SMEchannels June 10 Issue

SME BIZ /18

Microsoft: Your health is our prime concern

SME CHAT /32

“3 Ps have Created Magic for Us” VP Sajeevan of Canon

SME BIZ /38

Uniline: Its time to focus on channel market

Gigabyte Makes this Summer Interesting for the Partners /08PLUS

VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 04 | JUNE 2010 | RS. 25/-

www.smechannels.com

india’s first IT magazine for sme business

When the large orders were getting cancelled or deferred, SMEs had helped the vendors to keep their run-rate business on track. /20

IS

BEAUTIFUL’?

DO YOUALSO THINK

‘SMALL

1

Cover.indd 1 6/21/2010 7:22:49 PM

IN DEPTH /28

India Embraces UTM Technology More than Others

SME CHAT /34

“Globally, We are the Largest Manufacturer of HDDs”

SME BIZ /36

Adaptability is the mantra to thrive in the Market

Cyberstar Comes to the Rescue of HP ODD Business in India /12


PLUS

UNTIL CONSUMER MARKET TAKES OFF, WE CAN’T

FEEL GOOD

EDITORIAL

SANJAY [email protected]

Along with thousands of channel partners in Mumbai and all across India, the SME Channels family also mourns the death of Anees Khalfay of Radiant Technologies. Whatever reasons shroud his death, but his demise is untimely, especially when the market has almost crossed the bad times.

The buying at the govt. and enterprises space has already started but the visibility of the market movement will only come when there is consumer buying. So there is an inverted market movement. The enterprise class products are making normal movement whereas the products dependent on the mass market are slow to take off.

So, there is a requirement of huge push on the demand generation front, which apparently not vis-ible because of this month. Normally June month goes very low because of the year beginning assess-ment and budget allocation for the new financial year activities.

In the Delhi and NCR region, the Commonwealth games is driving a lot of investment in infra-structure building. Similarly, other cities either modernization of airports, state wide projects and networking across campuses of education institutes are driving the networking market.

Apart from the networking, there is a huge thrust on the security and storage technologies. Accessing information securely and storing it securely is what drives the effectiveness of any project. So, starting from the last issue till next issue, our focus is on the three segments – security, networking and stor-age. We are trying to bring out the focus of the vendors on the channel market because every vendor has almost entire basket of products, what is important for them is to engage the channel market by becoming transparent in their policy towards lead generation, education of partners, market develop-ment and pull creation. So in this issue, we are focusing more on the marketing and channel strategy than the technology. We also have touched upon the pain points of the partners to some extent.

There is no denying the fact that partners have issues with the vendors but on the other side, ven-dors also have problems with the partners in different forms. The primary issue is that the payment defaulters’ number is growing high. Of course, all the market issues are surfacing because of the finan-cial chocking at some point of the chain. Once the market comes to its full bloom, it will bring out solution with it. But, I will advise that one has to be very careful while going for any deal at least for next two quarters.

Seagate GoFlex Desk

MY EXPERIENCE

SPECIFICATIONS

Weighing only 2.38lb (1.08kg), the device is

very compact

FINAL WORDING

Available with 2 years warranty, it comes

in 2 capacities – 1TB and 2TB. So, if you are

a small organization, with Seagate GoFlex

Desk you can take back-up of your entire

office easily.

OVERALL RATING

SEAGATE GOFLEX desk, which is a part of its FreeAgent external hard drives family, is really different in terms of its connectiv-ity with the computing devices. Be it PC or MAC, this device can be connected with ease using traditional USB 2.0 interface. You can store or back up photos, movies, music and doc-uments, and retrieve as and when you wish to.

Either you use the standard USB 2.0 inter-face or upgrade to USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 by pairing the drive with the appropriate GoFlex upgrade adapter to instantly increase file transfer performance by up to 10x.

For the first time, Seagate includes an NTFS driver for Mac OS X on all GoFlex portable and desktop offerings, enabling storage and access of files from both Windows and Mac computers.

VOLUME 01 | ISSUE 04 | JUNE 2010 | RS. 25/-

www.smechannels.com

SME CHANNELSJUNE 2010

3

Edit.indd 3 6/21/2010 7:23:30 PM

contents

JUNEVolume 01issue 04

iNdEpthIndia Embraces UTM Technology More than Others /20

SME ChAtVP Sajeevan /32Director, Consumer system Products, Canon india

Khwaja Saifuddin /34Director sales – meA & south Asia, Western Digital

COVER

StORY

do you also think ‘Small is Beautiful’? /20

When the large orders were getting cancelled or deferred, smes had helped the vendors to keep their run-rate business on track.

editorial ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 03

snippets ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06

Products New launches ~~~~~~~~~ 17

Product Review ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 42

more inside

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Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra

Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury

Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza

Design and Development: Ravi Kumar

Visualizer: Manas Ranjan

Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary

MARkEtiNg

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Executive- Marketing: Rajat Kumar

Circulation and Printing: Panchanan Bhoi

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92, J.P.road, Andheri (West)

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SME BizYour health is our prime concern /18Health comes first for microsoft while designing a product and that too all the products are based on the feedback of the customers.

Adaptability is the mantra to thrive in the Market /36using esys sourcing and distribution ef-ficiencies, the company is able to offer much better TCo and value for money proposition to customer.

its time to focus on channel market /38Power backup market in india is growing at an annual rate of 15-20% varying within the three seg-ments – uPs, inverter and Generator.

SME CHANNelsJuNE 2010

4

2010


Helpdesk: 1800-209-3444 (Toll Free)E-mail: [email protected]/[email protected]

Website: http://www.digilink.in/www.digisol.com

AMD showcased First Fusion APUAMD, for the first time, dem-onstrated its Fusion processor, initiating the accelerated processing era. The AMD Fusion Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) represents a significant shift in processor architecture and

capabilities, combining high-performance serial computing and parallel graphics processing cores onto a single die to improve visual and data-intensive tasks that are pervasive in today’s computing environments. A video of today’s

demonstration can be found here.Rick Bergman, senior vice

president and general manager, AMD Products Group, provided an APU technology demonstra-tion during a press conference. This demonstration provided a

VMware unveiled the first of four VMware Partner Exchange 2010 EventsVMware unveiled the first of four VMware Partner Exchange 2010 events in India. Some 1,300 senior executives, sales professionals and technical specialists from top-tier partner organisations were updated over the course of the four events – in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai – on the latest VMware skills and knowledge to help customers make the journey to cloud computing. Along with other VMware Partner Exchange 2010 events in China, Australia, Japan and Singapore during May and June, Mumbai gathering formed part of the largest series of partner initiatives in VMware history, involving more than 2,500 individuals. The New Delhi event was staged on June 4, followed by Bangalore on June 8 and Chennai on June 11.

sneak peek into the upcoming seismic shift in the computing industry: power-efficient processors that combine CPU, GPU, video processing and other accelerator capabilities in a single-die design to efficiently power the most popular and demanding consumer experi-ences, from HD video applications to media-rich Internet experiences to DirectX 11 games. The AMD Fusion Family of APUs represent a distinctly powerful processing approach to the evolving digital consumer landscape, where more than 28 billion videos are watched each month online and a thousand pictures are uploaded to social networking sites every second.

“Hundreds of millions of us now create, interact with, and share intensely visual digital content,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Product Group. “This explosion in multimedia requires new applica-tions and new ways to manage and manipulate data. Low resolution video needs to be up-scaled for larger screens, HD video must be shrunk for smart phones, and home movies need to be stabilized and cleaned up for more enjoyable viewing. When AMD formally launches the AMD Fusion family of APUs, scheduled for the first half of 2011, we expect the PC experience to evolve dramatically.”


6

SNIPPETSfor more log on to smechannels.com

PRODUCT | CHANNEL | TELECOM | DATA COM

Snippets.indd 6 6/21/2010 7:25:41 PM

• IEEE 802.11 b/g compliant.• High density applications Access Point/Client Bridge/Client Router.

• Adjustable Transmit Output Power for user preferred selection.

• External Status LED, simplified network diagnostic and easy deployment.

• High gain integrated 7dBi Internal Antenna.

• Support high level wireless security that prevent unauthorized access.• Compact size and lightweight.

EAP-3660 11b/g

Wireless Multi-Client Bridge/AP/WDS

11b/g

Wireless Outdoor Client Bridge

EOC-5610

• IEEE 802.11a/b/g compliant.• High density applications: Access Point /Client Bridge/Client Router.

• High bandwidth up to 108Mbps with Super A/G mode.


• External Status LED, for best transmit and receive WiFi communication.

• Build-in 13dBi (5GHz) antenna & 5dBi (2.4GHz) antenna with EIRP @ 41dB that enable powerful long range coverage.

• Optional external antenna that enable flexible deployment.

11b/g

2.4GHz Wireless Outdoor AP/Client Bridge

ECB3500 11b/g

Wireless Multi-Function Client Bridge/AP

• IEEE802.11b/g compliant.• Supports Multi-SSID function.

• Universal Repeater.• Diversity support.

• Bandwidth selection.• WPA2/WPA/IEEE802.1x support.• Support Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) .

• IEEE 802.11b/g compliant. • Powerful features which consist of 7 + 1 multi-functions. • Support Multi-SSID function. • Detachable antenna that support flexible deployment. • High Speed Data Rate up to 108Mbps at Super G mode.

• Enhanced security features. • Antenna diversity support.

11a/b/g

Wireless Outdoor Client Bridge

• IEEE 802.11b/g compliant.• High density applications: Access Port/Client Bridge/Client Router.


• LED indicator for best transmit and receive WiFi communication.

• Integrated internal antenna with option to switch to external antenna.

• High speed transmit rate up to 108Mbps with Super G.• Supports WEP/WPA/WPA2/802.1x/L2 isolation.

EOC-2610

TelExcell Information Systems Ltd.F-7/C, Okhla Phase-I, New Delhi 110020Phone : +91-11-26814627, Fax: +91-11-46814621. Mobile: +91-9818659279Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] : www.telexcell.com

Routing | Switching | Security | Wireless | Video | VOIP | Storage | Access

TelExcell is Looking For Citywise Resellers in India for SENAO Products

Win Bikes and LCDs from HPHP India has launched an online contest - “Win With HP AiOs - It Pays you Back”. This contest enables the partners to answer three simple questions in order to stand a chance to win cool prizes such as bikes, LCDs, digicams and much more. Open till 30th June 2010 to all HP channel partners, the contest is about the newly launched LaserJet multifunction printers - HP LaserJet Pro M1136 MFP and M1213 MFP series with industry first technology innovations that not only contribute to the environment positively but also help in saving costs for the customers. The HP LaserJet is an investment that pays back the customer - saving the equivalent of its purchase price in less than two months, and from then on it never stops contributing to the business – both in bottom-line operations savings and in printing that delivers business-driving impact. For more log onto www.hp.com/in/win.

GIGABYTE MAKES THIS SUMMER INTERESTING FOR THE PARTNERSGigabyte Technology unveils the new version of its Gigabyte Channel Incentive Program titled “Gigabyte Summer Sensation” for its registered motherboard reseller partners in India.

Effective from April 1 - June 30, 2010, this scheme is open to all registered resellers who buy GIGABYTE

motherboards from authorized Gigabyte distributors in India i.e. Avnet (India), Ingram Micro, Redington (India) and Neoteric Infomatique. In Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Punjab and Chandigarh the scheme is valid only if the products are brought from Gigabyte Premium Partners. All quarterly claims must be submitted at Gigabyte office (Mumbai) by the reseller partners after the targets have been achieved.

This is the 5th consecutive channel incentive program from Gigabyte and it is designed to reward loyal reseller partners for their excellent sales performance over the quarter and to increase brand traction for Gigabyte in the channel during the promising peak summer buying season.

“We hope the attractive scheme will help expand our present base of registered motherboard reseller partners, especially in newer B, C and D class locations,” says Rajan Sharma, General Manager – MB, Gigabyte India.

A-DATA unveiled Total solutions at Computex 2010 A-DATA Technology has showcased the entire range of its products at Computex Taipei 2010. The company debuts its latest offerings to the world, including the new power supply product lines, high-performance DRAM modules, SATA 6 Gbps SSD with unrivaled transfer speed and the new-generation USB 3.0 Flash drives N002 and N005. Moreover, A-DATA also performed live demonstration for the visitors to experience the extreme performance of cutting-edge technology.

ATEN Showcased its Strength at COMPU-TEX 2010 ATEN has unveiled a variety of new technologies and products at Computex 2010. The technolo-gies included the intelligent Power Distribution Unit and a series of advanced Over the NET solutions for remote data center manage-ment. Furthermore, ATEN for the first time demonstrated the new Media Matrix solution, a combination of the 8x8 Cat5 A/V Matrix Switch and A/V over Cat 5 Extender.

“The launch of the VanCryst professional A/V solution series earlier this year has received positive feedback from the market. We believe this new product family will be one of the driving forces of ATEN’s sales growth of the year. ATEN also intends to maintain the leadership in the KVM market, ” says Kevin Chen, President of ATEN International.

EMS Data Centre-in-a-Box address the emerg-ing SME market Addressing a whole lot of verticals including the SMEs, Elliptical Mobile Solutions (EMS) launches its full range of data centre-in-a-box products. These vendor neutral, high-density, self-contained data centres include R.A.S.E.R.,a full-height (42U) MMDC, the C3.S.P.E.A.R., a half height (24U) MMDC and the S.P.E.A.R also a half-height, armoured (22U) MMDC. The Data Centre-in-a-Box technology provides more than 50% savings in data centre cooling costs due to EMS patented Closed Loop Cooling technology, thus enabling users to substantially reduce their overall energy consumption.

