ECMAR2014RS20

W W W . E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O MR S 2 0 | PA G E S 3 6 | V O L U M E 0 2 | I S S U E 0 2

VMWARE VIRTUAL SAN HITS THE MARKET. /06

M A R C H 2 0 1 4

DELL INDIA: “REDEFINING FLASH STORAGE” /23

The industry pundits are predicting to become a major part of the future technology infrastructure

investments. Both vendors and solution providers are gearing up to address the arising market

requirements. /16

EXPLORING REALMS OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED

ARCHITECTURE

Cover.indd 1 18/03/14 7:28 am

201, Himshikhar, Plot No.133, Sector - 21 Nerul Navi Mumbai - 400706, Contact: +91 8097545226

Advts.indd 1 18/02/14 9:42 pm

PUBLISHER: SANJIB MOHAPATRAEDITOR: SANJAY MOHAPATRA ASSOCIATE EDITOR: NIVEDAN PRAKASHASSISTANT EDITOR: KARMA NEGIREPORTER: APARAJITA CHOUDHURY REPORTER: MANALI MISRADESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: RAVI KUMARVISUALIZER: MANAS RANJANLEAD VISUALIZER: DPR CHOUDHARY

MARKETINGSENIOR MANAGER: M RAJ EXECUTIVE- MARKETING: RAJAT KUMARCIRCULATION AND PRINTING: PANCHANAN BHOI

SALES CONTACTSDELHI6/103, KAUSHALYA PARK, HAUZ KHAS NEW DELHI-110016 PHONE: 91-11-41055458/ 9313891660E-MAIL: RAJ@ENTERPRISECHANNELS.COM BANGALORE

PRINTED, PUBLISHED AND OWNED BY SANJIB MOHAPATRA PLACE OF PUBLICATION: 6/102-103 , KAUSHALYA PARK, HAUZKHASNEW DELHI-110016, PHONE: 91-11-41657670 / 41055458PRINTED AT KARAN PRINTERS, F-29/2, 1ST FLOOR, OKHLA INDUSTRIAL AREA, PHASE-2, NEW DELHI 110020, INDIA.

SUBSCRIPTION: RS.200 (12 ISSUES).ALL PAYMENTS FAVOURING: ACCENT INFO MEDIA PVT. LTD.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER.

BINDIYA JADHAV#28/1, 3RD FLOOR, SRI LAKSHMI KRUPA, NEAR SHAMANNA PARK, MODEL HOUSE STREET, BASAVANAGUDI, BANGALORE - 560004EMAIL:INFO@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COMPHONE: 91-8861821044

CHENNAITHAGA PANDIAN NO-27, RAJAN STREET, KODAMBAKAM CHENNAI - 24 PHONE: 044-43066990

MUMBAITAHMEED ANSARI2, GROUND FLOOR, PARK PARADISE, KAY-BEES CHS. LTD., OPP. GREEN PARK, OSHIWARA, ANDHERI (WEST), MUMBAI - 400 053.PH. +91 22 26338546 FAX +91 22 26395581

MOBILE: +91 9967 232424

KOLKATAS SUBHENDU BC-286, LAXMI APARTMENT, KESTOPUR KOLKATA-700101 PHONE: 9674804389

EDITORIAL OFFICEDELHI6/102-103 , KAUSHALYA PARK , HAUZKHAS , NEW DELHI-110016, PHONE: 91-11-41055458 INFO@ENTERPRISECHANNELS.COM

BANGALORENO.103, 7TH MAIN9TH CROSS, BSK I STAGESRINIVAS NAGAR, BANGALORE – 50PHONE: 91-11-8861821044 INFO@ENTERPRISECHANNELS.COM

S A N J AY M A H A PAT R A

S A N J AY @ E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O M

EDITORIAL

03MARCH 2014

Strengthening the Basics

While the entire IT fraternity is waiting for the Indian parliament election 2014 to get over soon, yet we should not live in the false paradise that this event will change the market situation. Secondly, we should not be so worried about why IT manufacturing is not happening in the country. One should realise that unless we correct our basics, IT growth is not possible. Our basics are developing infrastructure, primary health care, education, tourism, sanitation, agriculture, etc.

India is an agrarian society and majority of our population lives in villages. By creating business opportunity around some pockets of the country, we will not able to strengthen our growth. We should have a framework which will allow the young population not to move from their villages.

Today, we have thousands of engineering colleges which are producing tens of thou-sands of students to pursue career in ICT engineering but less than one per cent of them are actually going into real engineering of products rest of them are getting absorbed by ICT services industry. Parents of those students are even selling their agriculture proper-ties to get their children admitted into such courses thinking their kids do wonders. But after passing out they are earning very less amount and on top of that they are migrating to industrial cities in India or even some are moving abroad leaving their ancestral places.

Our primary healthcare is at a very poor stage. Nor all villages or even C -or D- class cities do have proper medical facility. Here IT can play a major role. Government and private participation can help take best of the best medical facility through e-medicine, tele medicine or m-medicine. Large vendors should create centre of excellence on this sector to showcase their solutions to educate the government sector.

India does have a huge hospitality opportunity. We have never created a plan to develop that sector and attract tourists. Government should think of creating a sustainable plan to develop all the tourism places. This sector should be emphasised on the global level to bring investment to create good hotels with all facilities. Here the role of ICT is immense. The large vendors should create ecosystem to extend technology to those places so that a tourist visits those place can also be in sync with their work place or their near and dear ones.

My suggestion is instead of keeping China in our mind from manufacturing point of view, we should think of how our strength areas can be leveraged and that will surely help the growth of IT in India. Following that we can actually think of manufacturing and exports. We are good at ICT services, let this sector flourish there no point imposing regulations around it. ë

Edit.indd 3 18/03/14 7:23 am

2014V O L U M E 0 2

I S S U E 0 2

M A R C H 2 0 1 4

W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O M

INNOVATION /34FORTINET

FORTIDDOS FAMILY

Fortinet’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) product

family with four new appliances for data

center managers and system architects are focussed at

mid- to large-sized enterprises and

managed service providers (MSPs).

EDITORIAL ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 03

CHANNELSTREET ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06

STORAGE :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 23

ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATION :::::::::::: 24

INNOVATION::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 34

COVER STORY

FEATURE

Transforming IT Infrastructure /26Organizations are no longer testing waters for VDI deployments. The technology has moved beyond that phase and is now becoming mainstream.

MY VIEWS /14

“Aligning IT with Business Goals”

MAHESH GUPTALEADER – ENTERPRISE

NETWORK ARCHITECTURE SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC

MY VIEWS /32

“SDN–a new network paradigm”EDGAR DIASREGIONAL DIRECTOR – INDIA, BROCADE

CORPORATE STORY /30

RED HAT: Services model to yield double-

digit margins

EXPLORING REALMS OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED ARCHITECTUREThe industry pundits are predicting to become a major part of the future technology infrastructure investments. Both vendors and solution providers are gearing up to address the arising market requirements. /16

CONTENTS

04 MARCH 2014

Contents.indd 4 18/03/14 7:40 am

Connect to More Visit dlink.com

With D-Link’s new DCS-6010L 360˚ � sheye lens Cloud camera it’s never been easier to keep an eye on your business, whether you’re working remotely, on the move, or checking your o� ce out of hours.

Fantastic image quality and coverage guaranteed, the � sheye lens provides incredible wide angle coverage. Mounted on a wall for a panoramic 180˚ view of a room, or on the ceiling for a full 360˚ view without blind spots.

The camera is mydlink-enabled, so you can access, view and con� gure it remotely, no matter where you are through the mydlink website, or with the mydlink mobile app directly on your iOS or Android mobile device.

The perfect solution for any business when used with the DNR-322L Network Video Recorder, a standalone storage device that can record video simultaneously for up to nine network cameras with footage that can be accessed remotely via a web browser from any device connected to the internet.

D-Link can support your business in other ways too, with a wide range of � exible and cost-e� ective Wireless, Switching, Storage and Security Solutions.

Less worry…concern about your business when you’re not there...

…more peace of mind

Security

Wireless

Cloud for IP Surveillance

DCS-6010L

Switching

Cloud for

Storage

DNR-322L

Storage

DNR-322L

Q3 Campaign4 Cloud for IP Ad Base_AW.indd 1 21/11/2012 17:22Advts.indd 3 19/02/14 8:56 am

APEJ Server Market Ahead of Other RegionsServer revenues in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region grew a modest 1.3% to total US$9,985 million in 2013, coming in just short of the magical US$10 billion mark, according to IDC.

The modest growth in 2013 was in sharp contrast to the heady 17% growth recorded in 2010 and 2011, fuelled by massive infrastructure buildout by Web 2.0 and cloud service providers in the PRC. Despite the sharp deceleration in growth in 2013 compared to the previous years, server market in APEJ continued to outperform other regional markets on a worldwide basis.

“Strong adoption of server virtualization and cloud technologies in the enterprise segment, rapidly increasing appeal of public cloud providers for specific workloads, and growing interest in Integrated Systems were some of the key technol-ogy disruptions that impacted the server spending growth in 2013,” says Rajnish Arora, Associate Vice President of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Enterprise Computing Research. “Global economic malaise,

lack of aggressive economic reforms in emerging economies, and political turmoil coupled with upcoming federal elections in certain countries were some of the non-technology factors that stymied server spending growth in 2013.”

The PRC, which has increasingly become the bellwether and cornerstone of the APEJ server market since 2008, grew at a much more anemic pace in 2013. The Web 2.0 and public cloud services providers such as Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba building hyper-scale datacenters, who were responsible for driving the heady demand for servers in the PRC for the past several years, took a breather in 2013 that impacted the spending growth. “Server spending plunged more than 21% in Australia and New Zealand in 2013 because customers are aggressively adopting cloud and cloud technologies to help build a much more agile and flexible IT infrastructure that is much more responsive, adaptive and predictive to the dynamic needs of the business,” opines Arora.

CHANNEL PARTNERS WILL BECOME ‘SMART’: IDCAt its India ICT Predictions 2014 event, IDC identified the key trends in 3rd platform and channel ecosystem. According to IDC, cloud adoption will catch up with public cloud gaining traction and enterprise mobility is on the cusp to take off in India. However, security is the biggest issue in adopting mobility and cloud. IDC also predicted that channel partners will get ‘smart’ to supplement the shrinking IT hardware revenue. OEMs will reflect on their benefit programs and lines between SIs, VARs, and ISVs will blur increasingly.

Jaideep Mehta, Vice President & Country General Manager, IDC India said, “2014 will finally see the India IT eco-system begin a serious transition to the 3rd platform technologies ofcloud and mobility, and to a lesser extent big data, and social.”

VMWARE VIRTUAL SAN HITS THE MARKETVMware Virtual SAN has been released in the market, VMware’s first Software-Defined Storage product.

Built directly into the VMware vSphere kernel, VMware Virtual SAN provides a new tier of hypervisor-converged storage. The software abstracts and pools internal magnetic disks and flash devices from industry-standard x86 servers to produce a high-performance and resilient shared datastore for virtual machines (VMs).

“Today VMware changes the way that storage has been operated to date,” said John Gilmartin, vice presi-dent and general manager, SDDC Suite Business Unit, VMware.

RAJNISH ARORA, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT OF IDC’S ASIA/PACIFIC ENTERPRISE COMPUTING RESEARCH

06 MARCH 2014

CHANNEL

STREET

channel street.indd 6 18/03/14 10:23 am

COMMSCOPE UNVEILS DATA CENTER ON DEMANDCommScope has released its new Data Center on Demand solution, which provides a flexible, highly efficient, purpose-built alternative to the traditional brick and mortar data center.

“Enterprises are dealing with a continual data deluge and have to find ways to expand their capacity quickly and efficiently,” said Kevin St Cyr, senior vice president, Enterprise Solutions, CommScope. “Some are up against the wall when it comes to physical space or available power and Data Center on Demand gives them a viable solution to expand quickly and easily with industry proven technology.”

“This is more than just a traditional modular data center offering,” said St Cyr. “It is not just a ship-ping container with servers. It is designed specifically with the same usability and ease of access to IT equipment as a traditional data center, but with lower up front and operating costs.”

SAP Creates Largest Data Warehouse Record

Avaya has released new and enhanced Customer Experience Management solutions to help businesses eliminate the fragmented, high-effort service that jeopardizes customer loyalty and revenue growth.

From a single software platform, new capabili-ties increase reach and bring every aspect of the customer experience into a seamless, dynamic stream with greater, real-time visibility into interactions and contextual information. The end result is a transformed customer experience built one interaction at a time.

Avaya Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions help deliver that holistic, proactive experience by enabling companies to centralize and orchestrate all mobile, web and contact center interactions that occur throughout a customer care cycle. Companies can now easily design and manage interactive proactive outreach

and self-service applications over SMS and email along with existing mobile, phone, video, and other touch points from a single platform. By doing so, companies have greater visibility, insights, and control across mobile, web and the contact center and enable a consistent, omni-channel customer experience that’s missing from many customer service strategies today.

“Companies can no longer afford to maintain the status quo by relying on older contact center technologies thinking the expense and disruption of an upgrade will put their operations at risk. The bigger picture is that if they don’t address the changing customer demands their entire business is already at risk. Avaya enables companies to close the gap between what customers expect today and help companies build truly legendary experiences – one interaction at a time,” said Mark De La Vega, VP and GM, Avaya.

SAP AG announced that with a team of technology partners, including BMMsoft, HP, Intel, NetApp and Red Hat, it has gener-ated a new world record for the world’s largest data warehouse using the SAP HANA platform and SAP IQ software.

