CtrlS is Emerging as World's Largest Rated-4 Hyperscale ...

1 www.varindia.com May 2020

HPE enables cloud-enabled COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers Cognizant buys Collaborative Solutions

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CtrlS is Emerging as World’s Largest Rated-4 Hyperscale Datacenter Playerwith over 6 Million Square Feet of Data CenterSpace powered by 600+ MW

The company has emerged as an Outlier in the Indian Data Center Space and is the Most preferred choice of Fortune 500 Companies

Sridhar PinnapureddyFounder and CEOCtrlS Datacenters Ltd.

AMIDST PANDEMIC ‘REMOTE WORKING WITH DAILY WEBINARS’- THE NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2020

2 May 2020 www.varindia.com

Network Access Control Solution Networking Switches Zero Tolerance Solution

COVID-19 suffocating yourbusiness performance?

For more information, reach out to iValue | [email protected] [email protected]

Make uninterrupted business operations possible even as employees work from home.

Leverage iValue's range of solutions to achieve seamless and safe connectivity and access to the organization's applications and resources in the cloud or datacenter.

Why trust iValue?

We are a leading provider of secure access, with a single client for access, centralized management for all access and visibility across your network. Plus, our solutions are built for hybrid cloud. We are the trusted partner for over 80% of the Fortune 500 to protect their networks with secure access solutions. Also, providing a dual-mode solution which lets you have the choice to deploy VPN-based secure remote access and move to SDP when you're ready.

iValue can deploy a smooth remote work environment for your organization through.

A single, unified client for access that operates exactly the same way whether you are accessing an app in the cloud, establishing a VPN connection or trying to access internal resources through any other medium.

A Zero Trust policy that secures the access regardless of the location of the user, device and application.

Centralized visibility, configuration and policy management. Also, with analytics to help tune the deployment.

Assured scalability. Having a solution that is secure but slow to respond or doesn’t scale, is not effective in a modern business network.


Network Access Control Solution Networking Switches Zero Tolerance Solution

COVID-19 suffocating yourbusiness performance?

For more information, reach out to iValue | [email protected] [email protected]

Make uninterrupted business operations possible even as employees work from home.

Leverage iValue's range of solutions to achieve seamless and safe connectivity and access to the organization's applications and resources in the cloud or datacenter.

Why trust iValue?

We are a leading provider of secure access, with a single client for access, centralized management for all access and visibility across your network. Plus, our solutions are built for hybrid cloud. We are the trusted partner for over 80% of the Fortune 500 to protect their networks with secure access solutions. Also, providing a dual-mode solution which lets you have the choice to deploy VPN-based secure remote access and move to SDP when you're ready.

iValue can deploy a smooth remote work environment for your organization through.

A single, unified client for access that operates exactly the same way whether you are accessing an app in the cloud, establishing a VPN connection or trying to access internal resources through any other medium.

A Zero Trust policy that secures the access regardless of the location of the user, device and application.

Centralized visibility, configuration and policy management. Also, with analytics to help tune the deployment.

Assured scalability. Having a solution that is secure but slow to respond or doesn’t scale, is not effective in a modern business network.

AWS Announces Major Enhancements to Amazon Macie Ingram Micro to distribute Check Point’s security solutions in India

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Facebook Invests In Reliance To Access Into Data Goldmine

Facebook buying a 9.99% stake into Reliance Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion(Rs 43,574 crore deal ), comes along a lot of concerns related to the future of the Indian internet and digital ecosystem. It is the largest FDI in the Indian tech sector. This is going be a deeper impact in the business of Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

It would be one of the largest investments across the world for a minority stake in the technology sector by Facebook. Both Facebook and Reliance possess humongous amount of user data. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to out how exactly the data-sharing agreement between these two tech giants will affect the entire digital landscape of India.

WHO’s Chief Scientist feels it is commendable that India keeps COVID-19 cases lower than other countries

Soumya Swaminathan, World Health Organisation's Chief Scientist has commended India for keeping the coronavirus cases and deaths very low compared to other countries and said it will play an important role in the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. She said the whole world has to be prepared for the ongoing transmission of infection for many many months and for perhaps years to come.

Swaminathan said it is not just enough to develop and test the vaccine, but it is also crucial to manufacture it, scale-up procurement and get health systems to vaccinate populations. All participants, including Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan, addressed the conference online. According to the World Health Organisation, as on Monday there have been 39,76,043 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,77,708 deaths.

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“OUR TOP PRIORITY IS PROVIDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO HELP INDIA WIN THE ONGOING CRUSADE AGAINST THE PANDEMIC”


INDIA’S NEW JOURNEY INTO MANUFACTURING

HELLO INDIA

The continuing debate whether or not India will emerge as the alternative manufacturing to China grossly ignores certain ongoing success of manufacturing business & number of significant facts of India. Today India holds the world’s largest mobile manufacturing plant which is operated by Samsung, the biggest complete indigenous 2 wheeler manufacturing company in the world and second biggest mobile phone manufacturing base in the world. To the biggest surprise mobile manufacturing in India offered the best of the quality ever achieved in the world and best cost parameters of Asia as claimed.

There are two major drivers for establishing a manufacturing plant and selecting a location for any global company, one is the access to a large market and second one is ease of having an uninterrupted local supply chain management (SCM). The SCM of the new location should enable the protection and mitigation of single sourcing risks. The size and growth of India consumption and economical dividend have a major differentiation. India is continuously enriched by hi-tech, digital & IT development hub for the last two decades.

Having around $300 bn worth of technology developments plus 3 million IT workers it offers one of the best talent pools in the world. The compelling need of manufacturing setup is to be future ready with Industry 4.0. India is now having the lion's share in development, optimization & adoption of the same by many global companies, who are building it from here. Plus all major technology houses have their own R&D and product developments in India.

Industry 4.0 is the new AVTAR of manufacturing with a change the way it works today. It is the complete digital version of traditional manufacturing blended with the power of big data, high computing capacity, artificial intelligence and analytics with an ultimate goal of production excellence. A new $150 Bn of investment due to this is awaited and strengths of India makes it the best place with the finest ecosystem. Take the example of Boeing, who is developing the same with IISC Bangalore. There are more than fifteen giants doing the same from India. There is a systematic growth in high value components in getting manufactured in India.

Post COVID world the preference of the manufacturing landscape has changed. It is futile to think now; China is going to be invincibly the world's most favorite destination for manufacturing. Based on scientific and factual deep due diligence and analysis it’s found outside of China, India offers the best alternative place for manufacturing. There is a vivid contrast to China. The product to be sold in China in most cases needs to be a Chinese brand. In India the global brand largely leverages the local market and also utilizes it as a base for the global market. The volume growth brings the cost advantage with benefits and ease on reverse logistics management. This also gets enhanced by the most reliable & qualitatively well educated resource factors. In India the technical resource with experience costs lower overhead cost as compared to anywhere else.

The ESDM ( Electronic Systems Design & Manufacturing ) segment in India is very robust. In the last couple of years from US $1 bn it has reached an annual US $10 bn mark with the presence of all global leaders like Foxconn, Flex, Jabil, Sanmina & Wistron etc. The recent Industrial manufacturing incentives package by the Central Government launched

and known as Scheme for Promotion of manufacturing of Electronic Component and Semiconductors (SPECS) definitely has ignited a massive positive interest for global giants. Capital subsidy, ease of repatriation and having simultaneous setup for SEZ (Special economic zone) for export & DTA (Domestic Tariff Area) for India business is a tremendous business enabler.

A major hidden success story of local manufacturing in India is always unnoticed with the US $ 135 bn incumbent automobile market success. In addition to this the automobile segment is doing an annual average export of US $15 bn. A state-of –the-art high technology and unmatched quality with lowest cost in the world became the hallmark identity of Indian automobile segment.

Today the consumer electronics market in India has surpassed US $12 bn and is expected to reach $20 bn in next two years. Korean brands successfully read this market early and harvested their dividend by entering India around 2009-10 strongly. In the last couple of years Japanese brands rejigged their strategy to be India centric and recently we are seeing an immense traction from Taiwan companies.

India has a magic and miracle left to experts to explore & decode. In addition to this India offers lowest corporate tax and ease of repatriation of dividend as compared to anywhere in the world.

Lastly, the next gen manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing is perhaps having the best available support systems in India more than anywhere else in the world.


Website: www.varindia.com

CONTENTS

REGULARS

Round About 08

Channel Guru 10

Channel Chief 12

Hot Bytes 13, 14

On the Ramp 15, 16

Voice N Data 17

Channel Buzz 18

Movers & Shakers 46

Product of the month 21

FACE TO FACE

19 Acer Leveraging its E-Store Facility to Serve Customers amidst Pandemic

20 Sophos Continues to Support and Safeguard Its Customers from Cyber-Attacks During

22 Brightcove leverages Cloud Solutions to Enable Customers to Save Costs, Increase Revenue and to Transform User Experience

Publisher: Deepak Kumar SahuEditor: S Mohini RatnaExecutive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Sub - Editor: Aparna MullickCorrespondent: Lopamudra Das Tech Analyst: Brajendu Das Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar SinghVisualizer: Ravinder Barthwal Manager-IT: Subhash MohantaManager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera

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

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

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* All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi only.

23 “Our Growing Focus is to Cater to The Demand of Photography Enthusiasts Who Want to Graduate from Smartphone Photography”

VAR CORPORATE

24 CtrlS Emerging as World’s Largest Rated-4 Hyperscale Datacenter Player

LEAD STORY

28 A Billion Dollar Question: Does Work From Home & Cyber Security Go Hand In Hand?

COVER STORY

36 Most Popular Partner Program

CIO OUTLOOK

32 AMIDST PANDEMIC ‘REMOTE WORKING WITH DAILY WEBINARS’- THE NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2020

VAR SECURITY

“Our Top Priority is Providing Innovative Solutions to Help India Win the Ongoing

Crusade against the Pandemic”

45

Our Upcoming Hyperscale Rated 4 Datacenter Facilities in India

Our Data Center Locations

MumbaiDelhiBangaloreHyderabad

SURAJIT SENCHIEF OF STAFF, MODERN DATA

CENTRE-APJ, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

CLOUD TRANSFORMATION

PROJECTS TO DRIVE BUSINESS AND

TECHNICAL BENEFITS


Our Upcoming Hyperscale Rated 4 Datacenter Facilities in India

Our Data Center Locations

MumbaiDelhiBangaloreHyderabad


ROUND ABOUT

CAN COVID-19 SPRING A SURPRISE TO HUMAN CIVILIZATION?

The sinister impact of the pandemic is lingering on bringing mankind to their knees and forcefully keeping billions of people under confinement. The governments and civil society are on their toes. From the day it started from Wuhan, the news on Covid-19 assumed several dimensions, which no other incident in the recent times would have demonstrated. From localized epidemics, it soon crossed to other countries, with more severity and intensity. Till date, that is continuing without any abatement, infecting millions and ending the lives of close to 200,000 people...

Admittedly, Covid-19 is a life time experience, which will stick on to the psyche of the people. The only country, I am told, has escaped from the virus, so far, is Lesotho in Africa, according to the available information. I am sure, if that is the case, Lesotho, which may not be known to many outside Africa, will be a case study and can unravel many unknown facts about the killer virus, particularly what prevented the virus to penetrate into that small country, while its bordering countries have incidences of viral infection.

An account that I read in the newspaper columns, though gory, but still significant, are the comments of the people managing burial grounds across the country, which I am sure, can be extrapolated to the rest of the world also. They say mortal remains brought for cremation of people, who have succumbed to diseases other than Covid-19 have considerably come down. The number of people dying on account of road accidents and cardiac problems have considerably reduced thanks to pollution free environment, non-existence of traffic jams and other unsavory incidences that an ordinary person living in a city or town has to undergo on a daily basis. The other day, I have seen a clear photograph of snowy mountains of Himalayas shot from some vantage point in Delhi. That is for certain not a fake photograph since it had appeared in a serious daily with the byline of the photographer.

Does it mean Covid-19 saga is not all that fraught with negativity? It has taught people many lessons; of being how helpless he or she is, how important is leading a healthy and disciplined life; how one can recreate Mother Nature; how one can keep the city clean and air pure, which people always considered as a byproduct of development. If Covid- 19 has taught us many lessons, the post Covid-19 world will not be the same.

Did the world forecast about the holocaust? Indeed, the film Contagion has many similarities to this pandemic. The only difference is that it was shot in 2011, when the pandemic was never even dreamt of. If someone feels that there is resemblance between what is happening now and the story line of the film, pray that what is foretold in the reel should not happen in real life, for that would cost mankind dearly. The storyline in the film has also its speculative twists and turns. There are quakes, who made a killing by selling fake medicines and spreading fake news. It also portrays governments, which are staring at the catastrophe helplessly putting us in a dilemma between reel and real life.

When will be the pandemic end or tamed? No one has a clue.There are reports about vaccines at various stages of trials. Almost every country is engaged in that. India is not an exception. Serum Institute of India, in close cooperation with Oxford University is conducting trials. The initial report is that it is incrementally progressing. Few days ago, a US company Moderna announced positive interim Phase 1 data for its mRNA Vaccine (mRNA-1273) against Novel Coronavirus. When will the vaccine be developed still remains to be a trillion dollar question. Many see it could be expected only by the end of this year since it has to meet with stringent standards set by the FDA and similar organizations. Once the vaccine is tested successfully, that will be the beginning of a new challenging phase. Experts are of the opinion that every individual across the world should be given vaccination irrespective of their age, color and

creed. That only can give them immunity against the virus. This would mean that more than 7 billion vaccines have to be developed to cater to the world population. No country should be left out. There should not be any lag in giving vaccination since in a short time virus can assume menacing proportions. Therefore, a focused attention should be given for the mass scale production of vaccine and its efficient distribution across the world. That will be a real challenge the medical science has to face once the vaccine is developed and tested successfully.

There is a concern also being expressed from various quarters. That is about greater degree of mutation of the virus and with each stage of mutation, the virus strain is assuming newer properties. Therefore, even if an oral medicine is evolved, the efficacy of that medicine for universal application is something, which can keep virologists and medical practitioners in a quandary. I believe that we have seen, so far, only the hard and sinister side of the pandemic. I sincerely feel that it may have a positive side sooner or later.

The change the pandemic can bring to the medical science will be mindboggling. I feel by the time the Covid19 makes its full exit, billions of tests would have been done across the continents to find the traces of the virus. The blood and swab samples of that many people would have been tested in the laboratories. This would be a huge reservoir of data that can be put into data mining to establish correlations between many attributes such as habits and diseases, races and incidence of diseases, dietary habits and diseases, how the virus would mutate and the circumstances in which proliferations happen and a whole lot of other things, which medical science never had an opportunity to do research. These insights are going to be of considerable importance to the medical science in understanding disease patterns, treatment profiles, preventive care etc. The greatest beneficiary is going to be the future generation, who will witness a spate of radical changes in the societal behavior and outlook towards life.


CLOUD-FIRST TO MULTI-CLOUD STRATEGY

The data management landscape has changed and rapidly moved from a siloeddatacenter to a multi-cloud world. Now organizations are building their datacenter for not just storing data but also to use it for decision making.

Organizations are adopting multi-cloud strategy as cloud is easy to use and simple. This shift by organizations is not surprising. However, multi-cloud does come with its own set of challenges, one of them being its complexity.

Elaborating on this, Surajitsays, “We understand this and therefore, we launched Dell Technologies Cloud last year. This solves multi-cloud complexity by being the operational hub of a customer’s hybrid cloud, delivering consistent operations and infrastructure, with workload placement flexibility- from edge to core to cloud. It offers an integrated set of software and hardware solutions that can be deployed in a variety of edge locations, core private cloud datacenters – allowing organizations to deploy applications using vSphere-managed virtual machines or Kubernetes managed containers and functions.

Additionally, our solutions allow organizations to have ultimate control over their data and applications,while also reducing overall cloud deployment and management complexity – in order to keep them ahead of the competition.”

GRID CLOUD Talking about the upcoming Grid cloud,

Surajit says, “Dell Technologies is playing a crucial role in helping organizations build multi-cloud environments, by allowing them to leverage consistent infrastructure and consistent operations across various cloud platforms. This would enable organizations to accelerate their cloud adoption. Grid Cloud is another facet of a multi cloud environment. Dell would be a key enabler for Grid Cloud through it’s industry leading technology and go to market program for Telcos and Service providers.”

BUSINESS MODEL TO SUSTAIN LONGER

At present, need for speed from IT and improved security are the major factors for

CLOUD TRANSFORMATION PROJECTS TO DRIVE BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL BENEFITS

consideration by businesses along with cost. This coupled with the increasing amount of data brought about by mobility, artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, along with traditional workloads, is driving demand for multi-cloud model.

“Going forward, the market will be in need for more consistent and standardized automated cloud resources to enable developers and line-of-business to execute at speed and in a more cost-effective manner. Therefore, to be future ready, Indian organizationswill aim for a multi-cloud model - where the same ease, simplicity, manageability, auto-provisioning and orchestration can be achieved at a lower cost. Additionally, this will enable them to experience a new way to build and consume IT services while driving innovation and growth,” predicts Surajit.

BENEFITS OFTHE ESG REPORT FOR THE PARTNERS AND VAR COMMUNITY

Explaining the ESG report, Surajit says, “The ESG report, titled ‘The Cloud Complexity Imperative’ provides an understanding of the concept of management simplification for the organizations adopting multi-cloud strategy. ESG’s research shows that more than nine out of ten organizations (91%) work with IT vendors, system integrators, value-added resellers, to help architect and implement cloud infrastructure projects. This research gives inroads to partners/VAR communities to derive maximum benefit out of the cloud for the customers. While cloud transformation projectswill drive dramatic business and technical benefits, organizations would be well served to explore partnerships with cloud solution architects who can help remove the friction from these transformations rather than doing it alone.Additionally, the report does say that only 5% of organisations are experiencing the benefits of cloud, meaning many firms are potentially missing out on supercharging their computing power. Hence, partners must counsel customers to get the most out of their clouds by having management consistency.”

PREPAREDNESS FOR COMBATING THE EMERGING CHALLENGESAt present people are working from home due to social distancing and lockdown norms. This

has led to an increase in cloud usage. As cloud provides the benefits of scale as per use, organizations are widely adopting cloud services.

He says, “Due to social distancing and lockdown norms, there is a need for organisations to enable their employees to be able to work from home and ensure data security at the same time. With almost all the organizationsallowing their workforce to work remotely,there has been an increase in the cloud usage.Organizations are increasingly adopting cloud services as it provides them the ability to scale as per the need and also provides them with the option of renting computing power. However, in the long run, companies who are dependent on cloud for their businesses will need to opt for cloud services that are cost-efficient.

In fact, our cloud infrastructure solutions helps organisations in removing any complexities which they might face and offers consistent infrastructure while reducing operational costs. Additionally, Dell Technologies has rolled out solutions like Unified Workspace, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and many more – to address the challenges emerging at this time.”

INITIATIVES TAKEN TO HELP PARTNERSTo help its partners survive this critical time, Dell has come up with various initiatives like

financial relief packages along with free training and certifications etc. “As a part of our commitment towards partners, Dell Technologies recently unveiled financial

relief package to help its partners preserve capital and cut costs and help their customers. The financial relief package, together with free training and certifications, will help Dell Technologies’ partners improve cash position and build stronger capabilities for the future. Additionally, we have also rolled out Working Capital Solutions (WCS) Programme and Dell Financial Services (DFS) which will help partners plan and strategize for the future to support their customers,” elaborates Surajit.

Dell Technologies’ mission is to help its customers embrace IT transformation and make them succeed in their digital transformation journey. Those organisations who strive to improve their IT will always have a competitive advantage over others and will also derive better business results. Channel partners have been an integral part of Dell Technologies business and the company puts in a lot of efforts to ensure that they stay up to speed and have the resources they need to grow and reach their end customers. In a chat with VARINDIA, SURAJIT SEN, CHIEF OF STAFF, MODERN DATA CENTRE-APJ, DELL TECHNOLOGIES discusses about


MOST TRUSTED & ADMIRED BRANDS CHOSEN BY THE CUSTOMERS

TO BE UNVEILED OVER A LARGE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE TO BE HELD ON19TH, FRIDAY, JUNE 2020, NEW DELHI

Copyright © (2019-2020) Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd.

50 MOST TRUSTED BRANDS IN INDIA

• GTM strategy of 100 Technology Brands

• Top Brands in the Indian ICT Industry

• Indian Market Landscape

• Eminent CIO’s of India CIO/CTO Outlook

• Icons of India

• Women leadership in Technology

• Tech for Good

• 50 Most successful Start-ups

• 10 Solution Partners in India

• 10 Digital PSUs in the country

Last Date for Confirmation: 15th April 2020

KEY HIGHLIGHTS


CHANNEL CHIEF

With the key responsibility to develop a partner ecosystem, enabling their capabilities, empowering them to offer services and solutions to help their customers, Neeraj believes in leading with optimism and faith.

“I believe in “leading with optimism and faith so together we create an honest, transparent and passionate environment”. It is imperative for organizations to keep their people and ecosystem equipped and empowered with the latest skills, aligned to business needs, in order to meet market demands of today’s digital economy. In line with this, my key responsibilities are to develop the partner ecosystem, strengthen their capabilities, enabling them to build services and solutions to help their customers innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition. This also provides a career growth path to all Red Hat associates while building on Red Hat’s leading position as an enterprise open source technology to customers across all industries and segments.”

