SME May 2019

PLUS

Dell Technologies Cloud Accelerates Customers’ Multi-Cloud Journey /06 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 03 | PAGES 40 | MAY 2019 | RS. 20/-

1

PLUS

A10 Networks Survey About Anticipating 5G Deployments /17 www.smechannels.com

India’s leading IT magazine for channel business PARTNER CORNER

/18 NDS EVOLUTION: NATIONAL DISTRIBUTORS: MAKING A COMEBACK AND BESTING VADS

DWT-VEGAS

/28 DELL TECHNOLOGIES : DELL TECHNOLOGIES: DEFYING GRAVITY

SME CHAT

/34 SUNIL SHARMA: SOPHOS CAPS IN ON THE SECURITY MARKET WITH BRAND NEW INNOVATIONS AND AI

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

17TH ASSEMBLY ELECTION: THE RESULT WILL DETERMINE INDIA’S FUTURE FOR THE NEXT DECADE SANJAY MOHAPATRA

sanjay@smechannels.com

While I am writing this piece of editorial, India is embarking upon a historical moment by holding the 17th parliament election. It might sound weird as I am referring to politics and election in a technology magazine, but India’s future lies in the hands of the legislatures. It has already started the journey of modernization and transformation by leapfrogging technologies. However, the indicators are saying that again BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi will form the government.

This country is still the largest democracy, which is for the people and by the people. The existing gov¬ernment has already rolled out multibillion-dollar digital projects, the outcome of which has not yet surfaced. The large infrastructure projects including roads, airport, healthcare, education, etc., are underway. There is a thrust on manufacturing and employment generation. Government departments are being digitized and processes are being automated. So, the result of the election would matter a lot to the future growth of the country.

On the other hand, this election result would determine the focus of the country – whether it is pro development – in terms of bringing more industries or something else. Every organization is eagerly awaiting the outcome. The government is not only the enabler of business but also the biggest consumer of technology.

A study says that India’s digital transformation market would reach $710 billion by 2024. We are just 7 years behind. Digital Transformation strategy is predicted to add $154b to India’s GDP over next 3 years.

Government has already established COE on AI, VR, AR, etc. There are huge data centers getting built up to address the citizen centric needs. Government is thinking of how to bring agility and flexibility in its operation and offer best of the services. One of the global digital transformation surveys says that India is ahead of digital journey.

Now there are various studies around India’s economic journey. Every study says that digital transformation is the way forward. It means the organizations need to transform everything starting from the workforce to IT, OT and even security. They must re-skill their workforce to accommodate the new way of work. They must embrace multi-cloud along with their own DC strategy. How to do the marriage is a critical question and strategy. There is risk involved into it too. There is also the data privacy policy.

So, a lot is on stake as far as this election is concerned. Our growth for next decade is dependent on the result of this election.

Poly ‘Calisto’ POLY CALISTO 3200 AND CALISTO 5200 PORTABLE USB SPEAKERPHONES are 360-degree audio in a compact devices. These devices share a simple plug-and-play design so individuals or groups of people can have a professional audio conferencing experience, from any room or remote location.

Both Calisto models integrate 360-degree microphones that transmit conversations with high-quality audio and voice clarity. The speakerphones are intuitive to use with simple touch-sensitive controls and visual indicators, coupled with voice prompts and mute alerts that can provide immediate feedback of call status.

SPECIFICATION: THE CALISTO 3200 CONNECTS VIA USB TO PC, MAC AND TABLET DEVICES WHILE THE CALISTO 5200 CAN ALSO CONNECT TO SMARTPHONE DEVICES USING THE 3.5MM CABLE. FINAL WORDING: Both Calisto 3200 and Calisto 5200 are compatible with Plantronics Manager Pro, Plantronics’ industry- leading cloud solution designed for IT professionals.

OVERALL RATING

SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

3

contents

Trusted Advisor of Channel Business

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 03

2019

MAY ER COV RY STO

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Sub Editor: Sailza Kumari / Pooja Jain Designer: Ajay Arya Assistant Designer: Deepak Kumar Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Nidhi Sail, Priyanka 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.

Ph. +91 22 26338546, Fax +91 22 26395581 Mobile: +91 9967 232424 E-mail: Info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur Kolkata-700101 Phone: 9674804389 EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New

Despite Cloud Growth Power Solution Market Grows Faster /24 In terms of the Data Center UPS markets, with the accelerating shift towards Cloud, digitisation, and Internet of Things (IoT), there has been an immense boost to the adoption of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems across different applications.

Delhi-110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@smechannels.com Bangalore #28/1, 3rd Floor, Sri Lakshmi Krupa, Near Shamanna Park, Model House Street, Basavanagudi, Bangalore - 560004 Ph. No. +91 88618 21044 E-Mail info@ accentinfomedia.com

DESIGNED BY

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

CASE STUDY MATRIX / 36

“MATRIX COSEC COMPREHENSIVE TIME-ATTENDANCE AND ACCESS CONTROL SOLUTIONS TO INDIANIVESH FOR ENHANCING ITS FINANCIAL SERIVICES”

more inside Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 03

Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016

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

Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06

Delhi 110020, India.

Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 37

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher.

Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info

4

SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Media Pvt. Ltd.

SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES

for more log on to smechannels.com

Dell Technologies Cloud Accelerates Customers’ Multi-Cloud Journey Dell Technologies is unveiling Dell Technologies Cloud, a new set of cloud infrastructure solutions to make hybrid cloud environments simpler to deploy and manage.

Combining the power of VMware and Dell EMC infrastructure, Dell Technologies Cloud removes cloud complexity by offering consistent infrastructure and operations for IT resources, across public and private clouds and the edge, regardless of location.

According to IDC, more than 70% of companies are using multiple cloud environments, and the largest data center challenge most companies face is developing a successful multi-cloud strategy.

Operating in multiple clouds has caused organizations to onboard many management consoles and

disparate processes, which stifles innovation and adds complexity.

The hybrid cloud approach is an ideal solution by offering a familiar management interface that extends across clouds for a simplified overall experience. With VMware research finding that 83 percent of cloud adopters are seeking consistent infrastructure and operations from the data center to the cloud, the Dell Technologies Cloud is designed specifically to address this challenge.

“For many organizations, the increasingly diverse cloud landscape is resulting in an enormous amount of IT complexity, and no one is more qualified or capable to help customers solve this challenge than Dell Technologies,” said Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman of Products and Operations, Dell Technologies.

Skybox Security and Indegy Integrate to Strengthen Cybersecurity in Critical Infrastructure and Manufacturing Skybox Security, a global leader in cyber risk management, has announced its integration with Indegy, a leader in industrial cybersecurity, to help organizations better understand the security posture of hybrid IT and operational technology (OT) networks.

“OT networks have been a mystery to IT security teams,” said

6

SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Amrit Williams, Vice President of Products, Skybox Security. “But more and more, CISOs are being tasked with getting a handle on security in OT environments.

That starts with literally being able to see and understand the connections between the corporate and production networks, visualizing how the two impact one another’s risk of attack. Our

integration with Indegy further strengthens the visibility and insight we give customers with hybrid IT-OT networks, so they can accurately prioritize and respond to those risks.” The integration between Skybox and Indegy provides customers with seamless visibility of their IT and OT networks. The combination of Indegy’s passive and active data

collection from the OT network is relayed to Skybox where OT assets, services and vulnerabilities are modelled alongside those from the IT environment. With Skybox’s understanding of the hybrid network topology and security controls, it can simulate access between and within networks, and determine the reachability of vulnerable assets.

SNIPPETS

Optiva Accelerates Public Cloud Migration for Telcos with Google Anthos Optiva Inc, an innovative software provider of mission-critical, cloud-native, monetization solutions to leading communication service providers (CSPs) globally, announced that it has selected Google Anthos, an integrated platform for hybrid cloud and cloud-native environments, as the Kubernetes platform for private and public cloud deployments.

By leveraging the Anthos environment, which is used on premise in private clouds to help facilitate a move to public cloud, Telcos can accelerate their OSS/BSS migration to the public cloud. The move to the public cloud and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers Telcos a total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of up to 80%.

“We are excited that GCP is making it even easier for Telcos to start their journey to the public cloud. With Anthos, Telcos can now utilize GKE for on-premise and private cloud deployments,” said Danielle Royston, CEO of Optiva. “Telcos can stand up their Kubernetes environment even more rapidly and realize their vision to leverage the public cloud to achieve their strategic business goals and gain a competitive advantage in 2019.” Anthos, pioneered and offered as a managed service by Google, is based on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and enables consistency between public cloud and private cloud environments.

Vertiv and 451 Research Release Report on 5G Technical Enablers Vertiv, together with 451 Research, released the report on the state of 5G, “Telco Study Reveals Industry Hopes and Fears: From Energy Costs to Edge Computing Transformation.” The report captures the results of an in-depth survey of more than 100 global telecom decision makers with visibility into 5G and edge strategies and plans. The research covers 5G deployment plans, services supported by early deployments, and the most important technical enablers for 5G success.

Survey participants were overwhelmingly optimistic about the 5G business outlook and are moving forward aggressively with deployment plans. Twelve percent of operators expect to roll out 5G services in 2019, and an additional 86 percent expect to be delivering 5G services by 2021.

According to the survey, those initial services will be focused on supporting existing data services (96 percent) and new consumer services (36 percent). And about one-third of respondents (32 percent) are expected to support existing enterprise services.

8

SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Dell Technologies and Orange Collaborate for Telco MultiAccess Edge Transformation Dell Technologies and Orange entered into an agreement to jointly explore developing key technology areas for distributed cloud architectures to deliver the real-time Edge use cases and new services opportunities 5G will create.

Combining their respective expertise they will collaborate on the definition and development of: • Edge technology use cases, business models and proof of concepts.

• Open source consortia and partnerships for the edge ecosystem.

• Definition and validation of infrastructure accelerators, such as FPGAs, GPUs, and SmartNICs, for edge workloads, including Cloud/Virtual RAN (CRAN/vRAN), MEC, and real-time, interactive, latency-sensitive applications.

• AI/ML-enabled software to support remote automation of a multi-technology, heterogeneous edge built on virtual machines, containers, and bare metal workloads.

•Edge infrastructure platforms supporting Telco environmental, space, operational and automation requirements.

MY POINT

“IN THE POST-SNOWDEN WORLD, YOU NEED TO ENABLE OTHERS TO BUILD THEIR OWN CLOUD AND HAVE MOBILITY OF APPLICATIONS. THAT’S BOTH BECAUSE OF THE PHYSICALITY OF COMPUTING–WHERE THE SPEED OF LIGHT STILL MATTERS–AND BECAUSE OF GEOPOLITICS.” SATYA NADELLA, CEO, MICROSOFT

Trend Micro Boosts Channel Partners’ Business through its New Channel Program in India Trend Micro Incorporated has announced its channel plans and strategy for 2019 in India. As part of that, the company has introduced the new Managed Service Provider (MSP) program in India, to further accelerate and transform its partners’ business by providing more recurring revenue opportunities with endpoint, data center, mobile, email, and cloud solutions that deliver the best protection for its customers.

Trend Micro works with nearly 300 active partners in India, out of which five are platinum partners and ten are gold. Tom Cheeran, Head of Channel Business, Trend Micro, India said, “We have 25 focused channel partners in India who contribute significantly to our revenue. With a focus of building a robust channel ecosystem, we are in the process of signing up MSP partners in 2019 who will offer services to our customers and take complete ownership of our product and service implementation. This provides an opportunity for partners to build a better profitability and invest in Trend Micro.”

SNIPPETS

Dell Technologies Unified Workspace Revolutionizes the Way People Work Dell Technologies introduces Unified Workspace to help IT transform the end-user experience. This visionary approach to end-user computing will give workers a frustration-free, ready-to-work experience, while enabling IT with automated, open and intelligent solutions for unified management.

It will revolutionize the way IT admins assist and enable their end users with device selection, deployment, security, management and support through flexible, scalable services and solutions that integrate with any customer environment, regardless of OS, device and cloud environment.

“Imagine an intelligent solution that told you the specific devices and applications your workforce needs based on their specific usage. Imagine one that then delivers those personalized devices directly to the end user, preconfigured and preloaded with all the apps and security features they need without IT having to touch the device. Now, imagine that same solution proactively helping the end user resolve day-to-day IT issues like password resets, access to applications and lost VPN connections,” explained Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman of Products and Operations, Dell Technologies.

Dell EMC Brings New Updates to VxBlock and Ready Stack New VxBlock features now allow customers to: Deliver cloud operations faster and more efficiently with new validated support for: • VxBlock Central Orchestration workflows with VMware vRealize Orchestrator version 7.5 • VxBlock Central Operations analytics with VMware vRealize Operations version 7.0 • VMware vSphere 6.7 virtualization platform The updated Ready Stack validated design portfolio will include: • VMware-based IaaS on Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers and Dell EMC PowerMax storage.

• VMware vSphere on Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers and Dell EMC Unity storage.

• Microsoft Hyper-V on Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers and Dell EMC Unity storage.

END-USER SPENDING ON IT SERVICES IN INDIA TO REACH $15 BILLION IN 2019 GARTNER ANALYSTS EXPLORE HOW TO EVOLVE IT OPERATIONS AT THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE, OPERATIONS & CLOUD STRATEGIES CONFERENCE 2019.

IT SERVICES END-USER SPENDING BY SEGMENT, INDIA, 2018-2020 (MILLIONS OF DOLLARS)

SEGMENT

2018

2019

2020

CONSULTING

3,373

3,782

4,362

MANAGED SERVICES AND CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES

5,537

5,946

6,605

BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING

1,451

1,660

1,941

IMPLEMENTATION

3,232

3,535

3,985

TOTAL MARKET

13,593

14,923

16,893

CROWDSOURCING, HOME WORKING/TELEWORKING AND THE “GIG ECONOMY” ARE ON THE RISE. Source: Gartner (MAY 2019)

10 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT Ingram Micro appoints Jyotil Mankad to lead the company’s cloud business in India.

McAfee appoints Sanjay Manohar as Managing Director, India.

Schneider Electric appoints Jaya Mahadevan as the Director – Distribution & IT Channel Business for Secure Power, Greater India.

Commvault Appoints Riccardo Di Blasio as Chief Revenue Officer.

SNIPPETS

LoginRadius Plans to onboard 200 million Indian identities by 2020 LoginRadius, the cloud-based customer identity platform has announced their plans to onboard 200 million Indian users by the end of next year. The company has already begun ramping up their India operations and will triple its workforce by 2020.

