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CHANNEL

BUSINESS

TECHNOLOGY

COMMUNITY

24 June 2015 | | arnnet.com.au

Continued overleaf

HAFIZAH OSMAN

TIME FOR A CHANGE

4 Editorial10 Interview32 Market reports

PLUS

T he fi nancial year ends on June 30 for many businesses. And for some it has been a tough 12 months as disruptive technologies and a changing channel impacted on not

only outlooks but the core way vendors, distributors and resellers operate.

Looking ahead, is technology going to slow down? Unlikely. Is it going to be any less disruptive? Also unlikely. So the key questions that have to be asked are what business direction should the channel take next? And, secondly, what are the technologies it should invest in?

Every one of our experts has a tip for channel players, but fundamentally it comes down to this: It’s time to rethink and transform your business. It’s time to make plans.

Westcon Group A/NZ managing director, Dave Rosenberg, said over the past fi nancial year, the channel has been busy in its conversion to offering anything-as-a-service.

“Whether you classify that as Cloud, or whether you term it as other value-added services, we’re now starting to see a change in the way in which end customers are purchasing. This results in vendors looking for distributors to support new and innovative ways of going to market,” he said.

As such, he said there has been a rise in the number of resellers changing the way in which they’re providing end customer solutions, especially within consumption based models.

“People aren’t just buying tin anymore. It’s not only all about infrastructure, we are also starting to see a bunch of new channel players come into the market and being born in the Cloud. So the channel should start to embrace new business models and understand clearly their value proposition,” he said.

Staples head of technology solutions, Karl Sice, said there is a lot of further commoditisation in the devices market, causing the lines between consumer and corporate solutions to blur.

“The commoditisation of IT trend is pushing very hard. This has resulted in customers using their data more effectively. They are analysing data and using the appropriate analysis tools to use the information they’ve got more effectively, make better business decisions, and drive better processes.”

CHANNEL PLAYSGoing into the new fi nancial year, Sice claimed the channel should be looking into business needs rather than technology needs. This involves higher collaboration levels between partners, distributors, and vendors over the next 18 months.

“They need to focus on the business of IT, not on IT itself. For

24 JUNE 2015 | VOL 20 NO 11

Smart machines are hereAs smart machines become

more capable and affordable,

they will be more widely

deployed across many

industries, replacing some

human workers.6Hunting crooks on a digital playgroundInterpol digital crime manager,

Steve Honiss, has come up

with a new phrase in the

hacking-centric universe:

Crime-as-a-Service. 8Planning life after separationVeritas head of global channel,

Mark Nutt, talks about the

company’s strategy since

its planned spin off from

Symantec’s information

management business.28

18The evolving datacentre ecosystemThis roundtable discussed the state of the datacentre

market, and pinpoints market opportunities.

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From page 1

organisations to continue to be successful, resellers and systems integrators need to have an ability to drive business outcomes rather than just selling bits and pieces. And there also needs to be a more sophisticated skillset from what used to be the case,” he said.

“Most customers are after help to improve their own businesses and deliver more profi t or to achieve a better outcome. As technologists, we need to gravitate towards a productive conversation.”

COMMERCIAL DRIVERS Alloys CEO, Paul Harman, mentioned as the economy moves into a time that isn’t as robust as it has been over the past few years, then the focus is going to be on the commercial drivers of the channel in terms of managing cashfl ow, and the areas related to them, such as stock management and expense management.

“Technologies in areas such as 3D printing, storage and Cloud will drive growth for the channel. In terms of business effi ciency, it will be how they manage both data and product fl ow in their business.

“In the next fi nancial year, the channel should evaluate its business and determine what it’s trying to do, who to partner with, what are the key things to do in terms of value proposition and understand all the critical numbers that make the business what it is. It should also make sure it’s managing those things tightly to get the best result,” he said.

AGC Networks Australia country manager, Tony Heywood, said for productivity, the channel should develop a consulting mentality.

“Resellers need to determine what their model is and understand the role that they have in consulting around workforce productivity, especially contact centre productivity. My one key advice is for them to move from an on-premise model to a managed services model – it doesn’t necessarily mean Cloud or hosted or on-premise, it’s all of the above.”

Heywood said the channel should pick particular Cloud services that are going to be relevant, especially within technologies such as video-as-a-service.

“If you look at the subscription model that vendors are working towards, most of them are torn between on-premise video

and Cloud video as a service. So resellers need to understand the pressures on a business and what video will be in that business in the next 12 to 18 months rather than think Cloud is the way to go,” he said.

According to rhipe market research vice-president, Stephen Parker, those who are in (or nearly in) the Cloud space and those who are coming into the Cloud need to look at how they manage their ongoing relevance in the marketplace.

“FY16 is going to be the year where the channel remains relevant to its customers by making the required business transformations. Partners will become more sophisticated with their offerings in the Cloud. And this is partly due to the success of the channel,” Parker said.

He indicated the channel’s success in the Cloud has drawn companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and VMware into the mass market Cloud, and to offering services around it.

“Going into the new fi scal year, it’s going to be all about maintaining differentiation through value-added services, be it better infrastructure with more customisation or putting Veeam or Citrix or VMware’s products to allow true hybrid solutions into the market.

“That’s where the existing service providers will have to focus in because hybrid is the only play they can deliver in where the global providers can’t,” he said. As for the new entrants into the Cloud, Parker suggested these value-added resellers selling products with some services need to evolve to become managed service providers that offer services that may have a product with it.

CONCERNSBut Channel Dynamics director, Moheb Moses, claimed the channel should be concerned about some of the limitations to the as-a-service model.

“If you look at Moore’s Law, it states computing power doubles every 18 months to two years and our industry has been driven by that. When the channel moves to providing IaaS it takes time to build up critical mass that generates a profi table revenue stream.

“What that means is in a matter of just two years, a customer can get a similar service from another provider, that is at

a lower price, bigger capacity, and more advanced technology,” Moses said.

And if companies do not budget for looking at their own infrastructure and saying “what do I have to do to make sure I continue providing a high quality of service and a reduced cost?”, the number of companies getting to the point of trouble will substantially increase.

As for adopting a subscription model, Moses addressed the need for the channel to keep an eye on their cashfl ow, as shifting an entire business from having an on-premise model to a Cloud or subscription based model can be expensive.

“The key is to pick out some technologies to align with and use that to test a business model. For example, you can review your compensation plan, change your sales approach, or even look at the automation of your billing systems.”

CLOUD MODELS According to Heywood, from a reseller perspective, to move customers to a Cloud model, the capability of the reseller to be relevant is marginalised because the vendor provides the Cloud model. As such, the reseller will need to determine if they’re going to build, own and provide a Cloud or if they’re going to sell another vendor’s Cloud model.

“Does the reseller just want to clip their way through or add value around being the provider of the infrastructure? If they’re a solutions provider, it’s always better to be the provider of value rather than just clipping the ticket on the way through.”

Westcon's Rosenberg said as the market continues to move to solutions that are more customer focused, it has to start providing solutions that it may not have thought about. That’s challenging to channel partners and vendors.

“You can’t be everything to everybody, so specialisation becomes a lot more important. The channel should re-examine what they want to be and where they want to specialise in. They should understand what parts of the market they want to go after or what the clients’ requirements are and make sure they’re providing those specialised solutions. Clarity of strategy is important for everyone,” he added.

2NEWS ANALYSISlooking ahead

arnnet.com.au | | 24 June 2015

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4EDITORIALchange

It is time for a change. Seriously, sitting and wishing and hoping isn’t going to work anymore.

Read this edition’s lead story. Every expert we speak to has the same message: the channel must embrace new business models, understand clearly their value proposition, evaluate all the information and transform.

For resellers/MSPs it is a must and with it comes opportunity as your customers struggle to fi nd their niche in this fast-paced, ever-changing world of ICT we work in.

There is no hiding. Some of the stories in this edition refl ect just how fast this crazy technology world is changing: Australian security expert and Interpol digital crime manager talks about Crime-as-a-Service. Then there is the rise of the smart machines – the ones that will take human workers jobs.

Businesses are splitting, spinning off sections, trying to fi nd ways to be new and still succeed.

On our website, we recently ran a story about retailer, Offi ceworks, launching a 3D Experience Centre in its Russell St, Melbourne, store. “3D printing opens up a world of creativity and stretches the limits of design. In terms of what next from here, we’ll be led by our customers and expand and evolve the offer based on their needs,” head of technology (merchandise), Toby Watson, said.

3D will continue to increasingly disrupt.The head in the sand move won’t work anymore. For many, it is a new fi nancial year and with it

comes the chance to assess, rebuild, change. ROCG Asia-Pacifi c chief executive, David Henderson, recently delivered 10 resolutions for SMEs going into 2015/16. They make sense:

1. Adjust accounting and management practices to accommodate change.

2. Leverage low interest rates as cash reserves are not getting the return they were a few years ago. This can be made to work in an SME's favour by budgeting now for higher rates over the next few years.

3. Paying for some services and utilities for the following year in advance before the price rise can see a saving of three to six per cent.

4. Set up direct debit accounts when discounts for this payment method are offered.

5. A rising or falling Australian dollar has an impact on consumer confi dence and infl uences if buyers will go offshore for a better deal. Resolve to keep an eye on the Aussie dollar.

6. Time the annual return and if the tax offi ce owes the business money, try and get it back as soon as possible after June 30.

7. To help maximise cash fl ow, a small business with an annual turnover of less than $2 million or with a GST turnover of less than $2 million can pay GST by monthly instalments or quarterly.

8. Resolve to know how the July 1 changes will affect the business.

9. Seeking advice in off peak times can mean an adviser might be better focused or more appointments are readily available.

