Reseller Middle East

ISSUE 193 // janUary 2013WWW.rESELLErME.COM

PUBLICATIONLICENSED BY IMPZ

vendor focusAvayalooks forward to a channel driven 2013 with its select regional partners

Trends and technologies to watch in the year ahead

reviews Product Acer Aspire M Touch – The fun of the future

Huawei launches new smartphones

s t o r a g e m a r k e t R i p e f o R R i c h p i c k i n g s

outlook 2013

© 2012 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved.

Video conferencing with anadded bonus. Simplicity.

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cover feature

CONTENTSISSUE 193 // janUary 2013

HigHligHts

6 News We help you catch up on all the

major news and announcements in the regional channel community

aNalYsis

14 A new dawn December saw HP unveil its

biggest storage announcements in over a decade and, along with it, ‘Project Dawn’ – the code name of the ambitious channel strategy HP hopes will win it new business.

PartNer watcH

18 A different league The global technology distribution

giant Ingram Micro has taken a significant step forward into the value business with the acquisition of Aptec.

20 Leading the pack Within first five years of operation,

Redington Value has already made its mark in the regional value-added distribution landscape.

feature

40 The next frontier The burgeoning data storage

market is opening up long-term revenue opportunities for channel partners. What does it take to succeed in this mature market?

veNdor focus

54 The time is now

Avaya’s VP of Emerging Regions, Nidal Abou-Itaif looks forward to a channel driven 2013 and believes it is the perfect time for the company’s 25 carefully selected regional partners to push new technologies.

Year of change and transformation?

Hot Products

New Dell convertible Ultrabook

58

Linksys rolls out Wi-Fi solutions

59Reseller Middle Eastjanuary 2013 3

© 2012 Dell Products. Dell, the logo, XPS, Latitude and Vostro are registered or unregistered trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and other countries. Ultrabook, Celeron, Celeron Inside, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Atom, Intel Atom Inside, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Intel vPro, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, vPro Inside, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks or trade names may be used in this document to refer to third-party products (such as operating systems and software) included with the products o� ered by Dell and the entities claiming the marks and names of those products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Dell Corporation Ltd, Dell House, The Boulevard, Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1LF.

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19033_Dell Q3_mobility Campaign_270x207-ME-V01-NV.indd 1 06/09/2012 14:45

EDITORIAL

Harbinger of change

PublisherDominic De Sousa

Group COONadeem Hood

Managing DirectorRichard Judd

[email protected] +971 4 440 9126

EDiTOrial

Group EditorJeevan Thankappan

[email protected] +971 4 4409109

Contributing EditorsBen Rossi

Joe Lipscombe

aDvErTisinG

Commercial DirectorRajashree R Kumar


Key account ManagerMerle Carrasco


sales ManagerNasir Bazaz


CirCulaTiOn

Database and Circulation ManagerRajeesh M


PrODuCTiOn anD DEsiGn

Production ManagerJames P Tharian


DesignerAnalou Balbero


DiGiTalwww.resellerme.com

DiGiTal sErviCEs

Digital services ManagerTristan Troy P Maagma

Web DevelopersErik Briones

Jefferson de Joya

Photographer and social Media Co-ordinator

Jay Colina

[email protected]+971 4 440 9100

Published by

registered at iMPZ

PO Box 13700Dubai, UAE

Tel: +971 4 440 9100Fax: +971 4 447 2409

Printed byPrintwell Printing Press

© Copyright 2013 CPIAll rights reserved

While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all

information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

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Twitter:@ResellerME

Talk to us:

The year gone by was one of change for the regional channel.

We witnessed business strategies evolving to keep pace with

the changing market realities and technology landscape. The

gloomy global economic climate and political unrest in some

of the countries in the region had a cascading effect, with the

channel struggling to do business on wafer-thin margins.

Now the question is what does 2013 hold?

We spoke to some of the key industry stakeholders to gauge

what trends will drive growth this year. Though the answers vary

depending on who you talk to, there are some commonalities. It

appears almost certain that the channel will shape up to a year

around mobility, BYOD, security and big data. Cloud computing is also

top of mind for many organisations.

The year ahead looks promising and what is for sure is that

we will continue to see a fundamental transformation in the whole

channel eco system with some of the new technology trends causing

a disruption of sorts in the business model for many. The role of

distributors may not change radically, but the way they do business

and meet the surging customer demands will definitely evolve. The

market research firm IDC predicts distributors will start to add value

upstream and downstream and seek to explore alternative streams

revenue to credit , logistics and financing. For the reseller community,

which actually owns and manages the end-user relationships, the

writing on the wall is clear; It’s time to move away from price-oriented,

box pushing models to more of a value-added proposition. The

margins lie in integrated solutions and services, especially in the

untapped SME segment, which accounts for lion’s share of the market

in this region. Services have long been the holy grail for the channel

partners and those who don’t invest to ramp up their capabilities in

this domain run the risk of going out of business this year. And finally,

channel enablement is more relevant than ever for vendors. There

has never been a more opportune time to re-think their channel

strategies and give the partners what they need to transition through

this time of painful metamorphosis.

Here is wishing you luck.

Jeevan ThankappanGroup Editor

Reseller Middle Eastjanuary 2013 5

Reseller ME B2B Security 270x207-E.indd 1 10/24/12 6:21 PM

Computerlinks partners with Sophos

riverbed Technology

announced that it has closed

its acquisition of OPnET

Technologies. The riverbed

Cascade business unit and

OPnET will be combined into

the new riverbed Performance

Management business unit and

will be led by General Manager

Paul Brady.