LoginRadius raised $17 million in a Series A funding last year, led by ForgePoint Capital and Microsoft’s venture fund, M12. It currently reaches over a billion users and is serving over 150, 000 websites globally.

With digital transformation at the forefront of Indian innovation and the rise of an on-demand digital economy, LoginRadius is already working with top Fortune 500 companies in India and also in conversation with some of the biggest brands in India. The plan is to specifically target certain key sectors where they have proven expertise. These include media, publishing, retail, travel, and hospitality.

HP Global Study Establishes Sustainability as a New Workplace Standard for Successful Businesses HP unveiled a new study underscoring the importance of sustainable business practices in recruiting, hiring and retaining top talent. It also finds that employees are more productive, motivated and engaged when working for an employer who is leading the charge in social responsibility. The global 20,000 participant survey found that 61 percent believe sustainability is mandatory for businesses. Of those interviewed, 56 percent believe that ignoring environmental impact in the workplace is as bad as ignoring diversity and inclusion.

• Study reveals 61 percent of survey participants believe business sustainability is mandatory.

• 58 percent said environmentally conscious practices are key to engaging future workforce.

• 46 percent said they would only work for companies with sustainable business practices.

• 53 percent of office decision makers did not realize imitation printer cartridges are not recyclable.

•HP invests $2 million to sustainable supplies and promote a circular economy.

Dell Technologies Partner Program Accelerates Growth Opportunities Across Family of Businesses Dell Technologies is announcing the evolution of its Dell EMC Partner Program, which is now known as the Dell Technologies Partner Program. With the Dell Technologies Partner Program, partners now have the full weight of the Dell Technologies brand behind them. The program provides partners with the competitive advantage of Dell Technologies, enabling them to do more business with transformational solutions. The evolved program provides simplified engagement for partners to cross-sell and procure products and solutions across the Dell Technologies family of brands.

“Our partners asked us to make it easier to do business across our full Dell Technologies portfolio, so we made it a top priority,” said Joyce Mullen, President, Global Channel, OEM and IOT Solutions. “By providing our partners with a clear roadmap and investing in training and development, partners will win even more deals and grow their business.”

Atos Inaugurates New Global Delivery Centre in Tirunelveli India Atos announced the opening of a new global delivery centre in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India.

The first building on the 100-acre campus will house 2,300 software engineers delivering digital and technology solutions to global clients. The new Tirunelveli campus will leverage the region’s high-quality talent pool and provide opportunities to solve complex business problems using technology.

Sean Narayanan, SEVP and Head of Business and Platform Solutions, Atos Group General Management Committee, said “The centre will generate employment opportunities for local talent and leverage their potential to create new digital ecosystems for global clients. At Atos, we strive to hire a diverse and competent talent pool and mould it to deliver cutting-edge technology solutions to our clients.”

12 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Cyient Reports the Quarter with Continued Growth in Revenue, Profit and Cash Cyient reported its consolidated financial results for the fourth quarter (Q4) of FY 2019 ending March 31, 2018.

• Highest ever group annual revenue at $660Mn; growth of 8.7% in $ terms, 10.1% in CC terms; group revenue at Rs 46,175 Mn, growth at 17.9% • Highest ever annual operating profit at Rs 6,443; growth of 17.3% post NBA investments.

• Highest ever services operating margin at 16.4% for last 20 quarters, growth of 120 bps YoY. • Services revenue at $146.9Mn; growth of 1.7% QoQ (1.4% in CC), 2.9% YoY. • Group operating margin at 15.1% – highest in the last 20 quarters; expansion of 33 bps QoQ. Financial highlights for FY2019: • Services revenue at $580 Mn; growth of 6.3% (7.6% in CC).

• DLM revenue at $79.7Mn; growth of 29.3%.

• Highest ever normalized profit after tax at Rs4898 Mn; growth of 14.0%.

• Highest ever Free Cash flow at Rs3770 Mn. •Free Cash Flow conversion at 48.4%.

• Highest ever final dividend at Rs9/share, Rs15/ share for the full year.

SNIPPETS

IceWarp Attains ISO 27001 Certification IceWarp, an all-in-one email collaboration platform for communication got certified by ISO, adding yet another feather to their hat. Accruing the ISO 27001 Certification has been highly beneficial for IceWarp and will reduce risks and improve internal controls.

ISO 27001 is a globally recognized standard, a specification for an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS being a framework of policies and procedures that includes every legal, physical and technical control involved in an organization’s information risk management processes. The certification does bring in a massive volume of respect and a sense of security amongst the customers for the respective organization. Receiving the said certification will benefit IceWarp now in showcasing and rationalizing its completeness and rigor of the information security controls it maintains.

Huawei Cloud Expands its Partner Network with Infosys

Fortinet announced new secure SD-WAN offerings, including the industry’s first SD-WAN ASIC, to further enable organizations to implement securitydriven networking.

As organizations adopt SD-WAN for faster and more cost-effective connectivity, security remains their top challenge. In a recent Gartner report, “72% of the respondents said that security was their topmost concern when it comes to their WAN.” In response, Fortinet continues to empower customers to deploy security-driven networking with the following new innovations: • The industry’s first SoC4 SD-WAN ASIC • FortiGate 100F Appliance, delivering 10 times faster performance • New SD-WAN features within FortiOS 6.2 • Fortinet 360 Protection Services Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC, Fortinet said, “The WAN edge is now a part of digital attack surfaces, but the edge of your network must never be a bottleneck.”

MAY 2019

Coursera, the world’s leading online learning platform, announced closing a $103 million investment in a Series E equity round. SEEK Group, a global leader in investing, scaling and operating online employment and education businesses, led the round while existing investors Future Fund and NEA also participated in the funding.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution, marked by advancements in automation and artificial intelligence, is dramatically reshaping our lives, businesses, and jobs. Coursera is at the forefront of preparing individuals, companies, and governments to meet that challenge head-on and turn this disruption into opportunity,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera’s CEO. “The additional funding gives us the resources and flexibility to further expand internationally and to accelerate the development of a learning platform that currently serves 40 million learners, 1,800 businesses, and over 150 top universities.”

Huawei Cloud and Infosys signed a memorandum on strategic cooperation to help enterprise customers transition quickly to the digital cloud. As part of the agreement, Infosys will join the Huawei Cloud Partner Network (HCPN) and the two companies will develop new cloud solutions leveraging Huawei Cloud and Infosys products and services to help customers securely adopt innovative cloud-based systems for their enterprise workloads. “With more than 30 years of experience in building ICT infrastructure and a deep understanding of the enterprise market, we believe Huawei has the capabilities to provide secure, sustainable and innovative cloud services to wide-ranging industries, enabling our clients to accelerate cloud migration and drive business growth. We hope to further expand the HCPN partner ecosystem by identifying and developing partners such as Infosys with deep consulting expertise. Through our collaboration, we will ensure smooth project delivery, optimize operational costs, reduce transformational risks and create business value for our clients,” said Edward Deng, President of Huawei Cloud Global Market.

Fortinet Unveils SD-WAN ASIC

14 SME CHANNELS

Coursera Secures $103M in Series E from New and Existing Investors

CoSoSys Announces its USB Enforced Encryption Solution for SMBs CoSoSys announced the release of its newly redesigned crossplatform solution ‘USB Enforced Encryption’ to the Indian market.The solution can encrypt, manage and secure USB storage devices by using 256-bit AES encryption. Passwordbased, the product is easy to use and efficient for all types of organizations, from Small and Medium Business’ to public sector. It works very well in a mixed environment that has both Windows PCs and Macs.

Enforced Encryption has gotten a makeover and now it has an intuitive modern interface for an improved user experience. The solution is an important module of CoSoSys’ flagship product, Endpoint Protector and can be used with Device Control software to make sure all confidential data transferred to USB storage devices is automatically encrypted.

SNIPPETS

Orange Cyberdefense and Gatewatcher Sign a Partnership between Service Providers For the first time, two companies with French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) accreditation have established a strategic partnership to protect the security of Operators of Vital Importance (OIV) and Operators of Essential Services (OSE). Customers will benefit from the combined expertise of the two companies with the best level of protection, detection and reaction to cyberattacks.

Orange Cyberdefense, the French leader for cyber security in France, is integrating Trackwatch probes published by Gatewatcher into its monitoring services at the heart of its 10 Security Operations Centres (SOC) around the world. Already deployed to several Orange Cyberdefense customers, the Gatewatcher detection system can identify the most complex threats.

“This alliance between trusted partners offers a cutting-edge response to the needs of strategic enterprises to secure their essential assets, pursuant to French and European legislation,” emphasises Michel Van Den Berghe, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense.

Deskera Partners with IIT Kanpur to help SMEs Gain Access to Best-in-Class Research Facilities Deskera, Asia’s leading cloud company, on a mission to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) unlock their true value, is entering into a partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, one of India’s premier higher education institutions, to provide SMEs of Southeast Asia and India access to world-class commercial and technical research opportunities. “IIT Kanpur as a host to one of the largest innovation ecosystems in an academic setting and cutting edge state-of-the-art research in all disciplines of science, engineering and management is poised to provide both technology and product intervention support to SMEs across India and Asia region making them globally competitive. As a knowledge partner we will be able to fill in the gap in Deskera’s SME engagement in providing state-of-the-art technology and innovation support in empowering SMEs to inherent strength, thereby improving the quality of life and economic prosperity in the region,” said Professor Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur.

VIAVI Optical Test Platform Selected by Interlink Telecom Viavi Solutions announced that Interlink Telecom, a major telecommunication services provider in Thailand, has selected the VIAVI T-BERD/MTS-4000 V2 optical test platform to support building, certifying, maintaining and troubleshooting the carrier’s fibre optic network.

Interlink Telecom PCL delivers a range of telecommunication services throughout Thailand and across Southeast Asia, supporting enterprise data, video and voice transmission and internet connectivity, as well as enabling backhaul transport for a number of mobile network service providers. Seeking to further grow their 30 percent market share, Interlink Telecom PCL also has expanded into the data center market, offering server storage space and disaster recovery services to meet mission-critical big data transmission needs.

Hiver named a leader in G2 Crowd’s Report for Email Software Hiver has acquired this coveted position on the Leader quadrant of the G2 Crowd Grid Report for Email owing to a high customer satisfaction score and large market presence. As many as 94% of G2 users rated it 4 or 5 stars, 92% of users believe it is headed in the right direction, and users said they would be likely to recommend Hiver at a rate of 88%.

Other products in the Leader quadrant of the grid include: Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Zoho Mail, Microsoft Exchange, Apple Mail, and IBM Verse.

All the products included in this report have received more than 10 reviews. These user reviews are used to rank products by customer satisfaction and the market presence is evaluated based on market share, vendor size and social impact. Hiver has received about 200 G2 Crowd reviews, many of which contributed to its standing in G2 Crowd’s Spring 2019 reports.

DIGEST *ASTTECS LAUNCHES WORLD’S FIRST VICIDIAL AGENT MONITORING ANDROID APPLICATION *astTECS and an Asterisk announced the launch of *astMonitor – VICIdial agent monitoring android application. VICIdial provides an absolute mobility and helps call centres run to their best potential. The app offers real-time and quick overview of each call center agent and presents detailed insights about each agent’s inbound and outbound calls, on the go. Key features and advanced capabilities of *astMonitor include : live status of all agents, detailed view of calls, reports of call duration along with the option to select campaign & view, individual agent report, analysis of agents logged in, calls answered, total no. of calls made, reports, campaign statistics and call barge-in.

R&M APPOINTS RADIANT INFO AS ITS NORTH INDIA DISTRIBUTOR FOR SCS BIZ Reichle & De-Massari, better known as R&M, who have been present in India for the past 15 years have now roped in New Delhi based Radiant Info Solution to drive their Structured Cabling System (SCS) business as their North India Territory Distributor. In a bid to make a deeper penetration and to further R&M’s footprint particularly in Structured Cabling Systems Channel business, this move was made based on Radiant’s capabilities for driving channel markets as a value added IT network provider with strong support presence.

AMD EXPANDS EMBEDDED PRODUCT FAMILY WITH NEW RYZEN EMBEDDED R1000 The AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC provides a new class of performance for the embedded industry with 3X performance per watt vs. previous AMD R-Series SoC and 4X performance per dollar compared to the competition. Building upon the success of the Ryzen Embedded V1000 SoC, the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC provides embedded customers with dual core, quad-threaded performance, as well as the ability to run fanless, low power solutions for 4K displays; while providing leading-edge security features. The AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 is perfect for applications in digital displays, high-performance edge computing, networking, thin clients and more.

HITACHI VANTARA INTRODUCES LUMADA VIDEO INSIGHTS Hitachi Vantara introduced Lumada Video Insights, an end-to-end, intelligent and adaptable suite of applications that delivers operational safety and business intelligence using internet of things(IoT), video, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics.

Lumada Video Insights brings together Hitachi’s video offerings for smart spaces with new technology updates, innovations and integrations into Hitachi’s Lumada portfolio. The solution complements and extends the Lumada platform and services ecosystem with expanded AI, computer vision, advanced analytics, data integration and orchestration capabilities to help enterprise and industrial customers.

SME CHANNELS 15 MAY 2019

SNIPPETS

Get My Parking Launches ‘Enable’ – An IoT based Smart Parking Solution Taking its mission to digitize global parking forward, Get My Parking (GMP) is launching the newest addition to its smart parking platform – ‘Enable’. GMP Enable is an IoT module that upgrades the old to the new. It connects any existing parking access system to any third party mobile app and sensors. Packaged as a small black box, it retrofits existing parking equipment in a plug and play manner. “Enable is designed to work with any type of access control – RFID, NFC, QR code, Bluetooth, or camera vision. It can handle communications over multiple protocols (GPIO, Wiegand, TCP/IP, Serial over RS232, etc) that have been industry standards, thus ensuring over 90% compatibility in the parking ecosystem. Enable can handle transactions in online mode as well as partially offline mode in case of low connectivity,” says Aman Singh, Head of IoT, Get My Parking.

IceWarp’s New Cloud Setup at Netmagic Datacenter IceWarp has been growing their share in the Indian market for over a span of 4 years and has successfully been able to acquire more than 800+ customers all across the country.

IceWarp aims at continuous and comprehensive innovation considering current trends and requirements of more than 50,000 customers. Pramod Sharda, CEO of IceWarp India & Middle East quoted, “We have been overwhelmed with the response that the Indian market has given us and thank the community for the acceptance of a new brand so readily. This trust from our customers has given us a reason to upscale our infrastructure. We are glad to say that we are moving closer to our vision of Vision 2020 of meeting our target of 2 million mailboxes in the Indian market.”