10. To make the most of a favourable depreciation deal, buy in July. Grab all cheaper directly deductible bargains right up until midnight on June 30.

These are basic accounting and management suggestions but they will work for you and the clients you advise. Several of the channel’s boldest and brightest minds have always said: With change comes some pain – and the chance for gain. Don’t get left behind.

NOMINATE NOWMy inner Yoda says 'left behind you will be' if you are reading this around June 24 because nominations for the 2015 ARN ICT Industry Awards close on June 26. That’s right your chance to win any of the ICT industry’s most prestigious Awards is on the line. You need to Nominate Now.

How do you nominate? Simple: go directly to the nominations page on the ARN website (www.arnnet.com.au/industry_awards/nominations/) and follow the prompts. Please limit your responses to the 250 maximum word count set per question.

ARN recommends companies only self-nominate to ensure the best chance of success with our 100-strong judging panel. You only need one nomination submission to be in the running for your chosen award (other nominations cannot be considered).

Now in its ninth year, the Awards recognise and celebrate industry excellence over the past year. To be hosted at a Celebration Dinner on Thursday, September 10, at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the 2015 awards theme is Carnaval – parading the industry’s best.

Hopefully, you will be in the parade!

Mike GeeEditorial Director ARN

[email protected]

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

or call us +61 (2) 8520 3570


6NEWS ANALYSISfuture tech

THE SMART MACHINES ARE HERE

T he growth of sensor-based data combined with advanced algorithms and artifi cial

intelligence (AI) are enabling smart machines to make increasingly signifi cant business decisions over which humans have decreasing control.

“As smart machines become increasingly capable, they will become viable alternatives to human workers under certain circumstances, which will lead to signifi cant repercussions for the business and thus for CIOs,” says Stephen Prentice, vice-president, Gartner Fellow.

“In the 2015 Gartner CEO and business leader survey, opinions were equally divided on this issue and indicate that business leaders are starting to take notice of the advances being made and more readily acknowledge that the threat to knowledge work is real.”

Already the growing capabilities of automation and robotics have led to their increasing deployment in a wide range of industrial and business environments, which has prompted debate as to their impact on existing jobs in sectors such as manufacturing.

“As smart machines become more capable, and more affordable, they will be more widely deployed in multiple roles across many industries, replacing some human workers,” Prentice said.

“This is nothing new. The deployment of new technology has eliminated millions of jobs over the course of history.

“At the same time, entirely new industries have been developed by those technologies, almost always creating millions of new jobs.

“Organisations must balance the necessity to exploit the signifi cant advances being made in the capabilities of various smart machines with the perceived negative impact of resulting job losses.”

During the next fi ve years, Gartner predicts that smart machines will inevitably be relied on to make more decisions that are of growing signifi cance

to the business, raising the fear that they may become “unstoppable” or run out of control.

“The fear among many individuals is that the machines will ‘take over,’ start making decisions on their own and run out of control, posing a threat to individuals, society and even humanity itself,” Prentice adds.

“However, within the confi nes of currently known technology, the idea of machines attaining some level of ‘self-awareness,’ ‘consciousness’ or ‘sentience’ is still the stuff of science fi ction.

“Even with the coming generation of smart machines, which actively ‘learn’ and will be able to adapt their actions to optimise their progress toward a goal, humans can choose to remain in control.”

EXPLOSIVE GROWTHAdditionally, the explosive growth of sensors, both physical and virtual, will provide smart machines with more “perception” and context of the physical world, enabling them to work more autonomously in support of business goals, leaving CIOs to highlight the risks and opportunities involved.

In the early days of computing, human operators “fed” the system with relevant data, thereby effectively controlling the

machines’ knowledge of the physical world.With the increasing availability of

low-cost computing devices, increased connectivity, sensor networks and the Internet of Things, computing “complexes” are now collecting data about the physical world without direct human involvement (other than the initial launch of the system and sensor devices).

The number of sensors, each collecting data in an automated fashion, is set to grow rapidly – Gartner estimates that more than 25 billion devices will be connected by 2020 – it will create a massive increase in this background data collection.

“In effect, smart machines are now collecting information about practically every facet of human activity on a continual, pervasive and uncontrollable basis, with no option to ‘turn off’ the activity,” Prentice adds.

“The potential reputational damage arising from uncontrolled and inappropriate data collection is well-established and can be substantial.

“CIOs should work hard to increase awareness of this issue inside the organisation and ensure that the implications of this activity are fully understood and that appropriate controls, processes and procedures are established.”

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8NEWS FEATUREsecurity

HUNTING CROOKS ON A DIGITAL PLAYGROUND

In a world fi lled with cybercriminals unimpeded by national borders, INTERPOL digital crime manager, Steve

Honiss, and personnel at the new Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore are tasked with thwarting the efforts of these international gangs.

Honiss is on secondment from New Zealand Police where he managed the New Zealand Cybercrime Centre and developed the fi rst New Zealand Police Operating Strategy.

INTERPOL is a different organisation than the national or state police forces around the world. Unlike its local counterparts, it acts as more of a support network for collaboration and tracking international crime.

It has spent much of its energy and resources pursuing transnational organised crime groups and in the last four to fi ve years begun to focus heavily on cybercrime organisations.

This is not surprising considering the cost of global cybercrime and the impact it has on millions around the world. Trend Micro estimated that in 2014, cybercrime cost an estimated $US456 billion and is expected to rise to over $US2 trillion by 2019.

Honiss made the point that the activities of many of these organisations are not limited to cybercrime. Many of them engage in money laundering, human traffi cking, prostitution, extortion and drugs.

In the last several years, Honiss said the Internet had signifi cantly changed the way traditional and indeed new types of crimes had been committed.

“The World Wide Web has made it much easier for organised crime groups to operate and much more diffi cult for police forces to track and apprehend them.”

“Without possessing much technical skill, anybody could get on to Google, complete a few hours of research and be able to purchase a set of credentials such as stolen credit card details.

“You could then use those credentials to purchase the services of an organised crime group to carry out a DDoS attack against a competitor.

“It has become far more achievable to the average person, with no hacking skills, to carry out this sort of activity. We talk about it as Crime-as-a-Service. That’s how easy it has become.”

CYBERCRIME MARKETHoniss said that in the face of the evolving and expanding cybercrime market, INTERPOL and its 190 member countries have had to increase scope and capabilities and have done this through partnerships with global IT security fi rms such as Trend Micro and Kaspersky.

INTERPOL and many of its industry partners could never hope to individually match the resources of transnational criminal organisations. The global policing organisation has joined forces with a number of security vendors

including Trend Micro and Kaspersky Labs to build a new centre for tracking cybercrime across the globe.

The INTERPOL Global Centre for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore is the manifestation of these partnerships. Offi cially opened in April 2015, the centre is a state-of-the-art facility devoted to the tracking and pursuit of cybercrime and the organisations that perpitrate it.

There are four Directorates housed in the IGCI, two of which are dedicated to cybercrime. The INTERPOL Digital Crime Centre (IDCC) and Cyber Innovation & Outreach. The IDCC provides investigative support to assist state police agencies with investigations, and includes a Digital Forensic Laboratory, and a cyber intelligence function.

SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL INVESTMENTINTERPOL is by no means a powerless organisation, but without assistance from IT security fi rms, Honiss said it would be an impossible task tracking the amount of cybercrime on the Web.

CHRIS PLAYER

”ANYBODY COULD GET ON TO GOOGLE, COMPLETE A FEW HOURS OF RESEARCH AND BE ABLE TO PURCHASE A SET OF CREDENTIALS SUCH AS STOLEN CREDIT CARD DETAILS”

“Trend Micro and Kaspersky have made signifi cant fi nancial investment into the centre,” he said. “As part of the agreement, they will bring in experts. We have a malware expert and intelligence people working in there. In the other areas we identify a gap in our capability or see an opportunity for joint collaboration we will identify individuals we know that have been working in the scene or reach out to organisations on specifi c projects.

“For example, it may be a university where there is an individual that has particular skills or interest and the university is willing to second someone in. We have done a few projects with universities on darknet.

Darknet is a private overlay network where connections are made only between trusted peers using non-standard protocols and ports. The dark web is the most commonly known subsection of the Darknet. Also part of the Deep web, the part of the Web that is not indexed in standard search engines.

“We recently had a professor from The University of Twente in the Netherlands. He spent six months in Singapore working on darknet and virtual currency issues. We

worked on some joint research and training development. That is a particular interest of his and it met our need to have very specialist technical skills,” said Honiss.

“He is an absolute world expert on darknet and virtual currencies. It is very useful for us as law enforcement offi cers to have that deep knowledge and technical perspective.”

He explained that INTERPOLhas its own internal training programs but also relies heavily on industry and academic partners to augment this training. “External partners that are brought in have their own specialist skills. One of the analysts at the IGCI at the moment is a malware expert so he has been training our technical people in malware analysis,” he said.

IT security gets an educational boostAustralia’s academic and research network (AARNet) and computer

emergency response team (CERT), AusCERT, have come together

to provide the research and education sector with a range of IT and

network security support services.

AARNet is the not for profit company that operates Australia’s

Academic and Research Network. Its shareholders are made up of 38

Australian universities and the CSIRO.

AusCERT is a cyber emergency response team for Australia providing

information security services since 1993. It provides threat intelligence

and reporting to members by investing in data analysis systems and

providing platforms for engagement with security analysts.

Members from both organisations in the research and education

sectors will have direct access to a suite of networking, consulting and

cyber security services.

In a joint statement, the two organisations said they will collaborate

to support enquiries, provide testing and remediation services. Both

organisations said this will assist CIOs and other IT professionals

manage complexities of IT security.

