E Magazine July 2017

FDS to provide SI services to Dassault Systemes

Fortinet selected by MITC to serve Mumbai citizens

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Trend Micro invests $100 Million Venture Fund

Canon India strengthens its PIXMA Series

16th STAR NITE AWARDS 2017 3rd Nov. 2017 Hotel The Lalit, New Delhi VOLUME XVIII

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The age of offering next-gen customer experience is here!

36pg

Nasscom forecasts $25billion potential from India-Israel startups

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he cumulative cross-border investment in Indian and Israeli startups has a $25 billion of revenue potential by 2025, said a recent report “Collaborative Innovation: The vehicle driving Indo-Israel prosperity” of Accenture and NASSCOM.

The report identifies IINSPIRE (IsraelIndia Startup Platform for Innovative Research and Entrepreneurship) framework to release innovation potential of the two startup nations. It concludes by recommending the creation of a program called IINSPIRE which aims to unleash the combined power of these two nations to deliver on Vision 25/25, by combining their strengths across three areas: talent, technology and temperament.

HPE and Microsoft to provide opportunities to partners through Cloud28+

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ewlett Packard Enterprise has formed a go-to-market alliance with Microsoft through Cloud28+, the world’s largest, open community dedicated to increasing enterprise cloud adoption.

Microsoft joins Cloud28+, an initiative led and sponsored by HPE, as a premier Microsoft Azure Stack technology partner. By becoming a Cloud28+ member, Microsoft will join forces with HPE to provide partners with new business opportunities and tools, while accelerating customer business outcomes powered by a rich hybrid IT ecosystem.

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HELLO INDIA

Transforming the workforce for the digital era …. Future is eyeing for cognitive computing When you think about major cloud hyperscales, prominent internet brands like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM tend to come into our mind. But is this a closed club or is there room for more? Now Alibaba Group is globally scaling its cloud and digital services platforms to earn its seat. The company that started out as a B2B portal now touches almost every aspect of the internet and e-commerce sectors.

In the recently-held VARINDIA Infotech Forum, majority of the CIOs talked about increasing digitization, where every part of our society and economy is being fundamentally transformed because of digital technology they want to use to develop stronger customer relationships and reshape the sales approach, with executives spending maximum hours in front of a screen than in the field. Sales engagement on digital channels – like email, chat, messaging, video conferencing and voice-over-IP – is boosting sales productivity. The digitization efforts by the government will continue to have a positive impact on the networking market too. The various private and government players are contributing towards increasing the digital footprint.

Technological change is the overall process of innovation and the technology shift happens with the need of automated IT systems that can solve problems without requiring human assistance by using machine learning algorithms. The answer could be cognitive computing. It is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerized model and it involves self-learning systems that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing to mimic the way the human brain works.

As India increases its investment in technology, the country’s data center and network infrastructure will undergo a massive transformation. With this, the digital journey is marching ahead with the introduction of GST. It is not just tax reform, but it is economic reform. GST is a way forward in the ease of doing business. Now the opportunity is to empower SMEs. The government hopes there will be a jump of 14 per cent in revenue growth under the new levy as more taxpayers come into the fold of the formal economy and move on to digital modes of payment. It will bring about an unprecedented transparency and create data for almost every monetary transaction in the economy. The government hopes, and this, in turn, will help expand the tax base and secondly, the incentive for cash transactions would reduce. Now they will be able to take credit for the taxes paid and evasion of taxes will be difficult as transactions have to be reported on the GSTN portal. So the level of compliance will increase. At the same time, concern about the new reporting requirements could also mean chaos in the nation where about one-fourth of the population can’t read or write and many offices do not have the technology needed to file digital returns. It will bring an opportunity for various IT vendors.

Lastly, GST is expected to make India richer, but the transition is going to be time-consuming. So till then let us wait and watch.

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CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Consulting Editor: Pravin Prashant Deputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna Mullick Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Sr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala kar Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 080-49530399 | Mobile:09886280836 E-mail: kamlakar@varindia.com Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Sr. Correspondent: Mamta S. Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai-410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479 E-mail: anil@varindia.com, mamta@varindia.com Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: M.S. Barani Door. No.8, Plot No.-837,89th Street, 13th Sector, K.K.Nagar, Chennai - 600 078 Mobile: 09444077065 E-mail: barani@varindia.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar B 383 HAL Colony, Balanagar HYDERBAD, Telengana - 500042 Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08100298033 E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Kiran Kumar 67 Sarada Park, Garia, Kolkata - 700084 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Mobile: 09903088480, E-mail: kiran@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

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46pg INDUSTRY EVENT

41|

AXILSPOT counts channel friendly business policy as key to success

30|

MICROSOFT INSPIRE – an amalgamation of new ideas

54|

45|

CP PLUS The Security Brand of the Nation

MSMEs foresee a mix of opportunities and challenges under GST regime

55|

Barco – a hi-tech MNC with a significant local footprint

LEAD STORY

VAR SECURITY

36|

The age of offering next-gen customer experience is here!

52|

42|

Open Source holds immense significance for Digital India

COVER STORY 46|

ICT Industry gives Thumps-Up for GST

38|

VAR MOBILITY 56|

Ziox focuses on delivering consumer-centric products

VAR ANALYSIS

EVENT 30|

53|

“Risk assessment of relevant threats is necessary” CP PLUS: The Security Brand of the Nation

Fortinet unveils new business opportunities at its annual SAARC Partner Conference 15th INFOTECH FORUM 2017 – Making a Digital-ready Future possible

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Petya - the new ransomware taking the cyber world by storm

FACE TO FACE 27|

ESDS to be a catalyst in helping customers go digital

32|

Deskera is Creating Cloud Partner Network in India

33|

VMware sees NSX adoption as critical to private cloud strategy

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Lenovo wants to be the differentiator in after sales service

REGULARS Channel Guru

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Channel Chief

12

Round About

14

Hot Bytes

16, 18

On the Ramp

20, 22

Voice N Data

24

Channel Buzz

26

Movers & Shakers

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Avaya aspires to provide ultimate customer experience In a chat with VARINDIA, Vishal Agarwal, Managing Director, India & SAARC and Chiradeep Rao Channel Head, India & SAARC, the two eminent leaders at Avaya vividly discussed about the company’s strategy, its investment plans for the India market and the present channels ecosystem besides talking about the rapid digitization of technology -

D

igitisation no doubt harnesses productivity for organisations.

As a result of digitisation of technologies, conventional methods and operating systems have gradually metamorphosed into the digital system. This new wave of digitisation is helping every sector and industry to evolve and aiding companies to increase mobility, efficiency of the workforce and enhancing the flexibility of an organisation.

Avaya has carved out a niche with its tech advanced devices and is beefing up its position in the Indian market. It has been delivering a wide range of products and software services for enhanced user experience to its customers and plans to make lives better in India by contributing to the Government’s dream project of making India Digitised.

Talking on the current market and Avaya’s position in the Indian market, Vishal Agarwal said, “India is a very critical market and one of the top 10 markets across the globe, and we are making a lot of investments in this market. We have a very strong R&D team, global services and a consulting team based out of India and quite a few of our back office work also happens out of India. So, India is a very strategically placed market for Avaya”.

Strategy & Investment plans...

Avaya serves in all the verticals, whether it is the service provider, the finance sector, the govt organisations, healthcare, or

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manufacturing. “In terms of our strategy, it is more around the customers, to see how we can give a differentiated experience to them and help them to consume the technology that they believe in. We believe customers will define the way technology will be consumed.

We need to provide open architecture and platform and help our customers to deliver the solution and customise it the way the customer needs. That’s our differentiating aspect and the focus on the technology,” asserted Vishal.

customers while helping it in new customer acquisition and generating sales.

Avaya counts its channel partners as very crucial.

Avaya has differentiated its partners broadly in the five categories - classical partners who cater to enterprise; global SIs & SPs; partners who cater to the mid market including SMBs; the cloud partners and finally the distributors.

“As Avaya cannot individually cater to every single partner, we have the distributors who cater to the smaller and tier 2 partners,” pointed out Chiradeep Rao.

To survive in this market with a good strategy a company also needs focus. Vishal said that his focus is on three main areas – the first is the large enterprises in terms of helping them to evolve through the customer engagement journey; the second is focusing on digital India by identifying the ways of how it can contribute to the govt. vision and the third is the rapid expansion in the current market and the commercial space.

He continued, “We have this partner program called ‘Avaya Edge’ where we tie, certify and provide skill our partners. This is typical of any program across OEM, but what we done is we have made it simple.”

As part of the its investment plans with regard to Channel expansion, sales & marketing and market expansion Vishal said that Avaya is hiring new people and training & developing its partners. “We are helping our partners to evolve through their technology and growing with their end customers is again a part of our investment,” he said.

Channel eco-system...

Channel holds a substantive position for Avaya. They represent the company to

Avaya also spends money every quarter in the areas of certification and skilling, and the company chooses it according to what it thinks the partners need to skill up on. “It’s a sort of mutual process,” said Chiradeep. “We identify the gaps for them and then together decide how to address these gaps.”

Avaya has a presence in three different areas including, networking, voice collaboration, contact centres and video. It has made its programs simple to the extent that if a partner wants to excel in just one technology, Avaya tries to enable him in that technology and gets him certified in it. “You don’t have to learn all the products that we have,” summed up Chiradeep. n

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Ph : 0261- 2634142/9924145614; Jupiter Automation: 111, Jay Ambe Society, Near Sakthi- Nikethan Temple, Adajan Patiya, Ring Road, Surat, Gujarat, Mob: 9825141666/9824751650; Earth Syscom Pvt. Ltd: 12, Trilok Raw House, Opp. Chanakya Tower, Near lad society, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad – 380054, Keyur raja: 9978908972 / 9904249601; Ravi infocom: B-4,shyamnagar soci., Gurukul Road, Ahmdabad. 380052, Ritesh patel: 098244 99920; Dikibi Technologies Pvt Ltd: 361/62, budhwar peth, Pune, Maharashtra, Brijen shah : +91 942-232-4746, Bhavin shah : +91 937-023-9712; S.M. Enterprise: 42/2, g, raj, Dashbhuja Estate, Near Dashbhuja Ganpati Mandir, Karve Road, Pune – 411038, Maharashtra, Suhas Gugale : +91 982-291-2300; Miracle Tech Distributors Pvt. Ltd: 212, Patel Shopping Centre, Sainath, Road, Malad West, Mumbai, Rajesh Goel : 9820291357; Massif Marketing: Room no.17, 4th Floor, Ahmed Chambers; Lamington Road, Grant Road(East) Mumbai, Maharashtra, Jayesh Jain : 9022662733; Computer Infotech India P Ltd: H6, 9th floor, Everest Building, Tardeo Road, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Jinesh Shah: 9821391155 www.varindia.com July 2017 23 11

CHANNEL CHIEF

Veeam ensures Availability to enable Always-On business for its customers V

Gone are the days where the brick and mortar companies used to just write on paper about the sales they have done, comeback and give it to the accounts team, who on its part will create an invoice and give it back. Today’s digital environment demands organizations to make data and applications available 24.7.365. This leaves enterprise with no room for any downtime or loss of critical data. Thus setting this context, Ashok Acharya, Regional Director, India and SAARC - Veeam gives an exclusive interview to VARINDIA while also speaking about the company’s roadmap for the India market -

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eeam is a 10 year old start-up with headquarters in Switzerland and having presence in more than 67 countries. It has more than 2, 45, 000 customers worldwide with a strong presence in India. In India it has about 750+ customers with 100+ active partners in its channel eco-system.

“We are the fastest growing company in the world with revenues of 720 million dollars worldwide, which will be reaching 2K million dollars by 2019,” asserts Ashok.

Veeam does not sell directly and it is always through the channel ecosystem. It works very closely hand-on-hand with ISV or alliance partners. Partners like HP Enterprise, Cisco, Microsoft and NetApp form part of this partnership.

The Veeam channel eco-system is also segregated into tier 1, tier2 and tier3 types that serve customers across all verticals. In tier 1 category, Veeam has global SI’s like IBM, Accenture and in tier2 partner category, the company has partnership with Indian SI’s with global presence like Wipro, TCS, Tech Mahindra and HCL. Veeam also works with the reseller community that is the tier 3 partners. The reseller is typically regional specific and they don’t have a national presence, but they are strong in each region and so Veeam works very closely with these regional partners.

“As part of the go – to - market strategy, whenever there is a datacenter opportunity, our ISV partners incorporate Veeam and send it to the customers. Just to give you an example- HP Enterprise has got Veeam price list. When a HPE sales person sells Veeam, he gets rewarded too. Likewise, we also work very closely with the CiscoUCS team; so whenever Cisco uses our opportunity, then by default the back-up is always from Veeam,” explains Ashok.

Veeam also categorises its business as SMB, commercial and enterprise; any deal value less than $10k is categorised as SMB, which is primarily run by the channel. Then there are deals worth $10k to less than $50k that is categorises undercommercial business.

“To run the commercial business we have two territory managers (TM) in each regionto cater to specific verticals.So One TM would be taking care for Banking, finance and IT and the other one will be taking care of manufacturing and services verticals in India.

These territory managers will work with the tier 1 partners and the global SIs and approach the customers for opportunities,” explains Ashok.

Veeam works with two distributors in

In India Veeam keeps getting repeat business from its top enterprise customers. The business of Veeam from Q1, 2016 to Q1, 2017 grew by 34% and in Q2 it grew by 43 %. But Ashok’s vision is to make this growth 100% by next year India –Tech Data and Redington.

Opportunities in India...

With 750 customers, Veeam has just covered 5% of the market in India, so there is huge growth opportunity for the company.

“We have not gone deeper into large enterprise customers and so hiring enterprise account managersin India to focus on such deals,” says Ashok. “We will identify the top 20 accounts in each vertical and as a strategy these enterprise account managers will have a dedicated sales engineer, who will go in the accounts sales directly.”

The key focussed verticals for Veeam is IT & ITeS, manufacturing, banking and Defence. “With digital transformation, Indian organizations have no scope for an IT outage, unavailability of data or web downtime. Since everyone wants to secure their back-up, they would require Veeam to enable Always-On business. Again data needs to bebackedupsecurely, so that it is readily available whenever you want it. That is where Veeam comes into play,” explains Ashok.

Roadmap for Veeam India...

Ashok wants to see Veeam growing as the no.1 vendor in the data availability space.

“We always ensure the SLAs that we cover with customers are the best. Veeam has got the maximum support ratings worldwide; we get 72% rating on support and we have a success rate of 85 % ofour customer renew license. This is because our engagement with customer has to be of very high experience,” says Ashok.

In India Veeam keeps getting repeat business from its top enterprise customers.

The business of Veeam from Q1, 2016 to Q1,2017 grew by 34% and in Q2 it grew by 43 %. But Ashok’s vision is to make this growth 100% by next year. n

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ROUND ABOUT

GST: Is it the time for excitement or prudence?

F

inally, it is out – to be precise on 30th June, 2017 at midnight, when the whole nation was seemingly glued to the TV or mobile screens.

GST is said to give us economic freedom and help us to treat the entire country as a single economic contiguity. There can be differing views and perceptions. I do not want to stoke a debate, except by telling that, as an entrepreneur, GST will influence how I do business, how I plan it, how I calculate the indirect tax that I pay to the government and how I earn credit for the taxes that I have paid to the government.

Undeniably, the launch of GST, to me, signifies a new thing. That has nothing to do with the slogan one India one tax or one India one market.

Presumably, when GST becomes fully matured and is accepted by the people to whom it is meant, there may be a marked shift in the business operations.

It seeks to subsume all indirect taxes that we pay at central, state and local levels into a single rate or two. That will have a great positive spinoff since we are sure of our tax burden, how it is collected and how it is appropriated.

What is GST? If you ask me how many in India have heard about GST, I would say hardly there is anyone who has not heard about it. If you ask me how many would know about how it operates, I would say hardly there is anyone who knows how it will get rolled out, initial hitches, how these would be resolved, etc. Nobody should be blamed for that. In a country where more than 1.3 billion live, where taxes particularly indirect taxes are to be paid from birth to death, several times in a day, how can we predict what challenges the tax structure pose. Everyone knows – government, tax experts, traders, industrialists and man on the street – that at the implementation stage there will be problems. Should that be a limiting factor for introduction of GST or should it be delayed for quite some time?

Is it a simple tax structure? Again, my take is that it was conceived as a simple one and many optimistically thought, to begin with, it will have only two or maximum three slabs of moderate rates. What was originally conceived as ideal one, had to be considerably watered down due to political pressure from the states. The Centre had taken three categories of goods from the purview of GST, viz. alcohol, petroleum products and tobacco.

These goods are generally referred to as non-merit goods and the state revenue flows mainly from these heads. To that extent, the present GST is truncated and nobody should be blamed for that. Had the Centre insisted on the original plan, GST would have been a non-starter.

After a lot of deliberations and consultations with stakeholders, India has chosen the Canadian model of GST – of course, with some adaptations.

It has three components – CGST (Central Goods and Services Tax), which will be collected by the Central Government on sales of goods and services.

The other one is SGST (State Goods and Services Tax), which will be collected by the respective state governments on sales of goods and services and the third one is IGST (Inter-state Goods and Services Tax), which will be collected by the Central Government on the inter-state transaction of goods and services. The collected IGST revenue will be distributed between the states, as per the view of the proposed GST Council. To compound further, there are five different rates pegged at 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, besides exempting three items like alcohol, tobacco and petroleum products, which will continue to remain with the state governments. They are the major sources of income for the state governments. If you feel that the GST on the ground is a compressed and compromised one, you are not far off the truth. Yet, one has to reconcile the political pressure that the Central Government has undergone to cobble together differing views.

We have to rough up the initial glitches of the GST. The base of the taxpayers is larger than what it has been earlier. Also, the GSTN (Goods and Services Network) has to be tested and validated. The digital network has to support registrations, return filing, tax payments, reconciliation, IGST settlements, etc. For an effective GST to operate, tax exemptions and presence of multiplicity of rates should be subsumed into bare minimum. Indeed, there is a lot of spadework still to be done. Granting time to the authorities to streamline things and iron out glitches is one thing. Equally significant is compliance. We should develop faith in the system. The human ingenuity

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may force people to find newer ways to dodge the taxes. If anybody does so, it should attract severe penalty. At the same time, authorities should be considerate and minor aberrations should be condoned and resurgence of inspector raj as it has been feared in some quarters should be shunned since business cannot grow in a situation where there is mistrust and vilification.

It is instructive to learn things from the experience of others. More than 140 countries have implemented GST in one form or the other. Barring the United States, most of the developed world has a form of indirect taxation similar to that of GST. Some of these countries have faced stiff problems in the initial stages. We have to learn what those glitches were to preempt occurrences of such things in our system.

Undoubtedly, the introduction of GST has pitched up the expectations of the general public. They expect that the prices will come down, tax rates will be lower, life will be much easier, etc. Bereft of occasional sound and noise aired from different sources, particularly from the small- and midsized companies taking up job works, industry in general has welcomed the introduction of GST. They feel that the cascading effect of taxes, which has played havoc on the growth of the economy, will be a thing of the past, since the industry will be allowed to take credit on input tax paid so that nothing is added to the basic tax.

Yet, there are many incongruities to be addressed. Let us take a few examples how such anomalies will get manifested. In the case of an airline ticket, if I have to travel from New Delhi to New York, a direct flight will cost me dear since the GST will be on the entire ticket. On the other hand, if I take a hoping flight from New Delhi to Dubai and onwards to New York, I save tax since in the second leg of my travel, I need not have to pay any GST. Does it mean that the government is inducing the travellers to opt for hoping flights to save money? Still, the clarity has to emerge how the exporters have to be insulated from paying tax since the general principle is not to export tax. The suggestion made by various authorities is that let the exporter first pay the input tax and later he can claim the refund. This is going to be a cumbersome procedure since money will be locked up and the exporter will be subjected to some harrowing experiences.

In summation, I might say that the government, after a long wait, has shown the political will at last to roll out GST. It was not at all an easy task and a lot of political tightrope walking had to be resorted to achieve that feat. That does not mean that the journey from now onwards will be easy, particularly when the expectations are high amongst all stakeholders. There is a long way to traverse before we can pat our back. n

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HOT BYTES

FDS to provide SI services to Dassault Systemes

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ourth Dimension Solutions (FDS) has partnered with Dassault Systèmes to provide System Integration (SI) services for the latter’s portfolio of applications and industry solution experiences based on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform in the Indian Subcontinent market.

The agreement covers both SI services and product/licence sale as FDS plans to increase its revenue from implementation services.

Amalendu Mukherjee, Managing Director, FDS Ltd, said, “This is a significant landmark

for FDS both locally and globally as our presence and capabilities in an evolving DPMS industry will be enhanced by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform from Dassault

Systèmes. FDS’ holistic approach offers organizations with futureready solutions that provide competitive advantage and market differentiation.”

Logitech to buy ASTRO Gaming for $85 million

L

o g i t e c h International has agreed to acquire ASTRO Gaming for $85 million in cash, and the acquisition is expected to close in early August. With the addition of ASTRO, the company is investing in an adjacent gaming market - the console gaming market - to help accelerate the longterm growth of its gaming business.