Currently, IceWarp is investing heavily in the Indian market; the company has modeled a multi-million investment for cloud infrastructure at the Netmagic site in Mumbai.

This site will be operational for their growing set of customers and can also be op-ted by existing customers as a near DR site in case of contingencies. With this, IceWarp is all geared to upscale their infrastructure and meet the growing number of customers. Email has become a lifeline for any organization today, with large information requirements and aggressive recovery time objectives and companies are more likely to require a Disaster Recovery site.

Dell Technologies Brings Speed, Security and Smart Design to Mobile PCs for Business

AWS Announces Winners of the 2019 India APN Partner Awards

New Latitude series re-imagined for modern worker, with express technology options and enterprise-class security.

• New and completely redesigned Dell Latitude mobile PC portfolio helps users get to work faster and stay productive longer.

• Next-gen biometric sign-in and multi-factor security options address the 80% of workers who believe built-in security features help keep company data safe.

• Dell Technologies Unified Workspace solution radically simplifies and accelerates deployment, management and support of new Latitude devices.

• World’s most powerful docks feature a future-ready, upgradable design for better productivity and management.

Sleeker, more compact and easier to carry whenever and wherever, the 10th generation of Latitude commercial PCs from Dell Technologies has been completely re-imagined to address the needs of the evolving work force. The new portfolio of Dell mobile business PCs is designed with IT departments in mind and aims to get business users productive faster.

The 2019 India Amazon Web Services Partner Network (APN) Partner Award winners were announced, recognizing leaders in the region playing a key role in helping customers drive innovation and build solutions on AWS Cloud.

A panel of AWS Cloud experts selected the five winners based on the below criteria: APN Rising Star of the Year: Sify Technologies Limited.

APN Consulting Partner of the Year: Umbrella Infocare Pvt. Ltd. APN Technology Partner of the Year: Freshworks Inc. APN Differentiation Partner of the Year (Consulting Partner): Minfy Technologies.

APN Innovation Partner of the Year (Technology Focus): Capillary Technologies.

The APN is a global partner program, focused on helping the tens of thousands of participating APN Partners build successful AWS Cloud-based businesses or solutions by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support.

The APN Program includes independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) around the world.

GajShield Introduces GajOS: Bulwark 4.0 for Ultimate Cyber Defense GajShield Infotech announced the next generation network security solutions, ‘GAJ OS Bulwark 4.0’. Enhancing the firewall experience, backed by contextual intelligence, the Bulwark 4.0 goes beyond just application context and gains visibility at different levels, deeper than any current firewall, for an ultimate Cyber Defense.

The newly released version 4.0, dubbed ‘Bulwark’ is more powerful than ever that aims to add greater visibility, deeper inspection and better security. The contextual intelligence engine gains a complete visibility on the network traffic to implement better security policies allowing you for deep inspection into data by inspecting application and data context. Giving you a better security to understand usage insight and identify data anomalies to protect from zero-day threats.

16 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

SNIPPETS

Vodafone Idea Selects HPE Solutions to Manage Next Generation Networks and Services HPE will help Vodafone Idea to manage unprecedented volume of data that comes with new hybrid cloud environment.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced that it has been selected by Vodafone Idea Ltd., to partner for its next generation operations support systems (OSS) platform for Vodafone’s Service & Network Operations Center (SNOC).

Vodafone Idea’s SNOC monitors and controls its vast network and service offerings to over 334 million subscribers. The company further plans to streamline its service assurance processes with the HPE Intelligent Assurance solution and expand the SNOC’s existing robotic process automation (RPA) journey as it transforms into a digital service provider. Vodafone Idea’s SNOC, located in Pune, remotely monitors 192,000 2G sites and around 372,000 broadband (3G+4G) sites across 22 circles. “Vodafone Idea is undertaking the world’s biggest telecom network integration and creating India’s most advanced, secure and cost-efficient network,” said Vishant Vora, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Idea Limited.

CEO Priorities are Slowly Shifting to Meet Rising Growth Challenges Growth continues to top the list of CEO business priorities in 2019 and 2020, according to a recent survey of CEOs and Senior Executives by Gartner, Inc. The most notable change in comparison to last year’s results is that a growing number of CEOs also deem financial priorities important, especially profitability improvement.

The annual Gartner 2019 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey of 473 CEO and Senior Business Executives in the fourth quarter of 2018 examined their business issues, as well as some areas of technology agenda impact. In total, 473 business leaders of companies with $50 million or more and 60% with $1 billion or more in annual revenue were qualified and surveyed. “After a significant fall last year, mentions of growth increased this year to 53%, up from 40% in 2018,” said Mark Raskino, Vice President and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “This suggests that CEOs have switched their focus back to tactical performance as clouds gather on the horizon. However, we did not see CEOs intending to significantly cut costs in various business areas. They are aware of the rising economic challenges and proceeding with more caution — they are not preparing for recession.”

Excess2sell Completes 3 years and Celebrates 100 crore of excess inventory sale.

Excess2sell was launched by Checkers India Technology in the year 2016, founded by Rajan Sharma, Anant Chaturvedi and Navinder Chauhan, collectively having more than 60+ years of experience in the IT Industry, with expertise in Product Management, Sales, Business Development and B2B Marketing.

Today this has become India’s Premier & biggest online marketplace for ageing assets that has a reach of over 200,000 B2B businesses through its portal and e2s b2b Mobile App. It has a registered seller-buyer base of over 24,000 players and offers 10,000 deals across 11 verticals and in more than 340 product categories. Their website is a one stop platform for vendors, manufacturers, dealers, wholesalers and distributors for offering their unsold – overstock, excess, ageing inventory to buyers across various verticals. One of the biggest advantages which the website offers to both sellers and buyers is that they can conduct transactions ‘Confidentially, Anonymously and Neutrally.’

A10 Networks Survey About Anticipating 5G Deployments A10 Networks announced the findings of the ‘Securing the Future of a Smart World’ Survey in partnership with Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network. Gathering insights from 145 telco and cloud service providers worldwide, including India, to understand industry intentions, priorities and concerns about 5G. The findings underscored that mobile carriers around the world foresee rapid progress toward 5G over the next 18 months, significant new revenue opportunities for carriers and disruptive new use cases for many industries. Respondents also believe that much-improved security will be essential to realizing the full potential of 5G. Talking about whether the country is ready for 5G, Ravi Raj Bhat, Global Field Chief Technology Officer, A10 Networks. responded, “Yes, India is ready and will need 5G in the next 2-3 years, because of the number of subscribers this country has and the density of the population that is coming into the cities. You will have to go into small cell deployment, and 5G is mainly going to be driven in small cell deployment and that is really what is going to be a driving factor for deployment of 5G in India.”

Quick Heal Technologies’ Next-Generation Suite of Superior Cybersecurity Solutions‘Lighter Smarter Faster’ Quick Heal Technologies Limited, one of the leading providers of IT Security Solutions to consumers, businesses and Government, announced the launch of its next generation suite of cybersecurity solutions – ‘Lighter Smarter Faster’, for laptops and desktops. The launch underlines Quick Heal’s 25-year legacy and constant focus on innovation to design future-ready solutions aimed at providing best-in-class protection against sophisticated cyber-threats.

The launch of Quick Heal’s ‘Lighter Smarter Faster’ suite marks a significant step in the direction of combating the rapid evolution of the global threat landscape. In its Annual Threat Report 2019, Quick Heal reported more than 973 million malware attacks on desktops and laptops during 2018.

SME CHANNELS 17 MAY 2019

SME CHAT

NATIONAL DISTRIBUTORS: MAKING A COMEBACK AND BESTING VADS Technology has disrupted the markets for all the distributors and VADs to work consistently by maintaining an effective strategy to be more successful. While there are players who are established, some emerging players have jumped in the bandwagon.

National Distributors in the IT parlance known as NDs are very important for any brand when it comes to the promotion and availability of a product. It is because of them that customers are educated and get to know about the products.

This distribution channel or otherwise known as marketing channel is also directly related to the success of the vendors. Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Regional Distributors make up the other section of this partner community and together they represent a competitive IT market which adds more value to the products and services being offered.

NDs bring technology solutions to the market with a right combination of resources and in this process they create a true value proposition for their partners. Possessed with the latest technology solutions, numerous national and regional distributors have made their mark in the valueadded market. By offering high-skilled technical support to provide expertise for overall customer satisfaction, the distributors are on their way to align their business models more closely with their tech vendors.

Over the years, thse NDs are changing their roles and adopting a hybrid model of business.

They have started becoming VADs too and are increasing their sale of product solutions into the market place with a focus on incentives to increase reseller growth. The market is becoming a very competitive place due to the VAD community providing an enhanced level of service for partners and customers in the technology space so that

18 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

the customers themselves can select the best of the software, hardware and services to meet their desired goals. Also, VADs are aimed at creating an enhanced level of service for the partners on the latest technologies being offered and this role has been built on a one-of-a-kind business model with a personalised resource portfolio that aims to increase market development of speciality solutions. VADs train, educate and help the resellers to understand the requirements of the customers in order to deliver the appropriate solutions and to elucidate the requirements which will create a on-demand generation.

Technically, the main role of the distributors is to create business for the companies. In India, this whole system of distribution has been categorized into NDM and RDM. In the NDM the main companies have an understanding with the already established distributors who then distribute their product and solutions and also provide support through their vast network of local manufacturers and resellers. Whereas, the RDM may not necessarily be attached to the main companies but they have a strong hold in particular in a particular region for particular products. RDMs also have a dedicated group of resellers operating under their umbrella or a network of distributors who basically work the whole small town market.

There has been a significant expansion in distribution channels in India in recent years. The Indian retail market, currently estimated at $490 billion, is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of six percent to reach $865

billion by 2023. The total number of retail distribution outlets in the country is estimated at over 12 million, mostly family owned businesses. An annual growth rate for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector is predicted at 10-12 percent during the next 10 years. India’ s Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce market is expected to reach $700 billion by 2020. Online retail is expected to be at par with the physical stores in the next five years. India is expected to become the world’s fastest growing e-commerce market, driven by robust investment in the sector and rapid increase in the number of internet users.

Indian e-commerce sales are expected to reach $120 billion by 2020 from $30 billion in 2016.

In the past couple of years, India has seen an increase in the interest from companies wherein they want to improve their distribution logistics to survive the ever competitive market. This has led to an emergence of independent distribution agencies who are vying to handle this part of the channel system. The companies are outsourcing many key area functions especially in the distribution areas and the third party couriers are finding far more affable ways to interact with the customers. This year, distributors have realized the massive opportunities in e-commerce, Big Data, Cloud Computing and IoT (Internet of Things).

Thus, majors like Ingram Micro, Redington, Tech Data have gone very aggressive while promoting various offerings to the channel. SME Channels interviewed these big companies to get a clearer picture of the distribution channel.

SME CHAT

“WE HAVE ADOPTED CLOUD IN A REALLY BIG WAY”

DIEGO UTGE,

SVP AND COUNTRY CHIEF EXECUTIVE, INGRAM MICRO INDIA.

“WE ARE CLOSELY MONITORING CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGIES LIKE BLOCKCHAIN, QUANTUM COMPUTING, AR/VR ETC. AND WILL CERTAINLY BE THE FIRST TO BRING THESE PRODUCTS TO THE CHANNEL.”

Please tell us about Ingram Micro’s India presence and resources.

Ingram Micro India is the leading technology solutions aggregator and distributor with35% market share. We have been around for over 20 years and have expanded our presence and investment in the country to cater for the rapidly expanding IT consumption.

How have you transformed within the company to cope with the market growth?

The market has grown not just in absolute numbers but also in different sectors. To meet this multi-dimensional growth we have not only ramped up our core distribution business which includes better warehousing, efficient logistics etc. but also rolled out multiple strategic initiatives in the following areas: l Innovative Channel finance & payment options. l OPEX-driven consumption models like Hardware-as-a-service. l E-Commerce enablement of retail partners l Professional services like technical consult ing, cybersecurity etc. l The world’s No. 1 cloud commerce engine

.

foremost in bringing the latest new products to our customers globally, and that is how we help them realize the promise of technology. We have adopted Cloud in a really big way, as is evident from the massive investments and subsequent success from our Cloud division. We have launched the industry’s first marketplace for IoT solutions, and have multiple offerings in the fields of Big Data & Analytics, RPA, HCI, Bot and AI, etc. We are closely monitoring cutting edge technologies like Blockchain, Quantum Computing, AR/VR etc. and will certainly be the first to bring these products to the channel.

There are new technologies like Cloud, IOT, Big Data & Analytics, Blockchain, AI etc. influencing the market, is Ingram Micro dealing with these products? If yes what is the kind of grow in this segment?

Ingram Micro closely monitors technological innovations both in research labs as well as new product launches around the world. We are

What is your policy towards partner credit line?

We believe credit is an extremely important factor in the Channel ecosystem and offer the best credit terms to our partners. In addition to the standard credit line that is extended to each partner (based on their requirements and purchase history), we have also rolled out many innovative Channel finance schemes like EasyPay which allows partners to make payments in equated installments periodically thereby freeing up their credit line and allowing them extended credit periods.

We have also introduced payments thrugh UPI, NACH etc. so that partners are able to leverage

l l l

CloudBlue.

Industry-leading cloud marketplace for federated provisioning of Cloud services.

Partner enablement through Consulting & Digital Marketing services.

Adoption of emerging technologies like IoT, ML etc.

What is the turnover and growth of Ingram Micro India?

We did over $3.5B in revenues annually in India.

Could you tell us about your turnover and YoY growth globally?

I Worldwide 2018 fiscal year sales were $50.4 billion, an increase of $3.8 billion, or 8 percent in USD.

SME CHANNELS 19 MAY 2019

SME CHAT

their credit lines more effectively.

ners than pure-play distribution.

What value added services you are offering to the partners, because these days most of mainstream distributors are turning VADs? All of the strategic initiatives mentioned earlier add tremendous value to our partners. For example, our E-Commerce enablement helps partners sell online more easily. Professional services and consulting helps partners with large and complex deals all the way from Pre-sales to solution design and finally post sales support. Our digital marketing services help partners generate demand and visibility while the consulting services helps make partners and their business more future ready. In short, Ingram Micro has completely embraced the concept of a being a valueadded distributor and has re-oriented itself to deliver more to its part-

What is your total product mix?

