VARINDIA E-Magazine March 2017 Issue

1 www.varindia.com March 2017

VOLUME XVIII ISSUE 07 MARCH 2017 PRICE Rs. 50

AMD launches Ryzen 7 Desktop Processors Huawei unveils Cloud EPN Solution

Digitisation and Role of IoT for Next Generation Enterprise

Thursday, 25th May 2017, Hotel Shangri-La’s - Eros, New Delhi

2 March 2017 www.varindia.com

Voda


Airtel makes radical changes on Roaming

Bharti Airtel has announced radical changes that redefine the value

proposition for domestic and international roaming. With this, Airtel mobile customers will be able to carry their numbers across India and the world.

Starting April 1, 2017, Airtel customers roaming within India will enjoy free incoming calls/SMSes and there will be no premium on outgoing calls allowing them to speak freely wherever they are within the country. Also, there will be no additional data charges on national roaming. These packs come with convenient validity options of 1 day, 10 days, and 30 days and offer loads of benefits including free incoming calls/SMSes, calling minutes and texts both to India and the local country as well as generous dollops of data to stay online.

Dell EMC withPrysm to strengthen smart city portfolioPrysm has announced a strategic

business partnership with Dell EMC, to jointly market and address the smart city opportunity in India.

In this partnership, Prysm will contribute command and control center i m p l e m e n t a t i o n s and dashboards for smart cities. Prysm’s large format content collaboration and mobile solution

will allow smart cities to have individual dashboards for each of the utilities and provide an opportunity to consolidate all utility parameters into a single, unified dashboard, in real-time.

Kaspersky Lab conducts partner meets Trend Micro to provide security solutions to SBI

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Cybersecurity: Best defence is a good offence

HELLO INDIA

India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. To seize growth opportunities and sustain success under shifting global business conditions in this promising economy that is witnessing a dynamic shift in the IT landscape almost every other day, companies need executives who are exceptional leaders in the field of IT. As a result of this, devices, data and applications are also changing rapidly.

However, technologies in the security landscape don't change as fast and security professionals risk being obsolete unless they adapt and update themselves as well.

Digital mediums are likely to surpass traditional ones by 2021-22, when smartphone and broadband penetration increases in the country. In this ever-changing scenario, the one thing that has remained common through the life cycle of this industry is the human interaction. It is us humans who have been using technology starting from the simple DOS systems to today's high-end systems. The human interaction with IT and the active usage of data by humans are the most vulnerable points when it comes to cyber-threats and need maximum security.

The vast and ever-changing threat landscape, coupled with the challenge of improving the security habits of customers, has provided fraudsters with ever more points of vulnerability to exploit. It is high time for the banks to admit that they have to invest in improving their IT security regardless of the return-on-investment, in order to meet the growing demands of government regulators, top management and even their customers. Despite banks putting serious efforts and budgets into safeguarding their perimeters against known and unknown cyber-threats, protecting the breadth of IT infrastructure that now exists – from traditional to specialized, ATMs and Point-of-Sale terminals – has proved difficult.

Technology is actually a part of the problem as well as a part of the solution, primarily because we tend to look at everything from a technological perspective. Thanks to newer technologies, a variety of devices are being allowed access to our systems. These devices can be hacked and prove to be malicious, a fact that more companies need to focus upon.

In a recently-held mega conclave on cybersecurity in New Delhi, organized by VARINDIA, where the Home, Law and IT Ministers, judiciary officials, senior cops from the police department, cybersecurity consultants and corporates participated, emphasis was laid on how awareness regarding cyber-attacks needs to be spread across the country. This is actually the best time for strengthening cybersecurity in India, mostly because the government is finally talking about it, and there is increasing awareness too. Users are now more aware of the things that can go wrong.

Lastly, spreading the right knowledge is half the work done, while the other half is about solving these issues.


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Website: www.varindia.com

CONTENTSPublisher: Deepak Kumar SahuEditor: S Mohini RatnaExecutive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Consulting Editor: Pravin PrashantDeputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna MullickArt Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar SinghManager-IT: Subhash MohantaManager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera

BUSINESS:Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar JhaSr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan DashCirculation Executive: Manish KumarMarketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar

CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, new Delhi - 110030Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809Email: [email protected]

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Mumbai: Bureau officeRegional Manager (West): Anil KumarSr. Correspondent: Mamta S.Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot no-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, navi Mumbai-410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

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VAR CORPORATE

28| HP Inc.: Market Share on the Rise

30| Sify Addresses Network Challenges with WAN

Transformation Service

TECHNOMANIA

31| The New Battlefield: Cyberspace

TAIWAN EXCELLENCE

32| VIVOTEK – Riding high in the IP

Surveillance space

VAR BUZZ

33| Lenovo aims to strengthen its channel community

COVER STORY

34| IP based cameras and Video Analytics set to take the next leap

EVENT

38| ISODA TechSummit 7 reveals the X Factor

VAR SPECIAL

40| Indian IT Channel heading for great times ahead

REGULARS

Round About 10

Channel Chief 12

Hot Bytes 14, 16

On the Ramp 20, 22

Voice N Data 24

Channel Buzz 26

Movers & Shakers 51

Product of the month 47 | 54

FACE TO FACE

45| Dell EMC's hyperconverged portfolio offers flexibility and scalability

VAR ANALYSIS

46| HPE strengthens its arm in Hybrid

IT with Nimble

LEAD STORY

48| Smart Cities Success: Vision, Planning, Funding & Execution

VAR MOBILITY

50| Zen aims for increase in sales volume and market share

VAR SECURITY

53| Hikvision’s Effective Security Surveillance in High Rise Buildings



ROUND ABOUT

The Coming Saga of RobotsIn this world of patents and intellectual property rights, let me

begin this article with an acknowledgment, which is quite unusual since such things are always put on the backburner and are invoked at the tail end and mostly go unnoticed. Recently, I read an editorial titled “Robots Could Have What It (IT) Tax”. It is mostly a satirical one, an obtuse dig at the tax authorities for their alacrity in taxing everything that comes to their mind, provided it can generate some revenue. Not being totally simmered by humility, the author of the editorial may have to acknowledge the makers of one Tamil movie “Enthiran” (Robot), which was remade into Hindi and several other Indian languages. Besides being a huge box-office hit, the film casting superstar Rajnikant and the heartthrob of millions – Aishwarya Rai, talks about the life of a robot, who fell in love with a next-door neighbour (Aishwarya Rai) and the hardships and hostilities that robot (Rajnikant) has to undergo until he was destroyed by the very person who created him.

In a more subdued manner, the paper also should have acknowledged me since some time back in this very column, I had tried to simulate a few illustrious people – Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose in the modern world of information technology. I tried to capture their thought process, broad direction of their speeches, writings and leadership qualities and what they could have done had they lived in the present world. How they could have handled their digital space; what would have been their approach to life: how would have they handled their gizmos, apps and other devices that would have connected them with people, places, ideas and what have you?

Everything changes with time and sometimes things leapfrog as if time does not wait for anyone. In today’s world when people are talking about artificial intelligence to make robots to obey commands to do difficult jobs ranging from navigating aircraft to odd jobs like cleaning toilets. Now, everyone is talking about Robots as if they present both prospects and gloom. According to Bill Gates, robots can displace many jobs, even most complex and intricate ones being done by humans of high intellectual. Those jobs include that of a pilot flying the most sophisticated aircraft, a software engineer evolving solutions to most complex problems, a mining engineer who supervises what is happening some 3,000 metres below the earth or of a space scientist who shuttles to the outer space. Robots and AI are a reality: they will replace the jobs that are mundane and can be described by a series of steps or processes.

Will the humans become redundant? Happily, there are some comforting statements coming from the same quarters, which envision the inroads robotics would make into the digital space. They say robotics will create ten times more jobs in the world than it will replace. It may sound to be apocalyptical. But I tend to believe it. Not many decades ago, people apprehended about the labour replacement power of the computers. Did it replace any jobs? Rather, it has created millions of creative and gainful jobs around the world. India, which resisted the introduction of computers, I must say, has hugely benefited from it. That seems to be a paradox but a fact. Let us take a survey to know how many Indians do not have seen a computer or do not know its functioning? The same may be the case with robots also. It will make life easier, comfortable and, perhaps, worth living since it might take care of some of human drudgeries and vicissitudes. However, the types of jobs will change – the new jobs will need technical education with a reasonable IQ. However, unemployment will increase, as some people will just become “unemployable”.

It is a great concern for the government, police and other law-enforcement authorities how people can misuse technology for criminal activities. Can there be robot thieves, hackers, criminals (as Enthiran has demonstrated) and even other types of antisocial elements, triggered by artificial intelligence. Knowledge is strength in the hands of right people who can use it judiciously and a destructive

weapon with people having a criminal mind

The underlying premise is that when one creates a robot and infusing it by ingraining artificial intelligence, there is no limit to its capacity. It can do both good and bad things as its creator (developer) wishes to infuse or manipulate. Does it sound that one has to be extra cautious while creating such edifices? What I have to offer is that robotic is a science, a front-end one. It can create and destruct as if they are two sides of a coin. One can interpret it as a perfect example of duality. The question is how we make use of discoveries – to make or break!

There is no end to technology. It evolves as and when people feel the need for it. Possibly, the West would have felt the pangs of a graying and declining population. They have to have devices to work for, to look after the aged and invalid, cook for people who do not have the time for it, to keep the house for them whenever they are at home and also to do several other household and office chores. Can these be the case with other countries? Certainly not! There is unemployment and deprivation in other parts of the world. Many of the troubles that have erupted and that may erupt in future can be traced ultimately to deprivation, unemployment and denial of legitimate rights of the people. While one side is looking at finding lasting solutions to find ways to employ and feed people, the other side is looking at the prospects of replacing them with robots created through scientific breakthroughs like artificial intelligence? Is there any contradiction in the two situations? It is how we look at it: from a human angle and from a mechanical angle, bereft of underlying human considerations. The other-world has the capacity to help them from the morass of deprivation they are suffering for a long time, even while continuing with their scientific pursuits. The point is deliverance of multitudes is compatible with scientific pursuits. What makes a difference depends on how we blend them.



CHANNEL CHIEf

D-Link continues to lead the networking market in India

D-Link feels that there are opportunities galore in the country at present. Throwing more light on this, Sanket Kulkarni, VP – Channel Sales, India & SAARC - D-Link tells VARINDIA of how D-Link has positioned

itself and built up its channel eco-system to leverage the growth opportunities in the country -

While globally D-Link has been a front-runner in computer networking technology, in India D-Link is synonymous with

internet. It was one of the early entrants in the market and continues to lead with its innovative and reliable product offerings.

“Today D-Link enjoys a lion share in WLAN segment and is known for its end-to-end networking portfolio. Infact D-Link is one of the widely distributed networking brands with strong penetration in even smaller pockets of the country. Also with Internet & mobility devices like Smart phone/ tablets bringing about a technological revolution in the country, especially smaller cities like C & D class, our focus in these markets will definitely have great impact and opportunity to grow,” says Sanket Kulkarni, VP – Channel Sales, India & SAARC - D-Link.

He continues further, “The business potential in India & SAARC is huge, given the socio-economic conditions and the susceptibility to technological advancements. D-Link has an impressive product range with tremendous back-end business. Over the year D-Link’s revenue has grown by leaps and bounds and it has sustained its market share even during challenging market condition, and strong channel infrastructure.”

For instance, these days connectivity being the key, there has been a huge demand for wireless devices, and uninterrupted wireless connectivity. As a result adoption of 11AC technology – the latest standard in wi-fi, is on a rise. And D-Link being a leader in networking domain has already introduced a host of 11AC products. Similarly, D-Link has also introduced devices that support the latest 4G mobile communication standard thereby allowing users to enjoy wireless Internet access at a much higher speed, and since these are unlocked devices they work with all service providers.

“As a leader in connectivity & wireless devices, D-Link is highly optimist about the market opportunity and we look forward to working closely with our partners & system integrators and contribute to the nation building process,” says Sanket.

A well developed channel eco system...D-Link is one of the most preferred networking brands amongst

partners & resellers. D-Link today has a strong business network with a healthy mix of National distributor, Business distributor & Channel partner. At present D-Link has 4 National Distributors, 80+ Business Distributors, over 15000+ re-sellers, reaching out to customers present across the length & breadth of the country.

To complement its growth story, D-Link wants to widen its partner base, engage with its existing channel and continue with its endeavour to educate re-sellers on new trends in networking. In addition to the existing network, D-Link is also looking at building a network of Value Added Distributors (VAD) who can further enhance its market reach.

“At D-Link we largely attribute our success to our partners/ resellers who have earnestly endorsed D-Link in India for close to 25 years now. Channel continues to be an integral part of our business strategy, with channel engagement & partner profitability being of high precedence. As a result Partner engagement is crucial for D-Link, and we ensure all our strategies are devised keeping channel welfare in mind,” says Sanket.

To ensure a direct interaction with its channel, D-Link conducts seminar/partner engagement program at regular intervals. It organizes such roadshows throughout the year in A, B & C class cities. The objective of these meets is to introduce partners to the latest in networking technology, update them on the product range and address any business concerns.

To enable partners to sell better, D-Link also conducts training & certification programs. For its Structured Cabling product line, D-Link has

rolled out ‘D-Link Certified Cabling Expert (DCCE) program across India. DCCE provides participants with in-depth information on the technical aspect of the subject, evaluates trends for both copper & fibre products and train them to design, install and conduct post-implementation testing of D-Link passive networking components for Infrastructure projects. D-Link also introduces various schemes on regular basis for partners that give them an opportunity to enhance their business value.

D-Link has always believed & maintained that customer experience is crucial to any business. And this is why D-Link has invested in building a support infrastructure for both consumers & enterprises that ensures smooth customer experience. Today D-Link reaches out to its customers in 130+ cities through its own D-Link Service Centers (DSC), which is supported by its wide network of D-Link Service Partners (DSP) and Partner Courier Pickup (PCP). Further D-Link offers ‘Service at your door-step’ for Broadband, Wireless and 3G Lifestyle products with D-Link Direct Service (DDS). “We also have Advance Replacement Next Business Day Warranty (AR-NBD) by D-Link, a premium support program designed exclusively for enterprise customers,” says Sanket. n

Samrita [email protected]

Sanket KulkarniVP – Channel Sales, India & SAARC - D-Link


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HOT BYTES

Trend Micro to provide security solutions to SBI

BD Software launches special offer for channel partners

Inspira collaborates with Alibaba Cloud

Lenovo to deliver Enterprise Cloud Solution on SAP platform

Seclore partners with RAH Infotech

Fortinet provides NSE program to promote Cybersecurity Education

Trend Micro has deployed its

security solutions across more than 26,000 branches of SBI in and outside India and over 275,000 endpoints. Trend Micro also secures 29,000 VMs (Virtual Machines). Trend Micro prides itself with having six among India’s ten largest banks as their customers, using their flagship security products and with highest market share with the leading banks in India. SBI is placing huge emphasis on embracing technology, with investment priorities around Digitization, Cloud

BD Software has launched a pan-

India incentive offer on Bitdefender flagship retail products targeted at the channel partners with a view to strengthening and expanding the company’s channel business.

A special offer is valid on four flagship retail products, namely Bitdefender Total Security Multi Device (1Device/1Year), Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Bitdefender Internet Security and Bitdefender Family Pack. The offer is valid from 15th February

Inspira has announced it has been selected

as a marketplace partner of Alibaba Cloud. Inspira will resell Alibaba Cloud’s services in India, extending Alibaba Cloud’s reach to major cities and industrial belts in the country.

Inspira will provide Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive suite of global cloud computing services to help power and grow enterprises, including Alibaba Cloud’s global footprint of internet data centers low latency, massive data crunching and processing capability

Lenovo has signed an agreement with

SAP, under which Lenovo will deliver a new enterprise cloud solution created exclusively for customers holding licences for the SAP HANA platform in China. To be named “Lenovo Enterprise Cloud designed for SAP HANA”, the new managed service is intended to open a simple and powerful migration path for China customers seeking to leverage their investments in SAP HANA off premise in a cloud

and Mobility, and the integration of security tools is a top priority for SBI.

“We not only protect customers who have already adopted the technology or who are already there on the high-end curve of the technology adoption. We also prepare customers to adopt those technologies,” said Nilesh Jain, Country Manager – (India and SAARC), Trend Micro.

to 15th May, 2017. The partners qualified will get a chance to visit Thailand in the coming July.

“As our channel community is expanding fast, we need to focus on scaling up our partners’ and distributors’ strength in their respective regions and markets as they are playing a critical role in promoting Bitdefender brand in India, growing the customer base and driving customer’s satisfaction,” said Zakir Hussain Rangwala, Director, BD Software.

and anti-DDoS technology to safeguards web applications.

“Inspira is very excited to be partnering with Alibaba Cloud as the company has a solid track record of implementing Cloud solutions that specifically address customers’ requirements and business concerns. I am confident that our joint partnership will strongly support the growing demand for cloud computing in India,” said Manoj Kanodia, CEO, Inspira.

environment.The new deal comes

shortly after the two companies crossed the one-year mark of an expanded strategic alliance announced in January 2016. It follows several other significant milestones achieved last year as part of the joint commitment to develop new cloud solutions for the China market, pioneer global innovations leveraging SAP HANA and Lenovo server technologies, and execute collaborative go-to-market programs.

Seclore has chosen RAH Infotech as

its specialist public- sector distributor. RAH Infotech specializes in enterprise and app security as well as application delivery. The new partnership will fuel Seclore’s push into various government sectors and support the national “Make-in-India” initiative.

“While the government is going digital, it is imperative to maintain the trust of citizens by ensuring that key information, such as ID proofs and Know-Your-Cus tomer documents, don’t fall into the wrong hands. Seclore can help by combining its

deep industry expertise and scalable persistent data-centric technology to seamlessly extend security infrastructure beyond government organizations,” said Amit Malhotra Vice-President, Sales India, Middle East & Africa, Seclore.

Seclore has closed a number of major public sector deals recently.

Fortinet has announced that

they are providing universal access to their Network Security Expert (NSE)

training and certification program, making it broadly available and free of charge. Fortinet is taking a massive step to engage a new generation of aspiring cybersecurity professionals by providing a gateway to attain the highly desirable

and lucrative skills in the growing field of IT security. Fortinet will offer NSE program level 1 courses to the public. Fortinet’s NSE

program has quickly become an industry-standard in cybersecurity training and certification that fosters the continuing education of IT security professionals worldwide and helps close the cybersecurity skills gap.

Netflix signs Partnerships for India MarketNetflix has entered

into strategic partnerships with Airtel, Videocon d2h and Vodafone, making the world’s leading Internet TV network and its critically-acclaimed programs like House of Cards, Narcos and The Crown more easily accessible to consumers across direct-to-home and mobile platforms throughout India.