This independently audited 12.1PB data warehouse has been recognized by Guinness World Records, and is four times larger than the prior record.

“Setting a new world record with the combination of SAP HANA and SAP IQ was a ‘moonshot’ challenge I had laid out for our engineer-ing team,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka,

member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, Products & Innovation. “Our goal was to set new limits in bringing Big Data together with

fast, ad hoc and scalable analytics. SAP has shown the ability of our platform to achieve such an incredible result, demonstrating a cost-effective and high-performance approach toward solving extreme problems in Big Data and analytics.”

This new world record demonstrates the ability of SAP HANA and SAP IQ

to efficiently handle extreme-scale enterprise data warehouse and Big Data analytics. SAP and its partners

had previously set a world record for loading and indexing Big Data at 34.3 Terabytes per hour.

A team of engineers from SAP, BMMsoft, HP, Intel, NetApp, and Red Hat, built the data warehouse using SAP HANA and SAP IQ 16, with BMMsoft Federated EDMT running on HP DL580 servers using Intel® Xeon® E7-4870 proces-sors under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and NetApp FAS6290 and E5460 storage. The development and testing of the 12.1PB data warehouse was conducted by the team at the SAP/Intel Petascale lab in Santa Clara, Calif., and audited by InfoSizing.

VMWARE OFFERS ‘FIRST’ HYBRID DAAS

VMware Horizon DaaS has been launched, a new cloud-based desktop service that delivers cost-effective enterprise-class virtual desktops running on VMware vCloud Hybrid Service.

The service offers the industry’s first hybrid desktop as a service (DaaS) solution that gives customers the ability to blend public cloud desktops and on-premise VMware Horizon View private cloud desktops for a seamless end-user experience announced the press release.

“Our experience working with customers deploying DaaS the last several years have shown that the majority prefers a blended environment with both on-premise and cloud desktops. However, very few solutions in the market can deliver a seamless end-user experience across multiple clouds like VMware Horizon DaaS,” said Sumit Dhawan, VP and GM (desktop products, End-User Computing), VMware.

VMware Horizon DaaS is built on the VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, a platform that enables customers to extend the same applications, network-ing, management, operations and tools across both on-premise and off-premise environments.

Avaya Announces New Contact Center Solutions

DR. VISHAL SIKKA, MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF SAP AG, PRODUCTS & INNOVATION

CHANNEL STREET

07MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 7 18/03/14 10:23 am

Citrix Strengthens India GTM StrategyCitrix has revamped its Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy in India in line with the realignment of its India sales team. The India business is now divided into two divisions with separate focus areas: Enterprise business and Emerging Business-Partner Led.

This realignment is aimed at strengthening the role of channel partners in selling Citrix solutions and expanding the company’s presence in territories such as Pune, Chennai, Gujarat, Hyderabad, West Bengal and Goa in India apart from other SAARC countries.

Sanjay Deshmukh, Area VP (India Sub-continent), Citrix, said, “The realignment of our sales team represents a significant step in intensifying our focus on developing business through partners and extending the Citrix value proposition to customers in new territories. Many Indian companies across big and small cities today are looking at adopt-ing mobile workstyles to enable

their employees to work from anywhere using any device to improve efficiency and optimise cost of IT operations.”

TATA ELXSI ASSOCIATES WITH THOMSON VIDEO NETWORKSTata Elxsi and Thomson Video Networks have announced an interoperable HEVC (H.265) Ultra HD solution. Thomson Video Networks’ ViBE VS7000 multi-screen encoding or transcoding platform and Tata Elxsi’s Ultra HD HEVC decoder have been tested and proven for interoperability, announced the release.

This interoperability ensures that Tata Elxsi’s Ultra HD HEVC decoder enables customers to build end-to-end workflows for adoption using the Thomson Video Networks product. Adding newer implementation on ARM Cortex-A15 platforms in addition to the x86 solutions, announced last year, Tata Elxsi has broadened the platform availability of the HEVC decoder. This enables embedded products using ARM cores to be armed with HEVC technology.

NETMAGIC, IMPERVA OFFER CLOUD-BASED SERVICE - SECUREATNetmagic, an NTT Commu-nications company and India’s Datacenter Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (DILM) service provider, has entered into a partnership with Imperva, pioneering the third pillar of enterprise security with a new layer of protection designed specifically for physical and

virtual data centers, to deploy a first-of-its-kind Web Application Firewall (WAF) platform in India.

Based on Imperva’s award-winning SecureSphere platform, Netmagic has invested and jointly developed a cloud-based service – SecureAT – that will be offered as part of its managed security services portfolio.

Commenting on the announce-ment, Nitin Mishra, SVP (Product Management), Netmagic, said, “Imperva is unparalleled in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) segment globally and we are pleased to have forged this alliance with them. The WAF platform is now imperative in Indian enterprises’ highly

complex threat landscape and with this announcement, we have the first-mover advantage in the market. SecureAT has already seen adoption in the Indian enterprise space – a leading global telecommunications company and a leading bank headquartered in South-East Asia have already deployed the service.”

WIPRO BRINGS CLOUD-BASED PLM FOR SIEMENS’ TEAMCENTER

Wipro has launched new cloud based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) services that will support Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter portfolio. Wipro is a global consulting and systems integration partner of Siemens PLM Software.

Siemens and Wipro offer the power of their combined product and pro-cess knowledge, industry expertise and rapid implementation services to deliver Teamcenter. The new PLM services will help electronics and semiconductor customers rapidly deploy Teamcenter on the cloud, providing agility to the product devel-opment process. They give added flexibility to quickly scale-up or scale-down infrastructure resources based on project requirements. The solution, delivered through an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform, also replaces significant upfront capital expenditure with operating expenditure providing ability to leverage PLM tools across the business processes.

Prasad Bhatt, VP (Product Engineering Services), Wipro Ltd, said, “We have witnessed the value that Teamcenter brings by enhanc-ing collaboration among different stakeholder teams during the entire product lifecycle. Teamcenter on the cloud provides added benefits of flexibility and cost-effectiveness.”

TCS TIES-UP WITH MICROSOFTTata Consultancy Services has partnered with Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) at the annual Microsoft Dynamics Convergence Conference. Through this strategic partnership, TCS and MBS will collaborate on the development of online and on premise versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

TCS is one of a select group of systems integrator to be involved in this development, which is a testament to the company’s technical capabilities and deep, working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As part of this partnership, TCS has developed a state of-the-art development center that will support the upcoming releases and updates to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Roadmap, namely Mira and Leo.

SANJAY DESHMUKH, AREA VP (INDIA SUB-CONTINENT), CITRIX

CHANNEL STREET

08 MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 8 18/03/14 10:23 am

SECONDS6

VMware Leads In DesktopVMware has been recognized as a leader in

India in the latest IDC Asia/Pacific Centralized Virtual Desktop Market Analysis. According to IDC, VMware led the market with a share of 62.9 percent of the Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD), or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), market in India during the first half of 2013.

IDC also estimates that the Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD) market in India will grow at a CAGR of 37.8% to US $32.14 million by 2017[1]. Desktop virtualization enables organizations to adopt a user-centric, flexible approach to computing. By decoupling applications, data and operating systems from endpoints- and by moving these components into the data center, they can be centrally managed. In addition, desktop and application virtualization offers IT

a more streamlined and secured way to manage users, and provide agile, on-demand desktop services.

According to the report, while security remains a key driver for the adoption of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) in India, other fac-tors, such as flexibility/mobility, operational cost reduction, management efficiency and longer refresh cycles are other major considerations for customers to deploy VDI in India. Most VDI opportunities occur during refresh cycles and software updates.

T Srinivasan, MD, VMware India & SAARC, said, “Being recognized by IDC as a leader in VDI validates our End-User Computing strategy in India, and signals the ability of VMware to transform workforce mobility.

INDIA CURRENTLY HOSTS OVER 11,000

IT CHANNEL PARTNERS: ZINNOV

Zinnov has released its first-of-its-kind ‘Partner

Enablement Framework’ to help technology

companies unlock their channel partner potential.

The released study also revealed that India

currently hosts over 11,000 IT channel partners,

excluding PC resellers and box pushers. While

65% of these partners focus on IT services/

managed services, 44% of the partners claim to

have solution centric capabilities, while 37% of

the current partner base is termed as resellers/

value added resellers.

Besides, Zinnov brought to light that the top 10

cities house only about 40% of total partner base

in India. While Bangalore, NCR & Mumbai are the

top tier cities, tier 2 cities such as Chandigarh,

Nagpur and Cochin are emerging as key tier 2

cities for channel presence. BFSI, Manufactur-

ing, High-tech, and Pharmaceuticals are top

revenue generating verticals, with ERP, CRM, and

Database as the top workloads.

Praveen Bhadada, Director (Emerging

Markets), Zinnov, said, “Over 85% of the Indian IT

revenue is driven by channel partners and Princi-

pal vendors are increasingly looking to unlock the

channel partner potential. We at Zinnov, with our

market expertise, have defined a robust partner

enablement framework that helps principal

vendors to assess the performance of its partners

on revenue contribution and partner maturity”

R&M BROADENS ITS REACH & SOLU-

TIONS WITH AFS

Swiss cabling specialist R&M has acquired

he business activities and operating assets of

Advanced Fiber Systems (AFS) in India.

AFS is a highly reputed manufacturer of

fiber-optic products and solutions for the Public

Network market and has been an R&M certified

assembly partner for the E-2000TM connector for

several years announced the press release. AFS

was founded in 2002 and has its production facil-

ity located in Bangalore. The management and all

employees of AFS will transfer to R&M in India.

Laurent Amestoy, Executive VP of R&M Asia-

Pacific, commented, “This acquisition is a key

milestone to further expand our business in India.

We can now actively participate in the growing

fiber-optic network deployments, Fiber-to-the-

Home (FTTH) roll-outs and Data Center projects.

I remain confident that our high-quality approach

and greater local presence will take us to the next

level in India.”

“Growing interest in big data solutions will continue to positively impact BI spending across

Asia Pacific in 2014 and beyond.”BHAVISH SOOD, DIRECTOR, ASIA PACIFIC,

GARTNER RESEARCH

IN PUBLIC

RISE IN GLOBAL ADOPTION OF HCM SOLUTIONSSuccessFactors, an SAP AG company and market-leading provider of cloud-based HCM

software has announced a series of global customer wins across various industries, including Danone, Live Nation and MillerCoors.

With its cloud-based HCM software, the company allows savvy companies to go beyond traditional human capital management (HCM) applications that enable them to engage their workforce in new and innovative ways that drive business transformation.

The release said that with integration across each solution in cloud and on-premise environ-ments, SuccessFactors solutions and the SAP Cloud for Human Resources portfolio enable com-panies to choose the solutions they need to develop and maintain a high-performance workforce while still building the long-term, end-to-end HCM system blueprint. Live Nation, a U.S.-based live-events company, selected solutions from SuccessFactors and SAP to better understand its target audiences for each venue as well as fan demographics of its artists.

CIENA AND ERICSSON TO DEVELOP OPEN SDN FOR CONVERGED IP

Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, and Ericsson have announced a strategic global agreement that includes packet-optical distribution, converged IP/optical joint development and distribution as well as an SDN collaboration framework.

Ericsson will offer Ciena’s Converged Packet Optical portfolio, including the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and 5400 family, to deliver a broader set of infrastructure solutions as customers migrate to new converged network architectures. In addition, Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical technology will be integrated into Ericsson’s IP portfolio, creating a solution that allows customers to interoperate routers with Ciena’s photonics.

The release said that Ciena and Ericsson are committed to accelerating the availability of open, programmable, software-defined networks.

CHANNEL STREET

09MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 9 18/03/14 10:23 am

Pacnet has announced the expan-sion of its MPLS based Global IP VPN services into the Greater Mekong Subregion, including an area encompassing Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Sanjay Nayak, VP, Pacnet, said, “The Greater Mekong Subregion is an exciting area of economic

growth for Asia-Pacific. A growing number of companies are seeking to establish a footprint within this region. But before they do so, they need to know that the appropriate infrastructure and services are there to assist them. One of the most critical services for any business today is a reliable and secure com-

munications network. Integrating these additional locations with our region’s largest subsea cable infrastructure, we can offer a true path towards network convergence to address the growing network demand of our customers and sup-port their business expansion.”

Supported by a global, multilin-

gual 24/7 support team, Pacnet’s MPLS based Global IP VPN ser-vices enable enterprises to improve productivity and communicate easily between branches through the use of corporate intranets, voice-over-IP services, instant mes-saging and round-the-clock access to critical business applications.

HITACHI TO ACQUIRE MICRO CLINICHitachi Systems and Micro Clinic India Pvt. Ltd. have concluded a share purchase agreement and shareholders’ agreement to bolster the IT services business in India.

Hitachi Systems will acquire approximately 76% of Micro Clinic shares and rename the company as Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic Pvt. Ltd. Besides, Hitachi Systems and Micro Clinic will implement proce-dures aimed at completing the share transfer by the end of March 2014.

Hitachi aims to grow revenues in India by nearly 3 times to 300 billion yen by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016, compared with the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012.

Hitachi Systems and Micro Clinic will provide Indian enterprises, Japanese companies and other foreign-affiliated companies in India with one-stop services extending from procurement of IT equipment to systems design and, integration, operation and maintenance.