Also tell us about your brand associations in India.

We have a huge product catalog comprising of over 200 products across 30+ categories. We partner with established and up and coming brands that are both global as well as homegrown. While it’s not possible to list all brands, we encourage interested readers to visit our website for our complete product catalog.

What is your product roadmap for 2019?

We are constantly adding new products across our Advanced Solutions, Consumer & Commercial, Cloud, and Mobility businesses. We want to bring best-of-breed and robust products to the Indian

market and are fortunate to have the trust of many brands who work exclusively with us.

Since Ingram Micro is a global company what are the best practices that you have implemented in this country?

There are many practices that are globally followed so it’s hard to list all, but I would like to take one example of GDPR and consent. Even through Indian laws do not mandate taking a person’s consent before sending an email, we believe it is the right thing to do. Hence we have adopted a constent-driven communication platform for our Indian customers too. This is just one small example of a global best practice being implemented in India but shows our single-minded pursuit of customer-centric and ethical business practices.

“OUR CLOUD BUSINESS REVENUE HAS BEEN DOUBLING EVERY YEAR”

RAMESH NATARANJAN

JOINT CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, REDINGTON

“REDINGTON’S STRATEGY IS TO BUILD STRONG CAPABILITIES AND SKILLS IN SELECT TECHNOLOGY PRACTICES AND INDUSTRY VERTICALS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE LEADING TECHNOLOGY VENDORS.”

Please tell us about Redington India’s presence and resources.

We have Pan-India infrastructure of sales Offices and warehouses. As on date we have …80+..Sales offices and 199+….warehouses.

20 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

How have you transformed within the company to cope with the market growth?

By deploying investments and resources in the growth sectors and emerging technologies.

What is the IT distribution market landscape? What is the total size in INR? This is difficult to estimate since quite a large part of IT distribution business is in the unorganized sector with many channel partners being direct

SME CHAT

many thousands.

importers.

What is the turnover and growth of Redington India?

We are currently in the silent period and will not be able to comment on this. However, we can confirm that our revenue growth has been in line with our expectations. .

Could you tell us about your turnover and YoY growth globally?

Since our Global Operations are completely independent of India business and has absolutely no relation to what we do here, the global revenue details may not be of relevance. Sufficient to say that Redington Gulf, which is responsible for MEA & Turkey business, is by far the biggest distributor in that region.

There are new technologies like Cloud, IOT, Big Data & Analytics, Blockchain, AI etc., influencing the market, is Redington India dealing with these products? If yes what is the kind of growth in this segment?

• We started investing in Redington Cloud Practice in 2015 and are now acknowledged as the best Distributor from both resources and capability point of view. Our Cloud business revenue has been doubling every year.

• IoT, Big Data & Analytics, BlockChain, AI etc. are still in the nascent stage, but these technologies are being incorporated rapidly into mainstream IT solutions. Redington’s strategy is to build strong capabilities and skills in select technology practices and industry verticals in partnership with the leading technology vendors.

What is your channel strategy?

Redington’s strategy is very simple and transparent. Whatever we do must add to helping our channel partners in their own business endeavours and enable them leverage on our capabilities, infrastructure and skills to offer new-age solutions to their own customers. Redington has always been, is and will remain a completely channel focused organization. We have always been in-step with our channel partners over all these years as the technology landscape has undergone several changes and take great pride in the fact that we have been a part, however small, of the growth journey of innumerable channels partners.

How do you maintain a competitive advantage over Ingram Micro, Tech Data, HCL Info, Compuage, etc.?

• By ensuring that we remain totally relevant to our vendors and our channel partners.

• By investing in skills and resources ahead of time, as we have done all these years. We had been the first Distributor to embark on the VAD journey and also the first distributor in India to invest in Cloud Practice.

What is your policy towards partner credit line?

There is no one-policy-fits-all answer to this questions. Partner credit remains the single most important value-add that any distributor can offer to the channel fraternity. This has multiple nuances and over the years has developed into a combination of art & science. We look upon our credit offerings as the most important business enabler for any deserving partner, who count in

What value added services are you offering to the partners, because these days most of the mainstream distributors are turning VADs. We offer a range of Service Offerings, cutting across technology platforms, staring from Partner Enablement & Training and going on to Pre-sales, Consulting, Implementation, Migration and Managed Services.

Please provide a graph of your product growth over the years.

Our product portfolio matured many years ago and we no longer look to just adding vendors. We carry almost all the most important and relevant technology brands.

What is your total product mix?

Also tell us about your brand associations in India • The number of brands that we associate with are far too many to list here.

• Our product mix includes PC, Print, Accessories, Server, Storage, Networking, Software, Security, Cloud, Smart Phones, Digital Publishing Solution, 3D Print Solutions and Health & Medical equipment.

What is your product roadmap for 2019?

We are looking to add specific, niche technology vendors whose solutions will help us address the Emerging Technology requirements of our partners.

SME CHANNELS 21 MAY 2019

SME CHAT

“TECH DATA PROVIDES CLOUD SOLUTIONS BASED ON THE PARTNER REQUIREMENTS “

SUNDARESAN KANAPPAN,

VICE PRESIDENT AND COUNTRY GENERAL MANAGER, INDIA, TECH DATA

“SHOP, TECH DATA’S AWARDWINNING ECOMMERCE PLATFORM WILL LAUNCHING IN INDIA THIS YEAR AND WILL FURTHER HELP OUR PARTNERS UNLOCK HIGHGROWTH OPPORTUNITIES.”

Please tell us about Tech Data India presence and resources.

Tech Data has 13 offices in India with innovation centers in Mumbai and New Delhi. Our solutions portfolio spans across data center, cloud, security, analytics & IoT, mobility, and education, from the world’s leading vendors.

We support our partners at every stage of their journey: plan and procure, integrate and test, install and implement, educate and optimize, and extend and end.

How have you transformed within to cope with the market growth?

Tech Data is constantly transforming to ensure we can best support our partners. One key transformation which supports market growth in India has been in education; specifically within our Innovation Center. Tech Data’s Indian Innovation Center (TDIC) has been established in two locations - Mumbai and New Delhi – and provides our partners with access to leading

22 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

enterprise hardware and software in a live product environment. We help partners effectively create differentiated solutions, speed the sales cycle and reduce the total cost of sale by: • Eliminating the need for costly trial programs • Strengthening our relationship with resellers and partners • Augmenting partner and vendor demo pools • Raising competency levels These facilities are used by: • Partners for instant access to industry-leading enterprise hardware and software solutions • Systems integrators to gain a realistic environment to provide solution verification • ISVs to test and run their applications on varied platforms • End customers to experience live demonstrations and understand the technology before they invest • OEMs to simplify buying decisions What is the IT distribution market landscape? What is the

total size in INR? Our government has identified Information Technology as one of 12 champion service sectors for which an action plan is being developed. They have also set up a US$ 745.82 million (Rs 5,000 crore) fund to help realize the potential of IT as a champion in service sectors. This means that IT distribution is a large and evermore important part of the Indian economy; both in terms of domestic productivity but also exports. Tech Data is ideally placed to support and grow this market with our global footprint and world-leading solutions portfolio.

According to one report India’s IT &ITeS industry grew to US$ 181 billion in 2018-19. Exports from the industry increased to US$ 137 billion in FY19 while domestic revenues (including hardware) advanced to US$ 44 billion. Spending on Information Technology in India is expected to grow over 9 per cent to reach US$ 87.1 billion in 2018.* Revenue from digital segment is expected to comprise 38 per cent of the forecasted US$ 350 billion industry revenue by 2025.

SME CHAT

Could you tell us about your turnover and YoY growth globally?

In fiscal year 2019 Tech Data’s worldwide sales grew 11 percent to more than $37 billion. In Asia Pacific, net sales were $1.2 billion, an increase of 14 percent compared to fiscal year 2018.

There are new technologies like Cloud, IOT, Big Data & Analytics, Blockchain, AI etc. influencing the market, is Tech Data daling with these products? If yes what is the kind of grow in this segment?

Over the next decade cloud will continue to evolve, combining with edge computing for analyzing data at source for better IoT solutions and expanding towards IoE (Internet of everything).

We expect to see growth in the area of open source solutions, more continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) for higher developer productivity, and increased integration of AI and RPA in daily tasks and processes.

Tech data provides cloud solutions based on the partner requirements around on-premise migration (lift & shift), SAP HANA on cloud, open source on cloud, LOB or app management on cloud for agile requirements and more. We are investing in cloud, along with IoT, security solutions and services to drive growth opportunities for our partners. .

What is your channel strategy?

Our strategy is to move to higher value.

We will achieve this by continuing to invest in next-generation technologies, strengthen its endto-end portfolio, transform Tech Data digitally and optimize its global footprint.

How do you maintain a competitive advantage over Redington, Ingram Micro, HCL Info, Compuage, etc.?

Tech Data’s position at the center of the IT channel positions us to serve both traditional and bornin-the-cloud vendors, conventional partners, new customers such as ISVs and MSPs. This partner ecosystem together with our innovative digital platforms like StreamOne and Shop give us high value-added capabilities to deliver next generation solutions that enable our channel partners to scale in multiple markets serving a multitude of customer needs.

Shop, Tech Data’s award-winning ecommerce platform will launching in India this year and will further help our partners unlock high-growth opportunities. The site features a comprehensive

online product catalogue, visibility into online orders and quotes, featured promotions and much more.

Additionally, Tech Data recently took another important step in strengthening our next-generation technology offerings with the formation of two new global practices. One focused on security solutions, the other focused on analytics and IoT solutions. These global practices bring together subject matter expertise from across our business to build on our current offerings and allow us to further accelerate our next-generation technology value proposition across our three regions.

What is your policy towards partner credit line?

Tech Data’s finance solutions are designed to give our partners access to flexible ways to purchase technology. With more finance options available, it opens the door to a world of new opportunities to help our partners grow their businesses.

We recognize that, if you are able to change IT expenditure from a capital expenditure to an operational expenditure, it often makes it easier for organisations to commit to an IT project. To help with this, our finance solutions incorporate a range of leases, subscriptions and loans our partners can mix and match to support their goals.

What value added services you are offering to the partners, because these days most of mainstream distributors are turning VAS? In April, 2018, Tech Data introduced our StreamOne Cloud Marketplace to our Indian partners. The provisioning, billing and end-user lifecycle management digital platform allows partners to scale, launch and manage a broad range of cloud services, including Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). It also enables partners to deliver advanced offerings such as assessment, migration, security and monitoring – enabling hassle-free cloud transitions for their customers.

The digital platform provides simplified access to premium cloud services from trusted providers, enabling our partners to offer cloud services with minimal investment and quickly drive recurring revenue. The platform currently offers a broad range of Microsoft O365 and Azure services, which our customers can leverage to cater to their end users’ cloud requirements, and we plan to continue adding to the portfolio of services available on the platform.

The StreamOne platform, developed by Tech Data, provides partners with the capability to manage the entire end-user lifecycle for consumption- and subscription-based cloud services. Part-

ners can easily leverage tools and resources that enable them to learn about, invest in and manage cloud services. Tech Data’s specialized support makes it easier for partners to efficiently transition their business models as well as unlock vendor and service provider program benefits.

What is your total product mix?

Also tell us about your brand associations in India.

We pride ourselves on the breadth and depth of our product mix. Some of our key vendors include Citrix, NetApp, VMware, Oracle, Hitachi, F5, Dell EMC, IBM, Microsoft, HPE, Checkpoint and Lenovo.

In recognition of the successful partnerships with these brands, some of our most recent awards our team in India has secured include HPE Compute Value Added Distributor of the Year, Citrix Partner of the Year, IBM Asia Pacific Excellence Award, What is your product roadmap for 2019?

We continuously review and expand upon our portfolio in strategic areas, ensuring we are providing the most comprehensive solutions for our partners. Cloud, analytics, IoT and security, are some of the key areas Tech Data is investing in as we move forward, recognizing the immense opportunities that lie ahead.

Since Tech Data is a global company what are the best practices that you have implemented in this country?

Tech Data was built on a strong foundation of shared values—principles that continue to keep us grounded in our mission and help us navigate uncharted territory in an ever-changing IT landscape. These values— integrity, excellence, accountability, collaboration and inclusion— serve as the cornerstone of our culture, giving us a shared sense of purpose as we strive to deliver the best experience possible to our channel partners and to each other. Within Tech Data and in our communities, the actions we take are a reflection of who we are and have a tremendous impact on the reputation of our company.

We follow standard best practices of Tech Data global and The Code of Conduct applies to everyone at Tech Data. This includes our Board of Directors, executives, employees and agents acting on behalf of Tech Data around the world. We also expect our business partners to follow these same principles. The Code connects us all, ensuring consistency in the way we do business, regardless of culture or location.

SME CHANNELS 23 MAY 2019

COVER STORY

Despite Cloud Growth

Power SOLUTION Market Grows Faster

In terms of the Data Center UPS markets, with the accelerating shift towards Cloud, digitisation, and Internet of Things (IoT), there has been an immense boost to the adoption of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems across different applications.

I

ndia’s power and energy industry has been expanding owing to the country’s large and diverse population with an entire spectrum of energy requirements. With electricity often being scantily available across the nation, Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS) emerge as a key place for energy storage. The UPS market is ever increasing due to the rising demand for electricity amongst consumers and enterprises as well as the need for quality power.

24 sme channels MAY 2019

COVER STORY

However, technology for power systems of modern equipment is facing tough challenges due to continuously increasing power-density and efficiency requirements. To address the need for a continuous supply of power, the focus is now on the introduction of advanced products with self-diagnostic features. Meeting these prerequisites will require substantial technology

advancements in system architectures, devices and materials, topology optimization and overall design structures. The high cost of installation and maintenance continue to remain an impediment to market growth.

There is an increasing emphasis on the need for technological innovations for capitalizing on this booming market. These innovations are predicted

to dominate the growth trajectory of the market in the future.

India’s power sector has experienced tremendous transformations in the last few years. India’s renewable energy sector is the second most attractive as per the Renewable Energy Attractiveness Index 2017. India continued its upward trend in the index to second position with the govern-

sme channels 25 MAY 2019

COVER STORY

“our aim is in helping our customers manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable.”

Manish Gokhale, Director, Business Development, Schneider Electric

“With rapid industrialization, there is an increasing pressure on the power sector for uninterrupted power supply. ” AS Prasad, General ManagerMarketing and Product Management, Vertiv

ment’s program to build 175GW in renewable energy generation by 2022 and to have renewable energy account for 40% of installed capacity by 2040. However, coal still remains the dominant source of electricity generation in the country.