Both the companies together are the number one

maker of headsets, mice, keyboards and streaming webcams for PC and console gamers. ASTRO is best known for its iconic A40 and A50 headsets designed for pro gamers and core enthusiasts. ASTRO’s recently introduced A10 expands the company’s reach in the console headset market, offering the essence of what makes their headsets premium, but at a more broadly accessible price point.

LG #KarSalaam campaign wins laurel at the CMO Asia Awards

T

he #KarSalaam campaign of LG, which was launched prior to Republic day this year (2017) has won the best social and digital integrated campaign of the year award at the recently concluded CMO Asia Awards.

The #KarSalaam initiave is dedicated to the Indian soldiers. The campaign, also marking LG’s 20th year anniversary in the country invited the whole nation to come forward and send their wishes to the Indian Armed Forces.

It is a manifestation of LG’s corporate philosophy,

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‘Life’s Good’ and a gesture of the nation’s support and solidarity to the soldiers for playing a great role in assuring that we all lead a fearless and good life in this country.

www.varindia.com

Inflow Technologies to distribute CYIENT inks agreement with Palo Alto Networks’ Security Platform Technologies Kii Corporation Inflow has signed a

C

yient has announced that it has signed a nonexclusive business alliance agreement with Kii Corporation to explore, bid and address business opportunities around smart city deployments. Through this agreement, Cyient and Kii have Corporation have decided to jointly pursue business opportunities globally, by leveraging their complementing skills and strengths.

The partnership will combine Cyient’s domain expertise and geospatial capabilities with Kii’s IoT platform to develop connected solutions through smart devices and applications. Under the terms of the agreement, Cyient will also provide Kii with project delivery and implementation services.

Telangana Government unveils HyFi Project

T

elangana State Government has launched the “Hyderabad City Wi-Fi Project”, also known as Hy-Fi, with over 1,000 hotspots across the state capital which was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Mayor of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, Shri Bonthu Rammohan. The project will cover 3,000 hotspot locations within the city.

In June 2015, under the “Digital Telangana”, the Government of Telangana had launched the pilot version of Hyderabad City Wi-Fi Project (Hy-Fi) which saw the government partner with ISPs to provide free Wi-Fi for 30 minutes at approximately 100 public category locations across Hyderabad. Over the last two years, the number has more than doubled to cover about 250 locations.

distribution agreement covering India and the SAARC region with Palo Alto Networks to deliver its Next-Generation Security Platform.

The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform was built from the ground up for breach prevention with threat information shared across security functions systemwide, and is designed to operate in increasingly mobile, modern networks.

Inflow’s unique base of

resellers will open up numerous opportunities for Palo Alto Networks, bringing new value to bolster the vendor’s partner network.

Aggressively focused on new growth markets and selling through awareness, training and support, Inflow is committed to providing technical expertise to uphold their reputation as a trusted VAD.

Oracle Digital Hub to help SMBs power digital transformation

S

mall and midsize businesses (SMBs) will get access to the cloud solutions and resources they need to power digital transformation with the opening of Oracle’s first Digital Hub in AsiaPacific, which will be based in Bangalore. The new facility, one of five Digital Hubs set to open in Asia- Pacific, highlights Oracle’s commitment to better serving the midsize market in the new cloud economy. The Digital Hub

will help SMBs leverage Oracle Cloud solutions to streamline operations, boost innovation and gain a platform for growth. The hub will house Oracle’s new digital sales team and focus on helping more midsize organizations transition to the cloud quickly and easily.

The team will provide timely, personalized and effective support to customers, using the latest collaboration tools, techniques and technologies to transform the buying experience.

Fujitsu and SAP SE expand partnership to aid customers go digital

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ujitsu Limited and SAP SE have announced expansion of their global partnership to offer advanced ERP solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Based on this agreement, the companies aim to develop solutions that will accelerate the digital transformations of their customers, combining each company's AI and IoT technologies based on the SAP ERP solution, SAP S/4HANA and the SAP

Leonardo IoT platform.

The companies aim to accelerate customers' digital transformation and plans to jointly develop

industry-vertical-oriented cloud services, With Fujitsu offering a one-stop solution covering all areas, from service-platform builds to application development and operations.

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Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries or both.

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June 2017

19

HOT BYTES

Karnataka Government launches “Program ELEVATE 100”

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overnment of Karnataka has introduced the ELEVATE 100 program which aims to identify and support 100 of the most innovative startups in Karnataka.

Registrations for ELEVATE have already started from 4th July and will be open till 18th July for all participants from across Karnataka.

For the first time, the State Government will be holding open houses to identify startups in Mangalore, Kalaburgi,

Mysuru and Hubli. Startups from these cities will get an opportunity to pitch their ideas to the ELEVATE team.

ELEVATE is the brainchild of the Startup Cell, Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services (KBITS).

Tech Data now a Microsoft CSP

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ech Data Corporation has announced that its Technology Solutions business, formerly a division of Avnet, can now deliver Microsoft’s entire Cloud portfolio, inclusive of Azure, SaaS and PaaS, to their valued channel partners across India via the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. This builds upon the successful relationship between Microsoft and Technology Solutions in Australia and recent signing

in Vietnam, and will enable partners in India to build profitable businesses in the cloud and create more recurring revenue.

“This is the next step in turning our vision to be the leader in next-generation technology distribution into reality,” said Naresh Desai, VP, Specialist Business, Asia-Pacific, Tech Data.

“Powered by Microsoft, our portfolio of cloud solutions will enable our partners to embrace new consumption models, transform IT and drive business growth.”

Trend Micro invests $100 Million Venture Fund

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rend Micro Incorporated has unveiled a corporate venture fund to explore emerging technology markets. With an initial investment of $100 million, this venture fund will allow Trend Micro to nurture a portfolio of start-ups that are incubating ideas and living at the epicenter of hyper growth markets, such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Trend Micro’s venture will offer companies financial backing, access to its world-class global threat intelligence, strategic alliances, as well

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July 2017

as its channel of more than 28,000 partners. In return, working with these investments will uncover insights into emerging ecosystem opportunities, disruptive business models, market gaps and skillset shortages. These learnings will influence Trend Micro’s cybersecurity solution planning.

Eva Chen, Founder and CEO, Trend Micro, noted, “Trend Micro’s vision has always been to make the world safe for exchanging digital information."

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Sterlite Tech Fortinet selected by MITC to partners with serve Mumbai citizens ortinet has Technology, Government Kakinada Smart F announced that the of Maharashtra, said, Maharashtra Information "Mumbai Wi-Fi project City Corporation Technology Corporation plays a crucial role in

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terlite Tech has announced that it has been selected for the implementation of Smart City solutions in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Kakinada Smart City Corporation selected Sterlite Tech as its implementation partner to deliver various Smart City-related ICT solutions.

These include Command Control Centre, CCTV surveillance, Wi-Fi, automatic number-plate recognition, face detection, waste and disaster management, among other platforms, bringing many technology firsts to India in terms of horizontal IoT platform, LoRa-based city-wide wireless sensor network and disaster management systems.

Sophos secures Workplace Hub of Konica Minolta

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ophos has partnered with Konica Minolta to integrate Sophos XG Firewall and Sophos Wireless into Workplace Hub. Konica Minolta recently announced Workplace Hub that integrates everything from basic office automation functions to security, IoT device management and data storage in a single platform designed for SMEs. “Due to its easy management and deep visibility into network activity, the XG Firewall is perfect for Konica Minolta’s vision for the workplace We both share the same philosophy of providing simple yet comprehensive technology for businesses of all sizes,” said Francois Depayras, VP for Global OEM Alliances, Sophos.

(MITC) has selected Fortinet to provide wireless Internet access to the citizens of

empowering our citizens digitally. Our goal was to cover all major areas in the

Mumbai, India. Fortinet’s access points provide WiFi internet access for the public in Mumbai and are deployed in more than 500 locations across the city for the Mumbai Wi-Fi project.

Vijay Kumar Gautam, Principal Secretary, Information

city with public Wi-Fi in order to make important government services available online.

An ambitious project like this required technology that could scale and be flexibile to enable more users, devices, and applications over time.”

Videocon forays into Security & Surveillance spacesegments.

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arking its entry into the fastgrowing Security and Surveillance market in the country, Videocon Telecom has announced the launch of its new brand of “Videocon WallCam”. With its prime focus on Video Surveillance products, the brand while bringing in a wide range of security and surveillance products will cater to the Enterprise, Government, institutional and retail (residential and small commercial set-ups)

Arvind Bali, CEO, Videocon Telecom, said, “The current Video surveillance market of approx Rs.3,650 crore is 55% of the overall Rs.6,600 crore security & surveillance market. The growth will be driven by households, including small commercial establishment (shops & offices) segments and the key success factor for market expansion will be affordability, ease-of-use (plug-n-play), and quality."

Wipro ties up with Red Hat for Cloud Application Factory

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ipro has collaborated with Red Hat to set up a cloud application factory designed to offer developers and IT teams a repeatable and rapid methodology for application modernization across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Wipro’s cloud application factory will have a dedicated services team that can help drive the strategy, design, and delivery of nextgeneration applications using Red Hat OpenShift

Container Platform.

The duo will provide dedicated IT consulting and services teams to help customers with application life cycle management, via specific roadmaps, frameworks, and best practices.

From the initial discovery phase, to the strategy and design phase, and ultimately when customers are ready to build a production environment, the teams will provide a scalable factory approach to developing next generation applications.

www.varindia.com

July 2017

19

ON THE RAMP

Lava enters into notebook segment with Helium 14

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ava International announced its entry into the notebook segment with the launch of Helium 14.

The Notebook, for which the company has collaborated with Microsoft and Intel, is designed to offer productive, simplified and user-friendly experience. Created to meet the needs of small business, Gen-Y, Lava Helium 14 has been launched online exclusively on Flipkart and will soon be available at select retail stores and other multi-brand outlets across Delhi NCR, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Bangalore from the first week of July

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in its first phase of launch.

Lava Helium 14 is priced at Rs 14,999.

Gaurav Nigam, Product Head, Lava International, said, “The launch of Helium 14 is an important milestone in the journey of Lava as a major Indian smartphone brand. It reiterates our commitment to continued innovation and is a testimony to the fact that we understand consumer needs.”

Onymos and Risan bring mobile apps development technologies

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nymos has signed up with Singapore-headquartered Risan Asia Business Partners.

With this partnership, Risan would provide a holistic market expansion strategy and means for taking the revolutionary mobile apps development platform to software developers, numbering in thousands, operating throughout the APAC region.

“With more than half the world’s mobile users

in Asia Pacific market, it is natural that the next generation of leading mobile apps will be built in that part of the world.”, said Shiva Nathan, Founder & CEO of Onymos Inc. “Onymos wants to enable this next generation of mobile app developers in Asia Pacific region realize their vision in the fastest and most cost-effective way possible with our suite of Onymos offerings including the Onymos Fabric”, added Nathan.

NetRack unveils iRack Block for Data Center Infra Capsule

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etRack has introduced iRack Block specially designed for in-house data center requirements and infra capsules. iRack Block series is designed to eliminate large DC infrastructure requirements and to overcome facility challenges related to scalability, efficiency, compliance and other security issues.

The Racks are IP 50 rated and configured with a load bearing capacity of 1,500 kgs in order to cater the high-density

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July 2017

Juniper launches Cloud-Grade Networking

requirements. These racks are equipped with multiple “intelligent” features and configured with selfcooled, self-contained and

self-powered features.

"There is a lack of infrastructure in the small markets. Hence, we can see a favourable 'need and the supply' dynamics in this space," said Ravi Raj, Brand Head, Director Sales & Support, NetRack.

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uniper Networks has announced CloudGrade Networking that will give service providers and enterprises a radically simplified way to build cloud networks capable of deploying services faster. It introduces a new set of principles for the way applications and services are architected, delivered and secured. This approach merges telemetry, automation and machine learning capabilities to ease the IT challenges of cloud transformation.

Juniper’s Cloud-Grade Networking comprises four principles: a platform-first approach, disaggregation, a Self-Driving Network, and pervasive software-defined security.

Republic TV embarks on its digital presence

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epublic TV has launched their mobile first digital destination – Republicworld. com.

Complete with user-centric features and cool technology, the destination aims to provide personalized and immersive content experience to its audiences.

Jay Chauhan, COO, Republicworld.com, said, “In the digital content space, there is no single dominant global player operating out of the South Asia and that’s a big opportunity for us.

Republicworld.com is at the intersection of Content and Tech, so we will keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to constantly engage and improve upon the user’s experience for our audiences.”

Re p u b l i c wo r l d . c o m besides having its extremely popular Live debates will also build communities around user habits such as Entertainment, Music, Gadgets, Travel, etc.

Canon India strengthens its PIXMA Series

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anon India has announced expansion of its PIXMA series with the launch of two new models – PIXMA TS3170 and PIXMA E3170.

The PIXMA printers comes equipped with a segment – LCD display with intuitive icons that guide the user through all operations from wireless setup, to making multiple copies using different document sizes. Both the printers come with a class apart, fingerprint and scratch resistant glossy grid pattern on their top surfaces which makes them easy to maintain. The enhanced

operation panel features one-touch switching to direct wireless connection and back to standard network infrastructure mode.TS3170 is best suited for occasional printing and is compatible with affordable cartridge Canon PG-745s and CL-746S. E3170 is best suited for everyday printing and is compatible with ink efficient cartridges PG-47 and Cl-57s which provides low cost printing of up to 400 monochrome documents and 180 colour documents.

Dell EMC, SAP help MSMEs become GST-ready

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ell EMC will deliver comprehensive on-premise digital Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions to enable Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across India to become Goods and Services Tax (GST) ready.

SAP’s pre-packaged “GSTin-a- Box’” solution will be available to MSMEs through joint go-to-market initiatives across 30 SAP GST solution centres across 15 cities in India.

Through the new solutions, customers can make their businesses GST-ready in 100 days, thereby ensuring minimal disruption when it comes to transitioning to the new tax model.

The “GST-in-a-Box” solution from SAP India, running on infrastructure solutions provided by Dell EMC, is aimed at helping MSMEs digitally transform their businesses while also ensuring a smoother and faster transition to a digital ERP system.

Ricoh India rolls out next version of RicohDocs 3.0

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icoh India has unveiled the next version of RicohDocs – 3.0 that enables users to manage all unstructured content and automate all business processes with absolute ease. This advanced office productivity platform helps organize the process of documentation and record creation, thus minimizing the involvement of professionals in the tedious regular tasks.

RicohDocs 3.0 is equipped with various new modules and advanced features such as file version comparison, sharing &

preview of media files and bulk upload of files, etc.

Significant enhancements have also been made in user interface and user experience in the latest version of the platform.

RicohDocs is a critical asset for every organization to lower risk, reduce operational cost.

www.varindia.com

July 2017

21

ON THE RAMP

Cisco launches intent-based networking solutions

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isco has launched intent-based networking solutions that represent one of the most significant breakthroughs in enterprise networking which will help businesses to unlock new opportunities and solve previously unsolvable challenges in an era of increasing connectivity and distributed technology.

Cisco's approach creates an intuitive system that constantly learns, adapts, automates and protects, to optimize network operations and defend against today's evolving threat landscape.

"The network has

never been more critical to business success, but it's also never been under more pressure," said Chuck Robbins, Chief Executive Officer for Cisco. "By building a more intuitive network, we are creating an intelligent platform with unmatched security for today and for the future that propels businesses forward and creates new opportunities for people and organizations everywhere."

HP presents its Pavilion and Spectre Notebooks

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argeted to meet needs of students and professionals, HP has introduced a range of powerful notebooks – HP Pavillion x360 and HP Spectre x360 that feature the Windows Ink capabilities.

The notebooks come packed with latest 7thgen processors, IPS FHD touchscreen display, up to 4GB Nvidia dedicated graphics card and hybrid storage, providing an unbeatable combination

of power and functionality.

These notebooks come in sophisticated designs and features to inspire today’s students and tomorrow’s reinventors. The addition of the HP Active Pen to its portfolio, aids users to intuitively turn thoughts into action, using the Windows Ink capabilities.

This opens new dimensions of creativity by allowing users to draw, highlight and write directly on the screen.

BlackBerry powers Enterprise of Things with Enhanced Platform

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lackBerry has announced productivity and security enhancements to its enterprise software platform designed to power the Enterprise of Things.

“The explosion of

with productivity and connectivity,” said Billy Ho, EVP of enterprise software, BlackBerry. “MDM and EMM are simply not enough, which is why we offer a Unified Endpoint Management platform that

devices and consumer applications is making it increasingly difficult for enterprises to balance information security and compliance

lets companies secure and manage these devices. We are removing one of the biggest IT challenges – getting employees to use corporate applications.”

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July 2017

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Edimax presents Intel India brings Xeon its OAP900 Scalable Processors Edimax Technology has introduced OAP900 which is designed especially for SMBs which demand high-network performance.

OAP900 features the latest 2 x 2 IEEE 802.11ac technology for 5GHz wireless speeds up to 900 Mbps.

Edimax OAP900 speeds up to 900 Mbps on the 5GHz band and can handle intensive tasks, perfect for audio, video and voice applications and significantly faster than traditional 802.11n Wi-Fi. OAP900 provides wide, accessible Wi-Fi coverage with strong security to protect sensitive company information and supervise access to internal networks.

Edimax Pro OAP900 supports the latest 802.11ac 5 GHz Wi-Fi along with high-density capacity to support up to a 50 users simultaneously.

Linksys unveils WRT1900ACS

Linksys has launched the powerful Dual-Band Gigabit WRT1900ACS Router that features an impressive 1.6 GHz dualcore processor and double the memory capacity (512MB DDR3 RAM) to deliver improved wired, wireless, and storage device performance.

The Linksys Router is made for both home users and business professionals operating out of small offices and start-ups. It is equipped to meet the needs of the most demanding home Wi-Fi networks to facilitate seamless surfing, video streaming, gaming as well as data transfer.

Cutting-edge software includes Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Application with Network Map allowing users to remotely monitor and control their network anywhere, anytime. Advanced users can also customize the WRT1900ACS via opensource software from thirdparty websites.

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ntel India has launched its new Intel Xeon Scalable processors, providing businesses with unparalleled performance to handle compute-hungry tasks, including realtime analytics, virtualized infrastructure and highperformance computing.

This marks the greatest set of data center and network processor advancements in a decade.

“As India Inc. increases its investment in technology, the country’s data center and network infrastructure will undergo a massive transformation.

Emerging use-cases in the financial, ITeS, healthcare,

and academic sectors will necessitate agile networks that can interpret and implement decisions based on artificial intelligence, HPC, and in the near future, 5G,” said Prakash Mallya, MD – Sales & Marketing Group, Intel India. “Intel processors will address the increasingly complex and varied needs of the data center, enabling customers to deliver next-generation business and consumer experiences."

Riverbed unveils “SteelCentral” Digital Experience Management Solution

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i v e r b e d Technolog y has launched the most complete and integrated Digital Experience Management solution in the market with the latest release of SteelCentral which now empowers customers to measure and troubleshoot all parts of the digital experience, from the user’s experience on the device to the back-end network, infrastructure, cloud and application.

This new release features the integration between SteelCentral Portal, SteelCentral Aternity, and SteelCentral AppInternals.

In addition, the integrated workflow between SteelCentral Aternity and AppInternals provides an integrated monitoring system for the entire end user service and allows IT to rapidly troubleshoot businesscritical applications across devices and applications.

MobiKwik integrated with Samsung Pay on select Samsung devices

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obikwik has announced its association with Samsung Pay. Under the tie-up, MobiKwik wallet is now integrated with Samsung Pay Mini to enable one-tap payments at more than 1.4 million MobiKwik powered merchants pan-India.

MobiKwik will also be available soon to Samsung Pay users.

Sanjay Razdan, Director, Samsung Pay Business, Samsung India said, “We are enthused by the tremendous

response Samsung Pay has received since its launch, both from our consumers as well as partners. Moving into the next phase of new and innovative services for Samsung Pay, we are delighted to have MobiKwik on board as a partner.

As India's biggest, mosttrusted brand of mobile phones, Samsung remains committed to a digitallyempowered economy and will continue to create meaningful innovations that will transform lives.”

www.varindia.com

July 2017

23

VOICE-N-DATA

Zyxel rolls out PMG2006T20A Wireless Router

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yxel has unleashed PMG2006-T20A GPON HGU embedded with a 4-port GbE Switch enabling it to connect to peripherals such as IP cameras, Network Data Storages, computer servers and Wi-Fi access points to share data in high speeds.

The Zyxel PMG2006T20A can be connected to the GPON OLT to offer network operators with management and provision features that support ONT Management and Control Interface (OMCI) and TR069 management functions as well. As a result, operation and maintenance of the PMG2006-T20A

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can be extremely easy and efficient.

As higher bandwidth and greater efficiency of Ethernet cannot guarantee delivery of high-quality voice, data and video across a GPON network, service providers can freely design their Advanced Quality of Service (QoS) policies and prioritize mission-critical services such as IPTV and VoIP based on their service plan offerings.

Nokia and WorldLink to help Nepal get superfast broadband services

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okia and WorldLink are upgrading 650-km-long backbone network with Nokia’s 1830 PSS (Photonic Service Switch) DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology to support bandwidthhungry entertainment and enterprise services across the country. The intercity network stretches from Kathmandu to Bhairahawa and Birgunj, and provides international connectivity

between Nepal and other countries, including India.