NEW PARTNERSHIPAusCERT general manager Thomas King, said the new partnership with

AARNet builds on the threat intelligence and reporting AusCERT has

been providing to members since 1993.

“Under the new partnership with AARNet, AusCERT will provide

unique and cost effective cyber security services to the higher

education sector within Australia and will build upon this base to

strengthen the nation’s research and education network,” he said.

AARNet enterprise services will bring professional services to the

partnership, drawing on security knowledge and best practice from the IT

Security community across multiple industries in Australia and overseas.

AARNet director enterprise services, James Sankar, said the

partnership was about supporting universities with a wider range of

cost-efficient options for securing campus IT environments.

“This is an operational solution. The relationship will help our

universities to have an end to end suite of options available for securing

their infrastructure,” he said.

“Traditionally you would have AusCERT fulfilling the analyst role

for IT. That’s going to broaden. It will be a lot more enquiry scoped and

helping define the security targets and posture. We will undertake

those tests and look at remediation options.

“It’s more of an end-to-end approach to security that has

traditionally been fragmented. This is just the beginning – our goal

is to enable the innovation pipeline for research and education by

continuously developing solutions for securing access to Cloud and

managed services.”

Chris Player

INTERPOL Digital Crime Officer, National Cyber Review Management, Steve Honiss


9NEWS FEATURE

security

10NEWScloud computing


DC DELIVERS CLOUDSELECT MARKETPLACE

D istribution Central is attempting to put the power back into the hands of resellers with a new open

standards-based Cloud Services platform.DC CloudSelect marketplace is

designed specifi cally for resellers, managed service providers, cloud service providers and partners born in the Cloud.

It will provide a single platform for the procurement, provisioning, integration, orchestration, and management of Cloud solutions, services and aggregated billing.

The marketplace is being launched with more than 200 products and services, which will continue to increase over time.

Key Cloud providers include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Softlayer (an IBM company).

The products and services catalogue also includes solutions from DC’s existing vendor partnerships such as Blue Coat, CommVault, Equinix, F5 Networks, NetApp, Palo Alto Networks, Riverbed, Seagate, SimpliVity and Sophos.

Distribution Central managing director, Nick Verykios said he was expecting an “avalanche” of enquiries, on May 11, when the marketplace will be switched on.

“Our beta testers have been looking at a lot of platforms around the the world and this is actually the best in the world right now,” he said.

“The irony is we could have kept on developing, but we had to put a stake in the ground, and we are going out now and giving our customers exactly what they have been asking for.

The development of the marketplace has taken about eight months.

He said the difference in what the company was trying to achieve was “bringing the resellers back into the conversation.”

REMOVING COMPLEXITYVerykios said the objective of the marketplace was to remove the complexity associated with the challenges of Cloud and to ensure partners had a

profi table pathway as they transitioned their business.

“DC CloudSelect is unique amongst other distributor solutions because of the extent to which it enables partners. It offers a large products and services catalogue and the ability to aggregate, orchestrate and manage end-user cloud environments,” he said.

“Partners get a single bill from DC and can present and manage multiple solutions to their customers, whilst having complete control over their customers’ cloud environments.”

Resellers also need to consider, not just the infrastructure required to deliver a Cloud service, but how they will optimise performance and secure the Cloud environment, according to Verykios.

“For this reason the DC CloudSelect Marketplace catalogue offers Cloud-based solutions that address these business problems and challenges.”

The company has also worked closely with vendor partners and integrated APIs across solutions to deliver a seamless experience for our partners and their customers.

Distribution Central chief technology offi cer, Michael Carlile, said the company would continue to add new vendor partners from the orchestration perspective.

“We will continue to expand this out, but there are tens of thousands of things we could orchestrate if we want to,” he said.

“The point is where is the value in it? If I need to manage multiple clients as a channel partner, I need one place to do it and - really - if that’s the only thing we achieve here, then we have achieved something of value for the channel.”

In 2013 Distribution Central launched its DC CloudSelect service with an online

confi gurator, billing engine and cloud-enabled solutions – CloudPODs – to enable partners to deliver cloud solutions to their customers.

The DC CloudSelect Marketplace overhauls this service by delivering a fully customised portal that acts as a single interface for resellers to consume and manage Cloud services.

CLOUD AGGREGATORVerykos said the company was going into the market as a Cloud aggregator.

“So it needs to do everything and do everything from the fi rst transaction right down to the constant renewable transaction,” he said.

“The resellers need to have their hands on our platform to actually manage their customers.

“What’s vitally important is we are walking away from that whole notion of white-boxing.

“What we are talking about here is resellers having the ability to OEM this platform. They surely put their brand on to it, but they can start to take deeper control of what they are doing with their Cloud deployments.

“They will be able to manage the platform. It’s all on their paper, it’s all on their website.”

BRIAN KARLOVSKY

Distribution Central’s Nick Verykios

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Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

12TECHWATCHstorage


Information is an organisation’s most valuable asset – and

often the most costly to maintain – and users are accessing

data more frequently from more devices than ever before.

As such, new storage solutions, including flash storage

and converged infrastructures, are better suited

for a world where digital data creation is growing

by around 50 per cent per year and organisations

work to keep pace and stay within budgets.

The feature looks at the latest storage solutions

and market trends, along with the growing

partner opportunities in this space. ARN senior

journalist, HAFIZAH OSMAN, reports.

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14TECHWATCHstorage

Storage has the potential to become more nimble and adaptable, support trends like bimodal IT, and be better integrated between

on-premises and Cloud environments. But, as the complexity and management of storage increases, infrastructure and operations managers should prepare for a transitionary storage phase in the next three to fi ve years.

That is the main message from channel thought leaders that work within the storage space.

Nimble Storage Asia-Pacifi c and Japan channel sales director, Theo Hourmouzis, said storage has typically been viewed as the foundational layer of an organisation’s infrastructure but picking the wrong storage solution can lead to exorbitant costs, lack of agility and complexity in one’s environment, ultimately failing to enable users to respond to the business requirements.

“Data and information is also considered as the most important asset a company can own, so protecting this, extracting its value and making sure the company users have timely access to it is extremely important,” he said.

And the use of data has transformed from simply being recording transactions to one that uses data to gain understanding, drive predictions, make real-time decisions and offer new insights – giving businesses a competitive edge.

“In a global survey commissioned by HGST, 86 per cent of CIOs and IT decision makers surveyed believe that all data generated has value if the organisation is able to store, access and analyse it optimally.

“Data touches practically every part of our lives, so it is absolutely vital that all organisations – from healthcare to IT to mining – fi nd the best ways to store and manage it,” HGST Asia-Pacifi c vice-president, James Ho, said.

Gartner research director, Pushan Rinnen, claimed through 2014, there were a few changes to the proprietary nature of storage arrays and storage management, resulting in management complexities.

They include different storage experts managing separate storage silos, which cause poor storage utilisation, workfl ow

and management processes. These key fi ndings were also included in the company’s 2015 Strategic Road Map for Storage research paper.

In addition, Rinnen said the lack of tight integration between public Cloud infrastructure and on-premises applications has confi ned Cloud storage usage to small-scale, non-business-critical workloads or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

“The emergence of bimodal IT, together with the trend of business units acquiring public Cloud or SaaS solutions outside the control of IT, is challenging the IT department to establish closer ties with the business and establish a service brokerage role,” she said.

Gartner also stated, in the research paper, that by 2017, 75 per cent of IT organisations will have attempted to put a bimodal IT organisational structure in place.

“Half of these will struggle and go through multiple attempts before reaching a working state. Also, by 2018, 50 per cent of organisations will give up on managing data growth and will redirect funds to improve classifi cation and analytics,” Rinnen said.

FLASH STORAGE AS A DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY Undoubtedly, fl ash-based storage is the biggest evolution the storage industry has seen to date, according to some of these channel leaders. Hourmouzis identifi ed there has been an explosion of new storage providers into the market, and all of this is in relation to fl ash-based storage.

Prior to fl ash, the last few decades had seen the storage industry remain quite stagnant with small increases in capacity and performance, contradicting the evolution of its complementary industry technologies such as compute and networking, he said.

“In almost all workloads fl ash-based storage can make a difference but the amount of fl ash is truly the key. Customers have seen the benefi ts from deploying such solutions and we don’t see this slowing down any time soon.”

Ho agreed with Hourmouzis, adding that it is changing the game in the storage market and driving enterprise appetite for more storage solutions, since for businesses to remain competitive

in today’s landscape, application performance matters. CIOs are quickly realising fl ash storage is well-suited for performance-intensive applications including databases, data warehouse and Big Data analytics.

“Data needs to be instantly accessible for real-time processing, analytics and insights. To address this need, enterprise customers are actively looking to add fl ash into their storage infrastructure,” he said.

Hosted Network managing director, Ben Town, agreed that fl ash storage is a new storage solution that is here to stay and perfectly suited to the digital world.

“Virtualisation is on the rise and the demand for better performance, speed and effi ciency are higher than ever before as well as the demand for low latency. With fl ash, scalability is measurable and affordable allowing businesses to keep the promise of storage longevity and security,” he said.

KEY CHANNEL PLAYSSince the biggest current trend is mostly around all fl ash storage arrays, Town said the cost of fl ash has come down considerably and now, with technologies such as deduplication, fl ash is cheaper than traditional disk.

“Organisations are realising that they need to utilise storage better to innovate further and provide greater value to the business. The best opportunities within the storage space involve service providers introducing new services that were previously not possible due to storage performance and/or scalability issues.”

Delphix Asia-Pacifi c and Japan sales vice-president, Chris Poulos, has a different view. He said data is totally reliant on storage only and it’s time that changed.

