Reseller Middle East

ISSUE 179 // NOVEMBER 2011 // WWW.RESELLERME.COM

PUBLICATIONLICENSED BY IMPZ

C h a r l S n ym a n , a l f o n S o D I I a n n I , X I a C h a o j I e , m at h I S l a I

ADDING VALUEAptec Distribution is completing its transformation to a value added distributor and is expected to be the largest player in this space. P33

BUILD YOUR TVAlmasa has chosen to spin off its value division leveraging on industry stalwart Roger El Tawil to deliver on the move. P38

VALUE SPIN OFFPanasonic is offering corporate and government ultra high format displays with inbuilt HD and 3D. P42

SPEAK OUT

Andrew PePPerell, Account MAnAger, Middle eAst And AfricA, Belkin

floriAn MAlecki, eMeA enterPrise Product MArketing MAnAger, sonicwAll

HAvier HAddAd, cHAnnel And AlliAnces MAnAger, teAM region, eMc

tAj el kHAyAt, AreA director, PArtners, AlliAnces, coMMerciAl segMent, MeA, juniPer networks

wAel ABdulAl, collABorAtion sAles MAnAger, cisco systeMs

ki

wacom.eu/bamboo

Be yourself.

With the new Bamboo Pen Tablets from Wacom you will enjoy a more natural, expressive and easier way to work with your PC or Mac. Cutting edge technology meets stylish design and intuitive usage, and with the new wireless capabilities, improved multi-touch functionality and pen technology in a single device, Bamboo gives you direct access to the next level of digital creativity.

Introducing the all new Bamboo

THEPERFECTTOOLFORYOURDIGITALLIFE

MAKE YOUR TABLET WIRELESS– with the additional wireless kit for Bamboo Pen & Touch and Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch (small & medium).

Exclusive Authorized Distribitor for Middle East & Africa

DESPEC MERA LTD. P. O. Box 61050 Jebel Ali Free Zone, UAETel: +971 4 8811191Fax: +971 4 8811180

Email: [email protected]

Networking channelsCOVER FEATUREIN FOCUS

33 Adding valueAptec Distribution is completing its transformation to a value added distributor and is expected to be the largest player in this space.

38 Value spin offAlmasa has chosen to spin off its value division leveraging on ex-Avaya stalwart Roger El Tawil to deliver on the gamble.

42 Build your TVPanasonic is offering corporate and government ultra high format displayswith inbuilt HD and 3D.

CONTENTSISSUE 179 // NOVEMBER 2011

58

46

05

07

18

23

26

57

Editorial

Tie-ups

Announcements

Awards

Gitex 2011

Movements

Scholar and consultant

SPEAK OUT

52 “The last thing we want to do is create uncertainty for our customers” Charl Snyman, Vice-President and General Manager, HP Personal Systems Group, Europe, Middle East and Africa

53 “We are trying to have one VAD structure for both hardware and software”Alfonso DI Ianni, Senior Vice President, Eastern Europe, CIS, Middle East, Africa, Oracle Corporation.

54 “As a services business group our focus is to listen closely to our customers needs” Xia Chaojie, Vice President Middle East, Huawei.

55 “It is better to work with one distributor having a channel network within a country” Mathis Lai, Business Manager, MMD Singapore.

PROFILE

Angelika Plate

How are leading vendors doing in this space today? The challenges appear as many as the vendors themselves. An overview of their ecosystem!

52

54

53

55

ki

wacom.eu/bamboo

Be yourself.

With the new Bamboo Pen Tablets from Wacom you will enjoy a more natural, expressive and easier way to work with your PC or Mac. Cutting edge technology meets stylish design and intuitive usage, and with the new wireless capabilities, improved multi-touch functionality and pen technology in a single device, Bamboo gives you direct access to the next level of digital creativity.

Introducing the all new Bamboo

THEPERFECTTOOLFORYOURDIGITALLIFE

MAKE YOUR TABLET WIRELESS– with the additional wireless kit for Bamboo Pen & Touch and Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch (small & medium).

Exclusive Authorized Distribitor for Middle East & Africa

DESPEC MERA LTD. P. O. Box 61050 Jebel Ali Free Zone, UAETel: +971 4 8811191Fax: +971 4 8811180

Email: [email protected]

Reseller Middle EastNOVEMBER 2011 3

EDITORIAL

It has been a busy October month. I had the pleasure of seeing the demonstration of Motorola’s new RAZR smart phone and I had the pleasure of receiving a Windows Phone with the latest Mango operating system and inbuilt applications. Motorola’s RAZR phone was launched with usual fanfare of fastest, slimmest, most colourful and so on, but what was interesting was its enterprise capability. The phone was running inbuilt Office applications and accessing data files through the public cloud somewhere on the Motorola corporate network. Couple that with storage vendors like Iomega and Western Digital offering personal cloud solutions that allow you to access your files at home from anywhere as long as you have access to the internet, and you begin to see an end to end pattern of remote connectivity.

Windows Phone on the other hand, seems to be an enormous exercise in the opposite direction and is still work in progress. The user interface flattens out all that is loaded into a smart phone and you can easily move from multiple social media channels to email to Office applications to voice and messaging. The huge amount of diligence that is being put into development of the user interface, supporting applications and the application store itself is impressive. Microsoft is going to extensive lengths to build its software mobile platform first before allowing it to appear on smart phone devices. The list of handset vendors ready to accept Windows Phone on their devices is a list of who is who, and surprise, surprise includes Dell and Acer. Do we have a smart phone winner in the making? Watch these pages to enter the realm of Motorola and Windows Phone.

And then there was the reversal announcement from HP’s CEO Meg Whitman on the future of the personal systems group. Was there ever a chance that the division would be spun off? As per HP insiders the spin off was never on the cards. It was supposed to be an assessment on the feasibility of the spin off and not a decision. Just as a matter of introspection, the effort to get out of Carly Fiorina’s 2001 shadow, when she merged Compaq and HP together has failed again. So compelling has been her decision to merge the two giants and so compelling has been the volume based sales model after the 2001 consolidation that HP’s empire survives yet again. Turn to page 52 for more on this.

And then there was the Gitex 2011 sprawl. Post event announcements by participants indicate 25-50% gains over last year. What was refreshing all across was the high quality of product and solution showcasing at the event. And what was refreshing for the participants was the high percentage of serious inquiries and serious shop talk. Dubai’s e-government pavilions with iris scanners, land deed management, phone based utility payments were at par excellence on standards and transparency. And then there was the Taiwan contingent, whose every member spoke faultless English. And Panasonic’s enormous 3D TVs!

What a change, what an event! Turn to page 26 for more on this

What a month!

Arun ShankarSenior [email protected]

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PublisherDominic De Sousa

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Tie-ups

IN THE BEGINNING

lieberman Software announced it has

appointed nanjgel Solutions to be its

value added distributor for the Middle

East including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman,

Qatar, Saudi Arabia and uAE. in its new

role in the lieberman Software Partner

Programme, nanjgel will not only continue

to market, sell and support lieberman

Software's identity management solutions

and other products directly to its clients,

but will now provide localised support to

authorised resellers and service providers

in the region.

"Nanjgel's proven ability to market and

support Lieberman Software solutions to

new customers in the Middle East earned

them this elevated position as distributor

for the region," said Jess Richter, Director of

Sales, Lieberman Software. "For more than

Jess Richter, Director of Sales, Lieberman Software

Lieberman appoints Nanjgel Solutions as VADa year Nanjgel has invested in experienced

technical staff and other resources

needed to be a single source provider of

Lieberman Software, with 24x7 support

and on-site training. We are confident that

Nanjgel will build and manage a network of

resellers to continue our rapid expansion

throughout the region."

In addition to Lieberman's PIM

solutions, including flagship Enterprise

Random Password Manager, which is

the first product that can automatically

discover, track and secure privileged

accounts dispersed throughout the data

centre, Nanjgel also offers Lieberman's

award-winning line of Windows security

management tools.

informatica Qatar announced it has signed

an agreement with global vendor provider

Huawei to be the exclusive distributor and

after-sales service provider in Qatar of

Huawei mobile phones, including the Huawei

iDEOS and the Huawei iDEOS X5. the

partnership leverages informatica’s extensive

network in the regional iCt industry,

providing a platform to optimise the market

potential of Huawei products in Qatar.

Wisam Costandi, General Manager,

Informatica Qatar, said: “Informatica Qatar has

a dedicated team of industry professionals with

wide experience in the telecom sector from

both the product and service domains, giving

us a strong head start in our efforts to enhance

the market presence of the Huawei brand

in Qatar. Moreover, the alliances we have

established with world-leading ICT companies

are in line with iQ’s firm commitment to

deliver quality solutions with best-of-breed

technologies. We are therefore very excited

to bring Huawei’s industry-leading technology

solutions to Qatar as it will ultimately benefit

our customers in the country.”

Informatica brings to the partnership its

experience as a distributor and service

provider in the ICT sector, serving a range of

telecom consumer markets in the region.

Huawei signs up Informatica for phones

(Left to right) Wisam Costandi, General Manager, Informatica Qatar and Xiao Ning Country manager Qatar, and Ye Xi Terminal sales director, Qatar.

Reseller Middle EastJULY 2011 7

IN THE BEGINNINGTie-ups

Waseela, a systems integrator specialising

in broadband wireless technologies for

telecom operators, service providers and

large enterprises announced it has been

appointed exclusive regional partner of

Accuver, supplier of rAn optimisation tools

and test equipment.

Under the agreement, Waseela will

manage Accuver’s full range of measurement

solutions that allow wireless device

manufacturers, network vendors and

operators to measure, troubleshoot and

optimise their products and networks. It also

includes introduction and implementation of

Accuver’s market leading WiMAX and LTE

drive test tool XCAL and post-processing tool

XCAP to the region.

Accuver’s LTE optimisation and

benchmarking solutions are the leading 4G

optimisation and benchmarking solutions

worldwide and are currently adopted by

leading LTE suppliers like Nokia-Siemens,

Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent. These advanced

optimisation and benchmarking tools are

set to be used in the current and recent LTE

deployments in the Middle East region.

Speaking about the partnership, Dr

Samer Taha, CEO of Waseela said: “We are

privileged to have been chosen by Accuver,

one of the global leaders in the field, to

represent them in the Middle East. We believe

Accuver’s products and services perfectly

complement those in our existing portfolio and

their inclusion will enable us to deliver more

comprehensive and cost-effective wireless

solutions to the region.”

Following its partnership agreement with

insta Health Solutions last year, Focus

Softnet is further expanding the scope of

its healthcare it solutions business in the

region by acquiring a stake in the Banglore-

based healthcare it Company. the new

investment is expected to strengthen

Focus Softnet’s product portfolio, thereby

allowing insta Healthcare Management

System to become a part of the portfolio.

“At Focus Softnet, we have been

continually looking to expand our vertical

specific solutions portfolio. We began

with the educational sector, wherein we

developed our own education vertical

solution called Focus ARMS. Next, we

added warehouse management solutions

to our product portfolio,” explained Ali

Hyder, CEO of Focus Softnet. “We felt that

a comprehensive mid-segment health care

solution was missing in the market. We found

Insta Health Solutions fit for this vertical and

hence we singed a partnership agreement

with them last year. After successfully

promoting Insta HMS for a year and from the

feedback we received from the market, we

felt it should become an integral part of our

portfolio and hence we decided to invest in

the company.”

Insta Health Solutions is a healthcare

focused IT company, whose flagship product

Insta HMS has helped many hospitals across

India automate their processes and become

more efficient at almost half the price of

other available solutions in the market.

The company is also one of the very few

companies to offer hospital management

software as a browser based solution.

(Left to right) Dr Samer Taha, CEO of Waseela and MyungSup Kim, CEO of Accuver Group at Gitex 2011

Accuver appoints Waseela as distributor

Focus Softnet acquires stake in Insta Health Solutions

Ali Hyder, CEO of Focus Softnet

8 Reseller Middle East NOVEMBER 2011


SAAED, the uAE-based traffic accident

service provider, signed a Memorandum

of understanding with Avaya as the

exclusive solutions partner for all SAAED

contact centres in the Middle East. the

Mou includes an Avaya-based solution for

Emirate vehicle gate Project, which is the

uAE’s largest contact centre for all traffic-

related issues, including minor accidents,

breakdowns, insurance claims and auto

repair logistics.

“The swift and efficient resolution of

traffic issues is key, and SAAED has chosen

Avaya as its communications partner in part

due to the proven reliability and customer-

related benefits of the Avaya solutions

installed at other critical civil service

departments in the UAE,” said HE General

Hussein Al Harethi, Chairman and Board

Director SAAED as well as General of Traffic

Department, Abu Dhabi. Included in the MoU

between SAAED and Avaya are turnkey

solutions for SAEED’s traffic management

contact centres, including the initial

consultancy through to the comprehensive

deployment and maintenance of the contact

centre, including the hiring, training and

assisting in agent management.

“Avaya has a track record across the

ESEt Middle East, an industry leader in

it Security, announced its distribution

agreement with FDC international. FDC

will promote the ESEt nOD32 Antivirus

and ESEt Smart Security software

products in both the consumer and

commercial channels in the gCC.

Speaking on this initiative, Rohit

Mathur, BU Manager Value Business,

FDC International said: “We are excited to

partner with a one of the leading security

software companies. Our partnership with

ESET reinforces our objective to offer

our partners knowledge, products and

support that they need to become trusted

business advisors with their customers

in the security space. ESET is in line with

our vision of offering best of the breed

products and with this strategic alliance

we plan to increase our VAD profile and

footprint in the region.”

Aji Joseph, General Manager, ESET

Middle East, further added: “Our main

focus is to increase the reach through a

wider channel thus ensuring better support

to customers. We look forward to a strong

relationship between FDC and ESET that

enables us to take things to the next level.

FDC has a good channel network and we

hope to leverage the same for ESET.”

Founded in 1992, ESET is a global

provider of security solutions for

businesses and consumers. ESET NOD32

Antivirus holds the world record for a

number of Virus Bulletin "VB100” Awards

and has never missed a single “In-the-

Wild” worm or virus since the inception of

testing in 1998.