“India is one of the most important and vibrant countries in the world and we are delighted to be teaming up with three of its leading companies to make it much easier for consumers to enjoy Netflix,” said Reed Hastings, Co-Founder & CEO, Netflix. “We look forward to bringing our Indian members more compelling stories, an ever-improving viewing experience and incredible joy.”

Veritas partners with Microsoft Veritas Technologies

and Microsoft have announced a multi-year global, strategic partnership to help organizations use Microsoft Azure to optimize for hybrid cloud environments and to host Veritas’ Enterprise Vault cloud management and governance service on Azure.

The partnership includes collaboration to enable and jointly sell hybrid cloud storage solutions to mutual customers to provide a comprehensive, simple and cost-effective approach to managing data in the cloud. Such hybrid cloud storage solutions will enable customers to take advantage of the cloud to reduce their storage costs while increasing business agility, and to extract greater value from their data, once stored in the cloud, through the full suite of Azure cloud services.



HOT BYTES

eScan releases “Special Incentive Program” for its Channel Partners

Vertiv launches Lucrative Program for Partners

Kaspersky Lab conducts partner meets

Avaya along with Salesforce focuses on Cloud Solution

Barracuda presents New “Cloud Ready” Program

Tally Solutions conducts GST awareness programme in Delhi

eScan has introduced “Special Incentive

Program” for its channel partners and their sales team. The special incentive program has been designed to reward the channel partners and their sales persons for their contribution towards the growth of eScan products. The rewards range from travel vouchers to various gifts. The offer is valid for all the sales made from 1st January to 31st March, 2017.

Sunil Kriplani, Senior Vice-President, Global

Vertiv has announced a

lucrative, “Bill More Gain More” program for its Value Added Resellers (VARs) in India. This unique offer applicable to small and micro Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) solutions (up to 20 kVA) has been unveiled to reward channel partners for their continued commitment towards the company. This offer gives channel partners a chance to redeem payback points and avail payout options for all sales made during the quarter ending March 31, 2017.

Kaspersky Lab has conducted

successful two marathon partner pitstops with its national B2B distributors – eCaps Computers. Both the pitstops were conducted with eCaps, the first one in Hyderabad on February 10, 2017 and the second in Ernakulam on February 17. Each pitstop saw a full house with partners who discussed how to take Kaspersky’s vision for India forward.

Both the cities saw over 48 partners and 78 attendees that came together to discuss the way forward

Avaya has announced an

expanded alliance with Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver solutions that more deeply integrate the contact centre products of the two companies.

The expanded alliance will focus on cloud-based solutions that enable seamless access, greater contextual awareness and rapid, knowledgeable service at all points along the customer journey, making it easier for businesses to meet the digital demands of today’s customers.

Barracuda has announced its

new “Cloud Ready” program designed to help organizations securely extend their workloads and applications into cloud environments. With each new purchase of an on-premises Barracuda NextGen Firewall or Barracuda Web Application Firewall – including both physical and virtual deployments, Barracuda provides a cloud licence for the same solution in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure

Tally Solutions has conducted its very

successful GST Awareness programme “GST – The Journey Begins”, training the business fraternity on the new indirect tax regime and preparing them for the transition. The event held on 23rd February at Hotel Eros, New Delhi witnessed footfalls of more than 80 business owners from across different business verticals like machinery, paints, heavy metals, electronics, etc.

Tally aims to work with chartered accountants and tax practitioners,

Sales and Marketing, eScan, said, "The channel partners are an integral part our business and growth story. eScan aims at an ongoing relationship with them in the market and bring them more close to the company. Hence, we come out with offers in regular intervals to reward their efforts and to make them part of our growing family of channel partners. This offer is also our way of rewarding the partners and their sales team for their relentless efforts and contribution in our success."

G o p a k u m a r Ambujakshan, Director, Product Management (small and micro UPS), Vertiv, India, said, “Our channel partners are integral to our sales strategy and, as part of our ongoing commitment towards them, we’ve come out with a profitable offer to motivate and reward them for their continuous support. We would like to wholeheartedly welcome our partners to participate and look forward to strategically support them in turn with schemes like ‘Bill More Gain more’.”

in the coming financial year. Kaspersky Lab has forged strong partnership with eCAPS Computers in their years together. Partner pitstops have been integral to Kaspersky’s way of working, to ensure that there is always a free dialogue with all members of its chain. It is important for them to hear back from their partners of what is happening in the market.

“Bringing together the assets of two leaders so adept at elevating the customers’ experience will accelerate their customers’ ability to digitally transform that experience as well,” said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Digital Transformation, Frost & Sullivan.” In addition, this partnership will greatly enhance the agent experience as well, which is critical with the growing millennial workforce.”

(Azure) at no additional cost for up to 90 days.

“In the burgeoning cloud era, IT buyers are in the difficult position of trying to meet the computing needs of today while determining where the compute environment will live over the next few years,” said BJ Jenkins, CEO, Barracuda. “With our ‘Cloud Ready’ program, Barracuda helps to simplify that process. We are empowering customers to make the right decisions for their businesses today.”

industry and trade bodies, business people and other stakeholders in the country.

The event saw eminent guest panellists Anil Gupta (CA) and Sathya Pramod – CFO, explaining the various facets related to the model GST Law, the importance of technology in the GST regime and addressing issues and questions raised by business owners on preparation for and transition to GST.

Snapdeal unveils GST Guru Initiative Snapdeal has

launched GST Guru, a program which will include a range of initiatives to help prepare the sellers on its platform for the impending GST reforms, expected to roll out this July.

Vishal Chadha, Senior VP, Business, said, “The GST is one of the most wide sweeping reforms launched by the Government of India in the recent times, and will deeply affect how business is conducted and reported in our country. Late last year, we realized that there is a lot of confusion, especially among MSMEs, on how they will be impacted by the changed tax structure, as well as other GST-related formalities. This program was, therefore, launched to bring expert help to our sellers, to make the transition as seamless for them as possible.”

Micromax focuses on Accessories segmentMi c r o m a x

I n f o r m a t i c s continues to focus on the accessories segment as well. Micromax will introduce products, including Sound Bars, Bluetooth speakers, Earphones and Power banks, which will enhance the consumer’s experience

Rohan Agarwal, VP, Consumer Electronics, Micromax Informatics, said, “India is one of the fastest-growing mobile phone markets in the world and consumers today are spending a lot of their time with smartphones, fuelling demand for mobile accessories. The market currently is highly unorganized and some industry estimates suggest that it could be to the tune of $1 billion and there is tremendous scope."



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The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo and ThinkServer. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. ©2016 Lenovo. All rights reserved. †Terms and Conditions apply. The test(s) above are performed on statistical samples.

At Lenovo™ we develop technology to meet

the ever-growing demands of small businesses.

With that in mind, we have launched the

ThinkServer® TS140 in India. It is powered to

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· Supports enterprise-grade HDDs

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· Whisper-quiet at 26 decibels

· Intel® Xeon® E3 series processor

· Windows Server® 2012 R2 platform

So go on, add this server to your portfolio

and keep adding to your customer base.

Powered by Intel® Xeon® processor E3 series.Intel Inside®. Powerful Data Center Outside.

Call 1800 3000 9990 to discover howour servers can help grow your business.Mail to: [email protected] visit: Lenovo.com/server


ON THE RAMP

HPE updates its NFV Portfolio

Busy Infotech unveils “BUSY 17”

QNAP launches TS-453Bmini Vertical NAS

AMD launches Ryzen 7 Desktop Processors

Riverbed launches New SD-WAN Solution

VMware launches vCloud NFV 2.0

HPE has announced updates to

its network functions virtualization portfolio, providing communications service providers (CSPs) access to new tools to speed NFV deployments, as well as virtualized solutions to build innovative, p e r s o n a l i z e d customer services.

“One of their biggest priorities is to establish a solid network foundation and flexible service platforms,” said Thomas Sennhauser, APJ CTO, CME, HPE.

HPE NFV System,

Busy Infotech has launched its all-

new GST-ready business accounting software “BUSY 17”. With the launch of BUSY 17, it is all set to carry forward the legacy. BUSY 17 is effectively designed to build a user-friendly GST product for seamless transactions and simplified statutory compliance for businesses.

Dinesh Kumar Gupta, MD, Busy Infotech, says, “We welcome GST era and feel delighted to announce the launch of BUSY 17. BUSY 17 is infused with a wide range of

QNAP has released the new TS-

453Bmini vertical NAS. Powered by the latest Intel 14nm J3455 quad-core 1.5GHz processor (burst to 2.3 GHz) and featuring AES-NI encryption, 4K UHD output and transcoding, the TS-453Bmini couples elegant glossy aesthetics with high- performance, security and intelligent services to provide excellent data storage, backup, sharing, and entertainment options for home and small office use.

"With a 64-bit quad-

AMD has released the first three

models of its highly-anticipated, high-performance AMD Ryzen desktop processor. There are three 8-core Ryzen 7 models available. Beginning in Q2 AMD expects to launch 6- and 4-core Ryzen 5 processors followed later this year by Ryzen 3, which is designed to bring more performance to mainstream applications. All Ryzen processors support the new AM4 infrastructure, with motherboard designs

Riverbed has launched Riverbed

SteelConnect that offers a radically new approach to networking for the cloud-era and simplifies the design, deployment and management of enterprise networks. Riverbed SteelConnect disrupts legacy hardware-based approaches to networking – which haven’t changed much since the 1990s – with a software-defined, cloud-managed and application-centric solution that delivers the agility, visibility, and performance that businesses need to

a pre-integrated NFV platform combining HPE hardware and software in a pre-integrated solution bundle optimized for NFV workloads, now

offers support for Red Hat OpenStack

Platform in addition to HPE Helion O p e n S t a c k

Carrier Grade. The addition of the

Red Hat OpenStack offers CSPs and network equipment providers their choice of pre-packed, pretested and supported carrier-grade virtual infrastructure management (VIM) tools.

features that best meet the business requirements and customer’s expectations post GST rollout.”

BUSY 17 comes in three editions with each edition addressing the needs of a specific target group within MSMEs.

core processor and the next-generation 64-bit QTS 4.3 NAS operating system, the TS-453Bmini provides performance hardware and key software features within a compact and user-friendly chassis," said Jason Hsu, QNAP Product Manager. "By supporting the open-source Ubuntu platform, it also adds greater value in allowing users to develop various IoT applications and to build a secure private cloud system for IoT storage."

available from top ODMs. “Today’s launch of

Ryzen represents AMD at its best, delivering great products and innovation to the high-performance computing market,” said Lisa Su, President & CEO, AMD. “With Ryzen 7 desktop processors, AMD delivers to PC gamers, prosumers and enthusiasts both the highest performance and the lowest power 8-core desktop PC processors, bringing the absolute best PC experience to millions of people.”

succeed in the digital age. Riverbed has also announced the availability of a new line of SteelHead SD models, which combine SteelConnect and its industry-leading SteelHead WAN optimization into a streamlined, single-device solution.

“Organizations in India are under tremendous pressure to transform digitally and to deliver more agile, simple, scalable and cost-efficient services to their customers,” said Nagendra Venkaswamy, VP, India and South Asia, Riverbed.

VMware has introduced vCloud

NFV 2.0, designed to modernize and transform network architectures and operations for global communications service providers (CSPs). The vCloud NFV platform can improve economics through accelerated service delivery, operational excellence and lower infrastructure costs. With vCloud NFV 2.0, CSPs will be able to deliver new and differentiated services on an agile, open and secure software-defined architecture today as they evolve their networks to support 5G and the Internet of Things.

“In today’s highly competitive environment, CSPs must deliver innovative services faster, with the best end-to-end customer experience and at the lowest cost. Current network architectures, including some virtualized deployments, remain rigid and expensive to build and manage. VMware vCloud NFV enables the transformation of network architectures, services delivery, operations and economics through a more dynamic, agile network built on software,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, Vice-President of Solutions, Telco NFV Group, VMware.

Teradata unveils IntelliCloudTeradata has

launched Teradata IntelliCloud, its next-generation secure managed cloud offering that provides data and analytic So f tware - a s - a -Se r v i ce (SaaS). It is available with new deployment choices, including Teradata IntelliFlex, the company’s flagship enterprise data warehouse platform that Teradata will deploy and manages in its own data centers, and global public cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and later, from Microsoft Azure.

“Demand for cloud services increases daily. In fact, by 2020, 90 per cent of our customers expect to have a hybrid cloud environment – and more than 85 per cent expect to buy ‘as a service’ for data warehousing,” said Oliver Ratzesberger, Executive Vice-President & Chief Product Officer, Teradata.

Microsoft brings Azure Stack TP3Microsoft has

announced the availability of Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3). It is a hybrid-cloud solution that enables customers to run Azure cloud in on-premise environments with pay-as-you-use pricing. It is an extension of Microsoft Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing on premise. As with Azure, there are no upfront licensing fees for using Azure services in Azure Stack and customers only pay when they use the services.

People, processes, and applications are transferable between Azure and Azure Stack. Azure services available on-premises: IaaS and PaaS services on-premises empowers organizations to adopt hybrid cloud computing based on their business and technical requirements.



Oracle presents Exadata Cloud Machine

D-Link and TeamF1 launch mydlink Business

Akamai adds major advances to Ion

SanDisk Unveils A1 microSD Card and USB 3.1 Flash Drives

Orange presents a global public cloud offering

Huawei unveils Cloud EPN Solution

Oracle has a n n o u n c e d

expansion of the Oracle Cloud at Customer portfolio

with the availability of Oracle Exadata Cloud Machine. Oracle is offering organizations the ultimate in choice and flexibility in where they deploy the advanced database cloud for mission-critical workloads.

“Oracle Exadata Cloud Machine is an ideal platform for organizations that want the benefits of the

D-Link and TeamF1 N e t w o r k s

have announced their partnership in delivering mydlink Business, a cloud-based device management platform featuring ease, value, and scalability for SMB. The business cloud platform is specifically designed to suit the operation and workflow models of system integrators (“SIs”), value-added resellers (“VARs”), and telcos/ISPs.

In the past two years, D-Link and TeamF1

Western Digital Corporation has

unveiled the microSD card that meets the Application Performance Class 1 (A1) requirements from the latest SD Association’s SD 5.1 specifications. The 256GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card, Premium Edition, delivers capacity, speed and enhanced capability to deliver a better smartphone experience.

The company also has announced the launch of SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive. SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drives are ideal for

Orange Business Services is

accelerating its international cloud strategy with a new global public cloud offering that includes advice, auditing, integration and managed services for cloud infrastructure and applications. The services, delivered in partnership with Huawei, complement the existing Orange private cloud portfolio and will help enterprises in their digital transformation initiatives.

The principal aim of the international cloud strategy is to help multinational corporations (MNCs)

cloud brought to their data center,” said Juan Loaiza, Senior VP of Systems Technologies, Oracle. “For

many years, Oracle Exadata has been the platform of choice for running mission-critical Oracle databases at thousands of customers, and the Oracle Exadata Cloud Machine extends this value proposition to those customers who want cloud benefits but cannot or aren’t yet ready to move to a public cloud.”

jointly developed mydlink Business, to satisfy needs for secured network access and premises surveillance.

The first batch of managed devices that work with mydlink Business is the DBA-1000 series 802.11ac dual-band business access points (“AP”). These APs could be physically located on different premises but under the same administrator’s management.

Ak a m a i Technologies has

unveiled several major advances that are intended to help solve key mobile performance challenges. The latest version of Akamai Ion, the company’s flagship Web Performance Solution, is designed to make it easier than ever to deliver compelling online experiences by leveraging the company’s new learning engine-based optimizations. Akamai will also enable developers to deliver near-instant mobile app experiences by using its new software development

kit (SDK).Built on the Akamai

Intelligent Platform, Akamai Ion is designed to help companies effectively reach and engage customers, prospects, employees, partners and suppliers, wherever and however they connect. The pressure to deliver great online experiences is higher than ever, across sites and apps. While most businesses have a basic understanding of what is required to optimize desktop experiences, they still struggle with the challenges mobile and cellular use-cases present.

creative professionals, tech enthusiasts, or anyone who creates and shares massive files.

“For a technology enthusiast and a consumer who is always on the go, these drives offer world class performance and convenience of moving content easily and quickly, without having to worry about a cable,” said Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager of SanDisk India and SAARC Retail Sales and Marketing, Western Digital Corporation.

migrate their legacy enterprise applications to the cloud and ensure that their infrastructure and applications are available in all geographic regions in which they need to be hosted. Orange will provide the data center facilities, network and security infrastructure, customers’ infrastructure and applications management, and professional services to support cloud migrations. Huawei will provide the hardware, develop the technology platform and OpenStack OS, and provide level-three support.

Huawei has launched its Cloud

Enterprise Private Network (CloudEPN) solution for enterprise interconnection. The solution helps carriers to provide on-demand and cost-effective enterprise leased line services with cloud-based visualized O&M.

Huawei’s CloudEPN solution supports SD-WAN and CloudVPN modes and allows for smooth evolution, meeting customers' service requirements in different phases. The solution helps carriers to provide on-demand and cost-effective enterprise leased line services with cloud-based

visualized O&M. With this solution, carriers are able to implement digital transformation and explore more opportunities in B2B markets with fast growth in the cloud era. For carriers, Huawei’s CloudEPN Solution helps to provide one-stop enterprise interconnection services and value-added services (VASs) on demand. Customers can use the ecommerce-style service platform to subscribe to or reserve enterprise interconnection services and VASs.

Cisco to accelerate Digital TransformationCisco is introducing

new technologies that allow customers to virtualize and secure their networks. Cisco is introducing a new hardware platform and virtual network services to extend virtualization to branch locations, as well as a new solution that allows customers to virtualize their network perimeter and extend it to collocation centres. Cisco is also delivering software-defined segmentation across the entire network – from the network to the endpoint to the cloud – with complete application visibility.

Organizations can now extend network services, like routing or security, to a diverse set of platforms across branch, campus, collocation centres and the public cloud.

Dell EMC releases EHC on VxRail AppliancesDell EMC has

announced that its turnkey hybrid cloud platform – Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) – will be made available for the first time on Dell EMC VxRail Appliances.

The Dell EMC VxRail Appliance family of fully integrated, preconfigured and pre-tested HCI appliances offers the industry’s only HCI appliances powered by VMware vSAN and jointly engineered with VMware.

Industry analyst and research firm 451 research notes in a new report that three out of four hyperconverged deployments are in the core data center, and hybrid cloud is the next frontier for HCI.