WorldLink, the largest fixed broadband operator in the Himalayan country, has 120,000 residential broadband subscribers and 5,000 enterprise broadband circuits. It is now connecting 10,000 residential Fiber-tothe-Home (FTTH) service subscribers every month, requiring the operator to meet ever-increasing demand for network capacity.

Telecom vertical drives India's external storage market in Q1, 2017

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ndia's external storage market witnessed a growth of 13.8 percent year on year (in vendor revenue) and stood at $74.6 million in Q1 2017.

Multimillion-dollar deal in telecommunication vertical drove this growth in the external storage market. Banking, telecom, professional services, manufacturing and government continued to be the key contributors in Q1 2017. In addition to the major verticals, significant growth is witnessed in verticals such as securities, transportation

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July 2017

BSNL empanels Plintron for VNO services

and insurance during this period.

Dileep Nadimpalli, Associate Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure said, "External Storage is getting very dynamic to address new age demands from emerging technologies such as real-time business analytics, Internet of Things, augmented reality, robotics, etc. Flash storage, Hyperconverged infrastructure and Software-defined storage technologies are getting more relevant across organizations like never before."

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lintron has empanelled itself with BSNL and has become the first Virtual Network Enabler (VNE) for enabling the launch of Virtual Network Operators in India. Through this association, Plintron aims to help BSNL better monetize their network assets. Under this alliance, Plintron will leverage BSNL’s national network and provide services to their customers efficiently, leading to increased revenues and profits.

Plintron, with this association, will offer end-to-end services to Virtual Network Operator Licence Holders in India.

The services will include connectivity through BSNL’s network, Plintron’s robust MVNE Platform and a host of other services.

Ruckus H320 offers Wi-Fi to Hospitality Market

Ruckus has announced its fourth-generation wallmounted access point (AP) designed to provide hotel guests with fast, reliable WiFi. The Ruckus H320 all-inone AP and switch features the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 technology, enabling guests to simultaneously connect multiple devices to hotel WiFi networks. The AP also allows property managers to connect wired devices such as VoIP telephones and IP-ready televisions without dedicated perdevice cabling.

The H320 AP and switch is based on the 802.11ac Wave 2 technology to satisfy steadily increasing in-room bandwidth requirements. It includes two fast Ethernet ports to enable connectivity for any wired in-room IP device, including IPTV, VoIP phones and IP cameras.

Huawei now a part of Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization

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uawei has joined the C o m m o n we a l t h Te l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s Organization (CTO) organization as ICT Sector Member. This is membership category of the CTO that is open to the private sector.

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome Huawei Technologies as one of our members. Members of the CTO greatly benefit from knowledge and experience sharing.

Huawei’s membership will help strengthen our organization

and its contribution to the use of ICTs for development across the Commonwealth,” said Shola Taylor, the CTO’s Secretary-General.

The global network equipment and solution provider also contributes to global policy efforts in areas such as universal access, infrastructure and cybersecurity – issues that the CTO regularly addresses through forums and consultations on these important policy issues.

Airtel announces Rs. 2,000 Cr Project

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harti Airtel has announced the launch of Project Next - its digital innovation program aimed at transforming customer experience across all of its services and touch points.

The company plans to invest up to Rs. 2,000 crores over the next 3 years under Project Next to launch several exciting digital innovations to step change the simplicity and interactivity of the Airtel customer experience.

Project Next complements Airtel’s massive investments towards building a future ready network under Project Leap.

Airtel is redesigning over 2,500 Airtel stores across India. The NextGen Airtel Stores have been conceptualized by the UK based 8 Inc. The new stores are wrapped in digital technologies to make the customer experience highly interactive through the concept of Share, Create and Experience.

*astTECS introduces IP PBX for SMBs

*astTECS has launched *astLite – an IP PBX solution for SMBs, which is ideal for offices with 20 – 80 extensions. It is an integrated solution and provides smaller organizations with benefits and functionality of modern IP PBX and delivers complete communication and collaboration capabilities.

It will enable SMBs to increase efficiency and productivity by simplifying the management of enterprise communication system. *astLite offers both classical PBX functionality and advanced features and interoperates with traditional standards-based

telephony systems and Voice over IP systems. The compact solution manifests open standards with no licence fee, seamless scalability & easy-to-use management features, full unified communication solution with advanced mobility, built-in recording, centralized administration, enhanced security and 24X7 support.

www.varindia.com

June 2017

21

CHANNEL BUZZ

TAIT organizes GST Awareness Workshop for Members

Barco showcases its projection solutions at its partner meet

rade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) has organized awareness workshop on GST educating members on the new tax regime. The

HSN codes done in GST, rightsizing their stocks and preparing their software on the complaint side and on the business side. Therefore, this workshop is a part of our

arco has recently organized a partner meet in Bangalore. Held on June 22, 2017 at Hotel Taj Vivanta, the event saw Barco showcasing its

beyond 80 megapixels of video content and manage 4K projector blend with refresh rates up to 60Hz.Barco has also showcased its innovative collaboration solution,

efforts to educate our members and prepare them for GST," says Rushabh Shah, President, TAIT. Alok Kumar S. Pansari, CA of ASL & Co., said, "It is a great opportunity for IT traders to explore different prospects such as software and application development. IT hardware business will get huge benefits from GST if they explore different business avenues. They have huge scope in the software and application development but they should explore opportunities to sustain in the business."

leading-edge projection solutions to AV System Integrators, AV consultants and distributors in the region. Over 100 AV partners attended the meet and shared experience in the sessions. A wide range of interesting, informative and interactive sessions were also organized by the team at Barco to discuss the future of projection technology and how it will play a major role in impacting business productivity.

Enabling superior image quality, exceptional input and output density, great expandability and durability, E2 is currently the only system available that will drive

ClickShare, and how it could enhance meeting room productivity for multiple users to transfer and share content simultaneously on the display device of their choice.

Major attractions at the event included Barco’s ProAV and virtual reality solutions, such as, the most compact 4K laser phosphor large venue projector, UDX4K32. Barco illustrated how its rugged design and modular components allow users to reduce shipping and labour costs as well as servicing hassles, and benefit from the increased utilization that the projector offers with its flexible brightness and resolution.

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sessions were addressed by Sukhjit Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Service Tax, Mumbai, and Alok Pansari, Partner, ASL & Co. Sukhjit Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Service Tax, Mumbai, addressed theTAIT members by giving his valuable insights into the GST tax regime. He talked upon various crucial components of GST clearing the misconceptions of the members in terms of stock clearance, service tax, input credit and tax computation.

"TAIT members were gearing up for getting the registration and

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DISTREE APAC comes up with annual Asia-Pacific Consumer Tech Channel Survey

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ISTREE Asia Pacific (APAC) has started collecting responses for its 2017 regional consumer tech channel survey. Reaching out to thousands of senior executives from consumer tech distributors, retailers and e-tailers across the region, the survey explores sales performance, business confidence, financial trends and attitudes towards product categories.

Liam McSherry, Marketing Director for DISTREE Events, said, “The APAC Consumer Tech Channel Survey was established last year and provided deep insight on regional market trends.

By repeating the exercise in 2017, we can compare data points year-on-year. This research also identifies key trends that form the backbone of the content programme at DISTREE APAC 2017, and provides more visibility on the consumer tech brands that channel delegates want to meet.”

The fifth annual DISTREE

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APAC will take place at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore on 8th to 10th November 2017.

The regional channel event gives consumer technology vendors and brand owners the opportunity to hold prescheduled one-on-one meetings with APAC’s leading distributors, plus senior executives from some of the region’s top retailers and e-tailers.

DISTREE APAC covers a diverse array of consumer electronics categories including gaming, lifestyle tech, mobile devices, mobile accessories, smart tech, smart home, consumer IT and related accessories. This year’s survey runs until 31st July

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2017. Consumer tech distributors and retailers operating in APAC are invited to participate in this year’s survey using the following link: Five respondents to this year’s survey (selected at random) will also receive a complimentary room upgrade for their stay at the event hotel in Singapore for DISTREE APAC 2017. All survey respondents are cross-checked against DISTREE’s extensive APAC channel database and verified to maintain the quality of the findings.

With an increased focus on distribution this year, more than 150 executives representing more than 130 distributors are set to attend DISTREE APAC 2017.

In addition, VIP retail and e-tail executives from across the region are invited, providing an extra value-add for exhibitors, creating more business opportunities for all attendees.

DISTREE APAC will invite delegates from the following markets in South East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. SAARC countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will also form part of the delegate base.

Oceania-based channel partners from Australia and New Zealand will also receive invites, as will distributors and key retailers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China in North-Asia.

The 2016 Asia-Pacific Consumer Tech Channel Survey, which included responses from distributors and retailers, revealed that 88% of respondents expected to increase their vendor portfolio in the next six months.

FACE TO FACE

ESDS to be a catalyst in helping customers go digital Dr. Rajeev Papneja – COO, EVP, ESDS in a chat with VARINDIA explains the role the company has been playing in the datacenter space through its software defined storage offering, besides recounting its plans for the IoT & managed service platforms and the projects it has bagged in the smart city space With the surge in data volumes, current datacenter space available in India would have got occupied at an unexpected rate with servers, if it would not have been for the acceptance of Cloud Technology.

Traditionally, increase in data simply transformed into buying more enterprise storage and manipulating the combination of SATA & SSD drives and having some form of database clustering in place.

The model doesn’t work in today’s world because it is not about the storage capacity and cache data anymore, but it is about the IOPS requirements.

“ESDS for instance saw an unexpected move of critical systems to the Cloud, especially SAP HANA/S4, by large enterprises. Out of the many challenges, the decision of architecture and selections at storage layer play a very crucial role. Having traditional dedicated SAN storage became a bottleneck, when customers on public cloud started demanding heavy IOPS. At the same time, it does not provide the flexibility of borrowing resources from other SAN. With the move of mission critical systems such as SAP HANA and online businesses to public cloud, the architecture has to be redefined at the storage layer for providing the required performance with High Availability and all this at a cost which is affordable and competitive,” explains Dr. Rajeev Papneja – COO, EVP, ESDS. ESDS deploys Software Defined Storage cluster solutions supporting scale-out SAN that helped the company to deliver extreme performance coupled with great flexibility, scalability and enterprise grade data protection and a business module to pay only for the consumed services. It has connected its Nashik and Mumbai Datacenters with the connectivity required to move virtual machines between the two datacenters in near real-time and deployed Software Defined Networking to facilitate it.

Digitization plans for 2017…

ESDS is presently working on IoT platform that will be powered by eNlight Cloud. The platform in currently in Beta stage. “We are coming up with a platform that will not only be device agnostic but also data format agnostic. IoT is an integral component of the whole digital disruption. We are working to understand various customer expectations and are in regular discussions with the CIOs in the industry to come up with that last piece besides Cloud and IoT that completes the picture. We see people still confused between Digitization and Digital Transformation. Similar to the efforts we had put in starting from year 2011 to facilitate adoption of public cloud, we will be doing the same to facilitate digital transformation.

Enterprises will also need to change their mindset of working with any one giant service provider as digital transformation would require involvement of many vendors as part of the eco-system. Choosing right partners will decide the fate of the digitization projects taken up,” says Dr Rajeev.

ESDS has also bagged the Cloud Service Provider contract for Pune Smart City. The company will continue to focus on working in majority of the Smart City initiatives this year. “With the “Make

in India” initiative, we are the cloud provider in the nation that has its own cloud indigenously developed by its CMMI level 3 appraised dedicated R&D team. We are able to provide the most optimal use of resources combined with better pricing. We have introduced a unique concept of vertical auto-scaling that is patented by the US Patent & Trademark Office and have introduced the concept of pay-perconsumption in contrast to the pay-per-use billing which is a common practice in the industry,” cites Dr Rajeev.

Managed services will also remain one of its key differentiators in the industry with the experience of serving more than 35, 000 clients from all over the globe for over a decade. It is already looking at Artificial Intelligence platforms that can provide a seamless experience to its customers for first level of communication. This will help the company to utilize more technical people to become experts in real technology issues thereby providing better support to its customers.

“We anticipate a huge demand in managed services due to the skill gap between the pace at which technology is getting adapted and the speed at which the skilled talent is getting ready,” sums up Dr Rajeev.

Top Technologies for ESDS in 2017 Use of dockers: With the enterprises moving to cloud and running hundreds of Virtual Machines, use of dockers have started to make lot of sense. There is no point in putting in dollars on guest operating system for hundreds of VM’s and also wasting compute resources to run these guest operating systems. There are some challenges related to security but similar to adoption of cloud, the concept of containers would be accepted very soon.

Driving AI: Being in the field of providing managed services, ESDS is starting to look at Artificial Intelligence platforms that can provide a seamless experience to its customers for first level of communication. This will help the company to utilize more technical people to become experts in real technology issues thereby providing better support to customers.

IoT: ESDS is also working on its own IoT platform that would assist with automation of many activities in Datacenter and would reduce monitoring efforts. www.varindia.com

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TOP 25 BRANDS IN INDIAN ICT INDUSTRY 2017

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This year’s Brand Book speaks about how technology companies have performed in comparison to the previous year. In the recently held Infotech Forum 2017 in New Delhi, the Top 25 brands in Indian ICT industry were awarded, which provides a thorough understanding on how the leading brands have performed with their cutting-edge technologies, their innovative ways to reach out to and connect with the consumers/ organizations and how they have enhanced their operational performance and increased their competitive advantage over competitors. These are the Most Trusted Brands that reached to consumer’s doorstep and enhanced their performance by the best use of IT.

Corporates while receiving the recognisation at

Annual Infotech Forum 2017 25th May 2017, Hotel Shangri-La, New Delhi

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Awards are being honourd by: Shri P. P. Choudhury, Minister of State of Law, Justice and Electronics & IT, Government of India, Mr. Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, GoI, Mr. Raman Roy, CMD, Quatrro and Chairman, NASSCOM, Mr. S. N. Tripathy, IAS, Additional Secretary & Development Commissioner, MSME, GoI, Mr. Rajesh Aggarwal, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, GoI and Dr. B. K. Murthy, Senior Director (Scientist-G), Department of Electronics & IT, GoI www.varindia.com

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INDUSTRY EVENT

MICROSOFT INSPIRE – an amalgamation of new ideas The need for digital transformation is to “Empower employees, engage customers, optimise operations and transform products”. Microsoft wants to democratise this notion of digital transformation so that every business can truly harness the power of this digital era. It is also trying to change how Microsoft goes to the market and serve customers better with core solution areas to enable digital transformation....

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he Microsoft Inspire, organized by Microsoft took place from 9th to 13th July 2017 in Washington D.C. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Among the keynote speakers at the event were CEO Satya Nadella; Microsoft President Brad Smith; Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group and Judson Althoff, Microsoft executive vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business.

Addressing 17,000 partners from 140 countries, the INSPIRE event was an ideal conference for business and channel leaders in SMB, Corporate Accounts and Enterprise markets and more.

The big idea that came out of this year’s conference was the crystallization of Microsoft’s overall strategy. It’s been a huge year of change for Microsoft as they have realigned their product stack and strategy for moving to cloud-based business solutions. Microsoft remains a partner-focused company, with an unprecedented opportunity and a mission to empower every person and machine on this planet.

In a brief speech, Ron Huddleston, Microsoft corporate vice president and head of the company's One Commercial Partner organization, talked about Microsoft's efforts to create a single point of contact for partners through his operation. He also cited the company's plans to spend $250 million on goto-market efforts for partners and to hire new channel managers to work with partners in their sales efforts.

“Digital transformation represents a massive opportunity and Microsoft has always been a partner-led company, and this ecosystem drives local economies and creates massive growth. Together we have unprecedented opportunity, as technology impacts every aspect of our global society and economy,” explained Satya Nadella, CEO – Microsoft.

“Don’t celebrate technology for technology’s sake. Our success is in our customers’ success.”

He

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“Microsoft partners employ 17 million people around the world and we have 64,000 partners working in cloud services and adding 6,000 new partners each month. These new partners are coming from other ecosystems. That ability for us as a partner-led company and a partner ecosystem to continuously welcome new partners and help them thrive as part of this community can together help us build the future. Microsoft is not only building IT solutions solely to support conspicuous consumption, it is also working to make a positive impact in the world.”

Satya Nadella CEO – Microsoft “Microsoft Inspire is where the world meets to transform business. Companies and businesses are transforming in the digital era. Our mission and our commitment to partners is steadfast, technology and technology paradigms come

and go. One such evolution is the move from a mobile-first, cloud-first world, to one that is rooted in the intelligent edge and intelligent cloud. This shift will bring about more digital technology in more mainstream ways into every life and every organization.

64,000 partners are leading with the cloud solutions. It is high time for shifting IT Priorities and Growing Channel Opportunities. While the world is getting into a digitised mode, business leaders are looking at how they can apply digital technology and build systems of intelligence to rethink on how to empower employees, engage customers, optimise operations and transform products.

Muti-device, Multi-sense: The first is how our digital experience is distributed across and spans devices, big screens, small screens, sensors in a room. The user experience is no longer bound to a device, it travels with you and it’s multi-sense. The experience may start with touch on one device, and end with speech in another device, or ink. Multi-sense is what developers are building for. The experience itself is getting richer and distributed.

AI: Artificial intelligence is getting built into every experience, and we need to take data and compute to where it’s generated. Whether in an autonomous car, on a factory floor, or in a hospital, every one of these experience is going to be powered by AI. Serverless: Finally, you need a backend that facilitates this rich fabric. We are taking a single user experience and making it span multiple devices using emerging technology such as containers and serverless compute.

We’re taking this intelligence and distributing it to the edge.

Leaders are hungry to empower their employees, transform and shape culture in this rapidly changing work environment. We aspire to build the experiences and tools that make it possible for every professional in any business or functional role to be much more productive in getting things done.

After empowering people within an organisation, we have to take it a step further, to ensure we are transforming the processes and functions people work within it. Remember, every business process is being digitised. We want to take these systems of intelligence, these feedback loops, and connect them together, so they can provide predictive information.”

Nadella said that while the trend is moving towards Mobile first/cloud first paradigm generating $2.5 trillion in IT spending, that number will surge to $4.5 trillion with the Intelligent Cloud/Intelligent Edge paradigm.

This brings an increased opportunity with Digitisation and the opportunity is greater than before as there is no longer a debate about whether to host data in a public or private cloud. “It is clear that what we need is a distributed hybrid cloud infrastructure. The richness of your data should be represented in how it is stored. Finally, we are moving beyond big data and even machine learning capabilities to be able to infuse cognitive capabilities, like computer vision and understanding natural language, into the applications you build. That's because Intelligent Cloud/Intelligent Edge will expand what is generally considered to be "IT systems" today. With increasing digitization, where every part of our society and economy is being fundamentally transformed because of digital technology, the opportunity is greater than ever before," Nadella said.

Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group spoke about how partners can turn

Your great idea is just the beginning. From there you need to define a sustainable, profitable business model and build a go-to-market plan that gives you customer reach and relevance. Great ideas need great execution to be more than just an academic exercise. I know for a fact that no single approach will work for every partner. Some partners will focus on building a services practice, some will develop a channel, while others will take a more traditional ISV approach.

Gavriella Schuster Corporate vice president, the Worldwide Partner Group Microsoft one’s great idea into a thriving business to drive digital transformation around the world and across industries. “Your great idea is just the beginning. From there you need to define a sustainable, profitable business model and build a go-to-market plan that gives you customer reach and relevance. Great ideas need great execution to be more than just an academic exercise. I know for a fact that no single approach will work for every partner.

Some partners will focus on building a services practice, some will develop a channel, while others will take a more traditional ISV approach. However, regardless of which business model works for you, I think there are a few common threads to keep in mind.

Here’s what I recommend. @ @ @ @

Know your customer & your market Grow your technical skills Build repeatable, scalable solutions Innovate”

The Microsoft Inspire event was attended

by VARs and partners from across the globe, including 176 from India. From asserting that cloud is foundational to enabling digital transformation to moving beyond big data and even machine learning capabilities, the event proved to be a powerhouse for all the participating partners. n

Moving Azure To Hybrid Cloud Environments Microsoft has had huge success with Azure (cloud computing platform). Now Microsoft is taking steps to move Azure into hybrid cloud environments with the announcement of the general availability of Azure Stack, an extension of Azure.

Microsoft's hardware partners, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell EMC and Lenovo, will ship Azure Stack with their hardware systems. Microsoft is pricing Azure Stack using pay-as-you-go use and capacity-based models. It is also making available an Azure Stack Development Kit for building and deploying applications for Azure hybrid cloud environments. Microsoft is offering a free single-server deployment option of the SDK for trial purposes.

Lastly, when you think about who you partner with long term, you have to partner with those who invest, and change, and lead—and Microsoft has once again proven that this is them and working with a goal of increasing partner profitability and accelerating business growth.

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FACE TO FACE

Deskera is Creating Cloud Partner Network in India W

ith an experience of 15 years in sales, Dhananjay Kumar Singh is the sales Head for North region at Deskera India. He is also a Business Performance Expert in helping organizations by Partner farmingand bridging the gap between the sellers and customers.

He has spearheaded the creation of Partner network and CA enablement. An advertising and sales management graduate as well as a post graduate in Marketing Management, he has worked with around 4000 IT partners and 8000 CAs in various cities of India. In a chat with VARINDIA, he reveals about the need of Partner network, definition of Channel cloud partners, how Deskera is going to help such partners and much more: Deskera is known for its cloud-based solutions for small and mid-sized businesses.