Currently, coal-based power plant account for over 70% of India’s power output.

Sustainable growth of any country is dependent upon its infrastructure, and one such basic infrastructure is availability of quality power.

There is a need for 24×7 uninterrupted power supply along with transparency in the operation of sector and consumer participation. In the power sector, reliable, efficient and sustainable power is a need-of-the-hour today.

According to a report by Global Market Insights, the data center UPS market is expected to exceed USD 4.5 billion by 2024. The report suggests that the growth can be credited to the growing trend of cloud computing and virtualization, fuelled by the increasing digital and computing requirements of the data centers. Across industries, including banking, healthcare and manufacturing, online UPS solutions are being

26 sme channels MAY 2019

deployed for increased performance. Owing to the demand of high voltage, frequency regulation, and power conditioning in telecom and IT, these systems have found themselves to be incredibly useful. Overall, cost efficiency and compactness are the key benefits offered by these products which are anticipated to drive the expansion of the segment over the next few years.

When asked about the future of UPS, AS Prasad, General Manager-Marketing and Product Management, Vertiv said, “With rapid industrialization, there is increasing pressure on the power sector for uninterrupted power supply. Furthermore, across the globe, the boom in the IT sector along with digitization has led to an increased demand for UPS. We see this market flourishing in the future as the towering demand for efficient power supply management solutions has led to the development and growth of the market in recent years. We anticipate this to continue and exhibit a similar trend over the next couple of years, on the back of the escalating implementation of UPS technology for power backup and data security.” According to him, the new technologies that will be influencing UPS as a product are efficiency; green technology and uptime are some of the key trends that will dominate the growth of UPS. Along with this, researchers also suggest that there is the increasing need for an end-to-end fully equipped solution that can control, monitor and maintain entire operations. New battery alternatives, chemistries, and construction suitable for highpower and long-duration critical infrastructure applications, combined with true bi-directional UPS systems will present opportunities for the broad adoption of UPS systems capable of more elegant interactions with the grid.

These more intelligent UPS systems and more versatile batteries for backup power have the ability to give data center managers load

management and peak saving capabilities today.

The possibilities are numerous, including using some of the stored energy in the UPS systems to help the utility operate the electric grid. The static storage of all of that energy has long been seen as a revenue-generator waiting to happen.

Due to an increasing dependence on data centers, this has in turn lead to a rise in demand for infrastructure components like UPS and Cooling systems which are very critical to business resilience. With India being poised to be the second-largest market for data centres in AsiaPacific by 2020, (per a recent report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)), the UPS market for data centre is all set to ride high on the growth trajectory.

Manish Gokhale, Director Business Development, Schneider Electric, talks about the state of power supply in India, “At Schneider Electric, we believe that ‘energy efficiency’ is the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant form to overcome the challenges of growing energy demand, rising energy costs and climate change. As the global specialist in energy management and automation helping our customers manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. From simple switches to complex operational systems, technology, software, green building solutions, all are pivoted on sustainability. We are committed to reduce carbon emissions and all our products and solutions are targeted towards that.”

Technology is always changing. Cloud computing and virtualization is bringing architectural changes to the IT environment and how IT services are delivered. With the economic benefits of Cloud computing, the overall demand for IT has increased tremendously which in turn is driving demand for more power solutions, be it in edge sites or hyper-scale data centres. For instance, Eaton has partnered in developing

COVER STORY

“One of the biggest challenges in the UPS market is understanding the need for it.”

Shreesha Nagar, National Channel Manager-Power Quality Division, Eaton Power Quality Pvt Ltd.

large co-location data centres and it is interesting to learn how the power redundancy planning changes when the stakes are higher with multiple client occupancy. The industry will see further enhancements in years to come with developing software and information technology.

Shreesha Nagar, National Channel ManagerPower Quality Division, Eaton Power Quality Pvt Ltd., describes the challenges in the UPS market by stating that, “One of the biggest challenges in the UPS market is understanding the need for it.

While most of the requirements would arise as a back-up solution, people generally ignore the fact that equipment require protection from nine power quality issues -Power Failure, Power Sag, Power Surge, Undervoltage, Overvoltage, Line Noise, Frequency Variation, Switching Transient, Harmonic Distortion. Therefore, UPS is a must wherever we have critical loads like servers, machine tools, lab equipments , so that clean power is made available all the time for process continuity. Another challenge is understanding the need for preventive maintenance of UPS and the need to choose a UPS provider with strong service capabilities.”

Deepak Singh Thakur, Head of BusinessIndia & SAARC, UPS, Critical Cooling, PQC & Datacenter Solutions, Communication & Information Solutions Business Unit (CISBU), ICTBG, Delta Electronics India Pvt. Ltd. explains the power gap in the country, “The industry is becoming more power intensive. And our demand for power by 2025 -2030, might require almost 2.5 times - even three times the power, which is currently available. So in the power generation side of it, there is a huge infrastructure to build and that is why you see every government is coming up with renewable power projects. You have solar, you have wind and then a lot of other projects. But this itself is insufficient to cater to create an almost 2.5 times the power which is

existing today. Nobody knows how the industry will change after 5G, after which you will actually see the adoption of AIs, VRs, and various other technologies, IoT, in a true sense of deployment.

The current infrastructures are not so digitized.

All the infrastructures of every business will get to change according to the new norms and everything will be getting into data. The moment 5G comes in and the kind of things you can do with this device will be immense and will put a lot of pressure on the kind of data that is being generated. That data is going to be stored somewhere.

That storage space needs some power and that power is going to be exponentially higher. So the kind of data boom, which we are seeing in the market, you would have experienced yourself in the past three years, everything is getting into more data, videos, downloads, people playing games and all, so this is what the power size will be.” India is in a transformation stage. Not only India, but the global economy is moving towards something called a technological rapid change as well and urbanization is just one part which is picking up. India as a country is moving towards more digitization. So when there is a talk about digitalization and about the development of the technologies or adoption of technologies in India, it’s still very low as compared to develope d countries. “So there’s a huge scope to cover up. As Delta we are a part of the Delta products group, which is the largest ODM and OEM and world’s number one switching power supply manufacturer. And we are an R&D driven company. We spent almost 8% of our revenue in terms of R&D and we have almost 64 R&D centers globally. And we have centers in India also. We are also coming up with a massive R&D center in India in the coming future. So to sum up this niche market has always been a challenge and it is also an opportunity for us,” added Thakur.

Without clean, reliable, and safe power, the

“The industry is becoming more power intensive.

And our demand for power, by 2025 -2030, might require almost 2.5 times More Than Now.” Deepak Singh Thakur, Head of Business- India & SAARC, UPS, Critical Cooling, PQC & Datacenter Solutions, Communication & Information Solutions Business Unit (CISBU), ICTBG Delta electronics india pvt. ltd.

customer’s business will not exist. Therefore, the UPS market is going to stay and prosper for the foreseeable future. The channel has a major opportunity to bring the right power management solutions to the customers. Channel is likely to invest in power management software. In the era of virtualization, customers want information at the tip of their fingers and want to see more smart products coming to the market. Globally, the trend is drifting towards maximum utilization of assets. The days are gone when businesses could afford large apex investment with lower operating returns. Now every asset has to outperform in this competitive economy. We are likely to witness a time when UPS systems will not be a load on the power grid but an asset to it. Lots of innovation is going behind the product in terms of energy storage, charging and capacity extension. It would definitely be a major contributor to the changing power scenarios.

sme channels 27 MAY 2019

DWT - VEGAS

DELL TECHNOLOGIES: DEFYING GRAVITY Ever since Dell as a PC company has been created by Michael Dell, it has been soaring high and fluttering into new territories of compute, storage and security. Now since the customers are needing complete infrastructure along with service capability, Dell has internally realigned to present it to the market as Dell Technologies by integrating all its companies including Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks, Virtustream and VMware, etc.

S

ince Michael Dell created Dell Computer Corporation in 1984, Dell has been soaring high and gaining more and more heights. From dropping the PC’s Limited name in 1987 to become Dell Computer Corporation to today’s Dell Technologies, the journey has been really inspiring and daunting at times – specially when he dared to acquired much larger companies including EMC in 2015.

Interestingly, from 1997 to 2004, Dell enjoyed steady growth and gained market share from competitors when the rival PC vendors struggled and either left the market or were bought out. In

28 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

1990 Dell entered server business and in 2000 because the leader in Intel based servers beating the competition. Keeping the momentum in mind the company in 2003 rebranded it as Dell Inc. With the maturity of the PC market, in around 2005, the company realized that it should have strong inroads into the beyond PC market – including services, storage and servers. It had a strong supply chain and price advantage too. In 2013 Dell becomes a private company. And, on October 12, 2015, Dell announced acquisition of enterprise software and storage company EMC Corporation at $67 billion. This enabled the com-

pany to acquire EMC II, RSA Security, Pivotal Software and controlling stake in VMware.

However, till 2019 the company remained as Dell Inc and Dell EMC but this Dell Technologies World 2019 the integration became complete and the company renamed as Dell Technologies.

The company not only rebranded itself as Dell Technologies but also unified it’s fragmented partner programs.

Attended by 1500+ professional including 240+ media professional around the world, the event saw many achievements of the company in the recent past and many groundbreaking announcements too.

DWT - VEGAS

DMITRI CHEN, COO & VP OF SPECIALTY SALES, APJ, DELL TECHNOLOGIES.

MICHAEL DELL

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

JEFF CLARKE

VICE CHAIRMAN, PRODUCTS & OPERATIONS, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

PAT GELSINGER

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VMWARE

With so much of announcements in last couple of days, how is it going to be translated in APAC? There is not a different opportunity in the APAC, whether it is about digital transformation AND ITS implications on software and around data lakes and data capital. There is not difference, it is over here or in US, whether it is in APJ or India more specifically. It is everywhere. No.2 is multi-cloud is the anything.

It is probably the faster uptake from an APJ and India point of view. The opportunity there is massive. The third conversation is that Data protection is everywhere, whether it is in the DC or in Cloud or in the Device level. That is probably the conversation hard right now. There is no difference from the conversation point of if it is in APJ, US or in India. It is a massive opportunity. So, the challenge is how to get enabled our team as quickly as possible to go out and engage with as many customers as possible. Because it is not limited to any industry or organizational size. The needs around digital transformation and IT transformation with multi cloud journey, workforce transformation and the transformation around security solution is across every single industry regardless of every organization size. So our real challenge is to enable our team as quick as possible so that they can confidently go and articulate our capability and our value proposition and then listen very carefully what a customer is going through his problems that he is trying to solve and stay there pay attention to the.

What is the opportunity in APJ out of the US$3 trillion-dollar market globally?

I do not know about the market size in dollar terms from total addressable market globally but yes I can say for sure that across APJ, there is an acknowledgement that there is an opportunity to leapfrog in technology because in our region, we have less traditional deep investment into more recent tech. So, there is an opportunity to investment in new tech moving forward. We have more countries that are 5G enabled from the architecture point view within APJ than anywhere in the world. When that technology really starts surfacing and capability start occurring you see an opportunity to see potentially countries and GDPs leapfrog other parts of the Globe. So, that is a pretty exciting time.

The old way of doing business from tech standpoint are not deeply engrained in India so there is an opportunity or us to upscale faster. The other thing is that the transformation that is occurring – whether that is digital, IT, workforce, security, etc. the growth pattern is much faster in our region.

The customers in this region view the technology as great equalizer so you can unlock potential moving forward. A lot of organizations and countries tends to capabilities on that.

For India, it is a special moment in the history. There is a lot of convergence in technology and business.

There is a lot of migration back to India by the software developers, which offers an opportunity to the country to capitalize on the software and application development.

How are you ready internally to execute the new strategy and integration – be it Dell EMC cloud, Unified Workspace or Unified Channel Programme?

Actually, the experience you have as an employee these days have shifted very substantially. You know are shifting to flexible workforce with the ability to work any time and anywhere. Their experience on role of device is also great. It is not restricted to what we give they can choose. We have Gen Z entering workforce.

So, we have now Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, all will work together from next year. All the generations would have completely different expectations that is compounded by all the different types of works they will be doing within the organization.

So, we are mindful of what is the employee’s expectation for each of those hundreds and thousands of employees because the role that technology has these days is significant.

Two and half years ago I used to spend about 80% of my time working from Office but now I spend 80% of my time working from home or remotely. And the company highly encourages that not only from the device standpoint but from the software capability standpoint.

We have 150 thousand team members working in this company globally. Each one of them has to have enhanced experience as much as possible.

SME CHANNELS 29 MAY 2019

DWT - VEGAS

MATTHEW ZWOLENSKI, VICE PRESIDENT, PRESALES, ASIA PACIFIC AND JAPAN AT DELL TECHNOLOGIES

How would you express this complete integration of Dell Technologies?

Like every merger, you expect to get through bumps. The way we executed this and the way we treated people as a precious resource has been phenomenal. I think people call us the most successful IT merger in the history. Today the brands integrated are stronger than ever. For last two and half years, we have been through huddles.

How does the pre-sales being affected by these announcements?

From my team perspective, we had the AWS side, now Azure being added, the strategy is going in right direction. The vision was always how does the customer manage many clouds. We had private cloud always part of our strategy, Now, with AWS and Azure on our side, it makes the core part of the technology for the customers to look at from their DC strategy. So, we had a vision now we got our execution complete.

The other thing is we have seen customers buy laptop, desktop and event VMware technologies, etc. We have made it simpler and integrated. VMware catalogue is evolving to complete the edge story of the user. It is an evolution. It was not there before because the customer was building everything.

What are challenges that CIOs facing and how are you mitigating those?

The biggest challenge is a lot of the CIOs tried public cloud projects and private cloud projects and failed in both. They have gone to public cloud and they are pulling things back. They have gone into private cloud and are disappointed too as it takes between five to twelve weeks to provision anything. So, the big challenge was how I solve the agility problem. Today the IT spending is 70 % on DC and 30% on public cloud.

Customers are creating agile apps in public cloud. Legacy customers are still investing in DC environment but often that is turning into public cloud. Sometimes that goes to the service provider to run it as a public cloud. So, in most cases CIOs have large DC footprint.