CHANNELSRed Hat believes in strategic partnership which ensures customer success. It aims to build

partnerships which will help the company to deliver digital transformation the open source way. The partners of Red Hat helps the company to reach a wide range of customers. In the growth trajectory of Red Hat, partners play a crucial role.

“As technology advancements continue to disrupt business models, organizations need to adopt new technologies, such as cloud, integration, containers to transform their business and innovate. We at Red Hat, believe in strategic partnerships which are fundamental in ensuring our customers’ success. Our endeavour and motto is to “build partnerships that deliver digital transformation the open source way”, by enabling partners with the right skills and resources to provide solutions that speed development, testing, deployment & re-engineering thereby improving performance, and maximize return on investment for the enterprise customers. Our partner ecosystem allows Red Hat technology to be a part broad range of solutions and ultimately allows us to reach a larger customer base. We partner with OEMs (such as HPE, IBM and Cisco), Global System Integrators (TCS, Infosys, Accenture), ISVs (SAP, Mindgate, Intellect, FSS), and value-added partners like Taashee, Keen & Able, VDA Solutions, Sonata and Team Computers and many more. Therefore, partners play an integral role in our strategy to grow with both existing and new customers,” explains Neeraj.

PARTNER PROGRAM

Red Hat feels that there are tremendous opportunities for partners who can identify the hybrid cloud opportunity and build a service delivery capability. With the right skills and offerings partners can retain customers, grow their business and achieve higher returns as well as grow their customer base. For instance, partners skilled in the concepts of kubernetes, containerization, automation and mobility would be able to implement their expertise and foresight in making more informed transitions and fulfil the role of system integrators while providing services to their consumers.

“The Red Hat Partner Program is designed to help our partners develop successful hybrid cloud practices and solutions to deal with evolving challenges that digitization entails. Our program offers a flexible structure designed to accommodate our partners’ individual business models while also providing them access to a variety of benefits that help develop our partners’ expertise and improve their capability to sell and deliver Red Hat technologies. Our philosophy is for a dual role for partners where they are enabling solutions for customer as a systems integrator and (or) delivering solution frameworks while themselves consuming Red Hat Technologies as a service provider.

Our partner program, Red Hat Partner Connect offers a structured enablement and development path designed to accommodate the partners’ business models while also providing them access to a variety of benefits that help them develop expertise and increase their capability to sell and deliver Red Hat technologies. Our Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program is designed to help our

partners meet customer needs better, for cloud-based technologies. Another successful program we launched is the Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program, designed to better position SIs to meet customers’ increasing interest for containerized application development and platforms that can support cloud-native workloads to become more efficient in delivering innovative solutions,” elaborates Neeraj.

EXPECTATION FROM CHANNEL

The open source technology helps Red Hat to offer customer’s need in such a way which differentiates the company from competition. An increasing number of customers are embracing Red Hat offerings to transform business. Red Hat along its partners want to help more customers who are thinking to start their hybrid cloud journey. “Our endeavour is to strengthen our partnerships further by continuing to add value to their business by building capabilities and resources to address their customers’ needs better.

For Red Hat, Open source technology gives us the ability to deliver what our customers need in a way that differentiates us from our competitors. Application development teams using Red Hat OpenShift have, on average, three or four times more product deployments, equating to more features launching to our end users faster. Our investments in Kubernetes engineering and community leadership offer our customers confidence to unleash new application capabilities and digitally transform their business. With more and more customers embracing Red Hat OpenShift, we see this as the first milestone in a much bigger transformation happening across every industry. With this we want our partners to help open more doors with customers looking to start their hybrid cloud journey, we expect hybrid cloud strategy to gain traction in BFSI, ITES, MFG & distribution and IT Services (Captives and developers) in the region. As we support organizations in their digital transformation efforts, we will continue to add new channel partners to further the open hybrid cloud ecosystem,” says Neeraj.

RED HAT ENDEAVOURS TO STRENGTHEN ASSOCIATION WITH PARTNERS BY CONTINUING TO ADD VALUE TO THEIR BUSINESS

IN A CHAT WITH VARINDIA, NEERAJ BHATIA, DIRECTOR - CHANNEL AND PARTNER ALLIANCES, RED HAT INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA DISCUSSES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF CHANNELS, PARTNER PROGRAM AND HIS EXPECTATION FROM CHANNEL ECOSYSTEM

THE RED HAT PARTNER PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO HELP OUR PARTNERS DEVELOP SUCCESSFUL

HYBRID CLOUD PRACTICES AND SOLUTIONS TO DEAL WITH EVOLVING CHALLENGES

THAT DIGITIZATION ENTAILS. OUR PROGRAM OFFERS A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE OUR PARTNERS’ INDIVIDUAL BUSINESS MODELS WHILE ALSO PROVIDING

THEM ACCESS TO A VARIETY OF BENEFITS THAT HELP DEVELOP OUR PARTNERS’ EXPERTISE AND IMPROVE THEIR CAPABILITY TO SELL

AND DELIVER RED HAT TECHNOLOGIES

“

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HOT BYTES

CyberArk buys Identity as a Service company – Idaptive

CyberArk announced it has acquired Santa Clara, California-based IDaptive Holdings, Inc. (Idaptive). Together, CyberArk and Idaptive will deliver modern identity platform with a security-first approach.

As organizations move IT resources to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and accelerate automation and digital transformation initiatives, the number of privileged credentials associated with human, application and machine identities continues to grow exponentially. And so do the risks. In modern IT environments, all identities can become privileged under certain conditions, based on the systems, environments, applications or data they are accessing, or the types of operations they are performing.

This new reality requires a new kind of Identity Security platform.Through the acquisition, CyberArk and Idaptive will deliver a

comprehensive Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based, security-first approach to managing identities that is adaptive and context-aware, and architected on the principles of Zero Trust and least privilege access, to dramatically reduce risk.

Microsoft announces acquisition of Metaswitch Networks

Microsoft has inked a definitive agreement to acquire UK-based Metaswitch Networks, a provider of virtualised network software and voice, data and communications solutions for operators, for an undisclosed sum.

The convergence of cloud and c o m m u n i c a t i o n networks presents a unique opportunity for Microsoft to serve operators globally via

continued investment in Azure,Yousef Khalidi, Corporate Vice President, Azure Networking says

that this announcement builds on their recent acquisition of Affirmed Networks, which closed on April 23. Metaswitch's complementary portfolio of ultra-high-performance, cloud-native communications software will expand their range of offerings available for the telecommunications industry.

As the industry moves to 5G, operators will have opportunities to advance the virtualization of their core networks and move forward on a path to an increasingly cloud-native future.

Microsoft aims to leverage these two organisations -- extending the Azure platform to both deploy and grow these capabilities at scale in a way that is secure, efficient and creates a sustainable ecosystem.

AWS Announces Major Enhancements to Amazon Macie

Amazon Web Services has announced a series of major enhancements to Amazon Macie, delivering important new features, greater availability worldwide, and substantially reduced pricing. The new features include updated machine learning models for more accurate detection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), support for customer-defined data types, and native multi-account management with AWS Organizations. As of today, Amazon Macie expands to 17 AWS Regions worldwide, with more regions coming online over the next few months. And, new Amazon Macie service optimizations enable customers to discover and protect their sensitive data in AWS at an 80% or greater discount compared to previous pricing. There are no additional charges or upfront commitments required to use Amazon Macie, and customers pay only for the data processed and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets evaluated.

As organizations continue to manage growing volumes of information, they need to identify and locate their sensitive data to ensure it is properly protected and being maintained in accordance with various regulatory compliance requirements.

Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet are the new hacker weapons

As many people are using video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, due to pandemic strike, hackers have registered domains according to a new report from a well known research paper. The domains could be used to pose as official links, potentially tricking people into downloading malware or accidentally giving a bad actor access to personal information.

In just the last three weeks, for example, 2,449 Zoom-related domains have been registered, the research paper determined that 32 of those domains are malicious and 320 are “suspicious.” And in one instance of attempted phishing, hackers sent an email that looks like an official email from Microsoft Teams, but a button in the email to “open” Teams was actually a malicious URL that downloaded malware to the user’s computer.

Hackers are also sending phishing emails posing as the World Health Organization with an attached file that downloads malware when clicked, the research paper said.

Indian traditional PC Shipments sees a fall by 17% YoY in 1Q20 inspite of demand from Enterprises, IDC India

According to new data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, the India traditional PC market inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations declined by -16.7% year-over-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2020 (CY 1Q20), with a total of 1.8 million shipments.

This decline was registered across all product categories and can be attributed largely to the supply issues faced by the vendors due to COVID-19, which impacted the manufacturing and logistics arms of vendors in China. The nationwide lockdown in India from the second half of March aggravated the problems further for PC vendors since it resulted in a complete halt of retail and commercial orders.

Notebooks recorded a -16.8% decline due to significant YoY contractions in the consumer and education segments. The private sector, however, posted much better results with companies advising their employees to work from home in March.

VMware hosts Connect 2020, wishes to acquire Octarine

VMware has made two key announcements during Connect 2020, the company’s annual cybersecurity user and partner conference (hosted virtually by VMware Carbon Black):

• The intent to acquire Octarine, whose innovative security platform for Kubernetes applications helps simplify DevSecOps and enables cloud native environments to be intrinsically secure, from development through runtime.

• The creation of a Next-Gen SOC Alliance along with Splunk, IBM Security, Google Cloud’s Chronicle, Exabeam, and Sumo Logic. The alliance empowers SOC teams with visibility, prevention, detection and response capabilities that can uniquely leverage the VMware fabric.

Protecting workloads is critical to the security of applications and data inside every organization. The unique properties of the cloud (speed, agility, scale) mean that developers are increasingly using Kubernetes and containers to modernize applications and changing the nature of workloads that need to be secured. As with any major technology adoption, attackers are not far behind, looking to take advantage of new risk areas.


Pitney Bowes confirms second ransomware attack in seven months

Pitney Bowes, Package and mail delivery giant, has suffered a second ransomware attack in the past seven months, as per a news report. The incident came to light after a ransomware gang known as Maze published a blog post claiming to have breached and encrypted the company's network.

The Maze crew provided proof of access in the form of 11 screenshots portraying directory listings from inside the company's computer network.

"Recently, we detected a security incident related to Maze ransomware. We are investigating the scope of the attack, specifically the type of data that had been accessed, which appears to be limited," a spokesperson said.

"At this point, there is no evidence of further unauthorised access to our IT systems," Pitney Bowes said, while also adding that "the investigation remains ongoing."

McAfee joins hand with Atlassian for advanced security capabilities

McAfee has announced collaboration with Atlassian, to bring advanced data security and threat protection to common customers looking to accelerate their move to the cloud. As a result of this collaboration, Atlassian customers can now leverage the power of McAfee MVISON Cloud to apply their security policies to their use of Atlassian services. MVISION Cloud provides visibility and control for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments, across Content Management systems and DevOps

environments, via a unified security platform which helps customers get comprehensive control over their cloud services from managed and unmanaged devices.

The need for solutions that are designed to secure the cloud are further validated within a recent McAfee report that found the average enterprise organization uses 1,400 different cloud services. As more organizations move their operations to the cloud and to remote work environments, they must evolve their security measures to meet the challenges of unintentional data uploads, device usage outside traditional network parameters, insider threats from rogue employees, application misconfiguration and more.

Cognizant buys Collaborative Solutions IT service company, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has taken

over Collaborative Solutions which specialises in Workday enterprise cloud finance and human resources services.

This move will help Cognizant to add news finance, HR and implementation services to its existing cloud offerings, Cognizant said in a statement. However, the company did not disclose the acquisition amount.

“Collaborative Solutions, with its rich expertise and leading position in the Workday ecosystem, expands our opportunity in a cloud by establishing a new practice area in this large, fast-growing market,” Greg Hyttenrauch,

President for Digital Systems and Technology at Cognizant, said.

The company also says that the transaction is expected

to close in the second quarter of this year, pending requisite approvals. US-based Collaborative Solutions, which was set up in 2003, says its Workday services platform helps deliver successful client outcomes in the finance and HR spaces. The company says it has over 1,000 employees across countries including the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.

HPE enables cloud-enabled COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced of deploying of four COVID-19 Test Labs and four Outpatient Department (OPD) Centers across the country to assist the Government of India and state governments in their efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. These facilities have been established in order to provide additional authorized testing facilities and isolation beds to manage the increased demand across the country.

Donated as part of HPE’s commitment to India announced last July, the HPE COVID-19 Test Labs are designed to enable quick and clean testing of individuals who suspect they may have contracted COVID-19, and will be based on the specifications provided by the Ministry of Science & Technology. The Test Labs will be run and managed by the concerned government agency including installing testing equipment, deploying paramedics and technicians, providing broadband connectivity, PPEs and medical supplies.

Som Satsangi, MD – India, HPE, says, “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge local communities across the world, we are responding with initiatives to support the communities where we live and work. The deployment of HPE COVID-19 Test Labs and OPD Centers will support the government’s efforts to prevent, detect and respond to COVID-19.”

Zoom acquires Keybase to focus enterprise end-to-end encryption offering

Zoom Video Communications and Keybase announce that Zoom has acquired Keybase, a secure messaging and file-sharing service. The acquisition of this exceptional team of security and encryption engineers will accelerate Zoom’s plan to build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability. Transaction Marks Key Milestone in Zoom’s 90-Day Security Plan.

Eric S. Yuan, CEO of Zoom, comments, “There are end-to-end encrypted communications platforms. There are communications platforms with easily deployable security. There are enterprise-scale communications platforms. We believe that no current platform offers all of these. This is what Zoom plans to build, giving our users security, ease of use, and scale, all at once. The first step is getting the right team together. Keybase brings deep encryption and security expertise to Zoom, and we’re thrilled to welcome Max and his team. Bringing on a cohesive group of security engineers like this significantly advances our 90-day plan to enhance our security efforts.”

Philips plans to invest Rs 300 crore, a part of Make in India initiative

Philips India in order to expand its manufacturing facilities has plans to invest around Rs 300 crore and hire around 1,000 people as part of that initiative, a top company official said.

As a part of Make-in-India initiative, the company is expanding its manufacturing facility at Chakan near Pune. Philips, celebrating its 90th anniversary in India, has already started to ship out its Affiniti range of ultrasound machines from there and has also planned to roll out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) components from the expanded facility.

The company has started manufacturing of MRI consoles, Magnetic Resonance Imaging etc. It is also exporting MRI components to various markets.

Make in India is a “strategic initiative for Philips”, which is becoming stronger from this investment in the expansion of the manufacturing capacity.

HOT BYTES


ON THE RAMP

Lenovo’s ThinkBook, taking flexibility and collaboration to a new league for today’s workforce

Lenovo’s new ThinkBook, dedicated to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) comes with new technologies that take flexibility and collaboration to a whole new level. It boasts intuitive features that modernises multitasking and redefines personal productivity.

Given the current COVID-19 scenario, modern workers need a streamlined laptop they can use to collaborate from nearly any remote

location. No other group leverages smarter technology to enhance productivity quite like the smartphone-literate workers. Nearly 60

percent of the “new workforce” have grown up working, creating and communicating online with stylish devices that make a statement. Millennials and Gen Z, who comprise of the two generations of modern workers crave meaningful employment and expect company devices that blur the lines of work, life, passion and purpose.

ThinkBook is specially designed for SMBs buying laptops for perceived design and price advantages, but also miss out on business grade features and security in the process.

Red Hat accelerates open Hybrid Cloud technologies with new offerings to fulfil customer needs

Red Hat announced new offerings to help organizations of all sizes and industries optimize, scale or simply protect IT operations in the face of shifting global dynamics.

Red Hat has long championed technology evolutions and wants to enable customers to build any application and deploy everywhere with the consistency and flexibility an open hybrid cloud foundation provides. Building on this vision, Red Hat’s new offerings are designed to improve the delivery, accessibility and stability of critical services and applications on a worldwide scale on the backbone of the hybrid cloud.

Paul Cormier, President and CEO, Red Hat says, “Perhaps more than ever before, the unique needs of every organization are in sharp focus - some need to scale operations immediately to meet relentless services demand while others seek to strengthen and maintain core IT operations. Rather than only provide technologies to address one need or the other, Red Hat provides a flexible, fully open set of solutions to our customers, meeting them where they are with what they need.”

DE-CIX India brings DirectCLOUD service DE-CIX, the internet exchange operator, is coming up with

DirectCLOUD service at their DE-CIX Mumbai location. Customers can access the DE-CIX Cloud Exchange and can connect to the global cloud services provided by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Amazon Web Services will soon be available.

“This is the first step in building an extensive Indian cloud ecosystem, which will feature both global and local service providers. We are looking forward to go beyond peering and bring our customers more value for their existing accesses to DE-CIX. More and more business-critical workloads are running in the cloud; thus, enterprises have an increasing need to get a robust, secure and private connection to these cloud infrastructures. Therefore, DE-CIX offers a Cloud Exchange with some of the most important Cloud Service Providers available allowing customers by using one physical infrastructure to access all the Cloud Service Providers they are using,” says Sudhir Kunder, Senior Vice President and National Head Sales at DE-CIX India.

Dell Technologies brings open source networking solutions Enterprise SONiC Distribution

Dell Technologies is announcing Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies, a new set of fully supported open source networking solutions that help enterprises modernize and simplify the operations and management of their data centers at scale.

As organizations increasingly rely on modern hybrid cloud models to do business, the historically monolithic and proprietary approach to networking has created inefficiencies and unneeded complexity. Dell Technologies is building off the work Microsoft spearheaded as part of the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) open source project. By integrating SONiC into the DNA of the Dell EMC PowerSwitch Open Networking hardware, Dell’s Enterprise SONiC Distribution removes complexity and creates an agile and flexible network through an approach built on open standards.

“Our customers tell us that, while a hybrid cloud approach is critical to their success, they struggle to maintain and scale their networks, and manage them to effectively avoid multiple points of failure,” says, Tom Burns, Senior VP and GM, Dell Technologies Integrated Products & Solutions.

Intel brings in 10th Gen Intel Core vPro Platform

Intel has introduced its new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, built to power the next generation of business computing innovation for the increasingly remote workforce. The new mobile and desktop

PC processors deliver increased productivity improvements, connectivity, security features and remote manageability – all to empower IT to deliver amazing experiences, helping employees stay connected, more productive, more secure and in the flow with minimal interruptions.

Stephanie Hallford, Intel vice president of the Client Computing Group and general manager of Business Client Platforms, comments, “Built for business, the Intel vPro platform is a comprehensive PC foundation for performance, hardware-enhanced security, manageability and stability. With our new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, we’ve enhanced that solid PC foundation to help tackle not only today’s challenges, but also those of future work environments across the PC lifecycle.”

For more than a decade, the Intel vPro platform has empowered IT to help businesses, that dedication continues to expand through the latest Intel vPro platform, powered by 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors, to deliver uncompromised productivity, hardware-based security features and a foundation for computing innovation.

Vertiv launches Liebert cPDU a compact, pre-packaged power management system

Vertiv has introduced Liebert cPDU, a reliable and affordable power management solution for critical computer rooms, LANS/WANS, communication facilities and manufacturing divisions. Housed in a single, self-contained cabinet, the system combines distribution, computer-grade grounding, and branch circuit power monitoring to provide clean and monitored power to vital electronic equipment. The Liebert cPDU is available in India, in 20-80 kVA capacities.

The Liebert cPDU’s combination of performance features, including custom tailored power system, and compact footprint, make it ideal for delivering monitored power in a wide range of applications from IT and manufacturing, to retail and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI). It offers the benefits of a custom-tailored power system, with the convenience and cost savings of a pre-packaged, factory tested unit.

Fully compatible with the non-linear loads of modern computer systems and other electronic equipment, the Liebert cPDU automatically establishes a single point ground to meet the grounding recommendations of major electronics manufacturers' and the National Electric Code.


ON THE RAMP

Veeam enterprise-ready Cloud Backup and Recovery Solution for Microsoft Azure now available

Veeam Software announced the general availability of NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, an enterprise-ready cloud backup and recovery solution. This new offering will enable customers and service providers to move more applications and data to Azure, and to cost-effectively, securely, and easily protect cloud applications and data in Azure. In addition, Veeam’s portable backup format enables complete Cloud Mobility – including backup, recovery, and migration – across a multi-cloud environment.

Public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), such as Microsoft Azure, continues to rapidly grow in adoption for production IT workloads. Even with public cloud IaaS, while the uptime of the infrastructure is guaranteed by the service provider, the customer is still responsible for not only their data, but also protecting that data against threats such as ransomware, accidental deletion, data corruption or rogue users, just as it is with customers’ on-premises data. With NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, Veeam extends its broad platform support with a comprehensive, enterprise-ready solution for added backup and recovery controls of Azure apps and data hosted on Azure virtual machines.

Citrix extends Remote PC Access offeringsCitrix Systems has announced that it is extending its globally leveraged

Remote PC Access solution to the cloud, making it available as part of Citrix Desktop Service and Citrix Desktop Essentials. The move enables organizations of all sizes to deliver a familiar virtual desktop and high-performance experience that empowers employees to safely access all the

apps, information and resources they need to perform at their best while working remotely.

