The 8th WIITF, MUMBAI- Unleashes opportunities in digital transformation for VARs

The financial capital of India, Mumbai has recently witnessed VARINIDA’s 8th Western India Information Technology Fair – 2018 taking place in the presence of many high-profile guests from the ICT industry. With the theme of "Opportunities for VARs in Digital Transformation”, the event was attended by top IT andtelecom honchos, senior government officials, industry leaders, VARs and SIs, making it truly an elite platform to connect with the industry leaders.

The evening commenced with the lighting of the ceremonial lamp amidst the distinguished guests that included Rachana Bhusari, Chief Manager (SME), NSE; Dr KuiljeitUppaal, Image Scientist & CEO, Krea; Champak Raj Gurjar, President, FAIITA; Dr Herald D’costa, Director, Intelligent Quotient Security; Rajesh Ramnani, Director, Hyper Converged Solutions, DellEMC; Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology; Devan Sarma, Regional Business Head – West, Canon India; Navin Mehra, Regional Sales Director, Fortinet Inc.; and Ketan Patel, Founder & Director, Creative Peripherals & Distribution.

Throwing light on the theme of the event, Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA, remarked in his speech that the role of VARs and partners has become truly vital and stronger with the support of various IT associations at the state and national level. He also took the opportunity to share a few excerpts from a recent survey VARINDIA has conducted with 300 CIOs/CTOs/CISOs in ten different verticals. “The facts of which are very interesting. There is no doubt that digital technology helps to open new doors to innovation. Digital transformation is on top of the mindsof the CXOs in 2018.”

The first speaker for the evening was Dr Kuiljeit Uppaal, Image Scientist & CEO,Krea, who presented her insights on how the image building and positioning is important in everyone’s life. Rachana Bhusari, Chief Manager (SME), NSE Ltd, was the second speaker who enlightened the partners and VARs on the opportunities in getting registered in National Stock Exchange (NSE). Ketan Patel, Creative Peripherals & Distribution, also spoke on his experiences after registering his company into NSE. 

In the corporate presentations, Rajesh Ramnani, Director, Hyper Converged Solutions, Dell EMC,spoke on how Dell brings newer opportunities for the VARs in the era of Digital Transformation. Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology,made his presentation on how Seagate brings newer opportunities for the VARs. While Devan Sarma, Assistant Director, Regional Business Head – West, Canon India, addressed the audience by speaking on how Canon through its different products and solutions offers opportunities for the VARs. NavinMehra, Regional Sales Director, Fortinet Inc., gave his presentation on how Fortinet is planning to bring new opportunities for VARs in the era of digital transformation.

The Fire Side chat session right after the corporate presentations caught the fancy of every guests. In a rapid-fire format, the session saw Dr Herald D’ costa, Director, Intelligent Quotient Security, giving his insights on a few pertinent questions raised by Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA concerning the cyber security world. It was then time to recognize the VARs from Western India, who are hailed as the real heroes of the IT industry by VARINDIA. Ten VARs from Western India were awarded in the categories of The Best Reseller, Western India; Best Value Added Reseller (VAR), Western India; Best Value Added Distributor (VAD); Best ISV; Best System Integrator; Best Solution Partner; Best Regional Distributor; Best Network Integrator; Best Cloud Solution Partner; and Best Partner (Information Security). The names of the winners respectively are:Aarvee Computers, Bluecom Infotech, Inspira Enterprise India, TechlinkInfoware, Pentagon System and Services, Orient Technologies, Creative Peripherals & Distribution, Magnamious Systems, Shivami Cloud Services and Essen Vision Software.

There was also a lucky draw contest held at the end of the event and the lucky winner walked away with a gift sponsored by Seagate. 
 

Corporate Presentation 

Session - I

Dr Kuiljeit Uppaal
Image Scientist & CEO, Krea 

“When we talk of organizations, we do not talk of brick, concrete or cement; rather we talk of people. So while we do our infrastructure building, the fact is somewhere down the line we as in individuals need to understand that we are the core essence of our organization. It is time we relook at ourselves and understand how we can contribute concretely to our organizations in our own way. The entire journey of image management that I have pursued in the course of my research is more to do with digital transformation. We are living in a digital era but when we talk of us individuals, we all leave behind digital footprints which are kind of permanent in nature – how we appear to be and how we are perceived by people around us is solely dependent on how you evaluate and control your image.”
 

Rachana Bhusari
Chief Manager (SME), National Stock Exchange

“If you look around, India is changing rapidly. And every change we see, we feel that there is a large corporate behind it or there is some disruptive technology that is causing this change. But in my opinion, any economy or any change in any country is driven by small & medium enterprises; SMEs contribute close to 8% of the GDP and around 80% of the export of industrial items in India. So any economy you look at, SME becomes the backbone and is pivotal for the growth of that economy. The same goes with India; 40% of the industrial output and 45% of exports is through SMEs. They are also the largest employment generator and contributes 8% of the GDP. So it is really heart-whelming to know that India is growing and SMEs are a pivotal change."