“India will not only see a surge in consumption of cloud services, driving

growth in domestic IT usage, but companies all over the world will

look to India to support their transition to cloud

computing.”STEVE BALLMER

CEO, MICROSOFT CORPORATION

MY POINT


8

SNIPPETS

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Advts.indd 11 4/21/2010 7:28:00 PM

Zhone Recognized as a Leading Global GPON VendorZhone Technologies announced that its port shipment year-over-year growth is at 4,580% from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010, thereby outpacing the industry average. The company saw rapid adoption of its MXK and zNID FTTx system in EMEA and CALA.

Further Zhone in India is distributed by TelExcell Information Systems Ltd. Partners can log on to www.telexcell. com to know more about Zhone offerings in India.

Netgear receives Another Accolade in IndiaNETGEAR wins another industry accolade in India. This time NCN has awarded them as most innovative product vendor for the year in managed switches’ category.

Speaking on the occasion, Atul Jain, Country Manager (India & SAARC), Netgear Technolo-gies India said, “Netgear is known for quality and innovation, and winning this award has boosted our confidence. This award signifies our continu-ous endeavour and commitment to give the best of products to our customers. We will continue to create best products to meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Kobian unveils a new Power Product SeriesKobian unveils their Power Product Series in India. Christened Mercury Elite 650 PRO UPS, this series is designed for corporate, small and medium business and home segment. Mercury Elite 650 UPS is inbuilt with wide input range of 140~300VAC and it include output short circuit protection and features like overcharge protection with sleek and compact design with CPU control and will be available across the country with the Kobian’s Distributors only at 1680/- (MRP).

Sushmita Das, Country Manager –Kobian. said “It gives us great pleasure to launch our Power Product Series in India starting with Home Segment UPS- Mercury Elite 650 PRO , Elite 800 & Elite 1200UPS. This is our attempt to bring value solutions to the consumers after understanding there need and demand.”

ABACUS PERIPHERALS ORGANIZES BIOSTAR-ZION DECO-DISPLAY COMPETITIONBiostar and Abacus Peripherals are organizing a pan India deco-display competition for a period of three months .This competition provides an opportunity to all the participating retail stores to win many exciting prizes including a Tata Nano Car, Bajaj two wheeler etc.

This Biostar – Zion Deco – Display competition will commence from 20th June, 2010 and will end on 20th September, 2010. Retail outlets with a definite retail space, selling Biostar and ZION products across the counter to end consumers/SIs are invited to participate in this one of its kind competition held by Biostar Group and Abacus Peripherals.

The cities included in the competition are Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Secunderabad, Pune, Cochin, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai whereas the cities classified for “B” class market include Bhubaneshwar, Vizag, Vijaywada, Mangalore, Surat, Ludhiana, Dehradun, Panipat, Lucknow, Ranchi, Guwahati, Raipur and Patna.

The participants have to simply decorate the retail outlet with all items in the Display Kit provided by Biostar and ZION and Display & Promote Biostar and ZION range of products during the duration of the competition.

Strontium Rolls out New Series of USB Drives

Canon India aspires to touch Rs.1200 crore revenue in 2010Canon India launches 15 new products to further strengthen its stand as the market leader in India for printers. With this launch, Canon expands its range to 82 IT peripheral products from its printing division with a current market share of 34.5% in the laser printer market across single function and multi function printers. With the launch of these new products, Canon expects the new products to contribute over 50% to the printer division’s revenues in 2010.

Alok Bharadwaj, Senior Vice President, Canon India remarked, “Canon has now maintained its lead-ership market share in the laser printer category in single function for almost 9 months and have also gained a strong foothold in the laser multifunctional category and we now have a 34.5% share in this category making us No. 1. Continued innovation leading to new products is crucial to Canon’s growth and the new range of products showcases Canon’s commitment to keep pace with consumer’s demands and also define standards in the industry. The printer division (CSP) is crucial to Canon’s business and will be key in achieving our goal of Rs.1200 crore by the end of this year. The CSP division will achieve Rs. 450 cr registering a growth of 60% in 2010.”

Strontium has unveiled three new series of USB flash drives, the Key, Spin and Hulk. Great synergy is witnessed as they are all highly fashionable and affordable to cater to the needs of the consumers.

All three USB series are compatible with USB 2.0 Technology with the data transfer rate of up to 480MB/sec. These are available in 2GB to 128GB storage capacities. They are truly plug and play devices which can be plugged into any USB port and it will automatically get detected by the computer as a removable drive. All three models

support Windows, Mac & Linux operating system.

Ajay Kogta, Country Manager, Indian Subcontinent, Strontium Technology, said, “All the three USB drives are a combination of capacity, ease-of-use and easy portability. They are versatile as they support storage not only of data but of applications and personal computer settings, plus security features.”

Further all these drives are available with 5 years warranty at an affordable price through Strontium channel partners across India.


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D-Link introduces Intelligent & High Performance multi-layer Chassis based Switch D-Link introduces DES-8500 series of chassis based switches. Based on intelligent and high-perfor-mance multi-layered LAN devices design, D-Link DES-8500 series switches are ideal for Enterprise and Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN). D-Link DES-8500 series is a new-generation large-capacity and high performance core routing switch series. Featuring a flexible modular architecture and industry standard compliance, these switches provide scalable expansion and a high level of investment protec-tion for businesses and telecom carriers to deploy Gigabit and 10-Gigabit packet switching and routing for office networking and Ethernet-based Internet services.

Jayesh Kotak, VP-Product Marketing at D-Link (India) Ltd. said, “D- Link DES-8500 series of chassis based switch provides market-leading services, performance, port densities and is available with invest-ment protection for both enterprise and service provider markets. Further its comprehensive network security feature takes care of all kinds of sophisticated attacks from both internal and external elements to assure complete Protection of investment for the customer” DES-8500 series is ideal for deployment in environments where minimal downtime of network applications, superior performance, security and control is required. This makes it a perfect choice for Enterprise networks and Service Provider networks.

PANDUIT UNVEILS MID MARKET SOLUTION

DIGESTMATRIX COMSEC LAUNCHES FIVE INDIGENOUS NEW PRODUCT Matrix ComSec launches its new range of

VoIP products in Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai,

Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Coim-

batore, Cochin, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow, Delhi

and Chandigarh respectively. The products will

include SAPEX: All-in-One Embedded IP-PBX

Server, IP-PBX with Seamless Mobility and

Universal Connectivity, SETU VFXTH: Multi-Port

VoIP-FXO-FXS Gateway, SETU VGFX: The

Multi-port VoIP-GSM-FXO-FXS Gateway, SETU

ATA211G: SIP based Port VoIP to GSM and FXS

Gateway, etc.

On the occasion, Product Manager of

Matrix ComSec Sajeev Nair said, “The IT and

office automation will be targeted through the

launch. With the wide and complete basket of

products leveraging the new-age IP telephony,

Matrix targets to have good sales revenue this

year, nearing the range of Rs.50-70 Crore”.

MODERN PROPERTIES SELECTS ACT! BY SAGE Sage India has tied up with Modern Properties to

implement ACT! By Sage to improve the latter’s

contact and lead management. The company

was looking for a CRM solution which could

provide a complete overview of the customer

and prospects in terms of their contact details,

communication and interaction history, maintain

inventory of various properties and at the same

time giving the sales executive the ability to stay

on top of their daily schedule in terms of their

daily activities and tasks. Modern Properties is

currently using a 20 user pack of ACT! Premium.

BUSINESS OCTANE LAUNCHES COLLABORATOR MAX SERIES OF ADVANCED COLLABORATION SUITES Business Octane, the pioneer in Enterprise

Collaboration Maximizer Solutions and

Enterprise Learning Maximizer Solutions today

announced the launch of its CollaboratorMAX

series of Advanced Collaboration Suites, a

significant introduction to its collaboration

solutions portfolio. Featuring as the most

affordable, media-rich dynamic twin telepres-

ence experience for enterprises, Collaborator-

MAX is a revolutionary collaboration solution

that creates a face-to-face meeting experience

for participants across distances, to empower

enterprises to dramatically accelerate business

collaboration.

Panduit, a world-class developer and provider of innovative physical infrastructure solutions, introduces the Panduit NetKey Cabling System. It provides a cost-effective, contractor middle-market solution for networking and for voice, data and video (VDV) applications.

Based on the universal keystone opening and mounting system, NetKey Modules, Patch Cords, Faceplates, Surface Mount Boxes and Modular Patch Panels are designed for simple and easy deploy-ment. When teamed with NetKey Ethernet Cable and with other complementary Panduit products, the NetKey Solution covers all needs from the telecommunications room to the work area with proven innovation and quality that professionals expect from Panduit. 100% performance testing of compo-nents ensures that Panduit quality standards are met by the NetKey System.

The Panduit NetKey System is backed by a 20 year product assurance guarantee.

CYBERSTAR COMES TO THE RESCUE OF HP ODD BUSINESS IN INDIACyberstar Infocom, which is known for its ability to sell unique and niche products, has taken the responsibility of giving a thrust to HP ODD business in India. Although HP ODD is not new to the Indian customers but it was never taken seriously by the channel market and was only in southern corner of India. Say it as an opportunity and challenge, Cyberstar has come to the rescue of this business unit by taking distributorship of this

product range in the Indian Subcontinent.In its go to market strategy, Cyberstar will target Tier1, Tier2 and Tier3 cities to make it

popular.“We are proud to roll out HP Optical Disk Drives in India. We have started the process of

bringing the various models of DVD writers to the market which highlights key features in comparison to the products of the same line”, said Raj Rathi, Managing Director of Cyberstar Infocom.

Cyberstar will introduce the entire range HP Blu-ray drives, internal PATA / SATA DVD Writer, internal DVD Rom and external ODDs.

Raj Rathi, Managing Director

of Cyberstar Infocom


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Redington to expand WD reach in IndiaWD appoints Redington India as its national distributor to sell WD’s full range of internal & external products in the country. With this tie-up, WD will expand its reach through Redington’s extensive network of over 18,700 partners.

“Strengthening our channel base is one of our focus areas for 2010 and we are keen to work with a firm that brings deep domain expertise coupled with a pan India footprint. Redington (India) Ltd. has an established capability in these markets and will provide immense value to our offerings. We are delighted to have Redington as our distribu-tor, and look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship” said Sushil Bandi, Country Manager for the Indian Subcontinent, Western Digital.

P. S. Neogi, President- Redington India, said “This partnership with a global giant like Western Digital will enable us to leverage their solutions & offerings to diversify our portfolio of products for the channel community and cater to the growing storage demand. Our nationwide network and infrastructure will help WD make deeper inroads into the regional markets of India”.

CHECK POINT ACQUIRES DATA SECURITY STARTUP LIQUID MACHINES Check Point Software Technologies acquires the privately held Liquid Machines, a leader in data security. Liquid Machines’ award-winning products prevent the misuse, modification, loss or theft of intellectual property and sensitive information residing in documents.

Liquid Machines specializes in data protec-tion and has 12 issued and pending patents for document encryption and content security. The acquisition will broaden Check Point’s extensive data security portfolio.

Liquid Machines is a US based company, headquartered in Waltham, MA, and is a market leader in the field of Enterprise Rights Management. Liquid Machines was founded in 2001, and its customers include Fortune 100 companies in the financial services, utility and industrial sectors.

The companies have obtained the required government and regulatory approvals and the deal is expected to close immediately.

“We are pleased to announce the acquisition of Liquid Machines. It is a great extension to our data security portfolio and will strengthen Check Point’s security vision. We’ve found Liquid Machines to provide the best technology for end-to-end data security and we are looking for-ward to having it as part of Check Point’s security architecture,” concluded Gil Shwed, chairman, founder and chief executive officer of Check Point Software Technologies.

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

Philippe Arsonneau has been appointed as President, Asia Pacific and Japan, APC. In his new role, Philippe

is responsible for the business strategy, growth and development in Japan, Pacific,

Hitachi Data Systems appoints Sri-kant Chakrapani as Director, Chan-nels and Strategic Alliances for India.

Tengguo Wu has been appointed as Director, PC Division at Toshiba India.

Chennai based, TAKE Solutions, a leader in Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Life Sciences (LS) prod-ucts, announced the appointment of Shobana NS as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

INDIA PRINTER, COPIER AND MFD PRODUCT MARKET GREW 36% IN Q1 2010HP, CANON AND SAMSUNG, THE TOP 3 VENDORS, CONTRIBUTED 76 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL MARKET IN Q1 2010INDIA’S PRINTER, COPIER AND MFP UNIT SHIPMENTS ESTIMATES, 1Q10 (THOUSANDS OF UNITS)

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SNIPPETS

Snippets.indd 14 6/21/2010 7:25:46 PM

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In a first of its kind gesture, DIGILINK organized an entertaining evening for its channel partners and customers by taking them

along with their spouses to the latest Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori starrer – Kites. This was implemented across 8 major cities in the country, where movie theatres were booked solely for this purpose. More than 1700 channel partners attended these shows.

Mr. Prakash Modi, Sejutronics, said “This was a great move by the company to build a rapport and also bring channel partners

together to enjoy an evening”.

DIGILINK ENJOYED SPECIAL SCREEN-

ING OF “KITES”

WITH ITS PARTNERS

Astaro Launches Astaro Red in India Focusing on the branch offices and remote offices, Astaro Corporation launches Astaro RED in India. The beauty of the product is that it comes integrated with complete IT security and VPN functionality.

Connecting with a central Astaro Security Gateway, Astaro RED offers ease of manageability and cuts the cost of securing and administering a branch office security by up to 80%. It really eliminates the need of any IT staff and additional security products at the remote office.