ON THE RAMP



VOICE-N-DATA

Edimax launches IAP1200 TP-Link launches TL-WA820RE Range Extender

Spirent and Nokia accelerate 5G Lifecycle Testing

AXILSPOT unveils AEC120 Antenna Ceiling AP

Ericsson’s OSS fulfilment suite helps Jio provide quality service

NEC presents Smart WTN solution

Edimax Technology has introduced

IAP1200 2 x 2 AC 1200 Dual-Band in-Walls PoE Access Point which is a powerful wireless solution with the latest IEEE 802.11ac technology for wireless speeds up to 1,200 Mbps.

"Edimax IAP1200 is a sumptuous networking solution for the businesses which demand high speed, prodigious performance and security. IAP1200 has been designed keeping in mind customers need for today's demanding applications. It strengthens the network performance allowing extreme flexibility

TP-Link has launched TL-

WA820RE Wireless Range Extenders. TL-WA820RE slides in your pocket and will feel like just another USB Drive. This USB Drive like Device unfolds into Range Extender which has an attached flap that holds dual antennas to boost that Wi-Fi signal.

TL-WA820RE is No larger than a USB flash-drive. It has a compact design that expands Wi-Fi coverage throughout your abode, supporting speeds up to 300Mbps for all your Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The

Sp i r e n t Communicat ions

has announced successful deployment of first-of-its-kind 5G Lab-as-a-Service for Nokia’s network infrastructure testing labs. The 5G Lab-as-a-Service (LaaS) enables unprecedented automation of 5G testing with a primary goal of significantly accelerating Nokia’s release of virtual network functions and physical infrastructure. The 5G LaaS also streamlines the use of shared lab resources across teams and geographies.

Ericsson has s u c c e s s f u l l y

deployed an end-to-end OSS fulfilment suite for Reliance Jio Infocomm. This OSS deployment includes order management, inventory management and activation solutions. The deployment has helped Jio achieve faster onboarding and provide quality service to its 100 million users.

Jyotindra Thacker, President, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, says, "At Jio, we would like to offer a digital lifestyle to our customers. The deployment of the OSS stack by

in the modern mainstream business," said Sanjay Joshi, Country Manager, Edimax Technology. "Edimax IAP1200 is an unrivalled product when it comes to improved business productivity, seamless roaming, superior speed, elevated performance ensuring and optimal network performance."

TL-WA820RE is powered by any USB port by TP-Link. Just plug into a power adapter, power strip, power bank or computer to extend Wi-Fi.

“Our goals for the 5G Lab-as-a-Service include automation of 5G lifecycle testing and more efficient sharing of physical and virtual test resources across teams,” said Rauno Jokelainen, Vice-President of Radio and Advanced Antennas, Nokia. “Spirent’s automation expertise and Lab-as-a-Service platform, Spirent Velocity, have been critical to our successful deployment in Oulu. We expect to achieve significant acceleration of 5G lifecycle tests as we deploy the 5G Lab-as-a-Service throughout Nokia.”

AXILSPOT has rolled out AEC120

Antenna Ceiling AP for enterprises with ultra-high bandwidth requirements. The solution, belonging to the Dolphin portfolio of AXILSPOT comprises of Multi-beam Smart-selection Antenna System (Rscan) which comes as a patented technology developed by the company.

The new system boasts of unprecedented technological advantages like automatic optimum path selection, stronger

interference resistance, and higher concurrent capacity. Network beams can be formed by controlling the waveforms with different phases beamed by each antenna. These beams scan different directions, and include over 16 million different direction beams.

Ericsson, which by far is the largest deployment by any single operator anywhere in the world, is helping us in critical areas like order management and activation solutions thereby giving customers an enhanced user experience.”

Ericsson OSS/BSS service fulfilment solutions are designed to streamline and simplify offer creation and automate fulfilment processes. Ericsson’s catalog- and component-based approach helps operators better manage the entire product and order lifecycle.

NEC has announced its

"Smart Wireless Transport Network” (Smart WTN) solution for resolving bottlenecks in the mobile backhaul for 5G networks, featuring a high- capacity pipe for dynamic network optimization.

The Smart WTN solution enables flexible network build-out, makes valid traffic and defect predictions, adapts to environmental and behavioural changes accordingly, and dynamically modifies operations in order to improve efficiency and minimize power

consumption.“NEC offers dynamic

and intelligent transport networks for telecom carriers, enabling them to provide the best user experience for their customers,” said, Atsushi Noro, General Manager, Mobile Wireless Solutions Division, NEC Corporation. “Based on our global deployment of reliable mobile infrastructure with the NEC PASOLINK series, NEC is able to provide optimized solutions for 5G that integrate best-of-breed products from a wide variety of vendors and disciplines.”

Tata DoCoMo deploys ICT Solution for Sewa BankTata DoCoMo

Business Services has announced successful deployment of ICT solutions for Shri Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank. TDBS provided the bank with fully secure and highly reliable connectivity solutions, which helped the bank in strengthening its rural presence and fortifying its data security across all its branches in Gujarat.

The Bank required an ICT solution which could help them to manage the increasing demand for reliable and secure connectivity, and seamless access to Core Banking Solutions (CBS), across all its branches. TDBS deployed a highly advanced connectivity solution over a fully secure and reliable hybrid Multi-Protocol Label Switching platform.

Huawei completes 5 Gbit/s Tests Huawei has

completed field tests on 5G terminals with a wide bandwidth of 200 MHz on the 3.5GHz carrier. A battery-powered 5G terminal prototype is configured with miniature multi-antenna to transmit and receive RF signals, and the terminal supports software-defined baseband.

For enhanced-Mobile-Broadband (eMBB) test cases, with the Massive-MIMO macro-base station set up scenario, the 5G terminal throughput can reach up to 5 Gigabits per second at downlink. The test results prove the feasibility of key 5G technologies and further validate the small size multi-antennas technology for 5G terminal in the phone form-factor, representing significant progress in 5G technology innovation.


6

6

A Reference Book For CIO / CTO

A brand is no longerwhat we tell the

consumer it is - it iswhat consumers

tell each other it is

6th


CHANNEL BUZZ

Supertron successfully celebrates ZOTAC’s 10th Anniversary

Konica Minolta organizes a roadshow at Telangana

DIGISOL rewards its partners

Canon India Roadshow to strengthen customer engagement

Supertron has successfully organized Zotac’s 10th

Anniversary celebrations at Amsterdam from 16th to 19th February, 2017. Supertron and Zotac have taken 31 top gaming partners from all across India to Amsterdam for a four-day trip and celebrated Zotac’s 10th Anniversary.

Z o t a c acknowledged the efforts of Supertron and partners for making Zotac a growing and successful brand in the graphic card industry. Partners have enjoyed all four days in one of the finest places Amsterdam, Europe.

“Zotac today is No. 1 graphic card vendor in India and this would not have been possible without the support from the top partners who joined the celebrations. We thank all our partners for their support in the successful journey of Zotac in India and making Zotac as No.

1 brand,” said Deepak Gupta, Country Manager, Zotac.

“We are always focussed on strengthening our relationship with vendor and partners. Zotac is one such brand having synergy in the

thought process of true partnership. Our partners are also the key for our success as a distributor in India. We take this opportunity to thank all the partners for becoming a part of this grand event at Amsterdam,” said V. K. Bhandari, CMD, Supertron.

DIGISOL has rewarded its partners with 4 night

and 5 days trip to three countries in Europe. The trip was organized for all the partners to celebrate their achievements. The DIGISOL “Chalo Europe” was organized from 8th to 12th February, 2017 and had over 25 partners joining from South and East.

The trip to Europe was packed with lots of exciting activities that included a visit to Prague – Czech Republic, Vienna – Austria, Budapest – Hungary. Plus drive through 4th Capital Bratislava – Slovakia.

“It has been our constant endeavour to work closely with our partners across the country and we will continue to introduce a number of incentive programmes for our partner community. The purpose of this trip was to reward partners. The tour helped to bring a refreshing change in our partner’s daily routine and to give all the participants time to consolidate and move forward with more vigour and purpose in the coming year,” says Mandar Joshi, Head – Channel Business, DIGISOL Systems Ltd.

Arun Kumar, Gold Line Datatech, said, “It was indeed

a pleasure to be a part of the DIGISOL partner event held at Europe. Needless to say, the entire event was well managed and all partners were taken due care of. The trip also came as a welcome break for partners and gave us a chance to spend some quality time in relaxed and peaceful atmosphere. My best wishes to the entire DIGISOL team!”

The trip included visit to Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square, Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, and the Church of St Nicholas in Prague. Short city tour of Bratislava city with visits to charming squares, courtyards and narrow lanes of the Old Town include the Main Square, Old Town Hall, Primate’s Palace, St Michael’s Gate, Franciscan church, first Hungarian University Academy Istropolitana, St Martin’s Cathedral, the Opera House and the other most significant historical sights.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions has recently

organized a roadshow in Nalgonda, Telangana, where it demonstrated its state-of-the-art Production Printers with the pivotal highlights of the event being the bizhub PRESS C71hc and C1060 production printer.

The roadshow was organized to showcase the company’s production printers as well as to furnish a platform for the printing businesses about the next-generation technologies in the vertical. It was also focussed to meet the customer’s end-to-end demands and gain a 360-degree visibility in their industry-related requirements.

The third-generation machine bizhub PRESS C71hc packs in immense benefits over its predecessor. This model incorporates advanced colour reproduction capabilities of the manufacturer’s proprietary high-chroma toner that produces enhanced printing outputs. bizhub

Taking the 20 years celebrations ahead, Canon

India has flagged off a 60-city roadshow to strengthen customer connect across the country. This “Consumer Connect” programme is an initiative to create wider awareness about the brand’s consumer portfolio, while consolidating its footprint and strengthening its presence across regions in the country.

Designed from an interactive engagement perspective, Canon India roadshow will provide a platform for hands-on experience of Canon products for existing and potential customers. Through this roadshow, Canon is also showcasing its latest premium cameras including EOS 5D Mark IV, EOS 760 D, EOS 750D and Canon PIXMA G series printer.

Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO, Canon India, said, “As the leading imaging player, we consider it our responsibility to connect the world of imaging to our customers. Having completed 20 glorious years

PRESS C71hc also comes with an optional banner tray to support the printing on media up to 13x47. This gives the customers to print bigger format of photo albums. Another asset of the bizhub PRESS C71hc is their wide range of finishing capabilities and its combination with a workflow software Print Xpress.

Konica Minolta’s bizhub PRESS C1060 is an ideal solution for small as well as mid-range industrial printing businesses, delivering a fast print/copy output of up-to 60 ppm. With a superior colour image quality, purpose built reliability and simple touchscreen control, a business can receive every advantage of digital production like variable-data printing and scanning.

in the country, we have escalated our vision of innovation and customer satisfaction. The roadshow is a consumer connect initiative to bring our product portfolio to the forefront and create mass awareness about the technological innovation that Canon houses within its imaging solutions. Our aim now is to push the boundaries and expand our offerings to Tier-2, Tier-3 and Tier-4 markets to engage with customers to understand their imaging needs and bring them the best of imaging solutions.”

Eddie Udagawa, Vice-President, Consumer Imaging and Information Centre, Canon India, said, “In India, photography industry is reconfiguring itself by manifesting in the form of growing interest in higher functionality compact and digital SLR cameras."

C0-M100-Y100-k0C0-M100-Y100-k10C100-M70-Y0-k0C100-M80-Y0-k25



HP Inc.: Market Share on the Rise HP Inc. India has done extremely well in the last one year both in the PC and

print segments with an average market share of 26.5 per cent and 46.5 per cent, respectively, thanks to a wide range of products and excellent after-market services

Globally, notebook PCs, printing supplies, printing commercial hardware and

desktop PCs each accounted for more than 10 per cent of HP Inc.'s consolidated net revenue, whereas in India it is difficult to predict revenue numbers with respect to product categories, but the company has done extremely well both in the PC and print categories.

The year 2016 saw major focus on tapping new markets, new segments and new demographics. HP has grown its business in the commercial (SMB, mid-market, start-ups, large enterprises) and consumer segment. Driven by the partner programme, HP is planning to increase its global market share to 15 per cent from the current 5 per cent in this $55-billion industry. The entire back-end domain of customer outreach, partner skill enablement and our support coverage has really helped the company to see growth momentum over the past year.

The company has gained a strong foothold in the premium PC category with the launch of Spectre and, now in 2017, HP is continuing to bring a whole new level of innovation by introducing Z32 mini and Omen portfolio in India.

In India, HP's focus is more on the PC and print segments, and the company has increased its market share in both the categories. Globally, HP Inc. business is divided into three segments – Personal Systems, Printing and Corporate Investments. The Personal Systems segment offers commercial PCs, consumer PCs, workstations, thin clients, commercial tablets and mobility devices, retail point-of-sale (“PoS”) systems, displays and other related accessories. The printing segment provides consumer and commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, solutions and services, as well as scanning devices and corporate investments include HP Labs and certain business incubation projects. In India, the company caters to individual consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors.

"We are the leaders in the Print and PC segment market and we will continue to focus and continuously strive towards innovating our products in these segments in India," said Gurpreet Singh Brar, Director, Commercial Channel Sales, Printing and Personal Systems, HP Inc. India.

HP's PC Market Share On the personal systems front, HP sells

commercial PCs, consumer PCs, laptops, workstations, thin clients, commercial tablets and mobility devices, displays and other related accessories, software, support and services for the commercial and consumer markets. The PCs and commercial tablets and mobility devices are

based predominately on Microsoft Windows operating systems and use processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Personal systems also maintain a multi-operating system, multi-architecture strategy using the Google Chrome and Android operating systems among others for notebooks and tablets.

Commercial PCs are optimized for use by enterprises and SMB customers, with a focus on robust designs, security, serviceability, connectivity, reliability and manageability in networked environments. Commercial PCs include HP ProBook and HP EliteBook lines of notebooks and hybrids (detachable tablets), HP Pro and HP Elite lines of business desktops and all-in-ones, HP Thin Clients, HP ElitePad, HP Pro Tablet PCs and HP Chromebooks.

Commercial PCs also include workstations that are designed and optimized for high-performance and demanding application environments, including Z desktop workstations, Z all-in-ones and Z mobile workstations,

whereas Consumer PCs are notebooks, desktops and hybrids that are optimized for consumer usage, focussing on multimedia consumption, online browsing and light productivity and include HP Spectre, HP Envy, HP Pavilion, HP Chromebook, Omen by HP, hybrids and all-in-one desktops.

In the PC segment, the primary competitors for HP Inc. in India include Dell, Lenovo Group, Acer and others. HP's competitive advantages include broad product portfolio, extensive service and support offerings and the accessibility of our products through a broad-based distribution strategy from retail and commercial channels to direct sales.

The market growth in personal computing is low single digit, but HP Inc. has increased its market share faster than its competitors and there is a Q-o-Q sequential growth during the last four quarters from 23.9 per cent to 28.8 per cent.

Speaking about the market share, Gurpreet

HP's PC Market Share

HP's Print Market Share

VAR CORPORATE


Singh Brar, Director, Commercial Channel Sales, Printing and Personal Systems, HP Inc. India, said, "As per IDC report for Q3 2016, HP stands as the leading PC vendor with a market share of 28.8 per cent. Additionally, according to industry sources, HP India's market pie in the fourth quarter surged to 31.4 per cent. Also, HP has been India’s most-trusted personal computing brand, according to the Brand Trust Report for the last three years."

HP's Print Market Share Printing provides consumer and commercial

printer hardware, supplies, media, solutions and services, as well as scanning devices. Printing is also focussed on imaging solutions in the commercial markets. HP groups LaserJet, Graphics and PageWide printers into Commercial Hardware and Consumer and Inkjet printers into Consumer Hardware when describing performance.

LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions delivers LaserJet printers, supplies and solutions to SMBs and large enterprises. Ongoing key initiatives include design and deployment of A3 products and solutions for the copier and multifunction printer market, printer security solutions, PageWide Enterprise solutions and JetIntelligence products.

Inkjet and Printing Solutions delivers consumer, SMB and PageWide Inkjet solutions (hardware, supplies, media, and web-connected hardware and services). Graphics Solutions delivers large format printers (DesignJet, Large Format Production and Scitex Industrial), speciality printing, digital press solutions (Indigo and PageWide Presses), supplies and services to print service providers and design and rendering customers.

Print Solutions provides end-to-end services, as well as core platforms to develop and deploy services across printing systems. HP’s focus includes driving customer value through managed print services and providing support solutions for new and existing customers, whereas 3D Printing delivers HP’s Multi-Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solution designed for prototyping and production of functional parts and functioning on an open platform facilitating the development of new 3D printing materials.

In the printing segment, the primary competitors include Canon, Epson, Samsung and Brother. In addition, independent suppliers offer refill and remanufactured alternatives for HP original inkjet and toner supplies, which are often available for lower prices, but generally offer lower print quality and reliability.

"HP India has led the printer segment for close-to 25 years. The market share for print, according to the IDC report for Q2, 2016, was 47 per cent. In print, we have maintained our leadership at 50 per cent, whereas in inkjet we are at 70 per cent," says Gurpreet Singh Brar.

“In the printer segment, the overall market has not grown, but HP has grown,” commented Gurpreet Singh Brar.

In terms of trends, the printer market has seen some shift from cartridge to ink tanks and the company has also gained market share in the CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) category. The company has also introduced A3 printers in the Indian market and presently has less than

5-per cent market share. On the printer front, the line between

consumer and commercial is blurring, product differentiation is also blurring and product designs are also changing the market. The company is planning to launch a full range of A3 printers in the market by May-to-June timeframe.

Large Government DealsHP offers the best-in-class commercial print

and personal computing devices which have been introduced precisely to meet the evolving needs of the customers. HP has started engaging with various central government departments and state governments to work on projects of Digital India. HP had won a project in Bihar for converting 50 million revenue departments papers into digital format in 18 months’ timeframe. The company has also bagged 145,000-laptop deal for meritorious students in Q3, 2016 from the Government of Uttar Pradesh.

“We have also been successful in enabling digital inclusion of 1.5 million students through a UP Government deal and have set the record of having the world’s largest IT contract for education,” said Gurpreet Singh Brar.

HP has seen tremendous increase in sales post PDS (public distribution system) digitization. We have set up a very strong separate Digital India business unit that is based on developing digital solution in the country. In this regard, HP has been continuously working with the Government at a solution level which also includes multiple state governments.

HP has also built its first centre of excellence in alignment with the Government's Digital India initiative, to offer solutions that solve real-life problems with technological innovations. Developed in collaboration with over 25 system integrators, including leading IT software companies, the CoE will be used as a platform to exhibit solutions relevant to government and businesses. It will allow government and non-government stakeholders to have a practical understanding of the solutions, making it easier for decision-makers to take a step forward towards comprehensive digitization of the nation.