Naoya Takahashi, President and CEO, Hitachi Systems, said, “We will expand innovative IT services to all of India-services that will fuse Micro Clinic’s business sites, and its abundant personnel, technologies and know-how, with Hitachi Systems’ virtualization and cloud services; managed services such as data center monitoring and operations; and security services. In doing so, we seek to contribute to the development of India’s economy, which continues to show remarkable growth.”

Check Point has introduced Software-defined Protection (SDP), which it claims is a revo-lutionary security architecture that can protect organizations in today’s fast-evolving IT and threat landscape.

Software-defined Protec-tion offers modern security today that can effectively protect against tomorrow’s threats, through a design that is modular, agile and most importantly, secure announced the press release.

SDP is a three-layer security architecture com-prised of enforcement, control and management layers. This framework decouples the control layer from the enforcement layer, enabling robust and highly-reliable enforcement points that obtain real-time protection updates from a software-based control layer. SDP converts threat intelligence into immediate protections and is managed by a modular and open management

structure. “The threat landscape has become

far more sophisticated while at the same time, enterprise IT environ-ments have grown in complexity. Enterprises are looking for advice on how they can become more secure, but in a way that is manageable and simple to use. SDP is today’s security architecture for tomorrow’s threats; it is simple, flexible and can robustly convert threat intelligence into real-time protections,” said Amnon Bar-Lev, President, Check Point

Software Technologies.“By offering a security architecture driven

by function, threat and need, Check Point’s Software-defined Protection architectural blueprint can help IT better redesign their enterprise security network to accommodate both today’s IT borderless environment and the dynamic threat landscape,” said Charles Kolodgy, research vice president with IDC Security Products team.

INDIAN HCP MARKET DECLINES BY 0.1 PER-CENT YOY IN CY2013: IDC

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), Hard Copy Peripherals (HCP) market in India declined by 0.1% year-on-year in CY2013 and stood at 3.2 Mn units.

HP continued to lead the Printer market in India with 48.9% shipment share in CY 2013, followed by Canon with 19.1% share. Epson and Ricoh continued to be at third and fourth position respectively but Ricoh entered at fifth position in CY 2013. The report further stated that Inkjet HCP market grew marginally by 0.9% in CY 2013 compared to CY 2012 in terms of unit shipments.

AMNON BAR-LEV, PRESIDENT, CHECK POINT SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES.

Pacnet Eyeing the Greater Mekong region

Check Point Debuts Software-defined Protection

CHANNEL STREET

10 MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 10 18/03/14 10:23 am

WEB CLIPSEC-COUNCIL OFFERS VIRTUAL CYBER

SECURITY TRAINING WITH ILABS

EC-Council has launched iLabs, which it claims

is first of its kind, virtualized cyber security

training platform providing access to cyber

learning materials, a virtual private cloud for

every student.

iLabs is a range of preconfigured virtual

machines which will allow students to get practi-

cal, hands-on experience in the concepts and

methodologies taught in EC-Council’s IT Security

Certification courses. Students can apply their

skills to work with vulnerabilities, exploits, tools,

and scripts to practice and test, in a safe, fully

functional virtual cloud.

SAFENET WEBSITE THAT CATALOGS

DATA BREACHES

SafeNet has launched a new website that cata-

logs data breaches as they happen, and provides

a methodology for security professionals to score

the severity of breaches and see where they rank

among publicly disclosed breaches.

The SafeNet Breach Level Index (BLI)

provides a centralized global database of

breaches and calculates the severity of data

breaches across multiple dimensions based on

breach disclosure information. It not only serves

as a benchmark for the industry, but CIOs and

CSOs can use the website to quickly classify the

severity of a breach within their own companies

when communicating the level of urgency with

affected customers or partners. The resulting

data can also be used in their own risk assess-

ment and planning.

JUNGLE VENTURES INVESTS 1.5 MIL-

LION IN CRAYON DATA

Singapore-based Big-Data start-up company

with its development centre in Chennai Crayon

Data Pvt Ltd, has received an investment of 1.5

million from Singapore-based venture capital firm

Jungle Ventures, alongside support from SPRING

SEEDS Capital.

This latest investment brings the total amount

of investment raised to SGD 5.5 million. Crayon

Data was started by enterprise analytics veteran,

Suresh Shankar (founder of RedPill Solutions,

acquired by IBM in 2009), and digital market-

ing guru Srikant Sastri (founder of Solutions

Digitasand Team4U, acquired by Publicis and

Randstad respectively), to help traditional

enterprises tap into the power of Amazon-like

analytics.

Nucleus Software Endeavors for Effective TransactionNucleus Software Exports has launched FinnAxia, a comprehensive product suite designed to power the transac-tion banking space. “Providing Customer centric products amidst dynamic market condi-tions have become essential for banks and financial institutions seeking growth. This new product suite provides our customers an integrated solu-tion to effectively manage key

aspects of transaction banking with a perfect combination of rich value drivers includ-

ing versatility, agility and high operational efficiency. FinnAxia continues our endeavor to provide consistent business value to our customers drawing upon 27 years of rich domain expertise. Additionally, in today’s connected world, FinnAxia’s mobility solutions will ensure our customers’ competitive edge,” said Vishnu R. Dusad, Founder, CEO and MD, Nucleus Software.

MOVEMENTSNUMBER GAME

SAP has appointed ADAIRE FOX MARTIN as President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan. In her new role, Fox-Martin will oversee SAP’s business in the Asia Pacific Region, excluding

China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

HCL Infosystems has ap-pointed two new indepen-dent non-executive direc-tors, SANGEETA TALWAR and Kaushik Dutta on its board.

Yahoo has appointed GUR-MIT SINGH as managing director for Yahoo India. As MD, Gurmit will oversee Yahoo’s business in India, responsible for its growth.

04%growthHealth care sector to increase 4% increase of spending on IT products and services in 2014 over 2013 to take it to $1.08.

APAC BI MARKET TO REACH US$1.4 BN IN 2014: GARTNERThe market for business intelligence (BI) platforms in Asia Pacific is expected to grow 7.4 percent to reach almost US$1.4 billion in revenue in 2014 and more than $1.6 billion by 2017, as data discovery and mobility create a revival in spending by business users, according to Gartner, Inc.

In Asia Pacific, the top four “megavendors” — SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM — controlled 72.2 percent of the BI platform market in 2012, up from 65 percent in 2011. However, Gartner analysts said that business units increasingly prefer data discovery solutions, such as Tibco Spotfire, QlikTech and Tableau Software, while their counterparts in IT are still more comfort-able procuring from megavendors.

Australia will remain the region’s biggest BI platform software market in the next few years.

VISHNU R. DUSAD, FOUNDER, CEO AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, NUCLEUS SOFTWARE.

CHANNEL STREET

11MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 11 18/03/14 10:23 am

Juniper Helps Service Providers Build High-IQ NetworksJuniper Networks has intro-duced new solutions to expand its open standards-based software-defined networking (SDN) portfolio to enable carri-ers to accelerate service creation and build networks that deliver a customized end-user experience.

Juniper has unveiled Junos Fusion, software that can control thousands of independent network elements either from Juniper or a third-party from a single management plane announced the press release. With Junos Fusion, service providers can reduce network complexity and operational costs by collapsing those underlying transport elements into a single point of control from the Juniper Networks MX Series or PTX Series routing plat-forms. Junos Fusion is fully interoperable with

third-party solutions and is extensible to SDN control.

Juniper is expanding its SDN portfolio with new software and hardware to help service providers build high-IQ networks.

Rami Rahim, EVP, Juniper Networks, said, “Historically, service provider networks have expanded economies, given voices to the oth-erwise unheard, and brought people and communities closer together. Imagine what the next evolution of

the network could deliver if it could inherently eliminate complexity for end users and operators, adapt on the fly to deliver experiences based on user preferences, and if intelligent software could be added to make existing hardware more efficient and versatile. That is what Juniper will deliver with an optimized, automated, high-IQ network that allows for real-time customization.”

DELTA POWER SOLUTIONS ASSOCIATES WITH MPHASIS

Mphasis has announced its strategic partnership with Delta Power Solutions to bring sustain-able innovation across the ATM industry. The partnership for the ATM Security Solutions will enable Mphasis offer the most comprehensive single window solution for ‘e-surveillance and integrated power efficient solutions to service the ATM businesses in India, announced the release.

The alliance with Delta Power Solutions will help Mphasis develop an intelligent solution that can provide a single user interface for a 360 degree view of an ATM and ATM site. It will also help Mphasis addresses a suite of customer centric offerings for safety and security that include theft prevention, theft deterrent, real time alarms in criminal tracking, reduction in overall energy cost spend at ATM sites and proactive maintenance to ensure higher uptime.

ORACLE TO ACQUIRE MARKETING DATA MANAGEMENT FIRM BLUEKAIOracle has signed an agreement to acquire BlueKai, a cloud-based big data platform that enables companies to personalize online, offline and mobile marketing campaigns with richer and more actionable information about targeted audiences.

The BlueKai solution includes its Data Management Platform, which centrally organizes a company’s

customer and audience data in the cloud to help implement personal-ized marketing campaigns across all channels and deliver better results and higher marketing ROI.

BlueKai will be integrated with both Responsys for B2C market-ing automation and Eloqua for B2B marketing automation in order to deliver orchestrated and personalized customer interactions

across all marketing activities and channels.

Steve Miranda, EVP (Applica-tions Development), Oracle, said, “The addition of BlueKai to the Oracle Marketing Cloud enables marketers to act on data across both known customers and new audi-ences and precisely target customers with a personalized message across all channels.”

DELL TO REVAMP FLIPKART’S DATA CENTERFlipkart has partnered with IT vendor Dell to ramp up its existing data center and setup a disaster recovery mechanism as part of its expansion plan to include additional product categories on its website.

To ensure that the customer need was met Dell Professional Services employed a consultative approach through Enterprise Deployment Team (EDT) during this engage-ment announced the press release. The team from Dell worked in with Flipkart right from installation of the servers to configuration and integration with network switches. Additionally, Dell also advised Flipkart to implement a Disaster Recovery site, thus ensuring business continuity.

The release further added how with the help of this deployment Flipkart can focus on core business without worrying about disruptions to critical processes. The deployment has enabled the online retail outlet to scale on-demand in terms of servers and storage growth. Further, Flipkart was able to manage the data center remotely allowing quick power up/down. The solution would be able to prevent potential data losses and guarantee business continuity in the future.

“Agility is a key business differen-tiator when it comes to encouraging the India market to shop online. With Dell, we can add hundreds of virtual machines within a couple of minutes to meet a predicted increase in traffic.

RAMI RAHIM, EVP (PLATFORM SYSTEMS DIVISION), JUNIPER NETWORKS

STEVE MIRANDA, EVP (APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT), ORACLE

CHANNEL STREET

12 MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 12 18/03/14 10:23 am

Websense TRITON Revenue Grows 18 percentWebsense has announced record sales and revenue for 2013. This success is attributed to Websense TRITON security system, which the company claims is the only solution that defends all channels by identifying, stopping, containing and disarming advanced persistent threats, targeted attacks and data theft.

In 2013, total Websense billings topped $380 million with Websense TRITON solutions accounting for 70 percent. In the same year, Websense increased its Fortune 100 sales by 45 percent over 2012. Websense TRITON solution billings increased 13 percent to more than a quarter of a billion dollars and TRITON revenue grew 18 percent. In fact, nearly 50 percent of Websense customers have purchased Websense TRITON.

Following the acquisition of the company by Vista Equity Group in June 2013, Websense

new customer acquisition surged by more than 30 percent worldwide in the second half of the year. Momentum was evident when the company secured six Q4 deals that exceeded $1 million with three topping approximately $3 million each. In the U.S., TRITON continued to be the go-to choice in cybersecurity with an 81 percent increase in new enterprise business.

John McCormack, CEO,Websense, said, “Our extraordinary growth is a clear indicator that tens of thousands of organizations clearly see the value and the security results our Websense TRITON technology delivers. Security systems are an increasingly crucial business necessity. We protect the infrastructure and critical assets of many of the largest global organizations and government functions from cybercriminals. Success in the security industry hinges on continued innovation and an investment in talent. “

DISTRIBUTORS COME TOGETHER TO FORM ASSOCIATION

In a significant move towards revolutionising the Indian technology- distribution industry, the country’s leading technology distributors have come together to launch ‘The Technology Distribution Association of India’ (TDAI). The Association’s motto is, ‘’we can only build when we know how to sustain’’.

With an aim to drive the industry’s next level of evolution through constructive dialogues amongst all stake holders, the leading Indian technology distributors have founded TDAI. The current members of TDAI collectively contribute nearly ? 50,000 Crores (~ US$ 8 Billion) annu-ally towards the total IT industry business in the country announced the press release.

A first of its kind non- profit organization in Asia Pacific & India, TDAI’s objective is to build a transparent and organized distribution services sector in India through risk mitigated best practices. While maintaining a strategic and healthy channel through good governance and appropriate compliance standards, from the Manufacturer to the End User,

INTEL’S PROCESSOR TO ENABLE REAL-TIME ANALYSIS OF LARGE DATAAnnouncing the launch of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 Product Family, Intel elaborated its roadmap for Big Data solutions delivering real time Analytics in India with specific focus on verticals like retail, healthcare and manufacturing in the first phase of growth.

“Big Data which was the buzz word is a reality now. Smart enterprises are adapting Big Data

for competitive advantage. At Intel, we are enthused by the Big Data revolution and we take this an opportunity to move away from our core business,” said Rajiv Bhalla, Director- Market Development, Intel South Asia. “The advanced performance, memory capacity and reliability of the Intel Xeon proces-sor E7 v2 family enable IT organiza-tions to deliver real-time analysis of

large data sets to spot and capitalize on trends, create new services and deliver business efficiency.”