“PARTNERS SHOULD USE NEW STORAGE

SOLUTIONS, LIKE HYPER-CONVERGED TECHNOLOGY,

AS A COMPETITIVE WEAPON TO GO AND

WIN NEW BUSINESS”NUTANIX’ DARRIN EDKINS

To page 16


16TECHWATCHstorage

According to Poulos, businesses should ditch the old world storage paradigm as modern storage solutions provide value, from near-instant cloning of data, to compression and de-duplication of data, as well as improved performance.

“To make a copy of your data you have to back it up, move it, and restore it. Modern storage provides ways to compress it, de-duplicate it and clone it, but the underlying lock-in to that storage still applies.

“You still need a box in a datacentre with that software locked into the device to provide those features. If you want to move it to a new datacentre, or take advantage of the Cloud, you duplicate it again, move it, and stand it up again.

“That takes time, network bandwidth, and more and more storage. Data capture is growing incredibly fast yet the reliance on specifi c storage vendors still applies, which can erode value in Cloud strategies and incur signifi cant cost,” he said.

He suggested businesses adopt Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) as it lifts the fl exibility, speed, compression and de-duplication features of modern storage to a higher level by virtualising them so they become available in multiple datacentres, including Cloud-based ones.

It’s also an alternative to next-generation storage that provides consulting opportunities for managed services providers and systems integrators to help tier-one fi rms go from monthly to daily releases and updates, reducing entire software development and testing cycles.

Nutanix A/NZ channel, OEM, and alliances director, Darrin Edkins, said the traditional storage space is going to be a

rapidly declining market. The opportunity for channel partners is to embrace newer technologies within this space.

“The primary opportunity for partners is to offer a differentiated solution to market. Partners should use new storage solutions, like hyper-converged technology, as a competitive weapon to go and win new business, as well as to build and grow their partners.

“Many partners are still tied to traditional storage solutions, but we’re seeing more and more partners now taking advantage of new solutions like hyper-converged technology to win business.”

Another opportunity for the channel, Edkins said, is to retain existing business relations by converting their old traditional architectures.

“What these partners sold to customers three or four years ago, they can go out to them and get the newer solutions deployed at a lower cost.“

And there’s also the opportunity for them to get involved in training.

“They should talk to their vendor partners, and train up on all these new architectures that are in the marketplace, especially around hyper-converged technology, so that they can help the customers lower their cost of IT,” he said.

CHALLENGESBut just like all new trends, storage too comes with a list of challenges. Town said cost and complexity are the biggest challenges of storage, along with the hesitation of IT decision makers to innovate. “While the cost has come down in recent years, traditionally, enterprise

storage has always been a signifi cant investment. The complexity of these systems to both implement and manage have always been labelled tedious, however recently the industry has seen an increase in Storage 2.0 vendors, forcing storage vendors to pick up their game.”

Veritas enterprise technical account manager, Scott Meddings, agreed and added the challenge associated with storage today is the large growth in the size of data that might arise in the next fi ve years.

Meddings said, by then, he expected the world’s data to grow to more than 40ZB, creating more pressure on businesses to be able to provide highly available storage and intelligence across this storage.

“Storage becomes the bottleneck in infrastructure quite quickly when dealing with today’s modern datacentre challenges, including high-speed networks and servers. To address this problem with high speed disks only provides raw performance. It is only after we apply clever software over the top of that disk that we create agility and effi ciencies.”

As such, Meddings suggested the world starts defi ning the difference between data and information to drive more agility and faster access to the information that is important to companies. To enable this, SSD will have to become normal with software defi ned management across this layer to provide integrated intelligence.

“This is because data is growing at about 60 per cent YoY, so we need smarter technology to manage this growth and become agile enough to cope with the demands of multiple heterogeneous platforms like virtualisation and the Cloud.

“Companies are trying to gain insight into the difference between data and information and are looking at ways to reduce storage spend with innovative storage solutions,” he added.

“WITH FLASH, SCALABILITY IS

MEASURABLE AND AFFORDABLE ALLOWING

BUSINESSES TO KEEP THE PROMISE OF

STORAGE LONGEVITY AND SECURITY”

HOSTED NETWORK’S BEN TOWN

Keys to successGartner identified four key moves for channel success within the storage space. They include:

1. Investing in more automated storage and integrated systems in a homogeneous environment,

as well as in more capable heterogeneous management tools enabled by software-defined

storage, to reduce storage management complexity and operating costs.

2. Investing in data management tools that provide insight to your storage, helping you form

business policies and decisions with confidence.

3. Picking a Tier-3 application, a development project or a SaaS solution that consumes

storage in an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) datacentre as a means to test Cloud storage

agility and elasticity, as well as flexibility in data protection and retention, with clear

operational and financial goals in mind.

4. Start training or hiring IT staff for the Cloud concierge role and for an agile “response team”

that can deliver business projects quickly.

From page 14

18ROUNDTABLEdatacentre disruption


The datacentre is undergoing unprecedented transition. Like no other time in history,

there are disruptive factors and dramatic changes in the datacentre market with some

significant technology advances including: software-defined networking and software-

defined storage, Cloud, network virtualisation and webscale-integrated infrastructure.

Cloud provisioning, increased automation, a growing reliance on mobility and the

need to do more with less are key factors shaping and affecting the datacentre market.

Certainly, the datacentre itself is transforming and changing, becoming more of a

‘datacentre ecosystem’ that is being procured by organisations that are using a mix

of collocation, Cloud services and on-premise.

With the disruptive technologies affecting the datacentres, there is an opportunity

for partners to take advantage of the growth, helping customers navigate the journey.

IT leaders are now tasked with harnessing social media, having to decide whether

to use Cloud and for which workloads, having to deliver mobility and how to take

advantage of Big Data and analytics – and partners are the driving force behind the

datacentre transformation.

In light of the trends and transformative journey, a select group of channel leaders

gathered to discuss the state of the datacentre market in Australia, highlight the latest

technology advancements, and pinpoint market opportunities for players in this space.

JENNIFER O’BRIEN reports.

This roundtable was

sponsored by APC by

Schneider Electric,

DPSA, Huawei,

NEXTDC, and Zerto.

Photos by MIKE GEE.


19ROUNDTABLE

datacentre disruption

“Datacentres in themselves are shrinking. In my view, Cloud very simplistically is the outsourcing of this decade. You go back in the ‘90s and you outsource your entire business to one of the big outsourcing players. If you go back to the last decade and you selectively source components of your business, you go to this decade and you’re really outsourcing components of technology. I’m outsourcing applications, outsourcing different pieces of my business to this Cloud, to that Cloud, to the next Cloud. But it’s really just the outsourcing of my technology. I no longer care about running my server. I no longer care about running the applications. I just want to consume the applications.”

And with the advent of these disruptive technologies including Cloud, Big Data and software-defi ned and converged infrastructures, the face of today’s datacentre has changed, according to Zerto director Asia Pacifi c and Japan, Andrew Martin.

“We are what I would call born in a software-defi ned virtualised age so on the surface we do replication, business continuity, fail over, but we do it very differently because we do it based on how IT is going today,” Martin said. “I’m interested to know where the industry is going because I don’t even really know what a datacentre is anymore because it’s not the same as I remember it. It’s changing rapidly and it’s not even a physical thing anymore.”

Martin said with the advent of Cloud and its infl uence on the datacentre there is a growing appetite for new and different technologies – and ultimately changing the customer’s buying behaviour, allowing more freedom and fl exibility.

“Because of how Cloud technology is evolving, it may be driven by the likes of Google, AWS, you can buy it with hyper converged appliances and you don’t need to plan. You can expand and shrink and you can buy for a few hundred

ATTENDEES

Danny Price (Brennan IT),

Andrew Martin (Zerto),

Ken Lowe (Canberra

Data Centres), Leo Lynch

(Huawei), Stuart Mills

(CenturyLink), Steve

Martin (NEXTDC), Jennifer

O’Brien (ARN), Jason

Rylands (DPSA), Nathan

Lowe (ASI Solutions),

Andrew Sylvester (APC

by Schneider Electric),

Cam Wayland (Channel

Dynamics), Chris

Player (ARN), Ian Deane

(Independent Data

Solutions)

SHRINKAGE AND EXPANSIONThere is both expansion and shrinkage taking place in the datacentre market with smaller enterprise-owned datacentres seeking guidance on how to reduce their footprint (mainly driven by the Cloud), while large collocation providers are seeing huge growth.

While the perception is that there is an escalation in the number of datacentres across Australia, this just isn’t the case, according to DPSA northern region manager and datacentre practice manager, Jason Rylands. DPSA is a distributor of infrastructure products to the reseller, contractor and collocation market.

“The number of datacentres in Australia is decreasing. In 2010, there were around 90,000 servers and datacentres. In 2015, there are about 60,000. We are actually seeing a decrease in the amount of datacentres. We’re starting to see the small/medium enterprises starting to consolidate and aggregate and move away from offi ce space style 10 to 20 rack infrastructure into either collocation, managed

service provider, or even dedicated facilities,” Rylands said, highlighting the trend.

“Back in 2010, the average datacentre server room that we used to provide was around 10 to 20 racks with an average of eight to 10. Most customers that we’re now talking to with channel partners are looking at one to two racks because they’re taking their infrastructure and putting it into collocation facilities, or choosing a software-as-a-service model. They’ve kicked out some of their CRMs and ERPs and are moving to a SaaS type model and they’re moving out to collocation so that there’s hybridisation – some in-house and some at collocation is happening.”

NEXTDC general manager, national channels, NSW sales, Steve Martin, agreed the datacentre business is reducing in terms of the number of datacentres, but said the fl oor space to datacentres and the capacity is increasing. He said the journey to the Cloud is driving innovation, providing fl exibility and freedom to customers, as well as opening up new market opportunities.



dollars paid capacity for half an hour – and that’s the big difference with the technology behind it. Some of those technologies – including software defi ned – have made that difference.”