Astaro Security Gateway controls the device in terms of managing security policy, configuration changes, etc. there is no need of training, licensing or technical expertise at the remote location for managing it.

GlacialTech Unveiled Innovation at COMPUTEX 2010GlacialTech has unveiled full range of its products at Computex 2010.

The highlight of the GlacialTech products showcase was cutting-edge thermal solutions, Switched Mode Power Supply (SMPS) solutions and LED Lighting solutions.

Recently GlacialTech has announced the launch of GlacialStars branded CPU coolers, case fan, NB cooler and thermal compound, etc. Addressing entire spectrum of market - from the mainstream to entry-level IT market - GlacialStars vouches for its value for money proposition. Compatible with Intel and AMD CPU systems, GlacialStars series products are designed especially for creative features and solid products. GlacialTech is leading diversified provider of cooling, power supply, PC enclosure solutions for the consumer and industrial applications.

Cyberoam Launches a Dedi-cated Partner Portal Providing a consistent support to the channel network, Cyberoam has launched a 24X7 dedicated partner portal. The objective of the portal is to automate processes of engaging partners by providing them sales and marketing tools along with technical support. The portal contains case studies, whitepapers and other necessary marketing collaterals apart from lead generation tools and technical/training support.

Says Tushar Sighat, VP- Operations, India & SAARC, “Through this partner portal, our vision is to strengthen existing relationships with part-ners and assist them in time. This would help them become more efficient in selling Cyberoam solutions. Partners can also send in their request for timely execution of sales promotion and lead-generation activities including mailing, tele-calling, joint advertising etc.”

SAMSUNG LAUNCHES IT BRAND SHOP IN NEHRU PLACE, DELHISamsung Electronics has inaugurated its first dedicated IT Brand Shop at Nehru Place, Delhi. This brand shop will display and retail the whole range of Samsung IT products including its sleek and stylish Netbooks and Notebooks, 2010 range of Printers, high-end Monitors, Mobile Phones and Digital Still Cameras. The Samsung IT Brand Shop also has an “Experience Zone” where consumers can experience digital convergence at its best with Samsung IT products.

The IT Brand shop was inaugurated by Mr. Jung Shoo Shin, President and CEO, Samsung South West Asia.

Ranjit Yadav, Director- IT and Mobility, Sam-sung India said, “The new Brand Shop is the first outlet dedicated to our IT products in Delhi. We plan to expand our footprint to 5 more cities this year. We are looking at our Brand Shops and our engagement with Large Format Retail contribut-ing around 5% of our IT sales this year.”

The company plans to use the IT Brand Shop to showcase and retail its latest breakthrough technology products.


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SNIPPETS

Snippets.indd 16 6/21/2010 7:25:47 PM

Health comes first for Microsoft while designing a

product and that too all the products are based on

the feedback of the customers.

BY SMRUTI [email protected]

After a very bad taste in 2009, organizations had pinned their hopes on 2010. For Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Divi-sion, this year also comes with a

great optimism. Of course the company had felt the pinch of the slowdown but has already come out of it pretty well owing to its innovation around the customers’ feedback. Secondly there is a huge after market for keyboards, mice, webcams, etc. which are the key components of Micro-soft Devices division. Of course this division is responsible for market gaming consoles (Xbox) and home & productivity software. The strategy of the company is “attach and upgrade”.

Ashim Mathur, Director-Marketing, Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division, says, “Did we have recession? I do not think so! It is only published in the newspaper. There was a huge upgrade market for all categories of our portfolio.”

He adds, “2010 will be very good for every vendor. We are seeing a good traction in the market for various product lines including net-books, notebooks, PCs, etc. All these activities are helping us to grow. Coping up with this growth, we are going all out by strengthening internally and increasing our partner base.”

For Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Divi-sion, channel community is the front end soldiers. These partners have been with the organization for a long time and have been promoting Micro-soft brand consistently.

From the products perspective, though Micro-soft has a lot of product ranges but never com-petes in the mass market, the focus is primarily on the premium segment. There has been a U turn for the organization. Compared to the earlier normal keyboard and mouse products, Microsoft is now giving a lot of emphasis on the ergonomic design and health aspect of the end users. They understand that key board and mouse are very important for connecting to a PC and these com-ponents have to be so ergonomically designed that they do not hurt the users in a prolonged use. Health comes first for Microsoft while designing a product and that too all the products are based on the feedback of the customers. This is what the company is propagating among the customers and the partners.

For instance, the increased focus on style along with great technology led to the launch of nine revolutionary products that are on their way to be trend setters. The LifeCam Cinema, the ultra thin web camera, is specially designed for the users

PRIMEY0UR HEALTH

IS OUR

CONCERN

India

Headquarters

: Gurgaon

Key People : Jaspreet Bindra, Regional

Director

Ashim Mathur, Director-

Marketing, India

Mihir Somaiya, Category

Manager - SDA

Number of

Employees

: More than 5300

Direct

presence in

India

: 13 offices

Key products : Keyboard, Mouse, webcam,

Xbox 360, productivity

software

Website : www.microsoft.com/india

FACTS ABOUT Entertainment & Devices Division


18

MICROSOFTSME BIZ

SME Biz_Microsoft.indd 18 6/21/2010 7:25:28 PM

ASHIM MATHUR, DIRECTOR-

MARKETING, MICROSOFT

ENTERTAINMENT & DEVICES DIVISION

WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY FOR 2010?The computer peripherals industry is gradually transforming to become a trendy and

stylish segment. Computer peripherals are no longer looked upon as equipment to aid

your work on the PC/computer. Nowadays, users recognize them as personality reflec-

tors. Therefore Microsoft has invested a lot of research and in-depth study about the

different personality traits before designing any such stylish products. The main chal-

lenge here is creating a product which will cater to a large number of users and also

help them identify with it.

Also, the growth in the market will be more in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as the purchas-

ing power in these cities has greatly increased. Therefore, newer business opportu-

nities will result in newer tie ups. In an effort to attract retailers in these markets,

companies will size up their marketing strategies and plans to reach out to them as

effectively as possible. Microsoft Hardware is committed to provide better experience

and accessibility to customers with its range of gaming and computer peripherals

products. We aim to continue offering world class products to the customer which is a

true blend of Style & Science. In addition We also see a great opportunity in Tier 2 and

Tier 3 towns where consumers and small business have recognized the importance of

computing and the production of low cost netbooks/PCs and a stable growth will fuel

the industry.

WHICH ARE THE PRODUCTS DRIVING YOUR MARKET?Microsoft Hardware has always stayed ahead of the curve and in tune with the chang-

ing needs of the Indian consumer. Keeping in mind the fast changing lifestyle and the

evolving preferences of the Indian customer, Microsoft Hardware launched a series

of products in the keyboards, mice and webcam categories in December 2009. The

products include LifeCam cinema, Wireless Mobile Mouse, Wireless Desktop 3000 and

a number of products which are designed after a study on computing habits of Indian

consumers.

The range of keyboards and mice also incorporate a high infusion of ergonomics to

enhance comfort and boost productivity. Products cater to different segments in

terms of technology, price and usage. These are not just purely functional products

but feature top of the line technology and design. Each of our products is designed

keeping in mind the customer’s desire for comfort, style and technology. The newly

launched products include Microsoft VX2000 webcam, Arc keyboard.

FINAL QUESTION

who love style and are always on the move. It has unique features like Photo Swap- where the user can share and swap photos live during a video call. It has World-class High Definition optics with a glass element lens giving the user clarity and good images. Even in dim lighting it gives Vibrant, rich video quality.

Ashim adds, “Microsoft has always been asso-ciated with technology but now we are offering superior promise of greater agronomy, style, colors and varieties. This technological supe-riority has been brought in on the basis of the feedbacks from the customers as to how we can improve our product design aligning their usage pattern. One such product is blue track mouse, which offers the consumers a different experi-ence with the mouse.”

The relationship between the customers and the product designing and development is becoming stronger every passing year, which is helping the company to gain a better mind share in the market. As per Ashim, this relationship will be definitely extended in the year 2010 and a lot of products will be unveiled. To propagate the products among the partners, the company is also active in offering various programmes to its part-ners. A lot of training is imparted to the partners advocating about how different Microsoft prod-ucts are in the competition. Microsoft keeps on organizing retail meets and does a lot of incentive programmes because the company understands the value of margin for the partners. In addition, Microsoft Hardware will also continue its vari-ous initiatives to empower its dealers across the country. These events serve as a platform to share the exciting plans for 2011. Those partners who attend these events are provided an exciting range of spot offers. This is very intesting for the part-ners’ community.

Ashim maintains, “The third big area is our sales and service support. As an organization, we are always committed to the end-consumers’ bet-terment. Most of our products come with 3 years replacement warranty. We have 15 service centers across the country to assist the partners and the customers.”

The company works with SES Technology to distribute products across India. Besides, the company has around 75-80 volume partners, under whom there are 3500-4000 channel part-ners present in almost 100 cities across India.

Finally…Though channels business has been the thrust area of the company, but going forward, Micro-soft wants to tap the enterprise market as well. Towards achieving this, the company is planning to create enterprise channel team.


19

SME BIZMICROSOFT

SME Biz_Microsoft.indd 19 6/21/2010 7:25:29 PM

The Indian market has seen phe-nomenal growth in the decade of 2001-2010. The national GDP has grown 6-8 per cent during this decade. The Prime Minister’s Eco-

nomic Advisory Council (PMEAC) has pegged India’s growth at 8.2 per cent for 2010-11 and 9 per cent in 2011-12, expecting the agriculture, indus-trial and services sectors to perform well through the next two years. In this interesting phase, Small and medium enterprises (SME) have a great role. They are huge in number and their contribution to the India GDP is pegged to be 22%, up from 17% now. These SMEs are participating in the growing technological integration keeping them competitive in the market. As per a study, 95 per cent of the enterprise units are SMEs in India, 40 per cent of the industrial output is driven by these SMEs. This is the sector, which is responsible of 70 per cent of industrial employment. Last but

not the least 35 per cent of the exports is done by the SMEs. The size of SMEs varies from single person entities till enterprises with 500 people. Of course there is deviation to this classification depending on vendors. But the fact remains the same that these SMEs require every cutting edge technology like the large enterprise. From the industry perspective, they are very agile and com-petitive compared to the large enterprises. When the industry is going through a very bad phase, small is definitely beautiful.

Therefore, most of the technology vendors have riveted their eyes on the evolution of this segment. So as far as networking solution is concerned, SMBs are the biggest market because of their size. In a report, AMI Partners says that Indian SMBs were on track to spend $1.04b on networking products alone in 2009, an increase of 11 per cent. The industry pundits are of opinion that with the investment again starts on happening on technol-

SMBs were the organizations which had kept the vendors alive in the tough times. When the large orders were getting cancelled or deferred, SMEs had helped the vendors to keep their run-rate business on track.

BY SANJAY [email protected]

ogy, networking solution will have a major share for it because of it being the first step for connec-tivity. On the other hand, IDC’s worldwide fore-cast for 2010 says, growth for SMB market will reach 3.5%, 1.4 pts higher than large enterprises; with the midmarket the brightest spot, recovering faster. So the clear message is that the SMB are at the top.

Arun Dharmalingam, Regional Manager, Distribution Channels, Cisco India & SAARC, says, “SME’s have been establishing themselves as a significant growth engine for the network-ing industry for some time now. This investment enables them to provide employees, partners, and customers with tools and applications that can help them function better, and achieve business success. With a vast variety of collaboration, plan-ning, reporting, and other business tools available to SMEs, and the underlying requirement is a strong network, which can enable the business to

DO YOU

IS

BEAUTIFUL’?

ALSO THINK‘SMALL


20

COVER STORY NETWORKING

Cover_Story.indd 20 6/21/2010 7:22:55 PM

IDC’S WORLDWIDE FORECAST FOR 2010 SAYS, GROWTH FOR SMB MARKET

WILL REACH 3.5%, 1.4 PTS HIGHER THAN LARGE

ENTERPRISES.

COVER STORY

21

NETWORKING



offer these services to its stakeholders, from any location and any device.”

Sudhindra Holla, Head Channels, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks is of opinion that Investments are growing in the SME Sector in the last couple of quarters and have been recession proof. In fact, the SME market has shown a decent double digit growth in spite of the economic slowdown and has grown higher percentage when compared to the Large Enterprise market. Roughly, SME contribute anywhere between 20-25% of the total networking market.”

Ms Sudha Jagadish, Chief Operations Officer, Dax Networks, says, “Indian SMEs are the focal points today. SMEs are considered to be the growth driver for many IT companies. SMEs busi-ness relationship, operational efficiency, employee productivity, customer responsiveness, cost containment, network security and their agility to react to competitive pressures and high speed business changes are some of the major drivers. The opportunity for the IT vendors and their partners is really very high with this segment.”

Mohit Anand, Managing Director, Belkin, Indian Sub Continent, says, “SME is one of the fastest-growing markets. It’s a segment which is poised to generate more demand for networking. Connectivity is always a major concern with small and medium enterprises and they always look for a solution which is easily expendable with their business size.”

Jitendra Gupta, Country Manager, Extreme Networks, “SMEs are today exposed to greater opportunities for expansion and diversification across the sectors like Manufacturing, Precision Engineering, Food Processing, Pharmaceuticals, Textile & Garments, Retail, IT, Agro and Ser-vice sectors. Due to this large density and fastest growing industrial segment, these companies are bound to invest on their IT infrastructure to enhance their productivity and reduce their operational cost. Resulting, most of these SME are investing on their LAN infrastructure to get faster

and reliable connectivity. Jayesh Kotak, VP-Product Marketing, D-Link

(India), says, “In the recent years, small and medium-sized businesses in India have experi-enced unprecedented exposure to new markets, suppliers, and customers. They are successfully deploying technology to support their busi-

ness reach, operational efficiency, productivity, network security and building the competitive advantage. In the networking space, routers and data switches contribute large majority of the SMB spend followed by wireless LAN & struc-tured cabling.”