Among the announcements the important were Unified Workspace, Dell Technologies Cloud, Dell Technologies Partner Program, etc. However, there were a lot many announcements too. For example, the announcement was around new and enhanced storage, data management and data protection solutions, modern infrastructure solutions for the IT landscape – from the edge to core data centers to public and private clouds, The 10th generation Latitude portfolio is optimized for the new Dell Technologies Unified Workspace while giving workers a frustration-free, ready-to-work experience, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, Featuring VMware’s high-performance compute, storage and networking software powered

by VMware vSphere, vSAN and NSX running on Dell EMC VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure, the service will be fully managed by VMware, enabling customers to focus on business innovation and differentiation. VMware Cloud on Dell EMC will be core to the Dell Technologies Cloud Data Center-as-a-Service solution unveiled today at Dell Technologies World 2019.

First of all, the Unified Workspace simplifies the entire device lifecycle for IT while providing workers with the personalized, frictionless, ready-to-work experience they demand. Unified Workspace integrates solutions across Dell devices and services, VMware and Secureworks to help businesses ease major end-user computing pain points and focus on transformative initiatives. The company delivers an intelligent, unified approach that provides IT leaders with improved visibility,

30 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

insights and automation to streamline processes and deliver an exceptional end-user experience.

Dell Technologies and Microsoft Corp also announced that they are expanding their partnership to address a wider range of customer needs and help accelerate digital transformations.

Through this collaboration, the companies will deliver a fully native, supported, and certified VMware cloud infrastructure on Microsoft Azure.

Additionally, joint Microsoft 365 and VMware Workspace ONE customers will be able to manage Office 365 across devices via cloud-based integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory. VMware will also extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure.

This was much anticipated though but it was the biggest news of the event where three leaders, Satya Nadella, Pat Gelsinger and Michael Dell got together on the state making the statement that it is a confirmation of Dell Technologies working with Microsoft to enable its Azure public cloud customers to better manage their online resources with popular VMware software tools.

“At Microsoft, we’re focused on empowering customers in their digital transformation journey, through partnerships that enable them to take advantage of the Microsoft cloud, using the technologies they already have,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with Dell Technologies and VMware, we are providing our mutual customers with an integrated cloud experience

and digital workplace solutions to open up new opportunities and meet their evolving needs.”

“With this announcement Dell Technologies and Microsoft are working to simplify our customers’ entire technology environment,” says Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies. “Our goal is to provide a single view from edge to core to cloud – an integrated platform for our customers’ digital future.”

“Customers are excited to see us expand our collaboration with Microsoft,” commented Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “These innovative cloud and client offerings will deliver customers even more value, provide more flexibility to accelerate their hybrid multi-cloud and multi-device journey, and accelerate the digital transformation of their business.”

Dell EMC Partner Program, which is now known as the Dell Technologies Partner Program will put full weight of the Dell Technologies brand behind the partners. The program provides Partners with the competitive advantage of Dell Technologies, enabling them to do more business with transformational solutions. The evolved program provides simplified engagement for partners to cross-sell and procure products and solutions across the Dell Technologies family of brands.

“Our partners asked us to make it easier to do business across our full Dell Technologies portfolio, so we made it a top priority,” said Joyce Mullen, president, Global Channel, OEM and IOT Solutions. “By providing our partners with a clear roadmap and investing in training and develop-

DWT - VEGAS

ment, partners will win even more deals and grow their business.”

Possessing the right skills to sell and deploy innovative solutions is a critical way for partners to differentiate their capabilities in the market.

Dell Technologies announced two new solution badges composed of already in-market certifications to validate a breadth of capability to support and deploy across a solution. The new solution badges are for Dell Technologies Cloud Platform and Dell Technologies Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Under the Dell Technologies Partner Program, the company also announced a new cloud competency that would support the newly announced Dell Technologies Cloud solution.

The competency would be composed of the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform Badge and few other certifications, including Services Delivery Competency on VxRail.

Giving keynote, Michael S. Dell, CEO, Dell Technologies touched upon the overall growth of the industry and role of Dell Technologies. He said, “Fortunately, I have been among so good people including best customers, best partners, innovators, engineers, businesses and government leaders. And I am inspired by what you all have accomplished. You are dreaming so big and you are fearlessly facing the digital future.” “I am proud to be your partner in your incredible journey. We believe in creating Dell Technologies by bringing together - servers, storage, virtualization and data protection. And you all have responded.

We are growing and gaining shares. We are investing in our business. we are paying down debts and we are integrating and innovating across our business like never before.”

He added, “We have invested US$ 20 billion in R&D in last five years. Our 20 thousand engineers, scientists and PHDs enabling your digital future. We are successful because of the meaningful partnerships with all of you.” “This is a beautiful world. Starting from millions of SMEs to very large organizations, we all have accomplished together. In a few days we will celebrate our 35th birthday of our company. I believe technology unlocks and accelerates you to progress. It is a privilege to play a role in the unprecedented and unmatched world of advancement. From life expectancy to infant mortality to vaccination to basic health, from literacy and go to school to economic growth rates and progresses, humankind has made unprecedented growth. Humankind has made astonishing progresses during the last 2 and half decades. The democratization of technology and simultaneously rise in human progress has been nothing short than miracles. But the fact is that those are the pre-game show as the next 3

decades will be more progresses than ever before.

Self-driving taxies, drone deliveries, 3D printing, etc. are all preshow events. How about some real progresses? The eradication of deafness, blindness and paralysis to robotics and AI, a new phase of miracles is just around the corner. Where we have come from and how we have been connected in Dell Technology family, we have something in common that we are technologist and we share awesome responsibility. We are creating digital twine of reality of alter universe, which is rich in data and analytics. It is in this universe; we find great human potential and our greatest future achievements. It is up to us to make sure that technology reflects our humanity in their values because technology can amplify human genius.”

Echoing what Michael said in his keynote, Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman of Products and Operations of Dell Technologies said, “We have to think about how we can make it easier to generate insights and intelligence from all of this data in this rapidly digitizing world, or what I call the foundation of digital transformation. It’s driving this technology led investment cycle that we think is key as IT has become an integral part of the business as well as intertwined in business decisions today.” “Dell’s approach in all these, places them in an advantageous position to deliver holistic solutions from the edge to the core to the cloud. Dell sees demand for these solutions to the point it gives them the rare opportunity to serve their customers better.”

Giving some facts and figures, Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware said 81% of the workforce engages in work outside of their traditional office, with 76% working in two or more places. This means it’s a uniquely mobile working device that VMware needs to enable.

He added, “IT needs a strategy that supports all these devices, and against all of those devices, all of those apps users need a consistent experience for tomorrow. It needs to support provisioning, deployment, processes that get the right devices with the right services and applications in the hands of your team. It requires seamless access for this consistent experience.”

He added, “The cloud today is in a very interesting period in the industry. It’s no longer a case of public vs private. We live in a world that is more multi-cloud and hybrid, a world where organizations are investing more in their own data centers but wanting them to interoperate with public cloud resources. We see an increase and emerging set of edge resources, where workloads are migrating public cloud, on-premise and to the edge and being repatriated and managed across that environment. It truly is a hybrid world where public and hybrid need to work together seamlessly.”

The Dell Technologies Cloud powered by VMware removes the complexity and control the chaos in the increasingly multi-cloud world. It is hybrid done right. It delivers a consistent cloud operating model no matter where the workload resides, be it at the edge, public or private cloud.

The Dell Technology Cloud offers consistent infrastructure operations across all cloud environments, better cloud economics, the ability to deploy across both private and public cloud, a consistent set of value-added services, a global ecosystem of 4200 cloud providers to seamlessly extend cloud environment, support for PKS and containers and the ability for simpler financing.

VXRail fully supports VMware cloud foundation, delivering a seamless experience across physical, virtual, public and private cloud.

Gelsinger said, “Code-named Project Dimension (now called the VMware Cloud), which is a fully managed, on-premise, IT in a box solution coming to market this year. It is an on-premise, cloud-like experience. What is interesting about this is that the “cloud” doesn’t scale well to the very largest companies because they can buy hardware and services at the same price as cloud providers.

So, by eliminating this unnecessary middleman, they can reduce costs, gain greater control, and better assure themselves the security of the result.

They then did a demo showcasing that the user interface for this offering was virtually the same for this on-premise solution and the firm’s external cloud resources. The audience appears to love this thing. This collects software, hardware, support and services into a single offering, simplifying invoicing and vastly reducing the headaches of managing a lot of diverse services that don’t interoperate well and that invoice separately. This appears to be a massive simplification of the concept of the “hybrid cloud.”

The most interesting part of the event was when Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft joined the stage with Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger to show his happening and support to the entire equation and , Microsoft, CEO, Satya Nadella said, “VMware Workspace ONE is not integrated with Office 365, and VMware extending the new Windows Virtual Desktop to provide what appears to be a far stronger cloud-based desktop solution than either company could have done alone. Partnerships like this provide customers with the kind of solution that they have long said they wanted, a vendor-bridging solution that just works out of the box. This isn’t just VMware on Microsoft’s cloud but Azure capabilities on VMware’s onpremise solutions so that both together seamlessly provide a similar set of capabilities and the user isn’t disrupted by the ever more minimized differences.”

SME CHANNELS 31 MAY 2019

CASE STUDY

TOP 5 REASONS YOU NEED EDR

E

ndpoint detection and response (EDR) tools are built to supplement endpoint security with increased detection, investigation, and response capabilities.

However, the hype surrounding EDR tools can make it difficult to understand how exactly they can be used and why they are needed. Making matters worse, today’s EDR solutions often struggle to provide value for many organizations as they can be difficult to use, lack sufficient protection capabilities, and are resource intensive.

Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR integrates intelligent EDR with the industry’s top-rated endpoint protection in a single solution, making it the easiest way for organizations to answer the tough questions about security incidents. Here are some additional reasons to consider an EDR solution.

Figure 1: Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR displays all the additional locations where a threat exists

CONFIDENTLY REPORT ON YOUR SECURITY POSTURE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT IT and security teams are often motivated by attack and defense metrics, yet the hardest question for most teams to answer is “are we secure right now?”

This is because most networks have sizable blind spots that make IT and security teams struggle to see what is going on inside their environments.

Lack of visibility is the primary reason why organizations struggle to understand the scope and impact of attacks. This often manifests itself when an incident occurs and the team assumes they are safe because that incident was detected. Intercept X Advanced with EDR provides additional insight that determines if other machines were impacted. For example, if a suspicious executable was found on the network, it would be remediated. However, the analyst may not know if that executable exists anywhere else in the environment. With Intercept X Advanced with EDR, this information is readily available. Being able to view the other locations where threats exist allows the security team to prioritize incidents for additional investigation and potential remediation.

Generating a clear view of an organization’s security posture also provides the benefit of being able to report on compliance status. This information will help identify areas that may be vulnerable to attacks. It also allows administrators to determine if the scope of an attack has impacted areas where sensitive data is housed. For example, if malware was detected that exfiltrated data out of the network, an analyst would need to determine if impacted machines housed medical information that was subject to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and

DETECT ATTACKS THAT HAVE GONE UNNOTICED When it comes to cybersecurity, even the most advanced tools can be defeated given enough time and resources, making it difficult to truly understand when attacks are happening. Organizations often rely solely on prevention to stay protected, and while prevention is critical, EDR offers another layer of detection capabilities to potentially find incidents that have gone unnoticed.

Organizations can leverage EDR to detect attacks by searching for indicators of compromise (IOCs).

This is a quick and straightforward way to hunt for attacks that may have been missed. Threat searches are frequently kicked off after a notification from third-party threat intelligence: for example, a government agency (such as US-CERT, CERT-UK, or CERT Australia) might inform an organization that there is suspicious activity in their network. The notification may be accompanied by a list of IOCs, which can be used as a starting point to determine what is happening.

Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR provides a list of the top suspicious events, so analysts know exactly what they should be investigating (coming in 2019). By leveraging SophosLabs machine learning capabilities, a list of the top suspicious events is presented, ranked by their threat score. This makes it easy for analysts to prioritize their workloads and focus on the most important events.

Suspicious events also highlight a common scenario where analysts are being called upon to determine if something is truly malicious. This pertains to activity that does not appear to be

32 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Accountability Act – US regulation). This would be a much simpler exercise with Intercept X Advanced with EDR. As an added compliance benefit, it would also be much easier to demonstrate that patient information is being protected thanks to increased endpoint visibility.

malicious enough to automatically convict but still appears suspicious enough to warrant a deeper look.

Think of it as falling in a “grey area” where additional analysis is needed to confirm if it is malicious, benign, or unwanted.

Figure 2: Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR offers the ability to search for indicators of compromise across the network. It also leverages machine learning to determine the top suspicious events that should be investigated (suspicious events functionality coming in 2019) RESPOND FASTER TO POTENTIAL INCIDENTS Once incidents are detected, IT and security teams usually scramble to remediate them as fast as possible to reduce the risk of attacks spreading and to limit any potential damage. Naturally, the most pertinent question to ask is how to get rid of each respective threat. On average, security and IT teams spend more than three hours trying to remediate each incident. EDR can speed this up significantly.

The first step an analyst might take during the incident response process would be to stop an attack from spreading. Intercept X Advanced with EDR isolates endpoints on demand, which is a key step to stop a threat from spreading throughout the environment. Analysts will often do this before investigating, buying time while they determine the best course of action.

The investigation process can be a slow and painful one. This of course assumes an investigation occurs at all. Incident response traditionally relies heavily on highly-skilled human analysts. Most EDR tools also rely heavily on analysts to know which questions to ask and how to interpret the answers.

However, with Intercept X Advanced with EDR, security teams of all skill levels can quickly respond to security incidents thanks to guided investigations that offer suggested next steps, clear visual attack representations, and built-in expertise.

Figure 3: Guided incident response offers suggested next steps and on-demand endpoint isolation to quickly and safely resolve incidents.

CASE STUDY

When an investigation is concluded, analysts can respond with a click of a button. Rapid response options include the ability to isolate endpoints for immediate remediation, clean and block files, and create forensic snapshots. And if a file is mistakenly blocked, it can be easily reversed.

Figures 4: Action buttons are located throughout Intercept X Advanced with EDR that offer multiple remediation options, with “clean and block” being the most common.

ADD EXPERTISE WITHOUT ADDING HEADCOUNT By a large margin, organizations looking to add endpoint detection and response capabilities cite “staff knowledge” as the top impediment to EDR adoption. This shouldn’t come as a great surprise, as the talent gap for finding qualified cybersecurity professionals has been widely discussed for several years.

This barrier is especially pronounced with smaller organizations.