DATACENTRE DYNAMICSWhat is the next generation datacentre? Analysts and industry experts talk about the impact of software-defi ned technology, mobility, Cloud provisioning and increased automation on the datacentre. Roundtable attendees offered up some key insights on the relationship between Cloud, on-premise and collocation.

Discussing the next generation datacentre, and explaining how it is a datacentre ecosystem, APC by Schneider Electric, sales manager, datacentre software, Pacifi c, Andrew Sylvester, said there are three legs on the stool: Cloud, on-premise and collocation.

“It’s about an application moving model or application development model. You’ll see a greater emphasis on application development. The application developers, whether they are in big corporate companies or small three to four man developers will say, ‘The outcome I’m driving from this application is X; is it better to serve it up on a Cloud platform, do I host it in-house in my own infrastructure or do I collocate that technology?’”

Adding another layer, CenturyLink country manager, Stuart Mills, said there was a fourth leg on the stool, which he described as the “whole hybrid

Mid-market partners get realChannel Dynamics director, Cam Wayland, said mid-market resellers had to make some tough

choices – important decisions about where they sit in the Cloud ecosystem and what role they want

to play, which is daunting.

“A number of mid-market resellers are really struggling with that transition from what their

business model was and having to make some really hard decisions. Do I go collocation and put all

of my infrastructure there and manage it; do I shut down the 20 or 30 racks that I have on-premise?

How do I actually manage that and how do I make that sellable and believable to my clients so that

they’ll stick with me on this journey to the Cloud,” he said.

Sadly, many mid-market resellers are “going through the cash flow valley of death,” Wayland

said, where they’ve invested in building the infrastructure, have to continually purchase and upgrade

equipment, but cannot recoup the investment given the lower-cost billing consumption model.

“I’ve got 60 days before I start billing and then I’ve got another 30 days before I get my cash

back, so how am I actually going to make this work? That’s the biggest issue that we’re seeing.

For partners who started that journey a long time ago, that’s okay. It’s the transition that causes

the pain point and it’s the inflection point for the industry. Those that are well down the path now,

great; those that are starting today, they’ve got some really, really hard decisions to make and it

comes back to the tools, the vendors that they go with, the infrastructure, the datacentre providers

that they’re actually going to go with, even the carriers that they’re going to work with because

Cloud doesn’t work without partnerships with the telecommunication providers.”

Indeed, tough questions need to be answered by partners like never before, he said. Partners

need to make a transition check-list and decide their value add.

“If you’re a mid-market reseller, you have to make some real decisions whether you build and

run the datacentre and you operate it yourself, which takes a completely different skill set from

selling on premise IT and managed professional services. The business model is different. You

have to decide whether you start reselling some of the public Cloud providers and making margins.

Do you have the orchestration tools to go out and manage that along with the SLAs that the

customer is requesting for that, and if they have to move workloads or expand that can you, as the

reseller, actually do that? Because you’re now responsible for actually delivering this rather than

the legal responsibility being on the customer,” he said. “If I’m running it myself where am I going

to actually run it? Is it actually colocation? Do I build it and have my own physical infrastructure?

Am I actually good at doing that? Can I be competitive not just now but into the future considering

the cost of compute when I have to refresh the equipment?”

NEXTDC’s Steve Martin said the biggest challenge facing resellers is getting the balance right –

and taking the steps to transition to a services revenue model and relying less on reselling product.

“The biggest challenge facing the channel is to give up the drug of revenue and convert it to the

oxygen of profit. Profit is what it’s all about at the end of the day. Vendors get paid on revenue. But

our partners, our integrators, the service providers, live or die on the profit. Now, you can be a

far more successful business generating a quarter of the revenue today than you did yesterday

because you’re making 20, 30, 40, 50 points on integration services rather than three, four or five

points on reselling product.”

IMAGES: Nathan Lowe (ASI Solutions), Jason Rylands (DPSA)

STEP 1: 1.5 HOUR ON-SITE REVIEW

A DPSA data centre professional does a joint visit with you to your client’s site to undertake a review of the IT & data centre infrastructure.

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IT conversation.” Mills said the evolution of the datacentre is a transformative journey that will require a combination of on-premise and Cloud functionality.

“I’m very interested in talking about where we in this country are heading in terms of the appetite for hybrid IT, and also the evolution of the datacentre from a purely physical device 10 years ago to this kind of Cloud-enabled interaction technology suite that’s happening now.”

On the hybrid front, companies want a comprehensive hybrid Cloud model and need help from partners to advise, migrate and manage services, Mills said. Many Cloud investments are being done in parallel with existing on-premise infrastructure and as the market matures the hybrid approach will be more strategic for CIOs.

“Companies are not going to go from on-premise to Cloud over night. Even if they do that for one application, they certainly won’t do it for their entire portfolio. If you’re a CIO and you’re thinking about these new agile ways of delivering outcomes, Cloud isn’t the only way. Collocation and the good old datacentre still has a really important role to play and it’s growing and there’s capacity coming online in this country just to serve that market. But even collocation isn’t great when the company doesn’t want to run its own equipment anymore or doesn’t want to manage it anymore. Certain Cloud providers are not built for resilience; that’s not their

key selling point,” he said.He said many businesses are

fearful of moving from on-premise to the Cloud. “I’m going to be very reluctant to move production applications from on-premise to Cloud with certain providers. So what are my middle steps? My middle steps are collocation where I outsource the cooling and power and physical reliability, but I now still maintain control of my servers, which is still in-house and the onus and burden on the IT department.”

And while many industries are afraid to wholeheartedly journey to the Cloud and/or opt for collocation, some segments of industry and public sector are embracing these new and disruptive technologies with gusto. Canberra Data Centres (CDC) founder and chairman, Ken Lowe, said government was told back in 2008 “to get things out of the cupboards and to consolidate.” CDC delivers security, service, reliability and environmental outcomes to the datacentre.

“The federal government have executed on that extremely well. There were steps in place to start getting rid of IT on-premise. Now that’s been a long process; it’s been seven years. But they are starting to see the benefi ts of doing that internally. The federal government taking the lead is quite exceptional because normally they’re very, very slow,” Lowe said. “Corporate IT has got the same mentality; they’re starting to grab the concept where they might put

their IT requirements in certain places, where they know the risks, they want the uptime, their data is important, and rather than having the cost of trying to manage their own mini datacentre, they outsource, which is cost-effective.”

Additionally, the green message is also powerful and important in the datacentre environment, and resonating with many businesses, Lowe added. Businesses are making investments in the effi cient use of power and cooling so that their energy consumption per unit of computing power is much lower.

CDC’s drive to reduce its carbon footprint and water consumption at every opportunity includes the adoptions of modern standards including AS/NZS ISO 14001:2004 – Environmental Management Systems and NABERS for datacentres. CDC also provides green reporting for its clients.

Indeed, the ‘green datacentre’, but also the improved cost savings and process effi ciencies thanks to the latest technology solutions in the datacentre are striking a chord in select vertical markets, DPSA’s Rylands said, highlighting the progressive efforts in the hospital sector, in particular.

Customers in healthcare (with hospitals leading the way) are particularly attracted to the collocation story, Rylands said, adding the big selling point is the freedom of being able to focus on the core business rather than having to worry about IT management and associated high-costs.

IMAGES:Danny Price (Brennan

IT), Stuart Mills (Century

Link), Ian Deane

(Independent Data

Solutions)

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“A conversation I have quite often with a hospital is, ‘what is your role? Is your role to run a datacentre or is your role to run a hospital and patient care? A lot of these conversations come down to, ‘what is your business? Is your business running a datacentre? If it’s not, then you really should be putting it into purpose built facilities with the right type of infrastructure to give you a managed-always-on approach,’” Rylands said.

“One of the biggest things is a ‘managed-always-on’ approach. There are tier III datacentres with a disaster recovery type premise, but people are actually moving towards having an always-on approach. They don’t ever want to go to disaster recovery; they’re going to more of an active/active type approach. We’re seeing this with the large end of town – banking, fi nance, insurance – and we’re starting to see that with the healthcare providers as well.”

Brennan IT general manager, service delivery, Danny Price said customers are moving quickly into the Cloud.

“Every customer we’re talking to is moving into a Cloud, whether it be public or private; it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t hurt. It depends upon where their workloads are and what part of the workloads they’re looking for them to move.” One size does not fi t all and customers need help from a service provider to leverage the Cloud through a range of solutions that can be tailored for each business, Price said.

Certainly, customers are more accepting of handing over control of the datacentre to outside parties. It’s no secret that the most time consuming task is the day-to-day management of IT – and so more and more customers are asking for help in supporting their IT needs, he added.

ASI Solutions general manager, Nathan Lowe, agreed businesses today are more accepting of handing over control to a managed service provider or datacentre provider – and he said the on-premise days are numbered.

“There’s more of an acceptance from the corporates to outsource a lot of those functions to lead their IT teams to focus on bigger issues [like Big Data]. It is all about taking away the constant contact with end-users within their organisations so they can do the strategic planning around what applications they can put into the Cloud or into the datacentre. What can I get rid of from an on-premise? Eventually we’ll all be there in fi ve years where on premise will be a thing of the past.”

MARKET CHALLENGESBuilding the datacentre of the future and adopting the latest disruptive technologies doesn’t come without a unique set of challenges. APC by Schneider Electric’s Sylvester said a big concern for many businesses is data collection and data sovereignty: where does the data reside, who owns the data, who has responsibility, and what are the privacy and compliance issues?