Today, the concern for the SMEs is getting a road map of platform. Fifty percent of them do not normally have people to manage the technol-ogy. The vendors always should look at the solu-tion selling than the product selling. Therefore the key is to suggest suitable solution, which will address their current requirement offering a sig-nificant cost saving.

Arun adds, “It is not about whether or not SMEs are interested in a networking solution, but more about what level of a network they are look-ing to invest in to run all the tools and applications they require for business success. Some of the key elements that Indian SMEs today look for are Wireless Access, Ease of Collaboration, Cloud-based Services, Remote management, etc.

From Cisco’s perspective, the solutions that address SME segment are easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use, rather than just scaling down or force-fitting enterprise-sized solutions. SMEs today focus on simplicity in installation, mainte-nance, and upgrading rather than the earlier per-ception of being a highly cost-conscious segment. However, with a range of support services, finan-cial packages, and specially-certified partners to address the needs of this community, Cisco takes a wholly personalized route when working with the SME segment.

Sudha adds, “Despite pricing factor playing a major role, SMEs are looking for customized solutions and products that would cater to their unique customer requirements and applications. Dax’s game plan is to empower the channels to deliver value-add to their portfolio with our extensive ‘solution based’ SME offerings. The fast-growing SME market are rapidly adopting IT deployments for business efficiency and enhanced business operations.”

Sudhindra says, “SME’s today are facing chal-lenges and competition from Large Enterprises & Multinationals. Also they are going global thereby opening up the opportunity for IT & Network vendors to play a strong role to build out the necessary infrastructure. Today, SME is definitely a high growing sector and investments are hap-pening in IT, Network and Security Infrastruc-ture. While investments are more focused on the basic IT infrastructure in the smaller Enterprises, Medium enterprises will invest in Applications, Security, VPNs and WAN infrastructure.”

Before buying any solution they consider affordability, simplicity, agility in terms of solu-

“SOME OF THE KEY ELE-MENTS THAT INDIAN SMES TODAY LOOK FOR ARE WIRELESS ACCESS, EASE OF COLLABORATION, CLOUD-BASED SERVICES, REMOTE MANAGEMENT, ETC.”ARUN DHARMALINGAM, REGIONAL MANAGER, DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS, CISCO INDIA & SAARC

“SMEs ARE LOOK-ING FOR CUSTOM-IZED SOLUTIONS AND PRODUCTS THAT WOULD CATER TO THEIR UNIQUE CUSTOMER REQUIRE-MENTS AND APPLICA-TIONS. ”MS SUDHA JAGADISH, CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, DAX NETWORKS


22



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tions being fast to adopt and change. They nor-mally depend on the SIs but the trend is catching up to outsource their entire IT, Network and Security Infrastructure. Therefore, Service Pro-viders are pretty active these days along with the bandwidth selling; they are selling infrastructure and its management. Today, vendors like Airtel, BSNL, Reliance, etc. are bundling solutions at a monthly payment options or pay per use option. But the opportunity with service providers goes with a constrain as they go for hard bargain with the product vendors to make the solution very competitive for the customers therefore premium brands find it very difficult to strike a deal with them for the SMEs.

Therefore, channel partners are the key for most of the vendors but the pity is that no vendor adopts best business practices. All vendors think of their own interest of selling products and the partners in a quest of adding top line and bottom line do not go into the nitty-gritty of the practice. So, after some months, when the desired result does not come out, they end their partnership in a very bad note. Mahendra Lalwani, CEO, TelEx-cell Information Systems Ltd., says, “The vendors should have clear defined roadmap in terms of partnerships for a year at least. They should have local RMA policy, Training and certification, etc. We need lead generation from the vendors’ end. There should be ethical sales practice. They should create market pull, awareness in every market verticals. All the certified partners should

be extended maximum benefits for their hard work.”

Therefore his advice to the partners is to evalu-ate the principal’s road map and commitment religiously before picking up any brand.

He adds, “Today, we are dealing with Forti-nent, Polycom, Cisco, Alverion, Wavion, Ruckus, Senao, Firetide, Mobotix, Crescendo, Cyberoam, NetAxcess, Inventum, Zhone, Quintum, Crypto-card, etc., but our major focus is Cisco business, which accounts for 50 per cent of out revenue.”

Jayesh Kotak of D-Link says, “Customers these days are highly aware of their requirements. They are not only looking for quality products/ solu-tion, but also for higher Returns on Investments (ROI) while lowering their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). So it becomes very important for partners to be close to their customer, be more adaptive and be adequately prepared to go through the transformation journey on technol-ogy front. So it’s important that partners invest in upgrading their skills and solution delivery capa-bilities. This will in turn result in higher customer satisfaction & also help partners to develop new contacts, while they also continue to retain their existing customer.”

ZyXEL, which is currently focusing on Wire-less, Switching and Security, Broadband DSL, VoIP products for the SMEs follow a regional distribution strategy.

Pinaki Chatterjee, Executive Director, Techni-cal, ZyXEL, says, “We have appointed USHA Info-tech as the regional distributor for the territory of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and Ransys Bios has been appointed for Tamilnadu. Lalani Infotech for complete East, Jaideep Mathur.com for Rajasthan and Akal Infosystems for Punjab and Himanchal market. Under the RDs we have chain of ZySTAR partners who are SI’s with spe-cialized skills and we keep on providing training to update them on new technologies, features changes etc, on the other hand we have ZyPart-ners who are in to channel business who follow stock and sell concept.”

He adds, “The difference between our product and competition are clearly visible, if you pick up any product specs and start comparing, you’ll find many USP’s in each product is better, we design products only on customer application needs and always try to deliver beyond customers expectation, for example P-320W which is our basic entry level wireless 802.11g router have a 5 dbi detachable antenna and this router can also be configured as a pure access point and also supports WDS and SNMP which no other brand offering right now, this is just one example but if you start comparing you’ll find the similar USP’s in each and every product of ours.”

POINTS KEEP IN MIND WHILE ADDRESSING THE MARKETl Map the actual requirement of the company

l Suggest right product with enough scalability

l Advise them the network solution

l Look at what application they are running

l Suggest the RoI vis-à-vis the competition

l Offer them the matrix of comparison

l Do not offer false commitments

l Stick to the commitment and enjoy good

relation with the client

Cisco the largest provider of SME solutions from the secure network perspective offers the entire spectrum of products including Switch-ing, Routing, Security, Data centre, Digital Media Systems, TelePresence, Unified Communication and collaboration tools, IP surveillance, Wireless, Video, etc. The core engines of these products are taken from the solution available for the large enterprises. So from the perspective of quality, these are the robust products. Cisco’s entire go to market strategy is driven through the channel partners. The company today patronizes the part-ners who are consistent with them and those who have intent to grow with Cisco.

Arun adds, “Our whole outreach to the SMB segment is through our partner community and we believe that to best address the needs of this segment, our partners need to be equipped, ready and motivated.” The company offers a number of benefits to enable its partners. The overarching initiative is the Cisco Select partner program, in which partners that fulfill certain parameters are provided with additional training and certifica-tion. This prepares them for their role as our pre-ferred partners to serve the SMB segment.

Cisco’s ‘Network on Wheels’ (NOW) van is a mobile showcase of customized Cisco networking solutions that travels to SMB clusters around the country and provides them with a first-hand expe-rience of Cisco solutions. The van also features advanced technologies such as security, wireless, unified IP communications. These solutions are aimed at helping Indian SMBs leverage the power of networking for their business growth.

To assist its partners, the company has insti-tuted the Cisco Sales and Marketing Services Organisation (SMSO), which ensures uniformity of marketing collateral on Cisco products and solutions. It also frees up the partner from con-

“WE DESIGN PROD-UCTS ONLY ON CUS-TOMER APPLICATION NEEDS AND ALWAYS TRY TO DELIVER BEYOND CUSTOMERS EXPECTATION.”PINAKI CHATTERJEE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TECHNICAL, ZYXEL


24



ceptualizing and making marketing collateral, and enables them to spend more effort on fulfill-ing customer needs.

Along with its strategy, Cisco’s financing divi-sion offers partners a product designed to address one of their key concern areas. When partners are engaged in customer infrastructure deployment that calls for investment of time and products from the partner, Cisco Capital releases periodic payments at certain predetermined milestones. This ensures that the partner is not financially burdened in the course of the deployment.

The partners are really happy with Cisco as they say: “The Company has a clear-cut mandate in India and back those people who are dedicated to Cisco.”

For Dax, partners play a very significant role. Sudha adds, “At Dax, we market our products to the end user through our ADSP (Authorized Dax Solution providers). Dax started the ADSP programme in the year 2007, which increased the channel foot print in the country. We cur-rently have 200 ADSP’s on board. This massive and exciting Channel thrust has helped us in tapping the horizontal midsized segments of the enterprise market across the country. Our ADSP’s will be armed with a successful combination of products and technology that yield a higher ROI for the customer.”

She adds, “Dax has adopted a solution oriented approach to support our ADSP’s and tap the hori-zontal SMB market. Our ADSP’s will be armed with a successful combination of products and technology that yield a higher ROI for the cus-tomer. We are a technology advanced here-to-stay player in the Indian networking market. Impor-tantly, we pursue a clear channel policy to ensure good profits for all partners.”

To accentuate channel engagement, Dax has started a reward programme called ‘Dax Drona’. The reward points are awarded to a Dax Drona for special and latest technology products being sold and for building Dax products into end users

networking solutions. These reward points can be exchanged for exciting holiday packages to foreign destinations.

Belkin, which is present in the market for last couple of years, is operating in India with a hybrid channel model with regional distributors selling through both organized retail and traditional retail channels to reach out to the end buyer across 10,000 stores countrywide, besides multi-brand retail chains. We are embarking upon an aggres-

sive market outreach programs through 2010 to help improve visibility and connect for the Belkin brand across target audiences and geographies.

Mohit says, “We are enabling our partners to cater better to their customers by introducing innovative products under “At work” and “On the Go” categories to ensure more footfalls. Soon we are coming out with more partner oriented pro-grams for 2010.”

He adds, “We are looking for a steady market growth in India with our crawl, walk and run approach towards the business. Our strategy in India is simple – continuously offer innovative, stylish, user-friendly and reliable products at value price points, at retail outlets that serve our customer’s convenience and ever-changing shop-ping habits, and then back it up with world-class tech support and warranty service.”

The company considers Empowerment is absolutely necessary for the partners. Also there are various channel incentive programs which are launched time to time for motivating channel partners like ‘Go for Gold’, ‘Gold Rush’, ‘Buy & Fly’ , ‘Cash Bhi, Videsh Bhi’, etc.

For Medium Enterprise, Juniper positions its SRX integrated bundle solutions as ideal. The SRX range of solutions allows customers to con-nect to WAN Infrastructure, Provide Effective Ethernet Switching clubbed with Security. Smaller enterprises can even have a Wireless Access point integrated to our SRX. Sudhindra says, “On top of it we also provide the added advantage of provid-ing Gateway level Antivirus, Antispam, Content Filtering & full fledged Intrusion Detection & Prevention Technologies without compromising the performance. We lower the TCO both at an OPEX & CAPEX level as SMEs need not invest in multiple equipments and spend time & money in maintaining/managing the same. These devices also support PoE, which can be used to plug IP Phones, Access Points & Video Surveillance cameras.”

Juniper normally markets its products through the service providers and SIs but as far as SME is concerned, the company depends on the distribu-tors and channel partners. The company invests in channel trainings to educate them & incentiv-ize them with more margins, schemes & loyalty programs. Also we offer the best in class products backed by superior support. The service providers also play a great role in targeting the SMEs.

He adds, “We are slowly seeing a trend where many tier-2 partners in metros and non-metros who would like to engage and work closely with us. While the channel base is strong in the West, North and South regions, we wish to increase our focus on the East this year. Juniper is planning to expand into the tier-2 and 3 cities which is a virgin

“WE ARE ENABLING OUR PARTNERS TO CATER BETTER TO THEIR CUSTOMERS BY INTRODUCING INNOVATIVE PROD-UCTS UNDER “AT WORK” AND “ON THE GO” CATEGORIES TO ENSURE MORE FOOTFALLS.”MOHIT ANAND, MANAGING DIREC-TOR - INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT, BELKIN

“WHILE INVESTMENTS ARE MORE FOCUSED ON THE BASIC IT INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE SMALLER ENTERPRISES, MEDIUM ENTERPRISES WILL INVEST IN APPLICATIONS, SECURITY, VPNS AND WAN INFRASTRUCTURE.”SUDHINDRA HOLLA, HEAD CHANNELS, INDIA & SAARC, JUNIPER NETWORKS


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COVER STORYNETWORKING


market for us. We are keen to look at partners in those cities.”

The Juniper J Partner program is a well struc-tured program which covers Partner enablement, training, business planning, account planning & creating pull through marketing/lead generation programs. Regional team interlocks ensure that the field teams are comfortable dealing with our solutions.

Extreme Networks has complete Ethernet LAN Switching solutions and WLAN solu-tions for SME space like Summit 150/250 Fast Ethernet and Summit 350/450 Gigabit Ethernet Switches and WM Series in WLAN having both 802.11a/b/g and 11n Access points.