Incepted in the year 2008, the company provides sophisticated and simple solutions that help different companies manage resources efficiently across departments, from operations to accounting to sales to HR, on one platform.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It has a pan India presence across eight major cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Pune. A market leader in integrated cloud-based GST ERP software, Deskera is among the first few companies who are GST ready to cater to India’s biggest tax reform and help companies move to GST.Today, more than 3,000 businesses, with approximately 80,000 users, manage their companies using Deskera products. Deskera’s mission has always been to provide world-class technology to mid-sized companies so they can succeed by running more efficiently.

Channel Partners play a crucial role in a company’s growth story. They are the representatives of the company in front of the customersDeskerahas always recognized the importance of its channel partners and have been taking various measures to strengthen the relationship. One of the many steps in this direction is creating its own Cloud Partner

network in India –a first-of- its kind initiative.

Those partners who are keen on selling only Cloud technology products have opportunity to be a part of this network. The program will help SME partners to enhance their competency for better understanding of Cloud and work on latest technologies.

What is Channel Cloud Partners?

A channel partner is anOrganization or Platform that provides services or sells products on behalf of a software/hardware Parent Company. Value-Added Resellers (VARs), Managed Service Provider(MSPss), Consultants, Systems Integrators (SIs), Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Distributors can be called Channel Partners. Deskera is going to bring these partners under one umbrella -Cloud Partners Network in India who will specifically sell only Cloud-based technology products.

Why is it required?

• Currently, there are no companies with structured partner network in India focusing only on cloud technology • Most of the of hardware vendors are looking for alternative business options due to heavy reduction in IT Hardware business • No company except Tally has ever worked to create its own partner network by Partner Farming • Cloud is now widely acceptable and most of the customers want to shift their data on the cloud to enable 24*7 access from any where • 67% of India’s population is below 35 years of age and they are eyeing latest services and solutions. They don’t want to remain dependent on system based solutions • The second generations of the traditional partners have entered the family business and they understand the importance of Cloud. They want to become cloud solution partners instead of being Box Sellers • Cloud systems are more secure • Most of the Partners feel we don’t have

the bench strength to do the work at locations where they don’t have geographical reach. Cloud can solve this concern as it requires browser and an internet connection only.

How Deskera is going to help such partners?

Deskera wants to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem along with its channel partners.

We are working towards building this Cloud Partners network. We hopethis initiative will contribute towards the Indian economy and aid in the government’s Digital India Campaign.

Deskera products are not limited to accounting solutions. We have an integratedsuite of business software that can help organisations of every size streamline their processes. Our GST Ready solution has–ERP(Accounting, Inventory, Taxations-GST ready), MRP,HRMS, CRM andPROJECT MANAGEMENT.

Who can approach Deskera for becoming our Partner?

• Anyone who wants to understand about Cloud and latest technology • Those who want to learn for continuous earning by providing Deskera Applications • IT/Hardware software vendors • CAs as Cloud software consultant

GDPR legislation to influence IT security market to grow in Europe by 16%

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usinesses of all sizes weather large or small all are scrambling to assess their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) readiness, with less than a year to go until its implementation on 25 May 2018.

The new framework demands a reassessment of the everyday operational structure for businesses that handle personal data in the EU. Canalys forecasts that this will spur the IT security market in Western and Central Eastern Europe to grow 16% to US$11.5 billion in 2018.

However, there are significant differences in

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preparedness between companies of varied sizes.

“Our research shows that large businesses are well informed on information security regulations, with resources in place to ensure compliance.

With ransomware threats such as WannaCry causing havoc, shareholders will be more willing to accept increased data security and compliance budgets to protect their long-term investment,”

said Canalys Senior Analyst Nushin Vaiani.

“SMBs naturally have fewer resources, putting constraints on implementation. But there are potentially massive fines for noncompliance with GDPR, putting SMBs under threat of bankruptcy. Businesses must take action now to safeguard from this danger”, added Vaiani.

Overall, the net effect on SMBs will be significant and many are turning to their existing relationships with channel partners for help.

Canalys expects this trend to accelerate, as SMBs realize they have little time left to implement changes if they are to meet the deadline.

FACE TO FACE

VMware sees NSX adoption as critical to private cloud strategy From a business perspective, NSX is a fast-growing technology for VMware. It initially built its company on server virtualization, but now it is a cloud infrastructure and business mobility company. Anand Patil, India Lead - SDDC Sales - VMware India feels that network virtualization is a bigger opportunity than server virtualization and it will continue to be in the world of cross cloud, where customers will run their workloads and applications across multiple clouds and at the same time manage, connect and secure them all -

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rganizations worldwide are realizing the urgency of transforming their IT infrastructure to meet challenges of working across public and private clouds, improving security, and meeting new regulatory requirements. The networking world is undergoing a seismic shift from hardware to software-defined models. Just as virtualization transformed physical servers in a previous generation, it is now driving network transformation and enabling the emergence of cloud-based business models.

VMware NSX (network virtualization and security platform) is a non-disruptive solution that is deployed on any IP network, including existing data center network designs or next generation fabric architectures from any networking vendor. The NSX network virtualization platform for VMware is the central product in the network virtualization domain that provides the critical third pillar to its Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) architecture. Last year VMware exceeded 600 million dollar bookings.

“NSX network virtualization delivers for networking what VMware has already delivered for compute and storage. It enables virtual networks to be created, saved, deleted and restored on demand without requiring any reconfiguration of the physical network. This provides the ability to tie security policies on a per app basis. Whether the app is running on a vSphere VM, natively in Amazon or Azure or one of the cloud datacenters or even if the app is in a container and tied to the container or applications – the whole point is that regardless of where the application is running or in what kind of framework, NSX incorporates built-in security to be able to apply very fine grained policies to protect those applications,” says Anand Patil, India Lead - SDDC Sales – VMware.

Opportunities galore in NSX...

Being a new technology, NSX has pretty high level of services attached with typical sale as customers need professional services to help them deploy it right the first time around. “This is a clear opportunity for our partners to get the services business.

If a partner is already selling VMware’s

virtualization technology, it gives them access to additional spends. If they are an existing networking partner, NSX gives them access to the customer’s security budget, which is the fastest growing budget in IT today,” says Anand.

For VMware’s solution provider partners, there are pull-through opportunitiesto help customers integrate NSX into their private clouds and to make it even easier for customers to take advantage of hybrid and public cloud environments– while maintaining the same security and networking policies across multiple clouds. By virtualising the network with NSX, it smoothens the transfer of workloads from one environment to another, and paves way to unlock the full potential of the SDDC. NSX provides inherent security so when an application moves – security moves with it – across any cloud.

“We are seeing broad adoption of NSX, and it is our partners that are driving this adoption. Adoption of SDDC by our vCloud Air Network service provider partners continues to accelerate given the success our partners have with core products like

Anand Patil India Lead - SDDC Sales VMware India

vSphere,” cites Anand.

In the last 12 months, NSX adoption has become an integral part of the private cloud build-out in large banks, conglomerates and telecoms within the ITeS segment to implement security with digital workspaces.

VMware expects this trend to extend to smaller organizations in these segments as well. Given the heightened awareness around cyber-security, VMware is also starting to see Government and PSUs take a keen interest in the micro-segmentation capabilities of NSX, which provides a way to mitigate malware from spreading within virtualized data centers. n

Challenges addressed by NSX • Security – NSX enables organizations to divide the data center into distinct security segments logically, down to the level of the individual workload—irrespective of the workload’s network subnet or VLAN. IT teams can then define security policies and controls for each workload based on dynamic security groups, which ensures immediate responses to threats inside the data center and enforcement down to the individual virtual machine. Unlike in traditional networks, if an attacker gets through data center perimeter defenses, threats cannot move laterally within the data center. This can help mitigate the propagation of malware within the data center.

• Automation – NSX addresses the challenge of lengthy network provisioning, configuration errors, and costly processes by automating labor intensive, error-prone tasks. NSX creates networks in software, eliminating bottlenecks associated with hardware based networks • Application Continuity – Since NSX abstracts networking from the underlying hardware, networking and security policies are attached to their associated workloads.

Organizations can easily replicate entire application environments to remote data centers for disaster recovery, move them from one corporate data center to another, or deploy them into a hybrid cloud environment—all in minutes, all without disrupting the applications, and all without touching the physical network

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VAR ANALYSIS

Petya - the new ransomware taking the cyber world by storm While 2016 was marked by extraordinary attacks, including multi-million dollar virtual bank heists, 2017 is no less. Just a month after WannaCry locked up thousands of computers, a new wave of ransomware attacks are targeting users across the world, including India and Europe. It’s the second major global ransomware attack in the last two months. Consumer, shipping, aviation and oil & gas companies were hit in the UK, Russia, France, Spain and elsewhere.

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etwrap, believed to be an advanced version of an old ransomware known as Petya, locked the computer screens of as many as 20 companies globally with $300 being demanded to be paid in Bitcoin to free them up.

Advertsising company WPP, food company Mondelez, legal firm DLA Piper, French construction materials company Saint-Gobain and Russian steel and oil firms Evraz and Rosneft Maersk and Danish shipping and transport firm Maersk are some of the companies targeted by the ransomware, causing serious disruptions according to people aware of the matter. Indian subsidiaries of UK and Russia-based oil and gas, energy and aviation companies were also hit.

Like WannaCry ransomware attack that affected more than 2, 30,000 computers in over 150 countries, with the UK’s National Health Service, Spanish phone company Telefonica and German state railways among those hardest hit, Petya spreads rapidly through networks that use Microsoft Windows. The malicious software spreads rapidly across an organization once a computer is infected using the EternalBlue vulnerability in Microsoft Windows or through two Windows administrative tools. The malware tries one option and if it doesn’t work, it tries the next one.

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According to the Ukrainian Cyber Police, the attack appears to have been seeded through a software update mechanism built into an accounting program that companies working with the Ukrainian government need to use. The ransomware infects computers and then waits for about an hour before rebooting the machine.

While the machine is rebooting, you can switch the computer off to prevent the files from being encrypted and try and rescue the files from the machine.

According to a Symantec study, there has been a 36% increase in ransomware attacks in 2016, with 3x as many as new ransomware families coming to the block. It has also been observed that attackers target those countries that can pay the highest ransom.

How does the industry reacts?

Sophos in its statement said that Petya (or Petrwrap/Petyawrap) was first discovered in 2016 – it is ransomware that encrypts MFT (Master File Tree) tables and overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record), dropping a ransom note and leaving victims unable to boot their computer. “This new variant is particularly virulent because it uses multiple techniques to spread automatically within a company’s network

once the first computer is infected.”

Kaspersky Lab experts on the other hand aim to release new signatures, including for the System Watcher component as soon as possible and to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack – with the intention of developing a decryption tool as soon as they can. It also advises all companies to update their Windows software, to check their security solution and ensure they have back up and ransomware detection in place.

Rana Gupta, Vice President – APAC Sales, Identity and Data Protection, Gemalto opines, “Because data is the new oil in the digital economy, ransomware attacks that restrict access to important data until the attacker is paid are becoming increasingly common.

However, neither businesses nor individuals should pay ransoms to unlock any files that have been affected by a ransomware attack, as this incentivises and rewards these kinds of attacks. In order to prevent becoming a victim of a ransomware attack, data should be backedup and encrypted, and stored away from the network the rest of the data is stored on. This means that, in the event that a ransomware attack locks someone out of their files, they will have secure copies available. By doing this, the victim would be able to return to business-as-

Top 20 countries based on numbers of affected organizations usual quickly and efficiently.”

Aamir Lakhani, Senior Security Strategist at Fortinet points out that Petya uses the same attack vector as WannaCry, exploiting the identical Microsoft vulnerabilities that were uncovered by the Shadow Brokers earlier this year. “There are a couple of really interesting aspects to this attack.

The first is that, in spite of the highly publicized disclosure of the Microsoft vulnerabilities and patches, and the world-wide nature of the follow-up WannaCry attack, there are apparently still thousands of organizations, including those managing critical infrastructure that have failed to patch their devices. The second is that this may simply be a test for delivering future attacks targeted at newly disclosed vulnerabilities.”

From a financial perspective, WannaCry was not very successful, as it generated very little revenue for its developers. This was due, in part, because researchers were able to find a kill switch that disabled the attack. Petya’s payload, however, is much more sophisticated, though it remains to be seen if it will be more financially successful than its predecessor.

Sharing her views, Sharda Tickoo, Technical Head, Trend Micro India says, “In India, so far we have no cases of Petya that have been reported to us. The countries most affected are Europe, typically Ukraine and Russia. We would recommend the companies to maintain an important hygiene of regularly taking back-up of necessary data and proactively monitor the systems for any suspicious activity. And most importantly, because it is a ransomware, we have to secure the email gateway first. There are also certain URL categorizations employed in work environment which can block access to malicious codes. Ensure that all the workstations have least privilege unless any workstation actually requires administrator privilege, as the ransomware spreads and tries to escalate the privileges.”

After the attacks, the IT Advisory/Risk Advisory team at BDO India released an advisory alert which says that the malware called, "Petya" or which security researchers are calling "NotPetya”, differs from typical ransomware as it doesn’t just encrypt files, but it also overwrites and encrypts the master boot record (MBR)1.

“The attack appears to have been initially seeded

through a software update mechanism built into an accounting program that companies working with the Ukrainian government need to use, according to the Ukrainian Cyber Police. Like WannaCry, NotPetya is spreading rapidly through networks that use Microsoft Windows and has already affected large number of companies, organizations and government entities on an international scale. As of today, 36 payments have already been made falling prey to this attack,” it read.

Sivarama Krishnan, Partner & Leader, Cyber Security - PwC India observes that there are three propagation attack vectors which has been observed that the current variants of the ransomware is using - Eternal blue - exploiting the MS17-010 vulnerability; Admin$ and WMI. “The worm spreads only within the subnet of initially infected host. Infection from internet systems may be limited (however this is yet to be confirmed for all variants). The system goes for a shutdown before being encrypted. In case in system has shut down automatically without user intervention - do not restart it. Isolate it and involve IR teams for disk imaging/analysis as necessary,” says Sivarama.

“The second ransomware attack less than a month from WannaCry, has brought to light how the speed of attacks has changed dramatically,” says Kartik Shahani, Integrated Security Leader, IBM India/South Asia. “Petya shows the attackers have learned from WannaCry, and have updated it be more powerful. What makes Petya different is that unlike WannaCry, the ransomware can also infect patched systems on connected networks using Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) and PsExec, a remote command tool from Microsoft. Companies need to ensure that all systems with network access in the organization are patched for the Microsoft vulnerabilities. If infected, the first step is to disconnect the devices from the network and shut them down immediately to lessen the damage. While many companies may be tempted to pay ransom to get their systems back online, there are no guarantees that people who did pay the ransom will receive their files back.”

Rakesh Kumar Singh, Datacenter lead,

Juniper Networks India contends, “Mainly corporates which are not in high-tech are more vulnerable as they have lots of legacy OS installations that were ignored as they were used for non-intensive purposes like data entry.

We saw that lots of intellectual property data was locked out during the WannaCry event.

Since Petya is not only exploiting the same ‘EternalBlue’ vulnerability but additional known vulnerability that was exposed from prior leaks, we are expecting a wider impact this time. We are also expecting that lots of home users would be affected too. It is a wakeup alert for all SMBs who avoided moving away from out-ofsupport operating systems. The main learning is that critical data should not be residing on user desktops.”

Amit Jaju, Executive Director, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, EY India says, “The recent cyber-attack through the strain of Petra Ransomware – now called PetWrap has hit many global companies through a software update from an Eastern European company. We have seen that the ransomware could be lethal as it encrypts the master boot record and hard drive, making it quite impossible to recover individual files once the entire hard drive is encrypted.

While the total encryption process may take over an hour to complete, even a ten minute window could be sufficient for the ransomware to make the entire hard drive unusable.”

And so...

India is responding positively with no major impact on our businesses. During the last attack, the government activated the ‘preparedness and response mechanism’, which turns to India learning two important lessons from this situation • To be always prepared: companies need to constantly stay up to date for plausible treats that could come their way • To have the armour to face such threats: the IT space needs to have enough skilled labour to counter such acts efficiently. These lessons should be implemented effectively and maintained as a hygiene for all companies henceforth. n

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LEAD STORY

The age of offering next-gen customer experience is here!

A product alone does not sell by the brand name. Because of the changing customer perception as also the multiplicity of product options available today, after sales service goes a long way as an important factor in helping a customer decide on a product -

Nikunj Murukutla Sales Director, Consumer and Small Business, Dell India

Sanjay Pai Managing Director – India, Genesys

Sudhindra Holla Country Manager, India & SAARC, Axis Communications

"After-sales contributes to a brand’s capability to build enduring relationships with its customers"

"The first thing that organizations need to understand is that customer service is not a cost center anymore."

"A strong after-sales support team can boost the brand value amongst customers"

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ndia is one of the largest hubs for after-sales services. The service sector is one of the highest contributors to the Indian economy. It not only brings in scope for foreign direct investment (FDI) but also attracts large scale hiring of talent. The tremendous scope for growth in the Indian market has set the stage for global players to build their teams here due to the cost arbitrage, skilled talent pool and vast hiring potential of service sector employees.

“With its vast demographic, knowledge levels, infrastructure availability and distinct usage habits, India presents a very unique market opportunity,” reiterates Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India. “Today, the Indian market receives the latest products and competes almost at par with its global counterparts. This leaves the Indian consumer spoilt for choice across all price points when it comes to high-end features. With the ever-increasing digitization in India, the urban consumer is well informed and also quick to share their positive or negative experiences in real-time.”

“Most companies today have a dedicated department to cater to the customers’ postsales needs since it is a critical element of customer relationship management. While companies invest in reaching out to newer markets, one cannot forget the needs of the existing customer base. A strong after-sales support team can boost the brand value amongst customers,” says Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, India & SAARC - Axis Communications.

Opines Balgound Chougula, VP- Customer Support & RMA, D-Link (India), “Customer engagement is a long term commitment and after-sales plays a crucial role in building a brand’s credibility. Customers are sensitive towards brand reputation, and are constantly looking for friendly local after sales

support.”

With increased penetration of internet and smartphones, technology companies are constantly working on disrupting through better customer experience.

“The first thing that organizations need to understand is that customer service is not a cost center anymore. Over time, customers have started expecting the same quality and speed from service providers across the market. India being an important market, providing an exceptional service is the key part of people’s overall experience,” Sanjay Pai, Managing Director – India, Genesys asserts.

“There is no doubt across any industry today that the paradigm of the support and services is undergoing transformation, shedding its traditional support processes,” says Srikant Attravanam, Director – Services and Support, Hitachi Data Systems. “Those days are fast fading when there used to be maintenance windows to perform support activities. Businesses today expect 24X7X365 availability, be it on premise, on cloud, hybrid, for their critical services with absolute 100% availability. Gone are those days when customers used to log a support call in call centre asking for engineer alignment for an issue. Today most if not all, Infrastructure support systems are getting automated, becoming highly intelligent and are able to collect, analyse and predict the failures much in advance before it can cause a negative impact loaded with AI and call home features to despatch support engineer or resolve issue remotely and proactively.”

Businesses don’t believe in just selling products anymore, rather they want to build

a relationship with customers. Through constant engagement, customers get extra value with the services and are ensured the best experience, while boosting loyalty simultaneously.

“Innovation is the key today. Businesses need to constantly think of newer ways to approach the experience factor for their customers. It is the bridge between how things were done and how it can be improvised.

There is a dedicated service team to guide customers if they facing issues with the products,” says Sanjay.

“Companies are seen reworking on their philosophies to place customer’s need at the center of all service initiatives. This value chain is observed throughout the organization

Srikant Attravanam Director – Services and Support, Hitachi Data Systems

Sudipto Ghosh Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India

Anurag Gupta Director - Customer Service Operations, Xerox India

"There is no doubt across any industry today that the paradigm of the support and services is undergoing transformation, shedding its traditional support processes."

"Companies are seen reworking on their philosophies to place customer’s need at the center of all service initiatives."

"Xerox has been the pioneer in launching the “After Sale Service Concept” for office automation in India."

Innovative customer experience...

Marthesh Nagendra Country Manager NETGEAR, India & SAARC

"Netgear makes use of Social Media extensively so that customers can get in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter"

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LEAD STORY

Prasanta Kr Das Vice President, Value Solutions, DASSAULT SYSTEMES

"Our endeavor is to deliver / create value for the customer with seamless customer experience that our technology and products can offer" right from the chairman to last mile consisting of field force who regularly meet customers and incorporate their feedback for proactive corrective actions,” opines Sudipto.

In a bid to simplify customer care, companies are also adding newer technologies like Big Data Analytics and AI chatbots in the back-end to enhance customer support system.

Another standout feature of today is the use of videos which help customers to understand complex products. “We believe that it is the provider’s duty to provide support to the customer as long as the products are in use.

Videos are easy to understand and can guide them through installation, troubleshooting, software management and quick tips on using the right accessories suitable for the right products,” says Sudhindra.

After-sales is certainly one of the factors that contribute to a brand’s capability to build enduring relationships with its customers, according to Nikunj Murukutla, Sales Director, Consumer and Small Business, Dell India. “At Dell, we strive to deliver customer service across multiple platforms - from tailor-made technology like SupportAssist Technology to Dell’s social media assets, Facebook and Twitter.”