With up to 80% higher perfor-mance and up to 80% lower four year total cost of ownership than alternative RISC architectures, the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family also achieves twice the average performance

Elaborating on the company’s

latest solution offering and roadmap, Bhalla said, “The new Intel Xeon E7 v2 processor family is built on an open source framework that allows third parties the flexibility of creating an application layer themselves thereby giving Intel the unique technology edge of allowing IT managers to have better control over their internal IT systems and processes. “

HID GLOBAL’S OFFERINGS TO HELP SOLVE AUTHENTICATION CHALLENGES

HID Global will showcase its healthcare security offerings at HIMSS 2014 in Orlando, Florida. The company said that these offerings can solve authentication challenges for IT security and patient information privacy.

The company will showcase its layered approach to patient data protection and health record security, including user, device and transaction authentication, along with browser protection and application security.

In addition to featuring its broad portfolio of converged physical access control and IT security solutions, HID Global will also highlight its solutions for secure access to Elec-tronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) and compliant solutions for writing Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (EPCS)

Key demonstrations will include Workflow Efficiencies for Secure Access, Convenient Remote Access, Electronic Prescriptions for Con-trolled Substances (EPCS) and Secure Visitor Management.

HID Global stated that demonstra-tions will enable booth visitors to gain a first-hand understanding of how the company’s secure identity solutions conveniently address real-world healthcare security and authen-tication challenges with minimal involvement of the end-user.

CHANNEL STREET

13MARCH 2014

channel street.indd 13 18/03/14 10:23 am

WHILE STORAGE AND DATA CENTERS ARE LEADING THE WAY IN TERMS OF

A SOFTWARE APPROACH, ORGANIZATIONS HAVE REALIZED THE BENEFITS

THAT CAN BE DERIVED FROM LEVERAGING THE POWER OF THE NETWORK.

ENTERPRISE CHANNELS SPOKE TO MAHESH GUPTA, LEADER – ENTERPRISE

NETWORK ARCHITECTURE SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC ON THIS.

“Aligning IT with Business Goals”

MAHESH GUPTA, LEADER – ENTERPRISE NETWORK ARCHITECTURE SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC

of new innovative technologies. While the concept of Software Defined Networking is at a nascent stage and customers in India are still getting educated and familiarized with what this proposition entails, there needs to be a pragmatic approach to their transition in embracing these new-age technologies.

With use cases being on a rapidly progress-ing increase, organizations have now found themselves compelled to look into the benefits that these offerings provide, and they’re keen to understand the positive impact that it can have on their business. Use cases clearly demonstrate the value of operational simplicity and comprehensive security techniques, which will boost adoption of such solutions across the enterprise. On the business front, it’s a little early in the day; however we expect this to clearly gain traction rapidly in the next couple of years.

How is the concept of Software-defined Networking shaping up in the Indian market? The concept of Software-defined Networking has gained elaborate attention in the recent past and

organizations are invariably attracted towards the buzz this trend proposes to have in the offing. The onset of Cloud based offerings has opened up a range of disruptive services to the industry, which have helped increase their receptiveness

MY VIEWS

14 MARCH 2014

Q&A-Cisco Interview.indd 14 17/03/14 9:13 pm

Highlight the factors driving the market for these technologies? There has been a sea change in the way that IT is deployed in recent years due to the plethora of new trends impacting the technology world. Disruptive trends such as mobile, video and increased requirement for better collaboration, has drastically altered the function of IT, with demands of a more inclusive and connected environment. Keeping in mind the complex-ity that comes into play with these changes, companies are demanding tools that allow them the flexibility to apply policies basis the business requirements while ensuring simplicity of management. A software based approach has made it possible for organizations to align IT more closely to business goals, and thereby focus on automation, simplification and ease of management.

Being a veteran in the industry, Cisco under-stands the complexities of the game and has therefore taken a more programmatic approach in the shift to a software based portfolio. With an architectural based approach, Cisco does not only help tackle the immediate challenge but begins from the ground up utilizing each component of the infrastructure efficiently while allowing the control to take place on the software layer. It’s much like building a house, you can choose to begin from the roof, but the correct approach would be to start from the foundation.

Could you briefly take us through some of the benefits of adopting the software-defined technologies? Some of the primary benefits that enterprises can garner would essentially be around flexibility and increased productivity. Since software based approach eliminates the unnecessary costs attained, due to underutilization of equipment businesses find it to be a viable option. In an ever changing economic scenario, organizations need to stay nimble but be able to scale if required. A software defined approach is therefore a good maneuver that not only provides the workforce with the much needed flexibility but also helps organizations stay aligned with their current business objectives.

Cisco has taken a well-defined approach in our Enterprise Network Architecture to address the requirements of the market – ‘one network, one policy and one management’. We’ve looked at harnessing the power of the network to provide intelligence and visibility into a plethora of functions, from the core itself. We are using software to change the way networks are devel-oped - extending software-defined networking

(SDN) approaches to focus not only on the goal of programmability, but also on policy, automa-tion, and simplicity. Cisco believes that this new model should be policy based, application and user centric, virtualized, and capable of providing end-to-end security.

To simplify the ability of our customers to consume and deploy this model and to provide a common platform to enable a consistent policy-driven model and a common platform for our customers and partners to support and extend this model through consistent and open APIs, we introduced the Cisco ONE Software Platform. The Cisco ONE Software Platform provides a simple and flexible common platform and licensing model that allows customers to deliver management, policy, and security across multiple resources (network, computing, and storage) and domains, simplifying the deployment and delivery of applications anytime and anywhere. The Cisco ONE Software Platform integrates the controllers, APIs, virtual services, and all the associated software, made available through a subscription service.

How are you ramping up the channel strategies around software-

defined technologies? Cisco works very closely with the partner community and always equips its partners to stay abreast of new market transitions. During the 2013 Partner Summit, Cisco encouraged its partners to go beyond a traditional approach and include elements of Cloud (Hybrid approach) in their solution portfolio. Cisco has consciously helped partners make a shift to provide these new models, led by the fact that there is a sea change in the demands arising across the market from customers.

In addition, with technology increasingly being more aligned to business goals, Cisco also unveiled the first of its kind, business transformation certifications which aim to enable partners to increase their relevance with their customers and go beyond being a pure play technology provider to a holistic business

relevant solution provider. With the concept of programmability coming into play, partners need to be well equipped to demonstrate the business value of the proposed technology to customers, since the conversations they have around technology aren’t going to be restricted to traditional tech boundaries and will be more on the lines of business impact which the technologies bring to the table.

How do you envision the evolution of these technologies in the coming years? Cisco continues to focus on offering the best and most innovative networking solutions, while also expanding our software portfolio. The Cisco ONE Platform encompasses evolving SDN and other approaches such as network functions virtualization (NFV). It provides cross-domain, cross-platform capabilities through Cisco controllers, thus expanding the flexibility, auto-mation, and control of Cisco hardware devices. The differentiation brought in by the Cisco ONE Platform is not limited to a specific domain. It covers a software based approach to data centre, WAN, and access and provides controllers and agents, virtual network overlays, and NFV as well as API interfaces at both the network controller

(Cisco ONE DevKit) and network element level (Cisco OnePK). Because Cisco offers a wide variety of network elements, we can provide a superior integration between the controllers and these elements, as well as the associated software required to deliver on the most challenging customer use cases.

The needle is gradually moving from an exploratory phase of adoption to a more concentrated and streamlined integration process, based on the use cases that are being developed constantly. This foundation will set the stage for the application ecosystem that’s slated to gain traction rapidly over the coming few years. It’s therefore extremely important for organizations to go beyond the Band-Aid approach and look at a solution that is intuitive enough to guarantee scale and eliminate future complexities. ë

“CISCO’S FOCUS IS TO HELP ORGANIZATIONS UTILIZE THE POWER OF THEIR EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE IN A SCALABLE MANNER AND ALLOWS THEM THE FLEXIBILITY TO CHOOSE THE OVERLAYING TOOLS.”

MY VIEWS

15MARCH 2014

Q&A-Cisco Interview.indd 15 17/03/14 9:13 pm

EXPLORING REALMS OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED ARCHITECTURE

COVER STORY

16 MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 16 18/03/14 9:33 pm

While the whole concept of software-defined ‘everything’ has started gaining momentum in the Indian market, it is still a buzzword for many enterprises here. Many vendors and analyst firms have

predicted that in 2014 there will be increased innovation in ‘software-defined networking’ (SDN), ‘software-defined storage’ (SDS) and ‘software-defined data centers’ (SDDC) with many Indian enterprises choosing to implement software-defined architectures for greater efficiency, flexibility and control.

Today, businesses want to ensure a future-proof network that can be managed holistically and this can be achieved with

a software-defined infrastructure. Looking at the changing market dynamics, most enterprises are interested in trans-forming IT in order to create a more efficient, streamlined infrastructure. Many, whilst not explicitly discussing software-defined technologies, can see that the greater degree of control afforded by software-defined ‘everything’ is appealing.

According to IDC, as organizations continue to grapple with the fact that the infrastructure investments are not being aligned to the business needs, they are starting to turn to software-defined ‘everything’ as a way to drive greater efficiency and utilization rates. In addition to this some of the advance/mature IT using organizations have started look at software-defined ‘everything’ as way to make the infrastructure more flexible and agile to ensure current and future alignment to business.

Moreover, the concepts like SDN and SDS will give way to larger concepts around the SDDC and ‘software-defined branch’. Since most of the enterprises have already adopted cloud technology and since the Indian IT market is mature enough to adopt new expertise, the industry experts expect that most of the enterprises will shift focus to invest in these technologies.

CURRENT LEVEL OF AWARENESS The Indian market is beginning to realize the benefits of moving to full-scale virtualization. The enterprises here are shifting from reacting to changes to becoming more proactive in seeking to embrace mega trends and ultimately towards software-defined ‘everything’.

Most customers are familiar with server virtualization, storage and network virtualization - the latter two effectively allowing organizations to manage underlying hardware resources as though they were abstracted pools of computing resources. Recently, industry jargon for doing this changed from virtualization to software- defined – meaning comput-ing resources will be defined, controlled and managed using software, improving utilization and the ability to automate management.

Venu Reddy, Director, IDC Centre for Consultancy and Research, says, “Software-defined ‘everything’ is at various levels of maturity and acceptance in India. The virtualization of

servers and storage are much better understood and adopted to a fair degree while SDN is at a low adoption rate. This is partly due to the fact that infrastructure usage maturity very tactical with many companies still looking at infrastructure (and the related investments) only as an IT tool with no clear alignment to business needs and growth.”

“Software-defined ‘everything’, popularly referred to as SDx, replaced cloud computing among prevalent industry buzzword, and has garnered tremendous momentum over the last year. We, at Symantec, believe that 2014 will be the year wherein companies will begin to understand the implications of this trend, with SDS and SDN leading this charge. And in order to increase overall efficiency, we will see the concept of SDDC, which virtualizes the server, network, and storage levels, gaining more prominence. It will bring in a more efficient and centralized model of utilizing IT resources,” adds Huzefa Motiwala, Head-Presales- Information Management India and SAARC, Symantec.

Some of the industry estimates further suggests that the current level of awareness in the country is relatively low with deployments limited to cases where the vendors up-sell their software-defined technology to certain end users who are upgrading their virtualization infrastructure. Nonetheless, awareness of software-defined ‘everything’ in India is still grow-ing, essentially because the concept is arguably the ultimate manifestation of cloud computing, or the steps that need to be taken to deliver IT-as-a-service.

Praveen Sahai, Vice President – Channels, India & SAARC, EMC, points out, “There is growing awareness and interest among enterprises on SDDCs. While there are some early

Looking at the business agility and cost-effectiveness associated with software-defined technologies, the industry pundits are predicting them to become a major part of the future technology infrastructure investments. Both vendors as well as solution providers are gearing up to address the arising market requirements.

n W O R D S : N I V E D A N P R A K A S H < N I V E D A N @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K . C O M

COVER STORY

17MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 17 18/03/14 9:33 pm

VENU REDDYDIRECTOR, IDC CENTRE FOR CONSULTANCY AND

RESEARCH

“Software-defined ‘everything’ is

at various levels of maturity and

acceptance in India. The virtualization of servers and storage

are much better understood and

adopted”

HUZEFA MOTIWALAHEAD-PRESALES-

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT INDIA AND SAARC, SYMANTEC

“We believe that 2014 will be the

year wherein companies will begin

to understand the implications of this

trend, with Software-defined Storage and

Software-defined Networking leading

this charge”

PRAVEEN SAHAIVICE PRESIDENT – CHANNELS,

INDIA & SAARC, EMC

“With its scale-out approach, software defined ‘everything’

will facilitate enterprise customers

to start small and add new servers as performance and

capacity needs grow instead of incurring

large upfront investments”

customers. Besides, the large scale adoption is expected in the next few years time frame.

MAJOR FORCES BEHIND IT The emergence of consumerisation, the internet of things and near-ubiquitous dependence on technology in all aspects of our lives will drive adoption of software defined solutions. The underlying technologies under the umbrella of software-defined ‘everything’ are evolving very

adopters, CIOs are still understanding and evaluating the potential in terms of their current IT infrastructure and future requirements. They recognize that software-defined will make even things like storage provisioning simpler. With its scale-out approach, software defined ‘everything’ will facilitate enterprise customers to start small and add new servers as performance and capacity needs grow instead of incurring large upfront investments.”