“Customers today are challenged with three key things. One is

the data collection and whether they have a data strategy, which includes Cloud, on premise, datacentre and collocation. A big challenge is how to standardise data and metrics across all three platforms,” Sylvester said.

“Secondly, they are using multiple different tool sets to try and get some data analytics on that

IMAGES:Left: Cam Wayland

(Channel Dynamics);

Right: Nathan Lowe

(ASI Solutions), Andrew

Sylvester (APC by

Schneider Electric), Steve

Martin (NEXT DC)

Cloud and colo – the dynamic duoTo build or not to build? That is the question at the

centre of discussion at the datacentre roundtable.

NEXTDC’s Steve Martin said there’s a crucial

relationship between Cloud, collocation and

the datacentre.

“The channel’s role is Cloud plus collocation.

It’s not build your own channel, there are plenty of

channel partners that do build their own and we’re

very supportive of that and we’ve got a lot of channel

Clouds in our business. But if you’re just selling Cloud,

you’re missing the collocation opportunity. If you’re just

selling colo, you’re missing the Cloud opportunity. It’s

about those integrators, those service providers, who

are able to understand that the customer has needs

to be on bleeding edge for this application or for this

service or for this process and it needs to be in that

Cloud or this Cloud or that Cloud, but also understand

that they’re running Solaris and they’re running old

mainframe systems or mid-range systems that are

legacy and they need to manage that as well,” he said.

“It’s the integrator that can manage all of the

customer’s compute that ultimately will be strategic to

those customers for the next 10 years. Because they’ll

migrate each of those workloads to whatever the new

version of that is going to be, Cloudify, Cloud workloads

or private Cloud workloads, dedicated, non-dedicated,

whatever it might be. But if you don’t get the Cloud

and colo or Cloud and legacy, if you want to use that

term, then you’re missing the strategic future of your

relationship with that customer.”

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Breakout workshops and roundtables: Barracuda APC Microsoft One-on-one Meetings Lunch Breakout workshops and roundtables: HP Webroot Veeam Breakout workshops and roundtables: Telstra Toshiba One-on-one Meetings

Dinner under the Stars

DAY 3 Keynote presentation by Bernie Brookes- Myer CEO (rtd) VMware plenery session

Breakout workshops and roundtables: Acronis NEXTDC IBM

EDGE Cup + Additional Activities

BBQ Dinner

DAY 4 One-on-one meetings and morning attendee departure



information so they can present a valid business case to the executive to either invest or not invest or divest some of those things. There’s a data analytics challenge or a data mining challenge. Thirdly, how do they use that data to enhance their offering to their customer? It’s all about creating revenue profi t or customer satisfaction with the data that you’ve got access to, whether it’s a bank or a retail provider.”

Privacy and compliance issues and uncertainties continue to plague many customers, according to DPSA’s Rylands, who said the Big Data piece of the equation is equally confusing.

“There are a lot of things coming around privacy and compliance in terms of grabbing this data. Are you informing your customers what data you are gathering, and what’s the compliance around that? There’s going to be, if not already, some compliance that will come out around that,” he said.

Ineffi ciency and waste are other challenges, he added. “There’s also a huge amount of potential waste and ineffi ciency in terms of storage because if you take Big Data, an awful lot of it is pulled from public sources. It’s Facebook, social media, it’s publicly available data (and whether it should be private is another matter). You have multiple companies that are pulling the same massive data pools and pulling it into their own datacentres. So how many times is the same data being pulled down and analysed over and over again?”

NEXTDC’s Martin agreed the

Big Data discussion – and even the Internet of Things (IoT) – is now inexplicably linked with the datacentre discussion.

“The Big Data piece is a large part of where the datacentre world is going. We’ve heard anecdotally about this Internet of Things [IoT]. IoT is going to drive the number of data points by 200 times what we have today in terms of humans in the world. And so the Big Data number crunching, when you walk past a shop with a mobile phone, that gets crunched. Every interaction that we will do in fi ve or 10 years’ time with every device, with our car, with the parking station, with everything, will be data that will be mineable, consumable and usable.

“As you start to think about that, the biggest customer in the datacentre is not actually people, it’s going to be things, it’s going to be devices that are talking natively to the datacentre in Flash storage and into all the other bits and pieces, but how you crunch that and how you turn that from data to information, that’s a very, very big challenge. It’s a challenge that there’s only a very, very small number of people that I think are trying to work on today.”

In addition to Big Data issues, another top challenge is the fact that power is shifting amongst businesses internally, with the IT department often not the power broker. Often times the CMO has a bigger budget than the CIO, according to Huawei channel sales

director, Leo Lynch, who said the IT department is commonly mandated by upper management to outsource.

“For the IT person, about 60 to 70 per cent of their budget is keeping the lights on. So let’s outsource that. Let’s give that to the datacentres. You guys can do it better than what they can do it in-house and let’s try to use our money to add value back to the business because that’s what is being driven down on top of them. And they don’t want the CMO to take control. It’s all about the politics within these organisations.”

Indeed, there are changing

IMAGES:Ken Lowe (Canberra Data

Centres), Steve Martin

(NEXTDC)

Flash in the pan?A top technology making headway in the datacentre

is the advent of Flash technology, according to

Independent Data Solutions (IDS) director, Ian Deane,

who said he is surprised by the lack of acceptance.

“I just can’t believe why the Flash technology hasn’t

been reabsorbed much more readily. It is great for

reducing costs, reducing power consumptions, and

ideal for the datacentre, yet I don’t see it being taken on

board wholeheartedly,” Deane said.

The Australian value-added distributor, which was

founded in 2004, now has offices in Sydney, Brisbane

and Canberra and is close to expanding to Melbourne.

Deane said he is surprised how many of the

resellers aren’t open to selling the new and disruptive

technologies in the datacentre. “We focus very niche

in what we propose to our resellers. I would like to

understand why the resellers do not take on board

new technologies. They actually won’t sell that to

their customers; they only sell to customers what the

customers are asking to buy. That’s why they won’t

push out the new technologies.”

He said the business case for flash is attractive, but

not well known.


27ROUNDTABLE

datacentre disruption

where they’re heading. From a datacentre perspective, if you’re not looking at your energy footprint then you should be,” he said.

But Zerto’s Martin has a different take on the matter, saying customers have no choice but to evolve – or else erupt and get left behind.

“I don’t think the customer is driving it at all; I think customers are being dragged along. They’ve got no choice. It’s only going one way and any IT director that turns around and says, ‘I’m going to keep my ‘everything on-premise’ is living in Cloud la la land. He doesn’t have the choice.”

But the industry at times “gets carried away with itself,” said NEXTDC’s Martin, adding many businesses have not bought into the future of the datacentre or adopted the overall Cloud promise and vision. He said many companies are still running mid-ranged technology for the core of the business and none of it is “cloudifi able”.

“There are going to be critical business processes that customers will run for some time that are in the lovely category called legacy. As an industry we’re driving customers kicking and screaming into the Cloud and into the new way of doing things, and into all of these vendor names that did not exist fi ve years ago.

“I have no doubt that that is the future, but the journey to the future takes a lot longer for actual real life customers who aren’t 100 per cent subscribed to our process, to our marketing plans, to our value problem.”

IMAGES:Leo Lynch (Huawei),

Andrew Martin (Zerto)

dynamics with the role of the CIO, CMO and CFO all facing evolving roles, and the Capex versus the Opex budget is driving all of these conversations.

But conversations are building. APC by Schneider Electric’s Sylvester said he is talking to more and more IT managers today given the urgent need to plan and adopt the next generation datacentre.

“I’m talking to more IT managers today about datacentre infrastructure than what I was even three years ago. It used to be a facilities management discussion, but now it seems to be more driven by the IT demand,” he said, adding that this a golden opportunity for resellers to help with the data management piece.

“There’s a whole other channel, which is what I call the manager and electrical contractors. These people are having more and more infl uencing power around some of the IT decisions,” he said. “It’s not only the IT resellers; it’s also this other part of that channel, which is the electrical mechanical management consultant area.”

And like the changes in the datacentre, Zerto’s Martin said the CIO is facing a brave new world thanks to the game-changing technologies like Cloud, Big Data and IoT. “The CIO’s job is actually changing because managing IT is not really a part of it – that’s the datacentre provider’s job and you don’t need to know about that anymore. Things like the Internet of Things actually start to become relevant for them because they’re

looking at how they can improve workfl ow. Can we spot how people walk around the offi ce? How can I improve space utilisation? All of this is being done through data that is being collected. So their job is changing because, at the end of the day, the datacentre is still important but for resellers and for IT managers it’s going to be something that they don’t do anymore. That’s what I see happening. Businesses are saying, ‘Let’s hand it over and let’s focus on the applications.”

FUTURE MOVESHuawei’s Lynch discussed the future of the datacentre and what that means for the ICT industry. It is no longer about logistics and moving product – it is about adding value.

“The future for partners is adding value and not owning the datacentre, but how do they add value to their customers and how do they also provide as-a-service. It’s all being driven by the end-user the way they want to consume IT. It’s all the consumption model, and being driven by their fi nances.”

ASI Solutions’ Lowe agreed the datacentre of the future is being driven by the customer.

“The customer is being driven by a combination of factors. It’s privacy. That is a big concern from a customer point of view, but the topic of energy effi ciency is also very important. Customers are a lot savvier about their carbon footprint and usage. Knowledge is power. They do a lot more research before they enter into agreements and they want to know

28INTERVIEWveritas


Julia Talevski (JT): What will

you be focusing on initially?

Mark Nutt (MN): With our vision and strategic objectives, we want to make sure that we’re covering the market in an effective way. We are building a channel to help us get scale and reach in the market.