“Xerox has been the pioneer in launching the “After Sale Service Concept” for office automation in India. Xerox Service Operations in fact have been a benchmark for the industry which evolves with the changing customer requirements to further enhance the overall value proposition. Xerox, in its endeavor to deliver better value to its customers, has a unique EUREKA Knowledge base, which has multiple solutions for the same problem faced by engineers across the globe. This makes the company an undisputed leader in the industry, and having a great number of repeat customers further validates its strong customer service operations,” says

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Anurag Gupta, Director - Customer Service Operations, Xerox India.

“We make all information to be provided on the box so that the end customer can easily call or write to our support. NETGEAR has close to 15 service centers/pick up points across India. Customers can also get in touch with us through NETGEAR India pages on Facebook and Twitter,” says Marthesh Nagendra, Country Manager, NETGEAR, India & SAARC. Similarly GIGABYTE have been investing in after-sales service in India for more than 10 years and it has its own repair service centers and 50+ collection centers in India.

“Our senior engineering team has developed the auto de-bug software which can detect the problem within 15 minutes. With its 3D Storage process, Gigabyte can also has the real-time component and RMA buffer data. Combining software and hardware set up in GIGABYTE service centers in metro locations, 95% of customer’s issue can be resolved within the same day,” states Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE India.

Social media offers the unique opportunity to listen to customers and engage in a twoway dialogue with them. There has also been transformation in consumer conversations since companies started listening and engaging with customers on social media and addressing their concerns in real time. Similarly Apps also assist consumers to understand products better and they can access to its worldwide community which will address to most of their issues.

Today, brands are using analytical tools such as big data analytics, predictive analytics, social media analytics, speech analytics, and various others to cater to the emotional factor of customer's experience, thus increasing their customer base. Every company is looking to offer a differentiated experience.

“Interestingly, a study commissioned

by Genesys in partnership with Frost & Sullivan, reveals that India ranks the second

Balgound Chougula VP- Customer Support & RMA, D-Link (India) Ltd.

"Customer engagement is a long term commitment and after-sales plays a crucial role in building a brand’s credibility."

Amrish Mahajan Director – Customer Support, Acer

"The next generation customer experience centres involve utilization of a variety of media channels including chat, Web, email and video to deliver content-rich, the consumercentric experience." highest, behind China, in IoT-Enabled customer maturity compared with other APAC markets. Across India, the research revealed organizations see high value in integrating of tools like IoT into their CX initiatives compared to other markets in the region. Such insights help roll out successful implementations to truly realize the potential of these technologies to improve customer experience,” says Sanjay Pai. “In a fast-paced digitized world, a customer looks for complete information at one place without any intermediary and hence, providing real-time information empowers a customer. Increasingly, they prefer resolving their own problems as much as possible,” says Sudipto.

Indeed, in today’s dynamic world a brand is as good as a customer’s perception basis his last experience with the brand. Hence it is imperative for brands alike to constantly engage, build a sustaining relationship with the customer and make their journey with the brand effortless with new age tools like social media, apps and chatbots.

“Chatbots and apps have come to forefront with the boom in the worldwide internet adoption and smartphone market.

Data shows that Tier III Indian cities are the largest adopters of smartphones and PCs for communicating with customers, managing business data and accounting related activities.

Today, one doesn’t expect a person to answer their queries, rather a bot to guide them through the process. These technologies have reduced the average time taken to address queries by customers. It has also reduced errors and dependency on humans,” points out Sudhindra.

Upgradation of technology is one major step to ensure customer satisfaction.

Technology in the customer service segment provides customers with access to proactive and predictive support rather than just reactive support. It also helps reduce the time taken to provide a resolution, benefiting the company, and satisfying customers.

Says Prasanta Kr Das, Vice President, Value Solutions, DASSAULT SYSTEMES, “While there are app/chat bots for optimization/ suggestions for customer queries before actually diverting calls to service executives, the use of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning for customer service in an industry of 3D design, Digital Mock Up, PLM has some way to go before it actually can be implemented on ground and in a country like India. Our endeavor is to deliver / create value for the customer with seamless customer experience that our technology and products can offer.”

Evolution of Customer experience centers...

Over the past few years, customers have evolved in the way they communicate, learn about products and make purchase decisions.

Next generation customer experience centers help address the evolving customer behaviour by allowing companies to redefine and share a new service vision. Once the basics of customer service are in place, brands will be able to integrate customer touch points and maximize loyalty, irrespective of whether the approach is through traditional or next generation customer experience centers.

“The next generation customer experience centres involve utilization of a variety of media channels including chat, Web, email and video to deliver contentrich, the consumer-centric experience that eventually and significantly improve client satisfaction. Customers expect you to know their problem. This integrated solutions that combine traditional contact center functions with enterprise social software, and business intelligence help to tie all pieces together and deliver on client expectations. I believe that adoption of these solutions will increase responsiveness and reduce query resolution time and will deliver powerful self-service solutions that will enhance the consumer experience,” says Amrish Mahajan, Director – Customer Support, Acer.

“Experience centers are a great new approach to showcase products in an immersive environment. Customers deserve to experience the products they want to purchase. While it is still at a nascent stage, the established customer experience centers have made an impact on the purchasing decision of buyers. These centers not only work as a demonstration space, but also as an intelligence gathering space. The buyers who come to these centers review all the possibilities and provide their feedback on what could be lacking and features they would like to include with a particular offering. This helps the company plan new products and also form a feedback mechanism with our SI’s, partners and end users,” says Sudhindra.

India is slowly picking up on the trend

of providing enhanced customer experience through contact and customer centres. While it is still at a nascent stage, many brands have realized the importance of giving customers a real-world experience of what they have to offer.

“We believe that the concept of customer experience centers is evolving, with brands continuously innovating their offerings to take experience to the next level. These centers are equipped with the latest technology and logistics and can take care of both in warranty and out of warranty repairs,” says Nikunj.

Role of Channel in services...

Channel partners are extended part of any brand. The critical retail experience for customers is delivered through partners.

It is imperative that channel is empowered with the right information, service back-up, collaboration, product ranging and regular training to provide a seamless customer experience.

Customers are looking to interact with vendors through seamless ways across multiple channels. The answer to this is Omnichannel Customer Service. Every business organization is focusing on increasing its customer base by providing solutions on multiple channels where customers can interact and their behaviour can be ascertained. By dynamically integrating and empowering channels in realtime, companies will be able to understand, engage and embrace omnichannel customer environment.

“Overall communication is the key. Just as passing of information from Vendor to channel is important, in the same manner it is essential for partners to absorb all the knowledge & pass on the details to endcustomer. Toll free support, service center information or details on support programs offered by vendor should be readily available with re-sellers so that they can pass on the information accordingly to customers. This will eventually lead to a seamless customer experience,” believes Balgound.

“A brand provides a seamless customer experience when it helps a customer enjoy a great service and expertise from experienced professionals until they own its products

India is slowly picking up on the trend of providing enhanced customer experience through contact and customer centres. While it is still at a nascent stage, many brands have realized the importance of giving customers a real-world experience of what they have to offer.

Sunil Grewal, Director, GIGABYTE India

"GIGABYTE have been investing in after-sales service in India for more than 10 years and it has its own repair service centers and 50+ collection centers in India" and services. Be it offering pre and post-sale support to making it easier for them to sell, it covers them all,” says Nikunj.

And so...

Today, services are playing a significant role in customer satisfaction and retention. It is as important as product quality since, both equally help to meet customer’s expectations. It is helping brands to generate loyal customers and strengthening the bond with them. These days, every brand is trying their best to offer finest services to the customers in order to spread a positive word of mouth. A satisfied customer refers your business to other individuals and eventually leads to more loyal base and sales.

“At Genesys, we constantly experiment with technology innovations to bring about advanced customer interface to create a seamless service experience. The key here is to understand your customers well. In fact, according to a study commissioned by Genesys in partnership with Frost & Sullivan, Indian organizations are open to implementing new technologies and have an optimistic view of IoT as a key enabler of sophisticated customer experiences,” contends Sanjay Pai. Balgound also agrees that customer engagement across various platforms is very crucial for business these days. “With the advent of technology & especially internet, people are constantly looking for immediate solution,” he concludes.

Companies at the same time are working towards understanding the changes in the consumer behaviour and are adapting to them accordingly. An initiative to engage more intensely with customers, gaining better customer insights, and leveraging service propositions is helping brands grow revenue. n Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com

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FACE TO FACE

Lenovo wants to be the differentiator in after sales service With a ‘Different is Better’ philosophy, Lenovo Services is striving hard to bring delight to its customers by adopting innovative service delivery models. Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India speaks to VARINDIA on its various service initiatives taken to differentiate itself from the rest and how Lenovo is trying to evolve the quality of its services in terms of use of new technologies -

S

ervice forms an important component for a consumer-centric brand like Lenovo. With new-age product challenges, it becomes imperative for a brand to engage with a customer at every phase of their journey. This places additional thrust on creating a seamless customer experience across all channels. As a result, after-sales service has become the unique selling proposition and one of the most critical pieces in the entire customercentricity puzzle. With a ‘Different is Better’ philosophy, Lenovo Services is striving hard to bring delight to its customers by adopting innovative service delivery models.

Serving customers through smart services...

In a bid to simplify customer care, Lenovo has also added newer technologies like Big Data Analytics IoT and AI chatbots in the backend to enhance its customer support system.

“We term them as the Smart services. Our competition is nowhere close to offering such services to our customers. When we observed that 90% of our customers interact on voice channels, we turned on to these technologies to leverage it to our customers’ advantage.

In fact, Lenovo is the first IT player to have partnered with NICE for a special customized software for speech analytics,” says Sudipto.

In Big data, Lenovo uses the speech analytics. The advantage of big data is that they have a 100% check on sample size. Every call is monitored if whether the db level is normal or showing any abnormalities. “By this we will know whether the customer is happy or not,” he says.

Lenovo has various channels through which customers can reach them - app, call center, e-service and even chats. In the chat service, Lenovo has realized that there are typically 5 or 6 things that customers come looking for or want help. “We have developed an artificial intelligence (an auto chat) which we call it robotic chat. The machine answers automatically from the cue word. This is our chat service on Lenovo’s support website.

The conversation gets intervened by our chat agents if the autochat cannot handle it on its own. The advantage here is that quite a few things can be solved without human intervention.”

When a customer needs a service, in several occasions he does not know how to contact Lenovo. In the newly developed IoT system, the customer on his desktop or notebook panel will have a QR code and the customer just has to scan it and he will get all

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the configuration of his Lenovo machine and that will automatically get linked to Lenovo’s call center.

Soliciting Quick Response Time...

Lenovo wants its services to be a differentiator. “There are instances when customers also take to social media to put up any complaints. Though it sounded like threat for us initially, we started taking it in our stride and decided to respond to all customer queries and complaints on social media, especially Twitter in less than 30 mins. It became a good opportunity for us. We are calling this – ‘Break the Wait’. All our initiatives are

primarily leading towards 2 things - how much effort a customer has to do to reach a service provider and the acceptance resolution time (how much time the brand took to resolve the problem),” points out Sudipto.

Additionally, Lenovo has built the concept of MITR (means friend) to treat its customers like a friend. This mindset helps deliver a better and friendly service. “We capture “MITR” moments in our daily service experiences and share them in our periodic service communication. This helps to keep the value alive across delivery functions,” he sums up. n Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com

From ‘At’ your service to ‘App’ your service...

Of late, Lenovo has shifted its focus from ‘at your service’ to ‘app your service’. The company has taken a lot of initiatives to develop the Lenovo app, which has been designed for partners, customers and service engineers Lencare app: Lencare App is a 24x7 service and is an innovative support channel where customers can conveniently track carry in center, check service order status, register a complaint and schedule a call.

Resolve App: Lenovo has empowered its own engineers too with an app. “Sometimes when a field engineer goes onsite to get a product fixed, he might need assistance from his back-end team. The app developed for this purpose is the Resolve App. This also does away any kind of delays that used to take place in the earlier system,” says Sudipto Ghosh.

‘Speed of Light’ App: This app is built for Lenovo’s partners. “All our 2000 Business partners have to register with us. Once he gets registered and becomes our authorised partner, he gets this app with him,” says Sudipto. There are instances when customers would like to upgrade warranty or add-ons like accidental damage protection, change an offsite warranty to an onsite warranty and so on. The Speed of Light app is for extending warranty. “Henceforth any customer who walks into a store, the partner just needs to see what product type he has and can then search in the app and immediately gets the price list for it, corresponding to the number of year that he wants his warranty to be extended.

The registration detail will also reach the customer immediately,” he explains.

FACE TO FACE

AXILSPOT counts channel friendly business policy as key to success In a chat with VARINDIA, Pinaki Chatterjee, Regional Director, India & SAARC, AXILSPOT discussed on how AXILSPOT is proving itself better in the current scenario of India’s digital interface and how it is enabling its partners while discussing about its future business expansion phone data traffic etc. Most WiFi infrastructure laid 2-3 years back are now getting upgraded due to performance demand as well as technology change. Gone are the days, where high-end technology was offered only by few premium brands at premium price. Now technology changes fast within a year or two and no one is willing to invest on high cost equipments as there is no ROI. It is where AXILSPOT can contribute most, by offering high technology WiFi equipment/solutions at lower cost along with strong performance.

For AXILSPOT, India is one of the most important and focused country. We are here to make a difference to partners as well as digitalise India ecosystem. We are already in to multiple smart city projects, apart from that few Govt. projects already bear AXILSPOT brand name on them. And partners are happy as we take care of their margins and secure their projects.

What are the current trends witnessed in the present market? How is AXILSPOT finding the Indian market?

Due to Govt. initiatives like Digital India, Smart City etc., there is a huge boost in IT infrastructure; specifically WiFi now is the era.

India IT infrastructure is yet to be developed unlike other countries where you walk in to any public place and you can instantly connect to free WiFi. After Govt. declared multiple smart cities, WiFi has become the first demand, at the same time most of these projects are Private Public investment mode. Therefore the solution must be technically astounding as well as cost effective to deliver.

For AXILSPOT, India market is one of the top most priority, we have dedicated team to address the needs of Indian customers. We have our office in India along with a highly knowledgeable team and a qualified product manager to take care of India customer. We are getting enormous response due to the products that we are offering. We are a company, delivering products rich in features and offering handsome margins to our partners and at the same time cost effective to end customers. It is a winwin for AXILSPOT and its partners, that’s the reason; we have an excellent sales infrastructure in place. We have signed strong and reliable national distributor Redington and to sum up, we have 10 exclusive regional distributors across the county. Apparently we are working on 4 smart city projects, 7-8 large college campus projects and many SME and enterprise projects. And all the credit for the same goes to our peerless partners who did all the hard work to promote our brand to their customers.

What makes AXILSPOT different than its other counterparts?

Just a few of the most important points which make AXILSPOT the brand we are 1. Strong channel friendly business policy 2. Reliable distribution network 3. We secure our partners margins and projects through different means 4. Performance and stability of the product 5. Ease of working 6. Easy access to AXILSPOT team and resources 7. Quick resolution to issue if reported 8. No tall claims and fake promises 9. No stock dumping

With the recent escalation in digital adoption what kind of opportunities persists for channel partners at present?

How AXILSPOT deals in different industry verticals? Which business vertical is earning more numbers for the company?

Our key focus is SME and Enterprise customers, we are SI focused brand and we are focusing on Govt., Education, Hospitality, Banking, Manufacturing, Mining and Corporate sector.

Smart city, Education and Govt. is from where we are expecting our maximum revenue.

Please comment on the current situation of India in context to the entire digital interface? How is AXILSPOT contributing to this initiative of Digital India?

World is changing fast and Internet is now a basic need. The old low cost Wi-Fi solution is not sufficient as it does not perform. Most of the applications are now migrating to cloud.

And current low cost, low performance products are not even worth in managing current smart

World is changing fast, most of the retail and high demand products have moved to online sales.

Current brands crave beyond market size and had made a gruesome competition due to which partner bleed at the end. The best way to keep moving ahead is keep adopting new technologies.

Always practice educating the customers and not just emphasize on box selling. We at AXILSPOT offer handsome margins, provide training to understand current WiFi related technologies.

We’re equipped with wide range of products to offer from. We don’t sell online and we don’t dump stocks on partners to avoid unnecessary challenges. Gone are the days when partners can be fooled merely by awarding partner certificate.

Now partners look for margins against their hard work, AXILSPOT is creating an ecosystem where partner can join hands with us and grow together with peace of mind.

What are your future plans to expand the reach of its operations in the country?

We have just started; we already got the sales infrastructure, office, PM etc. And moving ahead, we are in the process of setting up toll free number. We are looking at the expansion of sales team, service centres etc. Most of the setting up of infrastructure has already been planned and now we are taking steps, one after another to ensure, by mid of next year we have the over-all infrastructure is in place. n

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LEAD STORY

Open Source holds immense significance for Digital India India is one of the biggest users and contributors to Open Source technology.

It has evolved manifolds from being just a cost-efficient alternative technology of proprietary technology to an imperative technology in Government of India’s flagship programme- Digital India.

It is true that the revolution of digital transformation which has currently created ripples in the entire nation is one of the major drivers to the growth of Open Source. The Government of India has encouraged the adoption of this technology in the Digital

Neeraj Bhatia Director - Partner, Alliances & Commercial Sales, Red Hat India

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India initiative and this has further encouraged the CIOs of enterprises and other government organizations to make a move towards this technology.

“The rise of digital transformation in India has pushed the adoption of Open Source both by enterprises and government.

As per industry reports, by 2020 70% of all newly deployed applications will run on an open source databases. The uptake of the adoption by companies of all sizes is a direct reflection of the maturity of the open source solutions. Infact, several institutes are

Mohiuddin Khan Inamdar Senior Solutions Architect at Xavient Information Systems

opting to now including Open Source in their curriculum,” says Neeraj Bhatia, Director Partner, Alliances & Commercial Sales, Red Hat India.

Government & Open Source

Open Source technology has come across a long way in terms of maturity and flexibility.

The Government is adopting this technology as it offers a scalable and robust platform which in turn provides the best possible outcome. Moreover, the most important reason behind its rapid adoption is freedom

Kamal Brar VP and GM, APAC Hortonworks

Rajarshi Bhattacharyya Country Head Suse of choice.

“Open source technology today is fairly mature and it is much more flexible.

Considering the volume of data that the governments need to process, open source is the only scalable and robust platform which can ensure better outcome. Interoperability is another aspect which goes in favor of Open Source. Government’s infrastructure and systems need to support multiple systems, standards, applications and processes, which is possible only through the adoption of open technologies. Government, as customers, also appreciates freedom of choice—the biggest advantage of open source. Open source can be run on mainframes or Desktops, without compromising on performance or quality,” views Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Country Head – Suse.

The biggest advantage of Open Source platform is that it drives innovation. It is a prime reason that many governments across the globe have policies that support this platform. Government of India has also developed BOSS based on Linux operating system.

“The biggest benefit that Open source drives is innovation, it provides flexibility in terms of vendor lock-ins and feature customization. Another benefit is the faster time to market. More than 40 + governments globally have policies supporting this initiative.

The Indian Government has even developed BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions), which is a Linux-based operating system.

There are still more initiatives required on the applications and platforms front,” says Prashant Gupta, Head of Solutions, Verizon Enterprise Solutions South East Asia & India.

As Open Source platform offers cost efficiency, scalability, innovation, rapid deployment, security and much more so it is the first choice for Government of India to leverage the digital transformation initiative which is presently going on in the country.

“Open Source is a prominent choice of Government to truly leverage the digital transformation initiatives. The Government requires scalable, innovative and highquality eGov applications to be developed in a collaborative manner by encouraging synergy between departments and private organizations,” opines Dr. Devasia Kurian,

Prashant Gupta Head of Solutions, Verizon Enterprise Solutions South East Asia & India CEO, *astTECS. He further adds, “Apart from cost efficiency, Open Source solutions boast full range of features, capabilities and functionality to support a variety of needs. The key aspects are; agility, freedom to customize, rapid deployment, scalability, support and security.”

Importance of Open Source in Digital India

Digital India initiative is one of the most important project of Government of India which has encouraged the entire nation to go digital. To make it a success Open Source technology is very significant for it. Moreover, it is used in different government projects of Digital India and the policy announced in 2015 also encouraged its adoption.

“Opensource is an extremely important aspect of Digital India. It offers flexibility to enable, customize and explore newer technologies taking advantage of the global participation, unbound development, service automation which enables rapid development & deployment, bringing down the cost significantly. Open Source is now being used in various government projects under digital India program. The Indian Government also announced its Open source policy in 2015,”states Neeraj Bhatia.

When it comes to success of a new initiative, it depends on easy implementation and assembling of a platform which will encourage the growth of the business. Keeping this in mind, Mohiuddin Khan Inamdar, Senior Solutions Architect at Xavient Information Systems says, “Success of the Digital India initiative depends on how less it receives resistance from technology implementation and how fast a mature platform can be assembled to support innovation in business.

Adopting and endorsing Open Source is a great decision to build such an ecosystem.”

Digital India initiative includes three objectives, to utilize digital infrastructure for citizens, governance & services on demand and to empower citizens digitally. For such initiative Government of India is adopting Open Source platform as a key which is helping open source vendors to flourish as CIOs of various organizations are welcoming the platform warm heartedly.