Mark Bowker, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group, comments, “Businesses that rush solutions to accommodate remote work face security risks,

questionable impact to productivity, and unknown network issues. As companies work through addressing any shortcomings, now is an ideal time to consider VDI and other digital workspace technologies that can deliver a secure and productive experience for employees who are working from home.”

A Simple, Secure and Reliable SolutionWith Citrix Remote PC Access, IT organizations can quickly and easily

deliver a full virtual desktop experience to employees by installing a small client (VDA) that allows users to securely remote into their Windows or Linux PCs from anywhere using virtually any device.

NETGEAR brings one year Insight Management Solution

NETGEAR has announced the inclusion of a free one-year Insight subscription with the registration of selected list of Insight Managed switches, wireless Access Point and Routers. The offer applies to all devices added on or after April 27, 2020, for both new and existing Insight accounts.

NETGEAR Insight is an industry-first remote network and device management solution that provides easy plug-and-play set-up and management using its cloud portal or the intuitive Insight mobile app. The Insight cloud-based application, designed for remote network management is especially well suited for the current environment that both IT teams and managed service providers are now required to address. Providing a broad variety of configurations and network scenarios, the Insight application supports everything from the most basic of networks, through to multi-tenancy and multi-roles.

Marthesh Nagendra, Country Manager India, ME & SAARC, NETGEAR comments, "At NETGEAR, our key focus is to meet the demands of our customers and provide businesses a platform where they can manage numerous customers remotely which makes it possible for the SMEs to seamlessly access all the information to ensure the business is running smoothly."

Nutanix brings VDI service to help promote telework adoption

Nutanix announced a new VDI service to help promote telework adoption among Indian organizations. Nutanix ‘FastTrack for VDI’ brings together Nutanix HCI and software with selected partners to accelerate and optimise a VDI service in just a few weeks.

As the nation’s businesses continue to battle the impact of COVID-19, many still struggle to enable their workforces to operate and function remotely while still maintaining access to the same tools and applications they require to be productive and efficient. Hence, the increasing interest and importance of VDI.

Building VDI environments to effectively maintain core business and technical operations frequently takes up to a few months. But, Nutanix ‘FastTrack for VDI’ can reduce that to a matter of weeks.

Nutanix FastTrack for VDI helps to address these challenges while supporting local businesses to continue their DX journey in these times of uncertainty. It allows remote access to critical business applications, even via BYOD devices and strict security policies can be implemented and managed through its simple management console.

UiPath Announces ServiceNow integrationUiPath has announced an integration with ServiceNow to extend the

value of automation across the enterprise. Leveraging the companies’ deep and dynamic integration to easily and securely automate complete and complex workflows in and around ServiceNow, UiPath and ServiceNow enable organizations to achieve business-wide digital transformation to improve efficiency, innovate to remain competitive, and reimagine the IT, employee and customer experience.

In a bid to support, end-to-end hyperautomation platform with the ServiceNow Now Platform and products to help enterprises become digital businesses faster, Worldwide, companies are focused on delivering great customer and employee experiences. And behind every great experience is a great workflow. With its bi-directional integration, UiPath and ServiceNow are making it easy for employees and customers to quickly and easily make decisions, solve problems, find answers, and automate tasks – making their lives at work simple, easy and convenient.

Oracle enables HR teams to boost performance with its Analytics for Fusion HCM

Now more than ever, organizations need to draw actionable insights from their data to enhance decision making and boost business performance. To help HR teams achieve that goal, Oracle announced its Analytics for Fusion HCM.

The new self-service analytics capabilities help customers maximize the value of Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud. Built on Oracle Analytics Cloud and powered by Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Analytics for Fusion HCM provides HR teams with deeper insights into workforce management by enabling a comprehensive view into data from across the organization. “In today’s volatile business environment, HR has become a key strategic business partner for the organization,” said T.K. Anand, Senior Vice President, Oracle Analytics. “With Oracle Analytics for Fusion HCM, customers are now able to leverage out-of-the-box HR analytics to gain unprecedented intelligence and reduce the organization’s reliance on IT. This allows for closer collaboration between HR and other key business units—such as finance—to help our customers navigate uncertain times and position them for sustained business growth.”


VOICE-N-DATA

General Atlantic to invest ` 6,598.38 crores in Jio Platforms

Reliance Industries Limited and Jio Platforms Limited have announced an investment of ` 6,598.38 crore by General Atlantic, a leading global

growth equity firm. This investment values Jio Platforms at an equity value of ̀ 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of ` 5.16 lakh crore. General Atlantic’s investment will translate into a 1.34% equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. With this investment, Jio Platforms has raised ` 67,194.75 crore from leading technology investors including Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners and General Atlantic in less than four weeks.

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, says, “I am thrilled to welcome General Atlantic, a marquee

global investor, as a valued partner. I have known General Atlantic for several decades and greatly admired it for its belief in India’s huge growth potential. General Atlantic shares our vision of a Digital Society for India and strongly believes in the transformative power of digitization in enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians. We are excited to leverage General Atlantic’s proven global expertise and strategic insights across 40 years of technology investing for the benefit of Jio.”

Vodafone Idea offers customer service on WhatsApp through VIC

Vodafone Idea launched VIC - a revolutionary AI-powered digital customer service and support virtual assistant for its customers. It is now live on the Websites, My Vodafone and My Idea Apps, and on one of the most popular messaging app, WhatsApp.

The service has been developed for Vodafone Idea on cutting-edge technology by ORISERVE, a start-up in stealth mode. Through this initiative, Vodafone Idea has further simplified access for customers to get their queries, service requirements catered to, from the comfort of their homes. VIC enables Vodafone and Idea customers to get instant response on a host of service requirements including bill payments, recharges, VAS, plan activation, new connection, data balance, bill requests and much more.

VIC is intuitive, simple-to-use, secure and allows customers to converse with Vodafone Idea by leveraging the power of tomorrow’s technology, today. With people confined to their homes, life has moved on to the virtual/digital plane for people across demographics. In response to the needs of the times, Vodafone Idea VIC Virtual Assistant can be accessed 24x7, providing seamless service addressal and uniform customer experience for both, Vodafone and Idea customers.

Despite controversy, BSNL places 4G equipment order with Nokia, ZTE

As per news report, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to place a new order for 4G equipment to Nokia and ZTE in order to upgrade over 49,000 2G and 3G sites across the country.

The move follows recent obstacles faced by the ailing BSNL related to its phase nine 4G expansion tender for 50,000 new 4G sites.

The home-grown vendors via their representative body TEPC (The Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council) had alleged that they were not consulted before the operator floats this tender. They said that terms of this tender exclude them from bidding, and favours Chinese vendors like ZTE, besides flouting the Indian government’s ‘Make in India’ norms under the Public Procurement

(Preference to Make in India) Order 2017.After this, the tendor has been put on hold. India’s Commerce Ministry

asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the state-run telco, BSNL to do so.

Apple acquires virtual reality company NextVR

According to a news report, Apple has purchased NextVR, which is best known for its past work with the NBA. The two had worked together to produce and broadcast basketball games and highlights in virtual reality.

Apple didn't disclose the terms of the deal, but a report last month estimated the company had paid $100 million to acquire NextVR. It's not clear what Apple plans to do with NextVR's expertise, but that same report from 9to5Mac said Apple had asked NextVR's engineers to relocate to Cupertino.

For the past several years there have been rumors that Apple has been working on an augmented headset, but that device has yet to materialize. In fact, aside from its ARKit framework, which developers can use to create augmented reality experiences for iOS, the company has mostly been quiet on the VR and AR front.

SC announces WhatsApp Pay to be launched only after RBI nod

WhatsApp has assured the Supreme Court that it would not launch its payment gateway, WhatsApp Pay, before getting the approval of the Reserve Bank of India.

Kapil Sibal, Senior Advocate has made the statement on behalf of the messaging platform, before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde. The three-judge bench then clarified that there was no stay on WhatsApp’s application pending with the government.

The Supreme Court was dealing with a petition filed by NGO Good Governance Chambers, seeking to restrain the government from allowing WhatsApp and Facebook to operate payment gateways. The petition claimed that the reach of WhatsApp and Facebook represented a real threat to the security of financial information that would pass on to them. The court recorded Sibal’s statement, and issued notices to the National Payments Corporation of India, the RBI and the government seeking their formal legal stand on the issue. They will have to respond within three week.

Airtel inks multi-year deal with Nokia to enhance network capacity and customer experience

Nokia and Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) announced a multi-year agreement to deploy Nokia’s SRAN solution across 9 circles1 in India, helping Airtel to enhance the network capacity of its networks, in particular 4G, and improve customer experience.

The rollout, which will also lay the foundation for providing 5G connectivity in the future, will see approximately 300,000 radio units deployed across several spectrum bands, including 900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz, 2100 Mhz and 2300 Mhz, and is expected to be completed by 2022.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia) at Bharti Airtel, said, “Airtel has consistently topped network performance charts in studies conducted by multiple global experts. We are committed to continuously invest in emerging network technologies to provide a best-in-class experience to our customers. This initiative with Nokia is a major step in this direction. We have been working with Nokia for more than a decade now and are delighted to use Nokia’s SRAN products in further improving the capacity and coverage of our network as we prepare for the 5G era.”


CHANNEL BUZZ

RP tech India's Green & Orange Zone Offers gave Impetus to Channel Business: Partners

RP tech India’s Green and Orange zone offers received an overwhelming response from channel partners across India. Over 500 partners in more than 250 cities benefitted from the offers announced between 4th-16th May. Appreciating RP tech’s proactive step, partners said that the initiative provided an impetus to the channel business during Corona crisis and subsequent lockdown.

RP tech India successfully concluded Green and Orange Zone offers for all India channel partners. Under the offers, partners were eligible for various rewards on the achievement of certain turnover from RP tech during the offer period. Valid on Peripherals, Components and Accessories brands from RP tech Portfolio, the offers were divided into the various slab to ensure maximum participation from partners.

Akhilesh Goyal, Proprietor of Hubli based Goyal Infotronics, said, “The Orange zone offer helped me to restart business and reduce losses I incurred in the last 2 months. I am thankful to RP tech India’s local team for their support in the timely delivery of material. These kind of offers are essential to boost confidence of channel partners and help them sustain in the business. I thank RP tech for the steps they have taken to support channel partners during the COVID -19 crisis.”

Sanjay Sharda, Proprietor of Sangali based Sun Art Studio, said, “The offer helped me in getting my business back on the track. Their prompt material delivery and service support helped me get good business during the offer period. The initiative was fantastic, however, I would appreciate if they provide clarity on products availability and offer multiple SKUs options in future.”

Endpoint Protector boosts its Channel Partner Program to increase the adoption of DLP Solutions

Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys strengths its ‘Channel Partner Program’ to bridge connect and establish understanding on why the Data Loss Prevention Solutions are business-relevant and should be in priority. The company plans to focus on several industries, such as the BFSI segment, IT, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Pharma, where the adoption of the right technology is a complete must.

With a customer-first vision, the program aims to strengthen and widen its existing network across India and educate all partners with the right guidance, to accelerate the adoption of a data protection strategy that works for enterprises. Regular Virtual engagement activities and training sessions with the channel partners are planned to establish a healthy relationship and work together during this worldwide Crisis.

Filip Cotfas, Channel Manager at Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys says, “With Covid19, businesses have never been more at risk of data breaches. The Crisis today has taught businesses worldwide the importance of Data Loss Prevention solutions, and how its right adoption can help seamless functioning in any given situation. Taking the cues, from the current situation, Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys, with its Educational framework, aims to reinvigorate the adoption of the Data Loss Prevention solutions in India.”

With this, Endpoint Protector by CoSoSys plans to amplify its presence in India, by tapping into untouched regions, where adding more channel partners would be a big leap for businesses. The company shall lay special emphasis in the BFSI sector, being the most vulnerable, especially in the current situation where the country is seeing the increased data breaches surrounding the COVID19 pandemic.

Pitney Bowes celebrates its 100 Years Pitney Bowes marks 100 years of delivering innovative products

and solutions to drive commerce. The 100th anniversary is a remarkable milestone for a company that began in 1920, when Arthur Pitney, the inventor, and Walter Bowes, the promoter, first met and put their ideas together to invent the first postage meter -- the award-winning Model M, creating the “metered mail” market and a new industry with it.

Marc B. Lautenbach, president and CEO, comments, “Throughout our 100 years, we have supported millions of clients around the world, contributed significantly to our communities where we live and work, and invented industries and business models that have endured and evolved for decade. Today, we are leveraging our core mailing and related financial services capabilities to provide shipping and strategic capital to help our clients grow their business. You don’t reach 100 years in business without facing challenges, disruption and uncertainty at one time or another. Throughout our long and storied history, we have confronted difficult times, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Great Recession of 2008, and each time we have come out stronger. The pandemic has disrupted every sense of normalcy around the world, impacting the lives of many. Our primary concern remains protecting the welfare and safety of our employees, especially our ‘essential critical infrastructure workers’ who serve our clients every day. Through this global crisis, our teams continue to carry great pride in the work they do to power commerce and secure the foundation we’ve built for our second century.”

Ingram Micro to distribute Check Point’s security solutions in India

Ingram Micro India has inked an agreement with Check Point Software Technologies. Given the rapidly increasing velocity and complexity of cyber-attacks, Ingram Micro aims to provide organizations in India even more choice to find security solutions that are best suited for their requirements.

Commenting on the engagement, Navneet Singh Bindra, Executive Director, Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro India & SAARC remarked, “Data is the most valuable asset

of organizations in today's digital economy and they need to protect themselves from cyber-attacks designed for data theft. Cybersecurity is critical for businesses as it provides comprehensive digital protection from a wide range of threats. We are pleased to offer Check Point cybersecurity solutions spanning network, data, endpoint, cloud and mobile technologies that can be leveraged by channel partners to protect their customers against the most advanced attacks.”

Check Point Software Technologies’ solutions protect customers from 5th and 6th generation cyber-attacks with an industry leading catch rate for malware, ransomware and advanced targeted threats. It also offers the most comprehensive and cutting-edge cyber security technology across network, data, endpoints, cloud and mobile.


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ACER LEVERAGING ITS E-STORE FACILITY TO SERVE CUSTOMERS AMIDST PANDEMIC

In this unprecedented time when the entire nation is undergoing a lockdown to curb the spread of global pandemic, the novel Coronavirus, Acer is leveraging its e-store to facilitate its customer’s omnichannel through partners. This initiative will help customers to purchase products easily, keep partners and customers safe, and promote business continuity.

“As one of the top ICT companies, our channel strategy is always aimed at providing a clear vision and many others. During this volatile time, we are leveraging our e-store to further accelerate our customer’s omnichannel through our partners. This special initiative is built to ensure ease of purchase, keep partners and customers safe, and promote business continuity. This is a future-ready experience enabling our customers and channel partners in the post-COVID world. We have always relied deeply on our channel partners for engaging with our potential and already existing customers. Hence, we are committed to ensuring that there is no disruption to their competence to run business and serve their customers,” says ChandrahasPanigrahi, CMO, and Consumer Business Head, Acer India.

At this intense situation, Acer is bracing up to increase the operations so that it can fulfil the requirements of its buyers and sellers. It is also enabling its partner’s business and workforce by making products available for consumers and provide contactless delivery.

“Acer is preparing to scale up operations to meet the requirements of its users, both buyers and sellers. We are serving hundreds of sellers and thousands of small businesses across India and helping them prepare their business and workforce to make products available for consumers in this time of need and provide contactless delivery.

We see a strong pipeline of orders for laptops and desktops and work-from-home accessories such as headsets, mouse, notebooks, etc. Our seller support team is providing guidance and on-ground support to sellers on our platform to help them resume operations. Considering the current situation, our supply chain team continues to maintain an intense focus on safety and health procedures in our facilities and staff that will support the movement of products for sellers,” highlights ChandrahasPanigrahi.

In a chat with VARINDIA, Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO, and Consumer Business Head, Acer India mentions how Acer is leveraging its e-store facility, scaling up its operations to help its partners and their workforce to meet the demands in this severe time


ENSURING BUSINESS CONTINUITY AMIDST CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

There are a lot of companies which are right now providing work from home for employees. Sophos is ensuring that all of their customers are safe and secure from all kinds of cyber-criminal activities. During COVID-19 time, researchers have found that activities of the cyber criminals have increased.

On ensuring security, Sunil says, “All kind of threat and phishing emails, which are primarily today being targeted around COVID-19. Sophos is there to secure them with the help of our product profile, portfolio, which is cloud based security. Primarily, we are offering our customers Sophos Central, Intercept X advanced, which is on top of any basic antivirus or anti ransomware anti exploit. We are preventing and making sure that our customers are not being impacted.”

CHALLENGES AND SUPPORT FOR WFH

In a normal circumstance when usually employees work from office, then they are being secured by their local firewalls and local area network settings, done by the local IT admin. But as employees work remotely neither their access point is secure nor the laptop as they might be working off their personal laptop where endpoint security is not available. VPN connectivity is also a major challenge for the remote employees.

Praising his team Sunil comments, “Sophos and I are so proud that we have our brief sales team across the country, our support staff across the globe and we are supporting our customers 24x7. Different challenges are being faced by customers while working from home in comparison to what they used to while working from office. All our team members are available from 9-9:30 to 7-7:30 every day. They are continuously, consistently working with 3rd parties, with our partner, webinars etc. we are doing a lot of work. It is multiple webinars running at one time. And that is been a roaring success for us, which we were able to do. Primarily for our emotional connect with our partners, they are so excited about

SOPHOS CONTINUES TO SUPPORT AND SAFEGUARD ITS CUSTOMERS FROM CYBER-ATTACKS DURING

WORK FROM HOME

and the content which we deliver.We are adding to the knowledge and our happiness is over the moon.”

TO BOOST THE ECONOMY FURTHER

Sunil feels Sophos is a small cog in the wheel of Economy. Sophos is trying to keep the economy alive while they are working from home.

Sharing his observations on the economic perspective Sunil says, “I think it all depends on the worldwide economy, on how Indiacan start working early. The situation is pretty bad in terms of infections, no solution, there is no destination available and so it will take a bit of time. Even if you look at the International Monetary Fund about almost $9 trillion to impact and the worldwide economy will be shrunk by 3%. There is no doubt; this is going to be a huge impact. I may not be an economist to give the right figures for India.”

MESSAGE TO PARTNERS

Delivering a message to his partners Sunil wishes them for a healthy and safe life and boosts them in this unprecedented time. Through this message Sunil Sharma not only boosts the partners but also shows a way to survive in this tough time.

In his concluding words Sunil says, “All my partners stay safe and stay healthy and never ever give up. We are going through some tough times. And there are more tough times ahead. But keep moving. Keep talking to your customers and keep helping them. These are unprecedented times. Keep helping them and have a smile. I also understood from one of the story that when you go through a pain and if you have a smile, it releases a chemical called dopamine in your body which actually helps you to get relief from that pain. We have to do that job.” n

AS WORK FROM HOME IS BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL FOR MILLIONS OF INDIAN PROFESSIONALS, SOPHOS IS ENSURING THEIR CUSTOMERS’ SAFETY AND SECURITY FROM ALL KINDS OF CYBER-CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES AMIDST THIS PANDEMIC. WITH 25 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN IT & TELECOM INDUSTRY, SUNIL SHARMA - MD SALES - SOPHOS INDIA & SAARC HAS SHARED HIS VALUABLE OPINION ON THE BUSINESS CONTINUITY, ENABLING SECURITY FOR THE EMPLOYEES WHILE WORK FROM HOME IN A CHAT WITH VARINDIA.

SUNIL SHARMA MD SALES

SOPHOS INDIA & SAARC

FACE TO FACE


Cadyce provides a plethora of reliable networking solutions and hardware devices that efficiently work in the most demanding business and mobile environments. The extensive line of products offered includes Serial Communication Cards, Internet Cameras, Presentation Devices, USB Accessories, Apple accessories, and the like.

Mobile phones have become an important part of our daily lives and if it is running out of charge while we are on the go then it becomes very difficult. To prevent such a mishap, wireless charging docks have proved to be a blessing in disguise.

ERA OF THE WIRELESS:Wireless charging docks allow users to charge their devices in the

absence of a charging port or power outlet. Power is transferred to the users’ mobile devices without any connecting cable. This is done with the help of a power transmitting pad and a receiver, which is attached to the mobile device or in-built. Electricity is modulated to make sure that the charging pad and the battery can communicate with each other. In this way, the charger verifies that a valid battery is in place before power is transmitted. Wireless charging allows easy and fast charging without the hassle of USB cables, adapters, and power outlets. People do not have to depend on the availability of power outlets or wired charger while on the go.

Cadyce’s CA-WCHP wireless charging dock is based on Qi technology and adds HDMI and USB ports to computers and charges compatible smartphones wirelessly.

● The device uses inductive charging technology● It supports 5W/7.5W/10W Max output. ● It is compatible with both Windows OS as well as Mac OS. ● Cadyce’s CA-WCHP wireless charging dock can charge phones without even having to

remove the phone cases. Moreover, the device has an anti-slip surface, which provides maximum protection from the device falling or slipping.