SAAED, Avaya sign MoU for UAE operations

FDC to distribute ESET solutions

Middle East in successfully delivering

innovative contact centres to some of the

region’s largest public sector departments,

banks, telecoms companies,” commented

Nidal Abou-Ltaif, VP, Emerging Markets,

Avaya.

(Left to right) Aji Joseph, ESET with Rohit Mathur, FDC



Microsoft Middle East and Africa

announced its partnership with global

wireless distributor Brightpoint Middle

East to bring Windows Phone devices

to the Middle East and Africa region.

Microsoft and its Smartphone partners

have worked closely together to create

a different kind of phone with new

experiences that bring together what

people care about most.

“Smartphone growth is fuelling the

worldwide mobile phone market and

Windows Phone is poised to lead this

trend. In fact, IDC recently projected that

Windows Phone will have the second

largest share of the Smartphone market

by 2015,” said Gustavo Fuchs, Microsoft

Mobility Director, Middle East and Africa.

“We are seeing huge Smartphone growth

in the region and this is expected to

continue with a prediction of 38 percent

year on year growth for 2012. The launch

of the Windows Phone Online Shop will

help fuel the appetite of consumers in the

region.”

"We are happy to strengthen further

our long term relationship with Microsoft

in support of their Windows Phone

offering," said Anurag Gupta, President of

Brightpoint Europe, Middle East and Africa.

"Our expertise in offering e-commerce

and supply chain solutions will enable

consumers across Middle East and Africa

to purchase Windows Phone devices

online to be delivered to their doorstep.

We will continue to invest and expand our

portfolio of services and footprint in the

Middle East and Africa region."

Planning to launch later this year

the Windows Phone Online Shop will

be an e-commerce website that allows

consumers from all over the region to

purchase Windows Phone devices for

the first time. The Windows Phone Online

Shop will offer a centralised destination

for consumers across the region to

purchase a variety of the latest sleek form

factors from various manufacturers of

Windows Phone devices, to be delivered

to their doorstep.

The Windows Phone Online Shop will

be available in English, French, Arabic and

Turkish and will include many features

to optimise the browsing and shopping

experience. In addition to buying Windows

Phone units online, visitors will be able to

compare different models, read reviews,

Brightpoint to distribute Windows Phone online

and watch demo videos to get a good

understanding of the product range. The

site’s integrated social media platform

will bring people together by letting

them make recommendations and share

their activities with friends, family and

colleagues. Individual country access to

the Windows Phone Online Shop will be

rolled out with the first launch set to take

place later this year.

(Left to right) Hannu Rouppa, Senior VP, Middle East and Africa, Brightpoint Middle East and Gustavo Fuchs, Microsoft Mobility Director, Middle East and Africa



Optimus technology and

telecommunications announced it has

inked a partnership agreement with gn

netcom to distribute its flagship brand,

Jabra in the Middle East. According to the

partnership deal, Optimus will promote

and distribute Jabra’s extensive range

of headset solutions and Bluetooth

technologies for business customers

through its strong channel network across

the region.

“We are happy to partner with GN

Netcom to distribute their strong portfolio of

business products under their Jabra brand in

this region. This partnership is important for

us as Jabra is a leader in headsets solutions

and a perfect choice to complement our

customer unified communications and call

centre requirements. Through our marketing

and channel development activities, we plan

to strengthen Jabra’s channel network, sales

and market share in this region,” explains

Meera Kaul, Managing Director, Optimus

Technology and Telecommunications.

"The Middle East is an important market

for Jabra. We were looking to sign on an

established distributor to help increase our

footprint in this region. We partnered with

Optimus because they not only have the

market knowledge and expertise required

to promote our brand but also a channel

network in the region. We are confident

that our partnership with Optimus will help

provide a momentum to our growth,” said

Hanny Hanna, Jabra’s Business Manager,

Middle East and Africa.

GN Netcom signs on Optimus for Jabra

Waseela has announced expansion of its

global partner network as the new regional

system integrator for Dialogic, a global

provider of communications technologies that

power advanced networks. the agreement

comes as a result of the strong demand

for Dialogic’s mobile backhaul solutions,

particularly in the emerging markets. As its

dedicated partner in the Middle East, Waseela

will serve as systems integrator of Dialogic’s

Session Bandwidth Optimiser for Core and

Mobile Backhaul, a standalone system

that can optimise bandwidth and increase

capacity significantly in the backhaul and

core segments of both 2g and 3g mobile

networks. the company will be responsible

for the complete lifecycle of Dialogic’s

telecom infrastructure projects, from planning

to operations.

Dr Samer Taha, CEO at Waseela said:

“The mobile backhaul has become a critical

component, if not a weak link in today’s 3G

networks as operators in many of the Middle

East markets scramble to meet the exploding

demand for mobile data capacity. This

partnership with Dialogic will allow Waseela to

expand its solutions portfolio to offer mobile

network operators bandwidth optimisation

solutions and it opens up new opportunities for

both companies.”

Speaking on the partnership, James

Besley, Vice President of Sales, EMEA at

Dialogic added: “We are pleased to work

with a well-known and well-respected system

integrator like Waseela. With this expansion of

our network, we are able to provide our Middle

East customers with easy and reliable access

to our mobile backhaul optimisation solutions,

necessary to meet their communications

needs in this rapidly growing sector, supported

by Waseela’s highly talented resources with

outstanding track record”.

Waseela for Technology Consultations, an

integrated telecommunication solutions and

services provider, was established in Amman,

Jordan in 2006. Dar Alhai for General Trading

and Investment is the major share holder in

Waseela and had a turnover of more than $384

Million in 2010.

Waseela and Dialogic to expand mobile backhaul solution market

(Left to right) Tim Wheeler, Director of Business Development Enterprise, Dialogic and Dr Samer Taha, CEO, Waseela



Mahindra Satyam announced it has

partnered with iPipeline, a vendor

for innovative marketing, selling and

processing solutions for the banking,

financial services and insurance and

markets.

“Mahindra Satyam has a strong focus in

the banking and financial services sector, and

we plan to actively position iPipeline CRM

for financial services to our customers and

prospects in Middle East and Asia, especially

those focusing on wealth management,” said

Rohit Gandhi, Senior Vice President APAC,

India, MEA, Mahindra Satyam.

“iPipeline is strategically committed to

capturing business opportunities in the Asian

insurance and financial services markets.

This partnership with Mahindra Satyam

gives us an excellent opportunity to extend

the deployment of our CRM for financial

services solution to a broad range of banks

and financial services companies,” said

Andrea Evans, EVP, AMS and CRM, iPipeline.

“Client loyalty is a primary driver for building

assets under management and securing new

customers. Our solution extends Microsoft

Dynamics CRM to provide a complete suite

of financial services-specific features."

Mahindra Satyam partners with iPipeline

HP Middle East announced it is collaborating

with the Ministry of Education, uAE to launch

the HP Planet Partners programme in 25

local schools in Dubai. this environmental

initiative, which has seen more than 389

million HP print cartridges recycled worldwide

since its inception in 1991, offers free and

convenient return and recycling services for

original HP printing supplies. the programme,

introduced in the uAE in 2009, ensures that

no print cartridges returned through HP Planet

Partners ends up in landfill.

For the duration of the school campaign,

families will be able to return used original HP

toner cartridges to their child’s institute and

deposit them in the designated HP Planet

Partners recycling containers. Parents will also

be encouraged to sign their workplace up to

the HP Planet Partners programme, to which

participation is free of charge.

“HP is a leader in the industry when it

comes to environmental sustainability and we

work very hard to ensure we are developing

products and solutions that are not only

innovative but also help our customers print

responsibly,” said Amin Mortazavi, General

Manager, Imaging and Printing Group, HP

Middle East. “Through the collaboration,

scheduled to begin in 2012, HP and public and

private schools in Dubai will be working with

both parents and students to create awareness

around recycling, conservation and re-use in

the hopes of ensuring greater environmental

consciousness and a more sustainable future for

generations to come.

“The HP Planet Partners programme is

the perfect platform to start an open dialogue

around the importance of recycling and

environmental sustainability with the UAE’s next

generation of leaders,” said Noura Al-Mutawa,

Director of Activities and Special Needs, Ministry

of Education. “We are pleased to join HP in this

campaign and are looking forward to not only

participating in discussions with students but

also to help educate local businesses on how to

responsibly recycle used HP toner cartridges.”

HP, Ministry of Education work on recycling awareness

(Left to right) Amin Mortazavi, General Manager, Imaging and Printing Group, HP Middle East and Noura Al-Mutawa, Director of Activities and Special Needs, Ministry of Education

Rohit Gandhi, Senior Vice President APAC, India, MEA, Mahindra Satyam


Announcements

IN THE BEGINNING

trend Micro has announced an aggressive

new partner programme focused on

rewarding proactive partners, driving

new business, customer retention, while

delivering greater rewards and reviewing

partners who are underperforming.

Despite tough economic times, industry

analysts including Gartner, IDC and Forrester

recognise that the Internet Security sector

has posted year-on-year growth, and that

the growth is forecast to continue. Further

in-depth research by Trend Micro, conducted

with its extensive partner network and across

the wider channel, has clearly shown that

this sector represents a significant revenue

opportunity for partners selling both traditional

and cloud computing security solutions.

The re-launch of its partner programme

comes at a time when Trend Micro is achieving its

highest growth against competition in the Internet

security sector and has been rated number

one leader in the virtualisation security market,

according to Technavio’s Global Virtualisation

Security Management Solutions Citation.

“Our channel eco-system play a crucial

role in making our products and solutions

widely available and our new channel initiatives

are designed to empower and make them

profitable,” commented Sushma Kajaria,

Channel Development Manager, Trend Micro,

MMEA. “If our partners work with us to develop

profitable, sustainable business, we will reward

it with training, certification, specialisation,

business planning, and marketing tools, as well

as very competitive margins.

The partner tier structure includes bronze,

silver, gold and platinum, an improved flexibility

and reduced administration, plus a clearer line

of accountability to each and every partner.

Primary aspects of the partner programme

include:

• Partners will be rewarded financially

for working closely with Trend Micro on

developing business through deal registration

• Partners will be eligible for further training

and certification to enable them to develop

lucrative market specialisations, addressing

multiple areas including Cloud and Data

Centre Security, End Point and Mobility, Data

Protection and SMB

• Performers will be rewarded through

upfront discounts and rebate schemes

• A virtual marketing environment will

require partners to quickly set up, execute and

measure new marketing campaigns

• Updated partner portal with enhanced

support for sales, marketing and training

Yet research has also shown that the rapid

pace of change in this industry is exposing

weakness across some parts of the channel.

Many partners are relying too heavily on

easy repeat business, rather than working

proactively to hunt and farm opportunities

within existing and new customers.

Trend Micro revamps partner programme

Sushma Kajaria, Channel Development Manager, Trend Micro, MMEA

Symantec new update for private cloud Symantec announced version 6.0 of the

company’s storage management and high

availability products. With this release,

Symantec enables it organisations to

build private clouds by transforming their

existing infrastructure.

This release spans multiple products in

Symantec’s portfolio including its flagship

VeritasStorage Foundation 6.0, Veritas

Cluster Server 6.0, and Veritas Operations

Manager 4.1.

“IT architects appreciate the promise

of the private cloud, but beneath the hype

they are grappling with very real questions,”

said Anthony Harrison, Solution Architect for

Symantec MENA. “How do I transform my

infrastructure to make it more agile? How do

I give it the characteristics of a public cloud

without compromising on availability and

security?”

“Much has changed in the industry in the

five years since Symantec’s industry-leading

storage management and high availability

software Storage Foundation HA 5.0 was first

released.”

New products Announced:

• Veritas Storage Foundation 6.0

• Veritas Cluster Server 6.0

• Veritas Operations Manager 4.1

• Symantec ApplicationHA 6.0

• Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing 6.0

• Veritas Cluster File System 6.0

• Veritas Replicator 6.0

• Symantec VirtualStore 6.0

• Veritas Storage Foundation for

Windows 6.0

• Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle

RAC 6.0

• Veritas Storage Foundation for Sybase

ACE 6.0

Anthony Harrison, Solution Architect for Symantec MENA


Golf ad 207x270mm.ai 1 6/2/11 3:02 PM

Announcements

IN THE BEGINNING


new research from Oki has revealed that

uAE businesses are spending millions of

Dhirams per year on avoidable energy

costs. Oki holds that these costs could be

saved if local firms and organisations were

to utilise energy-efficient technology when

considering office equipment.

“What firms are failing to realise is that

while printing is an essential function of any

business, they have the option of utilising

energy-compliant office products,” stated

John Ross, General Manger, Middle East, India

and Africa for Oki.

“In doing so, they would be significantly

reducing their energy consumption and as

a result, would cut significant costs without

having to change a single workplace practice.”

IDC predicts approximately a quarter of

a million units in sales of printers in FY 2011.

If just 10% of the predicted sales of such

products were LED technology printers, the

UAE alone would save AED 1.3 million in

energy costs per year.

A study conducted by CEBR,

an independent economic research

consultancy, found that the UAE spends

approximately AED 1,136 million per year on

outsourced printing and AED 5,102 million

on printing materials, with the most spending

coming from the public administration and

defence sector, the educational sector and

the telecommunications sector.

Citrix Systems, launched a renewed

channel strategy and partner recruitment

drive to underpin its business growth in the

Middle East and north African region.

The new channel strategy reflects

Citrix’s long term commitment to equipping

partner organisations across the MENA

region with in-depth knowledge and tools

to enhance the Citrix customer experience.

Technical workshops and sales courses

are geared towards education on end-to-

end virtualisation strategies, offered free of

charge to certified partners and designed

to ensure partners are fully representative

of Citrix and its products. To incentivise

partners in the channel, Citrix offers cash

back rewards on revenues from solution

sales for companies to re-invest in their own

business growth.

Noman Qadir, Regional Channel

Manager at Citrix Systems, MENA and

Turkey, said, “Companies throughout the

Middle East are turning to the benefits

of virtualisation and cloud computing,

and we recognise the need to invest in

informed, educated channel partners to

support our business growth. By treating

our channel community as an extension of

our own team, not only do we help Citrix

customers but we also demonstrate why

it is good for business to partner with us."

As part of the new channel strategy, Citrix

is launching the Elite partner programme’,

which extends Citrix’s channel strategy to

reward the loyalty of long term partners.