Top reasons why organizations have not implemented EDR

Figure 5: Staff knowledge was cited as the top reason why organizations have not adopted an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution (Source: Sapio study in conjunction with Sophos, October 2018) To combat the staff knowledge gap, Intercept X Advanced with EDR replicates the capabilities associated with hard-to-find analysts. It leverages machine learning to integrate deep security insight and is enhanced with curated SophosLabs threat

intelligence, so you can add expertise without having to add staff. The intelligent EDR capabilities help fill the gaps caused by a lack of staff knowledge, reproducing the functions of several types of analysts: l Security analysts: These are the front-line analysts tasked with triaging incidents and determining which alerts need to be immediately addressed.

Ideally, they’re also able to proactively hunt to detect any attacks that may have gone unnoticed. Intercept X Advanced with EDR automatically detects and prioritizes potential threats (coming in 2019). Using machine learning, suspicious events are identified and given a threat score. The events with the highest scores are the most immediately important. Analysts can quickly see where to focus their attention and start investigating. l Malware analysts: Organizations may rely on malware experts that specialize in reverse engineering suspicious files in order to analyze them. Not only is this approach time consuming and difficult to achieve, but it assumes a level of cybersecurity sophistication most organizations do not possess.

Malware analysts are needed to decide if a file that was not blocked is actually malicious. They also may look at files that were convicted but may actually be false positives. Intercept X Advanced with EDR offers a better approach to malware analysis by leveraging machine learning. Using the industry’s best endpoint malware detection engine, malware is automatically analyzed in extreme detail, breaking down file attributes and code components and comparing them to millions of other files. Analysts can easily see which attributes and code segments are similar to “known-good” and “known-bad” files so they can determine if a file should be blocked or allowed. l Threat intelligence analysts: Investigations may rely on third-party threat intelligence (often at an additional cost) to add insight and context into threats. Analysts are needed to interpret and integrate this data to ensure it adds value. Threat intelligence can be used as a starting point to investigations, as a means for asking the security community what it thinks of a suspicious file, or to determine if an attack is targeting the organization. Intercept X Advanced with EDR provides IT and security administrators the ability to gather more information by accessing on-demand threat intelligence curated by SophosLabs. To maintain full visibility into the threat landscape, SophosLabs tracks, deconstructs, and analyzes 400,000 unique and previously unseen malware attacks each day in a constant search for the latest and greatest attack techniques. This threat intelligence is collected, aggregated, and summarized for easy analysis so teams that do not have dedicated threat intelligence

analysts or access to expensive and hard to understand threat feeds can benefit from one of the top cybersecurity research and data science teams in the world.

Figure 6: Machine learning analysis displays the attributes, code similarity, and file path analysis for powerful yet simple analysis.

UNDERSTAND HOW AN ATTACK HAPPENED AND HOW TO STOP IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN Security analysts have recurring nightmares where they have suffered an attack: an executive screams, “How did this happen?!” and all they can do is shrug their shoulders. Identifying and removing malicious files solves the immediate problem, but it doesn’t shed light upon how it got there in the first place or what the attacker did before the attack was shut down.

Threat cases, included with Intercept X Advanced with EDR, spotlight all the events that led up to a detection, making it easy to understand which files, processes, and registry keys were touched by the malware to determine the impact of an attack. It provides a visual representation of the entire attack chain, ensuring confident reporting about how the attack started and where the attacker went. More importantly, by understanding the root cause of an attack, the IT team will be much more likely to prevent it from ever happening again.

Figure 7: Threat cases provide a visual and interactive representation of the attack chain.

SME CHANNELS 33 MAY 2019

SME CHAT

SOPHOS CAPS IN ON THE SECURITY MARKET WITH BRAND NEW INNOVATIONS AND AI Explaining the new technologies that Sophos has innovated to combat cyber security, Sunil Sharma, Managing Director-Sales, Sophos, explains the company’s tactics to purge the threats to IoT.

How do you see security market evolving in India?

It is no different than the security market evolving in the world. I have understood the basic learning which is ‘necessity is mother of invention’. So when a security market is evolving, somebody asks that what is the size of security market in India or global, I would personally believe that it is all being controlled and driven by the external threat factors actually. The more we have cyber criminals pushing the team to think creatively, innovatively, the more the size will grow. And today worldwide the market is worth $40 billion, growing at an average of 6-7%. Another point is that in India, Gulshan Rai, I heard one of his key note in which he spoke about Indian market which is currently worth $4.5 billion and which is going to be $35 billion in the next 10 years.

So there are different versions in what people are talking about and third parties are giving their own stats, facts and figures. But again, my personal belief is that every year, when you have attacks like WannaCry and others, they are the ones who actually accelerate this market in terms of growth, in terms of evolution from both the sides. From the protection side, and from the threat side. So the more the criminals are going to be there, people will have to deploy more police.

Similarly, if you have more threats, which have been coming in and attacking the existing infrastructure, which is important for any CIOs and CSOs then you will have to deploy more power, in terms of cyber security. So that is how I personally believe that it is evolving. Because every second day we are getting some advance APTs which are prominently targeting a specific market, specific kind of segment, specific kind of vertical, and that is how the market is being driven.

34 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Security is not how it was in the earlier years. It has become sophisticated, and attacks are coming from all across, you never know from where you’ll get the attack. So what is your take on this?

I think one fundamental thing which I am in agreement with is that attackers have been thinking in different ways and means, but I think companies have also able to keep up the pace.

For example, earlier we never had a proactive kind of technology, and today I can proudly say, that companies like Sophos have come out with Deep Learning which is part of AI where we are talking about a technology with no signature and proactively able to estimate, understand that this could be a threat and a malware. Not a normal data which people are trying to get on their laptops or computers. So one side I agree that cybercriminals are very fast. Like today in Sophos lab we have 400,000 unique malwares being researched every day. You can imagine how this particular cybercriminal industry is growing and they have only one agenda right now and that is how they can take millions and billions of dollars to their bank. And that is why now the threats that have been coming in are absolutely targeted.

What are the biggest threats? Is it the ransomware?

As I mentioned earlier also, it is the ransomware malware. And a part of it is also a malware which is crypto jacking and crypto mining which constitutes the entire circle of different threats.

So you have (APTs) Advanced Persistent Threats, which are taking the maximum shares of malware and are a part of that is ransomware malware actually for example SamSam, Dharma, or BitPay malware, these are the recent ones which

are happening in the industry. I have not seen a single company which has not been attacked by these three and also EternalBlue which was part of WannaCry is like a targeted attack and people are still doing it because it is impossible in today’s world, to patch each and every aspect of your network. Also, when you see you have IoT devices coming in you have so much of vulnerability in the space in the network that you have created for your company to be successful. So you have so much vulnerability being available which these cyber criminals are taking advantage of. I would say ransomware malware is going to constitute in today and tomorrow’s threat radar where they are going to attack, mine and milk this industry and take maximum dollars out of our industry.

Do you have solutions for the kinds of attacks that are coming into the network?

Sophos as of today is providing end-to-end solutions to the mid- market and primary class of customers. Sophos has solutions available on end point, network side, we also have solutions which are like educational tools which we provide to corporates where they can educate their end customers which means their employees, about phishing attacks. So, these are the various kinds of solutions that Sophos in terms of network side is providing. On the end point side starting from next generation which also consist of intercept as one of our flagship products which is antiransomware, anti-exploit, and now we have come out very recently with a product same intercept text with EDR which is I think is complimenting the whole solutions. Today, people are very much worried about their devices. Let’s say there is an attack which has happened and some solutions of yours has already protected your device before

SME CHAT

SUNIL SHARMA, MANAGING DIRECTOR, SALES, SOPHOS

“SOPHOS HAVE COME OUT WITH DEEP LEARNING WHICH IS PART OF AI WHERE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A TECHNOLOGY WITH NO SIGNATURE AND PROACTIVELY ABLE TO ESTIMATE, UNDERSTAND THAT THIS COULD BE A THREAT AND A MALWARE.” the attack could happen, so now how are you sure that all your devices in the network are completely free of such kind of malware for which the attack was done. So EDR is one of the solutions which gives you the complete visibility in your network, gives you a dashboard that yes this particular device got attacked, it has been removed, cleaned up, so there is an automated remediation which happens with the solutions of Sophos, and that is the beauty of it. So on the mid market kind of customer we have solutions which takes care of almost all kinds of problems on cybersecurity side of the business. .

For the last 3-4 years Sophos has been quite successful in gaining market share. What do you attribute to for this success?

I think there are a few points to which we would like to attribute this success too, and this credit goes to our strategy on product. If you look at our products in the last 2-3 year’s we have really done a phenomenal amount of innovation. Before, we did innovation at the same time we acquired companies. Around 2-3 years back, apart from Cyberon which we acquired, we have acquired Mojave Networks, Reflection Networks, Surf Right in 2015, Invencia in 2017, and Barricade in 2016. So all these companies which we acquired, and how we have integrated it with the existing products, I think that has given a phenomenal amount of

ammunition against cyber criminals and against all kinds of threats which are available in the market. At the same time to be able to see through in the future also with the help of Deep Learning which is a technology available today whether we are giving Intercept X with EDR or Next Gen end point with EDR so that is about the product.

Second is about how do you position it. Lots of people have been talking about how Sophos is not there in very large type of enterprise kind of customers. I think as of today we can proudly say that we are able to serve mid-market and pragmatic class of customers in a beautiful way, where today the threats are very complex, coordinated, and are working in a very interactive way which means they will go one step ahead and somebody will leave a virus in your network and after leaving that nothing is going to happen to your network so there is information which is being captured, information is being given to the person, and after that the second thing will happen, the second step, the third will happen, the fourth will happen, so the attacks are very coordinated. Someone also needs to understand that the defence also has to be coordinated. So, at the network security, at the end point security, if both are not talking to each other, if both are not sharing the threat intelligence, and if both are not protecting the complete environment, I don’t think any company can protect the environment of the corporate culture. So that is where Sophos has the edge and I can proudly

say with the help of Sophos Central which is absolutely central to any network, and to the end point and we have dashboard coming in and we have a synchronised security which is being played between network and end point. And with the help of synchronised security you have any kind of attacks let’s say for example any end point gets quarantined, it gets cleaned up, and when it becomes healthy it comes back to the system. So for example if you are a CIO and you went for a cup of coffee in the canteen and you had an attack, by the time you come back after 30 minutes you will find on the dashboard that the attack happened, but it got quarantined, and the device got cleaned up and again back in the system and that is the report and the root cause analysis is complete. How would you feel? And that is what CIO and CSOs are looking for. And I think we are absolutely in the right direction and we are able to deliver to those set of customers. So, I talked about our product, I talked about our positioning, and another thing which I want to talk about is our people. I think we have one of the most dedicated manpower in India. We are successful because we have more than 850 people working out of India, able to serve global and in India. We have product development happening out of Bangalore, and in Ahmedabad, we have product support happening, we have lot of people working on cloud. So there are different departments which are based out of India and we feel a lot of strength collectively. And the fourth point but not the least why we have been successful is our channel partners, and our channel ecosystem. They have been loyal to us, and they have always been thinking that with the help of Sophos, for the last 3-4 years if you look at it they were selling only one product earlier and after that they have been enabled they have been given product by which they have actually increased their depth with the customers.

Which earlier used to mean with one customer, one product. Now the same customer has five more products. What does that mean? You need not to go for acquisitions of new customers. You are on the same side because it’s very expensive to acquire a customer. But to retain a customer and to give them more products, give them more security I think that is what these partners have done with us and have earned maximum amount of profit and have been earning actually and then you are able to create a renewable base over a period of time. And that renewable base is actually a bottom line to your balance sheet. So in my opinion our channel system has been absolutely a key to our success these past 2-3 years.

SME CHANNELS 35 MAY 2019

CASE STUDY

ANALYTICS TURNS SERVICE REPAIR DATA INTO COST SAVINGS

American Honda Motor Co., Inc. uses SAS to improve warranty claims and forecast usage for parts and services.

W

hen a car or truck owner brings a vehicle into an Acura or Honda dealership in the US, there’s more to the visit than a repair or a service check. During each visit, the service technicians generate data on the repairs, including any warranty claims to American Honda Motor Co., Inc., that feed directly into its database. This includes what type of work was performed, what the customer paid, service advisor comments, and many other data points.

Now, multiply this process by dozens of visits a day at over 1,200 dealerships nationwide, and it’s clear – American Honda has big data. It’s up to people like Kendrick Kau, Assistant Manager of American Honda’s Advanced Analytics group, to draw insights from this data and turn it into a useful asset.

EXAMINING WARRANTY DATA TO MAKE MAINTENANCE MORE EFFICIENT Like any other major automobile distributor,

KENDRICK KAU ASSISTANT MANAGER, ADVANCED ANALYTICS GROUP AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

American Honda works with a network of dealerships that perform warrantied repair work on its vehicles. This can be a significant cost for the company, so American Honda uses analytics to make sure that warranty claims are complete and accurate upon submission.

In the case of warranty claims, Kau’s team helps empower dealers to understand the appropriate warranty processes by providing them with useful information via an online report. To support a goal of reducing inappropriate warranty costs, Kau and his team must sift through information on

BUSINESS ISSUE • Analyze warranty data to refine warranty claims processing.

• Use service data to forecast future demand.

• Gain insight from customer survey data to find ways to optimize design, support and other functions.

SOLUTION SAS® Analytics, SAS® Enterprise BI Server, SAS® Forecast Server

“Looking backward on a year-by-year basis, we’ve been within 1 percent of where we forecast to be.”

36 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

BENEFIT • Reduced time for a claims processor to find a potentially noncompliant claim from three minutes to less than a minute.

• Reduced the cost of labor on 52 percent of the company’s labor codes.

• Predicted future demands within 1 percent accuracy.

CASE STUDY

repairs, parts, customers and other details. They chose a visual approach to business intelligence and analytics, powered by SAS, to identify cost reduction opportunities.

To decrease warranty expense, the Advanced Analytics team used SAS Analytics to create a proprietary process to surface suspicious warranty claims for scrutiny on a daily basis to make sure they are in compliance with existing guidelines.

The effort to identify and scrutinize claims was once fairly manual, tedious and time-intensive.

“Before SAS, it took one of our staff members one week out of each month to aggregate and report warranty data within Microsoft Excel spreadsheets,” Kau says. “Now, with SAS, we populate those same reports on an easily accessible online dashboard automatically, and we recovered a week of manpower that we could put on other projects.”

By applying SAS Analytics to warranty data, the Advanced Analytics group gave the Claims group and field personnel the ability to quickly and accurately identify claims that were incomplete, inaccurate or noncompliant. The results were impressive.