● CA-WCHP is small and handy. It is about 8.5 cm x 0.7 cm and weighs around 125g. With LED indicators, the device quickly notifies the users about the status of the operation. It is a solid white while the charging is on, and the white light flashes when an incompatible device is connected.

CA-WCHP - USB-C Docking Station with Wireless ChargingSTYLE MEETS EFFICIENCY

WHY SHOULD YOU CHOOSE CADYCE?

Priced at INR 6999, Cadyce’s CA-WCHP wireless charging dock has a plethora of advanced features. If you are looking for a one-stop hassle-free charging solution for your smartphone, Cadyce’s CA-WCHP wireless charging dock is your go-to option. The multiple slots for cables, excellent HDMI resolution,

convenient dimensions, LED indicators, and various compatible operating systems set it apart from other wireless charging docks in the market. Being certified by CE, FCC, RoHS, it is one of the best wireless charging docks available in the market.

FACE TO FACE

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

GEARING UP FOR THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY 4.0Industry 4.0 has assumed a critical

consideration in the overall scheme of things of the business ecosystem in general and industrial as well as the manufacturing domain in particular. What started as connecting the unconnected i.e. the physical components transformed into a digital ecosystem through the use of IIoT, has now evolved to reach a scale that goes well beyond the first generation of Industry 4.0.

For instance, business demands or rather expectations from Industry 4.0 encompass aspects such as work environment safety, industrial analytics, optimum supply chain management, pre-empting cyber-attacks, and enabling smart factories to cite a few. Thus Industry 4.0 is now expected to possess capabilities that not only enhance operations but also institutionalize business excellence.

The evolved version of Industry 4.0 includes under its purview use of new-age concepts such as 3D printing that have the capability to score high on not only operational

focus on Digital Manufacturing Solutions integrating Product Lifecycle Management, Manufacturing Operations, Manufacturing Engineering, Asset Management and Product Information Management thereby creating a value-based digital transformation roadmap.

aspects but also strategic objectives such as go-to-market. This proves that Industry 4.0 has advanced to assist product launches at optimum cost reduction ratios. The purview of Industry 4.0 now extends beyond support to assume a consultative role to the extent that businesses are able to redefine their revenue modules altogether.

Additionally, with change being the only constant, the requirement of businesses has evolved as well with parameters such as scalability challenges, diminishing role of humans, and uncertain return on investments faced by manufacturing players assuming high priority. These are being addressed by Industry 4.0, by adopting a solution-based, human-centric scalable approach to smart factories.

The next generation of Industry 4.0 involves an approach that is more human-centric and RoI-driven including making it possible to scale digital even in a factory setup. The evolved version of Industry 4.0 puts

By Dr. Keshab PandaCEO and Managing Director, L&T Technology Services


BRIGHTCOVE LEVERAGES CLOUD SOLUTIONS TO ENABLE CUSTOMERS TO SAVE COSTS, INCREASE REVENUE

AND TO TRANSFORM USER EXPERIENCE

INCREASING USE OF VIDEO STREAMINGBrightcove being a global leader in the Online Video Platform (OVP) space is a pioneer in

this space. In Vinit’s words Brightcove was founded a whole year before YouTube was formed. In terms of video technology and the video expertise, Brightcove is looked upon as the torch bearer of any innovation as well, in video streaming. If an OTT platform, an enterprise, a brand, an e-commerce or e-learning platform users want to stream video while making sure the economics, the price and affordability are within their range. Brightcove is very conscious of innovating with technology that will enable their customers to save costs, to increase revenue or to transform the user experience such that their customers get the most seamless experience when they hit the play button.

Delving deep in the use of online video streaming Vinit Mehta discusses about this platform. According to him, media and entertainment is the bread and butter. “Video does very well in media and entertainment but now we’re also finding out that enterprises along with e-commerce and e-learning guys are increasingly using video. They have been using videos for employee on-boarding, training, interviews, CEOs, subject matter expert analysis, so on and so forth. There is a video use case emerging in pretty much everything in life and the current situation is only giving it a boost.”

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY ON GLOBAL STANDPOINTPrimarily based in Mumbai and Chennai,Brightcove claims to be upwards of $170 million in

sales business wise. With more than 650 employees, in 14 countries across the world the company is headquarteredin Boston.

Vinit points out, “Our go-to market has traditionally been media organizations such as news channels, broadcasters, online publishers and OTT platforms. Now, over the last one and half to two years, we have seen increasing interest from e-learning and e-commerce portals as they want video on their site to communicate product knowledge and information. In the US, we have Home Depot as a customer, which shows people using different tools. Home Depot is the largest vendor of tools which can be used in Do-it-Yourself or DIY projects. The US is the largest market for DIY projects. They have video which depict different tools which can be used to make a bed or a chair. Many companies in India are approaching us to use video in innovative ways to communicate a message.”

FOR ENTERPRISESFor enterprises the company has recently launched a suite of products which enable businesses

to manage business continuity operations in these times. Brightcove comes with secure video workflows managing communications, events. In terms of scalability and security, Brightcove is one of the best in the business. It engages viewers with interactive elements and provides security and analytics all bundled in. That’s an offering called Brightcove Continuum. It is a suite of video products owned by us which will enable businesses ensure continuity by having video tools at their disposal.

ON LAUNCHING OTT PLATFORMSBrightcove helps customers launch websites, mobile apps, smart tv apps really fast. Brightcove

Beacon is meant for customers who want to launch an OTT platform. Usually, testing and launch periods in such cases is at least six months. Brightcove Beacon is a plug and play product which gives users the front end and the back end for video streaming called Video cloud as well as the payment partner to enablethem to launch the OTT app within 10-12 weeks max.

On launching videos, Vinit comments, “The CDN bit or the last mile delivery bit is getting commoditized a little bit, in terms of the bits delivered. But we always try and innovate as seen with products such as Brightcove Continuum. There’s another product we have launched

An online video platform, Brightcove provides cloud solutions for online video streaming to broadcasters, publishers, brands, content creators, e-learning companies, e-commerce organizations. With technologies like AI, ML and a specific technology called Context Aware Encoding, which is Brightcove’s patent pending technology, Brightcove is regulating the opportunity to save costs on bandwidth and storage. In a chat with VARINDIA, Vinit Mehta, Country Manager-India, Brightcove has spoken up about the surging use of videos, technologies used by the company and its global standpoint.

Brightcove Beacon, where if you’re a content owner and want to launch an OTT platform in the media and entertainment space, we enable you to launch apps on their website, mobile phone, smart TVs really fast.

PRODUCTS USED BY THE COMPANY

Brightcove Video Cloud is the fundamental product around which the other products are built around. It serves as the backend in the cloud which manages your workflow. On top of that, the company has different product stacks like Brightcove Live which is a product grade based live streaming solution. It enables broadcasters and publishers to stream live events or 24x7 live channels online.

Vinit elaborates, “We also have Brightcove Engage. If you’re an organization and you want to communicate with your employees through video. Then you can launch apps which have a single sign-on and security required for enterprise and you can have training videos, employee on-boarding videos, live townhalls all on an app. Without developing an app you can actually launch an app within two or three weeks with this technology. Brightcove Engage gives you a white-labelled app which you can give to employees, with your company name along with videos, so they feel connected to the organization. Brightcove Continuum is meant primarily for internal communications. With all our offerings, companies can have live events, very quickly.”

AT LASTIn his concluding words Vinit says people

come to Brightcove for their experience in video cloud and video streaming. They have an innovative product line and top experts on board which have helped several large organizations leverage video streaming which is simple to use, seamless and scalable. n

VINIT MEHTACountry Manager-India, Brightcove

FACE TO FACE


What is the current scope of photography in India? What kind of future do you foresee?

Photography as an art has grown by leaps and bounds, and it continues to grow. It has become a part of our everyday life as our eagerness to keep preserving memories has been one of the most vital factors in the growth of photography, both as a hobby and as a profession. This has in fact contributed towards the evolution of photography as we have so many genres sprouting from an art form, both established and emerging such as wedding, wildlife, lifestyle, fashion, documentary, cinema and more.

Furthermore, the massive adoption of social media and video blogging in India has acted as a catalyst in the growth of photography industry. The proliferation of imaging culture has led to an increased demand of new and innovative products in the industry, as users are constantly looking for breakthrough technologies to meet their photography requirements. This proves to be a great opportunity for us and the industry at large, thereby making it a responsibility of camera manufacturers like us, to keep innovating and expand our product portfolio to suit the evolving needs of our vast consumer base.

How has the proliferation of high-end smartphones with impressive camera features affected the rise of the digital camera market?

In the past few years, the penetration of smartphones in India has increased significantly. While the intent was to keep people connected, eventually camera became the key selling point for the majority of smartphone brands. This in fact led to a noticeable contribution to the propagation of imaging culture in the country, as consumers heartily responded with their intent to explore visual expression. However, in case of smartphone photography, the scope and the opportunities are limited and this is where DSLR and Mirrorless Camera photography comes in. Smartphone photography is exactly the right kind of hook for people to explore their love for photography, while their passion for photography is satiated by DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras. As one of the leading imaging brands globally, our growing focus is to cater to the demand of photography enthusiasts who want to graduate from smartphone photography. From a product perspective, cameras are equipped to offer unique imaging aesthetics and are always a value-add for a user, as compared to

“OUR GROWING FOCUS IS TO CATER TO THE DEMAND OF PHOTOGRAPHY ENTHUSIASTS WHO WANT TO GRADUATE FROM SMARTPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY”

brand presence and therefore considered as our extended family. Given this, we work closely with our channel partners and Value-Added Resellers in all the major cities for our product portfolio and large consumer base. We plan to reach out to tier I tier II and tier III markets through sustained marketing campaign, easy finance offers and add-on solutions. Currently, Canon camera products are available at over 150+ exclusive Canon Image Squares (CIS), 1200+Multi Brand Outlets (MBOs) and over 550+ National Retail Chains outlets.

How do you try to transform your channel from time to time through new channel initiatives and programs?

With the rapidly evolving channel industry, it is imperative for us to keep in line with the new technologies. Since digital cameras as specialized products, training plays an important role in keep our partners updated with the latest technologies. We organize both classroom and online training on both products and our latest technologies.

Canon also supports select outlets with trained in-shop demonstrators to explain features and to provide live demos to customers.

Affordability is key and Canon in tie-up with leading banks provide the facility of easy EMI through select retail outlets. n

a smartphone. For instance, one of the unique advantages of a conventional camera against a smartphone, is the presence of an ecosystem of diverse lenses and accessories that heightens the user experience manifolds.

Could you throw some light on Canon’s camera offerings in India? What are some of the best performing cameras by Canon in India?

At Canon, we are focused on increased innovation in alignment with our customers’ changing demands and preferences. We are a customer centric business and our strategy is based on consumer buying patterns and insights, hence we have what is called a ‘full lineup strategy’. As part of this strategy, we want to cater to all of the demands in the market, so we have mirrorless and DSLR, which combined over 60+ lenses and range of speedlites completes the EOS system, thereby aiming to plug the gap and suit customer demands across product options and price bands. From a user segmentation perspective, we offer a wide array of products across genres that cuts across segments from beginners to professionals.

Among the popular models are the legendary and ground-breaking professional cameras EOS 1DXMKIII and EOS 5DMK IV. In the mirrorless category, EOS R along with our new range of RF lenses is gaining huge popularity among professionals.

In the mid segment, both EOS 80D and the new EOS 90D are the superheroes while the mirrorless EOS RP is now breaking new sales records.

In the consumer category, EOS 200DMKII, EOS 1500D and EOS 3000D are our best selling products.

Canon has maintained No. 1 share of the global market for 17 consecutive years (2003-2019) in interchangeable lens digital camera category.

What is your retail and channel strategy for the camera portfolio in 2020? How do you plan to expand it further?

Channel Partners are considered as one of the most key elements of Canon’s ecosystem in India. They are an extension to our overall

IN A CHAT WITH VARINDIA, C SUKUMARAN, DIRECTOR - CONSUMER SYSTEM PRODUCTS DIVISION & IMAGE COMMUNICATION PRODUCTS DIVISION, CANON TALKS ABOUT THE PRESENT PHOTOGRAPHY LANDSCAPE OF THE COUNTRY, HOW HIGH-END SMARTPHONES WITH RICH CAMERA QUALITY AFFECTING DIGITAL CAMERA MARKET, PRODUCT PORTFOLIO, CHANNELS STRATEGY ETC.

C SUKUMARANDIRECTOR - CONSUMER SYSTEM PRODUCTS

DIVISION & IMAGE COMMUNICATION PRODUCTS DIVISION, CANON

FACE TO FACE


CTRLS EMERGING AS WORLD’S LARGEST RATED-4 HYPERSCALE DATACENTER PLAYER

TODAY, DATA CENTERS ARE THE ENABLERS OF INDIAN DIGITAL ECONOMY. THEY WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE IN ENABLING THE NETIZENS IN INDIA AS ALL CLOUD PLAYERS, E-COMMERCE PLAYERS, BANKS, INSURANCE COMPANIES, GAMING, OTT PLAYERS ARE HOSTED IN THIRD PARTY DATA CENTERS

How is the datacentre industry growing worldwide, Could India to be the next hub for massive growth of Data center in Asia? What kind of growth you see and do you think there is demand supply gap?

World over there are an estimated 7.5 million data centers. This includes on-premise as well as service provider data centers. However, there are just about 500 Hyperscale data centers globally and we own six of them in India. Secondly, India is well endowed with a 1.38 billion population, hence consumption is driving the economy. COVID-19 has certainly disrupted us at the moment, but once we recover from the same, India’s consumption will continue to grow.

VAR CORPORATE

Sridhar PinnapureddyFounder and CEO

CtrlS Datacenters Ltd.


As far as the demand-supply is concerned, India enjoys a data center footprint of 5.9 million square feet.

What is your take on data centers as the key enabler to success of India’s digital economy?

With 450 million social media users, 627 million internet users, we are amongst the largest consumers of internet, which is why you Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime have become a household name in the country. Applications such as WhatsApp, PayTM, Google Pay have revolutionized the way we communicate and transact money. India also has the highest average data usage consumption per smartphone at 9.8 GB per month.

Our per capita data consumption is estimated at 11 GB per month and this is likely to grow to 30 GB in less than five years. This very growth will see rise in online transactions, e-commerce purchases, social engagement, watching movies online, internet based education, where schools are now delivering education through e-learning, telemedicine will also witness rapid growth. This will give rise to two things digital consumption and more and more global entities attempting to attract Indian consumers online.

Today, Data centers are the enablers of Indian Digital Economy. They will play a key role in enabling the Netizens in India as all cloud players,e-commerce players, banks, insurance companies, gaming, OTT players are hosted in third party data centers.

There is surging demand for edge data centers, which is emerging at faster speed, How are you prepared to take this as an opportunity?

With 290 million internet users in rural India, and that number likely to double in the next five years due to changes in consumer behaviour, there is an anticipate demand for OTTs, online gaming, distance education, e-commerce, financial transactions, access to mobile apps etc. To ensure the servers are accessed with minimal latency, there is a compelling need to move data to the edge, giving rise to edge data centers in the country. This is very much an opportunity and we are planning 1,000 edge data centers. We will be rolling out edge data centers in about 20 locations in smaller cities of India.

With this increasing going remote, digital communication becomes more of a necessity. Regular employees are going for WFH (Work From Home) and given ayccess to use data connectivity to communicate with each other. How CtrlS is seeing this as opportunity?

India is now emerging as one of globe’s largest contact less economy due to COVID-19. Coronavirus is a lethal virus. It has already consumed close to 400,000 people across the world and over six thousand in our country. This has led to lockdown thereby compelling business to enforce work from home. This perhaps will be a new normal in the next six months. We too are planning to ensure that at least 80% of our staff works from home permanently, so that they enjoy safe health.

Likewise, all major businesses have implemented work from home solutions, We have had the privilege of supporting around 1,000+ business in enabling their work from home solutions through our Desktop as a Service combined with Cloud and Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) software. We see COVID-19 as an opportunity. In fact, our work from home has led to growth of productivity by 60%.

RATED-4 DC-3 | MUMBAI | LAUNCH: DEC 2020

UPCOMING HYPERSCALE DATA PARK MUMBAI - 2 MILLION SQFT | 250 MW


The data centers have multi-layered and constantly-upgraded security systems in place to prevent data theft. Can you share the uniqueness of Six Rated-4 Datacenters in India.

We are India’s 1st and only Rated-4 data center who is certified on all four parameters such as Architectural, Electrical, Mechanical and Telecom. We are also World’s 1st LEED Platinum certified v4 O+M certified Green Data Center.

As far as uniqueness is concerned, our Hyderabad facility is India’s first Tier-4 (Now Rated-4) data center, Mumbai is Asia’s Largest Rated-4 Data center. Our Noida data center is India’s 1st and only 100% Quake Proof Plus 100% pollution free data center. This is very special, as NCR region suffers from air pollution and the sulphur content is extremely high with a tendency to corrode (rust) the metal eventually leading failure of servers and storage. We therefore took the opportunity to build an air filtration plant which processes the contaminated air, scrubs it and releases clean air into the data center – which is both good for IT infrastructure and human lungs

.

High capacity data centres offer much higher uptime compared with a legacy setup that an organisation might have internally. Demand for Flexibility is always on demand, What are the readiness from CtrlS, in terms of building capacity for the future?

Today we own and operate around 1 million square feet of Rated-4 data center space in the country and serve 60 of the Fortune 500 and 108 of the ET 500 companies in India. To address the anticipated growth in the country, we are planning an additional 5 million square feet of Rated-4 data center space in India. By, 2024 we will be operating 6 million of Rated-4 data center space in India powered by 600 MW of power and with a capacity of 125,000 plus racks.

There is an exciting time ahead with the demand for localised data centers, which hold the key to the future. It will provide impetus to the global

digital economy while keeping data secure locally. How do you see another billion dollar opportunity?

India’s Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, has laid down the guidelines for storing of personal data, sensitive personal data and critical personal data. This will lead to large growth of data storage in India. India data centers will see a large surge of demand from cloud players, financial services players, telecom operators, OTT, e-commerce, gaming, education, manufacturing, retail and other sectors resulting in data centers contributing heavily to the Indian economy besides fuelling employment opportunities in the country.

VAR CORPORATE

BANGALORE DC - SOUTH INDIA'S LARGEST RATED 4 HYPERSCALE DATACENTER

NOIDA DC - INDIA'S 1ST & ONLY 100% QUAKE PROOF AND POLLUTION FREE DATACENTER

MUMBAI DC 2 - WORLD'S FIRST SOLAR PANEL COVERED RATED 4 HYPERSCALE DATACENTER


Fortinet announced continued momentum with network service providers who have chosen to leverage Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to scale and grow their business, deliver new value-added services, and limit overhead.

With the recent increase in remote workforces, network service providers are facing unprecedented demand for highly scalable VPN service offerings. Additionally, as the SD-WAN market has matured, these same SPs are beginning to offer security services as new customer demands and deployment efficiency call for advanced and integrated security. In fact, all participating service providers in a recent MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) survey identified security as an essential value-added service they were either planning to offer or have already started offering on top of their SD-WAN solution.

With advanced routing, security and SD-WAN functionality in a single solution, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has emerged as a top choice for network service providers to offer new and differentiated value-added services to their customers. Heightened by one of the broadest API ecosystems in the industry, Fortinet enables service providers to customize highly scalable secure SD-WAN services that can be quickly added to their offerings and easily deployed at customer sites.

Fortinet’s security-driven networking approach to SD-WAN empowers service providers with the ability to deliver highly scalable VPN services for business continuity. This approach also gives SPs the ability to build a complete security services platform with next-generation firewall capabilities such as web filtering, anti-malware, and threat protection, including deep SSL inspection, and even further expand to SD-Branch for complete consolidation of branch services.

The security flaw in China’s TikTok app was found. It lets hackers use text messages to control accounts. TikTok — owned by Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok has been sued in California for accusations of data transfers to china.

TikTok has got “multiple” security vulnerabilities. Hackers could take control of TikTok accounts and manipulate the content, upload and delete videos and reveal personal information such as a private email address, as per checkpoint.The cybersecurity firm found that it’s possible to send a standard text message to any phone number on behalf of TikTok. On the app’s own site, there is a function that lets users send a text message to themselves so they can download the app.

There was also a vulnerability in a TikTok web domain which allowed attackers to insert a malicious code. This was used to retrieve personal information of users. Check Point said, it disclosed the findings to TikTok and they have been patched.

It locates your position and accordingly send the videos based on your locations,by not specific to ur language selections, you will get location based videos.It means TikTok is using the data from ur SIM

GLOBAL SERVICE PROVIDERS PARTNER WITH FORTINET TO DELIVER SECURE SD-WAN SERVICES

YOUR DATA IS AT RISK THROUGH TIKTOK

Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC, Fortinet says, “Service providers are increasingly turning to Fortinet Secure SD-WAN as the favored solution to deliver services that standout from competitors and achieve faster and better ROI. Because Fortinet takes an integrated approach that combines advanced routing, security and SD-WAN in a single solution while also providing an open and extensible API-driven ecosystem, SPs that partner with Fortinet are able to simplify their service offerings and gain a huge competitive advantage in the market.”

card.If you will go to the Privacy policy it has clearly mentioned ,they will collect all the information from your social media connections and it uses HTTP server but not HTTPS ( Secure server). It uses AI, as its parent company Bytedance is strongly in Artificial Intelligence and working strongly in Algorithm.