Speaking about HP print and PC opportunity in the Indian market, Gurpreet Singh Brar said, "The penetration of PCs is 9 per cent, whereas India's GDP is at 7 per cent so the industry has to catch up. There is a big opportunity in Digital India trying to offer services, thereby improving efficiency of the government. The market is also

bullish on opportunities due to GST (Goods and Services Tax). Around 25–30 million small-time organizations will join GST bandwagon and this will lead to complete digitization."

HP's Channel Partner Spread In terms of channel partners, HP Inc. sells

products, directly or indirectly, through a variety of channel partners such as retailers that sell our products to the public through their own physical or Internet stores; resellers that sell products and services, frequently with their own value-added products or services, to targeted customer groups; distribution partners that supply HP solutions to resellers; and system integrators and other advisory firms that provide IT consulting and systems integration work.

Talking about the number of partners in India, Gurpreet Singh Brar, Director, Commercial Channel Sales, Printing and Personal System, HP Inc. India, said, "We have 500 exclusive HP World Stores across India in 220 cities and more than 3,700 partners across India in 300 cities."

In terms of after-sales support, HP's network spans across 376 service points in 159 cities. Onsite customer support is available in more than 1,800 cities. The service backup is best in the industry, as the company has also launched the HP Smart Care Concept, an automated system to diagnose system remotely. In April-May, HP plans to open HP Smart Care Concept for the entire range of products.

For improving services, the first time fix is a key thrust area. The first time fix has already helped HP to increase its market share. In metros, the focus is on resolution for the next business day which has also helped the company in the long run to increase its customer support which is good from the customer’s point of view.

HP has helped more channel partners capture mid-market opportunities and HP pMPS has offered high level of service to SMBs, delivered directly by HP.

"In 2016, HP Inc. launched Managed Print Services for large enterprises, whereas for small- and mid-market the focus was on Partner Managed Services. The company also launched Device-as-a-Service for the enterprise market," commented Gurpreet Singh.

The company is working on a two-pronged strategy – incentivising high-end portfolios and certification for partners. The two-pronged strategy will definitely be a win-win for both HP and its partners. n

Pravin [email protected]

Gurpreet Singh Brar Director, Commercial Channel Sales,

Printing and Personal Systems, HP Inc. India

"We are leaders in the Print and PC segment

market and we will continue to focus and

continuously strive towards innovating

our products in these segments in India"


Businesses are facing an unprecedented level of digital disruption; the ever rising popularity and the worldwide permeation of social media and mobile technologies along with the accelerated adoption of cloud computing systems by businesses, is forcing companies to reassess and redesign their current Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructures. To support business growth in the coming decade, next generation of Enterprise WAN systems must be created and deployed TODAY.

This is where Sify has stepped in and used its years of experience in network and cloud services to create a new transformational approach to redesign the existing WAN landscape – WAN Transformation.

WAN transformation can be defined as ‘the process of enabling organizations to transit from its widely disparate and hybrid networks to an integrated cloud enabled networking platform, where new approaches powered by the cloud technology drives substantial business benefits.’

Sify Addresses Network Challenges with WAN Transformation Services

Why do enterprises need WAN transformation?Organizations are facing several complications and difficulties with their

current network landscape. These network related challenges- dealing with multiple network providers for separate voice and data networks, keeping up with latest technological upgrades, minimizing the risk of technological obsolescence, plugging security gaps and controlling infrastructure and operational costs – can be easily overcome by transforming into a fully managed cloud-enabled WAN system.

Hence with Sify’s WAN Transformation Services, Enterprises & IT Teams can now focus on business outcomes, efficiency and profitability, rather than on operational issues.

But how does Sifydeliver these enhanced network benefits?

Sify is in a unique position to deliver these benefits, since we understand networks from the inside-out. Sify is a core-technology company and we enjoy solving technical challenges.

Having successfully built India’s largest MPLS network and implemented complex transformation project in diverse industry verticals, Sify is set apart from traditional system integrators who mainly deploy some network management tools and are body-shops offering low-skilled manpower to organizations to handle mundane day-to-day activities.

Sify’s WAN transformation approach is to understand the customer’s business, then assess and derive a network architecture which delivers the desired business outcomes. This is followed by detailed discussions with our clients to ensure we jointly implement key steps of the transformative process – Consolidation, Billing Optimization, Security Assessment, Inventory Management and Operations.

What are the business benefits for enterprises? Enterprise WAN in its transformed state creates a connectivity

framework which offers complete flexibility along with highly available service and hassle free management. Needless to say, cost benefits are a natural outcome of such transformation.

The ultimate success of the WAN transformation will depend directly on the capabilities and experience of the technology partner driving the process; the right partner is not just a link provider but is an enabler of enterprise-wide IT transformation.

As the most successful Enterprise WAN service provider in the country, Sifyunderstands what businesses need from their WANs. With a service portfolio that cuts across data center, network, cloud, application and technology integration, Sify is perfectly placed to undertake the transformation of your WAN.

By Indar Pal Khurana- VP, Domestic Data Business- Telecom Services

VAR CORPORATE


The New Battlefield: Cyberspace

Cyberspace has joined air, sea, land, and outer space as an arena of military interest, but the concept of cyberwarfare continues to evolve beyond the grasp of military leaders.

The strength of a nation is measured mainly by its economic

success, social progression, scientific and technological advances, and military power. The role of a nation’s military is to protect its citizens and territory; a secure populace has the freedom to maintain and develop its economy. However, with the rise of cyberwarfare, citizens, corporations, and governments are left vulnerable to cyberattacks via computers and communications systems. This requires a dramatic shift in military tactics and functionality. Nations are now open to forms of attack besides physical force; one can undermine countries’ economic strength by paralyzing the economic values of civilians through covert cyberattacks. Governments operate largely in cyberspace with highly sensitive information, and traditional military services will likely soon expand to protect state information from cyberattacks.

The damage that cyberattacks could potentially inflict on a nation and its industrial control systems is significantly more threatening than the damage that would result from attacks on IT systems. A review of a number of such cases in the past year shows that attackers are now more interested in targeted attacks on industrial control systems. Therefore, this is a good time to assess how we protect these systems.

(Follow to Fortinet report) Industrial control systems (ICS) are computerized systems that supervise the physical processes such as electricity transmission, transportation of gas and oil through pipelines, water supply, traffic lights, and other systems that are used as the foundation of modern society. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are the branch of ICS that manages the electronic exchange of data. In recent years, these control systems – on which our most critical infrastructures and manufacturing industries depend – have been under sophisticated cyberattacks with alarming frequency.

An example of such an attack occurred in 2011 when hackers damaged a main water pump in Chicago, Illinois; it is believed that they gained access to the utility’s network and broke the pump by remotely turning it on and off quickly. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation of the case, which has sparked fears of hackers’ infiltration and subsequent paralysis of public systems that are essential to the safety of our society.

Another example of a recent cyberattack occurred in India at the beginning of this year, when hackers infiltrated the systems of three government-owned banks to create fake trade documents, which were used to conduct illegal purchases and to raise funds abroad. To try to determine whether their systems have been hacked and tampered with, and to try to prevent future hacks, banks now have to check the documents that were shared through SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) against the actual documents at their base. Finding the origin of these attacks and tracing the hackers can be a daunting task, involving “obtaining logs from ISPs and other entities since international data travels over the Internet straddling multiple service providers across geographies.” Officials are left struggling to keep up with the rapidly advancing cyberattack methods and technologies, with

the hackers usually working one step ahead.

So what is needed to combat the enemy on what is clearly the most threatening emerging battleground of our world? The answer, like the problem, is complex. But it clearly requires a new way of thinking about security, the military, and the government, as well as new strategies, fields of study, and technological tools. In an age when our most sensitive information and most valuable assets are stored electronically, cybersecurity has become one of the most important fields in which individuals, businesses, and governments must invest.

In concluding the first of a series of articles written by Mrs. Carmit Yadin, the Vital Intelligence Group CISO, it is well noted that the author who is from Israel appears to be insinuating that the cyber threatsfaced by a tiny powerhouse of security excellence pave the wayin methods that are indeed consistent with the countries general national security concept.We hereby assume that learning and understanding that advancing and ongoing cyber security measures must not only be proactive but must in many ways be predicative as well.

By Carmit Yadin, CISO and Director of Cyber Division, Vital Intelligence Group

Methodology to Protect Critical Assets from Cyberattacks

TECHNOMANIA


VIVOTEK – Riding high in the IP Surveillance space

The name VIVOTEK is a convergence of video, voice, communication and teknology. The company’s motto is Integrity, Innovation and Accountability. Besides its expertise in being an IP surveillance solution provider, Vivotek aspires to become the leader in IoT. With close-to 17 years of proven expertise, the company wants to become the “Eye in IoT” and not only provides surveillance, monitoring and detection solutions, but also information that is collected which can be used as a crucial reference in the IoT system. This is its mission as well as vision.

Vivotek is committed to building a robust ecosystem and so looks forward to long-term collaboration and growing together with all its partners. The company’s strategy is to become a leader and build an ecosystem to provide total IP surveillance solutions and good quality product service support. Its ecosystem consists of four important parts, as given below:

• Products – Network cameras, video

recorders, video management software• Channel – They are partners, distributors,

consultants and system integrators• Solution Partners – That includes its

software and hardware partners

• Presence in different Vertical Markets – Vivotek has the expertise to penetrate into different vertical markets because of its expansive range of products and solutions. This has also been possible as Vivotek offers scope for customization and integration of its products as per customer’s needs.

Vivotek has a global network of around 180 distributors in 116 countries. It has its global offices in San Jose (USA), Mexico, New Delhi (India) and Dubai (UAE) and its European office in the Netherlands.

The company has recorded a steady growth in its sales revenue in these years. Last year, Vivotek recorded a sales revenue growth of 60 per cent and this resulted in the company investing in its brand image around the world.

Vivotek has its R&D team in Taiwan and invests substantially to come up with the latest cutting-edge technologies in its products. For

instance, its Vari-Angle IR Technology is a technology feature that provides longer range of vision in the cameras and consistently brighter night vision. It also has the 3D stereo counting technology that allows store owners in the retail sector to precisely count people walking in and out of a store.

While introducing any new product or solution, Vivotek keeps the following three things into consideration:

• Best Quality Products – As a surveillance brand, it needs to provide the best-quality

products.• Intelligent Features – Since this is the future,

major companies are investing heavily in it. Vivotek is not only a traditional surveillance brand, but it is putting vast resources into intelligent features.

• Reliable and User-Friendly Products – Vivotek ensures reliability of its products and sees its products as unique, user-friendly and easy to use and manage. For customer services, Vivotek has global

repair centres in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Mexico and Brazil. It also invests in the CRM platform of Salesforce and this Vivotek sees as a commitment to providing high-quality customer

India is a growing market for Vivotek and the company

works with very important solution partners to provide traffic monitoring solutions

for city surveillance. It is actively involving itself with

the City Surveillance projects of the Smart City initiative and continues to grow in

important business verticals of Transportation and Retail.

services. For instance, it has an online community on the Salesforce platform where customers can

ask questions, find information and ask for help.

Partner Enhancement Programmes

Vivotek leverages the strength of its partnerships and provides value-added solutions to the market and this has become a win-win situation for both its partners and Vivotek. To enhance

this partnership further, Vivotek has put in place several training modules and programmes for its partners to cash on and ultimately create solutions that meet the growing surveillance needs of its customers.

Vivotek Warrior Academy – This is a training programme in which Vivotek provides both online and onsite training and gives its partners a hands-on experience. One can avail different courses in this programme. On attending the course and passing the respective exam, one becomes a certified expert of Vivotek product.

Solution Integration Alliance (SIA) Programme – Vivotek invites participation from its software, hardware and application partners to join the SIA programme and use its Vivotek application development platform (VADP). VADP is an open development platform that allows developers to create third-party standalone applications that enhance the features of VIVOTEK network cameras. Vivotek has around 100 solution partners in it. For instance, in India it works with very important solution partners to provide traffic monitoring solutions for city surveillance. n


Founded: February 2000Type: Public-listed company since 2006Traded as: TWSE (TAIEX: 3454)Headquarters: New Taipei City, TaiwanCapital: US$23.8 MillionIndustry: IP Security Surveillance Solution ProviderEmployees: 800+

TAIWAN EXCELLENCE


Lenovo aims to strengthen its channel community

Lenovo is enhancing its PC after-sales service in India with a host of initiatives using new-age technologies and the company aims to empower its channel community by providing a seamless experience to the end-customer.

Lenovo is providing easy access to customers across multiple channels – Twitter, app, call centre and its service centres. The “Quick Response Time” programme guarantees a response within 30 minutes of lodging a query or complaint. The company was the first to take after-sales support on digital platforms like its dedicated India Twitter service handle and Lencare (Android app). Customers can also schedule a call-back from the Toll-free number or avail personalized self-service by logging on to the dedicated services website.

Lenovo has been working closely and strategically with core channel partners through various programmes:

• Round table conferences to consistently drive a healthy dialogue with more than 90 Core Channel partners

• Notebook clinics at key business locations to offer a complete check-up of Lenovo PCs

• Prioritized treatment for Lenovo’s privileged business partners and customers

• Resident programme where Lenovo-certified engineers are deployed at customer locations to deliver a customized service experience

Sudipto Ghosh, Executive Director – Services, Lenovo India, said, “Our channel partners play a critical role due to their close proximity to end-customers. In fact, they are our biggest source of intelligence to gauge customer sentiment in their respective markets. We are constantly listening to our channel partners and integrating their insights to build an exceptional customer experience.”

Lenovo boasts of a wide footprint of 150

PC service centres where customers can walk in with their devices for any complaints or check-ups. The company has an additional 177 authorized onsite centres that map 29,000 pin codes across India. These centres ensure that service executives reach consumers quickly. Every Lenovo service centre is well-equipped with competent and Lenovo-certified staff to address queries related to Lenovo desktops and notebooks.

This year, Lenovo was awarded with the “Best Customer Experience Transformation Award” at the Customer Fest 2017. The award recognized Lenovo’s exemplary customer service and marketing strategies that have been instrumental in building stronger relationships with customers, thereby impacting the overall business. Lenovo has also been awarded with the coveted “Golden Peacock Award 2014” for innovation in customer services.

Lenovo partners with DataCoreLenovo has entered into a new collaboration with DataCore, and it will integrate its industry-leading hardware with DataCore’s SAN symphony

software in a new turnkey appliance – the Lenovo Storage DX8200D. Working together, Lenovo and DataCore will deliver these capabilities in a pre-tested, pre-integrated platform designed for ease-of-deployment

and faster time-to-value. This powerful new offering optimizes a clients’ heterogeneous storage infrastructures, and promises to deliver the highest level of performance, availability and utilization.

The Storage DX8200D is built on Lenovo’s System x3650 M5 server, which offers leadership reliability and performance. With Predictive Failure Analysis and a next-generation diagnostic panel to facilitate easy serviceability, the x3650 M5 server helps reduce downtime and costs. Other high availability features on the x3650 M5 include dual fan zones with redundant fans, as well as hot-swappable drives and power supplies.

Lenovo Trusted Platform Assurance, a built-in set of security features and practices, protects the hardware and firmware. Lenovo’s high-performing hardware combined with DataCore’s Parallel I/O Technology, can quickly handle read/write requests. It mirrors

data in real time between separate storage systems to maintain continuous availability even through equipment and site outages. Extensive automation frees system administrators to focus on other parts of their infrastructure.

In addition, the software takes isolated storage devices, sometimes spread between different locations, and places them under one common set of enterprise-wide services. It pools their collective resources, managing them centrally and uniformly despite the differences and incompatibilities among manufacturers, models and generations of equipment. Squeezing the most value and functionality from diverse storage technologies, this new offering simplifies operations, reducing management time and cost.

DataCore customers report, data centers can realize a lower total cost of ownership, with a 90-per cent decrease in time spend on storage management and support tasks, up to a 75-per cent reduction in storage costs and up to 100-per cent reduction in storage-related downtime. With a 10-fold increase in performance, data centers also can realize higher availability of mission-critical data.

Finally, the appliance can centrally automate discovery, inventory tracking, real-time monitoring, configuration, fault detection, and alert handling over its lifecycle the DX8200D with Lenovo’s own XClarity software, a best-in-class enterprise management tool.

Technical assistance is available 24/7 with the DX8200D appliance, and features a single point of contact for both hardware and software questions from Lenovo’s support organization – which is consistently rated #1 for overall x86 server customer satisfaction.

“As an aggressive new player in this space, our cutting-edge SDS solution enables organizations to deploy their systems more quickly so they can reduce the time and resources required to manage their basic infrastructure. This, in turn, empowers our customers to focus on the business challenges of today, with a view to the future,” said Radhika Krishnan, Executive Director, Data Center Group, Lenovo. “This is in stark contrast to traditional storage offerings, from legacy vendors, which often-times require compromises in performance, availability, reliability and functionality – limiting the ability to scale and increasing CAPEX, power, cooling and footprint costs.”

VAR BUZZ


Ashish MutnejaDirector Quantum Hi Tech

Sharad YadavGeneral ManagerHoneywell Security and Fire

Sanjay Biswal Country HeadQNAP Systems

Surveillance MarketSecurity has always been an important

part of every individual’s life. The need for surveillance is as old as time itself.The increasing rate of crime, terrorism and also initiatives like Smart City, infrastructural growth etc surveillance has become the need of the hour.

“With smarter cities, comes smarter

responsibilities and Video surveillance is one of them. Not just video surveillance, the industry is moving towards video investigation too which helps in quick decision making. Like recently the government came up with the smart city project which is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technology and IOT solutions in a secure way to manage

city's assets, which proves that undoubtedly, Surveillance in India has improved its venture into verticals, like the, government, SMBs and SOHOs which played a major role in enhancing it. This market will keep on growing as associations and the favourable circumstances that IP-based observation carries with it,” opines Ashish Mutneja, Director - Quantum Hi Tech

IP based cameras and Video Analytics set to take the next leap

Video surveillance in present day is more than just monitoring, recording and storage. With changing society and increasing threat scenarios video surveillance has gained importance across the globe. According to 6Wresearch, India’s video surveillance market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 13% from 2016 to 2022. The research also puts forwards that still the analog based surveillance systems capture a major portion of the market but it is also visible that with declining prices of IP based surveillance cameras is gradually penetrating into the market.

At the same time Video analytics is also gaining momentum in the market as people are looking for increased security. This is now been adopted majorly by critical segments like government, city security, Oil and gas etc but it will also be accepted by smaller segments like Retail, SOHO etc. to understand customer pattern.