“Initially, it took our examiners over three minutes on average to identify a potentially noncompliant claim, and even then, they were only finding a truly noncompliant claim 35 percent of the time,” Kau says. “Now, with SAS, it takes less than a minute to identify a suspicious claim. And in that time, they are finding a noncompliant claim 76 percent of the time.”

The effort to increase warranty compliance

has paid off for American Honda. Through more complete analysis of warranty claims – and more education at the dealerships – American Honda saw a reduction in labor costs for 52 percent of its available labor codes.

USING SERVICE DATA TO FORECAST FUTURE NEEDS The American Honda Advanced Analytics team also uses service and parts data to develop stronger bonds with customers by ensuring dealers have in-demand parts available for customer repairs. Having the right parts available – at the right time – is paramount, so vehicle repairs data feeds directly into American Honda’s marketing and customer retention efforts.

“For the marketing team, we provide strategic insight to help shape their programs that are designed to drive customers to the dealers, and ultimately, keep them loyal to our brand,” Kau says.

“The goal of Honda is lifetime owner loyalty. We want our customers to have a good experience, and one of the ways to do that is through exceptional service.”

American Honda uses SAS Forecast Server to assist with business planning to ensure adequate resources are available to meet future demands for services. Using historical information on repair orders and certifications, they developed a time series using years of previous repairs. By combining time series information with sales data, Kau’s team can project where the company’s greatest opportunities are in the years ahead.

“Our goal is to forecast the number of vehicles

in operation in order to predict the volume of customers coming into the dealerships,” Kau says.

“And that translates to how many parts we should have on hand and helps us to plan staffing to meet customer demands. Looking backward on a year-by-year basis, we’ve been within 1 percent of where we forecast to be. That’s extremely good for a forecast, and I attribute much of that to the abilities of the SAS software.”

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK THAT DRIVES THE BUSINESS Another way American Honda uses analytics is to quickly evaluate customer survey data. Using SAS, the Advanced Analytics team mines survey data to gain insight into how vehicles are being used and identify design changes that are most likely to improve customer satisfaction.

On a weekly basis, the analytics team examines customer survey data. Kau’s team uses SAS to flag emerging trends that may require the attention of design, manufacturing, engineering or other groups. With SAS technology, users can drill down from high-level issues to more specific responses to understand a potential root cause.

“We can look into the data and see what the customers are saying,” Kau says. “And that leads to a number of questions that we can tackle. Is a component designed in the most optimal way? Is it a customer education issue? Is it something that we should address at the manufacturing process?

Because of SAS, these are critical questions that we can now identify using our data.”

SME CHANNELS 37 MAY 2019

SECURITY CORNER

FILIP COTFAS

CHANNEL MANAGER, COSOSYS

COSOSYS IS GAINING IN CHANNEL STRATEGY WHILE WINNING THE SECURITY ISSUE. Filip Cotfas, Channel Manager, CoSoSys explains the strategies employed by CoSoSys to stay ahead in the security market and how the Channel system is now defining the companies.

What is your Channel strategy for the country?

CoSoSys has a strong distribution channel in India, through which we help customers locally.

We know that India is a very relationship-based country and a strong local presence is required in order to build trust and help companies overcome their security challenges. Through our Distributors, we have been working with a mix of VARs, System Integrators, and MSPs, each of them with their own niche markets.

Our strategy for India is to increase the Channel Network and continue to bring more value to the Partners through our continuous R&D efforts for our award-winning Data Loss Prevention solution, Endpoint Protector. Our solution helps our customers protect their sensitive information and prevent potential data breaches.

I know we can help a lot of organizations in India overcome their security challenges, and our aim is to help mitigate the risk of losing sensitive information, either by human error or malicious intent. In order to achieve this purpose, we are focusing on developing a strong brand identity for our DLP solution, Endpoint Protector, on the

38 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

Indian market, which will add value to our company, clients and partners.

What is CoSoSys doing for solutions approach for partners & customers?

CoSoSys takes a customer-first approach and with over 15 years of experience we have a powerful network of partners. Our DLP solution is perfect to different types of organization from various industries.

Our team is committed to providing the best customer service and support to our partners with continuous advice, from technical to marketing and legal, as well as market access. We organize demos, trainings, webinars on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, according to their requests. For us it is really important to maintain and develop strong partnerships with our clients and partners.

Also, we host local conferences and partner events to share knowledge and encourage networking.

All our prestigious partners are invited to participate at these events and share their success stories with the attendees.

Keeping our customers happy is our main

priority and we are glad to know that our support team is highly appreciated by our customers and partners. We are aware that revenues, profits and customer loyalty are being driven not only by our DLP solutions, but also by post-sale services and support.

How would you describe your product strategy?

Data Loss Prevention is a complex technology and often is seen as the heart of most global data protection regulatory standards. At CoSoSys we have always taken a human-centric approach of Data Loss Prevention. We are continuously improving our products based on real feedback from our Customers and Partners.

Endpoint Protector is a full-DLP solution and offers multiple functionalities, such as protecting data in motion, data at rest, and providing enforced encryption capabilities. Our DLP solution is extremely granular, allowing the administrator to define rights per Device, User, Computer, and Group or Globally through the network.

A robust DLP solution should have the following strengths: cross-platform DLP implementation,

SECURITY CORNER

“KEEPING OUR CUSTOMERS HAPPY IS OUR MAIN PRIORITY AND WE ARE GLAD TO KNOW THAT OUR SUPPORT TEAM IS HIGHLY APPRECIATED BY OUR CUSTOMERS AND PARTNERS.”

easy and fast deployment, granular policies and settings, a modular approach to DLP and an intuitive user-friendly interface.

Does CoSoSys have any customized solution for mediumto-large enterprises?

Yes. Endpoint Protector is a full Data Loss Prevention solution for enterprises and smallmedium business, available as hardware and virtual appliance, or as cloud infrastructure. Our DLP solution provides great tools for all type of organizations, including enterprises and governmental institutions. CoSoSys was recognized in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enter-

prise Data Loss Prevention and in the Radicati Data Loss Prevention Market Quadrant in 2018 and 2017. It is also included in the Forrester Now Tech: Data Loss Prevention report in Q1 2019.

Endpoint Protector is certified with Common Criteria EAL2 and won the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards in the DLP category from 2016 to 2019 as well as the 15th Annual 2019 Info Security PG’s Global Excellence Awards.

How would you describe CoSoSys’ go-to-market strategy for Tier II & III towns?

CoSoSys not only works with excellent partners all over the world, but also takes multiple steps to

establish a solid brand awareness. In India, and other countries, we partner with locally-led distributors to provide the best customer support in the industry.

We also take a detailed look at our marketing activities in the area, and there are several ways to improve our visibility in India. We will continue our collaboration with the media companies and we will participate at the most relevant security events.

Our partners are strongly encouraged to publish news, articles and other articles about our DLP solution on their website, social media platforms or other online security magazines.

SME CHANNELS 39 MAY 2019

CASE STUDY

MATRIX COSEC COMPREHENSIVE TIME-ATTENDANCE AND ACCESS CONTROL SOLUTIONS TO INDIANIVESH FOR ENHANCING ITS FINANCIAL SERIVICES

COMPANY PROFILE: India Nivesh is one of the leading financial services conglomerate in India. IndiaNivesh is into various aspects of investment banking and consulting business. It plans to emerge as a dynamic, customer-centric, and progressive financial group in the country with PAN India presence. Having its head office in Mumbai, IndiaNivesh is growing with eight regional offices and 29 branch offices across India.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS l Application: Time-Attendance and Access Control l Locations: 32 (PAN India) l Users: 500 l Units Installed: 60 l Readers: Fingerprint and RFID Card BUSINESS CHALLENGE IndiaNivesh being widely involved in financial services business with 29 branch offices and 8 regional offices across India, required eradication of forged attendance data and manual attendance process, as security is a crucial aspect for them.

To streamline and manage attendance data of all employees accurately and perform calculation of error-free salary has been a tedious task. It has been challenging to integrate their existing payroll software with the Time-Attendance software.

MATRIX OFFERED SOLUTION Matrix offered COSEC Time-Attendance solution which has web based architecture and helped in connecting all its regional and branch offices to their head office in Mumbai. Implemented automatic salary calculation as Matrix COSEC Time-Attendance software got easily integrated with existing payroll software.

40 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

RESULT l Real-time Attendance of all Employees at a Centralized Location l Integration with its Existing Payroll Software l Ease of Implementation using the Existing Infrastructure l Fraudulent Time-keeping is Completely Eliminated l Accurate In/Out Time of Each Employee l Live Monitoring of In/Out Timing l Generation of Time-Attendance and Access Control Reports and Charts for all Branches l Improved Overall Productivity of the Organization l Continuous Operations with Excellent Service Support PRODUCTS COSEC DOOR FOP - Optical Fingerprint based Door Controller for Access Control and Time-Attendance COSEC DOOR CAS - Card based Door Controller for Access Control and Time-Attendance COSEC PANEL - Site Controller to Manage Multiple Door Controllers and Advanced Access Control Features COSEC LE PLATFORM - Application Server Platform for 1000 Users and Expandable up to One million Users COSEC LE TAM - Comprehensive TimeAttendance and Leave Management Module for

COSEC LE Platform COSEC LE ACM - Comprehensive Access Control Module for COSEC LE Platform ABOUT MATRIX Established in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Security and Telecom solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization; the company is committed to keep 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 Software, 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.

These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global foot-prints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 2,500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.

REVIEW

PRODUCT

MATRIX ETERNITY NENX

Matrix ETERNITY NENX is a small yet powerful phone system for small businesses, offering advanced features and functionalities as available with enterprise grade IP-PBXs. Based on modular architecture and stateof-the-art design, ETERNITY NENX provides connectivity to CO (FXO), GSM/3G and VOIP networks from a single platform. Range of phone options such as Analog, IP and Mobile extensions provides flexibility to communicate from anywhere and at any time. Furthermore, ETERNITY NENX offers integrated voicemail system, multiple auto-attendants and web based remote management.

NETGEAR TRI-BAND WI-FI 6 ROUTER

Features: 50 IP Users 8 VOIP Trunks 8 IP to TDM Calls 25 IP to IP Calls

NETGEAR NIGHTHAWK AX4 4-STREAM AX3000 WI-FI 6 ROUTER (RAX40) - The AX4 features the combined Wi-Fi speed up to 3 Gbps and an AX optimized dual-core processor powers smart home automation, ultra-smooth 4K UHD streaming, online gaming, and more.

Wi-Fi 6 — the latest generation of Wi-Fi – delivers up to four times better performance than Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) using innovative technologies such as Orthogonal Frequency-Division MultipleAccess (OFDMA) to help maximize the capability to connect multiple devices at the same time, which will help reduce the congestion for the typical bandwidth starved connected home. Wi-Fi 6 will provide a huge boost in total network capacity and reliability, ushering in a new era of speed, performance and capacity for wireless networking in today’s homes.

Features: • 4-stream Wi-Fi with up to 600 + 2400Mbps for ultra-fast wireless speeds.

• Powerful Processor—Dual-core processor ensures smooth 4K UHD streaming & gaming.

• Powerful amplifiers for network coverage throughout medium size homes.

6 Party Conferencing 8 Video Calls 4 Voice Mail Channels (Optional) 2 GSM/3G Ports (Optional)

Price: On request Warranty: On Request Contact: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com

PRICE INR 29,999/-

WARRANTY On request

CONTACT www.netgear.com

SME CHANNELS 41 MAY 2019

PRODUCT

NEW ARRIVALS

HIKVISION SHARP

SHARP MX-M5050 MFPS SHARP MX-M5050 is a A3 black and white device that offers a range of options and upgrades making it adaptable to ones future needs. It optimises productivity and is ideal for any busy workgroup that needs high performance, high quality output and versatility. Of course the series comes in distinct varieties i.e the Advanced Series, the Essentials Series and the New High-Speed, High-Volume models. This MFP is designed to have unmatchable User Experience for Simply Better business. The standard Print Release function allows users to send and store documents on a main MFP, which acts as a server, allowing print jobs to be securely released at up to five connected network-ready devices.

Optional workflow enhancing features include Single Sign-On cloud connectivity, mobile connectivity via Wi-Fi or NFC, USB direct printing of MS Office files, OCR for scan to searchable PDF and Scan to Office.

Price: On request, Warranty: On Request, Contact: www.sharpindia.co.in

HIKVISION ACUSENSE NETWORK CAMERAS HIKVISION NEW ACUSENSE NETWORK CAMERA SERIES, is a EasyIP 4.0 security solutions. Featuring a strobe light and an audio alarm, the new cameras can immediately deter intruders from entering a prohibited site, further enhancing the safety of premises and property. Importantly, Hikvision AcuSense network cameras build on the same cutting-edge intrusion detection functionality found within the existing Hikvision EasyIP 4.0 security solutions.

When a potential threat is detected by the camera, it uses its intelligent false alarm reduction technology to disregard irrelevant movements, such as rain, leaves and animals.

Price: On Request, Warranty: On Request, Contact: : www. hikvision.com

DIGISOL

DIGISOL POE+ CAT 6 SOLDER-LESS PATCH PANEL DIGISOL SYSTEMS LTD., ADDED A HIGH-PERFORMANCE POE+ COMPATIBLE Cat 6 Solder-less Patch Panel - DGC-PP6U2L1B-SL to its ‘enterprise cabling series.’ The newly launched PoE+ Solder-less Patch Panel is aesthetically designed to handle PoE+ electrical loads and to maintain high-quality power/data transmission output. The Solder-less Patch Panel consists of specially designed IDC contacts that accept wider conductor diameters (22 – 26 AWG). The patch panel’s module has patented PCBs to accommodate solder-free pin and IDC mountings that make them practically immune to wide environmental variations such as temperature and humidity. It is fully covered by 30 microns of Gold over the contact pins and offers high flexibility compared to traditional stamped pins.

42 SME CHANNELS MAY 2019

n Pricing : On request, Warranty : On request, Contact: www.digisol.com

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

Experience capabilities beyond SD-WAN with

ARUBA SD-BRANCH Aruba Software Defined Branch (SD-Branch) combines best-in-class wired and wireless branch infrastructure with remote management orchestration, analytics-driven security framework and state of the art SD-WAN capabilities Learn more at: www.arubanetworks.com/in-sd-branch For more details contact: +91 9606811117 | shipras@hpe.com Copyright Š 2019. Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. All right reserved.