Jitendra says, “Our sales pitch is pretty simple to SME customers – Look at our TCO story, Converged and Secured Networks, Highly scal-able solution with future investment protection as we firmly believe today’s SME are tomorrow’s large enterprises and they should not be locked in forklift upgrades and they really look out for cost effective, highly reliable products.”

Extreme Networks has 4fourtier partner programs with a title of Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. These partner program revolved around three main parameters i.e. skill set, reve-nue and loyalty. The company offers training and certification programs for sales, which is known as Extreme Certified Sales Professional, pre-sales - known as Extreme Certified Design Profes-sional and post sales, known as Extreme Network Associates & Specialist around its product and technologies.

D-Link is a very important player in the SMB space. The company offers a complete suite of products comprising Switching, Routing, Wire-less, Security, Storage, Broadband and Surveil-lance Solutions for the market.

Jayesh, says, “One of the key advantages that we enjoy with respect to our competition is the breadth of our portfolio. It works to customers’ advantage of most of the networking needs are

from single vendor- the management & integra-tion is better. Further in each of the above solution components we have clear differentiators & USP’s to keep us ahead in the race.”

As a vendor company, D-Link offers its partners with all the support in terms of right products/ solutions and extensive training. The company engages channel in empowerment programs so that they are updated on the latest technological developments in Networking & better equipped to meet customer demands. One such event is ‘Sales Pro’ – A multi-city technology education program that addresses the networking concerns of partners’ techno-sales & pre-sales team. Very

recently D-Link had also launched ‘Connection 2010’ – A multicity road show for channel provid-ing a direct platform for channel partners to have a one-on one interaction with D-Link team. In addition to this the company has set-up an exclu-sive ‘d-partner’ website for our channel partners, which contains huge D-Link data repository, tools and real case studies and project details. D-Link offers partner certification programs through this partner web site, and complements this with peri-odic class room training at regular intervals.

As mentioned in the earlier reply, D-Link is constantly looking at ways in which we can sup-port our channel partners to grow their business. Last year D-Link had launched a host of channel incentive programs like ‘D-Link Premier League – DPL’, ‘Secure Switch Promotion – SSP’ and ‘Sales Incentive Program – SIP’.

Matrix, which is a major force in the legacy telephony networks like VoIP, GSM, CDMA, 3G, ISDN T1/E1and PSTN, offer marketing and sales support in terms of advertisements, roadshows, exhibitions to create more awareness about the brand. Timely product trainings and schemes with incentives are provided for boosting up the sales motto. Matrix also launches new products every year which gives the channel partner to ven-ture into new market verticals.

From the technology perspective, wireless tech-nology is making a good traction as the WLAN Market for 2010 has touched Rs. 375 crore, a growth of 20% over 2009. The SME market is clearly responding to the wireless technology. Of course the market will tilt in favour of the wire-less majorly two years from now when power consumption and real estate price will be absolute exorbitant and people will use home office more than their corporate offices and laptop will be the computing device than desktop. But the situa-tion is that the customers are using today hybrid connection - wireless over wire. Therefore, the passive business is on rise. Smartlink Networks, after the demerger, has emerged as one of the large two companies in India for structure cabling solu-tion (SCS) products. Under its brand DIGILINK, the company has a comprehensive range of SCS products. Similarly, the company is also build-ing up capability to focus on the active products market with the DIGISOL brand, which has very good solutions for Switching, Wireless, Broad Band Routing and Converged Communication market. Belkin has launched passive products and appointed neoteric and Iris as their partners. Panduit has entered into the Indian market with a range of passive products and partnered Cyber-star. Similarly, Eurotech, Molex, R&M are doing very good business. There a lot many passive play-ers who are present in India but not recognised

“ONE OF THE KEY ADVANTAGES THAT WE ENJOY WITH RESPECT TO OUR COMPETITION IS THE BREADTH OF OUR PORTFOLIO.”JAYESH KOTAK, VP-PRODUCT MARKETING, D-LINK (INDIA) LTD.

“WE FIRMLY BELIEVE TODAY’S SME ARE TOMOR-ROW’S LARGE ENTER-PRISES AND THEY SHOULD NOT BE LOCKED IN FORK-LIFT UPGRADES”JITENDRA GUPTA, COUNTRY MANAGER, EXTREME NETWORKS.


26



by the partners. Another technology revelation is 3G. As it is on the anvils, people are thinking that it will offer a greater flexibility to the SMEs.

Support is a great issue in India. In addition to the Head-Office based Technical Support Teams, Dax has a Networking Competence Center and the Dax Service Center. The company has Techni-cal Support Executives based at 15 Partner Loca-tions & at 12 regional office locations. To resolve the customer problems and to address their que-ries, the company has a Toll Free Number through which the customers or partners can call anytime from anywhere within India. Dax website also has Live chat for customers. Dax also trains the Partner engineers and Customer engineers at the customer premises on the installation and main-tenance of the Dax products. The company is also likely to train the Partner engineer and Customer engineer on Trouble shooting tips, general techni-cal issues.

ZyXEL India has a toll free number 1800-102-9995 for support. Though it is available for 10-6 (office hours in working days) for SOHO products, the company mulls over making it 12 hours support. At the same time the company has dedicated engineers who are domain experts and handle higher end product calls directly.

Belkin offers a Multi-level Warranty and RMA Service Infrastructure designed to offer simple, hassle free, prompt and comprehensive service. Consumers can dial Toll-free number 1800 419 5546, from any MTNL/BSNL line, from any loca-tion from Monday to Friday, 24 hours a day. In an adverse case of a faulty product the Belkin con-sumer can take the products to Accel Frontline service center and get an over the counter replace-ment, in 38 cities in India.

For Juniper, the front end support is provided by its Channel Partner. The company offers assis-tance to its Channel Partners via its TAC which is available 24*7. Juniper also have spares depot in country and offer Next Business Day shipment support to cover majority of the locations.

Extreme Networks follows both direct and partner shared support model. They also have a 24x7 global TAC support center, a team of local Engineers and a central RMA depot at Chennai beside few satellite depots at major metros thru our Disti partners.

D-Link has a very comprehensive and flex-ible service support system to match the specific requirements of our customers. The company offers a toll free no.: 1800-233-0000, e-mail service: [email protected] and Web-Based Support.

Cisco has launched the SMARTnet solution, an award-winning technical support service that offers direct, anytime access to Cisco engineers

and an extensive range of technical resources. This allows for rapid issue resolution, flexible device-by-device coverage, and premium service options to help maximise operational efficiency. The ‘0% financing for Cisco Multi-Year Services Programme’ is offered by Cisco Services and Cisco Capital. It provides an interest-free financ-ing package for multi-year contracts for Techni-cal Services, SMARTnet and Advanced Services programmes, to address the budget concerns that

“WE OFFER QUALITY PRODUCTS THAT ARE TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AND HAVE AN EDGE OVER COM-PETITORS. APART FROM THIS, WE PRO-VIDE MARKETING AND SALES SUPPORT ALSO.”SAJEEV NAIR, HEAD OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT – TELECOM DIVISION, MATRIX COMSEC PVT. LTD.

“THE VENDORS SHOULD HAVE CLEAR AND DEFINED ROADMAP IN TERMS OF PARTNERSHIPS FOR A YEAR AT LEAST.”MAHENDRA LALWANI, CEO, TELEXCELL INFORMATION SYSTEMS LTD.

SMBs face.Cisco’s Smart Care solution is a proactive and

comprehensive network-wide monitoring ser-vice that offers health check-ups, diagnostics and software repairs in addition to technical support for a customer’s entire Cisco network in a single contract.In terms of growth most of the companies had a very bad time last year, but in 2010, things are surely changing in a positive direction. Dax has closed this year with Rs.108.87 core revenue from 89.98 crore rupees in 2008-09. Similarly, as a new company ZyXEL targets revenue growth of 30 - 50% this year. Belkin, a year old company India, is looking at a revenue of $10 million this year from $4.4 million last year. However the company has a target of $100 million by 2014.

The growth of Matrix Comsec has been around 30-35%, but, as per Sajeev Nair, Head of Product Management – Telecom Division, Matrix Comsec Pvt. Ltd., the company’s goal this year is to achieve 100% per cent growth over the last year. Matrix Telecom aspires to be one of the fore-runners in the IP-telephony revolution in the country. Its future plans are to expand its base and reach in domestic and international market.

Cisco had a lower earning in the fiscal year 2009, than the previous year, a drop of 8.7 per cent. However, by the end of the second quarter of 2010, the company has already seen a year-on-year growth of 8 per cent over Q2 of 2009.

Finally…With the comming of 2010, the infrastructure

maraket is seeing a boom time and every net-working vendor who are ready with right solu-tion at the right price point is gung ho about it. The industry pundits are forcasting that the boom time for India is yet to come. I personally believe next five years is very crusial in terms of India’s positioning in the international market. So watch out for the same!


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COVER STORYNETWORKING


Customers should not just procure, install, and manage products. Tech-nical support, end-to-end solution portfolio, future investment protec-tion, management & operational effort savings must be considered while deciding on a new security solution.

BY NEIL D’SOUZA & SMRUTI [email protected]

INDIA EMBRACESTECHNOLOGY MORE THAN OTHERSUTM


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IN DEPTH UTM

Indepth-UTM.indd 28 6/21/2010 7:23:38 PM

India, post the attacks on various important establishments and cyber threats from external and internal elements to cripple the lifeline of the modern economy – inter-net access - has become more sensitive to

the integration of robust security solutions to its systems. The whole of India is expecting the security vendors to be proactive to address the market from a holistic point of view. They do not want technologies in bits and pieces. The enter-prises – be it small or big are ready to evaluate the vendors’ offerings to get best of the solutions. This has also encouraged the global vendors to slip in newer products every quarter. The solutions come in various form factor i.e. software, hardware, services, etc.

Almost every segment in India, SMB, BFSI, Telco, Government, and Education are driving the UTM market and will continue to do so. Apart from Tier 1 cities, Tier II and III cities have also started adopting UTMs well.

Especially, for the SMEs, UTM devices are the most cost effective solutions today and hence it is observed as a preferred option.

In the May issue of SME Channels, we have talked about the vibrancy of UTM market in India, which has compelled most of the global players to be present in this market.

Vendor like Cisco, which is dominant in the networking, communications and security space, also offers a variety of UTMs to protect the customers. They are pretty much ready with the SME solutions. Prem Nitin, Senior Technical Consultant, Cisco India & SAARC, says, “Though the UTM market seems to get bit crowded, most of the vendors are in the space of point-product solutions. Cisco looks at the market and cus-tomer requirements from a holistic perspective offering an End-to-End Architecture and UTM is one of the key components. The hidden virtue of this “crowding effect” is that, more and more customers are keen on Integrated Security solu-tions rather than having individual multiple boxes offering the same features/capabilities.”

ZyXEL, the Taiwan-based networking solution company, is also addressing this market with a dif-ferent name. The solution the company offers are called ZyXEL Unified Security Gateway (USG).

Rishi Samadhia, Executive Director – Chan-nel, ZyXEL Technologies India, says, “ZyXEL USG solutions are more productive and powerful than the common UTMs. We have enhanced its features with the latest ZLD operating system. Aside firewall, content filtering, anti-virus, anti-spam and intrusion detection and prevention, the ZyXEL USG also supports IPSEC virtual private network, SSL VPN, L2TP VPN, load bal-ancing, Fail-over, Fall back, End Point Security,

Application Patrol, Device High Availability, User Authentication, bandwidth management and Graphical Reporting with Free Software ,these features normally unseen on other products in its class.”

He adds, “ZyXEL USG can still maintain impressive speed without being bogged down by tremendous loads, even with all above men-tioned functions activated at the same time. Its well-rounded features, speed, powerful protec-tion and ease-of-use really make different and competitive.”

Astaro is a new kid on the block for India. After creating a robust impact in the Western market, the company has turned its face towards the Asian market. India being the large geography in terms of volume and growth, they are pretty serious about it. Astaro is said to be the only vendor in

the market which focus is largely on the SME cus-tomers. They offer three different ways to deploy a solution, depending on their current network infrastructure, budget and preference.

The strategy of Astaro is to target Greenfield projects as well as give the existing UTM cus-tomers of other brands compelling reasons to replace their incumbent UTMs by Astaro Secure Gateway.

For Astaro, 2010 is the first year of its direct operations in India and they have already started making their presence felt and expecting to close 2010 on a significant note - both from revenue as well as install base perspectives.

Sunil Sapra, Country Manager, Astaro India & SAARC, says, “Our security subscriptions also gives SMEs the flexibility to exercise a buy-as-you-need attitude, providing full scalability and expectations for growth, fully considering the ROI standards of growing companies. Since Astaro’s base software called Essential Firewall comes free of charge, SMEs are able to meet ROI requirements. From there, they can grow with the security subscriptions as they need depending on

their network infrastructure.”The common factor among the vendors is that

all are targeting the channel market to push their products. Cisco has nearly 100% business flow through the channel partners so also Astaro and ZyXEL but their channel strategy is different from each other.

To address the channels, Cisco has launched Select certification program and SMB specializa-tion. Select Certified Partners benefit from an increased level of support from Cisco, including access to best-in-class products and services, tech-nical support, productivity tools, online training and marketing resources. Last year, in India the company has added channel management capac-ity by recruiting phone based Channel account managers to extend support to its SMB focused reseller partners.

Prem adds, “Cisco has invested resources in sales as well as channels to enhance support for its channel partners across the country. Since Cisco leverages on the channel partners to reach out to the customers in the Tier- 2 and Tier-3 cities, we believe that enhancing our partner skills in understanding the customer’s needs is key to reaching out to this market and implementing our strategy.”