“A software-defined infrastructure is about decoupling the hardware that executes the data transactions from the software layer that orchestrates them. Rather than individual elements (compute, storage, and networking), infrastructure will be treated as a set of resources required for specific workloads. The goal is about using software to create an underlying infrastruc-ture that can be managed holistically as part of the business. In 2014, we expect to see organizations

finally implement software-defined architectures to achieve continued flexibility and control,” opines Yogesh Sawant, Director – Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, India, Hitachi Data Systems.

Meanwhile, enterprises are looking for compelling use cases and the availability of mature solutions to start implementation. The service providers are leading the evaluation and implementation of software-defined technologies to deliver new value-added services to enterprise

OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS, ‘SOFTWARE-DEFINED EVERYTHING’ WILL START TAKING SHAPE WITHIN MANY ORGANIZATIONS WITH TRENDS LEADING THIS CHANGE

COVER STORY

18 MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 18 18/03/14 9:34 pm

YOGESH SAWANTDIRECTOR – PARTNER

SALES AND FIELD ALLIANCE ORGANIZATION, INDIA,

HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS

“A software-defined infrastructure is about decoupling the hardware that executes the data

transactions from the software layer that orchestrates them”

AMOD RANADEGENERAL MANAGER –

DATA CENTER BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, SCHNEIDER

ELECTRIC IT BUSINESS INDIA

“SDDC as an architecture promises extreme scalability;

and planning and deploying an infrastructure to support such IT

deployments is quite challenging”

quickly. Therefore, there is a need to align the pace at which applications are rolled out in each element be it network, storage or others.

“The primary driving force behind software-defined technologies is CAPEX and OPEX savings, greater flexibility in infrastructure allocation, and better utilization of the available infrastructure. In addition, service-levels can be improved, new services can be provisioned and managed easily, and enterprise IT services can be consumed on a pay-as-you-grow basis,” highlights Mrinmoy Purkayastha, AVP, Alten Calsoft Labs.

As per IDC estimates, the need for better ‘bang for the buck’ is one of the key drivers for this movement/adoption in the market. In addition to this, as companies grow and change very fast (due to the nature of the market), CIO are turning to software-defined ‘everything’ as a way to keep the IT nimble and future proof.

Santhosh D’Souza, Director – Systems

Engineering, NetApp Marketing & Services India, explains, “Software-defined solutions cut through the performance, availability, and efficiency limits of traditional hardware silos, empowering IT to non-disruptively align infrastructure with chang-ing business and application demands. It helps IT infrastructures achieve scalability, flexibility, and performance. As the cloud continues to enable a new era of IT service delivery, businesses will turn to technologies that enable more flexibility, responsiveness, and competitive advantage. One such movement, software-defined ‘everything’, will play a prevalent part in the transformation of IT, helping to break down technology barriers, driving increased agility, simplicity, and efficiency.”

The other key forces driving these technolo-gies in India are primarily around the need for control, resource optimization, asset consolidation, improving power and cooling, and optimizing TCO. Fundamentally this is all about optimization

and agility. As data centers and infrastructures move towards multi-tenant cloud models, there is a real need to be able to spin up assets on demand, under policy control, on a per workload basis.

LONG-TERM BENEFITS There are multiple benefits enterprises can enjoy by adopting software-defined technologies. The key benefits from a business perspective are significantly better resource optimization, reduced complexity and much greater agility. As a direct consequence, the infrastructure can be orchestrated to deliver more service to more customers in a much more customized form. This gives service providers that ability to offer a wider range of differentiated services to clients, and the ability to move with the times.

“Software-defined technologies are used to improve basic components whether they are stor-age, networks or security. These technologies are basically a combination of virtualization and other cloud components. From a data center perspec-tive, as the customer demand continues to rise, more software-defined technologies will make their way to the cloud. The growth in software-defined technologies will force businesses and individuals to re-think their approach to their ever-changing IT needs. Moreover, cloud service providers will be the leading buyers of software-defined technologies to meet customer needs in the coming future,” says Govind Rammurthy, MD and CEO, eScan.

Additionally, software-defined technologies provide a centralized management layer, thus enabling adequate support to the traditional infrastructure, legacy applications, and cloud services. By centralizing control and federating disparate datacenter hardware on the software layer, organizations can benefit from simplicity of scale, manageability and flexibility leading to a service oriented infrastructure.

Amandeep Dang, Country Manager – Net-working, Dell India, states, “SDN decouples decision making layer from hardware and con-solidated control in a centralized ecosystem which allows application or orchestration integration via a north bound application integration. With SDN application control of networks virtualization, orchestration or even legacy tasks like network topology convergence, analytics etc. are grossly simplified. While SDN adoption may be in its nascent stage, its benefits like freedom from hardware lock-ins, reduced OPEX, and scalability of infrastructure are undeniable.”

“SDDC as an architecture promises extreme scalability; and planning and deploying an infrastructure to support such IT deployments is quite challenging. Schneider Electric is pioneering

COVER STORY

19MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 19 18/03/14 9:34 pm

the PraFab Data Center architectures and Inte-grated Data Center solutions and services. These solutions and services make it easy to quickly deploy/retrofit/expand capacity to support the extreme scalability that architectures like SDDC can award,” adds Amod Ranade, General Manager – Data Center Business Development, Schneider Electric IT Business India.

It’s also important to note that software-defined technologies offer significant business benefits on both sides of ledger. By virtualizing the infra-structure, enterprises can realize the benefits of the cloud, which include improved time-to-new services/applications deployment; unprecedented programmability allowing enterprises to tailor

their infrastructure to the needs of their organiza-tions; virtualization enables resource utilization to be optimized as stranded capacity, which can be minimized and used as an elastic resource; and automation enables operations to be streamlined, reducing configuration and provisioning times, manual errors, and overall OPEX.

“When we separate the storage hardware from the software that manages the storage infrastruc-ture, software-defined storage enables enterprises to purchase heterogeneous storage hardware without having to worry as much about issues such as interoperability, under- or over-utilization of specific storage resources, and manual oversight of storage resources. It also provides functionality

IN 2014, THE INDUSTRY EXPECTS TO SEEORGANIZATIONS FINALLY IMPLEMENT SOFTWARE-DEFINED ARCHITECTURES TOACHIEVE CONTINUED FLEXIBILITY AND CONTROL

MRINMOY PURKAYASTHA

AVP, ALTEN CALSOFT LABS

“The primary driving force behind software-defined technologies

is CAPEX and OPEX savings, greater flexibility

in infrastructure allocation, and better

utilization of the available infrastructure”

GOVIND RAMMURTHYMD AND CEO, ESCAN

“The growth in software-defined technologies will force businesses and individuals to re-think their

approach to their ever-changing IT

needs”

AMANDEEP DANGCOUNTRY MANAGER –

NETWORKING, DELL INDIA

“While SDN adoption may be in its nascent stage, its benefits like freedom from hardware lock-ins, reduced OPEX,

and scalability of infrastructure are

undeniable”

such as deduplication, replication, thin provision-ing, snapshots and other backup and restore capabilities across a wide range of server hardware components,” asserts Sawant.

Furthermore, Motiwala is of the view that as part of the SDDC, SDS will also be regarded as a key development in the storage space, allowing increased flexibility in how enterprises can store information. SDS has the potential to spell the end of over-provisioning, as storage can be allocated more accurately from a wider pool. It also frees organizations from the cost overheads associated with proprietary storage.

PROPAGATING THE RIGHT MESSAGE Currently, all the leading technology vendors as well as service providers in the country are putting in a lot of efforts towards propagating these benefits amongst the enterprises so that the market witnesses maximum deployment of software-defined technologies.

“EMC was early to recognize Software Defined Infrastructure as the future and invested ahead

COVER STORY

20 MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 20 18/03/14 9:34 pm

of the curve which included the acquisition of VMWare. We then extended the software defined concept to Storage and were the first in the indus-try with the recently launched ViPR platform that provides the virtualization, automation, and management capabilities necessary to create a single pool of virtual storage. This is done without compromising the compelling characteristics of the underlying storage array (VNX, VMAX, Isilon). Storage administrators can then create virtual storage arrays that they can manage by automated policies,” mentions Sahai.

Similarly, Schneider Electric has put together the complete set of tools for making it easy to design, deploy, operate and service data center infrastructure. Innovations like Prefabrication/InfraStruXure architecture/Struxureware for data centers help bring infrastructure layer on the virtual plane. Software suites like Struxureware for data centers are designed to leverage virtualiza-tion, and can be deployed on a virtual platform. The company’s expertise, collaboration and part-nerships, help integrate the physical infrastructure of data centers with the virtual infrastructure that powers SDDC.

D’Souza is quick to point out, “NetApp has been working on technology innovation to

simplify, virtualize and automate IT architecture. NetApp works closely with technology partners in the Computer, Networking and Application space to ensure that our technology innovations align with theirs, and together deliver on the promise of a well-defined IT infrastructure. NetApp also is part of Standards bodies and Open Source communities, contributing code and formulating standards that are vital in creating an actionable roadmap for Software Defined solutions across heterogeneous technology products.”

According to Purkayastha, Calsoft Labs is working activity with major global players in Network Function Virtualization and Software-defined Networking technologies. We are enabling the development and deployment of these solu-tions with equipment vendors, telecom operators and enterprise customers. As these technologies are evolving, Calsoft Labs believes that there is a need for companies like ours to play a system integrator role to architect and design solutions to support a set of specific enterprise use cases.

HERE LIE THE OPPORTUNITIES So far, it is very much evident that software-defined technologies present a plethora of

opportunities for both technology vendors and service providers.

“SDN-based core switches will help CIOs and their teams to reduce dependency on proprietary OS-based equipment and consequently architect their networks in a more central, flexible and dynamic manner. Our SDN product line, provide our customers its own control/management appli-cations to create user defined networks and brings flexibility so that if they have a problem with brand ‘A’ equipment, then they can easily migrate to pick hardware brand ‘B’. We have Modular switches DG-CS7010 and DC-CS7004 which conforms to the Open Flow Switch Specifica-tion (Version 1.0),” points out Bimal Raj, CEO, Smartlink Network Systems.

On the same lines, NetApp’s Clustered Data ONTAP is the first storage and data management solution that makes the promise of Software Defined Storage attainable, thus focusing on agil-ity in delivering IT services to application owners while improving operational and IT resource effi-ciency. NetApp’s Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) allows enterprises to deploy native multi-tenant, policy-based storage services via programmable APIs and application integrations.

Ranade further adds, “Struxureware for Data

COVER STORY

21MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 21 18/03/14 9:34 pm

Center is built for the virtualized environment; and thus enables the integration of the physical infra to the virtual environment of the SDDC. Schneider Electric has invested in web services architecture, that brings together software solutions that were traditionally discrete; and now we are able to create a homogenous solution, that allows data to flow amongst various infra components; and create a database which can be exploited by the various analytics modules available in the Struxureware solution.”

Giving Dell’s perspective, Dang says, “We believe different customers will have different demands from SDN as a technology. One set will want very basic automation and control with no complexity. The second lot would expect complete green-field full SDN suite with open and API controls; and, the balance requirement will fall in the capacity of SDN overlay to existing IT networking investment as an SDN strategy. Dell is committed and supports all three scenarios. Our

approach to SDN encompasses a holistic suite of modular solutions in all domains of networking and infrastructure that deliver the most compel-ling business benefits without requiring a ‘forklift’ upgrade or complex integration.”

RAMPING UP CHANNEL STRATEGIES The rising inclination of Indian enterprises towards software-defined ‘everything’ has also compelled the most of the technology vendors to ramp up their channel strategies around these technologies.

As EMC progresses on it thought leadership journey, it is imperative to align ecosystem partners to be part of this success story. Software-defined technologies will become an integral part of the company’s communication strategy with the customers. In fact, it is in the process of updating its partner training programs and related content to be launched soon. In addition to the

SANTHOSH D’SOUZADIRECTOR – SYSTEMS

ENGINEERING, NETAPP MARKETING & SERVICES INDIA

“Software-defined solutions cut through

the performance, availability, and

efficiency limits of traditional hardware

silos, empowering IT to non-disruptively align

infrastructure with changing business and application demands”

BIMAL RAJCEO, SMARTLINK NETWORK

SYSTEMS

“SDN-based core switches will help

CIOs and their teams to reduce dependency

on proprietary OS-based equipment

and consequently architect their

networks in a more central, flexible and dynamic manner”

same, its partner team is also undergoing training to do field trainings on a daily basis.

Toeing the same lines, HDS India is conducting awareness sessions across the regions and making the community aware of these technologies and how they can impact the present as well as the future business. The company is further taking strides in making the partners self-sufficient by scaling their ability to provide services envelop-ing the said solutions and creating value for their respective customers. Necessary steps of co-creation of bundles, promo activities, and joint CIO roundtables are few of the many initiatives that are being undertaken for the India partners.

Similarly, NetApp’s go to market strategy is channel partner intensive and given the strengthened and enhanced relationships that the company shares with its channel partners pan-India, it is confident that it will be able to build the channel battalion across the country to cater to the increasing adoption of software defined technologies. The partner ecosystem will continue to benefit by its programmatic focus on the skills integration to better understand and execute new and existing portfolios to cater to a more demand-ing IT environment.

“Today, most of the DIGISOL partners realize that acquiring skill sets to handle new technolo-gies and equipments is a key factor for their future success and profitability. Therefore it will boldly help us to reach out to the new market segment with advance technology like SDN and put us in an absolutely leadership position. To achieve this milestone, our partner focus team have a lot of partner skill set development programs to provide customized, comprehensive and vendor neutral training programs running currently for our partners,” highlights Raj.