Training for Elite partners matches the depth

of technical and sales training provided to

Citrix’s internal employees, so that these

partners are fully equipped with knowledge

of Citrix solutions, to more broadly educate

the market on the benefits of cloud and

virtualisation strategies. Over the last 12

months, Citrix has approximately doubled

its regional channel network, with plans to

further expand further into Turkey, Kuwait

and Egypt.

Citrix introduces Elite partner programme

Oki research reveals energy saving in UAE

Noman Qadir, Regional Channel Manager at Citrix Systems, MENA and Turkey,

Avaloq Group visionary in Gartner QuadrantAvaloq group announced it has been positioned

in the visionaries quadrant by gartner in

the recently released Magic Quadrant for

international retail Core Banking 2011 report.

From Avaloq’s perspective this recognises the

company’s successful diversification from a

pure-play wealth management solution to a

leading provider of retail banking solutions.

For Avaloq being positioned in the Magic

Quadrant is a confirmation of its success in the

retail segment and its evolved strategy. “We

are convinced that our international expansion

and growth strategy, our vast community of

banking and IT professionals, and our service-

oriented architecture are the cornerstones of

our success”, says Francisco Fernandez, CEO

of Avaloq. Pascal Foehn, Head of Strategic

Marketing at Avaloq, adds “we feel our

position in the IRCB 2011 report reflects the

ability of the Avaloq Banking System to not

only meet the needs of private banks but also

to prevail in the retail and universal banking

sectors.”

In the report, Gartner positioned vendors

based on two parameters: ability to execute

and completeness of vision. To be included

in the IRCB 2011 report vendors had to

demonstrate market traction and momentum.

Inclusion criteria consisted of market share,

revenue, number of clients and types of

products or services for retail banks. The

evaluation began with 48 product candidates

and resulted in a qualified group of 20 vendors

and corresponding products representing the

major movers in the retail core banking system

market. Avaloq group came out as a visionary.

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Announcements

IN THE BEGINNING


infor, a vendor of business application

software unveiled infor10, which features

a consumer type user experience, industry

specific software applications and infor10

iOn Suite, a lightweight, middleware

technology that changes the way

enterprise software is managed.

“Our customers already enjoy

applications with deep out of the box

functionality across a variety of specialized

industries and micro-verticals. Infor10 sets

a new standard for how work gets done.

People at work have come to expect the

same user experience they encounter in their

everyday lives as users of Twitter, Facebook

and Google. Infor10 and the Infor10 ION Suite

bring that to the workplace,” said Charles

Phillips, CEO of Infor.

The Infor10 ION Suite is at the heart

of Infor10. ION connects and integrates

Infor and non-Infor applications, storing

information in a common format and

repository. ION allows information that

flows among applications, analytics and

social media streams to be accessed by

users from their desktops, laptops and

mobile devices.

Unlike conventional middleware,

the lightweight ION technology is not

layered on top of existing applications,

but infused into them. As a result, ION

makes integrations quicker, simpler and

more reliable. “ION creates the mobile,

social and flexible enterprise,” said Soma

Somasundaram, senior vice president,

Global Product Development, Infor.

“Because it’s lightweight and built

using open standards, ION installs much

faster than heavy middleware and allows

customers to get up and running quickly

and efficiently so they can focus on their

core business.”

ION enables new and existing Infor and

non-Infor applications to work as a holistic

solution, helping to create streamlined

workflows and end-to-end business

processes, while improving system

performance speed and upgrades. Infor10

ION Workspace unifies and presents all

relevant information for each user on one

screen, including role-based workflows,

task and alerts, in-context business

intelligence, event management, social

media collaboration, consumer-like search

capabilities, and business activity streams.

Infor10 suites are targeted for

aerospace and defence, automotive,

chemicals, distribution, equipment

services, maintenance and rental,

fashion, food and beverage, general

manufacturing, healthcare, high tech,

hospitality, industrial equipment and

machinery and public sector.

Infor introduces ION

Epson partner meet Epson Middle East announced it

recently held an event in Dubai for

its channel partners in the Middle

East and Africa to apprise them about

Epson’s new line-up of products

including projectors, system device

printers and larger format printers.

these products are set to be launched

in the region as part of the company’s

new ‘Engineered for Business’ strategy.

the event was attended by more

than 70 Epson channel partners and

included orientation sessions for Epson

staff ahead of new product launches.

Khalil El-Dalu, General Manager,

Epson Middle East, said, “The efforts of

our channel partners have contributed

significantly towards the sustained

success of Epson in the Middle East

and Africa. The recent event in Dubai

was an opportunity for us to express

our appreciation to them in person and

also give them an overview of all the

products that we plan to launch in the

region very soon.”

Epson is a global imaging and

innovation vendor with a product lineup

ranging from printers and 3LCD projectors

for business and the home, to electronic

and crystal devices.

Awards

IN THE BEGINNING

the EMEA Channel Academy 2012 Awards will

provide an independent and vendor-neutral

platform for senior channel executives to select

and recognise the outstanding vendors and

distributors operating in Europe, Middle East

and Africa. new awards for 2012 include three

vendor categories for imaging, audio and

monitors-tvs, plus a new France and Benelux

Distributor of the Year regional award.

The fourth annual awards ceremony will take

place in conjunction with DISTREE EMEA, the

leading annual event for vendors, distributors,

retailers and e-tailers operating in the region’s ICT

and consumer electronics volume channel.

“We’re delighted to host the EMEA Channel

Academy: 2012 Awards as part of the DISTREE

EMEA conference programme,” commented

Farouk Hemraj, CEO at DISTREE Events. “These

awards offer unique insight into how vendors and

distributors are perceived in the regional channel

through an open and neutral nomination process

followed by a live electronic vote.”

Next year’s awards will cover 25 categories,

identifying the outstanding Vendor of the Year

in 12 separate product categories, crowning

the Distributor of the Year in 10 sub-regions

within EMEA and handing out one accolade

for the EMEA Distributor Initiative of the Year. In

addition, the awards will include two Hall of Fame

awards, recognising individuals for outstanding

achievement within the EMEA channel.

Approximately 1,000 delegates are set

to attend the ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2012

Awards’ Gala Dinner, where the winners will be

decided by live electronic voting. In the months

preceding the awards, hundreds of distributor and

vendor executives are polled to determine the list

of five nominees in each award category that go

forward to the live vote.

“The methodology behind the awards is

highly effective,” continued Hemraj. “Hundreds of

distributors across EMEA nominate their preferred

vendors by category, while vendor executives

with EMEA responsibility, nominate their preferred

distributors by sub-region.”

“The top five in each category receive an

official nomination. During the Gala Dinner, the

excitement really builds as distributors select the

winning vendors through the live electronic vote,

and the vendor executives present perform the

same task to determine the winning distributors,”

he concluded.

New categories for 2012 EMEA Channel Academy awards

Alcatel-Lucent announces awards

Award categories

• EMEA Monitors/TVs Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Components Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Software Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Printing Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Home Networking Vendor of

the Year

• EMEA Accessories Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Gaming Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Storage Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Audio Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Imaging Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Mobile Device Vendor of the Year

• EMEA Notebook, Netbook, Desktop

Vendor of the Year

• UK and Ireland Distributor of the Year

• DACH Distributor of the Year

• France and Benelux Distributor of the Year

• Northern Europe Distributor of the Year

• Southern Europe Distributor of the Year

• South East Europe Distributor of the Year

• Middle East and North Africa Distributor

of the Year

• Africa Distributor of the Year

• Central and Eastern Europe Distributor

of the Year

• Russia & CIS Distributor of the Year

• EMEA Distributor Initiative of the Year

Farouk Hemraj, CEO at DISTREE Events

Alcatel-lucent Enterprise hosted its first

partner awards for the region in Dubai to

recognise the contributions by key business

partners across the Middle East. the awards

brought together more than 30 partners

from 15 countries. nicolas de Kouchkovsky,

Chief Marketing Officer, personally

acknowledged each partner’s achievement

in the various areas. Awards included top

distributors, resellers, system integrators

and selected areas of excellent performance.

Best Innovation Project Winner, Egypt and Levant: ENS

Best Reseller, Egypt, Sudan and Levant region: TECO

Best Sales Executive, Egypt, Sudan and Levant region: Samy Abd El Gawad from Intraconsult

Best Innovation Project Winner, GCC: Al Futtaim Technologies

Best Performance, GCC: FVC

Best Reseller, GCC: Region Telephony

Best Data Partner, GCC: Zerone

Best Sales Executive, GCC: region Mahesh Gowda from Intercol Qatar

Best Growth Winner, Genesys Solutions: NCR

Best Innovation Project Winner, Genesys Solutions: IBM

Best Innovation Project Winner, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain: Hoshan Integrated Systems

Best Sales Executive, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain region: Ali Abdallah from Hoshan Integrated Systems

Awardees


Masafi, one of the region's FMCg brand,

has been named as a winner at this year's

edition of the Oracle Excellence Awards, an

initiative aimed at recognising customers

and partners who have excelled at driving

business value and innovations through the

use of Oracle solutions.

The Eco-Enterprise Innovation award

was presented to Masafi in recognition of

the company’s use of Oracle products and

solutions as part of its move to take an

environmental lead, reduce its costs and

improve business efficiencies by using green

businesses practices.

The award was presented by Jeff Henley,

Chairman of Oracle Corporation to Tapas Roy,

CEO, Raqmiyat during Oracle OpenWorld 2011

held at San Francisco, USA. Raqmiyat is an

UAE based systems integrator and is Masafi’s

IT partner. It has helped Masafi address the

company’s IT business requirements with

the provision of a strategic IT vision and

roadmap.

The partnership between Raqmiyat

and Masafi has helped create a paperless

environment saving over two million pages of

paper per year and reducing the company’s

carbon foot print. Raqmiyat, which has

maintained a strong partnership with Oracle

over the last few years and is officially

designated to implement and provide

solutions on Oracle’s e-Business suite and

Oracle Technology suite, nominated Masafi

for its implementation of initiatives directed

towards protecting the environment and

saving energy and resource costs.

Criteria for the awards included the

reduction of overhead costs associated with

the value chain; creation of value by instilling

a greater dependency on systems and self

service; design of a fully integrated solution

comprising Oracle E-Business Suite, CRM,

supply chain, Oracle Discoverer and the use

of IT to provide automated environmentally

friendly solutions.

According to Masafi officials, the

implementation of Oracle solutions helped in

streamlining the manufacturing, distribution,

time and labor attendance systems and

reimbursement processes using electronic

purchase orders approvals, invoicing, and

tracking reports to achieve a paperless

environment, saving over two million pages of

paper per year and reducing the company’s

carbon footprint. The online workflow

approval for requisitions, purchase orders and

internal memos has saved the unnecessary

flow of papers within the company.

With this implementation Masafi has

saved 500 man-hours and 15,000 sheets of

printing paper per annum. During the initial

stages of the implementation, Raqmiyat had

assured Masafi that the utilisation of Oracle’s

integrated suite of solutions would play a

major role in helping the company achieve its

sustainability objectives.

Masafi wins Oracle eco-enterprise innovation Award

Performers recognised at NEC EMEA partner summit

Awards

IN THE BEGINNING


At the nEC EMEA Partner Conference 2011

held in valencia from September 28th till

September 30th, nEC awarded its top

performing business partners for their excellent

business performance in various categories

over the past year. Al Yousuf Computers

received the nEC top topaz Distributor 2010-

2011 award while golden Orbit Electronics

was recognised with the nEC Fastest growing

reseller in the year 2010-2011 award.

At the conference, which brought together

NEC’s major distributors and key business

partners from over 40 countries across Europe,

Middle East and Africa, Lex de Gier, Vice

President Marketing and Sales at NEC Unified

Solutions, expressed his appreciation for the

strong commitment the business partners

have shown and congratulated them with their

significant achievements in growing market

share across many territories.

“Over the past year Al Yousuf has

demonstrated excellent performance in the sales

of NEC’s Topaz system for SMB volume markets.

Al Yousuf keeps their feet on the ground, while

selling our systems in great volumes. That is the

reason why we have awarded them with the

NEC Top Topaz Distributor 2010-2011 award,” Lex

de Gier commented.

Golden Orbit Telecommunications has also

demonstrated excellent performance as reseller

in Jordan over the past year. “Our partnership

with Golden Orbit saw a great deal of success

in 2010-2011 with the sales of our complete SV

range, particularly in Government and Enterprise

sector,” de Gier added.

Awards presented included those for top

distributors, resellers, system integrators and

selected areas of excellent performance.

“With the innovative power of a global

leader and the energetic support of local

organisations and highly professional channel

partners, NEC is in an excellent position to

respond to the most demanding needs of

customers”, said de Gier.

Al Yousuf Computers received the NEC Top Topaz Distributor 2010-2011 award

During gitex 2011, exhibitors and

participants spoke of an unprecedented

number of new products and an increase

in quality buyers that has led to major

deals being struck.

"The Middle East is one of the most

exciting and lucrative ICT markets and

Gitex is the lynchpin for bringing global and

regional technology companies together

to form new partnerships and conduct new

business,” said Helal Saeed Almarri, CEO of

Dubai World Trade Centre, organiser of the

event.

“This year’s Gitex exemplifies how the

region has grown in terms of attracting

many of the world’s biggest players in

the technology sector. Business leaders

recognise the benefits of face-to-face

interaction with clients, and this is one of

the many reasons Gitex continues to offer

participants unsurpassed value,” he added.

Featuring more than 3,500 companies

from 57 countries, Gitex 2011 drew many of

the ICT industry leaders to Dubai to unveil

an unsurpassed number of launches to

a targeted audience of Middle East and

international decision–makers.

Launches included Microsoft Gulf, who

chose Gitex to announce Office 365 will

be available for trials across the region,

Etisalat’s Mobile Workforce Management

Solution, du’s Emirati Plan — a new mobile

service designed exclusively for UAE

nationals and Panasonic’s Home Energy

Management System along with many

others.

Microsoft’s Office 365 is aimed

at targeting Middle East businesses,

particularly many SMEs, which do not

have the time or resources to use cloud

computing to its full potential.

“For us, Gitex is the natural choice to

launch 365 – it is the most strategic event

for us in the region and the launches are

a testament of its importance across the

industry as a whole," said Samer Abu-Ltaif,

Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf.