Cisco training program is aimed at developing channel partners’ skills and technical knowledge. These programs are carried across Tier 1, 2 and Tier 3 cities across the country. The company further invites partners from remote location to attend training programs at the nearest city. The company has an extensive distribution network with 30 stocking point locations across the coun-try. Cisco can reach out to any city through these stocking points.

The company has four distributors including Ingram Micro, Compuage, Redington and Com-stor, who are well assisted by a strong channel network with over 1200+ resellers in 100 cities. The partners of the company is divided in three

“CISCO LOOKS AT THE MARKET AND CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS FROM A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE OFFERING AN END-TO-END ARCHITECTURAL AND UTM IS ONE OF THE KEY COMPONENTS.”PREM NITIN, SENIOR TECHNICAL CONSUL-TANT, CISCO INDIA & SAARC


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IN DEPTHUTM


categories i.e. System Integrators, gold certified partners and silver certified partners. There are 13 large SIs for the company including Cable & Wireless, Datacraft, HCL Comnet, HP, IBM, Vel-ocis, TCS, Wipro, HCL Infosystems Ltd., Proac-tive, British Telecom, Locuz and Orange Business Services, 10 Gold Certified Partners including Cable & Wireless, Datacraft, HCL Comnet, HP, IBM, Wipro, British Telecom, HCL Infosystems Ltd., Orange Business Services and eight Silver Certified Partners including Velocis (formerly Integrix), Proactive, Locuz, Targus, PC Solutions, Nirmal Datacomm, Tech Valley (Bangladesh) and SK International.

Whereas, ZyXEL’s go to market strategy revolves around its regional channel partners. USHA Infotech for Delhi, Up, Haryana, Akal Infosys for Punjab and Himanchal, Jaideep Mathur for Rajasthan, Coastal Traders for Kerala, Ransys Bios for Tamil Nadu, Lalani Infotech for Kolkata, Megastar computers for Ahmadabad, Hallmark for Mumbai, etc. are the major names who carry ZyXEL solutions.

The company has a chain of ZySTAR partners under the RDs. These are the SI’s with special-ized skills and the company keeps on providing training to update them on new technologies, features changes, etc. These partners are respon-sible for supporting the customers. On the other hand ZyXELL have ZyPartners who are into channel business follow stock and sell concept. The partner programme the company runs is known as ZyConnect. They also make sure to offer good margins on selling ZyXel USG series products.

Even though Astaro is a new entrant to the market, but the company has been successful in tying up with RAH Infotech as its exclusive distributor partner. The company’s strategy is to work only with dedicated partners who under-stand Astaro value and can articulate it well in the market. The company has already signed up with around 10 dedicated partners across India

and will continue to provide solutions through them. Orbit Netsol, Secure Network Solutions (SNS), Versatile Infosecurity and ACPL are some of the top Astaro solutions providers. Further to this, the company is in discussions with two large MSSP players for UTM in the cloud services and will soon announce formal tie-ups with them.

Astaro has already conducted a four days training in Germany by its experts from corpo-rate office and it has been followed up by regular trainings at the distributor’s and partner’s offices. Astaro also runs community based development at Astaro.org and feature.astaro.com. The com-pany’s India partners and customers can access

these and give their opinions as well as request for features in future versions.

Sunil adds, “We will be signing up education partners to promote security awareness and pro-vide training on Astaro solutions.”

From the product perspective, Cisco adopts a Self Defending Network (SDN) approach to secu-rity that helps customers manage and mitigate risks more effectively. As part of the SDN Frame work Cisco offers Adaptive Threat Defense (ATD) solution that helps to further minimize network security risks by dynamically addressing threats at multiple layers, enabling tighter control of network traffic, endpoints, users, and applica-tions. ATD also simplifies architectural designs and lowers operational costs. This innovative approach combines security features, multilayer intelligence, application protection, network-wide control and threat containment within high-performance solutions.

Astaro product strategy revolves around four product lines it includes appliances, software, virtual appliances and Astaro RED. Astaro ASG series of appliances supports enterprise base starting from 10 concurrent users up to 10000 concurrent users. And the fact is that up to 10 ASG appliances in an active- mode can be added. Astaro also provides the same features and functionality in the software version too. One can install Astaro software on any machine and get the complete UTM functionalities. There is no need of installing any O/S. Astaro provides VMware certified virtual appliances for in the cloud security. This offers a great flexibility to companies seriously looking at Cloud. MSSPs especially are finding it very useful for their business plans. Similarly, Astaro RED is one of its kinds. Its complete configuration is done cen-trally via an Astaro Security Gateway located at the main office and automatically distributed to the RED appliances.

Sunil Adds, “There is nothing like RED when it comes to branch security. No UTM vendor has a solution like this. RED simplifies the multi branch security as it is centrally configurable and doesn’t require a technical person on the site. It also brings down the TCO by over 80%.”

He adds, “Astaro being the leading European UTM security provider prides itself of its Ger-man-quality standards on our products as well as our support.”

Astaro’s security subscriptions gives SMEs the flexibility to exercise a buy-as-you-need attitude, providing full scalability and expectations for growth, fully considering the ROI standards of growing companies. Since Astaro’s base software called Essential Firewall comes free of charge, SMEs are already able to meet ROI requirements.

“ZYXEL USG CAN STILL MAINTAIN IMPRESSIVE SPEED WITHOUT BEING BOGGED DOWN BY TRE-MENDOUS LOADS, EVEN WITH ALL ABOVE MEN-TIONED FUNCTIONS ACTI-VATED AT THE SAME TIME.”RISHI SAMADHIA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHANNEL, ZYXEL TECHNOLOGIES INDIA

“THERE IS NOTHING LIKE RED WHEN IT COMES TO BRANCH SECURITY. NO UTM VENDOR HAS A SOLU-TION LIKE THIS.SUNIL SAPRA, COUNTRY MANAGER, ASTARO INDIA & SAARC


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IN DEPTH UTM


From there, they can grow with the security subscriptions as they need depending on their network infrastructure.

The easy-to-use GUI makes it a non-require-ment to have a specialized security expert to be continuously monitoring Astaro products. They also provide local support in India through various Premier and Preferred partners that are well-trained and certified. The Astaro website also provides numerous tutorial videos on how to configure features-sets which makes it easy for any network administrator to install and fully configure the Astaro solution.

Next biggest issue is support. To this Cisco pro-vides around-the-clock, award-winning technical support services, online and over the phone to all customers, partners, resellers, and distributors who hold valid Cisco service contracts. Online service request tools are available to registered Cisco.com users with a valid service contract. Cisco TAC Service Request Tool lets the users describe the issue in their own words and attach files to the service request, and that gets routed to an appropriate engineer as fast as possible. For urgent situations when someone needs to speak to

an engineer immediately there is also Telephone Numbers.

For Astaro the service strategy revolves around its partners. It is of course another opportunity for them to earn extra margin on top of the product selling. Besides, the customers and partners can access to the company’s 24 X 7 support fabric through phone, email and web. The company’s distributor maintains RMA inventory for any emergencies. Going forward the company will also launch Astaro certifications for its partners and customers.

Finally…After making a good business in 2009, when the whole of market had experienced bad times, all the UTM vendors are agog about this current year. They are expecting a positive turn around and are ready with newer variants. Moving on these lines, Astaro has created a product road map and launching three new innovations in 2010, namely Astaro RED, Astaro Mail Archiving (AMA) and Astaro Wireless Security Solution. In addition, its V8.0 announcement will bring IPv6 support to UTM and many new features

including flash reporting and easier management features. The company is expecting to ship this next month (July 2010) and it’s already in final Beta. Aligned with the initiative to create a secure network, Cisco supports the concept of borderless network architecture which can help IT adapt to rapid changes arising from the consumerization of technology and shifting work models. Border-less Security implements a unified access policy with Identity-Based Network Services, providing visibility into network operations and lowering operating costs while reducing risk.

If one looks at the UTM market, the market appears to be crowded with too many of vendors and every vendor has presence in every geogra-phy and vertical market. But technology wise each has strength therefore consolidation seems to be imminent. Signs of the consolidation are already visible with SonicWall’s agreement with Thoma Bravo to be acquired in a deal worth around $717 million and Fortinet’s coming closer to HP Pro-Curve to integrate their Fortigate - one platform in HP ProCurve zl switching module. This is just a beginning, by 2010-2014 there is a chance of more consolidation.


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IN DEPTHUTM


“3 PS HAVE CREATED MAGIC FOR Us”

VP SAJEEVANDIRECTOR, CONSUMER SYSTEM

PRODUCTS, CANON INDIA

When the entire printer market in India, for last couple of years, had not fared well, Canon had performed exceptionally. The strategy was pretty clear around enhancing

products’ and partners’ capability. Not only had the company unveiled numerous products but also ensured easy availability. Recently SME Channels caught up with

VP Sajeevan, Director, Consumer System Products, Canon India to know in-depth about the success mantra. Excerpt.

Canon has been named as a leader in the printer market by

Gartner; tell us more about that…This is the first time that in the single functional and multifunctional category, we have become No.1 in the country for Q1, 2010 (as per Gartner reports). In the last five months, from Jan to May, our growth has been 90% over the corresponding period last year. The drivers are laser printers and laser multi-functions – and, put together, we have grown 150% compared to the last year. Therefore, today we are declaring a leadership statement that ‘India Prints on Canon’.

What has created magic for Canon?

There are 3 important Ps that have created magic for us. The first one is the Canon products, which offer superior technology for unmatchable performance and reliability. Second one is our strong value-added partner base. Thirdly, we have a strong workforce. We have been rated as one of the top 10 companies to work with. So it is the combination of product, partners and people has enabled us to growth.

How did you manage the supply chain when there was problem

in the past year?We have a very good planning team, which works on a strategy of Bottoms-up. We work on the projection or the forecast from the bottom of the pyramid. This projection comes from the tertiary partners through other layers to the canon leadership team rather than going from the top. We have created four ports, in Delhi Mumbai, Kolkata, where we get products directly from factories. Secondly, we have devised a very good forecast mechanism for all our models and months. Assisting the mechanism, we have an online monitoring system called PEP-SY (partner excellence programme secondary), which helps us to evaluate and understand the stock situation in the market - shop by shop. However, we have also struggled but got rid of the situation. We have actually learnt from the situation.

Is not the printer market crowded with a number of

vendors?

India is an emerging market. We have only touched 3% of our population for IT penetration and out of that; printer market is only one third. So it is a long way to go as 97% of the market is left as virgin. Apart from the existing imaging print-ing companies, this market can accommodate another 10 brands and every brand can grow. From 1940 to 60, US grew because they had 40 percent of the young population. From 1970 to 2010, China grew because they had 37 per cent of the people who were youth and India now is growing because 67% of our population is youth. So, next 40 years is India’s year. Canon realizes this very well that is why we have put all our products for youth. We are focused on the home market because that is the place where the youth comes from. When inkjet market was dying, we came out with photo printing concept. With that, we evolved the home printing concept. School start ups or college start ups - all require printers.

How technologically are you different?

We address both the technologies - inkjet and


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SME CHAT

Chat- Cannon VP Sanjeevan.indd 32 6/21/2010 7:20:11 PM

laser - equally and try to build capability into both the technologies. We have lunched new Pixma WiFi printers with a lot of technology inbuilt into it. These printers can penetrate into the Indian market to add value. We have also launched the world’s smallest printer, which can fit into the bookshelves. The specialty of this printer is that it comes with an automated tray. When you fire the printout, the tray opens and takes the paper automatically. This has the duplex printing capability also, which saves 50% cost on printing. Secondly, all our prod-ucts are five star rated so that the power saving is close to 45%. Thirdly, this printer works with multiple platforms including, Linux, MAC and Windows. Besides, the inkjet MFDs have auto-matic sensor so that when you scan documents, it automatically turns it to JPEG and PDF.

We have also launched laser printer which comes with output tray sensor because today in the corporate scenario, people fire from the dif-ferent nodes and the output tray becomes full and stops printing process in the midway, but the new technology allows the system to know that the

output tray is full and the administrator or the user can walk up to the printer and clear the tray. We also have printers which come with remote UI printing features that eliminate the installation of printer driver for any printing.

What is your strategy to make the users aware about the rich

user experience?We have formulated a strategy called Understand-ing BIBLE (before I buy live experience). That is why we have launched image lounges in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Mumbai. All printers are displayed here with live demo option; people can walk in and check the advantages and benefits of Canon printers. We have taken this concept to 38 cities. We also have launched Image Express – the tech-nology expo on wheels. It has covered five cities now and 42 thousand consumers have experi-enced Canon products and the features. We aspire to take it near one crore consumers by the end of February 2011. We are investing more than Rs.12 crore in this project to make the Indian consum-ers understand and appreciate Canon’s quality.

What are the factors influence users while buying any printer?

There are four factors determine the users’ buying of printers. Out of that number one is quality of the images. Then convenience, speed, which is very important because the users do not have time to wait for print and last one is cost. These four things are important for all segments. These are the four pillars that Canon is excellent, which of course is the mantra for our success.

How are you correcting the per-ception about consumables?

As far as consumables are concern, it is a wrong myth that the original consumables are costly. The users should always value the quality reliability and perfor-mance that the original consumables bring in. As far as availability is concerned, we have launched origi-nal ink center concept. Therefore all Canon consum-ables are available next to their doors. We have 690 such centers across the country and planning to have 1000 original centers by the end of this year. We have seen our consumable business growing 54% this year over last year.