Following the similar approach, Schneider Electric is investing heavily in its partner com-munity. Structured programs focus on skill up-gradation, training and incentives. The company believes that in order to make its technologies available to the customers, it is critical to enable partners to advance towards technologies like SDDC.

FINALLY…By now, the industry estimates clearly suggest that the awareness of software-defined ‘everything’ across both enterprise and service provider organizations are at high levels. In fact, the adop-tion of these technologies has started gradually taking center stage in the Indian market. The trade experts predict that from the current siloed implementations, the software-define technolo-gies will become mainstream in the next 3-4 years time frame. ë

COVER STORY

22 MARCH 2014

Cover Story.indd 22 18/03/14 9:34 pm

STORAGE

Introduction of flash-based enterprise stor-age has been revolutionary in transforming the IT infrastructure. When compared to traditional storage systems flash offers higher speed, better performance, needs

lesser space and is energy-efficient. However, the pricing of the flash-based storage solutions has been a hindrance right from its inception. However, Dell is all set to change the scenario. With recent enhancements in Compellent’s enterprise-class software, Dell claims to deliver flash at the price of disk. A whitepaper shared by Dell indicates the same. Amit Luthra, National Manager, Storage and Networking Solutions Marketing, Dell India, remarks, “We made huge announcements of flash optimised solutions since the time we made it available worldwide and in India. It’s all about going back and talking to the customers on redefining the economics of storage. We were the first in industry to talk about flash in June last year and we have the early mover advantage when it comes to customer acceptance as well as installations. It’s all about challenging the status quo and redefining the economics of how storage should be deployed.”

Three areas where flash storage is gaining momentum are: Oracle workloads and SQL workloads basically the data base applications, organisations having high I/O intensive work loads like OLTP and ERP and virtual desktop environments as they want high throughput and low latency. Luthra points out that performance is the driving factor in these cases. “We see no resistance in customers. Customers who need performance appreciate flash,” he says.

Redefining Flash StorageFlash storage has been making news but its adoption has not become widespread due to the price factor. However, Dell intends to break that boundary.

AMIT LUTHRA, NATIONAL MANAGER, STORAGE AND NETWORKING SOLUTIONS MARKETING, DELL INDIA

“Social media, cloud, analytics, and mobility are big drivers for redefining the way business is done. These are also changing the way IT infrastructure is to be designed.”

n M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

Dell is breaking the price barrier for flash storage but Luthra mentions that this is just one aspect of the Dell’s competitive advantage. “More than the price advantage it is the density which we give with the flash drives. It can definitely help reduce power consumption and cooling require-ments and reduces latency up to 90% and rack space up to 84% when compared to a traditional storage architecture that someone would like to go,” he adds.

Luthra mentions that flash storage is not a vertical-driven requirement. “Usage of flash storage is horizontal. Anyone who is having problems to boost his database workloads can go for this,” he says.

FINALLY..Flash storage is the game changer for IT infrastructure. With all its advantages if it becomes affordable, it will lead to revolutionary changes. ë

23MARCH 2014

STORAGE

Dell Flash Story.indd 23 17/03/14 9:46 pm

NEAR FIELD TECHNOLOGY

Near Field Technology (NFC) is touted as the next revolutionary technology in mobility. NFC opens up myriad opportunities for contactless payments but it is

in its early stages in India. There are speculations regarding the adoption of NFC. Gartner forecasts that NFC will account for only about 2 percent of total transaction value in 2013 and 5 percent of the total transaction value in 2017, although growth is expected to increase somewhat from 2016 when the penetration of NFC mobile phones and contactless readers increases.

However, Zubair Alam, GM, Enterprise Busi-

Exploring New Avenues of OpportunitiesNEC is creating a market for Near Field Technology (NFC) as it perceives there is demand and India has the potential for the same.

ZUBAIR ALAM, GM, ENTERPRISE BUSINESS, NEC INDIA

“Although adopting NFC 100% for a customer is a challenge but if given a chance they are willing to invest in this.”

n M A N A L I M I S R A < ( M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

ness, NEC India, says, “NFC has the maximum potential in the Indian market. NFC does away with cash and transactions become very fast. This is the reason why most of the multiplexes are looking to adopt NFC, our first customer was a multiplex. Although adopting NFC 100% for a customer is a challenge but if given a chance they are willing to invest in this.”

In this respect, Alam says that NEC has the first mover advantage. It is creating a niche and perceives that there could be demand. It helped PVR introduce payment mechanism on the handset of their customers through NEC’s inte-grated e-money solution using NFC. “We have increased interest in real estate. Most of the real estate developers have shown interest in adopting NFC because of the residents in the township need to be given an access card to access facilities in the township,” Alam adds.

Unified Communication is another area where NEC is training its focus for the coming year. In display solutions, NEC has already rolled out digital signage software. It is in the process of identifying the right partnerships to introduce that.

Focused Channel StrategyAlam informs that as a matter of policy 100% business is indirect. “We have a channel ecosystem more focused towards multi-media product group and telephony EPABX products where we have an ecosystem of distribution network and tier-II partners,” he says. NEC had rolled out an incentive program six months back for its tier-II partners. It includes a trip to Japan

24 MARCH 2014

ENTERPRISE COMMUNIATION

Story NEC.indd 24 17/03/14 9:50 pm

in May. “It gives a chance to the partners to visit the country that they have never been to. We are planning to have a partner conference at our HQ office in Tokyo. We will follow it up with a visit to innovation centre in Tokyo. They will get a chance to visit innovations that NEC is undertaking which will see the light of the day in few years to come. If possible we will also be taking them to a trip to Universal Studios where end to end NEC products and solutions including NFC are being used,” elaborates Alam.

This program ends on 31st March, 2014. NEC had rolled out certain criteria and the qualify-ing partners are expected to be around 25-30 partners. “NFC as a technology in India is at a very nascent stage but in Japan it has been there for more than a decade. 80% of the retail counters where transaction takes place, NFC is available as an option. We would like to evangelize that and take the time of visit as an opportunity to do so,” says Alam.

Training the partners and protecting their interests is core to NEC’s partner strategy. The company provides training every six months which is a refresher training so that their sales team are fully equipped and are able to carry the brand and product information the way it is required. “We evaluate an opportunity and recognise the partner best suited to address that opportunity so that multiple partners should not address the same opportunity. We go along with the partner to our customer,” explains Alam.

NEC recently conducted training programs for tier-II partners where it trained 120 salespersons on the hardware and soon to be launched UC solution. NEC also rolled out an engagement program for tier –II partners five months back. It shortlisted few partners with whom it decided to work directly. “Out of the short listed ones, we have already started working with six partners.

The results have been good for both of us. We had several learning in the process and we are re-designing the program. We are not offering any incentive but what the tier-II partners get the direct attention and care from the NEC designa-tion Account Manager. We provide them the sales support, marketing support and even the case locking support. I believe, this initiative will get very good results in coming fiscal year,” informs Alam.

NEC has a universe of 700 partners today but Alam says that it is not possible to work with all of them at the same time. It plans to work with 100 partners eventually this year. “Five years ago when we started building our ecosystem, the first thing which we did was build up an ecosystem of the partners who work directly with us. We have the distributors who work with the tier-II partners, at most of the places, tier-II partners are our brand ambassadors. Though we have done our bit but we feel the need to do more with them,” he says.

Strong VerticalsHistorically, NEC has a strong presence in hospitality segment. “Any major hotel chain and you will find that it is running on NEC EPABX phone,” comments Alam. In SME, NEC is strong for both projectors and EPABX. “We have good presence in govt vertical for about public safety products and solutions which were of face recognition and biometric solutions. We are working with Police Departments and UID. We take this forward to other product lines also and we are having deeper inroads on govt vertical for telephony business and multimedia business,” says Alam.

New AlliancesNEC has signed Cadensworth as distributor for PABX line of products and this year it intends

to strengthen that by adding more solutions. “Cadensworth’s intention is to go more in a solu-tion selling way. We have the offerings to make that happen. We have trained their people and they are busy enhancing their sales team as well. Another alliance we had with Singapore Telecom (STE) and along with that we won the Chennai Metro project,” says Alam.

Growth FiguresPABX generated the maximum growth for NEC though it is in contrast with the market trend. “For us, this is the fifth year of operation in business and we still see a room to grow this business at the rate of 30% for the next two years,” adds Alam. Telephony business gives 45% of the revenue closely followed by Display and Retail.

Alam prides in the quality which NEC products have. “Due to our quality, the NEC loyal customers are even willing to pay a premium,” he adds. He points out that NEC has always made sure that its products are not over distributed. “Partners are able to make a good profit when they make any NEC sale. We ensure that the partner ecosystem is always balanced even though we may not be having the best of prices. There is no intra-channel conflict,” he adds.

FINALLY..NEC will be strengthening its presence in government and another vertical at which is transportation. “Chennai Metro deployment is going on right now which will be completed in about 4-5 months from now. We see similar other opportunities in other states also. Chennai Metro we engaged through our SI organization based out of Singapore. We are on a look out for SI partners who have the capability to address such opportunities and we would be undergoing tie-ups with them,” concludes Alam. ë

25MARCH 2014

ENTERPRISE COMMUNIATION

Story NEC.indd 25 17/03/14 9:50 pm

VIRTUAL DESKTOP

Transforming IT Infrastructure

Organizations are no longer testing waters for VDI deployments. The technology has moved beyond that phase and is now becoming mainstream.

n W O R D S : M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

As the market is maturing for cloud and virtualization, a sea-change is being witnessed in the end-user working environ-ment. Independent of the size

of organization, the traditional workplace has been drastically transformed. Terms like ‘mobile’ workforce and ‘follow-me-desktop’ are no longer new to the ears. In such a transformed scenario, organizations are moving towards Desktop Virtualization to meet its needs as well as of the end-users.

THE TRENDIDC estimates that the Centralized Virtual Desk-top (CVD) market in India will grow at a CAGR of 37.8 percent to USD 32.14 million by 2017. “Across the last few years, Desktop virtualisation moved from being a niche technology evaluated

by innovative organisations to a mainstream technology adopted by customers across verticals to enable their employees to experience mobile work style. Desktop virtualization is one such disruptive technology that has proven effective in meeting the requirements of both the end consumer and IT,” comments Kaushal Veluri, Director – Channels & Alliances, India Subcontinent, Citrix.

Amit Luthra, National Manager, Storage and Networking Solutions Marketing, Dell India informs, “Desktop Virtualization has seen tremendous growth in adoption over the last four years across various industry segments as it enables customers to transform IT infrastruc-ture as well as increase employee productivity optimising costs.” With cloud becoming popular, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is also gaining ground.

ADOPTION FACTORSWith newer applications and platforms driving mobility, IT organizations are compelled to incorporate the demands of users into the IT infrastructure. “According to IDC Asia/Pacific Centralized Virtual Desktop Market Analysis, while security remains a key driver for the adoption of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) in India, other factors, such as flexibility/mobility, operational cost reduction, manage-ment efficiency and longer refresh cycles are other major considerations for customers to deploy VDI in India. Most VDI opportunities occur during refresh cycles and software updates,” informs Ramesh Vantipalli, Head EUC India & South – VMware.

Enterprises are facing plethora of challenges and adopting a virtual desktop infrastructure offers a viable and secure alternative to

FEATURE

26 MARCH 2014

MEA

Feature-Transforming IT Infrastructure.indd 26 17/03/14 9:57 pm

traditional PC computing. Manish Sharma, Vice President, APAC, NComputing Inc. cites some of these challenges. “High cost of providing every user with a PC, frequent technological changes and resulting hardware and software obsolescence, costs associated with upgrade, replacement and management of the IT infrastructure, technical complexity associated with managing hybrid IT set ups, creating a robust and secure framework to enable and support high priority IT initiatives, including mobility, BYOD and migration to new versions of Windows operating environments etc. are some of the challenges,” says Sharma.

Veluri points out another factor leading to increased adoption of desktop virtualization. “The migration from Windows XP is one of IT’s top priorities today, in context of the emerging post PC era, where Windows XP support will be extinct post April 8, 2014. As organizations undertake this migration, many are looking to streamline the process for both IT and users to reduce the complexity and costs associated with migrating client PCs to a new operating system. VDI can facilitate this transition in a quick and seamless way,” he says.

IMPORTANT VERTICALS The trend of Desktop Virtualization is gaining ground across multiple verticals. The adoption is higher in BFSI, IT/ITeS and Government sector. “Retails, Telecom, Education, Healthcare, Public and Manufacturing sectors are also witnessing high adoption. We are also seeing increased traction in the SMB vertical,” says Ashok Shenoy - Regional Manager, Cloud and Datacentre Sales, Cisco India & SAARC.

BENEFITS OVER TRADI-TIONAL PCApart from the evident benefits like flexibility and mobility for employees, centralizing desktop infrastructure with VDI solutions proffers more benefits. “Simplifying management and increase control, reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) up to 50%, and letting mobile end-users can access their desktops even when discon-nected from the network are some of the benefits of VDI,” says Vantipalli.

In desktop virtualization, energy-efficiency becomes an added advantage with the centralised management in the data centre and use of thin clients. Data and profile security is another ben-eficial aspect in VDI deployments. Luthra rightly

points out, “In cases when employees lose their devices such as laptops, tablets or mobile phones, the users’ files can be easily secured against loss or theft of data from the datacenter and also the data can be quickly restored in the new machine, ensuring continued productivity.”