COVER STORY


Sanjeev GulatiCountry Manager – India & SAARCVIVOTEK

Ashish P DhakanMD & CEO, Pramahikvision

Not only infrastructure, another major factor which is acting as a catalyst to the growthis awareness of security. With the increase in crime and terror threat, the urban life is nowadays endangered and this has led to the rapid adoption of security surveillance in urban life. The industry is witnessing the pull from both government and private customers and also from urban to tier II and III cities.

“Infrastructure growth and safety awareness is driving investments in the Indian market for surveillance expenditure from both the government and the private customers. Rapid urbanization is increasing the demand for surveillance solutions from Tier II and Tier III cities. The market is fast changing with new technologies being introduced coupled with the technological advancement being more towards integrated, and software based solutions. Digital is raising requirements with focus on connected offerings,” explains Sharad Yadav, General Manager, Honeywell Security and Fire.

Through there is a growing rate of awareness but still there are few factors where the alertness needs to be created. The factors that are affecting the market are lack of technical awareness, analytical ignorance, adoption of analog cameras etc. These are the few factors that needs attention and awareness.

“Surveillance Market is growing very fast in India, but the challenges in India areless technical awareness, analytics knowledge and product positioning not reached at certain level. The Video quality are inferior due to old technology adaption of Analog CCTV, even IP camera recording and video archiving not standardize as per government guidelines- due to less budget VS requirement and deployment . India is very much potential market for surveillance business for 15-20 years,” highlights Sanjay Biswal - Country Head, QNAP Systems.

When it comes to adoption of technology in surveillance analog cameras holds the major part of the market but it is expected that IP cameras will gradually gain ground in coming years. Till now a great demand comes from the government sector but the private sector also indicates good potential.

“The total Indian video surveillance market which was reported to be around

$1.58 billion in 2014 is expected to reach to $8.24 billion by 2022, while growing at a CAGR of 22.96% during the forecast period from 2015 to 2022.

Though analog based surveillance systems have accounted for majority of the share (68%) in the overall market, yet IP based surveillance systems are expected to increase in the next five years due to increasing IP infrastructure, declining prices and demand for remote access.

The government, in general, is the biggest segment in terms of volume demand. The private sector also shows vast potential. About 87% of surveillance needs are for commercial purpose, whereas 13% are for residential. There has been a handsome growth in demand for CCTV surveillance for use in a wide variety of location such as IT parks, banks, malls; public places like parks; and private places such as gated communities and residential corridors, over the last two years. City-wise New Delhi (25%) has the highest demand for CCTV cameras, followed

by 16% from Bengaluru; 13% from Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai; 9% from Kolkata; and 7% from Pune. Across the country, maximum searches come from Tier 1 cities (76%), followed by 22% from Tier 2 and 2% from Tier 3 cities.” says Ashish P Dhakan, MD & CEO, Pramahikvision.

Shift from Analog to Digital

These days people are going Smart which means they are adopting Smart technology in their daily life be it smart TV or smart home or smart IoT etc. This means people are accepting IP based technology which makes it eminent that IP camera is going to rule the future market.

“When we talk about Smart, meaning –intelligence (Smart City, Smart TV, Smart IoT, Smart Home etcall connect to networks & internet). So,we moving very fast towards

IP (Internet Protocol) based technology. So there is no space for analog CCTV now a days (If we remember in TV, all consumer switch to LED /LCD from old CRT based TV). Here consumer want changes but problem is education and awareness. India’s economy is growing by good governess,FDI

and people are moving to next level of adaption. So upcoming market is IP CCTV only,” explains Sanjay Biswal, Country Head, QNAP Systems.

The shift from analog to IP cameras has been very easy and it is also very prominently seen. The latest technology has acted as a beneficiary to everyone.

“The paradigm shift has been a very smooth; there is transcendence for the customer as well as the integrator. Being a latest offering it has benefitted everyone in a certain way. The shift in the industry from analog based cameras to IP is very prominently seen, there are also other formats that have sprung up such as HDCVI, AHD, these address the question at hand of affordability, with a better and an advanced product as a package,” views Pulkit Punj, Director at AnG.

From another point of view, the three factors that have helped increase the adoption of IP cameras are cost, scalability


and flexibility. Explaining the factors Sanjeev Gulati, Country Manager – India & SAARC, VIVOTEK says, “By the security threats continue to remain high on radar of both commercial and the public. Government sectors are spearheading video surveillance deployments especially in airports, seaports, highways, and rail networks. To guarantee the 24/7 security, here are three factors that indicate IP-based video surveillance replaced closed circuit analog systems.

Cost: Even the traditional closed circuit analog systems are less expensive than IP-based video surveillance. However, the accompanying costs of labor, storage and maintain of analog systems is much higher than IP-based video surveillance. The IP-based video surveillance systems are cheaper to build and maintain with reusability of existing IP network infrastructure, highly scalable with little incremental costs, low maintenance costs. It helps to reduce the total cost of ownership and increase the migration.

Scalability: IP-based video surveillance systems are based on open platform, and this could help to provide more collaborative and integration which can build a scalable network with enhanced and customized features. And there is no limit to the number of devices that can be added to the network. Analog surveillance systems are limited to centralized video analytics, which requires additional hardware, cabling and is difficult to scale.

Flexibility: Via the IP network infrastructure, the IP-based video surveillance systems are able to access from anywhere and anytime in the world. Users are benefit with its integrated system and faster response time, allowing instant operator control rather than review video footages post events. Nowadays, more business intelligence are enhanced in the IP-based video surveillance systems, providing business owners key metrics to effectively make operating decisions and increase ROI (Return of Invest).”

Though India market has well accepted IP based cameras but there are few factors which are holding back the market. Lack of skill set among partners, consumer mindset, cost are few of the factors that are restraining the market to grow.

“Although there has been a paradigm shift

Abhishek KumarRegional Director, South Asia, Oncam

SudhindraHollaCountry Manager, India & SAARC, Axis Communications

Tom DodrillVertical Market Manager, Pelco by Schneider Electric

in the Indian surveillance industry, the Indian market is showing some resistance towards analog to digital transition all out because of various factors such as entrenched mindset, lack of skill set among channel partners, limited awareness, cost factor and bloated bureaucracy. Consequently, the transition from analog to digital cameras and also from traditional digital cameras to solution based services is taking place at a slower pace. However, digital is gathering momentum and in the next five years it will gain its due importance and prominence in the Indian security market,” says Ashish P Dhakan, MD & CEO, Pramahikvision.

Video Analytics

In the Global Video Analytics Market Report of 2016, Research and Markets estimated the video analytics market to grow from the USD 1.69 billion of 2016 to USD 4.23 billion by 2021 (a nearly 21 percent growth rate). The sudden increase in popularity of the video analytics market comes from an increase in security threats and the need for intelligent surveillance. The market is also driven by the increased use of cloud computing, the growing demand for automation, the need for infrastructural safety and for securing computing environment. Technological advances will continue to also affect market growth significantly.

It is predicted that the video analytic market will grow at a CAGR of 20.6% from 2015 to 2023 and it will grow majorly because there will be a need for increased security and to accumulate customer data. In present world crime takes place every day andit plays an important role in any crime as it helps to get the basic evidences.

“The video analytics market is slated to grow at a CAGR of 20.6% during the forecast period from 2015 to 2023. There are two main reasons for this- firstly, the need for enhanced security and secondly, to gather customer data. Video analytics is a key factor for law enforcement agencies across the world as it is a basis for gathering primary evidence for any crime. There are CCTV cameras installed in every area in every major city. Any crime committed in a public area gets recorded and

with advanced tools, one can identify the perpetrators and license plates in an instant,” explains Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Axis Communications.

In terms of gathering customer data, video analytics is used in market research. It helps to understand the customer behaviour and observe the footfall in any kind of retail outlet.

“The most interesting application of video analytics is in the field of market research. Any retail outlet with this kind of technology uses it to observe foot traffic, identify consumer patterns. This data provides a realistic idea of the pain points which can then be controlled,” adds Sudhindra.

Video analytics is not a new trend in the market. It has its existence since analog motion detectors. The improving features and capabilities are only new things.

“Video analytics have been around for a long time, since the days of analogue motion detectors. What is new is the growing and advanced capabilities that allow city surveillance managers to monitor crime areas, traffic flow, intersections and high or larger gathering points all from a single system without the need for an operator to sit and watch a monitor. The video analytics will monitor without an operator, and if an incident were to occur, the surveillance system wouldnotify the operator to provide closer attention,” explains Tom Dodrill, Vertical Market Manager, Pelco by Schneider Electric.

Nowadays almost every IP systems comes with analytics based software solutions and the scope of these systems and applications are wide. The merged analytics are now used in critical segments but it will have used cases in small segments also.

“Today, most of the deployed IP systems implement analytics based software solution too. The future of these systems and their application in surveillance will be wide. The merging of video based intelligence with audio and sensor based analytics will enable policing agencies with more filtered vital information faster. Today the analytics is generally used by segments like Oil & Gas sector, Safe city and other Critical areas. The merged analytics (Video/Audio & Sensor Combined) will have used cases to larger market segments like retail and SOHO. We,

COVER STORY


Kaushal KadakiaMarketing Manager, IPVS, Matrix Comsec

as Oncam, are promoting this merged analytic applications and are largely seen as the technology driving force in these segments globally,” saysAbhishek Kumar, Regional Director, South Asia, Oncam.

Similarly, PulkitPunj, Director at AnG also says that “As far as solution based services are concerned , it is important that we understand that banks, financial institutions, corporates, retail stores etc require regular services and additional services by default after purchasing a security solution. Services such as CMS (central monitoring station) are very essential to banks and financial institutions as they provide real time data and crime deterrence. QRT (quick response team) is also an example of widely used solution based services.”

Key Factors of growth

Being secured is the only factor that will always drive the surveillance industry. Security is a concern for all. With this the lowing cost of technology and cameras have boosted the consumers to adopt surveillance. Another major boosting element is Smart City project of India Government.

“The surveillance industry will always be driven by one simple factor: the basic instinct to be secure. The technology has become cheaper and the cost of cameras have come down. This has been a great motivator to those consumers who do not want to invest in physical security, but need automated systems at a reasonable cost to secure their premises.

The Smart Cities initiative has given a boost to the surveillance industry. The main reason why surveillance is critical to smart cities is to digitize the data collected through the CCTV cameras, which are strategically placed around the cities. This provides a deeper insight into the movement of citizens and also reduces crime rates. Smart cities are based on the utilization of ICT to reduce the cost of manual surveillance and support the government in urban planning,” opines Sudhindra.

The need of automated security solution and applications by government is the driving force of the industry. Moreover, though Smart City is nascent stage but this project

will definitely be a booster to the surveillance industry.

“The dependency on technology and a severe need for security are the major key factors driving the industry. The need for automated security solutions and increased application by the government is driving demand for the new technology solutions. This would require the system integrators to ramp up investments in technologies and build capabilities.

The smart city initiative is still in its infancy, however it's a well thought out project for managing an entire city with command centres and appropriate hardware technologies. Pilot projects have been executed to show the government how effective the solution is, these have performed very well. However, the government needs to establish it as a planned defined process in order to achieve success,” opines Pulkit.

As per Kaushal Kadakia Marketing Manager, IPVS, Matrix Comsec, it is the real-time security and automation are the two factors for which the adoption of surveillance has increased. He says,“The factors that are acting as a catalyst to this increased adoption are majorly real-time security, and automation. These analytics provide a proactive solution by preventing damage in real-time rather than reactive security. Added benefits are improved process compliance, productivity and employee discipline. These Intelligent Video Analytics help in providing productivity by saving huge time on investigations thereby leading to simplicity of management.At Matrix, we provide analytics with instant notifications like Calling from Mobile App, Email with Snapshot and SMS for enhanced automated security.

Early adopters of this technology are firms like banks, manufacturing units, jewelry showrooms and enterprises where safeguarding expensive assets and human resources in real-time is of utmost importance.”

To Conclude

It is quite prominent that surveillance market is growing and with time and development happening everywhere new and interesting problems will also come to surface. To address that industry will also respond to it with new and innovative analytics.

“The future for surveillance and video analytics is in a single word – expanding. As cities evolved their city surveillance platforms new and interesting problems will arise. Industry will respond with new and innovative analytics, both video and big data based, to meet that need. The concepts of city surveillance – crime reduction and traffic congestion relief will quickly move from large urban environments for secondary and tertiary cities and eventually to smaller towns and villages,” views Tom.

Reiterating similar views, Abhishek says, “In India, we are at the gasp of taking the flight into future of a secured smarter world

in which Oncam will have to play its definite role. With less than 20% of our cities covered with basic surveillance, we have daunting task ahead in making our cities safer and a better place to live in. The opportunities and scope is tremendous, future is very promising and bright.”

The video surveillance market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13% which will be led by terror threat, crime, data theft etc. Also the shift towards IP cameras in sectors like government, transportation, banking etc will give a boost to it.

“Indian surveillance market is poised for higher growth in India. Led by the ever increasing terrorist activities, increasing crime rates, data thefts, increasing it spending, the video surveillance market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13% during 2016-2020. Additonally, government and transportation and banking verticals are shifting towards IP video surveillance to prevent high security threats,” states Sanjeev.

Video Surveillance has come across a long way and now it is more than just monitoring, recording and storage. It provides better features like greater visibility and control, simplicity of management etc. and these will take the surveillance market to the next level of growth.

“Modern world has become more perilous than it was in the past. Video surveillance is a vital tool for protecting people and property around the clock. Thus, the surveillance market is poised for higher growth across the globe. Earlier, video surveillance was all about monitoring, recording and storage, but now video surveillance systems have other aspects like Greater Visibility and Control, Simplicity of Management, Proactive Solution with Early Detection and Instant Notification, Higher Reliability against Breakdowns and Integration with other solutions. These are the dynamics, which will drive real business value in the surveillance market,” concludes Kaushal.

So at the end, with evolving time the threats will also evolve and new solutions will be required to curb them. Moreover, we are heading towards adoption of smart city where video surveillance and analytics is an important part of the project. Therefore, this gives a clear view that video surveillance and analytics market will expand. n

Pulkit PunjDirector AnG


ISODA TechSummit 7 reveals the X FactorWith the theme of “Xcel, Xcellerate,

Xceed”, Infotech Software Dealers’ Association (ISODA) successfully concluded its flagship event, TechSummit 7. It was held from 16th to 19th February, 2017 at Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and over 100 System Integrators (SIs) and VARs participated in this three-day summit. This summit has been convened keeping Digital Transformation in view.

It is a unique platform offered by ISODA to help its members to identify the latest and relevant technologies, networking with technology vendors on how to collaborate with them and leverage each other’s core competencies and take it to the next level. Secondly, vendors get the opportunity to meet the owners of the VARs and discuss on new alliances and reinforce the existing partnership.

The strong foundation of any event of such stature is the agenda and the opportunity for networking. And, TechSummit 7 promises to have strengths in both. The theme of the summit explains, Xcel through strengthening the alliances, Xcellerate yourself for the next level of skillsets and Xceeed not just as an individual but also as an entire team and stakeholder, with the agenda focussed on identifying new opportunities, by a series of specialized sessions and informal as well as formal networking opportunities between members and principals.

In the opening address, Rajiv Mamidanna,

Chairman of ISODA TechSummit 7 and also Vice- President, ISODA, and Vipul Dutta, Chairman, ISODA, spoke about the X factor with the examples of Luis Figo, Mickey Mantel, Christiano Ronaldo and M. S. Dhoni, who are considered as the leaders and have leveraged the X factor. Incidentally, at the ISODA Tech Summit 7, the members also wore No. 7 as a dress code.

Rajeev Mamidanna expressed his views, “The need to Xcel in strategies and alliances has to Xcellerate to the next level of skills successfully, and has to Xceed the expectations of teams as entrepreneurs.”

The keynote session on the roadmap ahead was presented by Vipul Shah and K. V. Jagannathan.

A panel discussion on Digital Transformation in India and its impact and opportunities for the Indian IT community also took place.

This year, the grand ISODA TechSummit 7 has been sponsored by Simplivity, Sophos, Profectum, Radware, SonicWall, Red Hat, Edimax, Interlabs, Rah Infotech and Symphony Summit.

Alike other years, this time also ISODA gave away Business Excellence Awards in five categories. Enjay IT Solutions from Gujarat won the Business Excellence award, Mumbai-based LDS Infotech won Business Excellence award in Licence Sales, KKM Soft of Chennai bagged Niche Technologies award, Dev Information Technologies, Ahmedabad won Business Transformation award and Secure Network Solutions of Chennai received Business Excellence in Security award. The awards were selected by the jury members consisting of L. Ashok, CEO, Futurenet Technologies; Alok Gupta of Softmart; and Dhruv Dua, Income Tax Consultant of ISODA.

WinnersAwards Categories Winners

Business Excellence Enjay IT Solutions

Business Excellence in Licence Sales LDS Infotech

Business Excellence in Niche Technologies KKM Soft

Business Excellence in Business Transformation Dev Information Technologies

Business Excellence in Security Secure Network Solutions

EVENT


Rahul Joshi, Country Manager, Quickheal Technologies, says, “I have been part of most of the TechSummits at ISODA. This is one association I will always cherish as I have always come back every time with new knowledge of trends, new alliances and new friends. I am excited to be a part of the 7thTechSummit. Moreover, the coverage that ISVs like us get through ISODA is amazing!”

Venkata Murthy, Prime Mover, 22by7, says, “TechSummit is an event where System Integrators like us get the opportunity to meet new vendors, form new partnerships and also meet our colleagues who help us regularly cover areas which we cannot. I have used ISODA as a platform to service customers where I do not have presence.”

Manish Goenka, Director, ICONS Infocom, says, “I have been waiting eagerly for TechSummit 7. After a successful TechSummit 6 at Langkawi, expectations from the group are even higher this time. Of what I understand till now, it looks like a great agenda. I am actually very interested to hear from quite a lot of new vendors and hence I am excited at the prospects of new alliances.”

Ashok Kumar, CEO, RAH Infotech, says, “We are one the fastest-growing value-added distributors of India. Some of our alliances are unique and we attribute a lot of our growth to ISODA. The opportunities one gets as a member of ISODA is tremendous.”

Testimonials:

Corporate Presentations & Panel Discussion Session


Manoj KanodiaCEO Inspira Enterprise

Nilesh KuvadiaManaging Director ITCG Solutions

Kartik ShahManaging Director and CEO Bitscape Infotech

As per Indian Brand Equity Foundation’s report on IT/ ITeS

Industry, the sector is expected to triple its current annual revenue to reach US$ 350 billion by FY 2025. India’s IT sector has been instrumental in putting India on the global map. It is also true that the pace of technological change and growth will not slow down but will only grow with every new developments taking place.