As china wants to be the super power in AI by 2030, The fact whenever you are using TIKTOK, you are just using a survey and empowers its software. And you are constantly feeding them information like what you like and don’t like. All of this information is going to China. With this feeding we are simply supporting China’s version of the internet. It means privacy on the internet is very big question mark, because everything comes with a cost.

Hence, no service is free, when we use any free service then we are the product and our data is our currency. Experts says, if you are using any Chinese made app, then it is advised not to use UPI or any net banking apps there

and secondly when creating an account, it is never advised to use Google to sign in. Hence for create a new account and use a different password. Reason being Cyber theft, identity theft, data leaks are real. Keep changing passwords and keep your emails safe.


A BILLION DOLLAR QUESTION:DOES WORK FROM HOME & CYBER SECURITY GO HAND IN HAND?

THE ONGOING PANDEMIC, COVID-19 HAS CHANGED THE LIFESTYLE AND WORK STYLE OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD. TO CURB THE SPREAD OF THIS PANDEMIC, PEOPLE ARE LOCKED DOWN IN THEIR HOUSE AT PRESENT AND ARE FORCED TO ADOPT THE 'NEW NORMAL' OF WORK FROM HOME. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, THIS IS ENDANGERING ENTERPRISE DATA AS THE SYSTEMS LACK STRINGENT SECURITY AS IN OFFICE SETUP. THESE DAYS WE ARE OBSERVING A LOT OF CYBER ATTACKS HAPPENING AROUND THE WORLD AND CYBER CRIMINALS ARE TARGETING PEOPLE WHO ARE PRESENTLY WORKING FROM HOME.

VARIndia managed to share a thought with a few managing heads of various companies about their strategy for WFH and Cyber Security. Each narrative has something to say. Here’s straight from the horse’s mouth:

While new threats are emerging all the time, there are three areas - Remote-work, Supply chains &IT and OT convergence; Tenable India is focusing in particular, says Diwakar Dayal.

According to Dayal, the sudden shift to a remote-work model means that new assets like employees’ personal laptops and phones are being introduced into the enterprise IT environment. This influx of personal technology expands the attack surface and presents cybersecurity risks to organisations.

“We’ve already seen a number of phishing scams, misinformation and fraudulent work-from-home opportunities making their way around the internet. These could potentially put the wider corporate network at risk if accessed”, said Dayal.

It is imperative to have a cyber-resilient supply chain to keep the critical infrastructure secure and

DIWAKAR DAYALManaging Director

Tenable India

operational. Many instances of cybercriminals trying to exploit the health crisis by targeting individuals and organisations to infect network, as such, any failure or interruption could impact this ability to operate.

As more organisations interconnect their OT and IT networks to create greater efficiency and efficacy, they also expand the cyberattack surface, enabling bad actors to easily move between the digital and physical worlds. Security teams overseeing IT and OT networks must, therefore,

LEAD STORY


assess and prioritise vulnerabilities based on risk and likelihood of exploitation.

“Cyber hygiene practices such as maintaining systems, blocking malicious sites and IP addresses, enforcing multi-factor authentication and using encryption is a good place to start. It’s most crucial during this time for security teams to understand their distributed attack surface” concluded Dayal while taking about avoiding cyber attacks.

Speaking about Cyber attacks and how would they provide protection, Surendra Singh’s words were:

Forcepoint X-Labs, the custodian of threat and behavioral intelligence, in its latest reporton a three-month trend analysis of the web and email traffic reported a 358% jump in the number of malicious emails, in the week of March 23. The number of malicious emails is traditionally lesser than spam emails. Forcepoint Labs blocked over half a million spam emails every day mid-March onwards.

We encourage organizations to use modern data protection strategies that focus on protecting users and data everywhere. With data and applications moving beyond the traditional enterprise data centers and into the cloud, ‘people’ have now become the new perimeter from cybersecurity perspective.

In this ‘new normal’, organizations need to have an approach that protects critical data on-premises, data-in-motion and data in-the-cloud, as people access it from multiple devices (including BYOD) and from anywhere. For IT leaders, it’s important to have visibility and control of their users’ activity into the cloud. A clear understanding of the cloud applications people use and how they use them enables IT teams to mitigate risks and better protect sensitive data.

At an individual level, employees must focus on the following to keep themselves secure as they scale the work-from-home model:

• Use encrypted VPNs to keep themselves, and the company intellectual property, safe and secure.

• Be skeptical while clicking on any link or opening emails to avoid phishing attacks. Regular education by IT teams can help employees understand what to look for in a phishing attack.

• Use two-factor authentication for any company logins, be it internal applications or SaaS-delivered ones.

• Avoid the use of unknown USB thumb drives as there have been countless incidents from unknown USB drives infected with malware.

Parvinder Walia feels that, Since work from home began, an increase of cybercriminal activity is been seen. Due to anxious population and vulnerabilities resulting from the increase usage of remote access as well as home networks and devices, cyber crime is uprooting.

“We witnessed large scale password guessing attacks on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

Bad actors were apparently attracted by networks that are more open to incoming traffic due to remote working arrangement adopted by many businesses. Globally, there was a six-fold increase in RDP connection attempts in March compared to February”

“We also saw a surge in scam and malware campaigns using the pandemic as a lure, trying to capitalize on people’s fears and hunger for information”, said Walia.

Aside from the threat that is exploiting the pandemic, our researchers have also highlighted some of the top threats and malware in our Q1 2020 ESET Threat Report.

There are various things that people can do to stay safe at home, from the way that they work to securing their device. Remember to:

i) Avoid clicking on any links or downloading any attachments in unsolicited emails or texts from unknown sources, or even in trusted sources unless you are certain that the message is authentic.

ii) Ignore communications that ask for your personal information. If necessary, verify the content of the message with the apparent senderor the organization that they (seemingly) represent, and do so via a different medium than the received message.

iii) Be especially wary of emails that add to the sense of alarm and urge you to take immediate action or offer COVID-19 vaccines or cures.

iv) Control access to video conference by setting a password (do not embed it in the meeting link) and hold participants in a ‘waiting room’. If file transfer is needed, then consider limiting the types of files that can be sent; for example, don’t allow executable files (such as .exe files).

v) Use reputable multi-layered security software that includes protection against phishing.

Aside from that here are a few tips about how

to secure your device as you work from home:

i. Enforce strong passwords to access

the device, the domain and all services and applications. Set inactivity timeouts to log out when not in use.

ii. Implement full disk encryption to ensure that even if the device were to fall into the wrong hands, the company’s data is inaccessible.

iii. Always use a VPN to connect to the organization's internal network to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

iv. Utilise Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to ensure that access, whether to cloud-based services or full network access, is by authorised users only.

v. Most importantly, do an audit of all home devices to ensure there are no vulnerabilities among connected devices and the network. Ensure that all firmware has been updated to the latest version and all passwords are updated and kept secure.

J Kesavardhanan, believes, As COVID-19 continues to dominate headlines even in the world of cybersecurity, we still see standard phishing attacks that claim to be messages from the WHO or other credible sources, to mislead people into activating a malicious payload. But the efficacy of such attacks decreases as awareness increases, so we are now seeing cyber threats evolve to prey on people’s financial anxiety and social isolation as lockdowns are extended.

A real threat is an SMS that claims to be from the Income Tax authorities and notifies the recipient of a refund, but actually steals banking credentials and installs OTP stealing malware.

Finally, we have also noticed an increase in attacks on Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Employees working from home create a lucrative opportunity for cybercriminals as they access critical business data and networks, but do not have adequate cybersecurity at home for protection.

OUR ADVICE TO AVOID CYBERATTACKS IS:

a) Install all patches and updates from hardware and software vendors

b) Install a good cybersecurity product and ensure it is updated

c) Practise good cyber hygiene, such as using unique and tough passwords, and

d) Exercise caution and scepticism when viewing messages or websites and think twice

PARVINDER WALIAESET Sales & Marketing Director

for Asia Pacific & Japan

SURENDRA SINGHSenior Director & Country

Manager, Forcepoint


before opening an attachment, clicking a link, or installing an application.

While speaking on new normal- Work From Home Govind Ramamurthy noted, “With the latest WFH trending these days, cyber attacks are heard much. Benign looking emails with malicious links are being used as a medium to conduct a phishing attack where the user or organizations data through the user could be compromised.”

Users are worried about cyber attacks during the time of global crises, and cyber criminals are using this fear to execute various Covid-19 related scams for their own benefit.

Awareness about cyber attacks has always been the key towards constructing a safer work environment, whether in office or away.

Security teams in tandem with the internal communications and the Human resources department can conduct a weekly security training session to educate their employees on the various threats that the digital world is exposed to. On the other hand, users can observe basic hygiene, when it comes to the digital world.

SOME TIPS FOR THEM ARE AS FOLLOWS –

• Be very vigilant and avoid clicking on any unknown links or downloading documents from untrusted sources.

• Instead of clicking on unverified links for information, always bank on trusted sources and find them by with the use of a trusted search engine.

• Do not fall for advertising baits that seem too good to be true, or which offer information that requires a user to click on a link to know more.

• Organizations should have training campaigns on how to reduce the click-through rate.

• Do not share any personal information over the site that looks untrustworthy.

Adding to the discussion Shrikant Shitole, further says, Given that COVID-19 is the undoubtedly the overwhelming concern of governments worldwide for the time being, we anticipated targeting of government, healthcare, biotech, and other sectors by cyber espionage

actors. Spear phishing messages were sent by the actor to China's Ministry of Emergency Management as well as the government of Wuhan province, where COVID-19 was first identified.

HEALTHCARE OPERATIONS, RELATED MANUFACTURING, LOGISTICS, AND ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATIONS, AS WELL AS GOVERNMENT OFFICES INVOLVED IN RESPONDING TO THE CRISIS ARE INCREASINGLY CRITICAL AND VULNERABLE TO DISRUPTIVE ATTACKS SUCH AS RANSOMWARE.

The sudden and unanticipated shift of many workers to work from home status will represent an opportunity for threat actors. Organizations will be challenged to move quickly to ensure sufficient capacity, as well as that security controls and policies are in place.

In order to adapt to a remote and distributed workforce, organizations need to focus on protecting identities and applications regardless of whether they are in the corporate network or the cloud. The below mentioned tips offer a step in the right direction to keeping operations both secured and productive.

• Organizations must implement MFA on all external corporate resources to reduce the ability of network and application access through credential spraying, password stuffing and phishing attacks.

• Many organizations lose visibility into malicious activity targeting remote workers. Organizations should deploy a multi-layer endpoint agent on all employee endpoints.

• Cloud services are an important resource for remote workers and can contain sensitive corporate data. Ensure that teams are receiving logs from cloud providers and regularly reviewing them for unauthorized access and data exfiltration.

• Implement corporate alternatives, organizations can ensure that corporate data is protected and monitored by corporate security controls. For example instead of cloud use third-party solutions for note taking, file storage and document management.

• Provide security awareness training for remote workers. In addition to computing hygiene topics such as phishing and password guidance, train employees on physical security topics such using a privacy screen, limiting work on confidential material in public spaces and securing physical computing assets.

• Restrict off-network communications from virtual desktops to limit exposure. If some external network access is required, maintain a whitelist inclusive of only necessary, approved resources.

• Users should be provided the necessary equipment and trained on privacy best practices, including privacy screens, device locks and endpoint hardening.

• Organizations should consider the potential for laptops to be lost or stolen.

WFH shall sooner or later become the new norm, as a few companies are allowing their

employees to stay at home and work. But with this, it is necessary to look upon measures to protect the customers and educate them about Cyber security. Companies are taking preventive measures to protect their customers from Cyber criminals.

According to Dayal, “At Tenable, our customers are central to everything we do so we’ve developed thoughtful procedures that enable us to respond to emergencies and maintain high business standards.”

Tenable is not just available to our customers 24 x 7, but our research team is working around the clock to publish the latest research on cyberattacks, phishing attempts and other opportunistic behaviours so that our customers can stay informed, said Dayal.

Forcepoint offers Dynamic Edge Protection (DEP), a new cloud-native platform, to deliver advanced web, network, and application access security as a service from the cloud. It implements the SASE model, weaving together advanced capabilities such as firewalling, intrusion prevention, web content inspection, malware scanning, URL filtering, application access, and more. This converged approach eliminates gaps and redundancies to stop attackers consistently, no matter where your people are working.

Organizations today are trying to navigate through what is arguably unchartered business territory as their global workforces have shifted to a large-scale remote work model seemingly overnight. At Forcepoint, we have pivoted to a virtual strategy and already kicked off various marketing programs such as virtual events, digital roundtables, digital workshops and webinars, etc. to support our customers come out on the other side stronger and more secure than before, concludes Sureinder Singh

In ESET, “Digital transformation creates additional considerations for cybersecurity. Globally, businesses have adapted by embracing technology to provide connectivity to networks, video conferencing, collaboration tools and cloud services. The company foresees that the way that they currently work will form the basis of the new normal.

Throughout this entire transition period, ESET has been continually monitoring and

KESAVARDHANAN JAYARAMANFounder and CEO K7 Computing

GOVIND RAMMURTHYManaging Director and CEO

eScan

LEAD STORY


so is by extending the free trial duration of our consumer, SMB and enterprise solutions. Through this initiative we hope that businesses and employees will benefit from increased security and awareness during this period of work from home”, said Walia.

Looking ahead, we will continue to develop new solutions that aim to meet the evolving consumer and business needs, as well as address the evolving threat landscape. In addition, we hope to place more emphasis on cybersecurity education to ensure that businesses and consumers are better informed of the current threats and how to deal with them.

Walia further added that ESET is currently offering free online cybersecurity training at www.eset.com/in/business/cybersecurity-training/ which is designed to educate employees on how to stay secure while they work from home. In addition to that, we have also put together a comprehensive package containing useful guides and checklists for IT administrators to set up and ensure safe remote workforce arrangement.

As a global cybersecurity solutions provider, ESET is also constantly monitoring and researching the threat landscape at a global scale, for any new developments.

Moving forward, we will continue to educate our customers by regularly updating our blog with new content as well as being available for any service-related queries that they may have in the future, confirms Walia.

The K7 Labs analyse hundreds of thousands of malware samples a day and we distribute frequent threat definition updates to ensure that our products are updated, and our customers are always protected from the latest cyberattacks.

We have also published a COVID-19 Cyber Threat Report that dives deep into pandemic-themed cyber threats and countermeasures to spread awareness on what the ‘new normal’ cyber threat landscape looks like, says J Kesavardhanan.

We are conducting many webinars to accelerate the spread of cybersecurity knowledge targeting both the consumer and enterprise markets. We have created industry-specific webinars for enterprise customers to address the diversity in the enterprise cybersecurity space.We also regularly publish blogs to keep users updated on the evolution of cyber threats and how they can protect themselves against cunning cybercriminals.

K7 has always been prepared to take on any cyber threats irrespective of the scenario that we have been presented. We have various technologies that can aid users and organizations to secure their data even in the current work from home scenarios. We have a very adept marketing team that works round the clock. We take on a multi-pronged approach when it comes to educating our customers and spreading awareness about digital threats.

We get in touch with our partners through various mediums and educate them and they in turn pass on the knowledge to our loyal customers first hand. In such a situation even

if the customer has any queries regarding cybersecurity, with the help of our partners we get in touch with the customer and resolve their query.

WE WRITE A LOT OF INFORMATION ABOUT DIFFERENT SUBJECTS AND TOPICS ON THE CYBERSECURITY DOMAIN AND POST IN ON OUR BLOG, WHICH CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH OUR COMPANY’S OFFICIAL WEBSITE. WE ALSO ENGAGE IN DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH OUR CUSTOMERS THROUGH OUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS AND WE TRY AND SOLVE THEIR QUERIES. WE USE THE SAME MEDIUMS TO EDUCATE A WIDER AUDIENCE INTO KNOWING WHAT THREAT COULD DO WHAT KIND OF HARM TO THEIR DIGITAL EXISTENCE AND TIPS ON HOW TO SECURE THEMSELVES.

As we said, awareness goes a long way in avoiding digital threats and we take every possible step.

With the rapid escalation of COVID-19, organizations have to rapidly adapt to limit contact and person-to-person contamination, said Shrikant Shitole.

Over the past several weeks, organizations around the world have instituted remote, work-from-home policies. Business units and functions that have never been done remotely are now required to operate in a fully remote mode. During these rapid changes, security experts are rightly pondering what new risks may be introduced.

We at FireEye, are taking steps to ensure the safety of our clients. We have launched multiple reports and acquired additional solutions that aid to the resources we currently have to offer to our clients. We are also going the extra mile to keep a watch on how the threat actors are evolving in the current scenario. One of these steps is the acquisition of Cloudvisory in January 2020, as a means of combining cloud visibility with unrivaled insights into the threat landscape. Fully integrated into the broader FireEye cloud security portfolio, Cloudvisory

now offers customers instant deployment across their cloud infrastructures, and further capabilities in security analytics through FireEye Helix and advanced threat detection through FireEye Detection On Demand.

Building upon the FireEye cloud solutions portfolio, Cloudvisory is a cloud-native security solution that gives security team’s unified control over cloud sprawl and infrastructure misconfiguration. Unlike legacy and one-off security tools that introduce deployment complexity and fail to scale in the cloud without greater investments in talent, the Cloudvisory solution is designed to:

• Provide central single-pane visibility into assets, workloads and associated security controls and events across an organization’s cloud infrastructure

• Remediate compliance failures, without any need for extra deployment components such as agents, appliances and functions

• Block and quarantine attacks using cloud-native micro segmentation

At FireEye, we understand the importance of an effective cyber security solution and believe in constant testing to validate the solutions deployed by our clients. In light of this, last year we made strategic investments to build new capabilities in our solution portfolio including security validation to help the customers to get more from their security investments. The Mandiant Security Validation (formerly known as Verodin), helps organizations demonstrate the value received from security through a data-driven, evidence-based approach. It enables customers to continuously validate their cybersecurity controls, identify and mitigate configuration issues, and optimize their people, processes, and technology.

As the cloud grows, FireEye is growing with our customers to ensure that emerging technologies are not an attacker’s playground. To do this, our products and services protect traditional on-premise workloads from being leveraged for cloud attacks, and natively integrate with cloud providers to add protection, detection, and visibility for existing cloud workloads. As environments and attackers change, FireEye continues to innovate to help our customers meet those new security challenges.

The age of remote work is upon us. Companies around the world are letting their employees work from home, with many making the shift in a matter of days and some announcing plans to keep the policy going for the rest of the year -- or even indefinitely.

Though Work From Home may seem a permanent option for many, there are a few precautions to be taken.

Experts say they have seen a surge in "phishing" attacks targeted at people working from home, where clicking on a link in an email or message could lead to installing malware on one’s device. Precaution is the only cure at this point of time. As any longer, will make things slip out of hands. The end of global pandemic is unknown; VARIndia requests its employees and clients to Stay safe, work safer. n

SHRIKANT SHITOLEVice President and Country

Head for India, FireEye


Now-a-days fast-moving, cross-functional teams of people from different parts of the organization experiment and innovate together to deliver new products and capabilities at an unprecedented pace. CIO roles and responsibilities have been changing over the last decade, especially at companies that have been leading the way in the digital transformation of their businesses. Many CIOs at leading companies have evolved their job descriptions and their position’s reputation beyond roles like “digital enabler” and “technical operator” to become change agents who champion business model innovation. The organizations are spending more on the digital transformation of their companies even in this unprecedented time to fight against the coronavirus. And the CIOs are the executives most likely playing a top role in digital transformation, particularly in ideation and strategy.

According to the IDC Worldwide Semiannual Digital Transformation Spending Guide, the global annual spending on technologies and services is about to hit a whopping $2.3 trillion as forecasted. The spending on digital transformation (DX) is at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 17.1% for a period of five years (2019-23). In the post-digital world, along with digital realities, related products and services will be hyper-personalized.

Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, every sector - education, hospitality, pharmaceuticals or even in entertainment sector is running through a critical stage. Every company is now depending on remote workforce as employees are working from home. In this unprecedented time every industry is busy to save their business with their own digital transformation. In the following paragraphs we will find how industry leaders are taking this challenge and leading in this hard time.

AMIDST PANDEMIC ‘REMOTE WORKING WITH DAILY WEBINARS’- THE NEW TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2020

“Nowadays most employees are set enough in working from home with devices and internet. A big push with BIG Data analytics people are more safe to think and plan accurately in a relaxed environmental, lot of IT initiative takers have understood & tested the importance of this key platform.

The best practice is the use of general sense towards generating a support call or request. Nothing should be attended or honored unless a meaningful description / particulars are there. Here AI has a role to identify the issue almost accurately from a layman. It is to develop an application to start playing after any automated platform analyzing the supportive requirements.

We have adopted RPA in various practices and hopefully the implementation of this would help us to cope up with the current situation very soon.”

ARIJIT GUPTAHead-IT, Rupa & Company Ltd.