Veluri mentions faster Application Upgrades and OS Upgrades and migration as the other benefits. “With VDI, it is possible to bring stan-dardization and increased operational efficiency with the use of thin clients. In the event of a device malfunction, another thin client can be provi-sioned and work can be continued immediately as no data is stored at the endpoint,” he adds.

HOW TO CHOOSE?There are various competing technologies for VDI available. It may become complex for the customers which to use and on what parameters. Shenoy says, “Virtualization does not necessar-ily entail restructuring of the entire existing IT system/structure. However, it is important for the organisation to take a close look at their existing IT Infrastructure, practices and processes and get as much visibility as possible before deploying it. The way to choose the right solution for VDI is to check the architectural set up for it.”

FEATURE

MEA27MARCH 2014

Feature-Transforming IT Infrastructure.indd 27 17/03/14 9:57 pm

Today’s organizations have a choice for the platform they use for VDI from on premise dedi-cated infrastructure to off premise cloud based platforms. Luthra says, “Mission critical corporate data might still be a concern for some organiza-tions. The best way to choose the right solution is by assessing what your individual requirement is from the VDI solution and recognizing those solutions that are most suitable to you.”

However, Srikanth Karnakota, Director- Server & Cloud Business, Microsoft India feels that user profiling is something very critical to implement Desktop Virtualization. “Based on user profiling on different parameters like security, application needs, type of users, when they work, time-sharing etc., organizations can decide what solution is best suited.”

Veluri feels that the biggest competition for Desktop Virtualisation is maintaining the status-quo i.e organisations still buying and managing the traditional desktops as compared to moving to the virtual desktop infrastructure that offers them security, manageability, mobility and agility at a much better TCO.

Sharma sums it up by commenting, “Ideally, enterprises should select a VDI solution that

makes optimal use of resources and provides CIOs with a secure and robust framework to centralize and virtualize their IT infrastructure while keeping IT costs to the minimal.”

CHANNEL PARTNERSChannel Partners are at the heart of business for IT vendors to drive sales. Now-a-days, their role is beyond the sales’ aspect. “Channel companies play a number of roles in VDI, from pure consulting and advisory services to installation and training. Meanwhile, integrators contribute their experience in virtualization products and integration approaches, guiding customers toward objectives ranging from hardware cost reduction to mobile device security. Additionally, Channel Partners are key in helping us reach out to our mid-market customers in Tier2 and Tier 3 cities who required VDI solutions,” comments Luthra.

“Channel partners are critical in all the aspects of business that we do. We engage very closely with channel partners. They help across many dimensions first of all we work with partners like Citrix to deliver solutions to the customers. We have solutions partners who help customers

in deployment. We have resellers and all these partners who take the solutions to the market, educate the customers, provide support and also train these customers across various dimensions. Channel partners are a very crucial constituent in Microsoft,” says Karnakota.

Veluri believes that the success of Citrix partners will drive the success of the company in India. “Our channel partners help us significantly in achieving our growth in India by being an extended arm of Citrix in the mar-ketplace helping us reach customers, markets and segments which we may not have been able reach, Evangelising Desktop Virtualisation: Spreading the word of desktop virtualisation and Citrix’s undisputed market leadership with XenDesktop, and Building skills, implementing internally and helping customers to enable desktop virtualisation and empower their employees,” he says.

Karnakota says that Microsoft works very closely with the channel partners to bring the solution to the market. “We consistently have sessions where we train channel partners. We talk about the challenges the customers are facing and how these products really help address the gaps

KAUSHAL VELURIDIRECTOR – CHANNELS

& ALLIANCES, INDIA SUBCONTINENT, CITRIX.

“With VDI, it is possible to bring standardization

and increased operational efficiency

with the use of thin clients.”

AMIT LUTHRANATIONAL MANAGER, STORAGE AND NETWORKING SOLUTIONS

MARKETING, DELL INDIA

“VDI can fail to bring a favourable return on investment because of the immense storage

demands that it places on IT infrastructure.”

ASHOK SHENOY REGIONAL MANAGER, CLOUD

AND DATACENTRE SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC.

“The way to choose the right solution for VDI is to check the architectural

set up for it.”

FEATURE

28 MARCH 2014

MEA

Feature-Transforming IT Infrastructure.indd 28 17/03/14 9:57 pm

and needs of the customer. Then there are many different elements like incentives, enablement, multiple training sessions that empower the channel partners to take the Microsoft solutions to the market,” he adds.

Sharma informs that NComputing is a 100% channel centric organisation. He says, “NComputing maintains strategic global alliance partnerships with key technology providers to the desktop virtualization market and sells its portfolio of offerings via a worldwide network of value-added distributors and reseller partners.”

Vantipalli feels that VMware partners are vital for its success – especially since its business is driven through them in India. “We will continue to strengthen our relationships with our partners ensure that VMware is one amongst the top 5 portfolios for every partner we engage with. Helping our partners grow their business is a priority for us and we create and run many programs to support this. We’re encouraging our partners to build competen-cies to differentiate themselves in the market – and we’re working with key partners who have an expertise in end user computing (EUC) to here,” he adds.

CHALLENGESIn a survey carried out by Cisco, titled “2013 Global IT Impact Survey”, 1,321 IT professionals in 13 countries, including India and US, were asked about the most difficult projects that they had to rollout and the top 3 responses they gave were connected with virtualization either directly or indirectly. In descending order, these chal-lenges were: moving applications to the cloud; centralizing/virtualizing the data center; and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Virtualization maybe an IT necessity, but that doesn’t mean it has to be easy to implement.

Veluri says, “The primary challenge is to educate and convince the customers to adopt the business transformation that comes along with virtual desktops and desktop virtualisation as compared to the same strategy of traditional desktops. The other challenge is also the ROI associated with adopting desktop virtualisation. Citrix is working constantly with partners to reduce the cost of the infrastructure needed for desktop virtualisation as well as offering newer ways to customers to adopt the technology like DaaS.”

Luthra points out that the challenges associ-ated with VDI are mainly surrounding Storage.

“VDI can fail to bring a favourable return on investment because of the immense storage demands that it places on IT infrastructure. In order to capitalise on desktop virtualization, IT organizations must devote time and resources to prepare their datacenters for the rigorous demands of desktop virtualization. Organiza-tions can only expect to see adequate return on investment from their desktop virtualisation if suitable storage infrastructure has been put in place,” he says.

FINALLY..The current trend of proliferation of smart phones and tablets in the workplace indicates that desktop virtualization market will mature even more. The industry is unanimous about the potential of Indian market to absorb the same. “According to a forecast by IDC, cloud services will reach about $100 billion by the end of 2014, accompanied by dramatic increase in the number of datacenters is anything to go by, virtualization will play a major role in 2014. In markets like India, in SMB segment alone, desktop virtualiza-tion is expected to see about 30% YoY growth for the next three years,” concludes Luthra. ë

RAMESH VANTIPALLIHEAD EUC INDIA & SOUTH

– VMWARE.

“We’re encouraging our partners to build

competencies to differentiate themselves and working with key partners who have an expertise in end user computing to here.”

MANISH SHARMAVICE PRESIDENT, APAC,

NCOMPUTING INC.

“Enterprises should select a VDI solution

that provides CIOs with a secure and robust

framework to centralize and virtualize their IT

infrastructure keeping IT costs to the minimal.”

SRIKANTH KARNAKOTADIRECTOR- SERVER & CLOUD BUSINESS, MICROSOFT INDIA

“Based on user profiling on different parameters like security, application

needs, type of users, when they work, time-sharing etc.,

organizations can decide what solution is best.”

FEATURE

MEA29MARCH 2014

Feature-Transforming IT Infrastructure.indd 29 17/03/14 9:57 pm

RED HAT

In the recent times, the Indian market has seen a spurt in the demand of open source technologies. Looking at this trend, Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, has made significant changes into

the ways in which it approaches the domestic market. One such move has been towards aligning with right set of channel partners in the country.

Till couple of years back, most of Red Hat’s business was driven by niche open source part-ners and this strategy was followed ever since the company has been present in the Indian market. The company was largely interacting and doing business with these classic set of partners who used to run behind the early adopters of open source technology.

“But things have evolved in the recent times and we have taken a huge leap towards being a multi-product and mainstream enterprise software channels company. Today, we have portfolio of products and solutions in areas like middleware, cloud, and virtualization. Besides, we also have today multiple types of channel including global system integrators, tier II system integrators, OEM partners, ISVs, etc. Now, we project ourselves as multi-product, multi-channel mainstream company,” says Pradeepto Dey, Senior Manager – Channel Sales, Regional, Red Hat.

Dey adds, “Apart from the early adopters of technology, we are also now ready and geared in

terms of our offerings and modules to really take the technology into the large mainstream custom-ers. We felt the need of really strongly engaging and focusing with the mainstream enterprise channel partners. And that’s the change we have done in the last 2-3 years and very successfully, we have seen the change happening.”

Current channel set-up Red Hat is following a two-pronged channel strat-egy. Firstly, it is consolidating and going deeper with its Advanced partners and secondly, there is a separate distribution outreach engine that is going to focus on the mass of Ready partners that do business with the company in the Indian market. The classic mix of the two formulates the Red Hat’s channel strategy.

Till few years back, the company had 5-6 Advanced partners on board but as of today, it is in the range of 18-20. And the plan is to focus and consolidate this number to 20-25. Besides, there is a large set of Ready partners.

He further states, “In terms of the channel types, we have a large portion of the business that happens from the large and global system integrators. About 3 years back, we made significant investments in the GSI (global system integrator) initiative in India wherein we built an entire team which separately talks about the value of Red Hat technologies and products with the global SIs, who in turn, take these offerings to the marketplace. Moreover, we have a huge base

of application providers who are certified on Red Hat platforms.”

In terms of virtualization, Red Hat has a huge existing solutions architect team who is dedicated to the partner organization to help them drive proof of concepts, build COEs at customers’ place, and taking its virtualization technology to the market. The company has seen a fairly large success on this front as well. In the nutshell, all the efforts that Red Hat is taking for its enterprise partners is to go deeper with them, wherein it is looking at both length as well as depth of engage-ment/ relationship.

The other area that is well-appreciated by the enterprise channel partners is Red Hat’s subscrip-tion model, which gives them a chance to renew year-on-year basis. It is because of its subscription model that renewal business keeps on coming. And sustainable revenue opportunity is the number one value thing that its partners see in the renewal business. The company has a very high renewal rates and that’s why Red Hat’s partners will really need to service the customers to an extent where they are compelled to renew looking at the value proposition.

“As far as my team’s alignment with these goals is concerned, we are again going deeper. Today, the channel manager is really focused on Advanced partners in his respective region, expected to drive business plans and joint go-to-market solutions and initiatives with these partners, and go deeper into the market,” points

Services model to yield double-digit marginsToday, the number one priority for any enterprise partner in the country is to increase the services revenue, which can give them high double-digit margins in the long run. They don’t want to play in single-digit hardware margin anymore and that’s why they want to bring in the services component into their existing business. With its world-class services, Red Hat is uniquely positioned to help its partners in this endeavor.

n N I V E D A N P R A K A S H < N I V E D A N @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

CORPORATE STORY

30 MARCH 2014

Red Hat Corporate Story.indd 30 17/03/14 10:02 pm

out Dey. Dey is also of the view that a lot of enterprise

channel partners, who are successfully while doing business with Red Hat, are still highly dependent on hardware as a source of revenue. And most of these partners are trying to shift their business model to software services and products. Taking cue from this changing market dynamics, these partners can take Red Hat ser-vices offerings to the market that will help their customers in getting the business pain eradicated at lower total cost of ownership.

“Here, our partners get more room to custom-ize and provide services to the customers, which in turn, helps them gain better or rather double digit margins. It’s our learning that partners who have really understood this value proposition of aligning with Red Hat and especially given our subscription model, they have been very success-ful with us in the last couple of years,” asserts Dey.

He highlights, “Even during the tough economic times, we at Red Hat were going full throttle. We had a vision on our channel strategy two years back and during the economic depression time, no changes were made in these strategies. Apparently, we broke open the focused Advanced partner piece and got the channel managers to focus on them. We also set the focus on the separate distribution outreach engine, wherein our distributors are really doing a great

PRADEEPTO DEY, SENIOR MANAGER – CHANNEL SALES, REGIONAL, RED HAT

“In the last couple of years, we have taken a huge leap towards being a multi-product and mainstream enterprise software channels company”

drive change in the way partners are servicing the customers – both from the infrastructure and delivery standpoints. It’s not a classic enablement program but there are three key differentiators – for the first time, we have launched a hand-holding learning course wherein someone will track a partner’s progress in order to understand his journey cycle of getting enabled and hold his hand and take him across the line. Secondly, on the technical front, it has short-stitched packages which are ready to deliver service packages for our partners to take it to their customers. Lastly, it has classic plug-n-play demo kits that can be taken by partners to their customers and explain them our cloud technologies, middleware solutions, and virtualization solutions amongst others.”

“We have embarked upon a few initiatives in the last 12 to 18 months, wherein we have realized that there are a lot of partners who are very keen and interested in Red Hat but some of them need to understand more about the use case scenarios ad how these technologies and products can fit into the customer domain. Hence, we decided to get hold of these focused Advanced partners and top elite application developers and bring an exchange forum into the play. We have very successfully executed this initiative a few months back. Moving ahead, we plan to bring this initiative into practice at least twice a year because we are seeing opportunities getting generated,” concludes Dey. ë

job. Since Red Hat brings in value by offering technology at a much lower total cost of owner-ship, for us these are the right opportune time to go deeper into the market and try and make a difference in a customer’s buying pattern.”