Taking cognizance of this current market growth are the distribution houses and SI businesses, for whom this spells a lot of growth opportunities and market

scope for expansion. “We see good growth opportunities in the IT and Mobility space and therefore do not see any major challenges as such,” confirms Atul Mehta, Chairman & Managing Director - Compuage Infocom.

Similarly for companies like M.Tech, the current market offers great scope for growth and expansion. “M.Tech’s vision is to be the preferred, best-of-breed cyber security and network performance solutions provider. We select partners with market-leading vendors who are established in their respective domains. Together, we cover a broad spectrum of today's security and

network performance requirements - from firewalls, web security, intrusion prevention and security analytics to cloud networking and network virtualization,” says Bhavin Bhatt, Regional Director – M.Tech.

A report by Gartner predicts that the public cloud services market in India is projected to reach to a total of $2.1 billion by 2018. This presents a huge opportunity in this growing market. According to Manish Tandon, Managing Director – Questa Software Systems, 2017 is going to be a cloud year and major cloud vendors like Oracle and Microsoft are talking only about the cloud

Indian IT Channel heading for great times ahead

Armed with growth oriented strategies and aggressive business expansion plans, the IT Channel ecosystem is up for a new beginning in the year 2017. While the last

few years have seen sluggish and flat business, the market is changing for better with most of the businesses clocking double digit growth and winning lucrative projects.

VAR SPECIAL


Sundaresan KGeneral Manager, Tech Data (previously Avnet Technology Solutions) India

Sudarsan RanganathanChairman & MDVeeras Infotek

Atul MehtaChairman & Managing Director - Compuage Infocom

Prashanth GJCEO TechnoBind

Limesh ParekhCEO - Enjay IT Solutions

Vinod KumarManaging Director Corporate Infotech Pvt Ltd (CIPL)

story. “We partners have to sing the same tune. Microsoft has also changed its focus from Antipiracy to a solution-based approach which has started to take shape now. All other players are now either on cloud or are preparing to migrate.”

Nilesh Kuvadia, Managing Director - ITCG Solutions is too of a similar opinion and says that the year 2017 will see the adoption of cloud technology. “With the adoption of cloud technology by customers, the infrastructure cost will reduce drastically and at the same time the payment will be paid on a predictable interval basis like monthly/Quarterly/Yearly. Right from the Infrastructure as a service to Software as a service to storage as a service, these components will have a continuous demand throughout the year.”

The physical shipments & logistics of distribution are also moving to the cloud area. The upcoming distribution model for cloud is going to be completely different and distributors will be playing the role of aggregators rather than a distributor, according to market onlookers.

Thanks to the demonetisation drive, digitisation has taken a very fast pace. With digitization and internet penetration zooming up, the demand for IT and the accessories is also on uptrend. This has resulted in good opportunity for VAR partners for implementing IT hardware infrastructure. “IT markets are in transition. Opportunities in the field of Digitization and Automation are rising and we will work to move in early and catch this wave,” says Rajiv Kumar, Director

and CEO, Proactive Data Systems.Security is another area that is becoming

key for companies to invest on in the coming days. Deepak Jadhav, Director - VDA Infosolutions informs that his company is betting big on IT security as well as converged infrastructure which are likely to see very good growth. “These areas will help us to go deep in existing accts as well help to penetrate newer acts,” he says.

“Further the surveillance category is also growing at a very fast pace triggering the demand of not only surveillance systems, but also storage,” says Rajesh Goenka, VP –Sales & Marketing – Rashi Peripherals. “Also the transition from hard drive to SSD has also begun by opening new opportunities for channel partners.”

Mobility as a market has a huge potential, as the number of Internet-connected smartphones are only going up in the coming days. Technological advancements, especially in next-generation technologies like data analytics, Internet of Things and mobility have created significant demand in the education sector, particularly in engineering and computer science. Government buying is also set to increase and GST is helping pave the way for higher growth. “We see huge opportunities in terms of business potential in the Indian market. We are prepared to address this growth in terms of our alignment with the world’s leading IT vendors and our dedication to enabling partners to capitalize on high growth and next-generation technologies,” says Sundaresan K, general manager, Tech Data (previously Avnet

Technology Solutions) India.Vinod Kumar, Managing Director -

Corporate Infotech feels that achieving unified integration and communication between products and platforms will be the key for 2017. “Critical attention to effective privacy and security solutions will play an essential component in the IT industry growth. We anticipate that parts of this tech growth (e.g. cloud and data storage, hardware, computers and systems) will certainly play a major role in the near future. To tap these opportunities we have started working more collaboratively with our customers to truly understand the core challenges they are facing,” he says.

“There are plenty of areas to grow,” points out Sudarsan Ranganathan, Chairman & Managing Director – Veeras Infotek. “We need to look at extensible information security, cloud DR, hybrid environments and cost management on these hybrid environments. We will require extensive evangelisation, knowledge dissemination and predictable cost Management for IT teams.”

He further adds that distribution might continue in the same form but they will become more as aggregators. “Logistics will be a lesser pain to them than before but will focus on technology to make their operations efficient and effective. GST will also ease their complexity. But they will continue to be the risk mitigators for vendors on the financial front,” says Sudarsan.

“The requirement for automation software is increasing drastically (eg CRM, Sales Automation and Marketing Automation). We see that it has a huge opportunity in 2017.


Inorder to get maximum out of this, we have already started appointing training Sales/Implementation partners across India,” observes Limesh Parekh, CEO - Enjay IT Solutions.

There is also likely to be greater demand for new offerings like mobile applications, Cloud, Robotics Automation, Blockchain, SDN in accordance with the shifts in customer needs. “It will, however, become imperative for providers to raise productivity and innovate beyond labor-centric service models to capture new markets successfully,” points out Manoj Kanodia, CEO – Inspira Enterprise. “With a determination to go an extra mile to ensure customers achieve the desired outcome, the company needs to envision to constantly making an impact on the Indian IT industry by promoting innovative, high quality, price-performing technologies,” he says.

It is also noticed that distributors are increasing their support to small partners and with their help the share of business done by small partners has also increased in recent years. This has ultimately led to a higher level of product commoditization but lowering of partner margins.

Just like opportunities, there are challenges too that a partner and a distributor has to cope up in 2017. For instance the emergence of technologies such as cloud, Internet of Things and automation among others has created opportunities and uncertainties for the industry. Also, in 2017, the domestic market is likely to be a bit rough as businesses prepare for GST. “This sudden

shift in the technology has become a catalyst for the Indian IT services majors to go for acquisition and also make investments in the new age start-ups. To be successful and increase market share, enterprises in this sector will need to fundamentally transform their business models, re-vamp their solution offerings and invest in the right skills to be more relevant to enterprises. Along with all the changes triggered by new technologies and platforms such as cloud and mobility, the end customer is changing as well. As a result, how channel firms interact and appeal to end customers will need to adapt,” cautions Manoj.

According to Prashanth GJ, CEO, TechnoBind adoption of emerging technologies like cloud, mobility and digitization has been a challenge for enterprises across industries. “Primary reasons have been a lack of understanding about the emerging technologies and shortage of rightly skilled people who can implement and manage these technologies. Distributors can see this as a big market opportunity with the help of its unique GTM strategy and focus on skilled resources.”

Sundaresan feels that while an effective channel can be a source of strategic advantage for companies, an important challenge is that considerable thought, effort, and investment is required to create and maintain a distribution channel. “In the long run however it will be the distribution medium and its added value that will bring the greatest advantages.”

The distribution mechanism/market has already become more complex due to multi

distribution points, growth of rural market, expansion of urban markets and modern trade. In this complex environment, all companies need to base their next move on the best business intelligence and require optimizing distribution channels.

Nilesh also points out that the current distribution market is facing payment challenges apart from the constant push for year on year growth by the OEMs. “With frequent obsolete rate of products, the ageing stock movement is also a challenge. Customers do not adopt new technology at the same pace that these new products get introduced in the market.”

True, credit management and inventory management are the two very important concerns for the distributor industry and those who manage these two well will only survive in the industry. Also with Cloud or Opex model taking shape, the traditional business model might get mitigated and that could be a challenge from the top line point of view.

Ashok Kumar, MD & CEO - RAH Infotech is of the view that the Distribution market has been going through consolidation in the country and there have been many M&As in the recent past. “This is resulting in increased competition and as a result margins are shrinking. The need of the hour is to work in unique ways to overcome this challenge and RAH Infotech is already at it.”

Kartik Shah, Managing Director and CEO - Bitscape Infotech contends that the traditional distribution model will have to evolve in an annuity model to order to support

Deepak JadhavDirector VDA Infosolutions

Bhavin BhattRegional Director M.Tech

Sudhir KothariManaging Director Embee Software

Jiten MehtaDirector Magnamious Systems

Manish TandonManaging Director Questa Software Systems

Rajesh GoenkaVP – Sales & Marketing Rashi Peripherals

VAR SPECIAL


customer buying habits and need. “May be this will result in the mitigation of some of the channel members and distribution will primarily reach to end customer and service providers directly. But again, this is how the business model is going to evolve and the channel has to adapt to it.”

While it may be too early to assess the impact of demonetization on the distribution and partner business, but it did have some impact on the business in the initial days and weeks, but it did peter out quickly.

Demonetization however did not affect those companies that deal only in bank transfers or cheques. It in a way cleaned up the grey markets and paved the way for legitimate IT suppliers only. For companies like Proactive, demonetization had little impact on its business. “Though there was a slow business in the last quarter, but that cannot be attributed to demonetization alone. Others factors such as Trump factor were also at play,” says Rajiv.

“In my opinion, sectors with linkages to the unorganized economy were affected due to demonetization but its impact to IT industry and the technology sector/services will be short lived and are expected to gain in the long term,” says Vinod.

A growing Vendor-partner relationship...

The vendor-partner equation is changing and is believed to keep on changing to address the market effectively. Transparency and customer oriented service are growing to be an important aspect of any relationship. The best vendors are focussing on becoming trusted advisors and developing long-term relationships with partners.

In earlier days, the vendor partner equation was like a buy and sell relationship similar to traditional way of retail trading business.

Over the period, vendors have understood the importance of partner efforts towards customer satisfaction in pre and post sales. “The vendor has now integrated the partner effort through transparency, knowledge base, rebates, GTM strategy and treat partner as their extended arm to spread the message in the massive customer base. With Cloud being a major factor for OEMs, they have realised that partners play a major role to ensure larger consumption of cloud solutions,” says Devesh Aggarwal, Managing Director – Compusoft.

With new cloud centric policies of software vendors coming up, the partnership model is also changing. The VARs are emerging as cloud solution partners. “Now vendors don’t just need resellers but they are expecting more than that from a partner. We have to build our competencies on cloud and can expect better margins & healthy competition rather just fighting on prices,” says Manish.

“I believe nowadays vendor-partner relationship has become more of a transactional nature rather than a relationship nature. SIs are now seriously looking for avenues to make better margins and bigger revenues. The market is growing very competitive but after it starts getting consolidating, the scenario will change for better,” says Jiten

Mehta, Director - Magnamious Systems.

In the words of V.K. Bhandari, CMD - Supertron Electronics, vendor partner relationship has come a long way and now this engagement is getting stronger with right expectations from each other. “The trend is changing from pure play fulfilment relationship to a value added relationship. Most of the vendors are looking for right partnership with the right expectation.”

At the same time it is also true that vendors will increasingly give higher weightage to

With the adoption of cloud technology by customers, the infrastructure cost will reduce

drastically and at the same time the payment will be paid on a predictable interval basis like

monthly/Quarterly/Yearly. Right from the Infrastructure as a

service to Software as a service to storage as a service, these

components will have a continuous demand throughout the year

Rajiv KumarDirector and CEOProactive Data Systems

Devesh AggarwalManaging Director Compusoft

Ashok KumarMD & CEO RAH Infotech


V.K. BhandariCMD Supertron Electronics

partners who are investing on upcoming niche areas rather than just generic products. So it will be beneficial for partners to develop skills in newer offerings of OEM and help them to penetrate new market.

Vendors are grappling with the change as much as partners are. Consolidation across companies, mergers and acquisitions change partner plans as well as customer perceptions. “Opportunistic sales will become lesser as we go forward and value engagements will bear more results. The partners with greater technical skill, prescriptive solutioning capability and customer relationships will be favoured to merely customer relationship mode that has been the backbone of IT sales so far,” observes Sudarsan.

In Vinod’s opinion, the most important part of a strong vendor/partner relationship is visibility, trust and respect. “Previously vendor channel partnership expectations were limited to, how big is the market opportunity for specific vendor’s product, what are the paths to individual’s profits, how will vendor partner association will help/support

individual’s interest and showcase brand value to customer. The current changing IT industry scenario has given the strategic nature of these partnerships to ensure there is a ‘win-win’ approach by working together to grow the business,” says Vinod.

“Vendor relationships are “exploratory” or “shifting,” which means they are taking a look at new vendors to work with or they have made a definitive switch already. How the channel makes money from cloud solutions – recurring revenue, referral fees, consulting – has them rethinking the value of some of the more conventional ways that vendors structure their programs and financial rewards,” says Manoj.

And so...The IT market is growing very competitive

day by day with all the OEMs/vendors slogging themselves in the market. As India’s businesses continue to evolve, based on ever–changing market conditions, companies make continuous efforts to boost distribution. By doing so they ensure IT channel partners can easily access new technologies and are able to address maximum IT requirements from their customers.

“Distribution is a very critical element

as it should aim to make the product available timely with appropriate credit line facility. Presently for most major technology vendors, distribution is their principal route to market. The current expectation & role attributed to distribution is the provision of delivery logistics, product marketing services,

technical support, managing appropriate inventory and provision of credit line is very much competitive & sustainable,” says Vinod.

When asked whether the market is competitive or not, Rajesh says that the

answer would be both yes and no. “Yes because distributor like us is always under inventory pressure and market demand for credit is high. No because there are very few limited distributer left in country which can be counted on fingers. Focusing on sell-out

rather than selling will remain the Mantra of success.”

“Indeed distribution markets are growing quite competitive. But, it helps brings the best out of us. Learnings never stops. With the competitive nature of the business/industry, it makes us focus on enhancing our operational efficiency all the time,” agrees Atul.

According to Sudhir Kothari, Managing Director - Embee Software if one does unique selling then competition is not there, but vanilla selling would lend one in stiff competition. “It all depends on what kind of trajectory you are taking. We are in a solution selling and value proposition mode and so see mild competition for us. Being in the market for 30 years now, we have been able to build that trust amongst our customers. We work as a partner rather than a vendor to our customers.”

Intensifying competitive pressures from within and outside of the IT channel drive more vendors and solution providers to strive to reach escape velocity – that is, breaking free from legacy practices. “One of the most intriguing factors at play is the relationship between customers and the channel. The competitive advantage gained from intelligent use of data has separated early adopters from their counterparts, and everyone wants to quickly follow the suit,” says Manoj.

It is also true that the way businesses are conducted across the globe are similar in many ways, but the key differences in laws of the land and the way people operate region-to-region is what every company should keep in mind. Especially in a country like India, this is critically important while sustaining a relationship with vendors and partners.

In the end, with the market opening up further and with the introduction of programs by the government like Digital India, Start-up India, Make in India, both small and large businesses can get a big boost and opportunities can look very promising in spite of the competition that exists. In such circumstances, the only differentiator that

can work in the favour of a business house is the uniqueness of the product or service offering and the business model followed to tap this opportunity. n


VAR SPECIAL


Dell EMC's hyperconverged portfolio offers flexibility and scalability

In a chat with VARINDIA, Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, VCE, discusses about Dell EMC’s PowerEdge servers and their enhanced applications – VxRail appliances and VxRack systems. He also talks about the benefits

of the solutions, their go-to-market strategy and also how partners are adding value to these solutions

PowerEdge servers by Dell EMC have been well accepted among customers. Worldwide, the customers rely on this server portfolio to address and optimize workloads at any level. This range of servers is meant to deliver performance, agility, cost saving and performance.

“As the foundation for a complete, adaptive IT solution, PowerEdge servers deliver superior agility and reliability, outstanding operational efficiencies, and top performance at any scale. Dell PowerEdge 13th-generation server portfolio, the latest version of the PowerEdge server, is customer-inspired engineering built to optimize price performance for the widest range of web, enterprise and hyperscale applications, and features state-of-the-art advancements in storage, processing and memory technology coupled with industry-leading systems management capabilities,” remarks Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director, VCE.

VxRail appliances and VxRack systems

Based on hyperconverged infrastructure appliances and developed for VMware environments, VxRail appliances offer better CPU performance, flexibility in configuration, scalability and low in cost.

“The VxRail Appliance Family, the industry’s only HCI appliances specifically developed and fully optimized for VMware environments, now has configurations powered by the latest Intel Broadwell Platforms, VMware vSphere and VMware VSAN technologies and is based on PowerEdge servers. These feature 40% more CPU performance for the same price, increased flexibility and scalability with more configurations than before, all-flash nodes equipped with 2x more storage and a new 3-node entry point that is 25% less expensive,” explains Ramnani.

Dell EMC will add new updates of VxRail Appliances with VMware Horizon so that it can serve its customers better who look upon fastening time-to-value of an enterprise-class client virtualization solution. This solution also presents flexibility, performance and takes lesser time to deliver results.

“For customers seeking to accelerate time-to-value of an enterprise-class client virtualization solution, Dell EMC will offer new configurations of VxRail Appliances with VMware Horizon. The solutions are specifically optimized for client virtualization in order to provide simplified deployment and management of virtual workspaces. The solution, validated by Dell EMC with support

from VMware and NVIDIA, offers flexibility and high performance to accommodate a variety of needs and decreases time-to-delivery of the solution from weeks to days,” says Ramnani.

Talking about another important solution, Ramnani says, “VxRack System 1000, the only rack-scale hyperconverged system with integrated top-of-rack Spine-Leaf networking and SDN options, is the perfect choice for core data centers that require both enterprise-grade resiliency and the ability to start small and scale easily. Now based on PowerEdge R630 and R730xd servers, these VxRack Systems offer more capacity and 40% more CPU performance without increasing footprint or cost. With more than 20 new configurations, customers have the flexibility to add as needed

The benefits of VxRack System all-flash configurations include:• Better all-flash economics that offer

2.5x more usable flash capacity for a similar price versus previous generations

• Application acceleration with SanDisk DAS Cache speeds storage I/O operations while reducing latency, resulting in improved performance of I/O-intensive applications such as Microsoft SQL OLTP

• Configuration flexibility enables customers to scale linearly as their workloads require by incrementally adding high-density, storage-heavy or compute-heavy node configurations

compute-heavy, storage-heavy or balanced configurations (in both all-flash and hybrid models) as needed to match their workload requirements".