CIO OUTLOOK


“AIIMS New Delhi is a Govt. funded institute. As it is a Medical institute but has strong believed in transformation of technology. Since 1960 AIIMS has the IT set up for heal care research, training and health care services that why IT department has big budget as compared to other dept or intuitions.

Many OEM are approaching different types of offers replacement of San and NAS storage which is out of

life free if they scale up our storage. What we got the offer we have 2 PB NAS storage which will be upgraded to 4PB with the change of 2 PB with latest product.Similarly if the servers are out of life same type of offer has been pushed. But AIIMS is always following the CVC guideline for procurement.

We have followed the direction of Govt. of India. The entire Group A officers supposed to come to office everyday but the Group B and C has to

attend physically 50% and rest 50% has to work remotely. If the Group A unable to come to work place due to stick lock down then they have to take permission from the higher authority to work from home. If any major meetings required then we do tele-meeting and take the decision. Team members are working remotely to maintain server, storage, networking, security and applications.

The key priority of organization are :Setup a good Telehealth/Telemedicine/mHealthapplication,Cloud based Infrastructure in the campus, An advanced Data backup and recovery solution,Enterprise PACS & VNA on Open Source Platform, Adopting IOMT in medical instruments, Endpoint Security Solution, Replacement of Wi-Fi of AIIMS campus, High Performance Computing, Sensors and wearable technology, Remote monitoring tools, Real-time locating services and Robotics Solution for patient care services.”

“We have always believed in offering niche solutions and are positioned very uniquely in the market. ESDS is not just a datacentre player or cloud service provider, rather its strength lies in its strong R&D team and managed services expertise, backed by the value of creating lifetime relationship with everyone who crosses our path, be it our team members, vendors or customers.

There are many ways to look at market share and the fact is that as it stands today, no one has even come anywhere close to the market share that ESDS holds for enabling Govt organizations and Banks to reap benefit of Cloud technology & solutions running on respective community clouds by ESDS. We also have a huge market share of SAP HANA catered by our SAP HANA Community cloud.

While the vendors are focusing on offerings, we have come up with a marketplace (www.spochub.com) that bring various SaaS offerings grouped by business verticals at one place, fulfilling two important needs: a) Providing market reach for ISV’s who have great products but lack visibility and b) Providing options for organizations to make quick decisions on selecting the offerings, with the peace of mind that they are backed by ESDS. We have recently launched “AA+ Covid Detection” solution on SPOCHUB, an AI based Covid testing tool that can detect whether a suspect is infected or not simply by an X-ray within few minutes, along with the probability percentage score. It has already been fed with more than fifty thousand x-rays and has achieved an accuracy of above 96%.

Our focus is to make SPOCHUB the HUB for all relevant business software offerings that will not just be technologically advanced, but also add value to the customers’ business. Organizations do not want to spend time in experimenting with new technologies and spend hefty amount on trial and error of new technologies. They are looking for quick solutions that are readily available built on emerging technologies, but backed by a strong technology provider like ESDS.

While work from home or from remote places is a norm in our kind of business, major policies such as use of VPN for security, and different tools for collaboration etc were already in place. Since this was a different kind of work-from-home situation, our HR team had to be more active to make sure the staff stays motivated and healthy so as to perform optimally. Managers took the initiative to modify the KPI’s of their team members to make the team comfortable while sailing through the crisis. Since people would rarely have much physical activity, our CEO took the initiative of starting Yoga classes daily at 7:00 am led by him to make sure that staff remains active and healthy. Daily webinars has become a new norm where various departments are sharing their new initiatives and achievements amidst lockdown which is serving as a great knowledge exchange mechanism and assisting in cross skilling of resources.

More or less the policies have been designed in a way to keep the staff on similar routines as they were while working from office, so that when the time comes to start coming to office, no one should experience a cultural shock. Happiness Infuser team at ESDS has taken many initiatives to make sure that staff says comfortable and stress free during lock down period and do not burn out working long hours.

Being an innovation led organization, with a vision of creating a technology advanced Greener planet, teams at ESDS are on a constant exploration drive to keep researching and implementing newer technologies. With the security loopholes that were discovered in the collaboration tool ‘Zoom lately, we have realised that we need to have an indigenously developed collaboration tool. We have already built the tool ‘eNlight Cloud Meet’ that supports all the basic feature’s required for limited number of users to collaborate. The next versions would be optimized to support a scale that is necessary for SMB’s. With staff using heterogeneous personal devices to carry on their work remotely, security is definitely going to remain the biggest challenge. We are enhancing our SOC portfolio with the latest AI/ML based solutions that not only detect/prevent attacks but also predict the patterns of future attacks by taking feeds from various different sources available globally. We are researching extensively on bringing in more automation using AI/ML to get significant boost in productivity for organization as a whole. One of our products ‘Robo HR’ is under development and is a step towards this initiative.”

DR. SUSIL KUMAR MEHERDirector-IT, All India Institute of Medical Sciences

DR. RAJEEV PAPNEJA Chief Growth Officer, ESDS Software Solution Pvt. Ltd.


“ONEOTT iNTERTAINMENT LTD. (OIL) was able to face the initial brunt of spikes in internet usage when the Lockdown began. However, we realize that a good service experience is paramount, and we had to scale as per the increased traffic requirements.

We have Network insights & analytics solutions being pitched by various OEMs which will allow us to turn Network Data into Actionable Insights to improve our service experience resulting in segmented offerings and lower attrition rates.OIL falls under the essential services category and as such we have colleagues who are in the field 24 x 7 servicing the customer needs. We also have our colleagues in business support functions, who are not required to come to office or visit the customer’s place but play a crucial role in keeping the flag of Customer Responsiveness flying.

We trust our employees and hence it was not difficult for us to allow our support functions to ‘Work-from-Home’. On the technology front, we had subscribed to G-Suite services and this crisis made us realize the true potential of this office productivity suite. Happy to say that Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Docs and Meet have transformed the way we work. All our meetings happen over Google Meet, even our National Sales Meets with over a 100 + participants are happening over Meet. This has improved our productivity, strengthened employee engagement and kept the morale of WFH warriors intact.

Our Call Center colleagues are running Voice, Email and Chat processes remotely.For the employees, it has taken out the uncertainness about their work future.

OIL has upgraded its website functionality to enable prospects to find out whether OneGigaFiber is available in their buildings.This is enabled for Mumbai right now and we will extend it across all cities.

We are also looking to minimize the need for physical interaction between our Staff and customers. We are modifying our CRMs to have an online web capture of the fields & documents required to process the customer order. This is in the works as well.”

“When it comes to choosing a particular vendor or the OEMs on their offerings, a key point to be kept in mind is the current threat landscape of your organization and the need of the particular tool. Decision to implement a tool needs to be based on the risk assessment of the organization and not because it is an in “thing” in the market. The offered tools/solution/technology must be robust, flexible, user-friendly, adaptable and easy to integrate with the existing systems within the organization.

Tools and technologies have been enabled for remote working for all employees. Employee awareness and training programs are being conducted on frequent intervals. Daily standup calls are being conducted by task force (specially created to manage pandemic). Task force ensures that employee issues are handled effectively during remote working with minimal impact to customers and business operations.

A technology roadmap has been prepared; tools are being evaluated for security as well as their functionality. Once the risk assessment report is completed for each of the tools, they would go through multiple approvals before being deployed.”

“In my view, as far as possible I like to look at vendors more as partners - contributing in a strategic way to the organization and business rather than purely transactional. For one to enter the consideration set, they must have a product/service offering that solves a problem in an efficient manner. For this reason we have worked with a number of start-ups, addressing specific needs within our organization, adopting their products/services and in the process working with them to help them shape their solutions. A key factor to consider is the approach taken by the service provider to understand our business/organization and to be able to go the extra mile when needed to ensure the product/service works in our context. This, of course is within the framework of evaluating the best price-performance ratio for any product/service that I intend to use in my organization. The performance side translates to comparing products/services in terms of features and the cost side evaluating the total cost of ownership (TCO.)

We had adopted a cloud-first strategy for the past several years. Over this period we had moved communication & collaboration, operational systems and key teaching & learning systems to the cloud. As part of this we had also done a network revamp significantly increasing not only the bandwidth but also improving resilience across locations. The combination of these factors made us face relatively fewer problems from an infrastructure and applications perspective. Yes, there was an accelerated change management process that went in and the entire organization had to rapidly adapt to working remotely. For most, this was an easy transition as they had been doing an element of remote working previously. For others it was a dramatic shift - especially where the nature of job had been based on in-person interaction. The other challenge was around mental health as for short periods of time being isolated is one thing. When that extends to weeks and months - as has been the case with the pandemic - it becomes an important issue to address. We were able to do this through a series of initiatives that included frequent team check-ins almost on a daily basis, online social gatherings and activities. People were encouraged to follow good practices for online interaction to emulate in-person interaction as far as possible.

A lot of the in-flight projects have been proceeding normally - as they comprise geographically scattered teams. We are looking at some interesting initiatives around AI & ML, data science & analytics, and improving the digital experience. Several key security initiatives are also planned that include work around privileged access management, DLP and cloud security.”

SANJEEV AGARWALVP & Head – Customer Operations, ONEOTT iNTERTAINMENT LTD (OIL)

MEETALI SHARMA Risk, Compliance & Information Security Leader, SDG Corporation

DR. ASHISH BHARADWAJDirector - IT, Digital & Innovation, BML Munjal University

CIO OUTLOOK


“We are in Pharma manufacturing business and are in export business. Our business is mainly driven from the demand from the overseas market. Of the overseas market, our 70% sales come from US only. We are in B2B business. As such we manufacture and supply based on the advance form orders from our overseas subsidiaries which in turn do the business Make to Order (MTO). Due to COVID , there is no significant impact on our sales , but indirect impact on the revenue is there because lock down lead to lower productivity and efficiency and logistic challenges in shipment of goods , At times, we have to opt for Charter flights for the shipment , which has raised the logistic cost very high and eroding margins drastically.

Before lockdown, we have very minimal foot print of VPN users and post lock down this requirement

increased by multifold times. We as a manufacturing organization don’t have any WFH as a policy nor do we have a culture of working from Home in the past. But lock down mandated to do the continuous business we need to enable our workforce to get connected in a secured and fast way. We opted different solutions for those who are having company assets and those who need to be enabled on their own devices (BYOD). We scaled up from 300 users to 1800 users in ¾ days.

We Created 2 setups for WFHa. Company provided assets Desktop and Laptops with which users connect corporate firewall via VPN for with security policies in place by

providing access only to required services according to his profile, all assets are tracked with company applied policies by asset management tool and end point security which is monitored on daily basis.

b. Users Personal Assets used for WFH, for these users we built a separate firewall with a separate internet link connecting to External firewall with access to LAN only on RDP protocol. Security and comforters of user are considered as main focus. A user using this setup can only connect to his office desktop on RDP protocol and work as if at office, security settings related to data transfer to and from office PC to Personal computer and vice versa are being restricted via group policies on his office desktop

As IT team were also working remotely and many of the users are first time users and with all diverse sets of devices (because of BYOD), we have to do lot of handholding to ensure that all users are getting the access of applications and are working effectively. We established 18/7 IT Helpdesk team and ensured aggressive support and resolution time so as users should get their issues addressed in shortest possible time.

We also created a ready ref for common issue to our Helpdesk engineers for issue resolution.For reporting purpose, we used multiple tools for access control and activity duration for each user.”

“Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic most of the businesses are now struggling to preserve cash and make maximum utilization of existing assets and resources. Similarly, all the IT Departments are supposed to reduce their Budgets and make optimum use of It resources. Collaboration and Communication Tools are number one in the list of promoters or business leaders as during these lockdown and also for future, virtual communication and collaboration will be a key element in business transactions. As far as the vendor / OEM products and services are concerned, key to gain market share would be that all the products and services should be - low cost, high degree of features / functionalities, scalable, easier payment terms, zero lock-in. we are keen and interested for all IT products and services which have the above features. Robust, scalable, ease of use, feature oriented, low cost and easy payment options are preferred.

We have engaged all the employees through our communication / collaboration platforms (35000 meetings so far during lockdown); town halls were organized for all geographies and all level of employees (9 town halls covering 3500 employees), optimum use of online trainings were used (15 trainings covering 2500+ employees); MindaCare Mobile Health App for all 10000+ employees (same as Arogya Setu) to capture health condition of each employee and created live dashboard for HR & Security to take appropriate action.

Our organization’s focus is to develop digital capability across looking at the New Norm (WFH and beyond). Major focus areas are Shop floor process automation.”

GYAN PANDEYCIO, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd.

PARNA GHOSHVP & Group CIO, Minda Industries Ltd.

LG Electronics brings in the ‘Try and Buy Offer’ for Its G8x ThinQ Dual Screen PhoneLG Electronics India has unveiled the ‘Try and Buy’ offer for its

Premium LG G8X ThinQ smartphone with Dual Screen. By availing this offer, a participant will be given a 7 Day trial period for using the LG G8X ThinQ and will have the option to either buy or return the mobile along with all accessories & box at the end of the trial period. The Promotional offer is valid from 1st June till 14th June 2020 at selected resellers.

This offer is valid for all adult Indian citizens and the participant will have to pay a refundable security deposit of Rs. 99/- through a credit card while availing it. At the end of the trial period the participant will have the option to buy the product or return it, upon which the deposit will be refunded. An extension period of three days can be rewarded in the case of public holidays, strikes or personal emergencies etc. Loss or damage to the product is liable to be charged by LG Electronics.

After Purchase of LG G8X under this offer customer can also claim Jabra Elite 65t at Rs. 1, 999.

Advait Vaidya, Business Head - Mobile Communications at LG

Electronics says, “The LG G8X ThinQ is one of our premium products and has become very popular in India among the premium smartphone range. We hope to create the best user experience, which is difficult to enjoy through an advertisement. Henceforth, by introducing this offer we are allowing users to make an honest decision by completely immersing themselves in the product before resorting to buy it. We hope to reach larger audiences, through this initiative for people who have only heard of us but are yet to fully experience the innovative technology we offer.”

The LG G8X ThinQ Dual Screen Phone released in 2019 is a part of its G series smartphone that shares the identical 6.4-inch display of LG Dual Screen for double the Multitasking, productivity and fun. An in-display fingerprint sensor makes locking and unlocking the LG G8XThinQ easier than ever, even with the Dual Screen folded back. and includes an additional 2.1-inch Cover Display and 32 MP Front Camera. The Dual Screen also adopts a new 360 Freestop Hinge to allow for viewing at any angle, just like a laptop.


GROWTH IS THE DRIVING FACTOR OF EVERY BUSINESS AND FOR THAT A SUITABLE ALLIANCE IS HIGHLY REQUIRED TO FLOURISH FURTHER. CORPORATES ARE ALWAYS ON A HUNT FOR AN APPROPRIATE PARTNER TO EXPAND ITS BUSINESS.

A PARTNER PROGRAM IS EXTREMELY ESSENTIAL FOR BOTH CORPORATES AND PARTNERS TO PUSH BOUNDARIES AND ACHIEVE SUCCESS. PARTNER PROGRAMS ARE DIFFERENT FOR EVERY COMPANY AND IT DEPENDS ON VARIOUS FACTORS LIKE THEIR SIZE, VOLUME AND EXPERTISE. EVERY YEAR, CORPORATES SPEND A MAJOR CHUNK OF MONEY TO GROW PARTNER BUSINESS.

A SIMPLE AND TRANSPARENT PARTNER PROGRAM HAS ALWAYS BEEN A DESIRE FOR THE IT PARTNER ECOSYSTEM. COMPANIES CHALK OUT THEIR UNIQUE PARTNER PROGRAM EVERY YEAR WITH A VISION OF EXTENDING THEIR FOOTPRINT, ACQUIRING NEW CUSTOMERS ETC. FEW CORPORATES FOLLOW THE GLOBAL AGENDA AND FEW CUSTOMIZE PARTNER PROGRAMS ACCORDING TO THE NEEDS OF ITS PARTNERS IN DIFFERENT REGIONS BY EMBRACING PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATION STRATEGY FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT.

PARTNER PROGRAM IS A TOOL TO EMPOWER ITS PARTNERS SO THAT THEY CAN LEVERAGE THE TECHNOLOGICAL EXPERTISE OF A COMPANY TO ACCELERATE THE GROWTH. ON THE OTHER HAND RIDING ON THE BACK OF THE PARTNERS, THE CORPORATES LEVERAGE PARTNER’S COMPETENCIES AND RESOURCES TO DELIVER ITS BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION GOALS. IT IS TRUE THAT PARTNERS ARE A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE COMPANY’S REVENUE.

COVER STORY


ASHISH SIKKADIRECTOR- CHANNEL AND SMB, LENOVO INDIA

“As our current situation seems to be extremely dynamic, it would be inappropriate to make any long-term strategy for the future of businesses. However, we at Lenovo, are 100% dedicated to listening, taking action and improving to build a true win-win partnership. With most of Lenovo’s shipments coming through our channel partners, we are driven to equip our partners in the fight to stay relevant, as well as future proof their business. As a part of this, we have launched a few partner programs out of which we recently introduced the AP Lenovo Partner Program to streamline all engagement and operations with our channel partners into one single platform. This portal provides useful sales and management tools, as well as training and marketing content, allowing our channel partners to experience how Lenovo adds value to the partnership with just a single log-in.

We at Lenovo, understand their challenges and provide extensive and customized programs, from incentives to rebates to co-marketing to help channel partners sell more and reap greater rewards, gain expertise, and receive support.

There are several challenges we are facing presently. Channel partners in India cited that their biggest challenge is how margin pressures are impacting their profitability in the current scenario. Hence, we have we have put in place some of the measures for our channel partners, enabling them to align in the right direction and this year’s partner programs are mainly focused on tackling these challenges by providing extensive and customized programs. Also, this year, we focus on the programs that are different in several ways to encourage BP to drive a right mix of PC, Services and S&P attach depending on customer requirement.

We are aiming to grow faster than the market. Strong and loyal channel base will help us capitalize the new opportunity that is getting created due to changing business requirement like WFM and PC penetration due to growing online communication.”

SOM SATSANGIHEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE (HPE) INDIA’S MD

“India has come a long way in enabling remote work, thanks to innovation, and much of this is possible today because of the mobile and data revolution of the past decade.

“We are prioritising the things that are within our control— protecting our team members and their families, focusing on innovation and efforts to support our customers, and rising to the challenge of supporting the communities where we live and work.

We are focused on helping customers and partners maintain business continuity, manage cash flow and financial health and are deploying solutions to meet immediate challenges and unexpected demand.

Business continuity is a vital focus area for our enterprise customers who cut across several verticals including banking, insurance, telecom, chemicals, oil and gas, state and central governments, and so on. Several of these organisations have mature IT practices.

HPE has robust business continuity plans and with the activation of HPE Crisis Management Team in place we are confident we will mitigate disruptions, meet partner and customer demands, and protect HPE team members. We are working closely with more than 200 suppliers to continue to minimise the impact on partners and customers.

To help manage cash flow and financial health, HPE’s Financial Services arm (which is an IT captive finance company, managing $13 billion in portfolio assets in more than 50 countries) can help. We are also releasing capital from existing infrastructure, providing pre-owned tech equipment to relieve capacity strains or delivery delays.

We recently announced that we would defer or reduce expenses through payment deferral, so customers can delay payments for 90 days. Through the 2020 Payment Relief Program, customers can pay only 1 percent of the total contract value each month for the first eight months, deferring over 90 percent of the cost until 2021. This can help businesses navigate the financial impact of Covid-19 in the short term.”

MURLI MOHANVICE PRESIDENT, UIPATH INDIA

“The global outbreak of COVID - 19 has pushed organizations, today, to fast track their digital transformation and has given rise to new opportunities to reimagine work and business continuity. We recently conducted a joint study with Zinnov on the adoption of automation by Indian enterprises which clearly showed that Hyper Intelligent Automation (HIA) will become key to accelerate outcomes in the wake of COVID-19.

We, at UiPath, believe that only with strong partnerships to scale training, expedite deployment, and innovate new solutions, can we seize these opportunities and deliver value to our customers. The UiPath Partner Program is designed to accelerate our partner’s ability to guide their customers through their digital transformation, preparing them for the future of work. We also support them to leverage the platform internally to help reinvest their core services and achieve workforce gains, co-develop innovative new services solutions that exploit RPA capabilities, guide themselves and their clients on how best to leverage RPA with a Center of Excellence, and deploy RPA solutions as part of a broader business process optimization initiative. Our Partner Program also provides easier access to information and tools, at-the-ready marketing, sales and technical resources, campaigns and event kits. In addition to this, we also provide transparency and standardization around benefits, requirements, and constant support from our customer success team. In the coming year, we will continue to support our integrated partner ecosystem by upskilling them with our learning platform called Academy for Partners.”


COVER STORY

ANIL SETHIVICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, CHANNELS, DELL TECHNOLOGIES, INDIA

“The India region, in the past year, emerged as one of the largest channel regions for Dell Technologies and we have been consistent with our channel strategies, which are very critical for us and our partner’s success. We are fully committed to supporting the partner community navigate through the changing environment. Our world-class partner program, we drive our Simple, Predictable and Profitable message, to position it as the best program in the market, providing superior value to the channel partners. Given the ongoing situation, the priorities were strategically modified to help our partners evolve and meet the business goals. In order to help the channel partner community continue to serve their customers better, we recently announced ‘Partner Relief Package’, to provide financial relief. Information technology is become more specialized and requires Partners and OEMs to build expertize, leading to a shift in the partner ecosystem.