Focus on partner enablement As any large MNC, Red Hat too has the partner enablement piece in place. If taken a look at the new offerings that the company is bringing in to the market place from the enablement stand-point, it has recently announced an initiative called OPEN, a new online partner enablement network. It is a training and accreditation plat-form designed to empower partners and supply them with the reliable guidance and technical information they need to assist customers in making sound technology decisions.

As part of Red Hat OPEN, the Red Hat Partner Center will provide partners with 24x7 access to technical information as well as training resources, enabling partners to enhance their skills anytime, anywhere. This platform includes training courses that are designed to focus on developing role-based expertise and skills required to sell and deliver Red Hat offerings. Red Hat partners can earn accreditations by taking a prescribed combination of OPEN training courses.

Dey explains, “We believe this initiative will

CORPORATE STORY

31MARCH 2014

Red Hat Corporate Story.indd 31 17/03/14 10:02 pm

SDN CAN ENABLE AN ORGANIZATION TO GAIN VISIBILITY AND CONTROL

ACCESS TO THE NETWORK AND RESOURCES TO THE GRANULAR LEVEL,

ENABLING IT MANAGERS TO SOLVE SPECIFIC ISSUES THAT AFFECT THE

NETWORK. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS SPOKE TO EDGAR DIAS, REGIONAL

DIRECTOR – INDIA, BROCADE,

“SDN–a new network paradigm”

EDGAR DIAS REGIONAL DIRECTOR – INDIA, BROCADE

are expected to move into a phase of deployment from that of research and trial. Software can define or will define everything in data center which the next wave of innovation. Software defined network (SDN), software defined data center (SDDC), software defined storage (SDS) and software defined storage network (SDSN) form an integral part of it.

Over the last 6-12 months, Software-Defined Networking or SDN has become the hottest buzzword not just in enterprise networking but service providers as well with research networks, large DC hosting and cloud providers as some of the earlier adopters. An emerging concept that promises improved network performance, flex-ibility and manageability, SDN has the potential to revolutionize networking unlocking a wave of innovation for application services.

What’s the current level of

How is the whole concept of Software-defined ‘Everything’ being looked upon by enterprises in the Indian market? The “software is eating the world” phenomenon, made famous by Marc Andreesen is gaining

pace in the technology industry as the benefits of virtualization and software-led design and implementation are becoming more obvious. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and software-defined technologies (network, virtu-alization, data center, storage and infrastructure)

MY VIEWS

32 MARCH 2014

Q&A-Brocade Interview.indd 32 17/03/14 10:31 pm

awareness towards these software-defined technologies in India? While this trend is expected globally, we see this more consistent in Asia-Pacific and Japan. In India this is still at the nascent stage, and therefore only few IT organizations are familiar with SDN. Most of the enterprises are in a wait-and-watch mode, while some of them are getting familiarized with the concept. Globally, the SDN market is estimated to grow from $198 million in 2012 to $2.1 billion in 2017; this represents a CAGR of 60 percent from 2012 to 2017.

What are the major forces that will drive the market for these technologies? Today’s enterprises and service providers are becoming increasingly global, distributed, and virtualized. To realize their full potential, they must overcome the limitations of their networks, which have become monolithic and inflexible. These networks are closed-off, rigid infra-structures that limit choice and force extensive manual customization. What is needed is a new type of network: one that is optimized for the cloud, flexible, scalable, and far more adaptive than traditional network structures. This new network paradigm is called SDN, a powerful new approach that is drawing support from the most demanding networking environments in the world.

Brocade is helping organizations realize the promise of SDN through innovative technologies and solutions coupled with its most exciting recent acquisition of Vyatta. Brocade enables organizations to control their networks program-matically, transforming the network into a platform for innovation through new applica-tions and services.

Highlight the benefits that enterprises can reap by adopting the software-defined technologies?

There are key cost benefits you can realize with SDN deployments through efficient use of the network and operational resources within the following areas. n Automation—SDN will enable operations automation by linking OpenFlow to Operational Support Systems (OSSs) through protocols such as Restful, where triggers will enable rapid service changes and service creation. n Efficiency of assets—Network operators will now have an accurate depiction of network topol-ogy and usage, which will alleviate unnecessary upgrades, thus resulting in CapEx savings. n Incremental revenue streams—Service

providers will have the ability to offer self-service portals, enabling customers to tailor the network to accommodate their application or service need. Both the ability to be innovative in applications and the service offerings will enable the service profitability that service providers are looking for. n Business intelligence—Data held in the network is the current untapped goldmine that has the ability to improve many things: from real-time information and location-based offerings to new service insertion points, as well as intelligent applications that can re-route themselves based on network data. The result will be better customer quality systems and a better user experience.

What are your efforts towards propagating these benefits amongst the enterprises so that the market witnesses maximum deployment? An early supporter of SDN initiatives, such as OpenFlow and OpenStack, Brocade is help-ing organizations realize the promise of SDN through innovative technologies and solutions. The Brocade approach will enable organizations to control their networks programmatically, transforming the network into a platform for

innovation through new applications and services.

In addition, they can significantly increase the flexibility of network infrastructure in order to deliver new services faster and more easily. Brocade believes that SDN holds the promise of starting a new network innovation cycle and will launch a wave of next-generation network-based applications and services. The Brocade SDN strategy will guide Brocade investments in R&D, its partnerships, and the company’s future business direction. Brocade is embedding the open networking technologies of SDN into its solutions, enabling organiza-tions to realize the possibilities of SDN—such as network virtualization, programmatic control of the infrastructure, automatic and dynamic configuration, on-demand service insertion, and pay-per-use services—all

through standards-based software and orchestration tools.

How are you ramping up the channel strategies around software-defined technologies? There is a keen desire within channel partners to understand how SDN could be exploited to provide a differentiated offering from their competitors. Customers are looking for channel partners to act as strategic advisors in helping them understand how fabric based data centers can help them achieve their objectives of simpli-fied, automated and cost-effective data center implementation.

The key here is education of the channel partner sales and services teams to be able to articulate this message and be able to dem-onstrate key use cases in Enterprise, Service provider and data center customers.

Since these technologies are in the infancy stage of adoption amongst the enterprises in the MEA market, by when do you expect them to become mainstream? The success of SDN lies in enabling innovation through an open environment in order to deliver

high value, game changing applications for our customers. In India the concept is still at the nascent stage, and therefore only few IT organiza-tions are familiar with SDN. The SMB’s are in a wait-and-watch mode while some of them are getting familiarized with the concept.

While SDN offers significant new oppor-tunities to centralize and implement network services more rapidly and fluidly, it also intro-duces new forms of complexity. Brocade VCS Fabric technology provides unique automation capabilities and unmatched resilience through innovations in every plane of the physical fabric, as well as integration and hardware support for leading SDN innovations and solutions. Unlike competitive approaches, Brocade offers a carrier-grade cloud network that enables SDN without sacrificing performance, scalability, or reliability. ë

“BROCADE ENABLES ORGANIZATIONSTO CONTROL THEIR NETWORKSPROGRAMMATICALLY, TRANSFORMING THENETWORK INTO A PLATFORM FOR INNOVATIONTHROUGH NEW APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES”

MY VIEWS

33MARCH 2014

Q&A-Brocade Interview.indd 33 17/03/14 10:31 pm

Cyberoam ‘s new Next-Gen Firewall models including FleXi-Ports: CR1000iNG-XP, CR1500iNG-XP and CR2500iNG-XP strengthen Cyberoam’s existing NGFW offering and aim to offer the best mix of security appliances to the medium-large enterprise segment. The segment has few options to consider when looking for high performance with the desired ROI.

CR1000iNG-XP, CR1500iNG-XP and CR2500iNG-XP appliances come with FleXi Ports that offer I/O slots for additional Copper 1G, Fiber 1G/10G ports on the same appliance, along with high performance and next-generation security features to medium-large enterprises.

Cyberoam NGFW come with Layer 8 Identity-based technology for actionable intelligence and controls that offer com-plete security controls over L2-L8 for future-ready security in enterprises. Cyberoam’s Next-Generation Firewall protection is EAL4+ certified and offers Layer 8 Identity-based security, application visibility & controls, Intrusion Prevention System, website filtering, HTTPS inspection, VPN (IPSec and SSL) and granular bandwidth controls.

Additional security features like Web Application Firewall, Gateway Anti-Virus, Gateway Anti-Spam, and more, are also available.

Fortinet’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) product family with four new appliances for data center managers and system architects are focussed at mid- to large-sized enterprises and managed service providers (MSPs).

The new FortiDDoS-400B, FortiDDoS-800B, FortiDDoS-1000B and FortiDDoS-2000B appliances are designed to detect and help protect against today’s most damaging and sophisticated DDoS attacks and feature an inno-vative 100 percent behavior-based

DDoS attack mitigation engine. Combined with a new, single-path custom ASIC that both detects and mitigates DDoS attacks, FortiD-DoS is able to detect more types of attacks and performs up to 10X faster than other competing DDoS mitigation appliances.

The new behavior-based attack mitigation engine enables FortiDDoS to identify and mitigate current and future threats based on patterns and intent rather than content. Because these appliances don’t require signatures, they

are able to better protect against zero-day attacks by dynamically monitoring trends versus waiting for a signature file to be updated. A very short blocking period achieved using high-performance ASICs allows the appliance to continuously reevaluate attacks. This reduces the impact of false positives if traffic patterns return to normal. Competing appliances take much longer to detect attacks and block for much longer periods of time leading to higher false positive.

KEY CAPABILITIESn The FortiDDoS-400B features 4 Gbps full-duplex throughput, 16 1 Gbps RJ-45 copper and SFP ports for LAN and WAN connectivity with support for up to 1 million simultaneous connections.n The FortiDDoS-800B features 8 Gbps full-duplex throughput, 16 1 Gbps RJ-45 copper and SFP ports for LAN and WAN connectivity with support for up to 2 million simultaneous connections.n The FortiDDoS-1000B features 12 Gbps full-duplex throughput, 16 10 Gbps SPF+ slots for LAN and WAN connectivity with support for up to 3 million simultaneous connections.n The FortiDDoS-2000B features 24 Gbps full-duplex throughput, 16 10 Gbps SPF+ slots and 4 10 Gbps SFP+ bypass ports for

FortinetFortiDDoS Family

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT EDITOR@ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

CYBEROAM NEW NGFWS

KEY CAPABILITIESn High performance – Up to 60 Gbps firewall throughputs; up to 8 Gbps NGFW throughputsn Flexible Connectivity options – Multiple I/O slots for Copper 1G, Fiber 1G/10G FleXi Ports modules n Multiple deployment scenarios - allowing configuration as high performance Firewall /VPN /IPS /WAF, NGFW, UTM or Proxyn Centrally manageable and Centralized reporting

INNOVATIONS

34 MARCH 2014

Innovations.indd 34 17/03/14 10:31 pm

TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP

REXP-1600U-RPExpansion EnclosureScale-up

NAS Storage up to

Achieve unparalleled expandabilitywith SAS-Enabled Turbo NAS

500TB

Equipped with a Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® 3.4GHz processor, 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM and 10GbE support, the TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP deliversover 3,000MB/s throughput, 400,000+ IOPS, SSD caching and thin provisioning to drive your business forward.

Supporting a wide range of 2.5”/3.5” SAS/SATA 6Gbps hard drives & SSDs, the TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP can also naturally expand your storagecapacity with the flexible & economical REXP-1600U-RP/REXP-1200U-RP expansion enclosures to support over 500TB raw capacity.

The Windows AD and LDAP directory services greatly save IT administrators time and effort in account setup. The Windows ACL (AccessControl List) feature offers sophisticated shared folder permission settings that simplifies IT management and privilege control.

Designed purely to fit business needs, the TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP offers unified storage for both NAS and iSCSI applications and is idealfor server virtualization storage, business data backup, file sharing and IP surveillance storage.

Extreme Performance

Flexible Storage Options & Scalability

Effortless Privilege Management

Built for Business

www.qnap.comCopyright © 2013 QNAP Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP SS-EC1279U-SAS-RP SS-EC1879U-SAS-RP SS-EC2479U-SAS-RP

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

14021712_IN-Enterprise_Channels_TS-EC1679U-SAS-RP_SAS_full_0217_Print-.pdf 1 2014/2/17 下午 06:58:26

Advts.indd 2 18/02/14 9:58 pm

www.cyberoam.com

Turning CIO into thenext-generation catalystCyberoam NGFWs enable enterprise CIOs harness IT & network transformation with insights beyond security,

helping them innovate, monetize and differentiate.

Key business benefits of Cyberoam NGFWs to CIOs:

• Next-generation threat protection

(also secures critical infrastructure / SCADA networks)

• Wirespeed gigabit performance

• Visibility into BYOD and Virtual environments

• Easy compliance

• On-appliance Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Cyberoam Product Line :

Network security appliances(Next-Generation Firewalls/UTMs)

Centralized Management(Hardware & Virtual)

Centralized Reporting

© Copyright 2014 Cyberoam Technologies Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. | For more information contact : marketing@cyberoam.com

Also available through

NICSI / NIC

RNI NO: DEL ENG/2013/49006Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4169/13-15

Date of Publication: 18 of Every MonthDate of Posting: 20 & 21 of Every Month

Advts.indd 4 26/02/14 10:28 am