StrategyHolistic approach is what Dell EMC

believes in. The company does not believe in solving only infrastructural difficulties but provides a comprehensive integrated solution.

“Dell’s strategy and vision is to look holistically at the customers, not just solve their infrastructure challenges. Other vendors are concentrating on solving only part of the problem and are rigid, delicate, and proprietary. At Dell EMC, we have adopted a holistic approach to integrating hardware, management, solutions and applications. We have a rich heritage of providing organizations of all sizes the essential building blocks – industry-standard servers, storage, networking, and solutions. Dell has top benchmark results on TPC-H, SPEC rating scores over its nearest competition. We are open and integrated – not rigid. Customers can use what they have and remain flexible to adapt to technology and business changes. Data center solutions are powered by computing infrastructure that is intelligent, by network services infrastructure that is virtual, and by data management architecture that is fluid. Dell solutions trounce the competition in a comparison like this,” states Ramnani.

Value addition by PartnersThe solutions give ample opportunity to

partners to add more value to the solutions and serve better to end-users. The ISV partners are certifying their applications on Dell EMC stack. They can add services which can help their customers to migrate easily from physical/virtual environment to virtual stack and can also help with new infrastructure.

“Partners can add tremendous value over and above these products. Some of the options currently being followed by some customers are given below:

A) ISV Partners are today certifying their applications on top of Dell EMC stack and provide end-to-end support for the entire stack.

B) They can add services by helping customers migrate from their physical/virtual environment to virtual stack on top of Dell EMC hyperconverged infrastructure.

C) These partners can also provide infra refresh, by helping customers refresh their old infrastructure to brand-new HCI platform,” concludes Ramnani. n

Rajesh RamnaniRegional Director, VCE

FACE TO FACE


HPE strengthens its arm in Hybrid IT with Nimble

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has taken the next move to strengthen its

comprehensive portfolio and go along with the industry, in spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications. The acquisition of Nimble for $1.9 billion expands HPE's leadership position in the high-growth flash storage market that will create a comprehensive, leading-edge storage portfolio by bringing together highly complementary solutions to help customers around the world to make IT more efficient, productive and secure.

There is no doubt that business leaders are looking to optimise and grow their businesses, and cloud can give them the benefit of reduced costs and providing better customer experience.

Flash storage is a fast-growing market and an increasingly important element of today's hybrid IT environment. The overall flash market was estimated to be approximately $15 billion in 2016 and is expected to be nearly $20 billion by 2020, with the all-flash segment growing at a nearly 17 percent compound annual growth rate. Nimble's predictive flash offerings for the entry to midrange segments are complementary to HPE's scalable midrange to high-end 3PAR solutions and affordable MSA products. This deal will enable HPE to deliver a full range of superior flash storage solutions for customers across every segment.

“This is the fourth acquisition of HPE this year. The deal comes even as HPE's recently completed $650 million acquisition of hyper-converged provider SimpliVity, Cloud Cruiser (Infrastructure analytics), Niara (Security analytics vendor) and now Nimble Storage's portfolio which complements and strengthens

the 3PAR products in the high-growth flash storage market will help us deliver the vision of making Hybrid IT simple for our customers," said Meg Whitman, President and CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Key benefits to the customers with combined HPE and Nimble –• The ability to seamlessly move data and

replicate across hybrid flash and all-flash storage to meet unpredictable IT demands

• Integrated data protection with application aware snapshots, encryption, replication and integration with leading independent software vendors

• Effortless management of storage volumes along with data compaction to reduce capacity costs

• Predictive support automation to anticipate and prevent most problems and solve remaining issues in a matter of minutes

• Quality of service controls and full stack analytics to ensure predictable performance in hybrid IT deployments

• Increased dedicated sales specialist support• A future-proofed technology platform with

a rich roadmap to support next-generation storage

There are numerous benefits to using a hybrid cloud instead of a more singular approach, whether that is using only a public cloud or a private cloud. With an objective to make it full proof not only needs the performance of flash storage but it also looks for predictive intelligence to optimize their infrastructure. With Nimble Storage (a vendor of all-flash and

hybrid flash storage products) and 3PAR, HPE can now deliver on those storage needs and provide more effective on-premises control and performance, at public cloud economics. With this HPE is fast emerging as a major disruptive force in the infrastructure market.

HPE has chosen the best option with Nimble for enhancing its storage portfolio independently.

Nimble Storage offers converged flash arrays with predictive software for provisioning to speed up storage performance. Nimble's strong application performance in its entry to midrange flash storage solutions is backed by an intelligent, predictive analytics engine that delivers a simplified customer experience. This unique analytics platform goes beyond storage to analyze performance issues across the full data path, from apps to the array, and resolves most issues before they occur. In addition, Nimble has recently introduced multicloud storage services that combine the best of on-premises and public cloud storage capabilities for Hybrid IT deployments.

As on today, over 10,000 enterprises are using Nimble Storage because its Predictive Cloud Platform is reliably fast, radically simple, and cloud ready.

“With this we will be the Industry leader in fast growing flash-storage market," said Suresh Vasudevan, CEO at Nimble Storage. "This acquisition validates our technology leadership in flash and in the use of cloud-based predictive analytics. We are confident that by combining Nimble Storage's technology leadership with HPE's global distribution strength, strong brand and enterprise relationships, we are creating expansion opportunities for the combined company."

In the storage space, this is just as big as Aruba being acquired by HPE. Industry expert visualizes Nimble acquisition as another HPE infrastructure game-changer. There is no doubt that Nimble has a great product - this is going to really help drive sales growth for HPE in the all-flash data center market and this tightens HPE's hold as a one top data center shop. It provides HPE with new hot technology to drive growth. n

Meg WhitmanPresident and CEOHewlett Packard Enterprise

VAR ANALYSIS


Zyxel SBG3300-NThe SBG3300-N Series is a wireless VDSL router and Gigabit

Ethernet gateway. The ZyXEL SBG3300-N has been designed as a business-grade VDSL2 service gateway with speeds of up to 100Mbps downstream and up to 50Mbps upstream (PTM mode). With the Gigabit Ethernet uplink (WAN port), it can be connected to Ethernet or Fibre network via its Gigabit Ethernet uplink to become a Gigabit access gateway. It features multi-WAN (DSL/Ethernet/3G) fail-over and load balancing functions only previously found on high-end, complex network devices; this guarantees the Internet connection and minimises downtime, so that customers and employees can always stay online.

In case the Internet access is down, the device will automatically redirect all traffic over to the backup connections. The ZyXEL SBG3300-N features a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch with an 802.11n wireless AP for wireless devices. With the ZyXEL management GUI, administrators can maintain the office networks easily for office users to log in remotely. It has one DSL port and Gigabit Ethernet for super-fast Internet access over analog (POTS) telephone lines. The Device supports both Packet Transfer Mode (PTM) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). It is backward compatible with ADSL, ADSL2 and ADSL2+ in case VDSL is not available. The ZyXEL SBG3300-N features a Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) Firewall and Content Filtering. These help to prevent attacks and save customers from security threats. Web Site Filtering and Content Filtering are based on a large online database to prevent employees from accessing specific Web sites. SMB and SOHO users can implement their Web/FTP/Mail servers in a DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) while the IT staff can configure the DMZ to Ethernet ports (4 LAN, 1WAN) to guarantee smooth access for guests without worrying about network intrusion to the office LAN.

1Taxes and handling charges are extra.Intel, Intel Atom, the Intel logo and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

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LEAD STORY

Smart Cities Success: Vision, Planning, Funding & Execution

India's 100 Smart Cities Program success will be dependent on four parameters - Clear Vision, Long Term Planning, Adequate Funding and Module Based Execution

Eija-Riitta KorholaFormer Member of European Parliament

"Smart Helsinki vision is one more hour a day. Smart

city needs to be sustainable and should be doing more with less"

India has rolled out 100 Smart Cities Program in a big way

and things have started to roll out in different cities. Presently, majority of the tenders floated in the market is related to project management consultant (PMC); infrastructure projects like transport, smart roads, streetscaping of roads, smart solar projects, smart solar rooftops, development of green space, piped natural gas and smart car parking system; and setting up command & control centre. Different cities have floated their tenders depending upon what their priorities are for the future but the city planner before floating tender should also focus on four parameters - vision, planning, funding and execution.

If these four parameters are taken seriously by the town planners, things will become easy for all stakeholders and the city will really be smart.

Clear Vision The vision for all 100 Smart

Cities will differ from one another depending upon how city planners plan their city to be smart. For e.g. the new Kalasatama area of Helsinki is an experimental innovation platform to co-create smart urban infrastructure and services. This centrally located old harbour area is growing into the smart city district of Helsinki.

The vision of Kalasatama is that smart services save one hour of citizen’s time every day which is a very noble concept. Time is city residents’ most precious resource, which is why Smart Kalasatama aims to manage time efficiently.

The vision has been created together with local residents and all stakeholders, is for everyone to gain an extra hour of free time every day. Time will be saved by improving the flow of traffic and logistics, as well as guaranteeing first-rate local services and flexible facilities for remote working. The vision is very simple but executing this simple vision is not easy.

The objective is to deliver services to people rather than vice versa, reducing daily commuting. The time saved is spent on activities that bring happiness, whether that means relaxing in the local park, cooking with the children and studying or dance classes. Smart services help in improving both quality of life and time management.

Speaking on building better cities for people, Eija-Riitta Korhola, former member of European Parliament said, "Smart City needs to be sustainable and should be doing more with less."

Long Term Planning Smart cities become smart

only when all aspects of planning are taken into account be it long term or short term planning. Once the planning is finalised, it needs to be put into a dynamic three-dimensional (3D) city model for a particular city so that collaborative data can be shared by all stakeholders be it city planners, public, private and research sectors, thereby enabling users from different sectors to develop sophisticated tools and applications for test-bedding concepts and services, planning and decision-

making, to solve emerging and complex challenges for any city.

One such example is Virtual Singapore. Virtual Singapore is a dynamic three-dimensional (3D) city model and collaborative programme initiated by the National Research Foundation (NRF) at a cost of $73 million for the development of the platform as well as research into latest technologies and advanced tools over a period of five years. The platform is targeted to be ready by 2018 and will be deployed progressively.

This project is championed by the National Research Foundation (NRF); Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore; Singapore Land Authority (SLA); and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech). NRF will be leading the project development, whilst SLA will support with its 3D topographical mapping data and become the operator and owner when Virtual Singapore is completed. GovTech will provide expertise in ICT and its management as required in the project. Other public agencies will

participate in Virtual Singapore in various phases depending upon the project and what is being executed in Singapore.

Virtual Singapore is a collaborative data platform, including the 3D maps of Singapore. Virtual Singapore includes semantic 3D modelling, which comprises detailed information such as texture, material representation of geometrical objects; terrain attributes, for example, water bodies, vegetation, transportation infrastructure, etc. Models of buildings encode the geometry as well as the components of a facility, such as walls, floors, and ceilings, down to its fine details, as in the composition of granite, sand and stone in a building material.

Virtual Singapore will be developed based on geometric and image data collected from various public agencies, and will integrate different data sources to describe the city with the necessary dynamic data ontology. The 2D data and information co-ordinated through existing geospatial and non-geospatial platforms such as


Dr Chandan Chowdhury Dassault Systemes

Virtual SingaporeVirtual Experimentation: For example, Virtual Singapore can be used to examine the coverage areas

of 3G/4G networks, provide realistic visualisation of poor coverage areas, and highlight areas that can be improved on in the 3D city model.

Virtual Test-Bedding: For example, the 3D model of the new sport hub with semantic information within the Virtual Singapore could be used to model and simulate crowd dispersion to establish evacuation procedures during an emergency.

Planning and Decision Making: For instance, an app could be developed to analyse transport flows and pedestrian movement patterns. Such applications would be useful in non-contiguous urban networks such as our parks and park connectors in Punggol.

Research & Development: The rich data environment of Virtual Singapore, when made available to the research community with the necessary access rights, can allow researchers to innovate and develop new technologies or capabilities.

"Creating a virtual model of the city make an existing

city smarter. Make changes in the virtual city and understand

the impact of various decisions prior to

implementing them in the physical form” Kunal Kumar

Commissioner, Pune Municipal Corporation

"Path is different for each city but each

city has a clear path. Pune is the first city

with a municipal bond with AA rating from

Fitch as our financial position is strong"

OneMap, People Hub, Business Hub etc. will enrich the 3D Singapore City Model. Advanced information and modelling technology will allow Virtual Singapore to be infused with different sources of static, dynamic and real-time city data and information e.g. demographics, movement, climate.

Speaking about virtual model, Dr Chandan Chowdhury of Dassault Systemes said, "Creating a virtual model of the city make an existing city smarter. Make changes in the virtual city and understand the impact of various decisions prior to implementing them in the physical form.”

Adequate Funding With proper security and

privacy safeguards, Virtual City will enable public agencies, academia and the research community to make use of the information and system capabilities for policy and business analysis, decision making, test-bedding of ideas, community collaboration and other activities that require information. All these features help in better town planning and give a smart look to any city so that all problems whether it is long term as well as short term are solved virtually before doing the physical work for any smart city.

The central government

proposes to give financial support to the Smart City Mission to the extent of Rs 48,000 crores over five years i.e. on an average Rs 100 crore per city per year. An equal amount will have to be contributed by the state/urban local bodies. So, in toto, the available funds from ULBs, state government, and central government is to the tune of Rs 100,000 crore for smart cities development. This amount will not be sufficient for all modules of smart city development as project cost of each smart city will vary depending upon the level of ambition, model, capacity to execute and repay. The success of this endeavour will depend upon the robustness of special purpose vehicle (SPV) revenue model and comfort provided to lenders and investors. A number of state governments have successfully set up financial intermediaries such as Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa, Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar which can be tapped for financial support.

The central government funds and the matching contribution by the states/ULB will meet only a part of the project costs. The balance funds will be mobilised from urban local bodies through collection of user fees, beneficiary charges and impact fees, land monetization, debt, loans, etc; Innovative finance mechanisms such as municipal bonds with credit rating of ULBs,

pooled finance mechanism, Tax Increment Financing (TIF); Central government schemes like Swachh Bharat Mission, AMRUT, National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY); Leverage borrowings from financial institutions, including bilateral and multilateral institutions, both domestic and external sources; and Private sector through PPPs.

Some municipal bodies are looking at Tax Free Municipal Bonds for e.g. Pune. In the past, municipal bodies like Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Chennai and Madurai (Tamil Nadu), Bangalore (Karnataka), Hyderabad and Vizag (Andhra Pradesh), Ludhiana (Punjab) and Nagpur and Nashik (Maharashtra) have also opted for the model. In 1997, Bangalore Municipal Corporation had floated Rs 125 crore bond and Ahmedabad first municipal bond was for Rs 100 crore in January 1998. In 2010, Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation issued bonds worth Rs 30 crore.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is planning a bond offering of Rs 2,300 crore, the country’s largest municipal bond issue till date. Even Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is also planning to float municipal bonds bonds of Rs 200 crore. All this will be a win-win for urban local bodies as they require large

amount of funds so that they provide all basic amenities as well as extra amenities which will bring happiness to citizens.

Module Based Execution

In India, the Smart Cities Program will always lack fund for any smart city, so city planners will need to focus on executing different modules of smart cities in phases. In order to make city smart, the smart city planners should also focus on all the above points - clear vision, long term planning and adequate funding so that execution does not act as a bottleneck. The module based execution will help in making the jigsaw puzzle of smart city look smart when the final module gets deployed only when the big picture is infront of all stakeholders. All this module based execution will definitely help Indian cities to come at par with Mercer's Quality of Living Ranking where in the 19th edition Vienna tops the list.

Slagin Parakatil, principal, Mercer Quality of Living Ranking said, “A city’s infrastructure, or rather the lack thereof, can considerably affect the quality of living that expatriates and their families experience on a daily basis. Access to a variety of transport options, being connected locally and internationally, and access to electricity and drinkable water are among the essential needs of expatriates arriving in a new location on assignment. A well-developed infrastructure can also be a key competitive advantage for cities and municipalities trying to attract multinational companies, talent, and foreign investments.”

“Most cities now align variety, reliability, technology, and sustainability when designing infrastructure for the future,” added Parakatil. n

Pravin Prashant [email protected]


VAR MOBILITY

Zen aims for increase in sales volume and market share

4GPresently, the Indian market is moving

towards 4G devices after the introduction of VoLTE network. To boost this movement, Zen Mobiles offers devices that are affordable and at the same time feature-rich. The company has also tied up with Reliance JIO for bundled offers.

“India is a mobile first economy and 4G devices are fuelling smartphone adoption in India. We, at Zen Mobile, are focussed on offering value-for-money devices that are feature-rich, affordable and support the 4G revolution in India. Recently, we launched Zeneration 4G VoLTE devices – Cinemax 4G, Cinemax Click, Admire Dragon and Admire Thrill ranging from Rs.4,000 to Rs.6,500/-.

Additionally, we have also introduced multilingual feature, high-quality cameras along with bundled services like JIO Happy New Year offer so that customers can enjoy unlimited calling and data. As an additional benefit to the customers, we are offering free protection kit and one-time screen replacement in case of any breakage during the first six months. We will continue to innovate and bring in such devices in the future also. In the next few months, we will be launching a good number of 4G devices at the entry and mid level that will offer a wide range under the Zeneration 4G portfolio,” says Sanjay.

StrategyAs an indigenous company, the Indian market

The handset device market in India has witnessed exponential growth in the last few years and it has been majorly driven by budget smartphones or the mid- and entry-level phones. The growth has spread across all the tiers and is not just limited to the top tiers. This penetration has further led to the growth of mobile internet and fuelled the adoption of 4G network.

“The smartphone industry in India has undergone a dramatic change where affordability factor has been one of the prime drivers. Currently, 60 per cent of the smartphone users prefer to buy smartphones under Rs.8,000/-, and the smartphone players are constantly competing over specifications, features and pricing. With the rising number of first-time smartphone users, the segment will continue to see growth, especially in the mid- and entry-level segment. The rising mobile-led internet penetration along with the 4G network deployment will further fuel this growth which is also contributing to an increased smartphone adoption in the tier-II and tier-III cities,” says Sanjay Kalirona, CEO, Zen Mobile.

Feature PhonesThough the Indian market is rapidly

adopting smart handsets, there is still a major chunk of the market that possesses feature phones. Affordability and multiple features to stay connected give the feature phone segment an edge to be competitive.

“India is one of the largest mobile phone markets in the world with almost 60 per cent of the market currently captured by the feature phone segment. This figure clearly shows that the feature phone market has a strong presence in India, mainly in the tier-III cities and smaller towns. They are not only affordable but also offer multiple features that allow users to stay connected at all times. At Zen Mobile, we are constantly working towards offering the best and most innovative features at a competent price point across all the segments,” states Sanjay.