In addition to technology needs, our customers and partners have been vocal about their need for financial support in the current environment. The Global Dell Financial Services (DFS) team listened and responded with the new Payment Flexibility Program (PFP). One of the best in the industry, the program offers more choice and predictability for our customers. The Program is built on the strong foundation of DFS and our end-to-end portfolio. Dell has also announced $9B in financing available this year to cater to their critical technology needs. We are committed to helping our customers and partners drive business continuity in this new normal. Dell Technologies has always focused on raising the bar towards its promise of delivering a simple, predictable, profitable partner program. Our FY20 partner program focused on making it easier for partners to achieve gold status and also introduced a simplified market development funds (MDF) process.

The strategy and plan for FY21 needed an upliftment, given the ongoing scenario. Partners are looking up to us to maintain business continuity and to mitigate fluid situations. Financial support and capital are of utmost importance for our partners to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. Many of our partners needed help in this area to device a strong plan as they try to serve their customers better. Keeping this outlook in mind, we recently announced ‘Partner Relief Package’, with the intent of providing immediate financial relief to our metal partners. It is helping them to strengthen their capabilities and build pipeline for the future. In addition to this, Dell Technologies Working Capital Solutions (WCS) Program is working on ways to continue supporting our partners, to help them support their customers. We are also introducing new team-based pricing options for solutions providers to make all training more affordable for our partners’ teams.• MDF (Marketing Development Funds) validity extended till end-July 2020 – thus giving partners more time to plan and execute (up to 3 months

more than the current 6 months window)• Option of advance withdrawal – up to 50% of their earned MDF – to ease cash flow• Free training and certifications – for solution deployment capabilities• Digital Marketing Tool – enabling partners to execute Digital Marketing – the best tool in current contact-less economy to run customer outreach

marketing activities• Attractive Working Capital Solutions – minimizing the financial burden and working capital pressure for partners – when they transact with Dell.”

MANISH ALSHI DIRECTOR, PARTNER SALES, VMWARE

“VMware launched its new partner program, VMware Partner Connect on February 29th, 2020, which is a new, dramatically simplified, and flexible program designed to enable partners to do business with VMware in a way that aligns with their business models under a single, unified contract. The program empowers partners with the flexibility to meet customer needs, making VMware technologies and services opportunities more accessible. Partners now have an enhanced experience that delivers simplicity, choice, and innovation, while recognizing and rewarding partners based on the value they bring to customers. The new VMware Partner Connect program has been welcomed and widely appreciated by our Partner community.

VMware Partner Connect reiterates our commitment to dramatically improve the partner experience, helping them drive customer success and digital transformation. Designed to deliver simplicity, choice, and innovation, Partner Connect aligns with our Partners’ business model so that they can optimize profitability. While the earlier partner program was a cluster of multiple programs focused on resell-based transactions, the new Partner Connect Program brings in an increased strategic focus on value delivery across the full customer lifecycle.

The program was developed by a cross-functional team representing a broad set of perspectives incorporating both, VMware internal teams as well as partner teams. The Partner Advisory Council continues to provide feedback regarding various aspects of the program. VMware Partner Connect offers a simplified, consistent experience designed to provide clearer paths to our partners towards profitability, whether they want to resell software or services, manage or host services, or provide value-add services to their customers.

There are three key Incentive and Investment Programs within Partner Connect: Advantage+, Solution Rewards, and Development Funds. • Advantage+: VMware’s sales incentives program to drive bookings, pipeline visibility and deal advantage• Solution Rewards: VMware’s back-end rebate program focused on rewarding partners who have demonstrated their dedication to

selling and delivering VMware solutions• Development Funds: VMware’s pre-sales investment to drive incremental demand and increase strategic partners’ capacity and for

VMware technologiesThe new Partner Connect program rewards partners for growing their business, achieving solution competencies & master services

competencies, and progressing to Advanced or Principal tiers within the Partner Connect Program. Incentive eligibility is determined and applied by the program tier level, market maturity, and business model.”


DEBASISH MUKHERJEE VP, REGIONAL SALES – APAC, SONICWALL

“For the year 2020-21, we will continue making our headway in the enterprise market along with immense focus on the expansion of our channel partner program. We will be working towards adding greater capabilities and intelligence to our partner community and collaborating with them to chart out our business plans. We are also investing in:

• Sales and technical resources to assist our partners find more opportunities• Channel enablement tools and content to keep our partners up to date on the latest

SonicWall innovations• Innovative products and technologies to continuously improve our offerings

SonicWall recently unveiled an enhanced version of its SecureFirst Managed Security Service Provider (MSSPs) Program to provide the licensing models, resources and tools needed to help MSSPs profitably scale and accelerate their managed security services business, leveraging SonicWall’s award-winning technology. In India, this program will commence from June 2020.

Built on the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program, the enhanced three-tiered MSSP program offers benefits such as flexible pricing options, tailored premier technical support access, access to MSSP field sales and technical specialists, increased access to co-marketing funds as well as specialization training and assessments for sales and technical staff.

Due to the unprecedented need to quickly and efficiently deploy security to rapidly expanding remote workforces, SonicWall will include its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) solution for MSSPs, allowing managed security service providers to swiftly deploy and scale on-demand security and connectivity at costs based on the number of concurrent users.

Specific to the MSSP program tiers — MSSP Protect, MSSP Powered, MSSP Powered Plus — partners will be offered new program benefits including:

• Expanded annual and monthly pricing model licenses• Aggressive volume-based pricing based on assets under management• Priority access to Premier Support tier 3 engineers• Increased access to MDF, including accruals for Powered Plus partners • Support from a new and expanding MSSP strategic account management team, globally• Addition of Secure Mobile Access (SMA) to MSSP portfolio Participating MSSPs will continue to be required to meet annual revenue requirements, have an operating NOC or SOC with Help Desk L1/L2

support capabilities, as well as sales and technical staffing criteria. Authorized MSSPs will need to be established in the SecureFirst program at the Silver level or above.”

NEERAJ BHATIADIRECTOR - CHANNEL AND PARTNER ALLIANCES, RED HAT INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA

“Our partners play a significant role in our go-to-market strategy and our overall success. Year over year, our partners have brought invaluable ability and resources for the benefit of our customers by being true ambassadors of Red Hat and our enterprise open source solutions, from automation to hybrid cloud infrastructure, Openshift based containerisation and beyond.

In response to the current events, we have been working on identifying new ways to help our customers and partners to navigate the challenges and forge a path forward. Our approach is to meet our customers wherever they are in their journey - whether it is adopting a virtual-first footing or scaling up to make remote workforce productive. Open source exists for times like these, working together to solve shared problems is fundamental to our business. These current challenges are unfamiliar and new to all of us. As we embrace new ways of working, we believe that open source and subscription based models will become more appealing for customers.

It has been established that organizations who have been adopting agile methodology, optimised infrastructure like automation, devops, mobility built on hybrid cloud, are better prepared to operate effectively during these unprecedented times. The requirements of social distancing and the need for restricted movement has further accelerated the adoption of automation by organizations across verticals to continue day-to-day operations. In line with this, below are some of the initiatives we have undertaken for our partners:

● We have launched Ansible Automation Platform Certified Partner program to help our partners build automation practice and capitalize on growing adoption of hybrid / multi cloud by customers. The program entails several benefits for partners including increased rebates.

● Our existing partner programs like Red Hat Partner Connect , Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program, and Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program are already designed to help partners meet customer needs for cloud based technologies, containerized application development and platforms.

● In order to create awareness around our SMB business, we initiated an exclusive program called Red Hat Baazigar (partner incentive program) for select partner representatives to drive new business opportunities for Red Hat.

● Red Hat Training & Certification is delivering live virtual training classes, extended timelines for using Red Hat Training Units and the exam window by three months for those who are not in position to cancel or reschedule previously scheduled classes or exams.”


PRAKASH KRISHNAMOORTHYDIRECTOR, ARUBA INDIA

“Aruba partners include distributors, resellers, managed services providers, and OEM partners for whom we have a partner program initiative known as “Partner Ready for Networking”.

Distributors can have the full portfolio of Aruba products and services to distribute. They earn rebates based on what they resell, and depending on various factors.

Managed service providers (MSP), service providers (SP) and system integrators (SI) are partners recognised with different business model. MSP/SP/SI generally is the asset owners of our technology who deliver “As a Service” to the customers in single tenant and multi-tenant solutions.

OEM partners integrate HPE and Aruba products with their own intellectual property to deliver a unique value proposition as part of the go-to-market strategy. This has resulted in an ecosystem of partners utilizing HPE and Aruba innovations.

Over the last 12 months, we have delivered both consumption and subscription options for partners to resell and/or to use as-a-service. Combining our complete portfolio of products, services and financial offerings, partners have a greater array of options to buy, consume and pay for network needs including HPE GreenLake for Aruba, a subscription service where the campus or corporate network is used and paid for on a predictable payment plan over a period of 3 or 5 years.

In response to COVID-19, HPE recently provided additional benefits to partners that include:• Rebates - HPE and Aruba has made it easier for partners to earn rebates.• Settlement incentives - Aruba is offering early settle incentives for partners, encouraging them to take advantage of this incentive to improve

their working capital and cash positions.• Extended Credit & Early Settlement Terms – We have provided up to 60 day credit terms in May with enhanced early settlement incentives

being offered for payments from May through July for distributors.• HPE Partner Ready Programs Revenue Threshold Suspension - To provide stability for partners facing financial uncertainty, HPE has

suspended the revenue threshold targets required for current partners to maintain their equivalent status for 2021 eligibility.• HPE Financial Services (HPEFS) offerings - HPEFS is enabling resellers to recommend to their customers these offerings to reduce their

financial risks (available in all countries except Vietnam and AEC), which include:o Payment Relief Program (defer >90% of the cost until 2021)o Support to convert existing IT assets into capital including a buy back schemeo A new payment deferral option is available on new technology purchaseso A phased deployment program that allows them to acquire compute and storage capacity now with the flexibility to configure, test, and

stand up systems before payingo Short Term Rental of pre-owned HPE technology to empower a remote working set up (available in selected countries for data center

assets only).”

COVER STORY

HARSHAVARDHAN KATHALEYDIRECTOR, CHANNEL SALES (INDIA & SAARC), JUNIPER NETWORKS

“For Juniper and our partners, customers are at the center of everything that we do. Our mission has been to build a strong partner ecosystem to be able to help our customers succeed and together with our partners, become part of customer’s success stories. To that end, Juniper’s partner program has evolved over the years to support and fulfill the technology innovation to deliver Juniper solutions through our partners. At its core, the program is simplified yet covers all the aspects of Skillset & certifications, Marketing & demand creation, business acceleration tools, sales enablement and most importantly profits & rewards for our partners.

AN OVERVIEW OF JUNIPER’S ENHANCED PARTNER PROGRAM PROVIDES:New specialisations: With Juniper’s recent acquisition of Mist Systems, the new joint

Juniper-Mist Specialisation enables partners to deliver AI solutions into the enterprise, while the new SaaS and managed services specialisations are designed to incent and enable partner transformation into recurring revenue models. Partners can choose their specialisation based on their competitive differentiation and unique business models. Following is the list of various specialisations available for our partners - Security, Routing, Data Center, AI Access – Mist, Cloud Software, Services, Managed Services

Incentives and rewards: New incentive programs are designed to help partners who are co-investing with Juniper to grow their enterprise business: incentives focused on driving growth of Mist and Juniper solutions and paying double-digit rebates on growth technologies such as software, cloud and SD-WAN. Additionally, Juniper is making incremental investments in partners who invest in building technical, sales and service expertise in Juniper technologies. As our partners stack up their specialisations, they earn stackable rebates.

Demand creation: Juniper is providing programs and campaigns, as well as joint marketing funds, to create a demand for new business and to expand existing accounts. Our partners have access to on-demand, customised and turn-key marketing campaigns focused on differentiated product solutions and targeted vertical segments in the enterprise.

Sales enablement: To help partners upskill in emerging areas like AI, cloud, wired assurance and managed services, Juniper is providing a new sales enablement curriculum to accelerate partner success.

Given the ongoing outbreak, there will be an accelerated focus and more investments in the healthcare sector, throughout every aspect of that industry – from hospitals to pharmaceutical companies, to essential commodities production and distribution, to retail and e-commerce, among others. The government is expected to lead this charge in India, followed by the private sector.

Furthermore, ISPs have witnessed unprecedented increase in demand due to the recent work-from-home practices, which is also expected to have an impact on future work culture. Just like work-from-home; there shall be back-to-office scenarios leading to a need for implementation of SOPs e.g. Contact tracing-inside the premises, social distancing alert systems etc. Juniper’s AI enabled solutions are already being examined by customers for these applications.

Cloud adoption will continue to gaining further momentum to provide opportunities right from Data Center build or expansion to multi-cloud rollout and management.”


NICK TIDDVICE PRESIDENT - GLOBAL CHANNEL SALES, POLY

“Recently, we launched a new Poly partner program – we have reimagined our program to encourage participation from a broad range of partners and made it more beneficial to partner with Poly. Our partners consistently tell us that their success depends on their ability to differentiate based on reputation, service delivery capability, and complementary skills. Our goal is to help all partners successfully stand out in the market.

The new program, which brings together more than 15,000 partners around the world between Plantronics and Polycom, is designed so partners of all sizes can more easily deliver the most compelling and customized solutions to their customers.

The Poly partner program shifts the evaluation of partner levels from a focus on revenue to an emphasis on involvement with Poly to support innovation and mutual growth. The model is built around three categories:

• Capabilities, ensuring a deep knowledge base through training and enablement;• Commitment, a demonstrated focus and investment in Poly; and• Contribution, which expands beyond just revenue and provides opportunities for

bonuses for our partners. Additional benefits include a single instance of deal registration, performance dashboards, and a real-time scorecard to make it easier to track partner standing.

Additional features of the Poly partner program include:• A new Poly partner portal launching on April 10 which will replace Polycom Partner Connect and Plantronics Plantro.net. The portal

offers an interactive and collaborative space to easily connect partners to Poly, support technical expertise, sales, marketing, and continuous real-time learning.

• The Poly partner portal will also provide a comprehensive library of images, marketing assets and co-brandable templates so partners can effectively and efficiently market to customers.

• Poly University provides a full suite of curriculum by specialty to help partners satisfy certification and specialization requirements as well as elective learning. A robust certification program provides individual sales and pre-sales training in various product and service categories.

• Sales tools offer customer testimonials, videos, promotions and a demo discount program to help drive business.Poly’s new partner program offers new tools, business opportunities and a refreshing business mindset for the Polycom and Plantronics

partners,Poly Partner Program and Portal RegistrationAll Polycom and Plantronics partners will receive access to the Poly partner portal on April 10, 2020, which will be available in North

America, EMEA and APAC regions. Other interested partners may register here to become a Poly partner today.”

LATA SINGHEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR IBM PARTNER ECOSYTEM & CSI, INDIA/SOUTH ASIA

"Theworld is dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and number of our clients and partners have had to re-evaluate their IT strategy in the short and medium term. IBM is committed to support our clients via multiple digital platforms of engagement in these times of social distancing. We have launched a special set of offerings to cater to the increased demand for Cloud solutions, Cybersecurity, Remote Workforce and Business Continuity Planning and some specifically to assist our channel business partners.

IBM is offering an extended financial stimulus package for our customers through IBM Global Financing. IBM Systems globally has added millions of dollars into the incentive portfolio which will be available for distributors and all partners in India. The Q2 performance incentive for Power and Storage has been increased. The funding for eligible digital co-marketing activities in Q2 has been increased from 50% to 100%. Clients will be given option to pay in quarterly installments at zero percent interest for any hardware purchases in Q2 subject to terms & conditions.

We have suspended CVR Sales / Sales Assist, CVR Solution revalidation for 2020 allowing partners’ additional time to prepare and complete necessary testing. The revalidation grace period for IBM Partnerworld program has been extended from May 5, 2020 to January 1, 2021 so that partners will not decrease in program level or lose a competency during this time. IBM provides resources to plan/prospect and progress leads, run a digital workshopwith the Digital Technical Engagement team and incentives if the workshop is done with a client. We are providing access to key virtual selling tools, remote training tools, guidance and resources to make sure learning never stops. My Digital Marketingis the new digital marketing platform which IBM launched in Feb for our partners to quickly access an array of 'ready-to-execute' digital campaigns. With it partners will be able to plan, personalize, execute and measure their next digital marketing campaign, and identify what does and doesn’t work as our lines of communications shift to more virtual channels. We provide 24/7 access to solution demos, webinars and more at IBM Virtual Client Center. IBM has launched a special 90-day software offerings and trials at no cost for Cloud & Cognitive Softwareand defined a distinct set of focus solutions for IBM Power, IBM Security, IBM Storage, IBM Z and LinuxONEthat will help both partners and customers. We will continue to push more content to the Seismicplatform - a central repository for all sales enablement materials on demand - with additional programmatic digital enablement sessions. Business Partner Connectoffers both IBM and Red Hat partners the ability to discover new collaboration opportunities, by leveraging Watson's matching technology to help find the right tools for shifting business needs.IBM digital badges and professional certifications are now available on IBM Skills Gateway.

Since we have a strong services team we are sharing with our partners details on our service offerings as well as best practices. Partners looking to expand their service offerings can seek advice from our experts as well as take the IBM service offerings to their Clients. We are also keen that our partners leverage IBM Cloud for their client needs from bare metal to SaaS offerings. On top of it all, we are hosting the IBM Think 2020and PartnerWorld conference digitally on May 5-6. It will be an exciting combination of live streamed content, interactive sessions and certifications, highlighting IBM’s technology and industry expertise for Business Partners and developers. The focus on building skills on solutions for the post COVID time remains most important."


KAUSHAL VELURIDIRECTOR – CHANNEL ECOSYSTEM, NETAPP INDIA

“A few months back, the question on new partner programs would have been answered differently. With the advent of COVID 19, this is a testing time for the entire ecosystem.

As businesses slowly come back to normal over the next few months, cash flow is a significant issue for our partners. To help address these challenges, NetApp is currently extending partner credit terms by 30 days for direct purchasing partners (distributors and direct resellers), extending eligibility for achievement in partner growth programs, delaying our next compliance review by three months and extending all certification expiries by six months.

As we look to the future, supporting our partners as they discuss their customer imperatives in the “new normal” is our core priority.

NetApp’s Partner programs have focussed on three tenets of Simplicity, Acquisition & Knowledge and helping partners with initiatives in alignment with these strategies.

We have made it simpler for our partners to earn the rebates they are eligible for by making the process claimless. This has helped our partners to focus on market outreach and customer acquisition without worrying about missing out on rebates. This simplicity met with great response from our customers.

To help our partners acquire new customers, we expanded our marketing support to help them with their demand generation activities through initiatives like Marketing Concierge where they can seek help to run an integrated marketing campaign. At the same time, we support partners through back end rebates for acquiring new to NetApp customers and competitive customers through our Run-to-NetApp programs.

As we embrace the new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vendors will need to provide customers innovative, flexible technologies with the choice of how to use and consume these technologies to meet evolving business requirements.

Achieving this simplicity will be the foundation for companies as they look for growth opportunities in the new world

• Buying patterns are shifting as customers brace themselves for the workload demands on critical applications. The need of the hour is to support remote workers with End-user computing (EUC) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions for wide-scale deployments without sacrificing performance while making data and applications available and ensuring optimal performance.

o With 5G we see AI-driven IoT becoming a reality, edge computing environments are also primed to become even more disruptive than cloud was. In preparation for the widespread emergence of 5G, maturing AI applications and lower-cost sensors will be leveraged to build compute-intensive edge environments, laying the groundwork for high bandwidth, low latency AI-driven IoT environments with the potential for huge innovation

o The adoption of hybrid multicloud as the de-facto architecture for enterprise customers has led to tremendous pressure to modernise the infrastructure and deliver tangible business value around data-intensive applications and workloads

o Hardware-based Composable Architecture will have less short-term potential against commodity hardware and software-based Infrastructure Virtualisation. Majority of organisations that need to transform within 2020 will be best-served by the combination of modern HCI architectures (including disaggregated HCI) and software-based virtualization and containerisation.

NetApp has always recognized that our success depends on the success of our partners and that we can all accomplish more by working together than we ever could on our own.”

SAMEER BHATIADIRECTOR OF ASIA PACIFIC CONSUMER BUSINESS GROUP AND COUNTRY MANAGER FOR SAARC & INDIA, SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY

"We have been seeing a strong and continuous growth in India, not only on the consumer side but also enterprise. Our leadership position in storage space in the country has been possible with the constant support of our distributors and channel partners. Working towards our partners’ business success across all the cities in India is one of the key focus areas for us at Seagate each day. We believe in nurturing our partner ecosystem by understanding their needs and guiding them with all the product knowledge and tools to enable their success in competitive environment. We connect with our customers and partners in the markets through the Seagate Insider partner program. This year, we will continue to focus on providing comprehensive training sessions and seminars as well as working on co-marketing initiatives to better identify evolving opportunities in the changing norms currently.