Anthony Peter, Director, Direct

Communication and Customer Care Group,

Panasonic Middle East said that Gitex 2011

had been an extraordinary success: “I would

say that business conducted has been up

by around 50% this year and by the end of

the second day, we recorded an increase in

footfall of around 130% on last year. It is vital

for the industry and an excellent platform

for Panasonic to launch and showcase our

latest world class products to a discerning

and influential audience.”

Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Vice

President, Oracle Middle East and Africa,

agreed: "Gitex is a good cross-industry,

regional platform for Oracle and the event's

conference programming - Global Leaders

Summit and Cloud Confex - has attracted

high calibre, C-level attendees. Additionally,

our stand traffic has been consistently

high enabling us to showcase our latest

innovations and demonstrate how our

complete hardware and software stack can

help transform business across the region."

The volume of new business between

international and regional partners has also

been one of the driving forces of Gitex.

Among several first time partnerships,

Gitex vital for regional IT industry

Gitex 2011

IN THE BEGINNING



a new agreement between the UAE Telecom

Regulatory Authority and Silicon Valley-

based ICANN (International Corporation

for Assigned Names and Numbers). Rod

Beckstrom, CEO and President of ICANN

and a speaker at the Gitex Global Leaders

Summit said: “For a Middle East market this

is a great step forward in terms of being

able to use Arabic and increase internet use

and penetration in what is already a rapidly

evolving Internet region.”

netcetera, one of Switzerland’s leading

IT providers, says Gitex is vital for their

continued expansion in the Middle East. “This

is only the second time we have exhibited

at Gitex,” said Dr Andrej Vckovski, CEO of

netcetera. “We have already won a contract

from the Health Authority in Abu Dhabi and

plan to expand to Qatar.”

Several first-time exhibitors have also

found that meeting potential clients at Gitex

can be as valuable as deals that have been

struck. Alex Filocca is Middle East Director

of Marketing for Citrix, who are making

their Gitex debut. “We had extremely high

expectations when we started the week and

they have all been surpassed,” he said. “The

quality of visitors has been superb, and to

meet this level of decision-makers in terms of

sheer numbers would take a lot of years and

a lot of flights.”

Adding to the draw of local, regional and

global participants at Gitex is the addition

of brand new initiatives in Cyber Security,

Digital Marketing and Card Technology, along

with a dedicated telecom symposium and full

conference schedule including world class

ICT industry leaders.

Abdullah Al Samahi, IT General Manager,

General Organisation for Military Industries,

Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Saudi

Arabia, was a delegate at several of the

conferences – he has been to every single

Gitex since it was founded in 1981. He

said: “The conferences give everyone an

opportunity to meet with industry leaders

from all around the world and keep abreast

of the latest technology developments. I

have never missed a year and more and

more I see how vital Gitex is to the ICT

industry.”

As one of the three largest ICT

exhibitions in the world, the show connects

more than 130,000 industry professionals

from five continents with over 3,500

suppliers, and is seen as one of the most

influential and high-profile events in the

global ICT sector. //

Gitex 2011

IN THE BEGINNING


Jacky's Electronics, surpassed its initial

sales projections during the eight-day

exhibition of gitex Shopper 2011. the

company experienced an increase of 16% in

sales from last year's event. Better product

bundles and lower price points on fast-

moving products such as notebooks, digital

cameras and smartphones fuelled the total

sales of the company.

“During the middle of Gitex Shopper,

price points came down where we saw entry

level digital SLR cameras in AED 2,000 price

range, while prices for several brands in

the notebook category dropped to as low

as AED 1,699. Along with great freebies

bundled to these products, boosted our

sales this year,” said Ashish Panjabi, Chief

Operating Officer, Jacky's Electronics.

The company also recorded DSLR,

tablets and LED TVs sales more than

doubled from last year. BlackBerry continues

to dominate the smartphone category while

Samsung and Sony brands dominated the TV

segments. Canon and Nikon were especially

aggressive in the DSLR category this year.

“Among the brands that performed well

were HP with its ON campaign and their

collaboration with Beats Audio. Lenovo had

a good increase too thanks to an improved

overall awareness on its range of Intel core

i5 laptops, while Dell also had a good share

on the total notebook sales. Apple iPad 2

remained as the tablet of choice for most of

the shoppers, while Asus and Viewsonic also

had good sales this year,” he added.

The exclusive launch of the ultrabook

category during the second day of the show

also generated interest from shoppers, which

Ashish Panjabi, Chief Operating Officer, Jacky's Electronics.

Jacky's sales up 16% at GITEX Shopper

led to stocks being sold out within a few days.

“Our participation this year has well

exceeded our expectations and we are

very optimistic that our sales will also

translate even after Gitex until the big Eid

and the festive seasons. We will continue

to provide our customers with innovative

promotions and great bundle offers on the

latest products and gadgets in the market,”

Panjabi said.

Jumbo Electronics, uAE based

consumer electronics retailer,

announced record foot falls and sales

at gitex Shopper with the company

on track for 10 and 15 per cent growth

over last year. nadeem Khanzadah,

Deputy general Manager retail at

Jumbo Electronics, said, “We have seen

a phenomenal response to our laptop

promotions and tablets, which makes

it products account for majority of

our sales so far, around 60 per cent in

terms of volume. Our smartphones and

3Dtv’s have also performed really well.”

Jumbo teamed up with its key

partners to give fun activities for visitors

at Gitex Shopper. Fujitsu offered a free

laptop to anyone who lasted one round

with a giant Sumo wrestler. Acer offered

a Ducati motorbike through a mobile

phone raffle.

Jumbo records growth at Gitex Shopper

Fujitsu’s Sumo promotion at Jumbo stalls Ducati motorbike promotion through a mobile phone raffle at Jumbo

Sharp Middle East recorded increased interest

in its lCD solutions compared to last year,

at the infocomm exhibition included within

gitex 2011 this year. Sharp saw a marked

increase in the percentage of business

leads compared to last year, more than 50%

increase over last year. the focus on end-to-

end solutions, saving costs for customers and

improving return on investment, targeted at

the professional audio visual industry during

infocomm, helped boost improved numbers.

“The addition of Infocomm to Gitex

Technology Week has paid dividends, with

an increased interest in our new products

and solutions from audio visual industry

professionals,” said Gautam Chakrabarty,

Deputy General Manager Marketing, Business

Solutions Division, Sharp Middle East.

The public debut of one of Sharp’s latest

innovations attracted a lot of attention, with

the 20 touch screen LCD venue maps located

around the Dubai World Trade Centre proving

a hit with visitors. The screens saw more

than 10,000 people use their smartphones to

access more detailed information of exhibitors,

including the exact location of the stand.

More than 15 industry applications making

use of Sharp’s versatile LCD solutions were

demonstrated. The solutions highlighted

included the semi-outdoor applications of the

new high brightness enabled LCD panels,

with ideal uses including hospitality and

events. These were showcased alongside

touch screen applications, which were also

developed for the retail and banking industry.

Adaptive digital advertising, education,

entertainment and communications using

digital signage are additional sectors served by

the latest Sharp solutions.

The power saving benefits of the newest

Leads up 50% for Sharp at GITEXdevelopments were also displayed, with real

time energy consumption showed between

panels with local LED dimming technology, and

those without.

Sharp’s alliance with software company

Quividi developed the interactive digital

advertising solution, which was also one of the

highlights of the stand. The LCD screen was

integrated with software developed by Quividi

which profiles the person standing in front of the

screen, automatically adapting the advertisement

on the screen to match the person.

The education focused solutions also proved

popular, with a small touch screen LCD used as a

digital lectern while the display is linked to a video

wall. The brand new 70 inch touch screen was

also showcased as a digital whiteboard.

“These innovative solutions can be applied

to almost any industry, adding value and

reducing costs thanks to the complete end-to-

end nature of the installations. This has proved

attractive to Infocomm and Gitex visitors this

year, and we’re sure that many of these new

applications will be utilised in exciting ways,”

added Chakrabarty.

Alongside the latest n9 handset featuring

near Field Communications technologies,

nokia has shown its dedication to the

developer community in both the uAE and

the region. Following on from the success

of its ramadan application campaign that

saw over one million downloads from

around the region during the holy month,

nokia is amplifying its developer strategy

to encourage app developers to partner

with nokia, give them expert counsel and

the financial support they require to bring

fantastic app ideas to fruition. As part of this

initiative, nokia conducted free of charge

developer training workshops on its apps

development frame work with a focus on

its newly launched nokia n9 smartphone

and the latest near Field Communications

offering. At the heart of the gitex apps

activity was the nokia lounge event with

the Pitch Your App competition.

Praveen Prabhakaran, Marketing

Solutions Manager, Nokia Lower Gulf,

said: “With the application and developer

ecosystem expanding at such a rate, Nokia is

keen to ensure young and burgeoning talent

is given the best chance to succeed in this

dynamic environment. We are very excited

about the Pitch Your App competition and

look forward to seeing the apps of the near

future in their concept stage and with our

support, witness them become a reality.”

Over 50,000 applications are now

available for easy download at the online

Nokia Store, while direct billing with Etisalat

enables quick and easy payment.

Nokia encourages young app developers at GITEX



10

1 2

5

7

8 9

3

64

1Strong showing by Dubai’s e-government entities inspected by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler

of Dubai

2Taiwan based Epicgear had some innovative gaming accessories on display including an enhanced power supply unit, a hybrid twin

senor mouse and Corsa and Cyclone heat dissipation devices

3Epson displayed its range of banking solutions including high speed stackable cheque printer and MICR cheque reader with its interface software

4,5A fine range of headsets from China based Somic Industrial for the full spectrum of audio reproduction including IP telephony, wireless,

gaming and surround sound

6Japan based Eizo Corporation displayed a range of specialised monitors for medical imaging, gaming and colour calibrated graphic applications

7,8New range of Lenovo tablets at component and hardware distributor, FDC International stall and also high profile attractions

9Strong presence from du at Gitex

10Dubai Police displayed the Iris scanner solution used at UAE points of entry

Gitex Technology Week 2011

Gitex 2011

IN THE BEGINNING

16

17 18 1819

11

14

15

12 13

11A range of gaming laptops on display at MSI

12A number of security solution vendors were present including Quick Heal and ESET

13Microsoft displayed its Kinect gaming device and applications with two demo stations and an all lady team

14Promotions and awareness on the move across Gitex Technology Week

15Motorola’s rugged ET1 enterprise tablet specifically designed for industrial use and enterprise applications

16Gaming for gamers by gamers, strong product showing by global vendor Razor Zone

17Panasonic’s walk around comic character

18Microsoft previewed its Windows Phone on HTC, Samsung and Acer device handsets

19Strong hands on interest for Apple products at distributor stall Arab Business Machine



Value powerhouseAptec Distribution is completing its transformation from a broadline to value added distributor and is expected to be the largest player in this space

vendors and tier one system integrators

and value added resellers traditionally

operate within key customer accounts as

a single team. A tier one partner usually

has full access to vendor technology and

consulting and in the market their roles are

interchangeable. A partner doubles up for the

vendor during end customer deliverables and

a vendor engages in presales activities along

with the partner. But vendors in the region

are now looking at replicating this success

model across the medium and small business

customers also.

Distributors are expected to replace

the vendors in this strategic role and enable

partners to deliver a much broader range of

services and support activity. “Why do vendors

need distributors? They do not have the

bandwidth to manage everyone and anyone,”

says Santosh Kumar, Business Unit Manager,

Aptec Distribution. “And we provide the best

feeds for the mid market space.” During go to

market activities, Aptec does not carry its own

tag. It carries the tag of its partners. “We say

we represent the partner and that is why the

partners are loyal to us and we do not compete

with them.”

The task of enabling reseller partners

also means that Aptec has to initially build

those capabilities internally for each vendor

partnership that it has on board. Amongst

the vendor partnerships that have a higher

degree of reseller enablement responsibility

include the recent Microsoft Office 365 tie

up, Microsoft’s Hyper V, Microsoft Link and

other solutions, Vmware, Veeam, Symantec,

SAP Business Objects, Netapp, Oracle,

Mcafee, Cisco and others. During partner

and end customer engagements in the

market, Aptec supports them with presales

consulting, solution sizing, BoQ, proof of

concepts, implementation and post sales

support. “Depending on the requirement and

capability of partners we fill the gap, whether

small or big and we tell them to make use of

us,” says Kumar.

Along with the transition of the industry

from selling commodity hardware products to

selling customer specific business solutions,

Aptec Distribution has also adapted its

business model for reseller and vendor

partners. “We are evolving from a broadline

distributor to a value added distributor, from

products into solutions. This is very much

in line with what is happening in the market

today,” says Bahaa Salah, Managing Director,

Aptec Distribution. From a portfolio that used

to dominantly include printers, PCs, notebooks

in the past, Aptec’s ramp up is across security,

storage, networking and cloud solutions.

“These are all value add products rather

than broadline products,” remarks Salah. In

Aptec’s new value added role, it is expected to

train partners to help identify optimal solutions

with best performance for the end customers.

“Aptec has stopped dealing in consumer

products and components. On the other hand,

vendors with solution based products have

come to rely increasingly on Aptec’s model,”

says Dr Ali Baghdadi, CEO and President of

Aptec Group.

During its broadline go to market days,

Aptec Distribution had a flat sales structure

covering the whole range of products. It

was upto the product manager to get the

mindshare of the partner, train them and get

them to sell his line of products. Now the sales

structure has evolved into business units and

product groups that deliver and support the

sales cycle end to end. While some of the

previous sales staff was repositioned in the

Evolving into a value added distributor, Bahaa Salah, Managing Director, Aptec Distribution

Aptec Distribution

IN FOCUS


Aptec’s services fActory

Five years ago Advanced Technology

Services or ATS was set up with the objective

of servicing vendors with professional support

services. However in the last one-two years

vendors have increasingly moved out of this

space and want reseller partners to start

building the demand base for professional

services.

“In 2006, there was not that much

demand from resellers but there was

demand from vendors. Today there is a

paradigm shift. Vendors are pulling out of

professional services business and they

are saying I want to empower the reseller

channel,” says Veljovic.

This aligns with certification based global

vendor partner programmes, wherein resellers

are being encouraged to certify their skills base

and scale them based on market opportunities.