It’s also important to think about customer choice and value. We recognise that we’ve serviced a lot of our customers around on-premise capability, but many of our customers want to move to a managed service or a Cloud-based service, although we’ve got partners that can provide that, there’s an opportunity for us to expand.

We’ve achieved some solid growth numbers around Veritas and the third layer of our strategy is profi table growth. When

we think about the customer lifecycle, it’s about understanding where our partners play in that customer lifecycle and making sure that we understand the role of our partner, and that we measure and reward it effectively.

JT: How have you been communicating

to your partners about the changes

that Veritas is undergoing with the

split away from Symantec?

MN: We’ve just gone through the sales separation in April, and we’re heading towards operational separation in October, then legal separation towards the end of the year.

We had our worldwide sales conference in US, which was an opportunity for our

teams to hear from our chiefs. Some of our partners heard directly about our strategy, commitment and our plan.

We had about 150 partners that joined us in Orlando and they were very excited about us bringing back the Veritas brand. For a lot of our partners, the Veritas brand represents a strong channel commitment and an opportunity to grow.

One of the best practices that we’re sharing is monthly calls and talking directly to our partners around our strategy and plan and the progress that we’re making.

We’ve also been running partner councils – globally and regionally, and we continue to leverage our advisory councils so that we’re hearing the right messages from our partners on how we’re doing.

When recently appointed Veritas head of global channel, Mark Nutt, was in Sydney, he sat down

with ARN’s JULIA TALEVSKI and spoke about the company’s strategy since its planned spin

off from Symantec’s information management business. He also talked about where he sees

partner opportunities for 2015. Nutt joined Symantec in 2011 to lead its EMEA strategy and

sales operations team and was previously the general manager for a channel partner, Morse.

To page 30

Kevin AckhurstGoogle for Work

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30INTERVIEWveritas

JT: What has been the feedback

from your partners so far?

MN: The feedback has been positive. We talked about our partner program, which we set up to reward growth, increase capability and commitment.

We shared our vision with our partners around information management. When we think about our customers, they are looking to improve some of their key business services and increase their overall productivity. The message we’re sharing is that it isn’t about infrastructure management, that’s shifting to information management.

Some of the messages that we share with our teams and partners are around getting them to think about the data they are storing – 69 per cent of the data that customers are storing, has very limited value. When you think about information management – what do I have, where is it? What’s the business value of it? Once you start to understand the true value of the information, then you can make better and informed decisions about what you want to store and where you want to store it. That could be on-premise and in the Cloud.

JT: Will there be any impact on partner

investments as a result of the split?

MN: We’re protecting their investment and what we’ve been sharing with our partners is that we’re going to continue with the framework of the program. Like all things, it will evolve over time.

Partners that have gone through the validation process with us, that have met the revenue goals and technical criteria till the end of our fi scal year (March 2016), will be protected in terms of their status and commercial terms with us.

At that point, as we go through the operational and legal separation, we’ll further think about our strategy, program and how it may evolve.

Our programs are very focused around growth, capability and commitment. For the partners that have stepped up with us over the past 12 to 18 months, we want to give them the opportunity to get a strong return on their investment.

JT: Where do you see the opportunities for

partners in the market?

MN: We have a strategy around services that will be partner led. We are building great technology and we have a very strong roadmap that will take us forward. But, beyond that, we rely on our partners and their service capability to deliver value to our customers.

Our partners are working with us around support. It’s a technology that has great margins and partners can build their services around it. In regards to our product roadmap, we’ve delivered some strong releases on our existing products and the NetBackup 5330 is our strongest appliance offering in the market to date.

Our roadmap is looking at a number of new products through information availability, backup and recovery, and information intelligence.

In the near-term our Information Map, presents a tremendous opportunity for our partners and it’s very closely linked to the messaging that we’re talking about in terms of information management. For customers that are using our backup technology, it gives us the opportunity to understand the data they have and how to map that.

Another exciting development we’re bringing to market is the Veritas Resiliency Platform (VRP). We’re taking

that technology beyond the private Cloud and starting to think about how we deliver solutions, in the hybrid or public Cloud environments. You’ll see us launch VRP in the mid-term.

JT: Where do you see some of your growth

coming from?

MN: We have seen very strong growth around our appliances business with purpose-built back-up appliances, which is an integrated hardware and software stack focused on providing an enterprise level back-up and recovery solution for customers. We entered that market three or four years ago and we are now signifi cantly taking market share. Many of our partners have helped us achieve that growth. In the next six to nine months we expect to be the market leader.

Compliance is also another area where we expect to drive growth in the mid- to long term.

JT: How do you see the Australian market in

comparison to other markets?

MN: It’s the fi rst time I’ve been in Australia and it’s an opportunity to meet with customers and partners. I’m meeting with the team as well. We’ve got a tremendous customer lists and have some of the strongest partners in the region.

From page 28

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32MARKET REPORTSmobility, tablets, security

CYBER ATTACKS TRIGGER SECURITY MARKET REVENUE RISEJAMES HENDERSON

A cross the worldwide security appliance market, both factory revenues and unit shipments

continued to grow in the fi rst quarter of 2015 (1Q15), as cyber attacks become increasingly sophisticated.

That’s according to IDC, which claims that worldwide vendor revenues increased 7.5 per cent year over year to $US2.3 billion, marking the 22nd consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

Unit shipments expanded to 526,767 and grew 9.4 per cent year-over-year for the sixth consecutive quarter of volume growth.

Compared to the fourth quarter of 2014, both revenues and shipments declined in 1Q15, falling – 12.8 per cent and 12.6 per cent respectively.

“Today’s threat environment is extremely dynamic and continues to change exponentially,” says Ebenezer Obeng-Nyarkoh, senior research analyst, Worldwide Trackers Group, IDC.

“The growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks has created an environment where integrating disparate security solutions is required to protect sensitive business and personal information, as well as to safeguard national security.”

Regionally speaking, Asia/Pacifi c (excluding Japan)(APeJ) captured 18.2 per cent of worldwide revenues in 1Q15 and gained 0.4 points share year over despite a

net loss of 4.5 points sequentially.The regional experienced solid year-

over-year revenue growth of 9.8 per cent, largely driven by Huawei in China.

VENDORSCisco continued to lead the overall security appliance market with 17.6 per cent share in vendor revenue. Growing at 8.8 per cent year over year, Cisco gained 0.2 share points year over year and 1.0 points compared to the previous quarter.

Check Point remained the no.2 security appliance vendor with double-digit revenue growth of 12.2 per cent year-over-year revenue, despite a decline of 11.3 per cent sequentially. It ended the quarter with 13.4 per cent worldwide revenue share and gained 0.2 share points

sequentially and 0.5 points year-over-year.Since entering the top 5 in the second

half of 2013, Palo Alto Networks has consistently grown its revenues faster than the overall market.

In 1Q15, Palo Alto Networks grew its revenue 54.3 per cent year-over-year with a net gain of 2.9 share points when compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Fortinet was the no.4 vendor with worldwide market share of 8.3 per cent, resulting in a net gain of 0.7 share points sequentially and 1.3 points year over year.

Fortinet maintained the same year-over-year revenue growth as last quarter, expanding 27.4 percent to $191 million.

Blue Coat rounded out the top 5 vendor list with 4.7 per cent revenue share despite a net loss of 0.3 share points year-over-year.

Vendor 1Q15Revenue

1Q15Market Share

1Q14Revenue

1Q14Market Share

1Q15/1Q14Growth

1. Cisco $404 17.6% $371 17.4% 8.8%

2. Check Point $307 13.4% $274 12.9% 12.2%

3. Palo Alto Networks $218 9.5% $141 6.6% 54.3%

4. Fortinet $191 8.3% $150 7.0% 27.4%

5. Blue Coat $107 4.7% $107 5.0% 0.2%

Others $1,064 46.5% $1,088 51.1% -2.2%

TOTAL $2,291 100% $2,131 100% 7.5%

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Security Appliance Revenue, First Quarter of 2015 (revenues in US$ millions)

TABLET AND 2-IN-1 MARKET SLUMPS BUT IDC SAYS THERE ARE SIGNS OF LIFEMIKE GEE

T he Australian market for tablet and 2-in-1 took a massive hit in the fi rst quarter of 2015,

according to analyst IDC. However, there are apparently still signs of life despite the disappointing quarter.

IDC found 2015 Q1 shipments of tablets and 2-in-1s totalled 770,752 units

in Australia – a 40 per cent quarter-on-quarter decline.

The analyst company said whilst a seasonal slump in Q1 is customary, the magnitude of this decline was steeper than expected. Shipment decline of 25 per cent year-on-year (YoY) further reinforced the reality of a slow-down in demand for

this product category.However, drilling down into the

segments revealed some positive signs. Whilst consumer shipments declined by 27 per cent YoY, commercial shipments increased by a modest 1.2 per cent YoY.

IDC said mobile work-force such as fi eld-police and hospital doctors To page 34

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34MARKET REPORTSmobility, tablets, security

MOBILE PHONE MARKET GROWS; PHABLETS INCREASINGLY POPULAR: IDCMIKE GEE

T he mobile phone market in Australia experienced a strong fi rst quarter despite a high penetration

rate, according to analyst IDC.The company said 2.32 million units of

mobile phones were shipped into Australia in 2015 Q1. This was a drop of 22 per cent quarter-on-quarter. However, this was to be expected when taking into account seasonality and excess channel inventory.

When compared year-on-year (YoY), IDC said the overall mobile phone market in Australia grew by 29.2 per cent. Much of this growth was attributed to the continued popularity of Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Momentum was also seen in entry-level smartphones such as the Telstra Tempo and Rush, with both phones selling below $100.