“The Digital India initiative by the

Sunil Mehra Vice President, Cloud Platform Oracle India Government of India urges everyone to adopt open standards, promote open source, and open technologies. This was supported

by Government of India policy on open source. Open source policy align well with the Digital India Program, the program seeks to prepare India for a knowledge economy with three broad areas of focus: Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen, Governance & Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens,” explains Prashant Gupta.

Further adding to it he says, “Governments using open source software, as a key component of 'digital agenda' initiatives that include open standards and open data policies, to enhance citizen engagement. The formal adoption and use of open source is the largest in the government organizations in the country.

By leveraging the open source technology for effective governance, the Government of India is setting a successful example. As a result, CIOs are turning to open source to drive digital innovation to support various business processes with a new angle. Being a substitute for an expensive solution, open source is preferred by SMBs, which in turn, has appositive impact on their businesses.

Hence, a mass adoption of the open source technology can impact the economy of a developing country such as India.”

Interoperability is the key to deliver services through various digital platforms and hence open source is the crucial technology for Digital India programme. Realizing the fact, Government of India has introduced policies and reforms to uphold the technology.

It has become a preferable technology in all e-Governance systems.

“Adoption of open source is critical for the success of Digital India programme, especially for our e-gov projects and electronic delivery of services to citizens. Interoperability is paramount to deliver citizen services through multiple channels like web and mobile.

It’s evident that the Indian Government is aware of this and has introduced policies and reforms to promote the usage and development of open source technologies.

Open Source Software is now the preference in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organizations, in comparison to Closed Source Software. We are sure that open source can help greatly

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LEAD STORY in bridging the digital divide in the country,” states Rajarshi Bhattacharyya.

Apart from interoperability, another inportant factor for the enablement of Government of India's digital vision is India Stack. It is a set of APIs that encourages developers to work with various organizations and government.

“One of the key enablers to India’s digital vision is India Stack, a set of APIs that allow developers to work with government, businesses, and startups. Oracle Cloud platform has been validated to develop applications using India Stack services and is in line with Digital India initiative. With this, customers can create and test next generation cloud applications that invoke core India Stack APIs, including Aadhaar Authentication and eKYC, eSign and DigiLocker,” says Sunil Mehra, Vice President – Cloud Platform, Oracle India.

Opportunities in the market

Worldwide, many governments are getting associated with open source which is boosting innovation in the segment. The open source platform now does not only mean acquiring a product but also an investment in innovation.

The introduction of policies for open source

by Government of India has acted as a catalyst in the usage of the platform.

“Across the world many governments are increasing their engagement on open source. This is critical to powering a culture of innovation that is vital to serve the needs of a modern world. The use of technology, including open source software, is moving out of the sphere of simply 'acquiring a product' to 'investing in innovation'. The Government of India’s move has triggered a surge in interest and usage for Open Source Software (OSS). Although it is difficult to put a number to it, this is an exciting opportunity for vendors of OSS and the community at large to ensure widespread adoption and a level playing field for all,”explains Kamal Brar, Vice President and General Manager of APAC, Hortonworks.

With a similar view Prashant Gupta of Verizon says that open source market has widened considerably with government adopting the platform. It has occupied a major place in various technologies like Cloud computing to software defined network, web and application server, Big Data etc. “The market for open source has expanded considerably after the government started utilizing and promoting the technology. Open Source was one of the top Enterprise IT Trends to watch in 2016. From Cloud computing to Software Defined Networks, Web and Application servers, Big Data, Analytics and Automation open source has made a significant place.

Many studies clearly indicated that a vast majority of organizations have adopted open source in one way or another. We see even SMBs embracing open source technology and sectors such as banking, manufacturing, software development and business process have bet big on open source and successfully deployed solutions.”

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Dr. Devasia Kurian CEO *astTECS The Government’s move of embracing open source software has been beneficial for the vendors. This has encouraged many other verticals apart from government like telecom, BFSI, manufacturing etc to accept this technology.

“There has been a concerted effort from the government to promote the usage and development of open source technologies and it’s certainly paying off. As you rightly pointed out, government in itself is a huge market for open source, with initiatives such as Digital India, smart cities and various other e-gov projects moving to the next level. And projects like Digital India has an all-encompassing impact on the whole ecosystem. So government’s decision to promote open source has certainly resulted in more opportunities in other sectors. Other than the government, Open source today is widely accepted by verticals such as BFSI, Telcom, Manufacturing and Enterprise sector,” mentions Rajarshi Bhattacharyya.

Adoption still lacking behind…

Though Open Source platform is gaining grounds presently but training and awareness for the technology is very much required to take its success to the next level.

“There is a strong ecosystem in place and the adoption of Open Source is consistently increasing. Yes, more training and awareness is required for Open Source to spread and organizations are making an effort in this direction. With Open Source becoming prevalent, there is an increase in demand for skilled professionals. At *astTECS through *astTECS academy, we offer comprehensive training programme on Asterisk solution to Asterisk user, customers and organizations in India and many countries across the globe,” suggests Dr. Devasia Kurian.

Kamal Brar of Hortonworks provides a similar view and adds that a proper platform is needed to train and prepare individual developers on evolving open source software.

“The key concern is training and availability of talent that will drive the next wave of adoption. Though, large systems integrators in India have committed re-skilling of majority of their workforce on next generation open source, Cloud and Big Data technologies, there is a need for a platform to train and prepare individual developers on emerging Open Source Software and their upgrades.

At Hortonworks for example, we provide a set of easy to use Sandbox environments of fully loaded and tuned with tutorials. These are all available free to download from our website.”

Adoption of open source platform is not enough but empowerment of developers with an expertise to take advantage and contribution to the community are also an important for its success.

“Open Source adoption is increasing in India with more government entities and organizations coming to the fore to take adoptive measures. However, a well-equipped talent pool and a proper training mechanism are needed to empower the developers with the expertise required to take advantage & contribute to the Open Source Software. Red Hat offers courses and certifications covering everything from systems administration to enterprise application development.

Whether one is a Linux system administrator, or a cloud and virtualization developer or architect, Red Hat certifications not only helps developers advance their careers but also allows organizations and governments to hire the best talent,” Neeraj Bhatia.

Apart from lack of skilled developers other challenges such as absence of vendor support, software quality and information security are also there. A strong policy framework can improve the situation.

“The most important challenge that organizations face in the adoption of the open source technology is the lack of skill availability. Other challenges include lack of dedicated vendor support, software quality and information security. This can be addressed by laying down a robust policy framework to support adoption. Make in INDIA can also drive solutions developed on an open source platform. With the growth of open source in the Indian market, better training and more participation will result in setting a mark in the global open source market,” highlights Prashant Gupta.

To Conclude…

It is quite evident that with digitalization and different government initiatives open source adoption has been encouraged in the country. The policies of Government of India in this regard has further strengthened the position of the platform. All these factors have not only extended opportunities for the open source vendors in government segment but also in other business verticals who were skeptical in adopting the technology. But it is also to note that India lacks in terms of skilled talent in this technological field which is very critical for the growth and development of the technology. It is important to provide a proper platform of training for the developers to further contribute to the technology. Not only this challenges like vendor support, software quality and information security need to be addressed.

Considering all the aspects we can conclude that open source software is making its way to success. n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

INDUSTRY EVENT

MSMEs foresee a mix of opportunities and challenges under GST regime MSME (Micro small and medium enterprises) share a major presence in the Indian economy with a contribution of 37.54% to its GDP. Also, it has been continuing to maintain a strong foothold in the market contributing to nation building. The role of MSME role is very crucial with regard to job creation, employment generation, increase in income of people and the overall economic growth.

The Ministry of MSME with a total budget of Rs. 85.705Cr, including Government of India’s contribution of Rs. 58.105Cr during 2017- 18 to 2019-20 has decided to implement Digital MSME scheme for promotion of information communication technology in the MSME sector. Through this the government envisions to make MSME digital, and plan to promote ICT in MSME industry along with the implementation of the scheme.

The GST regime holds an enormous opportunity for various sectors of the economy and is expected to herald a new era of indirect tax regime. By replacing various indirect taxes, GST is expected to be a key step in the field of

indirect tax reform in India.

The uniform tax reform under GST is expected to provide a uniform market for MSMEs. By cutting down multiple taxes, this reform will increase the flexibility in transfer of goods, hence reducing the total business cost. Also with GST enabling a centralized registration, starting a business would be much easier. With this act of standardising the process under the new tax regime, many other activities like purchase of capital goods and products, reduction of tax burden on new businesses will help to boost this sector.

Challenges under the GST regime...

However, just like the opportunities, the GST regime also throws up a few challenges for this sector. A section of the MSME industry holds an opinion of GST posing potential challenges for the sector. They point out the reduction in excise duty threshold as their primary concern, as post GST implementation the exemption limit will likely to get lower to 25 lakhs from 1.50cr. This means companies

with turnover of more than 25 lakhs will have to pay the excise duty. They claim, as a result the MSMEs especially, the small level enterprises will have to pay a large portion of their earnings in form of excise duty, hence putting burden of tax on them. Also it is believed to increase the cost of the products for businesses that supply directly to end users and no differentiation between luxury and normal goods will affect largely the SMEs competing against large enterprises.

Nevertheless, for faster GST compliance, various efforts have been taken by the Ministry of MSME such as, a GST cell has been formed at NIMSME, Hyderabad and a digital MSME scheme has been approved to make MSME units become GST friendly.

For a better and an efficient GST implementation, the govt. is also promoting digital MSME in which cloud computing will play a pivotal role. The government is putting lot of efforts and encouraging MSMEs to adopt the cloud technology, as it is emerging as a cost effective and viable alternative.

SAP signs MoU with M/o MSME to launch Bharat ERP On the occasion of International Day for MSMEs, SAP has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to jointly launch Bharat ERP. Bharat ERP is an exclusive program to empower MSMEs with next-gen technology to fuel their digital journey. The MoU was signed in the presence of Kalraj Mishra, Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India.

As a part of the MoU, SAP India and the Ministry of MSMEs will collaborate to enable MSMEs become future-ready by helping them focus on innovation and MoU for Bharat ERP signed in the presence of Shri Kalraj Mishra, Union Minister for business profitability. The initiative aims to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India between Deb Deep Sengupta, digitally enable nearly 30,000 MSMEs and President and Managing Director - SAP Indian Subcontinent and Shri S. N. Tripathy, IAS, youth in the next three years as the program Additional Secretary & Development Commissioner, MSME, Government of India expands.

Bharat ERP will be executed through learning and enablement approach consisting of the following components: SAP to provide software and training curriculum to trainers identified

by Ministry of MSME under the ‘Train the trainer’ method; SAP will facilitate training and enablement courses on SAP Business One solution in the well-established network of existing technology centres under the control of the ministry; and Post the completion of the course, SAP and the ministry will offer a joint certification to the candidates to assist in increasing their employability.

With the help of Bharat ERP, MSMEs will be able to access cutting edge, next generation technology from SAP that can streamline and integrate key processes such as financial, sales, inventory, and more – with a single business software.

Deb Deep Sengupta, President and Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent said, “Our objective through Bharat ERP is to make digital technologies more accessible to micro and small enterprises, in line with our aim to help businesses of all sizes grow with SAP.” Luis Murguia, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SAP Business One said, “As India prepares for a more robust trade environment, MSMEs will need a digital platform and the skillsets to help them gain scale, be more competitive and leverage new technological tools to compete in the digital economy.”

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ICT Industry gives Thumps-Up for GST

The benefits of GST are enormous, but the government should focus on removing anomalies in real time so that it is a smooth sailing for GST in coming months with respect to robust secure-proof backbone, lowering of threshold limit, proper implementation of legislation and procedure and no additional levy by states

G

oods and Services Tax (GST) is the biggest tax reform since Independence and has paved the way for realization of the goal of “One Nation – One Tax – One Market” in the country. India's ICT industry has welcomed GST implementation in a big way as it will benefit all stakeholders, namely industry, government and consumer and will also help in lowering the cost of goods and services, thereby making the products and services globally competitive, giving a major boost to “Make-in-India” initiative.

GST aims to completely restructure the indirect taxation of the world’s fastest-growing economy and will be administered together by the Centre and states. Not only will it help in mitigating the cascading effect of taxation but it will also reduce fraud and increase efficiency within the government tax machinery. GST will also help in the creation of a unified national market that will help in ease of doing business as corporates do not have to make different tax proposal for different states.

Under the GST regime, exports will be zero-rated in entirety unlike the present system where refund of some of the taxes does not take place due to fragmented nature of indirect taxes between the Centre and the states. GST is largely technology driven and will reduce the human interface to a great extent, thereby improving ease of doing business in India.

Commenting about GST, Neeraj Athalye, Head – S/4HANA, SAP Indian Subcontinent, said, "We believe GST is capable of generating

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a more stable source of revenue for the nation.

This can happen if we make this tax regime real-time, effective and transparent, for which businesses will have to go digital. Our view is that GST is not a tax problem but a technology issue."

"Implementation of GST is a historic step and we congratulate the Government of India for achieving this milestone in tax reforms.

As a company, we wholeheartedly welcome the implementation of GST which will mean simplified business for all. This move will avoid cascading effect of double taxation, bring more transparency and give boost to the overall industry growth in long run. I am sure this shall also boost India’s brand image as tax compliant country," said Rajeev Jain, Director & CFO, Intex Technologies.

Talking about the benefits of GST, Chandrahas Panigrahi, Business Head and CMO, Acer India, said, "Government will have more money from taxes and this should then help to invest back in the economy in terms of infrastructure development, healthcare, education and other citizen-friendly schemes."

Speaking about GST, Pulkit Punj, Director, AnG India, said, "The movement in the market with respect to goods is definitely slow for now, that is because of the revision in input costs for all segments and then further the trickle down effect results in change of the output cost. This in entirety causes a delay in movement. Many industries were prepared and did necessary

planning before hand, thus helping them in not losing out on business much. The market was taking it slow in the first couple days but is now getting back on track."

Ease of Doing Business

In the Pre-GST regime, there were different tax slabs in different states which was making things very cumbersome. With the coming of GST, there is one tax for a particular product irrespective of the states, thereby simplifying the overall process for all stakeholders. All this helps in taking brand India to a new level in terms of ease of doing business.

Explaining about the convenience during GST regime, Sridharan Mani, CEO, American Megatrends India, said, "We had several tax types paid before GST as we had central excise, VAT, CST, octroi and service tax and now, it is all only one GST and this has helped for us to do business across the country with ease. All the organization has GST registered, it is clear for us to transact with them all with much ease irrespective of any state. We had to file and submit central excise duty separately, VAT separately which was taking a lot of effort and time. We also had our partners and customers with C form where we had to send our material with CST and we had to get the C form from them which used to take months together depending on the state for us to get it to file back in the system. Now, our billing is made easy with one GST number in place."

Commenting on ease of doing business,

Tally leads the way to make India GST compliant W

ith more than 5 million GSTN registered businesses under its wings, Tally Solutions, the premier Indian software company has set its sight on helping businesses across the board with GST compliance. The government estimates that around 9 million businesses will fall under the GST net. This coupled with the importance of technology in the GST regime has got software vendors smacking their lips. However, Tally has chosen a slightly different path compared to its peers. The company has been working extensively to not only equip businesses with the right technology for GST compliance but empower them with knowledge of how GST works. These efforts date back to August last year, when GST was announced.

The first among its GST awareness initiatives was the launch of an exclusive blog on GST (blogs.tallysolutions.com). The blog houses over 100 rich articles on GST law, rules, policies and procedures. It also has posts on impact of GST on various types of businesses and opinion columns by eminent representatives of the industry. All articles in the blog are available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu & Kannada so that the reach out can be effective. The blog has so far had a whopping 33 million + page views.

Following closely on the heels of the blog was an exclusive mobile app of Tally for GST which is essentially GST in the pocket for businesses. The app is available both on the Playstore as well as the App Store and apart from the knowledge section, it has a news tab which keeps the user updated on all GST developments, a quiz for people to test their knowledge and provides a simple way for existing Tally customers to move to the GST ready version of Tally. The app has been downloaded more than 2 lakh times already and was recently one of the featured apps on the Playstore.

Tally has also been driving several GST awareness events across the country to help businesses understand the nuances of the new law. To ensure effective reach out, the company collaborated with associations like CAIT (The Confederation of All India Traders), FAIDA, CII, ASSOCHAM among others and has so far conducted more than 5000 events across the country. The events saw healthy participation with more than 3 lakh business owners getting benefitted. The company worked closely with its 20000+ strong partner network for these events.

Tally has also been working closely with Chartered Accountants, Tax Practitioners, Tax Consultants and accountants in a bid to help their clients with GST compliance.

They have sought domain expertise from this community for their events while handling

Tejas Goenka Executive Director Tally Solutions

Key Highlights •

The first among its GST awareness initiatives was the launch of an exclusive blog on GST (blogs.tallysolutions.com).

• All articles in the blog are available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu & Kannada so that the reach out can be effective. The blog has so far had a whopping 33 million + page views.

• Tally has conducted several GST awareness events across the country to help businesses understand the nuances of the new law.

• Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0. The product promises GST billing from Day 1, accurate invoicing and returns and simple and easy setup for new users.

• Tally has built a robust online help portal, help.tallysolutions.com where users can easily get their queries answered through self-help guides, videos and documents.

the technology bit themselves. With a view to create a pool of GST knowledge and bring members of the community together, the company launched an exclusive online portal, community.tallysolutions.com which hosts a GST knowledge sharing platform, authored articles by CAs and interactions with eminent tax practitioners. Tally firmly believes that the community will play a key and active role in making India GST compliant.

As the country moved closer to the launch of GST, Tally had been up to doing what it has done so well over the years. Creating a simple, easy to use and reliable GST product for businesses. A week before the launch, Tally launched its GST ready version, Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0. The product promises GST billing from Day 1, accurate invoicing and returns and simple and easy setup for new users. To enable their existing customers to move to the new version with ease, Tally has built a robust online help portal, help.tallysolutions.com where users can easily get their queries answered through self-help guides, videos and documents. On the day of the creation of this article, Tally’s GST ready version had been downloaded more than 1.5 million times and more than half of Tally’s customers had moved to this release. To extend on-ground support to its customers and other businesses alike, the company plans to hold 7000 Tally GST Camps and Kendras across the country where people can get their Tally upgraded, buy a new license and even seek GST knowledge. To help businesses who have been using manual methods of bookkeeping, Tally in association with Acer India and CAIT launched Biz Guru, a one stop plug and play solution for accounting and GST compliance. Biz Guru couples Acer’s robust hardware along with pre-installed GST ready Tally.ERP 9.

A few months back, Tally also qualified to become one of the 34 qualified GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs). This will allow the company to extend GSTN connectivity services to tax payers in a seamless manner. Tally’s next major version of its GST product will have the benefits of GSP embedded in it which will further simplify the lives of business people.

A recent study conducted on GST preparedness among SMEs revealed that more than 65% of businesses have not yet adopted a GST software while 22% of them are deeply concerned about technology adoption for GST. Further, more than 40% admitted to not having adequate GST knowledge. However, Tally’s efforts in educating businesses across India on GST and equipping them with simple technology products are going a long way in narrowing these gaps and the aspiration of a GST compliant nation seems on track. n

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"Well, it's a good initiative taken by Indian government and the industry is talking it nicely as well. The movement in the market with respect to goods is definitely slow for now, that is because of the revision in input costs for all segments and then further the trickle down effect results in change of the output cost. This in entirety causes a delay in movement" Pulkit Punj Director AnG India

Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India & SAARC, said, "Initially, there will be short-term challenges for all industry verticals but later on it will help in facilitating a level-playing field to all businesses and also providing transparency and promoting ease of doing business."

"With the implementation of GST, we see the graph of PC adoption going higher in the coming months. From the past couple of months, our team was working towards developing GSTenabled machines; we have introduced a range of desktops, laptops and AIOs, which are GST ready. We see this as a huge opportunity to assist start-ups, businesses and trades in adopting this change and growing with economy by utilizing technology at its best for running their business and being GST compliant," says Chandrahas Panigrahi, Business Head and CMO, Acer India.

Talking about ease of doing business, Harish Naidu, Head – Finance & Legal, LatestOne.com, says, "We are inventory-based online retailer and GST will benefit us tremendously as it allows to adjust various input taxes against the taxes collected from the end-customers. We were at a disadvantage earlier as we were forced to absorb several components of input tax as costs with little or no chance of adjusting these CENVAT credit at a future point in time. With GST rollout, we can now adjust CENVAT credit carried forward, which will improve our cash flows."

"GST is likely to reduce the cost of production and make goods cheaper for consumers, simultaneously increasing the competitiveness of Indian export on international platform," says B Madhav Reddy, Chief Executive Officer – eGovernance, Karvy Data Management Services Limited. "With this stable and transparent tax structure in place, foreign investment is likely to grow in India which in turn will create significant job opportunities. As an individual tax payer, I

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"We had several tax types paid before GST as we had central excise, VAT, CST, octroi and service tax and now, it is all only one GST and this has helped for us to do business across the country with ease. All the organization has GST registered, it is clear for us to transact with them all with much ease irrespective of any state. We had to file and submit central excise duty separately, VAT separately which was taking a lot of effort and time" Sridharan Mani CEO, American Megatrends India must say “Welcome GST.”