A key facilitator in this model is the availability

of a value added distributor, a role adopted by

Aptec Distribution.

Today ATS exists within Aptec Holding

as an independent business entity with a

separate profit and loss statement. ATS

has the advantage of off-setting its skilled

manpower cost against the total opportunity

base of 4,500 resellers that Aptec

Distribution services through its new VAD

delivery model. ATS operates as a vendor

neutral, high end consulting supplier with

the distinction of not trading in products and

focussing solely on services.

“We offer resellers a chance to shadow

us as a partnership and the partner gets

trained from scratch.”

The final objective is to grow the overall

business and this is accelerated if partners

are enabled by lowering the barriers of

entry. “We start challenging ourselves as an

independent company to deliver profits as

per our budget,” says Veljovic.

new structure, presales and consulting teams

had to be brought in. “This is the price you

have to pay for developing yourself into a value

added player. The one good thing about all this

is the margin that justifies the investment you

are adding,” says Salah.

“Today we have a team that can take care

of best quotes, build the right relationship with

the customer and is tied up with Advanced

Technology Services for post sales if needed.

Now we are able to provide an end to end sales

cycle if needed, with a specific line of products,

that is working good in a value add setup.”

Resellers do not mind talking to multiple

product managers for the best solution and

the best price to get the best deal from the

distributor. "As long as there is a guy who knows

the best and is able to drive the pricing factor to

the bottom they prefer to deal with this person”,

says Salah.

So what is Aptec’s mantra in its evolving

role as value added distributor? It is following

a four step process of first recruiting partners

to play the role of value added resellers. The

second is to enable them through training and

skills development. The third is to engage with

them in business development and provide

them with presales consulting, proof of concept

and BoQ services support. And the fourth is

to help them deploy the final solution at the

end customer by guaranteeing time bound

implementation and meeting post sales service

level agreements.

“For presales services we believe it is

our responsibility and we have to go along

with the reseller to help close the deal and

put forward the best solution,” says Salah.

The cost of Aptec’s presales support team is

therefore carried forward and justified by the

increased opportunity conversion through a

wider base of value added resellers, which it is

now supporting.

“We are not just helping the partner to

get enabled and then leave them alone. We

help them to do deployment, configuration,

installation, and enhancement, even when they

do not have the technical capability,” says Mario

Veljovic, Operations Director at Aptec Holdings.

Veljovic is also responsible for managing

Providing the professional services, Mario Veljovic, Operations Director at Aptec Holdings

Aptec Distribution

IN FOCUS

continued on page 36

On the vision for Aptec group

Aptec has focussed 100% on value added

distribution and associated services across the

group. This includes selling solution based products

to small and medium focussed resellers and increasing local

presence and services in the region.

On significant changes in market, industry dynamics

Within our targeted segment, solution selling and service

provision is a must for profitability and survival. Technical and

commercial know how needs to be deeper within the reseller

community. This has led to Aptec’s establishment of a training

division for technical and commercial enablement across the

region.

On significant shift in vendor relationships

Aptec has stopped dealing in consumer products and

components. On the other hand, vendors with solution based

products have come to rely increasingly on Aptec’s model. Be

it cloud services, virtualisation, storage solutions, data centre

solutions or networking. We are focussed on major vendors and

at this stage are receiving applications from vendors who wish

to be represented.

On market challenges for the group

The economies of Europe and the USA are facing major

challenges. Our Middle East and Africa markets and in particular

the small and medium business segments have proven to be

resilient to the economic recession of 2008 and 2009. We are

optimistic the market will continue growing in the coming years

even if the West suffers from an economic downturn. Our region

has petro dollars and economies will grow following the Arab

springs in North Africa and Egypt.

On internal challenges for the group

Growing and increasing the knowledge of our talent pool,

enabling our partners and ensuring their profitability so that our

partner network which is an extension of our teams remains

healthy and profitable.

On forward looking vision for the group

We are in the lead as the major value added distributor in the

Middle East and Africa. We are recognised as an innovation

centre and will therefore continue leading and replicating the

model in emerging regions as they expand.

"We are in the lead as the major value added distributor in Middle East and Africa" An interview with Dr Ali Baghdadi, CEO and President of Aptec Group



Aptec Distribution

IN FOCUS

rolling out the cloud

Aptec has signed up with Microsoft to

be its Office 365 value added distributor.

Office 365 is a public cloud application

suite that includes Exchange Online, Office

Live Meeting, Office Sharepoint and Office

Communication Online. The channel model

for Cloud solution subscription involves a

direct payment transaction between the end

customer and Microsoft, with commission

margins being transferred to the distributor

and reseller separately.

“We now have a big challenge in terms of

how to educate the market and the channels.

Resellers feel they might lose their business,”

says Kumar. “The main role for us is to recruit

partners and for partners to be able to

convince end users to consider the solution

and it stops at this. The target is first time

users,” adds Salah.

Microsoft on the other hand has

considered the pros and cons of the channel

mindset. “Of all the companies in the world,

who should be worried about the cloud,

Microsoft should be on top of the list - we make

our living selling licenses. The economics of

the cloud are so compelling there is no way this

change will not happen. We as a company are

committed to make it happen. The question

is do we sit and hold back or do we want to

be on the forefront of the change? We want

to be on the forefront not because we feel

like it but because we have to stay relevant,”

explains Mohammed Arif, Partner Strategy and

Programmes Manager, Microsoft Gulf.

Aptec will enable partners targeting

small and medium businesses through

training workshops, round tables and sales

presentations. The adoption of Office 365

in the region by this segment of end users

is expected to lead to a hybrid cloud model.

Since most of the partners may not have the

capability to manage activation and integration

of a hybrid cloud, Aptec looks at this as a

considerable opportunity for managed services.

“We are looking at a complex integration

of on-premises and public cloud applications,”

says Kumar.

Staying relevant with cloud partners, Mohammed Arif, Partner Strategy and Programmes Manager, Microsoft Gulf

Advanced Technology Services, which is

responsible for the delivery of professional

services to channel partners through Aptec

Distribution and directly to vendors outside the

distribution portfolio. Aptec Distribution markets

and sells professional services from ATS

like any other vendor solution in its portfolio.

“We manufacture services within the group”,

comments Veljovic on a lighter note.

Reseller partners focussed on small and

medium end businesses are usually hesitant to

invest in development of technical staff since

the returns are sometimes later in the future. “If

the partner cannot see the return on investment,

we need to step in ourselves and to cover up

for whichever shortfall they have,” is the role

that Salah has now taken up. In the initial stages

Aptec will provide the technical skills support

for reseller partners. Once the partner has been

enabled and has received a return on sales it

will be upto them to reinvest and grow their

skills accordingly.

Salah’s immediate action plan is to

penetrate and enable this segment of resellers

through Aptec’s pool of available professional

skills resource with a two-fold objective. Firstly,

Aptec will support resellers who have the basic

technical skills but insufficient resources to scale

for a project or a particular go to market activity.

Secondly, Aptec will support resellers who have

a go to market strategy around a certain vendor

portfolio but have not invested in technical

resources of their own.

“We help the reseller to bridge the gap

when they are faced with the question, does

it make sense to train up a person without

knowing what you can really get out of the

business?” adds Veljovic. Interestingly by

operating alongside, Aptec can actively

reduce the entry barrier for a reseller to cross

over into becoming a value added reseller.

With Aptec talking responsibility for the end

to end delivery of a solution a partner is

assured of meeting end customer timelines

and therefore timely payments. This also

ensures a positive cash flow situation making

it easier for a partner to assess the benefits

of investing in technical skills and resources

and following a value added reseller business

model. This is a win-win situation for both

reseller and distributor.

Aptec’s vision is to keep replicating this

success story in regional markets. In the

words of Baghdadi, “We are recognised as an

innovation centre and will therefore continue

leading and replicating the model in emerging

regions as they expand.” //

continued from page 34

Technology is short term, but partnership is long term

Global sourcing - local supportIn a world of technologies, focusing on the ones that deliver benefit is good for your business. That’s why FVC partners with global IT leaders to bring the most effective, most transformative products and technologies to you, our channel. From telepresence to network traffic management, security to WAN optimisation, we are the leading VAD in MENA, supporting products with logistics, implementation and training. Let us be your partner of choice for tomorrow.

Almasa Value Distribution

IN FOCUS

Over the last two years Almasa it

Distribution has been restructuring itself

towards putting more emphasis on its

value added business and segmenting its

internal operations into volume, value and

retail focussed activities.

The value division has existed within

Almasa IT Distribution for the last seven

years as a business unit and has been

growing at a double digit growth, albeit

on a small revenue base. In order to

create a more direct focus on this side

of the business, Almasa IT Distribution

has been restructured and the value

added operations, vendor and partner

relationships have been consolidated

under Almasa Value Distribution as a

separate business. Industry veteran Roger

El Tawil is now heading this company as its

Executive Director.

“The unpredictable nature of the

market had a significant impact on

everyone's business, so Almasa took this

opportunity to evaluate and refocus for

growth going forward,” says Mehdi Amjad,

Executive Chairman of Almasa Holdings.

El Tawil was initially brought on

board as a consultant and after jointly

evaluating the pros and cons of Almasa IT

Distribution’s value business with Amjad,

has now taken on the responsibility of

managing the business as a standalone

business entity. “When you are a division

in a bigger machine of distribution driven

by components and volume, you are not

getting the right level of focus, leadership,

investments,” was El Tawil's logic for

recommending Almasa Value Distribution's

spin off.

“The result in this evolution was to

give the value business its own identity,

leadership and management approach

while the IT distribution arm focuses on

its core business of volume distribution,”

adds Amjad.

Announced in October 2011 along with

his formal appointment, El Tawil has been

quick off the mark. His first year game

plan across 2012 is built on a few strong

basic principles of vendor and reseller

partnerships and geographic reach.

The first basic principle is to focus

on strategic vendor partnerships around

products and solutions from HP Procurve,

Avaya and Gateprotect. Amongst the three

vendors, the relationship with Gateprotect

is the newest and its portfolio is meant to

be complementary to HP Procurve and

Avaya directed at the small and medium

business. For Avaya it is the full unified

communication convergence portfolio

including telephony, video, data, wireless

as well as contact centre solutions also

directed at the small and medium business.

Is the unified communication business

being under leveraged by channel

partners? El Tawil believes so. The key

is to focus along with vendors and in the

direction of vendors. “You need to align

with any vendor that you are going to work

with. You need to align to their strategy. You

have to sit down and plan and measure.

At the end of the day, vendors want

incremental business.”

On the contact centre opportunity –

every government entity, every service

provider, almost every large enterprise in

the region has a contact centre. Almasa

Value Distribution is looking at offering

social media along with contact centre

solutions.

“It is definitely an area of growth.

Social media players like Facebook,

Skype, iPhones and email on the move, are

changing the way we communicate today.

Everyone in the small and mid market wants

to leverage their business and personal

tools and get the most out of unified

communication space.”

With value added distributors

like FVC, Westcon, Secureway

Network, Computerlinks, Optimus

Telecommunications well into the game, is

there a risk that Almasa Value Distribution

may be too late into the market? “It is

never late. When I joined Avaya eight years

ago, we said no one knows Avaya and no

one knows the brand. Was it too late? No!

There is always room for another player,”

he remarks.

The value added business model is

more or less similar amongst the various

players in the regional market space. But

El Tawil believes the differentiation from

others will come from Almasa’s people

and partners, decision making speed and

consistent results. “A lot of vendors are

under pressure. We want to be there to

support this pressure and really deliver to

the market. Yes we lost a bit of share but

we are ready to take it back.”

“Every vendor also goes through the

process of revisiting and consolidating their

Value spin offAlmasa has chosen to spin off its value division leveraging on industry stalwart Roger El Tawil to deliver on the move

vendor pArtner profile

Software and security: GateProtect

Peripherals and storage: Seagate

networking: Avaya, HP Procurve

Components: Asus, Intel, AMD, LG, Acer

A lot of vendors are under pressure. We want to be there to

support this pressure and really deliver to the market.

continued on page 40


“The unpredictable nature of the market had a significant impact on everyone’s business”An interview with Mehdi Amjad, Executive Chairman Almasa Holdings

On revenue growth of Almasa it Distribution

The unpredictable nature of the market had

a significant impact on everyone’s business,

so Almasa took this opportunity to evaluate

and refocus for growth going forward. This

year, Amasa IT Distribution moved away from

volume, addressing Saudi Arabia from a value

perspective.

On reasons for restructuring of Almasa it

Distribution

The Almasa Value division has been a business

unit of Almasa IT Distribution for the last seven

years and has been experiencing double digit

growth since then. In response to changing

global and regional market conditions, Almasa

evolved the value business to increase its focus

and ensure that the needs of both vendors and

resellers are being met.

On mandate for roger El tawil as a consultant

As a consultant he provided strategic direction to

Almasa Value Distribution. As executive director,

he continues to refine the strategy and execution

of Almasa Value Distribution’s objectives.

On tawil’s recommendation towards Almasa it

Distribution

While leveraging the infrastructure, experience

and support of Almasa IT Distribution and

Almasa Holdings, Almasa Value Distribution has

the opportunity to operate independently, giving

us the agility to move faster and respond to both

channel and vendor needs.

On progress of restructuring of Almasa it

Distribution

Our evaluation took place in 2010, and we have

proven ourselves to be very agile when we see

opportunity in the market. We recognized that

through a combination of market focus, correct

solutions and strong relationships with vendors

and resellers, there is a significant opportunity to

be addressed.

On vision for Almasa it Distribution

Almasa IT Distribution delivers a strategic mix

of leading technology products to resellers and

retailers in focused markets in the Middle East

through a proven channel network.

On shift of Almasa it Distribution portfolio

Almasa IT Distribution represents an array of

world leading vendors such as Asus, Asrock

Intel, Seagate and LG providing in-country

services to the region in order to guarantee

reliable logistics support, responsive supply

chain service and localised in-country services to

customers in the region.

On market expectations from Almasa it

Distribution

We are expected to evolve and provide a mix

of leading technology products to resellers and

retailers in a timely, efficient and focused manner

through robust processes.