“Currently, we offer more than 25 running models in the feature phone segment and have a strong presence across all the states in India. We are focussed on increasing our market share in the tier-II and tier-III markets and want to become a dominant player across all the handset categories,” he adds.

is important for Zen Mobile and, to reach out to its customers, the company depends on its widespread channel partners.

“Being a homegrown company, India is the most important market for us. We have a robust distribution and sales channel that we would like to leverage and reach out to a larger set of consumers. Currently, we have close-to 400 partners pan India and are planning to double this figure. In the retail segment, we currently are present at 20,000 retail stores and by the end of this calendar year we are targeting to reach out to more than 30,000 retailers. We are currently focussing on expanding our 4G device portfolio and establish a strong presence in the tier-II and tier-III markets across the country. Our aim is to increase overall sales volume and market share which is important for the sustainability of our business,” reveals Sanjay.

Talking about the regional market, Zen has a good hold in West Bengal and Bihar, followed by UP and Rajasthan. The company is also performing well in other regions and are targeting for a bigger market share.

“As of now, our top two states are West Bengal and Bihar, followed closely by Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. This shows that we have high demand in the rural market. However, going forward, we will be shifting focus towards other markets also. We did really well in Gujarat and Maharashtra last month and with our ever-increasing Zeneration 4G portfolio we’ll be very aggressively targeting a bigger market share in each and every market that we are currently present in,” adds Sanjay.

Zen gives priority to its customers and serves them with the best possible services to satisfy its customers.

“We follow a customer-first policy and are committed to deliver world-class service to our customers. We always take an extra step to delight customers with the best of offers, like six- month one-time screen replacement warranty on almost all our running models, 15 days service assurance scheme for our existing customer base and initiatives such as these build brand loyalty over a period of time. Currently, we have more than 870 Zen care service centres spread across the country and the number is ever increasing,” concludes Sanjay. n

Sanjay KalironaCEO, Zen Mobile


Intel South Asia MD Debjani Ghosh to step down in March

Intel has appointed Prakash Mallya as the Managing Director for South Asia. Mallya will be taking charge of operations from Debjani Ghosh who will depart at the end of March.

As the MD for India, Mallya will be leading Intel’s effort in establishing new growth areas for the company. A 16-year veteran at Intel, Mallya has held several regional roles, most recently as Director for Intel’s Datacenter Group in Asia. He has also held the position of Managing Director of Southeast Asia where he led all of Intel’s sales, marketing and the enablement of Intel products across Southeast Asia.

Sapient India appoints Sanjay Menon as MD

Sapient has announced that Sanjay Menon has assumed the position of Managing Director of Sapient India, effective immediately. In this role, Sanjay will drive the strategy, capability development, and growth of Sapient’s India presence and maintain its status as a hub of the company’s globally distributed delivery network.

Sanjay, who will continue his responsibility of leading Delivery out of India as Global Head of Service Lines for Sapient Razorfish, takes on this new role from Rajdeep Endow. Rajdeep has taken on the role of Managing Director, Sapient Razorfish, Asia-Pacific and is responsible for leading strategy and growth for the region and helping clients reimagine their business through radical customer-centricity.

Lenovo Appoints Sudhin Mathur as Managing Director, Motorola Mobility

Lenovo Mobile Business Group has announced the appointment of Sudhin Mathur as the Managing Director - Motorola Mobility India Pvt Limited. He has been inducted as a full-time director on the Motorola Mobility Board in India and has taken over as MD, Motorola Mobility India. Sudhin will also continue to serve the role of Executive Director for Lenovo MBG India.

Sudhin has been running the operations for Lenovo MBG in India since its inception in the country four years ago and has been instrumental in leading the seamless integration of Motorola and Lenovo mobile businesses.

Netgear names Marthesh Nagendra as Country Manager

Netgear has appointed Marthesh Nagendra as Country Manager for India and SAARC region. A Netgear veteran with extensive experience in building the company’s channel partner base in India, Marthesh will spearhead new growth initiatives, focus on streamlining channel structure and partner base, enhancing quality of customer service and expanding retail presence including branded offline and online stores.

Simon Tsang , Vice-President APAC, Netgear said, “Marthesh will drive strong regional growth, strengthening our business model and provide leadership to our channel and solution partners in the region."

Lava International names Sunil Raina as its CMO

Lava International has announced the appointment of Sunil Raina as its Chief Marketing Officer. Sunil Raina takes over this position from Solomon Wheeler, who has decided to pursue other career opportunities outside Lava.

Sunil Raina, presently the Sr. Vice President and Business Head at XOLO has been associated with Lava for close to 7 years, having held several leadership roles through his tenure at the company. He has successfully lead XOLO’s growth journey as its Business Head and will continue to do so, while additionally spearheading the Marketing and Communication function for Lava.

Sales Leader Appointed to Head up ALE

ALE, operating under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand, today announced the expansion of its senior leadership team in Asia Pacific, a key region for the company, with the appointment of Pierre Samson as Vice President of Sales. Pierre will assume his role effective immediately, and will be based from Singapore.

Pierre has over 12 years of experience in the industry and has held senior leadership positions as Head of the Unified Communication & Collaboration Business Unit for Large Accounts at Orange Business Services, and most recently as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Sales Officer at Lexsi, a cyber security specialist which was acquired by Orange in 2016.

Intex names S. P. new AVP – Sales (Mobile)

Intex Technologies has appointed S. P. Subramanian as Assistant Vice-President – Sales (Mobile) to further strengthen its mobile business. In his new role, S. P. Subramanian will be handling sales of Intex’s mobile division nationally.

Subramanian brings with him nearly 25 years of rich experience in the fields of Telecom – Service Provider, Telecom – Mobile Devices, FMCG, etc. He has worked with organizations like MPS Telecom (HTC Mobiles), LAVA International and MTS (Sistema Shyam) in the past.

S. P. Subramanian said, “The mobile handset industry in India is extremely dynamic, and it is commendable that Intex has established itself as the leading domestic player in the hyper-competitive market. I am delighted to be associated with Intex Technologies and look forward to supporting the company’s vision for the future."

Sophos names Shamshad Ahmed as Director – Sales for its ESG

Sophos has announced the appointment of Shamshad Ahmed as Director – Sales for its end-user security group (ESG) business for India & SAARC. With more than 20 years of experience behind him, Shamshad has lead a number of businesses across the telecom, IT, ITeS and network security sectors, of which he has spent 16 years in senior executive roles for global technology brands. Shamshad will be based in the Sophos office in Mumbai and will report to Sunil Sharma, Vice-President of Sales for Sophos India & SAARC.

Shamshad was a part of Hewlett-Packard where he was regional sales director for their enterprise security products division. Prior to joining HP, Shamshad was regional sales director at Tipping Point Technologies (a Hewlett-Packard enterprise).

Movers & Shakers


Panasonic unveils ELUGA Pulse X and Pulse Smartphones

Vivo launches Y55s Smartphone

Panasonic India has launched two new

smartphones in its Eluga series – Eluga Pulse X and Eluga Pulse. The newly-launched smartphones are loaded with 4G VoLTE connectivity. The Eluga Pulse X and Eluga Pulse smartphones come with 13MP Auto Focus Rear Camera, and the 5MP Front Camera.

The Eluga Pulse X and Pulse smartphones come with an HD display and IPS screen topped with a scratch-resistant Asahi Dragon Trail protective glass. It packs a powerful 1.25GHz quad-core processor with a 3GB RAM for Eluga Pulse X and 2GB RAM for Eluga Pulse. Both the smartphones run on Android Marshmallow 6.0 and come with a 16GB memory expandable up to 128 GB.

The new smartphones are a great blend of style and class which makes the smartphone appear really sleek. Connectivity options include 4G, VoLTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. The unique fingerprint scanner feature, accompanied

with Android-for-work security, provides the smartphones with an impenetrable security that can be surpassed only by the user.

Pankaj Rana, Business Head – Mobility Division, Panasonic India, said, “With new variants launched in the Eluga series, launched with different designs and unique features, Panasonic targets various kind of users – youth, working professionals and gaming enthusiasts.

Vivo has launched Y55s smartphone. The device

is in line with the Vivo’s brand philosophy “Camera and Music”. Priced at Rs.12, 490, the all-new Y55s has since been made available in crown gold and space grey across the country from 26th February,

2017.The newly-launched device sets

the bar high with a faster RAM, a smooth user interface and a long battery life. Armed with 13MP rear camera, the device has been

exclusively designed to complement the preferences of tech-savvy customers and camera lovers. It is equipped with three card slots that accord more flexibility to customers.

Y55s, the 4G LTE-enabled smartphone features a 1 3 . 2 2 c m (5.2”) HD display and a1, 280x720-p i x e l r e so lu t ion . Powered by Snapdragon 425 processor and paired with 3GB RAM and 16GB ROM, the device runs on Funtouch OS 3.0 based on

Android 6.0 Marshmallow.Kent Cheng, CEO, Vivo India,

said, “After the success of Vivo V5 Plus, we hereby strengthen our Y series portfolio with the launch of this power-packed device – the Y55s."

VAR MOBILITY

LG launches 'Dhaakad Phone' with panic buttonLG Electronics India Limited

(LGEIL) has announced the launch of its new ‘Dhaakad’ smartphone with special ‘panic button’ features.

LG Electronics is the first company to adhere to the TRAI recommendation to have a single number ‘112’ for all emergency calls in the mobile phones

across the country, which is referred to as the panic button implementation.

The launch event was graced by Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister, Communications and IT, Government of India and Pankaj Mahindroo, founder and national president, Indian Cellular Association, saw the unveiling of the phone.

Dhaakad smartphone features include 5.3-inch HD In-cell Touch Display that delivers a superb viewing experience. The smartphone has 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera with 120-degree wide angle selfie lens complements the phone.

Other advanced features include a fingerprint scanner, OTG Support, a metallic U-frame for a sturdy but slim 7.9 mm profile with 2.5D Arc Glass design and latest Android OS 7.0 with 4G VoLTE.

Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “We are consistently working on initiatives to create a safe and conducive environment for citizens of the country through

technological excellence. The panic button, 112, is a great initiative and we must applaud efforts of LG Electronics who is developing technology for the betterment of the society. I would also like to congratulate LG for completing 2 decades in India.”

Kim Ki Wan, managing director – LG Electronics India who was present at the launch said, ‘’We have devised a new K10 2017 Smartphone with an

emergency panic button that can be pressed to generate an alarm by a vulnerable target in case of an unforeseen situation.

The smartphone has a premium look with its curved elemental design, distinct side character line and a curved metallic frame with 2.5 D curved glass. It has an ‘everybody in’ feature with the 120° wide angle selfie camera with a brighter F2.2 lens which catches the full surroundings of the user.


A high rise building is a sitting duck for the terrorists. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 in New York and November 26, 2008 in Mumbai authorities in high-rise buildings are beefing up their surveillance systems to prevent any untoward incident in their premises. The installation of surveillance cameras acts as an effective safeguard and deterrent to protect people and property inside and around a high rise building. Surveillance is not only about cameras but also devices that monitor the entry and exit of individuals, detect an unexpected presence using motion detectors, and identify the potential threat from fire and smoke. They all complement an effective surveillance system. The surveillance solutions must be simple in operations, non-intrusive and highy integrated.

Video SurveillanceVideo surveillance is essential to protect

occupant safety from virtually any threat. Designers of high rise buildings, rely on an expert security surveillance company to develop systems that monitor unauthorized intrusions or provide early warning in case of fire, smoke or gas leak outbreak.

A design that strategically places the right surveillance equipment or device throughout the building will provide a complete system to detect all threats inside and outside the building.

Objectives The key objectives of installing Hikvision’s

surveillance cameras in a high rise building are:To provide safety and security to the people To prevent crime To reduce the fear of crime To improve property security To safeguard women, children & senior

citizens To create a safe & vibrant atmosphere

Benefits of Surveillance Installing Hikvision’s cutting–edge security

solutions in the high rise buildings offers the following benefits –

1. Prevents CrimeHikvision’s ever alert surveillance cameras

not only catch criminals in the act, but also deter a would-be criminal from executing his/her nefarious plans.

2. Foils TheftIf you suspect one of the visitors of wrong-

doing but not sure of his/her misdemeanor, then surveillance cameras can be a very helpful tool.

3. Acts as a Useful Piece of EvidenceHikvision’s Video recordings of surveillance

cameras act as an indisputable evidence to nab the criminal.

4. Helps Law Enforcement Solve Crime

High Rise Building Surveillance SolutionsAreas Solutions Large Area Hikvision HD Multi Optical Zooming PTZ CamerasPerimeter Hikvision Bullet Type IP CameraVehicle Entrance /Exit Hikvision IP Cameras with HLC(Highlight Compensation) Technology Entrance Hikvision WDR IP CamerasHallway Hikvision Smart IP CamerasLobby Hikvision Fisheye + PTZ CamerasAccess Control Hikvision’s Integrated surveillance Solution.Basement Discreet Sized Fish Eye Camera or Mini PTZ Camera Low Light Area Hikvision Dark Fighter Multi- location Monitoring Hikviison’s 46’’ and 55’’ LED ScreenCar Parking Area In the Basement ir Around The Building Hikvision’s HD PTZ Cameras & iDS Cameras No Park Zone Hikvision Smart IP Cameras

immediate action to prevent fire, gas or water leakage.

9. Increases Visitors’ & Occupants’ Confidence

Surveillance cameras in high rise buildings provide the visitors and the occupants a sense of security and safety.

10. Saves Lives & Properties Hikvision’s surveillance cameras with alert

mechanism save people and properties inside the high rise building.

Video Surveillance Management Hikvision’s iVMS-5200 Professional Video

Management Software enables security personnel in the high rise buildings to manage all security subsystems such as video surveillance, lobby, access control, staircases, rooftop, car parking and license plate recognition in one platform.

Video Surveillance Technologies Hikvision’s Video surveillance in high rise

buildings has evolved significantly over the years. Its Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) made significant advances in features and functions. Hikvision’s cameras today have embedded processors that enable video to be compressed within the device and transmitted real-time over IP networks to Network Video Recorders (NVRs) that centrally manage video feeds from many IP cameras. DVRs and NVRs have many advantages over older analog recording technology. Streaming video can be continuously recorded and discarded in cycles of days, weeks, or months. If an incident does occur, disk indexing and time-stamping make it simple to find video from a given date and time. In short, constant surveillance is the only way to ward off threats within and around a high rise building.

When someone commits a crime and is caught on camera, police and other law enforcement officials can use the footage to release video or photos to the public via various media outlets.

5. Keeps an Eye on Children & the Elderly Persons

With Hikvision’s latest CCTV system at high rise building you can monitor the safety of children and elderly persons.

6. Protects AllHikvision’s CCTV Cameras can help protect

the occupants physically against violence from intruders. It can also protect them against false accusations.

7. Encourages Good BehaviorHaving Hikvision’s CCTV cameras inside

high rise buildings help in creating discipline among the visitors and occupants.

8. Monitors High-risk AreaHikvision’s surveillance cameras placed in

high-risk areas inside a high rise building can alert security personnel and enable them to take

Ashish P DhakanMD & CEO, Pramahikvision

Hikvision’s Effective Security Surveillance in High Rise Buildings

Provides Safety - Prevents Crime - Protects Properties

VAR SECURITY


Foxin FTTE 90 LCD TV box

Foxin’s FTTE 90 LCD TV Box is one of the premium products from the house of Foxin. It offers a fantastic and superior class experience to the users.

There are a number of features and specifications associated with it making it one of the sought after devices. The TV box is completely compatible with all types of LCDs and TV monitors and offers the viewers a high quality viewing experience. It also provides a very clear and stable 3D graphics affect which adds on to it visual quality. The TV box comes with an in-built speaker to offer an enhanced audio experience to the users and it is quite handy.

The LCD TV box also has an audio visual interface which makes it quite easy to connect with DVD, PDP and PS2. The PIP function of the device is also quite unique and its position can be adjusted from time to time. The PLL tuner also helps in storing the channel programs quite effectively.

Intel Security partners with Micromax over smartphone protectionWith a view to protect its range of smartphones against growing

and increasingly complex mobile threats, Intel Security has announced a strategic partnership with Micromax. These devices will come integrated with McAfee Mobile Assistant that will help provide a secure mobile experience to Micromax users in India.

“With smartphones becoming an integral part of our connected lives, it is important consumers realize threats that exist in the digital world and understand how to safeguard their valued data,” said Christopher Young, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Intel Security Group. “Intel Security is focused on championing cyber security and we believe in protecting every device. Globally we have secured over 220 million users. The partnership with Micromax is another step forward in realizing our vision of being the #1 security partner of choice.”

According to McAfee Labs Threat Predictions Report, mobile malware will continue to grow and target vulnerable consumers. As more consumers use their mobile devices in day to day activities from online banking to managing their connected devices, malware writers are rapidly evolving their techniques to exploit unsuspecting users to gain access their information, further underscoring need for robust protection.

Out of the box thinking could deal Cyber law challengesThe Conference on Cyber law & Cybersecurity Law strategies that took place in New Delhi came up with the conclusion that companies

need to come up with out of the box thinking and creative legal approaches while dealing with Cyber law and Cybersecurity law challenges post-demonetization. The said Conference was organized by Cyberlaws.Net and Pavan Duggal Associates, Advocates, Supreme Court of India.

The Conference was addressed by Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India and internationally renowned expert and authority on Cyber law who highlighted the various increasing cyber security law challenges in today’s scenario. Pavan Duggal further focussed on the need for companies to comply with statutory provisions under the Indian Cyber law as also with new notifications of the Government of India dealing with Cybersecurity breach notifications. He further highlighted the need for companies to ensure due diligence while exercising their duties as stipulated under the law.

The Conference was attended and addressed by more than 40 experts from different sectors and verticals including ITES, BPO, Telecom Service Providers, Network Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, Web Hosting Service Providers, Search Engines, Online Payment Sites, Online-Auction Sites, Online Market Places, Automobile, Supply Chain Solutions and also Embassies of different countries.

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ethernet for high-speed connectivity.

Scalable40 GbE line rate for wireless

Powerful2 Tbps backplane with low

2.1 us latency.

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Datasheet comparison with HP 5400R v3 and Cisco Catalyst 4507R+E. Tolly Test Report #214144 Dec. 2014. © 2016 Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

For more information, www.arubanetworks.com/products/networking/switches ormail us at [email protected]

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RNI - NO 72399/1999 Reg. No: DL-SW-1/4030/15-17Printing Date 18 & 19Date of Posting 20 & 21

every month

56 pages including cover