Mobile phone operators ran aggressive marketing campaigns to stimulate re-contract and new business. The main value-proposition driving the promotions was increased data-allowance across

different price-plans. Several fl agship models also became available at a cheaper monthly-plan, including the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8. This pre-emptive move was to accommodate for the new fl agship launches of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 in 2015 Q2.

“Phablet adoption in Australia was catalysed by the introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus. Market share of phablets

grew from 9 per cent in 2014 Q3 to 38 per cent n 2014 Q4,” IDC market analyst, Joseph Hsiao, said.

“Growth of phablets continued in 2015 Q1, reaching a market share of 41 per cent. More phablet models are coming to Australia this year, including the Microsoft Lumia 540XL and LG G4. By the end of 2015, one in two smartphones sold in Australia are likely to be a phablet.”

“PHABLET ADOPTION IN AUSTRALIA WAS CATALYSED BY THE INTRODUCTION OF THE IPHONE 6 PLUS”

IDC’S JOSEPH HSIAO

Vendor Group 2014Q1 Market Share 2015Q1 Market Share YoY Unit Growth (%) 2015Q1Apple 38% 49% 66%

Samsung 40% 31% -1%

Telstra 2% 3% 87%

Microsoft 4% 3% -6%

HTC 4% 3% -3%

could experience signifi cant productivity benefi t from using mobile devices. Tasmania police’s pilot of Acer Iconia (2-in-1) was testimony to this statement. A total of 37 devices managed to save the police force 280 hours and $2600 over a period of six weeks.

ENTERPRISE ADOPTIONPopularity of tablets and 2-in-1s is not restricted to the mobile workforce alone.

Enterprise adoption of Microsoft Surface Pro 3 gained traction in 2015 Q1. Growth potential for small businesses is also high due to the recent Federal budget announcement, according to the analyst.

The asset tax write-off threshold increased from $1000 to $20,000, which expanded the wallet-size of the small business buyer. Although purchase is not restricted to technology, increased

affordability and utility of mobile devices may drive uptake.

“Opportunities that exist in the enterprise market are real and growing. The high-profi le partnership between Apple and IBM is a strategic move to capture a slice of this pie,” IDC Australia market analyst, Joseph Hsiao, said.

“Android for Work is Google’s attempt to break into the enterprise market. On top of that, there is the incumbent player Microsoft and their soon-to-be-released Windows 10. It will be interesting to see how the play unveils.”

Apple and Samsung still dominate the Australian tablet market with a combined market share of over 75 per cent. Local vendor, Pendo, is struggling to sustain its outstanding performance from the second half of 2014, as competition is fi erce in the low-price range devices.

Australia’s Smartphone shipment by Vendor

“ENTERPRISE ADOPTION OF MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO 3 GAINED TRACTION IN 2015 Q1”

Segment Group 2013 Market Share 2014 Market Share 2015 Market ShareCommercial 11% 13% 15%

Consumer 89% 87% 85%

Australia’s Tablet/2-in-1 market share between Commercial and Consumer Segment

From page 32

Oh, how quickly the mighty fall. Sitting

high on the pedestal last year was

HTC with its One (M8), well above the

plastic-esque Galaxy S5 from Samsung.

A year on and the tables have turned. Of

all the flagships to launch in 2015, it’s HTC’s

One (M9) that leaves the sourest of tastes in

our mouth. It is cumbersome, expensive and

faltered by a camera generations behind.

Hope is not lost for HTC, which has

launched a revised version of last year’s

flagship, called the One (M8s), on the

Vodafone network. Unlike its predecessor, it

will work with the carrier’s 850MHz spectrum.

A number of differences have been made

to the One (M8s), though none of them are

visible on the outside. The smartphone

remains clad in hairline finished metal,

its year old build holding up well against

the march of time. We still fancy the shape

of the One (M8s) more than that of the

current flagship because it feels like it was

milled from a single aluminium block.

The M8s has the same screen as the

premium M9. It spans 5-inches, has a

1920x1080 resolution and a 441 pixel-per-

inch density. Coupled with the front-firing

and amplified BoomSound speakers, it

proves ideal for the playback of videos,

music and photos.

SORE POINTOne sore point let down last year’s

flagship and that was the low resolution

of the rear camera. HTC has tended to

this shortfall by equipping the M8s with a

larger 13 megapixel camera. The camera

outperforms its inexpensive rivals, even

though it has a slow autofocus and has a

tendency to overexpose photos. Consider

the M8s’ camera can blur the background

of photos and it grows more appealing.

The front camera was ahead of the

curve last year at 5 megapixels. Today

HTC ONE (M8S)

Better value for money than HTC’s flagship TONY IBRAHIM

it remains competitive, particularly

compared to the 4MP ultrapixel

camera of HTC’s current flagship.

Important changes have been made to

the computing hardware that better reflect

the M8s’ lower price. Both its Snapdragon

615 CPU and its Adreno 405 GPU are

less powerful than those featured in its

predecessor, but there is a silver lining.

Five years ago smartphones were

running early versions of Android

with a single processing core and the

industry marvelled over the technical

milestone. The One (M8s) has an octa-core

processor, combining a 1.7GHz quad-

core CPU with a 1GHz quad-core CPU.

The reality is any performance dip

during everyday tasks is not noticeable,

not even when the smartphone is in

the company of the One (M9).

Last year’s HTC One (M8) was powered

by a Snapdragon 801 processor, a quad-

core CPU clocked at 2.5GHz. The M8s opts

for an octa-core Snapdragon 615, which

combines a 1.7GHz quad-core CPU with

an economical 1GHz quad-core CPU. This

change means the M8s doesn’t have as

much computational power as the original

and its 3DMark ice storm extreme result

of 5383 stands testament to this.

The remaining hardware has been

inherited from the original M8, with 2GB of

RAM, 16GB of internal storage and support

for microSD cards up to 128GBs in size.

The final change made to the M8s has

to do with its battery. It is larger at 2840

milliamps-hour (mAh) and it has helped

maintain the strong battery results set by

the original M8. We used the One (M8s)

heavily over a one week period for phone

calls, texts and emails; for social networking

and video streaming; to play music and

take photos; and for some light gaming.

We found the One (M8s) held charge for one

day (24 hours and 30 minutes) on average.

A feature absent from the M8s is HTC’s

Sense TV, which lets the smartphone

double as an electronic program guide

and as a universal remote for home

entertainment systems. Although it was

present on 2014 HTC smartphones, it

looks to be discontinued in 2015 models.

Not even the application in which it was

based on, Peel Smart Remote, supports

the One (M8s), and that is truly a shame.

Walk into a Vodafone store and you’ll

see two phones. One is the M9, a metal

clad Android phone with stereo speakers

and a 5-inch screen priced from $65 a

month. The other is the M8s, a metal clad

Android phone with stereo speakers and

a 5-inch screen priced from $40 a month.

One of these smartphones is overpriced;

the other is exceptional value.

“IMPORTANT CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO THE COMPUTING HARDWARE THAT BETTER REFLECT THE M8S’ LOWER PRICE”

35FIRST-HAND

smartphones


Highlights from the Ingram Micro Experience 2015 in Sydney

All about the IM ExperienceThe Ingram Micro Experience 2015 made its way around Australia over the

past month or so – and ARN was the official media partner and sponsor

of the keynote speaker. The Sydney leg was held at Doltone House. A host

of speakers brought top level thought leadership to the table, and vendor

partners showcased their products, services and the latest technology.


36COMMUNITYout & about

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ACAPacificStorageCraft Australian Distributors:

AVAILABLE NOW FROM

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38COMMUNITYout & about38

President and Publisher: Susan Searle

[email protected]

EDITORIALEditorial Director: Mike Gee

[email protected]

Editor: Allan Swann

[email protected]

Associate Editor - Events: Jennifer O'Brien

[email protected]

Senior Journalists: Brian Karlovsky

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Hafizah Osman

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Journalists: Chris Player

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Art and design: Kate Dougan

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AD INDEX3CX 5Alloy Computers 33ASUS 17Dicker Data 7,31Diversified Communications 3DPSA 21.IBCGoogle 29

Intel 11Kyocera 13Lenovo OBCNEXTDC 23Qnap 15Storagecraft 37Toshiba OFC,IFC

The showcase at the Ingram Micro Experience 2015 in Sydney

was popular and busy!

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t | | 24 J 2015

Jacques TessonDPSA CEO

We are very proud to be sponsoring the ARN ICT Industry Awards again in 2015. As a specialist distributor of data centre infrastructure, the channel is at the centre of everything we do and we are really pleased to support this annual initiative from ARN.

DPSA is the data centre delivery partner for leading IT infrastructure vendors, service providers and data centre operators and our customers and partners benefit from the deep experience of our team in designing, delivering and implementing infrastructure for Data Centres.

These awards recognise the hard work and effort of so many organisations and individuals in the Australian ICT industry and we look forward to seeing you all in September and helping to celebrate the achievements of our customers, vendors and peers.


PROUD PLATINUM SPONSOR OF THE

ARN ICT INDUSTRY AWARDS 2015

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Lenovo’s new onshore troubleshooting service is designed to help you provide your customers with even better support. Based right here in Australia it means you can offer immediate assistance on all Lenovo Think products, with minimum disruption to your customers’ operations.

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All products and offers are subject to availability. Lenovo (Australia & New Zealand) Pty Limited ABN 70 112 394 411 reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time, without notice. Lenovo makes every effort to ensure accuracy of all information but is not responsible for any editorial, photographic or typographic errors. For full Lenovo product, service and warranty specifications visit www.lenovo.com. The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo,the Lenovo logo and For Those Who Do.

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ARN Next Gen Storage July 2015