On vendor expectations from Almasa it

Distribution

Vendors rely on our ability to offer secure credit

lines, sound supply chain and on-the-ground

market expertise.


distribution strategy. This is very normal

these days”, and El Tawil should know

this since he previously served as Avaya’s

Channel and Marketing Director for Middle

East and North Africa.

Should Almasa Value Distribution have

been spun off earlier? “Yes, the sooner the

better”, he admits. But with regional markets

expected to revive in 2012, the timing of

Almasa Value Distribution’s entry into the

market is still on track and on time.

The second basic principle being

adopted by El Tawil to bring Alamasa Value

Distribution upto speed is to reinforce

relationships with key VAR partners which

may not have been a leading priority during

the focus on top line growth of previous

years. In this respect, El Tawil received

overwhelming support from old and new

prospective partners during Gitex 2011.

One of the cornerstones for Almasa

Value Distribution’s go to market confidence

is its ability to leverage on credit facilities,

geographical reach and financial reserves

of both Almasa IT Distribution and Almasa

Holdings. “It is upto me what services I need

from the organisations. It is not based on what

is available. What I need, I will take and if they

do not have it, I will build and I will invest in it.”

“While leveraging the infrastructure,

experience and support of Almasa IT

Distribution and Almasa Holdings, Almasa

Value Distribution has the opportunity to

operate independently,” adds Amjad.

An observation that El Tawil has

made while switching from the vendor

side of the fence to the channel side is

the deterioration in loyalty standards.

“Everyone is shopping, hunting and deal

making. But you really need to work to build

your business and have the right partners

around you. Long term success is not going

to come from shopping around.”

The third basic principle El Tawil is

working on is geographical reach. Saudi

Arabia is an important target market for

him in 2012. The other geography he is

focussing on is Africa for Avaya’s contact

centre solutions. With more than forty odd

telecom service players the opportunity

for upgradation and migration of customer

service platforms is considerable. In terms

of logistics and operations, Almasa Value

Distribution will leverage the existing reach

of its volume counterpart.

Moving forward, the financials for Almasa

Value Distribution will remain consolidated

within Almasa IT Distribution for the next

12 to 18 months, after which they will be

separated. If 2010 and 2011 have been the

years of consolidation for Amjad’s Almasa

Holdings, then 2012 will be the testing year

for El Tawil’s Almasa Value Distribution. On

the face it appears all the ingredients of

success are ready to deliver for El Tawil. //

Challenges ahead for Roger El Tawil, Executive Director, Almasa Value Distribution

Almasa Value Distribution

IN FOCUS

Everyone is shopping, hunting and deal making.

But you really need to work to build your business and have the right partners around you. Long term success is not going to come from shopping around.

continued from page 38


Panasonic

IN FOCUS

Panasonic has launched its custom display

solutions in the region. While the company has

surpassed industry standards by reaching the

152 inch lCD tv size, it believes that size is

not the primary aspect of its solutions. “How

to utilise the solution is the key issue,” says

Masao Motoki, Director System Sales and

Marketing group, Panasonic Marketing.

A display solution built around the 152

inch LCD TV, with 3D rendering, can cost

upwards of $0.7 million. This high investment

precludes certain consumer focussed demand

areas like the home theatre and personal

viewing. However the product is robustly built

for outdoor use and is both waterproof and

dustproof. According to Motoki, “the primary

application area is expected to be display

advertising” in locations like up market malls,

retail outlets, outdoors, special events and other

advertising opportunities.

Other application areas are public

sector including government departments,

defence, environment, land development;

simulation for transportation like airlines,

urban transport; product walk through for new

products under development and high end

CAD/CAM graphic design.

A typical outdoor LED signage usually

costs around $3,500 to $6,000 per sqm after

installation at the final site depending on the

quality of display resolution in the signage

structure. By comparison Panasonic custom

solutions cost $65,000 per sqm and above.

Such a high capital investment implies that

either the project needs to have a very high rate

of return or the benefits of using the solution

are strategic and the nature of its usage justifies

the investment.

While Motoki admits that demand for these

high end solutions is limited, especially around

the 152 inch TV, he expects go to market

activities to be driven both by partners and

Panasonic themselves. Since the solutions are

custom developed both partners and Panasonic

need to have a high degree of readiness to

Build your TVPanasonic is offering corporate and government ultra high format displays with inbuilt HD and 3D

centrAlised displAy pAnel At nyc hAll

The New York City Hall is the hub and control

room for municipal activities in the city.

Multi-department alerts and updates need to

be flashed regularly for the team members

to collectively take real time decisions.

However the City Hall has tall ceilings, wide

wall spaces and are alteration protected.

Specifically the City Hall has a 26 feet high

ceiling and wall display area of 70 feet by

40 feet. Such a large wall space makes TV

display panels like a 65 inch screen too small

to be visually suitable. A projection system or

a multiple display video wall was ruled out for

aesthetic reasons. Getting the right centralised

display solution was a challenge.

The solution finally selected was a single

Panasonic 103-inch High Definition Plasma

Display. The display was outfitted with DVI,

HDMI, component video and PC input plug-

in modules, enabling multiple feeds to be

multiplexed on a single 103-inch screen. The

solution was built to allow team members

to monitor news and event updates

simultaneously with live video feed from

traffic cameras, while having the ability to

play back recording in high definition via the

Panasonic Blu-ray Disc Player. Since team

members view the information at the same

time and at the same location, the standard

of decision making has improved.

Product highlights

• 100,000 hour product life cycle

• Flat screen form factor lends to aesthetic

installation

• Consistent image quality even after

extended use, non bulb illumination

• Sharp images even for fast moving

frames with 1080p resolution

• Resistance to ghost images

• Wide angle viewing

• Three year warranty

Focussing on meeting customer expectations, Masao Motoki, Director System Sales and Marketing Group, Panasonic Marketing

study and implement the solution. Low demand

base, low volume of production, high degree

of consultation and presales engagement, high

standard of implementation skills, logistics and

transportation costs all combine to raise the

final cost of the solution.

Another innovation is the horizontal, touch

screen control panel display. According to

Yasuo Yamasaki, General Manager, System

Solution Department, Panasonic Marketing,

“This is like a computer panel. You can open

five applications to control the connected TVs.”

During a meeting, participants can deliberate,

touch, use and manipulate the information on

the horizontal panel before viewing the final

results on a vertical 3D TV panels.

Will the price of the solution come down if

Panasonic starts production using standardised

sizes and specifications? Motoki admits the

price can come down with this approach, “but

with big investments, customer expectations

are much more,” and it is unlikely they will be

satisfied with a standardised product. //


Panasonic has a full range of professional LCD TVs, specially reinforced for outdoor conditions ranging from 65 inches and upwards. The 152 inch TV is currently the largest in the world from any vendor

Enhancing custom solutions, Yasuo Yamasaki, General Manager, System Solution Department, Panasonic Marketing

The touch screen horizontal format control panel is meant to manage to manage displays of large format TVs and is part of the custom solution offering

Shutter driven glasses, which alternatively switch visual transmission from left to right in phase with the TV, create the 3D immersion effect

th 152 uX1

Specifications

Colour: Black

Screen Size diagonal: 152.0 inch

Aspect Ratio: 17.9

Display Type: Full high definition

plasma display

Effective Display Area (WxH):

134.4" x 70.9"

Resolution (HxV): 4,096 x 2,160 pixels

Pixel Pitch (HxV): 0.0328" x 0.0328"

Contrast Ratio: 5,000,000:1

Gradation: 8,192 steps

Audio Input: RCA pin jack x 2

Scan Rate: 48Hz/60Hz

Inputs: Component/RGB HDMI, DVI,

Serial Input/Output

3D Shutter Out: M3 Jack x 1, for

Optional 3D IR Transmitter

Power Requirements: 200-240 V AC

Power Consumption: 3700W

Power off condition: 0.3 W

Stand-by condition: 0.5W

Weight (approx.): approx. 1,272.1 lbs.

Operating Temperature: 32 °F - 104 °F

Operating Humidity: 20% - 80%

(Non condensation)

Operating Altitude: 0 to 4,920 feet


Optical Media

Flash Drive & Cards

PC Accessories

Hard Drives

STORE • PROTECT • CONNECT

Grand Entertainer

www.imation.com/en-aeImation Corporation is a leading global technology company dedicated to helping people and organizations “Store, Protect, and Connect” their digital world.

InsideConsumerAD.pdf 1 10/2/11 2:31 PM

CnME’s iCt Achievement Awards 2011, the

region’s premier iCt awards event, honouring

the best in people, projects and products from

the Middle East, took place on 9 October 2011

at a gala evening function.

The evening, which brought together

more than 400 delegates forming the

who’s-who of the ICT sector in the region,

took place at The Monarch Hotel in Dubai.

The ICT Achievement Awards recognised

the achievers and trend-setters of the IT

industry of the region, who have used budgets

effectively and providers who have made

good every enterprise investment.

These accomplishments covered

everything from projects focused on speed to

market, maintenance backlog challenges faced

and overcome, business-facing prioritisation

of increased budgets, smart analysis of new

technological opportunities, adoption of global

best practices and standards, investment in

skills and end-user support, as well as other

intelligent use of resources by end-users,

solution providers and service providers in

the changing financial landscape of the last 12

months.

CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011 was

judged by a panel comprising industry experts

from across the region. This year’s judges

included: Trevor Moore, IT director, Abu Dhabi

University; Sa’di Awienat, Director, IT, Qatar

Foundation; Dr Aisha Butti Bin Bishr, Assistant

Undersecretary of Institutional Services and

Support Sector, Ministry of Labour, UAE. //

ICT Achievement Awards 2011Hosted and organised by Computer News the event was attended by over 400 CIO and IT industry delegates

the awards were handed out for 21 categories. the awardees and categories are listed below.

CiO OF tHE YEArAbdulla Al Bastaki, RTA

FuturE CiO OF tHE YEArKhalid AbdulRahman Al Awadhi, head of the infrastructure section within IT at Dubai Municipality

it tEAM OF tHE YEArAmerican Express Middle East, Bahrain

EDitOr’S CHOiCE OF tHE YEArMobily

inDuStrY ACHiEvEMEntVAD of the Year, FVC

BFSi DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArQatar First Investment Bank

tElECOMMuniCAtiOnS DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArSaudi Telecom Company

gOvErnMEnt DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArGeneral Organisation for Youth and Sports, Bahrain

HEAltHCArE DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArKing Fahd Military Medical Complex

EnErgY DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArMasdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company)

EDuCAtiOn DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArSupreme Education Council, Qatar

COnStruCtiOn AnD rEAl EStAtE DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArSorouh Real Estate

rEtAil DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArDHL Express UAE

HOSPitAlitY AnD tOuriSM DEPlOYMEnt OF tHE YEArJumeirah Group

COnSultAnCY OF tHE YEAr Deloitte Consulting

SECuritY SOlutiOnS PrOviDEr OF tHE YEArBlue Coat Systems

StOrAgE SOlutiOnS PrOviDEr OF tHE YEArDell

MAnAgED SErviCES PrOviDEr OF tHE YEArInjazat Data Systems

SYStEMS intEgrAtOr OF tHE YEArMahindra Satyam

vEnDOr OF tHE YEAr – HArDWArECisco Systems

vEnDOr OF tHE YEAr – SOFtWArEVMWare

CPI Awards

IN FOCUS

FVC received the industry achievement award


COVER FEATURE

Networking ChannelsHow are leading vendors doing in this space today? The challenges appear as many as the vendors themselves. An overview of their ecosystem!

Key vendors operating in this space face

a diverse mix of channel enablement

challenges. vendors Cisco, Juniper networks,

EMC, Sonicwall and Belkin all face different

challenges in their channel workspace. For

infrastructure vendor Cisco, it is looking down the road at its

upcoming Quad enterprise social software. its partners have

done a commendable job of mastering the infrastructure

and solutions of wired and wireless networking. it has

introduced unified communication solutions into the

market place and its partners have started ramping up.

But unified communications has now merged into social

media and partners will soon need to establish familiarity

with collaboration solutions, interfacing and integration

with end user infrastructure. “today social media is not

enabled for unified communication. We are putting unified

communication on top of these applications,” says Wael

Abdulal, Collaboration Sales Manager, Cisco Systems.

For end to end networking vendor Juniper Networks, the

key focus is to consistently maintain partner engagements with

enterprise customer accounts with a high level of consulting

standard, thereby ensuring that both partner and customer

get a high degree of return. The vendor closely manages the

performance standards of its Elite and Select partners and the

number of active partners in this space. The challenge for it is

to grow the number of its partners in sync with market growth

without compromising on engagement standards likely to affect

perceived returns and profit margins. “A focussed eco system

leads to streamlined investment into partners and better quality

assurance,” explains Taj El Khayat, Area director for partners,

alliances and commercial segment, MEA, Juniper Networks.

For storage vendor EMC, its high growth model implies an

equivalent growth in value added resellers being driven by a

value added distributor partner. However identification of value

added distributors with whom EMC can work with is the first

challenge. The next challenge is to work closely with value

added distributor partners to grow the number and capability of

the value added resellers. “We need to get someone to play the

same role we are supposed to play. That is why we focus a lot on

soft skills development of partners. You need to be very close to

the distributors to change their mind set,” says Havier Haddad,

Channel and Alliances Manager, TEAM Region, EMC.

For firewall vendor Sonicwall, managing regional growth

opportunities from outside its traditional channel market

segments is the current focus. Since Sonicwall operates at a more

competitive price point than its competitors, system integrators

working in health care, education and the public sector are

approaching it for solution partnerships, technology know how

and enablement. Building loyalty with these partners for long

term and repeat business is Sonicwall’s immediate priority. “For

years these accounts have long standing relationships with

larger vendors. But when they start losing deals and start getting

requests from end customers they come and partner with us. We

will train them,” says Florian Malecki, EMEA Enterprise Product

Marketing Manager, Sonicwall.