Challenges in GST Implementation

Majority of large and medium companies have completed their GST implementation but are facing minor issues as they are yet to understand one tax regime in toto, understanding of complete GST process is also a time taking process as both system as well as process are new so there is lot of focus on training at different levels.

Speaking about operational challenges in implementing GST, Chandrahas Panigrahi, Business Head and CMO, Acer India, said, "With GST already implemented from 1st July, corporates have been fretting over the four sets of rules on transition, input tax credit, composition and valuation. Then, there is the requirement of fitting your items under the four tax slabs – 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% – which may evoke contrasting emotions. The government, has also initiated the GSTN under which business and traders will have to register themselves.

Corporates have to be deft to execute a comprehensive strategy for the new taxation regime."

"Further, corporations have to also establish robust processes and systems to ensure master data changes, rates and rules maintenance, accurate determination of tax, integration with various upstream and downstream systems, so that compliance is effectively managed with a long-term perspective," added Panigrahi.

Commenting on challenges, Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India & SAARC, said, "The GST system is easy to implement. But we had to understand the tax breakup and the categories our products fall under. We also had several discussions with the partners to clear the doubts on billing

"We see Make in India initiative getting a direction through the introduction of GST. As GST would breakdown the barrier of state tax regulations, companies in various sectors would be able to create manufacturing hubs across the country and can focus on pan-India operations looking from an overall economy perspective" Chandrahas Panigrahi Business Head and CMO Acer India

and taxation; now they are ready with the new process. Another challenge faced by our partners was regarding the CVD and customs duty benefit, which have been cleared by removing most exemptions on input taxes to align with the GST regime."

"Since the rules and rates under GST were undergoing constant changes until last minute of roll out, we had to anticipate and prepare various scenarios to assess the impact of GST on our accounting, IT Systems, cash flows and product pricing. Our IT Systems had to be completely changed in line with GST rules," says Harish Naidu, Head – Finance & Legal, LatestOne. com.

Commenting on GST challenges, Asoke K. Laha, President & CEO, Interra Information Technologies, said, "I do not think in our case we face too many challenges in GST. We are into software development and provide software services to clients in and out of India.

What is needed is only to take note of the GST implication in prices and taxation. GST tax rate for software developers is 18% with full Input Tax Credit."

Talking about GST implementation challenges, Sridharan Mani, CEO, American Megatrends India, said, "We had to conduct a session on GST for our staff so that they had a firsthand information about GST. Also, we found it challenging to get the GST registration details of our vendors and our customers and update the same in our database."

GST and Future Business

In India, the logistics sector is fragmented but contributes approximately 13-14% of India's GDP. The rollout of GST effective July 1, 2017 would have a positive impact on the Indian logistics costs. With the new GST regulation in place, logistics companies can now adapt hub-

"GST will make systems more accountable and governance more open and transparent..."

Rajan S. Mathews Director General, Cellular Association of India (COAI)

Operators’

How is GST a significant milestone for the Indian economy?

GST is a historic and path-breaking taxation system, and the telecom industry wholeheartedly supports it. It will truly introduce the long-desired structure of One Nation-One Tax and put India at par with several other nations and strengthen the federal structure while allowing businesses to grow without the hindrance of multiple tax structures. For the telecom industry specifically, which operates out of 22 telecom circles, GST will introduce a more streamlined structure of taxation. In the long run, the telecom players can reap the benefits both in terms of time and tax saved.

The industry, while welcoming this iconic reform, has also requested the government to lower the tax rate from 18% to at least 12%, as telecom is an essential service and currently the industry is in extremely poor financial health.

Also, with the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) taking up the issues related with the financial health of the telecom sector, it will be prudent that the sector is given due relaxation so that it can come out of its present woes and the market can mature as it moves from voice-led to datadriven.

COAI members have implemented GST. Please explain?

Yes, we have all implemented GST, and are fully aligned with the government. The industry has been preparing itself for this for the past year in all earnest, and we are confident that

any issue which crops up during the process of implementation will be handled with due expertise and maturity. The industry also strives to provide the best possible services to the consumers, while contributing wholeheartedly to the national goals and the Prime Minister's vision of Digital India. It must be noted here that our members have been working very hard and these efforts have only intensified over the past many months to ensure a smooth rollout of this unique taxation system.

It is, indeed, a unique opportunity for all of us to participate, and we will make our best possible efforts to ensure that everything goes as planned, and with as little issues as possible.

overcome multiple, cumbersome, separate tax compliances required by individual states.

What were the operational challenges in implementing GST?

How will GST support “Make in India” initiative in the long run?

For the telecom industry, the biggest challenge perhaps was to put in place mechanism which will ensure a smooth transition and minimum hassles for our billion-plus consumers. All the telecom operators, therefore, started working towards this goal in all earnest, and some of the best brains were made responsible for the smooth execution of this herculean task.

However, there are a certain operational issues that we are still grappling with. These mainly relate to the fact that for telecom services the country is divided into 22 circles or service areas, while GST is mapped to 29 states, and seven union territories. Dichotomy between the area covered by telecom circles and state boundaries would create significant IT and accounting challenges for operators. There are also issues regarding billing across overlapping states, circles and operators.

In many cases, tax has already been paid on existing stock. But under the new regime, telcos will have to pay tax on MRP at the time of supplying to channel partners. Accordingly, we have requested that credit for tax paid on vouchers be allowed or be exempt from GST. Similarly, there are a number of other areas where there is lack of clarity. We have specifically requested that the government gives more clarity on issues like determination of transaction value for tax, self-supply of services based on statewise registrations and various components related to admissibility of input tax credits.

The industry is committed for a seamless execution and to continuing to work with the government for an early resolution.

How has GST implementation helped telecom operators in terms of ease-of-doing business?

In the long run, it will definitely help the telecom operators. While GST will save a massive amount of man hours, it will also help us save money, which we used to pay under several tax heads. GST has always been a system to look forward to, by the business community and for an industry like telecom which operates on pan-India level, it is an ideal system, helping

How will digital transactions through GST help in increase in business for the company?

Digital transactions are going to be the way forward for doing business very soon.

For businesses which operate in volume and big numbers, it provides easy access to the data and helps streamline the cumbersome taxation process. GST will make systems more accountable and governance more open and transparent, thus easing business processes all around.

GST will put in place the much-needed and robust taxation process and will bring the whole country under a single unified tax system. It is an ideal system to have, when we talk about corporates from other countries coming to India for setting up their production base. It enhances the rate of investment and eliminates any taxation and regulatory errors in the future, thereby facilitating ease-of-doing business in the country as well and making India a more investment-friendly destination. This is critical for telecom as a sector in which 100% FDI has already been allowed by the government.

What are the future challenges with respect to GST which needs to be implemented as per government regulation?

The fact is that, even at the current rate, the tax rate is much higher in comparison to other countries. Singapore has a GST rate at only 7% on telecom services, Malaysia 6% and Australia 10%. Telecom services are a key to the country’s economic growth and fulfilling the government’s marquee programmes like Digital India. We had requested that ideally, the rate be fixed at 5%. But unfortunately contrary to our submission the tax has been raised to a rate of 18%, from 15%. This will have an additional crippling effect on the industry, if other forms of relief are not provided.

The additional costs involved in implementing the new tax reform, coupled with the higher rate, are also likely to slow down the planned rollout of communications infrastructure across the country. Further, there are challenges of IT compatibility which are still being addressed.

Telecom is an essential service and it needs timely interventions and favourable policies so that these services are able to reach everyone. It has been the industry’s continuous endeavour to connect the unconnected, deliver government services to every corner of the country and support the vision of Digital India. We are fully committed to the Prime Minister's goals for a better, connected, developed and empowered India.

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"We believe GST is capable of generating a more stable source of revenue for the nation. This can happen if we make this tax regime real-time, effective and transparent, for which businesses will have to go digital.

Our view is that GST is not a tax problem but a technology issue" Neeraj Athalye Head – S/4HANA SAP Indian Subcontinent

"We were at a disadvantage earlier as we were forced to absorb several components of input tax as costs with little or no chance of adjusting these CENVAT credit at a future point in time. With GST roll out we can now adjust CENVAT credit carried forward, which will improve our cash flows"

based warehouse system rather than spokebased warehouse system before GST. This will bring down inventory costs, improve operational efficiency and also fuel savings. All this will benefit end consumer as all these costs will be passed to the bottom of the pyramid.

"With the current regulations demanding the logistics companies to make every transaction digitally for better tax regulation, the huge emphasis would be laid on the newage technology which will be the key driver. To make the most of the GST regulation, logistics companies should adopt a holistic approach in integrating the 3PL partners and the third-party

technology solutions, for building an agile and cost-effective supply chain," says Kushal Nahata, Co-Founder & CEO, FarEye. "Integrating with IT providers that are flexible, scalable and future-oriented solution will drive the designing and execution of complex.

“Supply chain cycles, project management and inventory reduction in addition to on-time delivery. Complete integration with IT increases visibility and cost cutting by almost 22%," added Nahata.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make-inIndia project definitely benefits in big way with the implementation of GST pan India. The simplification of tax structure, customs duty increase on CBU imports of mobile handsets and easier compliance model makes it easy for foreign companies to set up manufacturing base in India.

Commenting on GST to support Make-inIndia initiative, Chandrahas Panigrahi, Business Head and CMO, Acer India, said, "We see Makein-India initiative getting a direction through the introduction of GST. As GST would breakdown the barrier of state tax regulations, companies

"Initially, there will be short term challenges for all industry verticals but later on it will help in facilitating a level playing field to all businesses and also providing transparency and promoting ease of doing business"

"Security will play an important role in helping organistions adopt GST and Forcepoint with its human-centric security approach can help organisations adopt new systems and technologies to take their business forward” Surendra Singh Country Director Forcepoint

"With today’s custom duty increase on CBU imports of mobile handsets, the government has shown its intent to support Make in India initiative. We are thankful to government for this bold step just before implementation of GST" Rajeev Jain Director & CFO Intex Technologies

Sudhindra Holla Country Manager Axis Communications, India & SAARC

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GST to support Makein-India Initiative

Harish Naidu Head – Finance & Legal LatestOne.com

"GST is expected to reduce the tax burden of multiple taxes on the manufacturing sector in India by putting in place a single, simplified tax structure. GST is likely to improve the potential for foreign investments into the manufacturing space, injecting capital into the sector" Sashank Rishyasringa Co-Founder Capital Float

"GST will definitely help push the Make in India agenda. We believe that one of the major impediments to running a smooth business, especially in the manufacturing sector is an uncertain and unpredictable tax regime. Simplification and reduction in tax burden should help both the producer and consumers of goods & services. This will not only make the market more conducive, but even more competitive" Vineet Grover Vice President Paxcel

"In my view the biggest challenge would be to prepare us to implement the new regime. India being a vast country and with a plethora of traditional tax systems in various states and products simplifying and recoding is going to take some time and commitment both for the government and the manufacturers and service providers"

"With the current regulations demanding the logistics companies to make every transaction digitally for better tax regulation, the huge emphasis would be laid on the new-age technology which will be the key driver. To make the most of the GST regulation, logistics companies should adopt a holistic approach..."

Asoke K. Laha President & CEO Interra Information Technologies

Kushal Nahata Co-founder & CEO FarEye

in various sectors would be able to create manufacturing hubs across the country and can focus on pan-India operations looking from an overall economy perspective."

"With today’s customs duty increase on CBU imports of mobile handsets, the government has shown its intent to support Make in India initiative. We are thankful to government for this bold step just before implementation of GST," says Rajeev Jain, Director & CFO, Intex Technologies.

"Till now, it was difficult for foreign companies to manufacture in India due to the uncertain tax regime. With GST, more foreign players will consider India as a manufacturing hub, which will support the Make-in-India initiative.

With easier compliance model, the businesses will be able to set up base here with ease. GST will also boost job creation and strengthen the current workforce in manufacturing, FMCG, IT, telecom and e-commerce fields," said Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India & SAARC. Talking about manufacturing in post-GST regime, Sashank Rishyasringa, Co-Founder, Capital Float, said, "GST is expected to reduce the tax burden of multiple taxes on the manufacturing sector in India by putting in place a single, simplified tax structure. GST is likely to improve the potential for foreign investments into the manufacturing space, injecting capital into the sector. There is no dearth of human resource in the country and with increased capital investments, manufacturers will get the necessary boost to compete with multinational companies as well as explore the possibility of increasing exports to foreign shores. An additional advantage of increased investments is an immediate surge in jobs and hiring."

"GST will definitely help push the Makein-India agenda. We believe that one of the

major impediments to running a smooth business, especially in the manufacturing sector is an uncertain and unpredictable tax regime.

Simplification and reduction in tax burden should help both the producer and consumers of goods and services. This will not only make the market more conducive, but even more competitive," commented Vineet Grover, VicePresident, Paxcel.

Future Challenges

Implementing large transformation project in 29 states and 7 union territories and catering to a population of 1.25 billion is not an easy task. So there is bound to be some problem but the question is how fast these problems can be rectified. The challenge before GST Committee is to see to it that how fast they can reduce the rate of goods and services tax so that they can create more demand in the market due to reduction of

B Madhav Reddy Chief Executive Officer – eGovernance Karvy Data Management Services Limited

cost with respect to goods and services.

Commenting on the challenges, Chandrahas Panigrahi, Business Head and CMO, Acer India, said, "There are few challenges, which the government might face: Lowering of threshold limit should not be a ‘taxing’ burden on small businessmen in the country; GSTN should have a robust IT backbone; tax administration staff at both centre and state to be trained properly in terms of concept, legislation and procedure; additional levy on GST would defeat the very purpose of GST in the country if states charge additional levy."

"Like any game-changing plan GST which brings ‘one country one tax’ policy has challenges to overcome. In my view, the biggest challenge would be to prepare us to implement the new regime. India being a vast country and with a plethora of traditional tax systems in various states and products simplifying and recoding is going to take some time and commitment both for the government and the manufacturers and service providers," says Asoke K. Laha, President & CEO, Interra Information Technologies.

Commenting on cybersecurity challenge, Surendra Singh, Country Director, Forcepoint, said, "We believe that GST will significantly enhance the ease of doing business across India through reduction in multiplicity of taxes and simpler tax regime. Given the significant increase in financial information that will now be available across sources. It is expected that organizations would need to protect their critical business data as they adopt new technologies. Security will play an important role in helping organizations adopt GST and Forcepoint with its humancentric security approach can help organizations adopt new systems and technologies to take their business forward.” n Pravin Prashant pravin@varindia.com

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“Risk assessment of relevant threats is necessary” In a chat with VARINDIA, Bhaskar Agastya- Country Manager- Sales, Ixia, India discusses the present security landscape of India, effects of WannaCry in the country, measures to be taken by a company etc

W

ith the growing trend of Internet of Things (IoT), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) etc India is witnessing a rise in the cyber security market. The cyber threats are becoming complex everyday which makes organizations more vulnerable. In India many organizations are still using obsolete operating system which makes it easy for the criminals to attack.

“According to a survey by EY, most enterprises are not paying enough attention in building essential capabilities to safeguard themselves from cyber threats - 55 % do not have a formal, threat intelligence program, while 44 % do not have vulnerability identification capability. Further, more than a third does not have a security operations center to continuously monitor the systems,” says Bhaskar AgastyaCountry Manager- Sales, Ixia, India.

Security landscape of India Cyber attacks have evolved in all these years and with the utilization of sophisticated tools the cyber criminals carry out various kinds of attacks. In last two years, the security breaches in the country have increased considerably.

“The current cyber security landscape in India presents a far more risky scenario in terms of sophistication of the attacks. Today, cybercriminals are leveraging sophisticated tools to execute various modes of cyber-attacks such as Advanced Persistent Threat attack, hacking, data leakage and so on. According to recent reports, there has been a 40 % quantum jump in the number of security breaches in the country in the past two years, and the value tickets of these breaches are also on the rise in equal proportion, if not more,” explains Bhaskar.

Effects of WannaCry in India Off late, the massive hue and cry that took place across the cyber world was due to a new ransomware named WannaCry. Apart from countries like United Kingdom, USA, Spain, Russia etc, India has also been one of the victims of this ransomware attack. The number of compromised computers in India will be high as

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a major chunk of the functioning systems run on pirated Microsoft software.

“India was the third highest worst hit nation by the ransomware attack with more than 40,000 computers affected. Also, the outspread of attacks in India was quite high owing to the number of computers functioning on the pirated version of Microsoft. ATM machines were stalled for a couple days because banks weren't sure of the effect of the attacks. However, very few victims came forward to report it. Barring few attacks on standalone machines there has been no report of any substantial disruption.

Usually, mid and small-sized companies fall prey to these attacks due to lack of robust cyber security policy & preparedness when compared to large organizations,” describes Bhaskar.

Measures to follow To keep any business at bay from the cyber attacks, risk assessment is important to get a clear picture of the possible threats, number of times it is expected to occur and also estimated loss.

These information will help companies position them in a better way against cyber threats.

“Each business is exposed to different types of threats and one must think through the list of threats that are worth worrying over. This is why a risk assessment of relevant threats is necessary.

It will give you a fair understanding of which risks are applicable to the business, how often it is expected to occur and the estimated loss. With the help of this information, businesses will be in a better position to take a call on which risks to address first and what kind of remedial measures to adopt. Irrespective of the size of the business, every organization must have a clear security policy in place. A policy that defines the usage of IT resources by employees is an absolute necessity these days,” suggests Bhaskar.

He adds, “Organizations must also use an indepth strategy while designing a secure network.

It is ideal to not rely on a single device or product completely to administer security. Make sure to explore the security capabilities of a firewall or a router and confirm that software and servers are up-to-date. Employing application proxies for common applications and protocols is another way to ensure security by not revealing internal hosts to the Internet. It is very crucial to keep a tab on what operating system is running on each system on the network. This will help in understanding what vulnerabilities

exist in each operating system and take relevant precautionary measures. Additionally, put in place an aggressive method of patching the operating system frequently to reduce the exposure from vulnerabilities.

What will you do to address the aftermath of a security breach? The answer is an organized method to address and control the effect. In simple words, an incident response plan is a set of instructions to detect, respond and limit the impact of a security breach. Every business must have a plan in place on how to respond in the event of an incident.”

Government initiatives & Cyber Security The digital transformation that is taking place in the country will demand superior defense from threats. The cyber criminals may exploit the initiatives. So to make these initiatives effective government needs to make sure that the connected devices are secured.

“The cohesive digital footprint shaped by Digital India and Smart Cities is likely to bring challenging and increasing demand on resources to defend against the growing threat levels and entry points. Although both Smart Cities and Digital India will generate new economic and social opportunities, there will also be an increasingly large attack surface for criminals to exploit. Government’s initiatives to transform the country into a digitally connected economy can be effective only when the security of the connected devices is guaranteed,” views Bhaskar. n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

VAR SECURITY

CP PLUS launches new range, showcases its product line-up in Thailand CP PLUS has launched its Ultra HD Analog range of cameras and DVRs. Designed to offer high resolution imagery for revolutionary clarity, this range will mark a major shift in the capabilities of analog surveillance systems. “The Ultra HD Analog range is great for those who are looking for an IP equivalent performance in analog. It offers excellent image clarity coupled with Edge Analytics for smart surveillance - a feature that was akin to IP thus far. What’s more, these cameras produce brilliant images even in low light conditions, while the edge analytics ensure no trespassing goes unnoticed,� said Yogesh B. Dutta, COO – CP PLUS. CP PLUS Ultra HD Analog range marks a significant shift it the quality of imagery from its earlier counterparts. This range includes Ultra HD 4MP cameras and DVRs that offer distinct, detailed images even in low light conditions.

Showcase of CP Plus products‌ To showcase their latest range of solutions, CP PLUS has recently hosted a show in Thailand. The show was conducted on the 10th of June 2017 and saw CP PLUS walking its audience through some of its best sellers and latest developments. “It was a great show. On showcase were some of our best selling products and the latest from CP PLUS. The audience was keen to learn about our new technologies, which is an encouragement for us to come back each time with better products and solutions. We look forward to more of such informative and interactive trips; it was certainly a pleasure,â€? mentioned Aditya Khemka, Managing Director & CEO – CP PLUS. Present at the event were more than a 100 CP PLUS premium partners and system integrators from all across Thailand. The show was kick started with an introduction to CP PLUS’ exemplary growth story,

post which the audience was introduced to CP PLUS IP, AHD, HDCVI solutions; Time & Attendance solutions; Home Solutions such as Video Door Phone and Intrusion alarm systems; its latest BodyWorn cameras for security personnel; Mobile DVR solutions and Ezykam’s range of compact, Plug&Play cameras. An elaborate technical session saw Aman Arora of CP PLUS educate the audience about the trending technologies followed by a Q&A round. The show was wrapped up with a lucky draw where lucky guests won iPhone 7.

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FACE TO FACE

CP PLUS: The Security Brand of the Nation In an exclusive interaction with VARINDIA, Yogesh Dutta, COO, CP PLUS India,speaks about his vision of making CP PLUS a stronger brand in India -

I

ndia at present is a strong market for CP Plus; this is evident from the fact that the company has, in a matter of a few years has bagged several important surveillance projects and been a part of many key initiatives.

Talking about the opportunities and plans of CP PLUS in Indian market, Yogesh asserts, “Indian brands today have more opportunities than ever before because the government, under its Make in India initiative, is giving serious consideration to the Indian brands and encouraging homegrown production of technology.”