Ketan Patel
Founder & Director, Creative Peripherals & Distribution 

“There are many advantages of getting listed on the SMB  National Stock Exchange (NSE). Our listing on NSE happened by chance. We got a call from a company who wanted a great distributor. So they called us for the distribution contract and during our conversation we were suggested that we should consider ourselves to get listed. But I was of the concern that what value would the general public see in us if we listed ourselves. He then told us about NSE SMB platform that has got lot of credibility. In spite of us being a very small company, the team at NSE was very cooperative. So we finally got listed in March, and let me tell you doing business in a transparent manner gets you a good pay-off when you are listed on NSE.”

Session - II  Corporate Presentation

Rajesh Ramnani
Director, Hyper Converged Solutions, Dell EMC 

“Alan Turing was the person who created the first computer. It was way back in 1943 when Germany was in war with England and was not called a computer then. He created this machine to help England decipher codes that Germany was sending out. Now those codes had to be deciphered and ultimately what came out was a machine that weighed some 18 tonnes; lot of technology went into it. People found that the machine was of value and they started to make it simpler because it was this that saved their lives. Having said that, today we people don’t want to keep something that takes time to build, manage and take it around. So the technology that was there in that machine, we happen to carry three times more technology today in our pockets.”

Sameer Bhatia
Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology  

“Seagate powers the data storage business that we are into. We see a tremendous scope for companies like us in this digital transformation era and enabling data solutions for customers. So we two business segments in Seagate – consumer storage and core (internal) storage. We did a rebranding recently and have today three portfolios – Barracuda, IronWolf and SkyHawk. We have some of the fastest drives and that is how we termed our desktop drives as Barracuda. IronWolf are our NAS drives and SkyHawk are our surveillance series of hard drives. The surveillance is growing the fastest in the Seagate domain and have tied up with all the surveillance vendors in the country and the globe. In India we have exclusive partnership with Dahua, Hikvision and CP Plus.”

Devan Sarma, 
Regional Business Head – West, Canon India

“We are a $30 billion company (as per data of 2016) and operate in four regions – Americas, Europe, Asia & Oceania and Japan. The business contribution from each of the four territories is 25%. It is an 80 year old company that stated of in the year 1933, with 8-9 enthusiasts who wanted to create the world’s best camera and beat the Germans. They created the first proto-type in 1934 and stated a company by the name Precision Optical Laboratory in Japan which later in 1947 became the Canon Camera Co. it was in the year 1969, the logo of Canon that we have been using today was initiated. In 2017 we celebrated 80 years of our existence in the world. We in India represent the Canon Marketing Asia Group.”

Navin Mehra
Regional Sales Director, Fortinet Inc

“In the era of digitization, cyber security plays a very important role. Business uptime is a very important factor for any organization. Cyber security can be a seen as a big business potential, because it is just another vertical just like compute, cloud, networking etc. Digital transformation will bring more value and that is how customers look at it. They want integrators to probably ensure that their businesses and networks are up and running and also secured. As new technologies are coming into play, there is a bigger need for integrators who have the skillsets to deliver for the customers. For customers who are looking at cloud platforms like Amazon and Azure, they will need integration support and therein comes the bigger scope for partners and SIs."

Session - III  Fire Side Chat

The fire side chat session witnessed Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA sharing the dais with Dr Herald D’ costa, Director, Intelligent Quotient Security and taking his insights on the legal implications and ramifications for an organization for not keeping the network secured, and the security parameters that needs to be built in to stop any kind of third party access.   
 

An excerpt from his insights -  

“I have been working on many audits of the corporate sector; last year itself I had audited 26 organizations. They have been companies in the 50-11,000 crore bracket, and many of these organizations have invested in hardware and software. At the time of implementation, however they do not abide by any security guidelines. For instance, I was auditing a 250 crore turnover chemical company that has invested into both hardware and software but from the implementation point of view, they were not up to the mark. And as a result I could find many of their digital assets on the public domain. There have also been many instances where I have discovered many third party access & intrusions into the network and some criminal activities have been done using this organization’s network. There is a provision in the Information Technology Act which clearly says that negligence in having proper security practices in place is an offence. It is both a civil and a criminal liability. From civil liability, it is up to Rs. 1 crore liability to the victims affected and in criminal liability it can be up to 3 years of imprisonment which is a cognizable but a bailable offence. So this could be the legal ramifications for a partner for not keeping his client’s network secure. 

The judicial field has a shortage of technical people. The IT Act 2011 states that intermediary rules and regulations are to be followed by any organization which holds any personal or confidential information. So if you have any client that is dealing with some sensitive information, it is a must to have proper security practices in place. Those security practices can be a cyber compliance audit, information security audit, a vulnerability & Assessment penetration testing (VAPT), and having the policy guidelines which are put on board to be implemented. While talking of intermediary, one should be aware that government organizations are not a part of the intermediary, but every organization, whether small or big is an intermediary.”