With the emergence of IT 4.0, our focus for this year is to help partners drive profitability by enabling them to embrace and monetize the new opportunities around edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI). We connect with our customers and partners in the markets through the Seagate Insider partner program. In addition to regular products and technology trainings, Seagate also provides its partners to better understand evolving opportunities.

Our India-market specific SkyHawk Partner App is a great example of how we empower our partners and customers. The total downloads of the app are now nearly 13,500 from 10,000 users in late November 2019 – a 35% increase in over four months. The total app registrations also increased from over 4,000 users in November 2019 to over 5,600 users now.

This year we also redesigned and opened a hi-tech Lacie Showroom in March to provide better tech experience to our customers.With the increase in the number of connected devices there has been an exceptional growth in the creation and consumption of data. We believe that

the next wave of data growth will come from “embedded devices”, and with the advent of IT 4.0, our focus is on helping partners drive profitability by enabling them to embrace and monetize the new opportunities around edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

As mentioned earlier, with the growing business opportunities, our focus continues to be on engaging with the partners and distributors network. Our channel ecosystem continues to grow in numbers and reach as we better understand evolving opportunities and double down on our efforts to engage with our partners and customers more closely than ever.”

COVER STORY


AMARISH KARNIKDIRECTOR – CHANNEL SALES, ALLIANCE (INDIA & SAARC), VEEAM

“We at Veeam are committed to enabling our partners with the right set of tools, resources, and opportunities to ensure business continuity for our customers. As a reflection of the commitment, we launched Veeam PartnerPerks Program earlier this year. The entire program is designed to build trusting and long-lasting relationships that result in meeting the demands of our customers, repeat transactions, encourage focused products and solutions adoption. At the same time, also rewarding our partners for their focused approach towards boosting sales and ensuring Veeam solutions reach the market faster. Veeam also launched the enhanced Veeam Accredited Services Partner (VASP) programme in 2019 to strengthen its partners’ capabilities to sell, deploy and support Veeam solutions, and ensure customer satisfaction.

We are a 100% channel centric company and for the year 2020-21, we will continue to help partners at every sales stage. Right from the opportunity generation, to doing proof of concept and to deal closures, we help partners build extensive profitable portfolio by enabling competencies at partner place. In addition to that, we help partners talk industry/vertical specific language which enables us to achieve better business acceleration and velocity. With the programs like PartnerPerks, we will continue our efforts in enabling our customers across industries to have uninterrupted access to data, at all times, with the right set of Veeam Backup and Recovery solutions.

We are expecting unique challenges and opportunities for our channel partners as there is likely to be change in revenue models at the customers end. There will be a robust requirement to develop different sales models to stay relevant to our customers. Below are the top three opportunities that the channel community should prepare for in the coming time:

a) Need for data mobility and portability will fuel Cloud Data Management adoption: Businesses are going through a monumental change at the moment and are looking for new methods of making data more portable within their organization and it can only be achieved through a robust CDM strategy. This change is leading them to look at cloud data management (CDM) to ensure the availability of data across all storage environments, including private, public and hybrid cloud. The channel community must leverage the demand for CDM as an opportunity to go to the market with scalable solutions.

b) Pay-as-you-go model over CapEx purchases: The current business environment is shifting the IT spending to a pay-as-you-go model over CapEx purchases. Business are opting for cloud-friendly consumption models, where they only pay for what they use, when they use it.

c) Organisations will replace, not refresh, backup solutions: The trend towards replacement of backup technologies over augmentation will gather pace. Businesses will prioritise simplicity, flexibility and reliability of their business continuity solutions as the need to accelerate technology deployments becomes even more critical. The channel community must be agile to respond to this trend in 2020.”

JITENDRA GHUGHALDIRECTOR CHANNELS, INDIA & SAARC, FORTINET

“Customers need strategic counsel and guidance more than ever now to navigate through new challenges brought about by the current reality. As organizations transform their networks, security plays a critical role and also needs to evolve to keep up with new business demands.

Recognizing this Fortinet has designed new enablement initiatives and specializations, allowing partners to take advantage of digital innovations and the changing business landscape. The recently announced Engage Partner Program provides greater flexibility on partner engagement with Fortinet, offers customized support to partners’ business models and allows partners to specialize in emerging areas through tailored training and certifications.

Expanding Partner Opportunities Through New Partner ProgramFortinet’s Engage partner program addresses the required technology and sales skills needed

from new network ecosystems, such as next-gen branch offices and dynamic cloud environments comprised of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud. The new program is based on three main concepts, including:

• Specializations: Partners are able to select an area of specialization to receive additional support and benefits in their chosen areas. These include: Dynamic Cloud, Secure Access and Branch, Secure SD-WAN and Data Center. Customized training and certifications are available for each of these specializations to help partners upskill in emerging areas, further enabling partners to capitalize on growth opportunities.

• Business Model: Fortinet offers specialized support for partners that fit the following three business models: MSSP partners, Market Place partners and Traditional Integrator partners. By offering customized support for these unique business models, Fortinet is evolving its partner program to further embrace growing business areas such as the selling of managed services.

• Engagement: Partners have greater flexibility when determining the level of engagement they want to have with Fortinet. They’re able to select the type of expertise they want developed, the benefits and the revenue stream. This allows partners to select how they want to work with Fortinet to grow their business. As a result, there are four new levels of partnership outlined in the program ranging from Fortinet Advocate, Fortinet Select, Fortinet Advance and Fortinet Expert.

The new partner program is designed to provide an expanded set of benefits to partners, such as training and certification so they can leverage a wider range of Fortinet consumption models. This not only enables partners to better meet the dynamic and expanding needs of customers it also enhances their ability to “land and expand.” With the new Fortinet program a single opportunity can be easily expanded to a long-term relationship.

When partners are armed with a broad portfolio of integrated solutions, tools, and platforms available in any form factor, and solutions designed to operate natively in and between any networked environments, they have the opportunity to radically change the nature of relationship with their customer. And significantly expand business and revenue opportunities.

Building on our investment in our partners, the new program offers specializations, updated enablement initiatives and tailored support for unique business models to further partner success.”


JAGANATHAN CHELLIAHDIRECTOR, MARKETING, WESTERN DIGITAL INDIA

“We continue to reinvent the way we work with our partners, considering the current environment, we are heavily focused communicating digitally with our partners and helping them further communicate with their customers in a best and most effective way. Our rewards initiatives and programs are uniquely designed for each set of channel partners to help them grow, maximize profitability, and, most importantly, delight their customers.

Western Digital works to create an environment for data to thrive and continues to make constant efforts for its channel partners to get robust insights into the technologies, product design etc. using an app-based training module for channel partners called TechTalk. The organisation is committed to its partners' growth and success in today’s volatile and dynamic environment. We also use the WhatsApp business platform to engage with channel partners and stay connected. The platform allows us to communicate easily from understanding their queries to resolving them and understanding the market trends observed. Channel partners are encouraged to use the platform and are constantly rewarded via our reward initiatives. While the mindset is what we roll out from our programs is to give the partners an opportunity.

Partners recognize the value that Western Digital brings along with the product portfolio. Appended are various partner programs planned for the year –

WhatsApp for Business - To engage in constant communication with our partners we use the WhatsApp business platform. The platform allows us to communicate easily from understanding their queries to resolving them and understanding the market trends observed.

TechTalk - An app-based training module for channel partners that provide them with robust insights into the technologies, product design etc. It provides them training modules on different products of eight-minute followed by a quiz and then they have a leaderboard, accordingly, everybody gets rewarded. SanDisk League of Heroes (SLH) - SLH is created for recognizing and rewarding the best performing channel partners in the consumer segment. Each quarter represents a mission consisting of a number of stars that can earn the partners attractive rewards. The SLH program consists of rewards, booster rewards, and medallions that can earn exciting prizes.

Western Digital Elite Partner Promo - This program is for enterprise SIs and VARs who provide complete storage solutions to the customers. It is an annualized rewards program with quarterly rewards based on performance for the channel partners who sell Western Digital Ultrastar HDDs, SSDs and storage platforms and server portfolio that includes our JBOD, JBOFs, Ultrastar Serv24-A, and Ultrastar Serv60+8. myWD Partner Program - myWD Partner Program is a highly successful rewards program that engages with partners within the IT and surveillance channel. Under this campaign, ~6000 partners participate under a timebound, two-way communication-based rewards platform and get trained on select, WD-branded products.”

CHANDRAHAS PANIGRAHICMO AND CONSUMER BUSINESS HEAD, ACER INDIA

“COVID-19 has changed the framework of our work, the way we approach to the partners and the customers as well. However, being one of the top ICT companies and a global PC brand, Acer believes in the growth of our channel partners on two aspects – innovation and upskilling. As always, we believe in supporting them by introducing new innovative and interactive measures. To offer the best to our channel partners and customers during this challenging time, we have come up with an Omni-channel solution. This will help our partners serve their customers with an integrated experience by connecting at multiple touch points to provide a seamless experience to the customers. The customers also have an option of getting their products home delivered keeping social distancing in mind. The service comes with a unified and contextual customer experience through Acer e-store platform.

The lockdown has created a rush of remote working culture across, we are seeing a spike in the demand for laptops, PCs, monitors, and other peripherals at Acer. Whether it’s an organisation or an educational institution, we can see that remote working and online learning has emerged as the new normal. In addition to this, many people have been pushed behind doors and therefore, a huge chunk of people are engaging in online gaming as well. In fact, gaming has also become a viable career option for many of the folks across. Hence, we are observing a surge in gaming devices and accessories. To cater to this increasing need, we are focusing on our supply chain and are looking to fulfil orders as quickly as possible. As an organization, we are also looking at up-skilling ourselves as per the ongoing situation so that the current catastrophe can be turned into an opportunity wherein, we emerge more productive and stay ahead of the situation.”

SANJAY ZADOOCOUNTRY MANAGER CHANNEL, VERTIV

“Vertiv partner programs are focused on keeping our partners updated about recent technology updates in the IT infrastructure domain. To enhance the partners’ knowledge about how various Vertiv offerings address customer challenges, we have arranged numerous online trainings during this current pandemic, to make the best use of their time and availability.

Our partners have been leveraging training to acquire new customers through online platforms, in addition to retaining our existing customers. With the partner community being highly responsive to our initiatives, we see tremendous growth potential in the times to come.”

COVER STORY


“OUR TOP PRIORITY IS PROVIDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO HELP INDIA WIN THE ONGOING CRUSADE AGAINST THE PANDEMIC”

SECURITY TRENDS IN INDIA Being at the forefront of research and development Prama Hikvision is offering innovative

temperature screening products and contactless face recognition solutions to resolve the challenges emanating from the ongoing pandemic crisis.

Ashish feels, “Significant changes have shaped the security industry during the last decade, and more exciting innovations should be expected in the 2020s. Emerging technologies and applications – such as multi-dimensional perception, UHD, low light imaging, artificial intelligence, and cloud technology – open new possibilities for the security industry. At the same time, millions of cameras and other security devices are being connected into networks, making the security industry a very important part of the future IoT world.”

THE LATEST TECHNOLOGIES FOR CUSTOMERS Prama Hikvision has a variety of innovative security technologies and solutions to help its

customers, which includes Flexible Temperature Screening solutions through Thermographic Camera based on thermal technology and AI detection, Temperature Screening with Access Control through Facial Recognition, Deep Learning, AI and Thermal Technologies, Security Check through Temperature Screening Metal Detector Door (Thermal,AI & PI (Pulse Induction)Technologies), Patient Monitoring through EZVIZ Camera Series (Smart IP Technology).

In the Access Control segment the company has two innovative products i.e. Temperature Screening with Access Control and security Check (Touch-free Temperature Detection with Access Control with MinMoe Temperature Screening Terminal (Special Feature of Mask Wearing Alert) and (Temperature Screening Metal Detector Door). The Patient Monitoring solution through EZVIZ Camera Series (Two Way Communication and Alert System) and Hikvision VDP solution for Hospitals and clinics are being developed to help the healthcare facilities and patients to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Ashish claims, “With PramaHikvision’s innovative products and solutions, customers can replace the old access control protocols and systems with new temperature screening thermographic solutions and face recognition access control solutions. These innovative solutions are extremely helpful in managing organisations with large number of employees and people.”

STEPS TO FIGHT CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAKAshish P. Dhakan depicts resilience as the new normal for now and the future. The strict

adherence to, health and safety guidelines will be a new norm for survival in India. The key strategy will be resilience and hyper-localised containment at every phase. He is quite sure that they will overcome the odds and win over the pandemic. According to him it is critical to be vigilant in their response to the activities that make up their daily operations. They need to implement the right strategies, tactics and protocols to ensure the business continuity and well-being of their clients, employees and community.

Discussing about the steps taken by PramaHikvision, Ashish says, “Our first step was to ensure the wellbeing of employees, their safety and health is our top priority in these challenging times. We had announced ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) policy for all our employees as per the government guidelines with immediate effect. We had ensured that our employees are working from home and taking care of their roles and functions in the organisation. They had served the business continuity objective in a mission critical mode. Our focus continues to be minimizing the supply chain disruptions. We are ensuring by all means that despite the ongoing situation, supply chain disruptions and therefore prolonged lead time are kept to a minimal.”

IN THE ONGOING CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC CRISIS, PRAMA HIKVISION IS WORKING ON SECURITY TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS TO HELP ITS CUSTOMERS. THE COMPANY HAS OFFERED INNOVATIVE TEMPERATURE SCREENING PRODUCTS AND CONTACTLESS FACE RECOGNITION SOLUTIONS TO RESOLVE THE CHALLENGES RISING IN THIS UNPRECEDENTED SITUATION. IN A CHAT WITH VARINDIA, ASHISH P. DHAKAN, MD & CEO, PRAMA HIKVISION INDIA HAS DISCUSSED ABOUT THE CURRENT SCENARIO, ITS LATEST TECHNOLOGIES AND THE COMPANY’S STEPS DURING THIS CRISIS.

THE FIGHT IN THIS CRISISAt PramaHikvisionthe employees are

striving hard to enhance the customer experience at every touch point. Their customer centric approach has always opened new opportunities, but they are sure this pandemic crisis will need extraordinary efforts and teamwork. “We are ensuring that the customers are attended by our representatives of the respective departments and their queries are resolved in a shortest possible time. We are contributing and helping the Government and semi government bodies through our channel partners by offering our innovative products and solutions to combat the pandemic crisis. In these times, resilience and relevance of technologies, products and solutions in resolving the challenges matters the most. Our top priority is providing innovative solutions to help India win the ongoing crusade against the pandemic.” says Ashish.

TO CONCLUDEAshish feels the mega stimulus package of

Rs. 20 Lakh Crore and Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self Reliant India Movement) announced by the Prime Minister recently is a big boost from the government to the MSMEs and other key sectors of Indian economy. The key focus of the announcements has been aimed at protecting employment, providing liquidity and ensuring business for the MSMEs, encouraging ‘Make in India’ by providing giant fund for expansion of business.

Talking about manufacturing facility, Ashishconcludes, “PramaHikvision has a long term commitment to ‘Make in India’ vision and local manufacturing.Our ‘Make in India’ manufacturing facility is a remarkable milestone in our decade long journey and we are committed to expand our ‘Make in India’ mission further by manifesting our maxim ‘Made for India, Made by India, Made in India’.” n


MOVERS & SHAKERS

DIGISOL Systems ropes in Sarvesh Mishra as the Head of Sales and Marketing

DIGISOL Systems has appointed Sarvesh Mishra as the Head of Sales and Marketing. In this role, he will be responsible for developing sales

& marketing strategies and driving growth by focusing on emerging market opportunities.

Sarvesh is an Industry Veteran with 25 years of experience in the Networking & Telecommunications Industry, with a diverse experience of various key domains including Sales and Marketing, BD and Product Management of which 14+ years are with Schneider Electric India Pvt Ltd. and early career stints with the companies like WIREWORKS, SUBEX SYSTEMS LTD, NEW VIDEO LIMITED (SHAW WALLACE GROUP CO.)

Sarvesh Mishra, Head of Sales and Marketing said, “I am excited to be part of a leading made in India IT networking brand- Digisol that has been digitally empowering business across India. In this new role, I am looking forward to working with the team and contributing to accomplish business goals and objectives.”

OnePlus India positions Navnit Nakra as VP and Chief Strategy Officer

OnePlus announced the appointment of Navnit Nakra as the Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for OnePlus India. As part of the OnePlus senior leadership team, Navnit will spearhead the company’s corporate strategy plans in the India region.

As part of this role, Navnit will be leading the strategic operations on the Red Cable Club, OnePlus’ marquee digital lifestyle membership initiative, and will also drive key strategic partnerships that are vital to the India business.

Prior to OnePlus, Navnit worked with Apple as the Head of Affordability in India for over three years. Navnit led the strategic initiatives on devising effective consumer and enterprise finance offers across categories ranging from smartphones, tablets, and laptops, to watches and accessories. Navnit also previously worked with Citibank N.A. for nearly 15 years. At Citibank N.A., Navnit held a variety of leadership roles across Consumer and Institutional Banking.

During his later years of tenure at the company, Navnit was the National Head for Liabilities and Regional Lead for the E-commerce segment across India, Greater China and Korea within commercial banking.

Nutanix elevates Christian Alvarez as Head of Worldwide Channels

Nutanix announced that it has promoted Christian Alvarez to Senior VP of Worldwide Channels effective immediately. As the worldwide channel and partner sales leader, Alvarez will have oversight of the strategic direction of Nutanix’s channel partner ecosystem, fostering strategic relationships and

developing global sales and distribution programs for value-added resellers (VARs), distributors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), global system integrators (GSIs), and Telco/XSP partners.

“Nutanix has aligned the right resources, investments and expertise behind its award-winning product portfolio, enabling our partners to add new services and expand their market share to drive accretive revenue streams,” said Alvarez. “I am honoured to lead Nutanix’s worldwide partner organization through our next phase of growth while helping our partners improve profitability with professional, managed and cloud services. The opportunity ahead of us continues to be vast as we carefully adapt to

today’s unprecedented market dynamics.” Alvarez helped lead the roll-out for partners of new solutions and offerings to help partners in the trenches deploy technology for end-users faster and more simply, including FastTrack for VDI and Xi Frame Test Drive. He also led the development of the Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program to offer immediate financial support to partners by helping to alleviate cash flow concerns and increasing financing flexibility.

Ajay Kaul joins AWS Ajay has a accountAjay Kaul joins as the India States & Local Govt.

Leader with AWS. Before this Ajay was working with Dell Technologies as the Director and GM, Head Government Business. Ajay served Dell over 18 plus year for Dell.

In his present role , he was heading the Government business in India , which is said to be the very important division for the growth of Dell Technologies, earlier it was DELL EMC. Before this he had worked for Dell India Pvt. Ltd. as the Director & GM- North Geo, he was responsible for heading North Commercial business P&L across all lines of business & verticals and he had also served for the Global Commercial Channels-India as the Director & GM.

With digital transformation happening at an accelerated rate, the Indian Government is also trying to achieve its vision of Digital India. Accordingly, from apps on the cloud to analytics for better service delivery, every government department is looking to leverage the power of technology to significantly transform the way it functions of delivers service and Dell Technologies is a unique family of businesses that provides the essential infrastructure for organizations to build their digital future.

FarEye names Amit Bagga as new CROFarEye has announced the appointment of Amit Bagga, a seasoned

leader with a track record of driving transformative growth across geographies, as its Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). The announcement comes as the company gears up for the next level of growth and plans to expand aggressively in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific after its recent announcement of a successful funding round.

Bagga joins FarEye’s leadership team and will drive one of the most critical functions in a tech-first company like FarEye. In his role, Bagga will focus on leveraging key revenue opportunities across sales and operations, enhanced customer experience, marketing, and partner strategy, all of which will help pivot towards a customer-first focus for the company.

Prior to joining FarEye, Bagga has successfully led the growth for Blue Yonder (previously JDA Software) Asia Pacific, Oracle’s on Demand solutions, and held various roles at HP. Under Bagga’s leadership, Blue Yonder captured the key challenges that the supply chain industry faced in APAC and delivered tangible value with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions.

Microsoft veteran Cesar Cernuda joins NetApp as President

NetApp has announced the appointment of Cesar Cernuda as President of NetApp, reporting to CEO George Kurian, effective in July. He will lead our global go-to-market operations spanning sales, marketing, services, and support. Cernuda joins NetApp from Microsoft, where he was President of Microsoft Latin America and Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation. He brings with him extensive experience in leading business transformation, building diverse, high-performing teams, and driving a successful cloud business. In his role as president, Cernuda will continue to evolve the NetApp go-to-market strategy and organization to accelerate growth by transforming how we approach the changing customer landscape and capture new growth opportunities, particularly in cloud.

George Kurian, Chief Executive Officer, comments, “As we look to accelerate our cloud and software strategy, Cesar’s experience in successfully transforming large global organizations will strengthen NetApp’s position as a leader in cloud data services and drive value for our shareholders. I’m excited to welcome a leader of his caliber. I look forward to him bringing to the team his passion for strong results, his commitment to building diverse, high-performing teams, and his experience in business transformation as we continue to evolve our go-to-market strategy to reflect the changing customer landscape.”


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