For networking and accessory vendor Belkin, the challenge

is to find distributor partners ready to carry its full range of

products. While networking products is its largest segment by

revenue, the key differentiator in the market is when a distributor

carries its complete portfolio making it attractive for a reseller

to complete a single point deal. The challenge is more acute

as Belkin gears up to expand across Africa, where not all of its

product segments are likely to have an immediate uptake in

the price sensitive market. “Belkin's strength is in its range and

breadth of product portfolio. Instead of a reseller or retailer sitting

with multiple distributors for multiple vendors they can approach

Belkin for the full range,” says Andrew Pepperell, Account

Manager, Middle East and Africa, Belkin. //


Top of the pack

networking products have the highest

contribution to Belkin’s revenue in

the region. the networking product

portfolio includes routers, powerline

solutions, wireless home cinema solutions, wired

switches and adapters and patch cables. the

router range of products is further segmented

into wireless, modem and uSB adapter based.

the wireless range of routers has speeds ranging

from 150-450 Mbps and the uSB based router

can manage applications like gaming and home

theatre video streaming. the powerline product

allows you to convert the power cable into a high

speed network cable connection. it can support

connectivity from 200-1,000 Mbps. the home

cinema tv adapter connects to a laptop with intel

wireless display and provides HD 1080p resolution

along with Dolby sound. it has both rCA and

HDMi output. the wired switches support 1,000

Mbps gigabit networking with 5 and 8 ports and

gigabit uSB 2.0 adapter.

Since Belkin insists that distributor partners

carry the full range of its products, resellers and

VARs usually need to access only a single distributor

for a range of supporting networking products

and accessories. In the UAE, Belkin has appointed

Logicom, Ashley and Jumbo Electronics. Logicom

also distributes in Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain

and Oman. Jumbo also distributes in Kuwait, Bahrain

and Oman. For Saudi Arabia, Belkin has appointed

Shastech for Saudi Arabia. Since imports are shipped

from United Kingdom, distributors are expected to

keep an inventory of 75 days.

For South Africa, there are three distributors and

they carry the full range of Belkin products. However

for the rest of Africa including East and West Africa

the focus will initially be on carrying networking and

cable products. “A master distributor for rest of Africa

will carry the full range of products”, says Pepperell.

“The advantage of carrying all product categories is

a distributor can offer an entire accessory solution

thereby differentiating itself from competition,” he

adds.

Belkin expects appointed distributors to be

aggressive in their go to market activities. In terms of

priority, the vendor would spend marketing funds on

retail incentives, rebates and promotions instead of

brand building. It is also monitoring competitor price

points in the market to tackle reseller perception on its

higher selling price points.

Andrew Pepperell, Account Manager, Middle East and Africa, Belkin


Next generation platform

When unified communication solutions

appeared in the market two to three

years ago, partners needed to fall back to

Cisco implementation teams for support.

not so much because the technology was complex,

but more so the difference from conventional lAn

technology products. “they have done a good job

on the switches and routers, but they are gearing

up their skills to really start understanding the soft

capability beyond the boxes that we used to sell,”

explains Abdulal about the ongoing evolution of

partner skills.

Cisco has introduced a separate category of

partner programmes for unified communication with

three levels of specialisation: Express, Advanced

and Master. There are also four areas of technology

specialisation including rich media, IP contact centre,

Unity support and Unity design.

The highest level of specialisation is the Master

level for partners who have in-depth technology skills,

at least five demonstrated customer success stories

in implementing value added unified communication

solutions and project management certification

amongst others.

Looking down Cisco’s road map, Abdulal is excited

by what lies ahead. “We are passing through the next

level of communication. We used to say telephony, then

unified communication and now it is collaboration. This

covers social media and it is more complex than before.”

Cisco is developing its enterprise collaboration

platform called Quad, which flattens out social media

channels into a unified communication interface

allowing much more powerful interactivity. This is

being driven by changes in the workplace including

expectations of instant communication, multiple

formats and sources of information and flexible team

structures.

Quad’s features include new postings, video as

content, personalised dashboard, user profile, contacts

directory, sharing, collaboration and searching within

a community, access to recent activities, real time

notifications, mobility, security and policy management,

integration and interoperability, scalability, fault tolerance,

centralised application maintenance or private cloud and

systems management.

With Cisco putting so much emphasis on its next

generation collaboration platform, partners will also

need to keep their skills in phase with end user and

vendor expectations.

Wael Abdulal, Collaboration Sales Manager, Cisco Systems

COVER FEATURENetworking channels


Enablement is key

For storage solution vendor EMC the

most important component of its channel

programme is the value added distributor

partner. With emphasis on soft skills

development of reseller partners by the distributor, EMC

believes this is only possible when the distributor has

been built from the ground up on the same business

model. “the target for a distributor is to have extended

sales, presales and post sales force. We treat the

distributor as our extended sales force,” says Haddad.

While he does not expect the distributor to reach the

levels of a vendor in terms of partner enablement and

acceleration through its velocity channel programme,

“We want them to do the job to a certain extent at least.”

EMC has set ambitious targets of penetration into

the SMB segment across the region and for this it needs

a strong reseller base. “We need to get someone to play

the same role that we are supposed to play. That is why

we focus a lot on soft skills development of partners.” For

EMC, tier one partners including large system integrators

and enterprise resellers contribute 55% of its revenue.

Value added distributors are expected to contribute the

balance 45%. Value added distributors for EMC include

Computerlinks, CIS Lebanon and Al Jammaz in Saudi

Arabia.

EMC follows a five tier partner structure called the

Velocity partner programme. This was introduced in 2010,

when EMC changed its focus from a direct sales model to

an indirect one, from a channel non-friendly to a channel

friendly vendor and from an enterprise storage vendor to full

market segment storage vendor. A partner can enter at the

Affiliate level, without any preconditions and also without

any programme benefits. The next higher level is the Affiliate

Elite where they are eligible for quarterly rebates. The next

level is Premier, where in addition to quarterly rebates they

are eligible for performance based rebates. The next two

levels are Signature and Signature Solution Centre and the

last three involve technology specialisations.

For the Premier level a partner is expected to

specialise in minimum of one technology and for the

Signature levels, they are expected to specialise in a

minimum of two technologies. The Signature Solution

Centre partner is the highest partner level, where a partner

not only invests in the solution centre product line up but

is also responsible for demand generation around the

particular technology. MATCO in Saudi Arabia is one such

partner. The areas of technology specialisation include

Data Domain and the Consolidate, Advanced Consolidate,

Backup and Recovery, Archive and Governance Specialties,

RSA integration and Security Specialty.

Havier Haddad, Channel and Alliances Manager, TEAM Region, EMC



Taj El Khayat, Area director, Partners, Alliances and Commercial Segment, MEA, Juniper Networks

Margin focus

During the dotcom boom of the late

nineties, Juniper networks was focussed

on routing infrastructure for service

providers including ASPs, iSPs, MSPs and

tSPs. the first course change happened in 2004

when it acquired netscreen and entered the security

space while adding netscreen’s enterprise customers

to its portfolio. Further acquisitions between 2004

and 2008 finally established it as a serious solution

player in the enterprise space. “A key reason for

our survival has been our Junos operating system,

which is modular and leading service providers are

leveraging their infrastructure on this today. it has

made Juniper networks evolve from a routing telecom

infrastructure provider to an end to end networking

and security infrastructure provider,” says El Khayat.

Another key factor for Juniper Networks

consistent performance across large enterprise

accounts and the top end of mid market accounts

is its channel engagement strategy. “We do not

do en masse recruitment of partners or en masse

specialisations,” says El Khayat. The approach is not

to dilute the quality of the engagement between an

enterprise customer who is expecting the highest

level of technology consulting and a partner. Only Elite

and Strategic alliance partners engage with named

customer accounts through a high touch support

model. For these partners the market opportunity is

divided into enterprise solution and service provider

infrastructure. Elite and the next lower level Select

partners are expected to specialise along various

technology options including super core infrastructure,

converged solutions, data centre solutions, enterprise

campus and branch solutions and security.

Since Juniper Networks manages the number of

competing partners, higher margins are achievable

during customer negotiations. Rule of the thumb

is Juniper Networks adds 10% to what its closest

competitors give their partners. Another area of

positive channel engagement is the partner business

plan. “The business plan between Juniper Networks

and its partners is very sacred. We agree on revenue,

we agree on objectives and we create a platform for

communication and review,” explains El Khayat.

In the regional markets, Juniper Networks

has distributor agreements with Computerlinks,

Mindware and Westcon. Distributors play a fulfilment

role for named accounts and a value added role for

reseller enablement in the remaining commercial

customer space.

COVER FEATURENetworking channels

Zero latency firewalls

twenty years ago, Sonicwall’s firewall

products were focussed on the small

and medium business segment. Over the

years through acquisitions and internal research its

products have been repositioned to also cover the

enterprise segment. it now carries a full portfolio

from high end enterprise to small business and

from centralised management software to end point

security solutions.

Another factor that has been driving product

change has been the volatile nature of the internet.

“Old generation firewalls were designed for the way

we used to use the internet previously. It was good at

that time but they are not adequate anymore. We have

moved to NSA, multi core architecture and we inspect

traffic on the fly as it comes, without creating any

latency," says Malecki.

The current product portfolio includes Supermassive

E10,000 and E-class NSA series firewalls meant for

enterprise end users. The NSA series of firewalls is

meant for medium and TZ series for small businesses.

While Sonicwall may have repositioned itself in the

enterprise space, the SMB segment is also sustaining

its growth. A key initiative is to grow the number of

VARs and resellers focussing on the SMB market

segment through Redington and Westcon distributors.

“From a price point of view, Sonicwall has always been

a vendor that offers what the customer needs. Why pay

30% more for 10% additional features that you do not

use?” explains Malecki.

Another initiative by Sonicwall, again in conjunction

with its distributors, is to get VARs to move towards

value based engagement with customers. This

involves offering services like presales consultancy,

implementation and knowledge transfer amongst

others. Partner enablement is by continuous training

through distributors and tier-one partners are directly

managed by Sonicwall account managers.

Sonicwall has a partner channel structure called

Medallion which consists of Approved, Bronze, Silver

and Gold tiers. Gold and Silver partners can further

specialise in managed services or enterprise integration.

The key vertical segments driving growth

include e-learning because of intranets, retail

because of distributed nature of networks, public

sector and education. Independent security

certified system integrators from these segments

are also approaching Sonicwall based on received

customer interest.

Florian Malecki, EMEA Enterprise Product Marketing Manager, Sonicwall.


SPEAK OUTCharl Snyman

in your opinion what have been the

primary internal reasons for HP reversing

its decision to spin off PSg?

Snyman: To be clear, we never reversed our

decision. In August we announced that we

are exploring strategic alternatives for HP’s

Personal Systems Group. The decision was

based on strategic, financial, and operational

criteria and is in the best interest of HP’s

shareholders and customers to retain the

Personal Systems Group as part of HP

How much effort and what type of effort

will need to be made by your team to

rebuild customer confidence in the

division, and rebuild commercial sales and

inquiries?

Snyman: Believe me, the last thing we want

to do is create uncertainty for our customers.

We’ve been in close contact with customers

through this process. This is a competitive

market, but we compete and we win every

day. In fact, we believe that PSG held its

leadership market share in calendar Q3 in

the midst of this evaluation period. We are

truly grateful to our millions of loyal customers

who made us the leading PC company in

the world, and we will continue to focus on

delivering great products to them.

What is the primary difference in channel

structure between the Middle East and

Europe?

Snyman: In the mature markets like Western

Europe, there is a much bigger and distinct

go-to-market channel between corporate

mid market and big retailers. In the emerging

markets this is a little bit more greyish. In all

the emerging markets like India and Vietnam

it is the same trend and Italy, France, Greece

were like this ten years ago.

What about the primary distributor

arrangements across Europe?

Snyman: We have large in-country or

national distributors like Ingram Micro and

Techdata and they are structured exactly the

same way we are. They have an European

entity and a country entity.

Are you saying the reseller opportunity is

around small and medium companies?

Snyman: There are so many small and

medium companies being created every

day. If somebody does not address them,

who is going to address them? If we do not

have a channel to address them, we have

“The last thing we want to do is create uncertainty for our customers”

to do it directly like Dell has done or we are

going to be eaten by our competition like

Apples of the world in retail. Then you are

marginalised by retail and we do not want to

be marginalised.

the resellers in the region are looking

for volume deals. Why would they want

to target the small office and small

businesses?

Snyman: For me the most important

customer buying at the end is if there is

value coming from the small reseller, giving

the product as well as all the services

around it to run a business. If the reseller can

provide an end to end solution, then a non IT

managed small office or small business looks

at the reseller as his trusted advisor and

there is a value and a discussion.

How does the opportunity look from a

reseller perspective?

Snyman: I have the best end to end, middle

product and services. I need a go to market

reseller base that sells that value add to my

customers with his contribution of course. If

there is a gap in the go to market opportunity

somebody has to address it.

With regard to enterprise and corporate

business what is the structure followed in

Europe?

Snyman: In Western Europe, my corporate

business is 70% direct. It is not going through

the channel anymore. The customer requests

they deal directly with us.

if 70% of the corporate sale is direct, what

is the role that tier one system integrators

and vArs play?

Snyman: Whether a tier one partner is

involved or not, for me that is independent.

For me what is important is the relationship

between me and the customer is direct. I

hear directly from the customer on what is

working and what is not working.

There are a lot of factory and customer

integration services which we frankly cannot

do. In 80% of the cases the customer invoice

comes to us. If a distributor or tier one

partner is adding value in terms of cash,

credit or stock they may also be activated in

the transaction. //

Charl Snyman, Vice-President and General Manager, HP Personal Systems Group, Europe, Middle East and Africa is responsible for product management, pricing and forecasting for desktops, notebooks, workstations, thin clients and retail solutions. Prior to his current role he has held various senior positions in sales and business development for the same regions. He joined HP in 1994. A discussion on the dynamics of the European versus Middle East markets.


Alfonso Di Ianni

SPEAK OUT

Please describe the Oracle channel

programme for resellers, developers and

education partners?

Di Ianni: Our structure in terms of channel

programme is the same around the world

- it is called the Oracle Partner Network.

We also have the same partner tier that

is platinum, gold, silver and we have the

same terms of conditions for handling

VADs around the world. But the selection

of who can be a key partner depends on

the local business.

Does the Partner network include only

Oracle applications or is the Sun server

platforms included as well?

Di Ianni: The Oracle Partner Network

has been extended to hardware as well.

Since Sun had its own programme, after

the acquisition we merged this into a

single programme with all the benefits

and rules of engagement for all partners

no matter what products they want to use.