WE ARE DECLARING A LEADERSHIP STATEMENT THAT ‘INDIA PRINTS ON

CANON’.


33

SME CHAT

Chat- Cannon VP Sanjeevan.indd 33 6/21/2010 7:20:16 PM

How has been your performance globally?

As per the last numbers reported, globally, we are the largest manufacturer for HDD. In spite of having very small portfolio for enterprise, we have shipped 51.5 million HDDs last quarter, which made us the world’s largest manufacturer of HDD. The uniqueness of WD is that we are vertically integrated. Each and every part which goes into WD HDDs is made by us or one of our compa-nies. So, we do not rely on external companies. We have manufacturing facilities in California, Malaysia and Thailand.

What is your view on the Indian IT market?

If you look at the IT industry, JFM Q1, 2010, the industry has grown by 20-25% on the PC ship-ment front largely driven by the enterprises. It is a positive signal to the market. But unless the consumers’ market grows, we cannot feel that. The business is actually happening as a lot of convergence and diversification is happening in the industry. I believe the next five years will be the boom time for India. The recent boom what I see is the hosting of commonwealth games. By hosting this game, it is a big shift on the infra-structure in the capital city. Secondly, all the plans and programmes that the centre and the state

governments have undertaken will be executed in the next five years. Imagine what will be the situ-ation! The government of India has already come out with a new law that the all public educational instructions should have to have digital surveil-lance. What potential we are going to see across the nation. Besides, a big growth is coming from the telecom sector.

How do you see the Indian HDD market faring?

For us, it is not the PC or laptop anymore, any-thing which needs a hard drive, we are there. Storage has gone into surveillance, home enter-tainment, communications and other things as well. Today, all the TV channels and radio chan-nels need to keep back up of their transmissions. The netbook is evolving in the market as a big thing. I see the market is growing but we are not ready to accept that.

Do you think the customers are ready to buy new products?

I see Indian consumers are more matured about what they are buying. They do research before buying anything, where as the market has not been matured to address their needs. The chan-nel partners have to make the products available as per the requirement of the customers. The

vendors should also make the pricing correct so that there is a parity all across. As far as WD is concerned, we have flat and competitive pricing across the world

What are your views on Cloud Application for storage?

Cloud storage is very expensive application. At the cost of one year subscription in the cloud space, you can buy 1 or 2 TB HDD for your local PC. Secondly the bandwidth for transmitting the data especially in a country like India is a real concern. Third thing is that what kind of content you can keep in the cloud, where you do not have control? You keep your personal data? No. Maximum you can keep in cloud is the common files which can be shared. When Google started the Gmail, it became the highest backup place for data because the users started emailing their document copies. It is a good thing in a way because Google doubled their storage size and bought from us the HDD for their data centre. So, as long as there is data in a digital format, there is a HDD. So whether I put that HDD in a PC or Google mainframe server or a cloud application server, the medium will remain to be a HDD. Personally I feel cloud is a nice applica-tion but it is a short lived application only, until people start using it aggressively.

“GLOBALLY, WE ARE THE LARGEST MANUFACTURER

OF HDDs”

KHWAJA SAIFUDDIN DIRECTOR SALES – MEA & SOUTH ASIA,

WESTERN DIGITAL

HDD is the principal component in a PC but the hard drive market is no more dependent on the PCs. It has explored a lot of other areas including entertainment, broadcasting, surveillance, etc. for its growth. The market is pegged to reach US$27.7mil in 2010, up 18.4% from 2009.

Secondly, the cost of capacity is going down year on year – almost 40% per year. Some time back SME Channels met Khwaja Saifuddin - Director Sales – MEA & South Asia, Western

Digital, to know about the company’s India specific plans. Excerpt.


34

SME CHAT

Chat- Khwaja Saifuddin.indd 34 6/21/2010 7:18:50 PM

How are your focused on the Indian market?

India is a focused market for us, not because of its dynamism, but for the potential of the business that this country is offering. There is a low PC penetration in the country with high consumer-ism and the high growth of the middle class. The country has a sentimental attachment for us. We have a presence here with local office for past five years and we have had significant growth from the country as well that is why we have high focus for next two years. In fact all the growing markets, including India, Russia, China, Brazil and turkey are within our radar of focus.

What is your channel focus?80% of our business comes from Channel

market in India. We are doing a lot of activities

automatic, we have launched a website called WD University and partners can go to the library and get themselves trained. Every month, we do a lucky draw for the winners of the training.

What is your latest offering?We have the entire range of products

including the recently launched WD TV Live HD media player, featuring network capability and Full-HD 1080p resolution. The WD TV Live HD media player makes it easy for anyone to play media stored on USB and network drives, any PC on the home network, as well as content from popular websites, on the biggest screen in their home - their big screen television. We also have launched WD VelociRaptor hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA family of hard drives. We are trying to bring in the experi-ence to the consumers and more opportunity for the channel to sell.

We also have Passport AV external drive for the AV application of the dish TVs or satellite TVs.

SSD is already there with us by virtue of Sili-consystems acquisition but we are not promoting it because the demand is more than the supply. At the moment, we have very high end products which are not affordable for the consumers. Simi-larly, we have world’s best SATA based drive better than the SCASI drive.

What is the future of SSD technology?

Our analysis is that the SSD market will come after 10 years. SSD is better technology in certain ways but not compared to the HDD. It is good in writing but as far as rewriting is concerned it is extremely slow. There is a life to an SSD. We are still in research to come out with a right thing. Secondly it is too expensive to justify that for the price of a 128 GB SSD you can buy 2TB of HDD and what you save on is the 3 seconds of boot up time. For those 3 seconds it is a big compromise. SSDs are very good things either for very small application in terms of memory cards or for some very mission critical applications for very high-end servers where cost is not an issue. It is the criticality of the operation and execution of that command, which is more important.

What are your weak areas in India that you want to plug in?

We want to penetrate into the tier 2-3 cities. Our focus is about going closer to the consumers. Last month, we acquired Hoya’s magnetic media opera-tions. So in terms of products availability, we are able to forecast well in advance, so we do not have product shortage in the market. Secondly, we want to grow more in the enterprise segments. SME

“I SEE THE MARKET IS GROWING BUT

WE ARE NOT READY TO ACCEPT THAT. “

for this market. We are giving them the backend programmed called Select WD. We are also giving them WD Express RMA service, which is a free pick and drop service. They need to only call the toll free number and a person will come to pick up the faulty product and drop the repaired product in a stipulated time. We are creating road shows to create pull. We are also educating the partners as well as the customers about how to sell and what to buy. We are doing in stall merchandising and branding to make it easier for the consumers to influence their decision. Besides we are open for the ideas from the partners to enhance their experience with us. Recently, we have added Red-ington to the list of our distributors.

In a quarter, we organize at least 10-15 road shows. So, in a year, we get 60 occasions to meet them face to face. In order to make it easier and


35

SME CHAT

Chat- Khwaja Saifuddin.indd 35 6/21/2010 7:18:54 PM

Using eSys sourcing and distribution efficiencies, the company is able to offer much better TCO and value for money proposition to customer.

BY SANJAY [email protected]

Industrial evolution is always very phenom-enal to watch. You never know what could be the growth path and you never can control its movement. If one documents the progress, it looks like a flow of a river.

The moment it hits a rock solid surface, it changes its path. Nature has given the intelligence to the rivers to take an alternative path than stopping at the sight of the obstacle. This is in fact natural with all living beings on the earth. When it comes to creating enterprises by the human beings and sustaining growth, how can they stop their move-ment when faced with any tough times or obsta-cle? So being adaptable to the changing situation, the enterprises have flourished.

eSys Information Systems has also been adap-tive in its journey of last decade to thrive in the market. It has never bucked down with the indus-try’s ups and downs. Started as a simple compo-nent distribution company in Singapore by Vikas Goel, who happens to be the current chairman and group managing director of eSys Information Technologies has come a long way to become a PC manufacturing company – though the distri-bution arm is the quantum revenue earner still.

Vakul Bhatnagar, COO, Esys Information Technologies, says, “Road map for the organiza-

tion is not just limited to the distribution, but to provide complete solution on SMB space. We are there from the starting of supply to deployment.”

Since its incorporation in 2000, eSys has set a scorching pace to become a major IT component distribution network in Asia and Europe with 32 in-country subsidiaries and more than 100 points of presence. India being the incubation center and a large country in terms of growth, it enjoys a very important position. Today, they have Intel, Xerox, Fuji, Numeric, SAP, ADC Krone, Foxconn, etc. as their principal partners for distribution and all these brands are distributed pan India. This strength has helped eSys to diversify into manu-facturing of their own branded products. Today, eSys offers Wizard Range of PCs, Netbooks, Serv-ers, etc. They also have UPS, TFT, USB drives, Keyboards, RAM, Mouse, NAS solutions, etc.

Being an OEM player it is a difficult proposi-tion to compete with their OEM partners. But as per Vakul, the company does not have competi-tive products in their distribution kitty, so conflict does not arise. However, both the segments get their due focus from the company.

The advantage of eSys is that it understands the market from the core. Supply is not an issue. Having less over head compared to large compa-

Year of

Operation

: 2000

Regd Office : Chandigarh, Corporate office

: Gurgoan

Key People : Akash Deep Sharma -CEO,

Sanju Laroria VP-Global

Operations, Vakul Bhatnagar

-COO

Direct

presence in

India

: 27 locations

Products : eSys Branded : Wizard PCs,

servers, netbooks, UPS, TFT,

USB drives, Keyboards, RAM,

Mouse, NAS solutions, House

ware, Ray Lights-CFL, Flex &

Photo Papers

Distibution : Intel, Fujifilm, Xerox, Numeric,

SAP, ADC Krone, Foxconn

Website : http://www.esys.in

FACTS ABOUT

IS THE

TO THRIVE IN THE MARKET

ADAPTABILITYMANTRA


36

ESYSSME BIZ

SME Biz_eSys.indd 36 6/21/2010 7:25:22 PM

nies along with its manufacturing and R&D capa-bility, the company can play well with the pricing and quality. So the net result is that within a very short time, the company has earned good success in SMB and education segment against some of the leading brands.

Vakul adds, “Using our sourcing and distri-bution efficiencies, we are able to offer much better TCO and value for money proposition to customer.”

The clear mandate of the company is to offer value for money products. Vakul maintains, “We are heavily relying on word of mouth from end users and business partners to make the sales easy.”

From the products’ road map perspective, the company is always in sync with technological trends of key leaders such as Intel, AMD and other building block providers. He adds, “As we operate on Just in Time strategy, providing latest offering is easy and faster for us as compared to other multi layered brands.”

eSys eWiz-3332T tower server provides the entire data centre paraphernalia to the SMB customers at a very affordable cost. Similarly, the new eSys rack server eWiz-16HR is a HOT-SWAP model offer-ing more redundancy to the system when it comes to criticality of operations. This model is also in 1U category with enhanced Quad Core Xeon E5504 2.0Ghz Processor mounted on an Intel S5500BC

VAKUL BHATNAGAR, COO, ESYS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES PVT.

LTD.

motherboard which is a Dual Socket board with 4GB of DDR3 memory. This is upgradeable to 31GB via 8 DIMM slots. The server has ample storage capacity with 2 units of 500GB Enterprise HOT-SWAP Hard Disk Drives mounted from the front panel. This feature may not be available in any product of this scale at the price of Rs. 69,990/-, which is unique to eSys. The company leverages its manufacturing facilities based out of Nalagarh (Himachal Pradesh). This facility is spread over18 acres of land and known as the nerve center for the entire eSys operations. The state of art plant has a peak capacity of 1.2mn PC/year. All PC go through the industry standard testing procedures of QC and FQC before being ready for shipment. The QA team constantly works on improving and testing PC on newer platform so that PC when put to any applica-tion in field does not fail.

All these products are marketed through a large number of channel partners spread across all the cities in India. As vendor and distributor eSys is always working towards improving the profit margins of its partners. All Monthly schemes or rebates rotate around small and achievable num-bers so that the partners do not get stuck with inventory. On Products like Motherboard, Ext USB drives, key boards, mouse, the company has introduced a new concept of “NO Q Warranty” that is no questions asked warranty subject to no CID (customer induced damage).

eSys has two kind of business partners, eSys Premium Partner (EPP) and eSys Value Partner (EPP). Both get different and very simple quar-terly policy on rebates around numbers - that are mutually agreeable between eSys and Partners. Apart from this, the company has monthly Promo Schemes on selected or new products, which are open to all. Vakul maintains, “On Channel empowerment, we conduct training program, shared activity with partners, man power shar-ing and have a technical Product help whenever required by Business Partners.”

The success of IT business of eSys through partners has also inspired the company to foray into other segments of the market. The theory is pretty simple for them and they are the masters of the distribution business. Therefore, the company very deliberately entered into various non IT markets including Flex Paper, photo paper, CFL lighting product (under brand name Ray-Light), House ware under brand name Mangrove, etc.

Finally…With a current Turnover is of Rs. 650 crore in 2009-10, eSys is well poised to challenge the hege-mony of some of the big brands in the coming times. As the market is swinging up, the company is expecting to grow 25% this year.


37

SME BUZZESYS

SME Biz_eSys.indd 37 6/21/2010 7:25:25 PM

Power backup market in India is growing at an annual rate of 15-20% varying within the three segments – UPS, Inverter and Generator. This opportunity has encouraged Uniline to scout for a strong channel part-ners’ base who have ambition to grow with the company.

products. These products offer features like green power, low distortion and energy conservation and high input power factor for greater efficiency.