Speaking in context to India being a multi-cultural society with its diversity, socio economic differences, and the on-going trends, he said, “I think CP PLUSis apt for the Indian market because CP PLUS solutions are designed and developed around the needs of our Indian customers.

Presently, we are focusing on making ourselves the go-to-brand when it comes to security.”

He further adds, “We are partnering ourselves with the eco-system partners for various projects such as smart city solutions, intelligent traffic for the highways, malls and airports. CP PLUS is well equipped with a wide portfolio of products and solutions designed to meet a variety of needs.

We have initiatedstrategic alignments with the best of the partners from across the globe, so as to secure the nation’s environment.”

Vision to make CP PLUS a powerful brand

The ultimate aim of CP PLUSis to become the go-to-brand when it comes to security. It is presently focusing on how to enhance and widen its portfolio so that it can engage more channel partners and reach out to maximum customers. Variety, an optimistic Yogesh believes, is always welcomed in the Indian market. With a wide variety of surveillance cameras, video door phones, time and attendance devices, and electronic safes already populating CP PLUS’ product catalogue, the brand is now focusing on accessories, cables, power supplies and land cables which are a critical requirement for the CCTV market. That aside, Yogesh further mentions, “We are launching Plug&Play cameras very soon, which are apt for the budding home security market.”

He further adds, “We also have dedicated solutions for government projects, such as Bodyworn cameras; Command Control Centre solutions; besides mobility devices like mobile TVs, etc. That said, our core objective right now is how to make CCTV more engaging for our customers and stake holders so that they find our products more relevant.”

CP PLUSendeavours to take its plans forward with a strong focus on training its system integrators and partners who will be the eventual solution providers.

Distribution Network

Explaining about the partner eco-system and integration of

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“We are partnering ourselves with the ecosystem partners for various projects such as smart city solutions, intelligent traffic for the highways, malls and airports. CP PLUS is well equipped with a wide portfolio of products and solutions designed to meet a variety of needs. We have initiatedstrategic alignments with the best of the partners from across the globe, so as to secure the nation’s environment.” distribution network, Yogesh revealed, “We work directly with distributors having a strong PAN India distribution network as the regional and zonal distributers, besides key system integrators spread across the country.”

GST Impact and opportunities it foresees in India

“I think India is going through a golden period;it’s not just a good time for us, but for everyone in the technology business. The opportunities right now are immense; however, one must have thorough understanding of the market. We’re doing our bit to bring the best solutions to the market”, stated Yogesh.

Discussing about the impact of GST on the business, he opined, “GST has been positive for us; initially we were apprehensive with the 28% cut in our category, but considering our representation, now that it has been revised to 20%, it makes a lot more sense.”

In conclusion, he summed up saying that while the slogan “UpparWala Sab DekhRaha Hai” goes very well with the brand name, there will soon be a Version 2.0. n

FACE TO FACE

Barco – a hi-tech MNC with a significant local footprint B

arco Electronic Systems is a 100% subsidiary of BARCO NV Belgium. With presence in 90 Countries worldwide it has a total employee (Worldwide) strength of 3500, while India employee strength is 550. Barco India is headquartered in Noida from where Manufacturing, R&D, and Sales and Marketing operations take place. Barco has grown in India as a market leader in its domain and earned a reputation of a hi-tech MNC with a significant local footprint and a name in operational excellence. It offers a wide range of innovative, hi-tech and high-quality networked visualization products for the Indian market, including Large Screen display solutions, Digital Cinema projectors, Hi-tech medical displays, rugged displays for professional applications.

Barco India – seeing a prospective growth...

Barco India has a well-integrated, large set-up of around 500 people and is equipped with facilities like R&D, Software development, Manufacturing, Sales, Customer service to support the regional market.

India is the only source of manufacturing and exporting Video Walls from Barco. The production capacity has grown manifold in the past years; it is now manufacturing hi-tech products for both national as well as for global markets in its state-of-art factory in compliance with all the international safety and quality norms. The Manufacturing plant is certified for ISO 9001, ISO 14001 & AS 9100 for PCBA process. Manufactured products are compliant with international norms like UL, Cebec, CE, CCC etc.

Barco India has a 14,400m2 facility that also houses a demo center and a customer support center.

Barco helps professionals to collaborate better and get the most out of the available information by optimizing distribution and visualization of all kinds of data. With the opportunity of 100 smart cities coming up in India, Barco is looking forward to eliminating complexity and bring clarity into a world of chaos in a large number of markets, including security & surveillance, telecommunications, traffic management, business, entertainment, healthcare through its smart solutions and help in building safe and smart cities with Command & Control Rooms .

Focused areas...

Barco has installed its systems in many prestigious organizations in India including the Public and Private sector companies and closely works for three sectors- Enterprise, Entertainment and Healthcare. The revenue generated from the following Sectors- Enterprise (40% approx), Entertainment (40% approx), Healthcare (20% approx) has helped Barco made its presence felt everywhere.

Barco has devised a two-pronged strategy to accomplish its laser roadmap aimed at fulfilling the projection needs of the cinema market. For instance, the Flagship Laser and Smart Laser series of projectors ensure the perfect match for every screen. Similarly for the education sector, Barco has low cost projectors. Barco's complete portfolio of high-quality

Key Successful Projects • • • • • • • • • • • • •

UP Goverment's Dial 100 project Lucknow Metro Akshardham Temple Bahubali Transmission Bharti Airtel Vodafone Delhi International Airport Ltd. Cairn India Aeronautical Development Establishment INOX Sathyam Cinemas Cinepolis Prasad Labs Fortis Hospital and Seven Hills hospital and many more

Rajiv Bhalla Managing Director, Barco Electronic Systems An industry veteran with more than 23 years of experience, Rajiv Bhalla is the Managing Director of Barco Electronic Systems. In his role at the organisation, Rajiv spearheads the formulation and execution of business strategies with an end-goal of expanding Barco’s local footprint in the India market and tapping into the country’s enormous business potential. He is also the legal representative of Barco India.

A result-driven leader, Rajiv holds a deep understanding of the B2B and B2C aspects of the technology business. His business acumen has been honed by his cross-domain exposure to various industries like consumer electronics and IT. Rajiv holds extensive expertise in critical business functions such as direct/indirect sales, marketing, growth, profit centre management, strategic alliances etc. His innovative problem solving approach has equipped him with unique insights that he’s leveraged to drive and refine the organisational vision, as well as to inspire and coach great teams throughout his career. video wall modules encompasses a wide range of display technologies with different sizes and resolutions, which is best suited for the Control Rooms (Video Walls) and Virtual Reality in Car Designing and many more sectors where the visual display has paramount important. One of Barco’s hot moving products is the Clickshare. It is a wireless presentation system and is very easy to connect and display content from a laptop with absolutely no waste time on technical hick-ups. For the Enterprise Sector, Barco focuses mainly on Meeting Rooms (Clickshare). n

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VAR MOBILITY

Ziox focusses on delivering consumer-centric products In a chat with VARINDIA, Chiranjib Sarkar, National Sales Head, Ziox Mobiles, discusses positioning of the company, its products, channels, service support and targets of the company

Z

iox as a handset maker has always been known for its innovation and latest products at a pocket-friendly price. The quality of the products has always been an important factor for the company. Ziox also concentrates on their R&D so that it can offer innovative technology to its customers.

“India along with being a vast market for technology brands is also a very dynamic and evolving. It is essential to establish the stronger communication foothold with your audience.

For Ziox Mobiles, we are known in the market for our innovative and latest technology products at the best budgeted prices. Ziox phones bring unparalleled quality, with dedicated efforts on R&D. Each product goes through rigorous quality checks before they hit the market shelves which assure maximum reliability to the consumers against the market flooded with devices which are neither quality assured nor easy to use,” assures Chiranjib Sarkar, National Sales Head, Ziox Mobiles.

Consumer centric products

As Ziox targets the mass population, the company concentrates on delivering consumercentric products which will provide a good user experience. The company offers feature-rich handsets based on the needs of the audience.

“Ziox is known in the market for both the segments – feature phones and smartphones.

We have been targeting mass population and our phones have been tailor-made as per the growing needs of the audience. Ziox has established the unique position to deliver comprehensive, end-to-end solutions to customers, over and above traditional services, bringing the balanced consumer mobility ecosystem. The emphasis is on to deliver the most consumer-centric products enriching the user experience,” explains Chiranjib.

Further elaborating, he says, “Our products are designed with key value propositions each being unique to itself, focussing on key aspects.

We are constantly upgrading/innovating our models to appeal to the wider audience.”

Channels

Ziox believes in creating the best products and providing a high level of service which will,

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in turn, paves the way to success. Implementing this strategy in sales, the major chunk of the business comes from the traditional distribution network and also the company is looking forward to e-commerce distribution.

“Our strategy is simple. We believe that if you create the best products and create a high level of service, it’s hard not to be successful in the long run. In sync with the same thought, in terms of sales, 95% of our sales comes from our well-established distribution network, 5% is limited to e-commerce. We are not present in organized retail at the moment. However, our business model shall now see the right mix of both Online and Offline channels. We will increase the percentage of e-commerce in the coming months rapidly,” says Chiranjib.

The handset company to mark a presence in the online market has partnered with few e-commerce companies.

"Ziox is steadily expanding and growing. We aim to become a brand to be reckoned with by hitting 10 million handsets in the fiscal year 2017-18" “Undoubtedly, India is a very big market and e-commerce is bigger in India. With 30% of smartphones being sold online, we too have entered into strategic partnerships with leading e-commerce partners, namely Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, Homeshop 18, Shopclues and others,” he adds.

Service Support

Ziox is well known for its after-sales service and the company has a unique replacement policy that enhances the relation with its consumers.

“Ziox is popularly known among its TG for the after-sales service. Very recently, we have introduced a 111 Days Replacement Policy for our feature phones. This policy is applicable from the day of activation or purchase (whichever one is first). This unique policy allows us to build stronger connect with our customers and

will assure them that we stand for best quality products and service in the cluttered mobile market. Started in selective cities, we plan on extending it to a pan-India level. In addition to this, we have an Assured 10 Day Service policy, wherein we will close on any hardware issue faced by our consumers at a maximum of 10 working days. If in case we are unable to address the issue at hand, we will replace the device with a similar condition device on the eleventh day of complaint login. Servicing the growing customer needs, we have over 700 service centres across India with the clear approach – Quality that speaks!” says Chiranjib.

Looking forward…

The company is witnessing a steady growth in the Indian market and is aiming to reach 10 million handsets in the current fiscal. To achieve the target, Ziox is planning to increase production capacity by adding two new manufacturing units.

“Ziox is steadily expanding and growing.

We aim to become a brand to be reckoned with by hitting 10 million handsets in the fiscal year 2017-18. To achieve the same, we will be coming up with more technologically advanced phones.

Also, we will be increasing our production capacity by adding two more manufacturing units. Distribution channel will be strengthening further along with after-sales service,” reveals Chiranjib.

While talking about market share, Chiranjib shares, “Ziox has attained a significant market share, on the back of an aggressive retail and goto-market strategy. The brand has made rapid inroads into the smallest of neighbourhood stores, not only increasing the dealer count but also establishing the stronger network. Currently, with the key focus on Tier-II and Tier-III cities, Ziox has acquired an aggressive market share and intends to occupy 3–4% by FY 17-18.” n Aparna Mullick aparna@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

Honor unveils Honor 8 Pro priced at Rs 29,999

H

onor has launched Honor 8 Pro. With processing power, long lasting battery life and 14.47cm 2K display, the Honor 8 Pro with dual-lens camera is packed into an impossibly thin 6.97mm body. The Honor 8 Pro has been designed under the partnership with Amazon, Gameloft, GoPro, Jaunt VR and Deep Silver Fishlabs to enrich digital lifestyles t h r o u g h enhanced smartphone experiences.

The Honor 8 Pro offers market-leading specifications by pushing the boundary of smartphone design, providing 2K display, extra-long battery life, dual camera setup and delivering powerful performance to

ensure best experiences across the scenarios that today’s smartphone users care most about. Honor can do this like no other due to its unique e-commerce business model and worldclass R&D capabilities.

India is one of the key

markets for Honor and the company plans to grow exponentially with the new gamut of product offerings.

The global smartphone major has revamped after sales services with over 250 service centers across the country.

All-new Spice Brand launches a new portfolio of mobility devices

S

pice brand, a joint venture between Transsion Holdings and Spice Mobility, have launched an all-new portfolio of 8 mobile devices, including 5 feature phones and 3 smartphones.

The new product portfolio offers aesthetically and stylishly designed

with focus on performance and camera), and Z series which are essentially the feature phones, offering best-value & quality with great design.

Sudhir Kumar, CEO, Spice Mobile under Transsion Group, said, With the launch of the series, we have taken a step closer in

phones with features that would stand out and appeal to the youth, and is priced between Rs.850 to Rs.9,500.

In alignment with the fresh design created for the Indian youth, the products are segmented as F Series (Music, fun, fashion), K series (Creative & fashion), V Series (Value premium,

creating an inclusive yet all-new powerful and rich digital experience for the young generation of India.

Aligned with the brand identity and philosophy, Spice brand wants to fuel the existing culture of sharing amongst the Indian youth."

Moto E4 series launched with 5,000 mAh battery priced at Rs. 9,999

T

he new Moto E family, Moto E4 Series come with extra power to meet the requirements and make the smartphone experience smarter.

With sharper looks and major upgrades, they deliver the things you want – all day battery, outstanding display and advanced camera capabilities – at just the right price.

Moto E4 Plus, outfitted with a vibrant, 13.97 cm (5.5”) HD display wrapped in smooth metal, it will be hard to put it down. With a 5000 mAh battery, you can go longer without worrying about recharging for up to 48 hours. Moto E4 Plus comes with the 10W rapid charger, which gives you hours of battery life in minutes of charging.

The Moto E4 Plus comes with the dual SIM slots and lets you store as much as you want on the 32 GB internal storage that’s expandable up to 128 GB with a dedicated MicroSD card slot.

Moto E4 Plus features a 13 MP autofocus rear camera with flash and a 5 MP front camera with a selfie flash and beautification mode for stunningly sharp photos – even in low light.

Make your life faster with a quad-core processor and 4G VoLTE and ViLTE as Moto E4 Plus offers the speed and power you need to scroll through your favorite websites, play games and more – all without the wait. And with pure and latest Android 7.1.1, an updated version of the world’s most popular operating system, you can expect only the best with Moto E4 Plus.

InFocus presents its Turbo 5 in Indian Market

I

nFocus has launched its Turbo5 smartphone under the new brand licensing agreement signed with Foxconn. This product is the first from a

days of standby time and doubling as a power bank, the Turbo 5 ensures endless entertainment.

The Turbo 5 sports a 5.2inch HD IPS 2.5D

series of innovative product line-up especially developed for the Indian market, keeping in context the Indian consumers’ needs, under this new strategic partnership between InFocus and Foxconn.

The Turbo 5 focussing on reliability and performance packs in a high capacity battery life smartphone of 5000 mAh. With an incredible 34

Glass display that offers razor sharp display, clear and striking images. The device is powered with a 1.3 GHz Quad core processor and a 2GB/3GB RAM and 16GB/32GB ROM which is expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. The fingerprint sensor has as a multipurpose usage, not only can it unlock the device but also start flashlight & click images.

XOLO rolls out Era 1X Pro Smartphone at Rs.5,888/-

X

OLO has launched Era 1X Pro, a highperformance smartphone.

The handset comes loaded with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal memory which is expandable up to 32 GB, making it the most favourable choice for consumers who are looking for a smooth multitasking phone in this price segment.

To enhance the user’s experience, XOLO has done a seamless integration of hardware and software in this phone. It exhibits a premium design with a 5” HD Ultra bright display screen with a luminosity of 400 and 16.7 million colours, designed for an enhanced viewing experience. Also, the phone comes loaded with a memory combination of 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM which allows consumers ample space to store up to 4,000 images, 350 videos and 2,000 audio files in the smartphone. In terms of

camera combination, Era 1X Pro is equipped with 8MP primary and 5MP front camera with Dual LED flash and comes with a new refreshed camera user interface called Pro mode which helps users to change the settings at the camera screen itself. The primary camera comes with a host of high-end “smart” features like slow-motion videos, time lapse videos, live photos, audio note, beauty mode, burst mode, panorama mode and screen mode. The camera sports a high precision 4P Largan lens that makes images look sharper and clearer.

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Movers & Shakers

Nokia Technologies hires Gregory Lee as President

Dinesh Malkani resigns as President of Cisco India

Nokia has announced the appointment of Gregory Lee as President of Nokia Technologies and as member of the Group Leadership team, with immediate effect. Prior to Nokia, Lee served as President and CEO, Samsung Electronics, North America, with a focus on driving fast growth, profitability and operational excellence.

In this capacity, Lee led all of Samsung’s businesses for North America, managing a portfolio of products including mobile phones and consumer electronics, as well as those in new market segments such as digital health, virtual reality devices and digital content.

Lee will be based in California, reporting to Rajeev Suri, Chairman Nokia.

Dinesh Malkani, Cisco India and SAARC President, has resigned and is now believed to take on a leadership role at a start-up, but details of the same could not be ascertained. He will continue in his role until 31st July and remain associated with Cisco till the end of September.

Dinesh has played a key role in driving its growth, talent and digital transformation initiatives in India. After his exit, Cisco will continue to execute on its long-term strategic focus on India through its investments in innovation, skills development and digital transformation. People aware of the development said the company has already conducted an internal and external search for Malkani’s replacement and will make an announcement in the next two weeks.

Nikhil Arora appointed Managing Director of GoDaddy India

Transsion appoints Tathagat Jena to head marketing

GoDaddy has announced the appointment of Nikhil Arora as Vice President and Managing Director for India.

Nikhil will lead corporate strategy, business development and customer experience for GoDaddy in India. Prior to joining GoDaddy India, Nikhil led the Asia and India operations for WeWork. Previously, Nikhil served as Vice President and Managing Director of Intuit India, where he led Intuit’s India business strategy, strengthened partnerships and capitalized on social, mobile and global market trends impacting small businesses. Nikhil has also worked at Laureate Education, ADP, Delphi Automotive and CBS Television.

Autodesk names new President and CEO

Autodesk has announced that its board of directors has appointed Andrew Anagnost, current interim co-chief executive officer and chief marketing officer, as the company’s new President and CEO, effective immediately. He will also join Autodesk’s board of directors.

The company has also announced that Amar Hanspal, Senior VP, Chief Product Officer and Interim Co-CEO, has decided to leave the company.

Anagnost, who holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University, began his career at Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Company and as an NRC fellow at NASA Ames Research Center. After joining Autodesk in 1997, he held various technical and strategic roles.

Ziox Mobiles appoints Vikash Chandra to fuel online business

Ziox Mobiles has announced the induction of Mr. Vikash Chandra as the General Manager – eCommerce & TV Shopping business. The brand poised to bring its focus and resources to online space. To fuel further growth, the company aims to strengthen its Online Business and e-commerce network. Through this strategic appointment, Ziox Mobiles will now advent its position in eCommerce domain.

Ziox plans to fortify the online business with Vikash Chandra spearheading the operation. Reinforcing its position, the brand aims to accomplish online sales of up to 20% of the total sales in this FY 20172018. Marketing data and analytics all concentrated to online sales that shall bring Ziox the opportunity to expand their reach to the region and beyond.

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The Chinese mobile OEM giant TRANSSION is setting its sights on the lucrative Indian handset market in the 6k – 20k price band. Tathagat Jena or “TJ” as he is called, joins them as Sr VP – Marketing and has been entrusted with the task to build a strong brand and run an efficient demand generation programme for the Tecno and Infinix brands.

TJ is a seasoned marketer with nearly two decades of experience, almost half of which have been spent at Samsung, helping take it from the No. 4 brand in 2008 to numero uno status. In his nearly nine-year journey at Samsung, TJ has handled multiple roles in marketing and communication.

Before that, he had worked at leading advertising agencies such as Leo Burnett, Ogilvy and Lowe.

Nitin Rakesh appointed as chair of NASSCOM IT Services Council

National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has appointed Nitin Rakesh, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Mphasis, as the Chair of the IT Services Council.

Nitish Rakesh was elected and unanimously elected as its Chair. His vision is to transform India’s brand image from a cost competitive offshore destination to an essential technology partner and work towards bridging the gap between “Bangalore-and-Bay Area” both from an IP and start-up perspective. To power these core priorities, building a strong ecosystem to transform India as a technology destination is vital.

Sandeep Nagpal quits SAP, joins Cvent

Sandeep Nagpal, who was with SAP earlier, has joined Cvent as its Vice President and Head of Marketing.

In his previous stint, Sandeep had served at SAP as the Head of SME & Partner Marketing (VP), APAC & Japan. In this role, Sandeep was responsible for overseeing SAP's Partner, Ecosystem & Volume Business Marketing Strategy. It also included gaining market share for SAP, increasing the SAP brand affinity and purchase consideration among the small & mid market (SME) segment across APJ. He also managed strategic alliances, VARs & Ecosystem partners marketing programs including affiliate & influencer marketing, rebate/incentive programs and communications. He also held the position of Senior Director Marketing when he first joined SAP in 2010. Sandeep had earlier worked for Nokia as Head – Business Mobility & Commerce Solutions and Microsoft Corporation as Marketing Lead.

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