One thing is important we have a strong

incentive for our partners to specialise.

Given we have a very wide portfolio of

products we want our partners to add

value to each of the stacks and focus on

their knowledge and investment in using

the applications versus middleware and

database.

How are the various partner businesses

managed under the same programme?

Di Ianni: In the Oracle Partner Network

we have system integrators and reseller

partners within the same programme. We

have these streams and there are different

terms and conditions, different benefits

for system integrator or VAD or resellers.

Partners fall into the same programme but

have to subscribe and qualify for different

kinds of streams. For system integrators

you need to show a number of people

trained on applications. If you are reseller

you do not need to do that.

How are distributor partner managed

under the Partner network programme?

Di Ianni: We have completed the VAD

selection for both Oracle hardware and

software products in this part of the world.

We went through an assessment and

compliance exercise, which was done at

the corporate level. We are trying to have

one VAD structure for both hardware and

software. That has just been concluded

“We are trying to have one VAD structure for both hardware and software”

• Al Mazoon Group and TCS are

implementing Oracle E-business

Suite for Ministry of Education,

Saudi Arabia. The solution includes

Financials, Human Resources, Payroll,

Purchasing, Property Manager, Project

Management, Oracle WebCenter.

• Qatar based Manai Trading software

division is migrating Hamad Medical

Corporation’s Oracle E Business Suite

to an Oracle Exalogic and Exadata

platform. The solution consists

of partial racks of Exadata High

Performance Engineered System,

partial rack Exadata Engineered

System, media servers, tape library,

Database Enterprise Edition, Real

Application Cluster, Secure Backup,

Exadata Storage Software.

• Abu Dhabi National Oil Company,

is deploying Exadata Database

Machine X2-2 for its database

applications including OLTP, OLAP,

data warehousing and other mixed

workloads. The solution includes

Exadata Storage Software, Database

11g, Partitioning Tuning and

Diagnostic, Real Application Clusters,

Automatic Storage Management.

regionAl updAte

fairly recently and it should already be in

place in this part of the world.

rME: What are the benefits of having

a single vAD structure for both hardware

and software?

Di Ianni: What you will see is VADs

expanding their business because now they

have either hardware to sell or software to

sell depending on where they are coming

from. It is a great opportunity for our VAD

and channel partners. We have so many

products we will never be able to sell them

directly or all of them to all our customers.

So partners play very strongly in our

economy here. //

Alfonso Di Ianni, Senior Vice President, Eastern Europe, CIS, Middle East, Africa, Oracle Corporation, manages growth and profitability across 86 countries. He is responsible for technology, application and consulting licenses across these countries. Joining Oracle in 1997, he has previously held the post of global leadership of Oracle Field Marketing and Alliance Channels. He holds a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering and a Masters Degree in Business Administration.


Xia Chaojie

SPEAK OUT

What is the end to end mandate for this

division of Huawei?

Chaojie: Huawei’s aim is to enrich life

through communication. Thus as a services

business group our focus is to listen closely

to our customers needs and to ensure their

business success through professional

services solutions. Our professional services

solutions are innovative and customised,

based on business collaboration and

partnership, taking into consideration

market trends, securing customer assets,

satisfying end-customer requirements,

maintaining OPEX spending and generating

new revenue streams. Our ultimate goal

is to provide best in class elite services

and solutions to our customers in order to

maintain their market leading position and

to benefit from our global experience and

innovations.

What is the business model of this

consulting services division?

Chaojie: Our business model is based on

our CARE strategy (Collaboration, Agility,

Reduction and continuous Enhancement)

where we pay full attention to our customers

needs and pro-actively engage with them

early enough to promote their business and

support them to sustain their growth and

maintain their networks services quality and

excellence. Through our CARE offerings we

make it happen believing that our advisory

and consultancy market experience is made

available to create the maximum value to the

customer.

Can you describe the skills and customer

facing structure of this division?

Chaojie: Huawei’s Professional Services is

strategically structured to face the customers

through dedicated customer centric teams,

consisting of the key account team, the

services solutions team and delivery

management team. They are supported

by three service business units working

towards providing innovative solutions to

fulfil the customer requirements. Huawei is

keen to attract leading talent and expertise

A discussion with Xia Chaojie, Vice President Middle East, Huawei, on the dynamics and business model of Huawei’s professional services group, which has been operating in the region since 2006.

The division started in the Middle East

in 2006 focusing on creating value for

the region’s telecom service providers

in a very competitive environment by

reducing OPEX, improving the quality

of their networks, accelerating TTM

and providing new technology training.

Amongst its achievements over the last

five years: 42 accumulated managed

services contracts, staff of 1,700 with

107 project management consultants

and 377 certified engineers, 96 certified

service partners and 786 qualified

engineers from partners certified by

Huawei Technologies.

huAwei professionAl services

and is not saving efforts to continuously look

after the improvement of its staff knowledge

and competence through its internal learning

programmes.

How does this division engage with the

actual sales model from the products side?

Chaojie: Huawei has understood the

ICT market trends and over years has

successfully grown into a giant systems

integrator where we solely believe that

offering a comprehensive end-to-end

solution is what our customers look for

rather than offering products separately.

Going through solution integration phase

starting with demand creation, solution

architecture and design and ending with

putting the final touches of integration, our

product sales team works together with our

solution development teams to deliver the

customised solution.

What is the engagement life cycle of this

division with end customers?

Chaojie: Huawei’s Professional Services

engages at early stages with our customers

where services solutions planning,

designing, implementation, operation, and

optimisation services life cycle is enforced.

Quality assurance is applied continuously all

across those stages. //

“As a services business group our focus is to listen closely to our customers needs”

Huawei’s Professional Services is strategically

structured to face the customers through dedicated customer centric teams, consisting of the key account team, the services solutions team and delivery management team


Mathis Lai

EMPA is the distributor of Philips monitors across

the region. What is the connection with MMD?

Lai: Philips and TPV went into a licensing

agreement in 2009 and TPV now owns the

rights for Philips branded monitors. TPV is

actually the manufacturer of Philips monitors.

MMD is a wholly owned subsidiary of TPV and

is in charge of sales and marketing of Philips

branded monitors globally.

How is the product portfolio of Philips

monitors segmented?

Lai: The entire range of monitors is LCD and

LED backlit is getting more and more popular.

In comparison to CCFL lighting, LEDs have

40% less power consumption and monitor

designs can be slim and ultra slim. The range

of products is categorised as B2B, B2C

through retail, TV monitors and gaming with

18" to 27" sizes.

What are the features for the corporate and

business users?

Lai: In the B2B category of monitors we have

standard, business and professional line of

products. The standard line is entry level

with plug and play functionality. The business

monitor is a stepped up product with speakers

and height adjustment. The professional

segment has swivel and pivot, colour and

contrast adjustments and power sensors. The

power sensor is two infrared sensors in front

of the monitor that detects your presence and

dims and shuts itself down accordingly.

What are the features for the consumer and

retail segment?

Lai: In the B2C category of monitors we have

E,C and X product segments. In B2C all

monitors are of contemporary design. They

have an added feature patented by Philips

called Smart Image. Power sensor has also

been introduced in the consumer line. All our

monitors are about sustainability and are using

lead and mercury free materials. In the X line

of products we are using a Philips patented

technology called light frame. The bezel

surrounding the monitor has a blue emitting

light. A university group has shown that a

blue light frame reduces eye fatigue after

prolonged use.

What are the features for gamers?

Lai: We have a realised a lot of our users are

technology savvy. A lot of them like to play

online games which are 3D. Our 3D monitor

appeals to a lot of gamers since it is a stepped

up model with high resolution, high contrast,

flicker free and supports 3D rendering. It comes

with an HDMI port and can be used as a TV

through a digital setup box with HDMI output.

EMPA distributes the Philips brand of monitors in UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. However Hong Kong based TPV Technologies manufactures the monitors and its subsidiary MMD further markets the products globally. A discussion with Mathis Lai, Business Manager, MMD Singapore on the fast changing product portfolio and other go to market activities.

“It is better to work with one distributor having a channel network within a country”

• Global revenues of around $10 billion

• Largest volume manufacturer of

monitors globally, 30 million units in H1 2011

• Manufactures and sells AOC, Philips and

Envision brands

• 55% revenue from PC monitors, balance

from TVs and other products

• China 37% and rest of the world 26%,

largest volume markets for TPV

• Production at ten locations across

China, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Russia

tpv technologies

today there is trend towards large format

monitors and integration of monitors. Are there

any such specific products in Philips portfolio?

Lai: Under MMD we not only take care of LCD

monitors but we also have the other side of

business called signage. The signage monitors

are actually large format monitors in the size

range upto 50 inches. These monitors are

meant for professional use like airport displays.

They are meant to work continuously once

they are switched on and an after sales service

contract comes with the product.

Since MMD is operating from Singapore, how

do you manage equitable pricing across all

the countries?

Lai: In Philips we are quite strict. We do not

allow price cutting on the same model between

partners. For this reason we appoint distributors

within the country and they are not allowed to

parallel import into another country.

There will always be differences in the transfer

price to a partner by country. It depends on the

marketing needs, where the country sits and a

whole range of other factors. Different countries

have different import duties, local tax, VAT and so

on and the final selling price will be different.

What are your plans to expand into the

various regions of Africa?

Lai: We have a distributor in South Africa. For the

rest of Africa it is through reexports. EMPA has

customers coming from as far as North Africa

to meet them. We would be happy to expand

into Africa and we would be happy to work with

EMPA if such an opportunity arises. //

SPEAK OUT


Movements

PEOPLE

MSI announced

the appointment

of Steven Chen

as Regional Sales

Director for the

notebook division

at MSI headquarters

in Taipei. Chen’s

region, the Greater

APAC, includes Asia

Pacific, Southeast Asia, India and Middle

East Africa regions. In his new role, Chen

will ensure each country team has the

same scope, values and direction for the

MSI brand. Chen was previously successful

in partnering with new distributors in China

and significantly expanding the notebook

market in Southeast Asia and India.

HP Middle East

announced it has

appointed Salah Al

isawi as Country

Managing Director

of the Levant and

Iraq. In his role, Al

Isawi manages HP’s

overall direction

and strategy for the

Levant, including planning and execution

across all market segments in addition

to strengthening HP presence in Iraq. A

Jordanian national with more than ten

years experience in IT, Al Isawi has many

years experience in the Gulf as well as

Jordan and Iraq. Prior to joining HP, Al

Isawi worked with EMC, with his most

recent position as Country Sales Manager

for Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.

Ali Faramawy has

been promoted

to Corporate Vice

President, Microsoft

Corporation and

President Microsoft,

Middle East and

Africa. As Corporate

Vice President, Ali

Faramawy will continue to be responsible

for Microsoft's operations in the Middle

East and Africa area. MEA is one of

thirteen areas that comprise Microsoft's

worldwide operations. He was previously

Vice President Microsoft International and

President Microsoft, Middle East and Africa.

Ali Alamadi

has joined help

AG Middle East

as Principle

Consultant

to support

its strategic

consulting

division. Prior

to that Ali

worked at the

UAE computer

emergency response team, aeCERT, as

an information security incident handler.

He has developed different awareness

campaigns targeting different segments

of the community. He has also conducted

more than 200 security awareness

workshops and trainings across the UAE.

Wavestore

has appointed

Manoj Singh

Chouhan as its

Regional Business

Development

Manager for the

Middle East.

Reporting to

Chris Williams,

Director of

Wavestore, Manoj will be responsible for

developing new business opportunities

throughout the Middle East by working

closely with Wavestore’s fast growing

network of consultants, installers and

system integrators. Manoj has worked

within the electronic security industry for

over twelve years. Previously he worked

as Divisional Manager for Bahrain based

Mantech Computer Services where he was

responsible for the company’s security and

surveillance products.

Cyberoam

has appointed

Pradeesh vS as

Regional Sales

Manager, Middle

East. A veteran

in channel

management,

business

operations

and revenue

expansion,

Pradeesh’s role will extend into laying

the foundation for the growth strategy

of NetGenie in the region. This is a new

product range of wireless routers with

in-built security for both home and SOHO

markets. Prior to this, he was with ADOAX

Middle East where he handled ESET

NOD32 for the Middle East and North

Africa Region.

IT security and

data protection

firm Sophos

announced the

appointment

of gerhard

Eschelbeck to

the post of Chief

Technology Officer

and Senior Vice

President. He will

lead the company’s technology strategy,

driving product direction and innovation.

Eschelbeck holds a number of patents

within information security and is one of

the inventors of the Common Vulnerability

Scoring System. He brings nearly twenty

years of leadership experience to Sophos.

He served as CTO and Senior Vice

President at Webroot Software, CTO and

Vice President of Engineering at Qualys,

and senior product and technology roles at

companies including Network Associates

and McAfee. //


PEOPLEAngelika Plate

Angelika Plate’s toughest job in her life was

completing her PhD at the Hannover university

in germany – the specific thesis topic had never

been solved before. Completing her studies both in

mathematics and computer science in 1993, Plate went on to

become an independent consultant in the various global iSO and

iEC security standards. Joining Dubai based security solution

reseller help Ag in 2010, Plate now functions as its Director of

strategic security consulting. As part of her current job role she

enjoys identifying the best possible solution that addresses the

risks faced by her clients and is most suitable for their business.

Her stint with the international standards group, also the most

stimulating period in her life, helps her to bring this innovation

into her job role. On the other hand, convincing clients to adopt

a more rigorous consulting approach to risk assessment, ranks as

her biggest job role challenge.

Off work, Plate unwinds by horse riding or listening to music

or meeting friends and lets her mood decide the rest. She

passionately daydreams of winning a horse riding event with

cross country, show jumping and dressage performances. She is

happily addicted to the iPhone, iPad and iPod devices and uses

social networks for her work life. But she draws the line on social

networking in her personal life and describes herself as open and

friendly. Learning informally as she does all the time is something

she cannot imagine ever stopping. //

help AG’s number wizard

Scholar and consultant


Contact us:P.O.Box : 500327, Dubai Media City, U.A.ETel : +971 4 3688118; Fax : +971 4 3688170Email : [email protected] Thuraya Tower 1, 24th floor, Dubai Media City, Dubai, UAE

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