Today, the company has 10,000 sq.feet of modernized sales and service area in South Delhi and factories at Delhi and Parwanoo (HP), along with branch offices across 20 locations in India, the company has a dealer network at 53 locations along with company’s resident engineers.

From the products perspective the company has a number of products including Online UPS from 1kVA to 500kVA, Line interactive UPS from 500 VA to 2kVA, sinewave inverters and servo voltage stabilizers from 1kVa till 330kVA in the single face and from 3kVA till 1000kVA in the three phases. All the instruments are fully cali-brated from reputed labs.

Apart from the traditional products the com-pany has forayed into solar power solutions for UPS and inverters. And, very recently the com-pany has also bid for a government tender worth 25crore rupees to supply solar solutions. Besides, the company has unveiled a high-end power solu-tion product called D Series UPS to address the

BY SMRUTI [email protected]

TO FOCUSIT’S TIME

ON CHANNEL MARKET

India

Headquarter

: New Delhi

Key people : R K Bansal, Founder & MD,

Uniline Energy Systems

Direct

presence in

India

: 20 branches and 53 location

presence through partners

Key products : UPS, sine wave Inverter, CVT

& Servo Stabilizer

Website : www.unilineindia.com

FACTS ABOUT T

wo decades of journey is never a small thing, especially in a market where margin is very thin and competition is very high. Based out of the heart of New Delhi; Uniline

Energy Systems has been part of the Indian power continuity industry for last two decades.

Started as a trading house by R K Bansal, Founder & MD, Uniline Energy Systems, with the help of a single person, Uniline has emerged as the 3rd largest UPS manufacturer in India with a turnover of Rs.100 crore.

The motto is to offer quality power products that are reliable and competitively priced, which has also enabled the company to No.1 in the north India market. The growth of the company was so fast that it assumed 3rd position in just five years time. The mantra of success of the company revolves around making customers satisfied.

During its long journey, Uniline has built capa-bility in its products offerings. It is the first com-pany to offer the IGBT Technology. The company has deployed right Infrastructure & strong R&D facility to bring out power back up and continuity


38

UNILINE SME BIZ

SME Biz_Uniline.indd 38 6/21/2010 7:25:33 PM

data centre and enterprise market. Besides, the company is also launching domes-

tic inverters. From the market perspective, Uniline caters

to the needs of large and small computer instal-lations, industrial automation, banks, airlines, healthcare, R&D Establishments, DoT, etc. The repeated orders from the conventional sectors have encouraged the company to focus more on the IT channel market, where the penetration is comparatively low. Of course it is the right strat-egy to be present in all the sectors equally so that any sector performs badly for the company the other sector can compensate.

Out of its entire basket, 33% of its turnover comes from OEMs like HCL, HP, IBM, Wipro, Acer, DELL, etc. Another 30% comes from Govt. Sector & balance through distributors and dealers across India.

Uniline UPS systems from 600VA to 1KVA in the Offline range and in the Online UPS space from 500VA to 10 kVA goes through the channel. These are the items which are generally sold along with computers. The concern of the channel is availability of the product at the right price point.

So the challenge is product availability at near-est location and at attractive price, so that the channel partners earn handsome profit on every sale. Focusing this aspect Uniline had introduced 600 VA Uniplus UPS for SOHO sector. These products are compared with any international brand in terms of feature and outlook. Similarly, 1 to 6 kVA Green Line Series UPS have also been aggressively pushed to the channel market.

The strategy is to have 2-3 distributors in each state and main dealers in each district. The com-pany wishes to appoint dealers who have capabil-ity to sell and distribute power products. They should have technical background and infrastruc-ture setup for providing after sales support.

At present, the company has 122 channel part-ners but going foward Uniline wants to take this number to 500 by the end of this year. To assist them, the company provides a dedicated service network. They also have offices and resident engi-neers all across India.

Supporting these dealers, the company wants to use all forms of media, whether print, electronic or outdoor as part of its promotion campaign. Similarly, for the dealers there will be promotional scheme like gifts, turnover incentives & attractive international trips.

Finally…With a lot of product lines including domestic inverters, solar solutions, D Series UPS, the com-pany is eyeing at a turnover of Rs.150 crore from Rs.100 crore.

RK BANSAL, FOUNDER & MD,

UNILINE ENERGY SYSTEMS

HOW WAS THE YEAR 2009 FOR UNILINE?2009-10 was a difficult period of the industry; every organization including Govt.

enterprises had hold back their expansion plans because of the uncertainty about

the future. There was less Govt. investment as they had also felt the hit. So computer

manufacturers and the UPS manufacturers were also hit. But we were able to maintain

our position because we were lucky to get good contracts during this period.

Since our presence is in all the sectors, including govt. channel, enterprises, we have

not only survived but also grown decently.

WHAT ABOUT THE QUALITY AND RELIABILITY OF UNILINE PRODUCTS?For last 20 years, we are able to sell 3 million UPS systems in India out of it the total

complains in hand will be around 200. We value the customers’ down time. So our

products are highly reliable and affordable.

HOW FOCUSED ARE YOU ON CHANNEL?Earlier we used to focus more on the Government and OEM segment, but with the

growth of the channel market, we are also focusing on the channel aggressively. Our

strategy is to push UPS upto 10kVA through the channel market and the higher kVA

will be sold directly by our team. We are expecting that going forward, channel will

contribute 50% to our revenue.

We plan to have dealers in each district. Our team is in the market to finalize the tie

ups. The advantage of Uniline is that the channel partners have a very good image

about us. Secondly, in comparison to the competition products, our products offer

handsome margin.

We also train them and time to time offer special price for any account. Our policy is

very transparent with the partners. We follow a log in policy for the partners, which

never allow any dispute among the partners in respect to the clients.

WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA TO BE PARTNER WITH UNILINE?We are looking for the people who have capacity, ability, infrastructure, knowledge

and good visualization. It is very easy to partner with us. Neither we have complex

procedure, nor do we require much investment from them. Only Rs.5 lakh investment

can make them sign up with us. Today, people without any technology know how or

knowledge about UPS, are doing good business in power sector.

It takes only 15 days to evaluate everything for signing up. And, our exit policy is also

very clear. Any day, the partner feels that he wants to quit this business and switch to

another business, he can give us all products at minus 10% of the cost. It will take one

month for us to wrap up.

FINAL QUESTION


39

SME BIZUNILINE

SME Biz_Uniline.indd 39 6/21/2010 7:25:37 PM

SAMSUNG ML-1666

CANON LASER SHOT LBP 6300DN

HP LASER-JET PRO P1606DN

CANNON

SAMSUNG HP

CANON LASER SHOT LBP 6300dn is a perfect laser printer for the small business or professional home office, who likes to print a variety of documents including A4, Letter, Legal, etc. Combining an excellent print performance, it offers network printing capability.

With print speed of 30ppm, the LBP6300dn offers high-quality monochrome documents in double-quick time. In addition, the first printout time is only 6 seconds, which greatly reduces time spent waiting for documents to be ready. This printer consumes a 9W in standby mode. Changing the LBP 6300dn’ toner cartridge is very easy. Push a button and the front cover opens, allowing you to replace the toner easily. Equipped with automatic duplex print, the LBP 6300dn comes with the 50-sheet multi-purpose tray and a 250-sheet standard cas-sette an optional 500-sheet cassette feeder brings total paper capacity to a massive 800 sheets. With 2500 pages duty cycle, this printer is rightly ideal for the SMBs.

n Product: Canon Laser Shot LBP 6300dn, Price: Rs.24,995, Warranty: 2 Years, Contact: Canon India Private Limited, Tel No.: 1800-180-33-66 (Toll Free No.), Email: [email protected]

HP LASERJET Pro P1606dn Printer is one of the small foot print laser printers available from HP portfolio. Focused on the small office environment, the printer offers Ethernet network-ing, automatic two-sided printing. It saves money and energy with Instant-on Technology. The in-built HP Auto-On/Auto-Off Technology adds to the savings on energy cost.

This is the fast laser printing with built-in productivity features designed for small offices.

It easily connects a small office using built-in Ethernet net-working and PCL5e support. Offering 26 ppm letter/25 ppm A4, the first printout comes in as fast as 7 seconds. Plus, a 250-sheet paper tray and 10-sheet priority input slot handles a wide range of HP media that best suits your business purpose.

With 8000 pages duty cycle per month, the spherically shaped toners that contain wax particles fuse at a lower temperature adding to the energy savings on auto duplex mode.

In addition to the above advantages, the product brings very robust features like 25 ppm / 32 MB / Duplex / Network printing and it targets SMB, Govt., Education, BFSI, etc.

n Product: HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn, Price: 17,415 + taxes, Warranty: 2 Years, Contact: Ajay Rawal, Email: [email protected], 91-124- 2566111

SAMSUNG ML-1666 is a compact “Made for India” laser printer. With 16 PPM speed, it offers an intuitive printing experience by incorporating a number of easy to use one touch features into the product design. The ML-1666’s low noise level, rapid print speed, and easy power button assure maximum convenience.

The printer’s print screen button – conveniently located on the printer control panel – lets you print the contents from your screen, quickly and easily, even when you’re away from your desk. Just one touch is all that it takes. With one click, there’s no more extra editing or cropping of unwanted content-clutter from original webpages or documents. If a single page is what you want, it’s what you’ll get. Hold the button for more than two seconds and the ML-1666 prints the last object that you activated on your monitor.

The Samsung ML-1666 laser printer has an elegant exterior design, sure to fit in with any workspace. Its glossy top cover looks chic and polished while offering dust-free protection. Spiff up your space with a desktop accessory that actually helps you work better.

The ML-1666 features a first page output time (FPOT) of just 8.5 seconds and an impressive 1200 x 600 dpi print resolution, satisfying both your need for speed and your demand for quality. The printer comes with full starter toner of 1500 pages.

n Product: Samsung ML-1666, Price: Rs 5499, Warranty: 2 years, Contact: Aditya Mahajan, [email protected], +91-124-488-1234


40

NEW ARRIVALSPRODUCT

Products-New Arivals.indd 40 6/21/2010 7:25:06 PM

ESYS MYXERVER MX3600

ESYS MYXERVER MX3600 might look very simple but its utilities are manifold. Ideal for the home users and SMBs, MyXerver MX3600 stores data automatically and makes it available over any network even if the PC or MAC is off. The NAS box with 1TB storage capacity takes the entire data of an organization or entire photographs, videos, films or document of a home user.

With the smooth contours, it is also a very good design with a gently glowing ice blue light in one corner. As a stor-age box, you might think it is a noisy but on the contrary, it is mostly silent when in function.

On the body of box there is a power button, Gigabit Ethernet port and USB 2.0 port, which help the users to enhance productivity.

One of the key elements of the MyXerver is that it’s not just ideal for backing up your files at the end of the day, as other NAS storage boxes but also backs up your changes as you make, which is unique in this storage box. If you change a Word document on your PC that change can be immedi-ately backed up on your eSys MyXerver. Additionally, you can automatically back up data from a USB stick.

Access is not at all a difficult task. You can log on to the eSys MyXerver from anywhere using the web interface. Though initial setup is slightly difficult but once you set up the device, it is easier to access. MyXerver combines the function of a file server together with a host of other value-added features such as BitTorrent download feature, which allows you to do continuous download of internet contents even when the PC is off.

You can save thousands of photographs in this and share with your friends just about everywhere. This can generate a web-based photo album with thumbnails and details such as date, resolution, aperture, focal length etc.

FEATURESn Storage capacity: 1TB

n Flash Memory: 16MB

n HDD: 1x support SATA I/II HDD

n Network: Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet

n USB Port: 2x USB 2.0 support USB

printer, disk, digital camera, thumb drive,

etc.

n Stores: Up to 330,000 photographs

and upto 60 HD movies

PRICERs 14,990/-

CONTACTUday Tuteja, Product Manager, eSys

Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Plot

No. 521, Phase-111, Gurgaon, Haryana-122

016 India

+91 124 3010678-79

[email protected]

OVERALL RATING

BY MANAS [email protected]

If you are a chatting freak over internet, you

can absolutely bank upon Microsoft LifeCam

VX-2000. It combines an elegant design

with a high quality built-in microphone and

vivid VGA video. Using this webcam, you can

record and send videos to your friends and

relatives over a live call.

It is easy to set up and easy to use. Only in

seconds you are through. With VGA video

and 1.3MP still photography, the VX-2000

provides crystal-clear images. It auto-

adjusts to low-light conditions and creates

bright pictures in a variety of scenarios. So

those who are staying away from their fami-

lies do not worry, this camera can provide

you life like experience.

Secondly, those millions of small and mid

size enterprises who want to save on their

travel cost but want to give a live experience

to their communications, can adopt this

webcam.

MICROSOFT LIFECAM VX-2000

n Product: Canon LifeCam VX-2000, Warranty: 3 years limited hardware warranty, Pricing: Rs.1250, Contact: Mihir Somaiya, email: [email protected], Tel No.:91-124-4158000


42

REVIEWPRODUCT

Products.indd 42 6/21/2010 7:24:01 PM

Simplifying Network Security

Astaro REDReinventing Branch Office Security

Virtual ethernet cable to the headquartersOn-site setup in 2 minutesCentralized configuration in the Astaro Security Gateway (ASG) in the headquarters

Call us now! Contact Astaro authorized India distributor RAH Infotech Pvt. Ltd. at Tel nos. +91.9999917712, 9999716664, 9899953381, 9810090217 or E-mail [email protected] or [email protected].

www.astaro.com Connect with Confidence

RNI No.: DEL ENG / 2010 / 3192 Data of Posting: 19 & 20 of Every Month. Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/10-12

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Documents

SMEchannels June 10 Issue