The OPNET acquisition

builds on Riverbed’s heritage

and experience in delivering

solutions that improve the

performance of technology

for business. OPNET has built

its success on application

performance management

(APM). By combining APM

with leading-edge network

performance management

(NPM), Riverbed is now able to

offer customers performance

management solutions that

diagnose both application and

infrastructure issues. Whether

the problem is server, application,

or network-based; in a virtual,

physical or cloud infrastructure;

or, using mobile or fixed

clients, Riverbed performance

management solutions will help

application and infrastructure

teams identify the problem and

deliver actionable insight for

solving the issue.

“Customer satisfaction,

employee productivity, business

agility, and the bottom line

all hinge on business-critical

applications working as

expected,” said Philippe Elie,

Director, Business Operations

EMEA at Riverbed. “The

application and the underlying

infrastructure on which it

runs are tightly coupled, but

previously were managed in

fragmented technology silos.

Through the OPNET acquisition,

Riverbed is the only company

that provides customers with

the solutions needed to manage

and optimise all aspects of

both application and network

performance in a single portfolio

of products, ensuring high

performance, very fast problem

resolution, and an enhanced

end-user experience.”

Riverbed completes OPNET acquisition

in line with its strategy to add more value

back to the channel and tap the sMB

market, the regional value-added distributor

Computerlinks has signed up sophos.

“We are very strong in the enterprise

space and over the last 12 months, we

have had a major push into the mid-market,

which we will continue to do this year as

well. Most of our vendors are asking us

to play in this market, which is looking for

end-to-end solutions and that’s exactly what

Sophos offers,” said Lee Reynolds, MD,

Computerlinks, MEA and APAC.

He added that in the Middle East,

Computerlinks’ focus is on bringing to the

market some of the smaller brands which

can offer more value to the customers and

margins to partners. “It is really important

that we offer more than top-tier brands to

help small and medium-sized resellers.

And we are still very much a VAD, which

means we will bring the same levels of

technical and commercial resources to the

mid-market. We are growing at a rate 25%

year-on-year and we have to find a strategy

to sustain that growth momentum. It doesn’t

mean that we are going to de-focus from the

enterprise market, but drive our growth into

the midmarket.”

Under the agreement, Computerlinks will

distribute the whole Sophops product range

in the Middle East. “We are a 100% channel

company and Computerlinks will distribute

the whole portfolio right from gateway to end-

point protection to mobile device management

solutions. There is a huge demand for security

solutions in the SMB market and our focus is to

make security easy and usable to address 99%

of their pain points,” said André Scheffknecht,

Vice President NEEMEA, Sophos.

Sophos now has two distributors in the

region, and Scheffknecht says Computerlinks

was chosen for its loyal and pro-active partner

base. “The value Computerlinks brings to

the table is their pro-active channel and our

strategy is to enable our partners to sell, install

and maintain our products. We segment our

channel partners into two categories- general

partners and solution partners, who need twice

the number of certification training as there is

a direct relationship between the education

levels of partners and brand reputations.

Computerlinks will play a big role in training

and educating our channel.”

hIghLIghTSNews

Lee reynolds, MD, Computerlinks, MEa and aPaC


Harman Middle East has expressed

confidence in achieving a 45 per cent

increase in sales during its participation at

this year’s edition of the Dubai shopping

Festival (DsF), the uaE’s largest annual

shopping event that will run until February

3, 2013. The forecast is attributed to

the increasing demand for consumer

electronics across the region in general

and the uaE in particular. The retail chain

is on track in achieving its target revenue

of $ 400 million for the Fiscal Year 2013.

Industry analysts have pointed out that one

important factor that will help drive retail growth

is the pick-up in tourists visiting the UAE—

bringing in an increased spending on consumer

electronic goods. In addition, product innovation

and competitive price cuts have also been

identified as key drivers for AV spending. During

DSF 2013, customers visiting ‘harman house’

stores will have the opportunity to redeem 10

Harman Middle East aims 45% sales jump during DSFto 40 per cent of the purchase value on any AV

product in the store while also receive gifts.

We are excited about our participation in

DSF 2013, which is being positioned as the

largest and best yet. Moreover, we are seeing

that the buying trend is still on the high and

this year we are offering some unbeatable

offers on products like flat screens and

Smart TVs, home theatre systems, docking

stations and headphones,” said Amit Malani,

President, Harman Middle East. “We are

currently witness to a positive change in the

consumer electronics segment and DSF 2013

will surely prove to be rewarding as well—with

consumers seeking products that showcase

quality products with better connectivity,

performance, speed and the convenience to

suit their lifestyles. During our participation at

DSF we are focusing on giving more value to

the customer for each purchase of our bundle

offers and promotions.” amit Malani, President, Harman Middle East

hIghLIghTSNews

8 Reseller Middle East january 2013

The iCT solutions value-added distributor

aptec, an ingram Micro company, has

launched netapp’s Expresspod sMB

virtualisation solution in the Middle East.

ExpressPod is netapp and Cisco’s new

prepackaged solution, which combines

computing, networking, storage, and

management products into a solution

architected for streamlined deployment.

ExpressPod integrates Cisco uCs C-series

servers, netapp Fas2220 or Fas2240

storage, and Cisco nexus 3048 switches

with infrastructure management to support

an open ecosystem of management and

hypervisor solutions.

Expresspod is a miniature version of

the successful Flexpod model. It is targeted

exclusively at mid-sized businesses that

are budget-conscious and have limited

IT resources. Flexpod celebrated its

second anniversary recently and has been

adopted by more than 1300 organisations

in 35 countries that have accelerated their

transition to the cloud using the product.

“After having a successful run globally,

with Flexpod being adopted by the enterprise

and mid-sized enterprise customers, now

NetApp and Cisco have launched Expresspod

to replicate the same success in the fast

growing MSB segment,” said Govind Haridas,

business unit manager, Security and Storage

at Aptec. ”It is a validated design and a

viable alternative for the customers who want

hIghLIghTSNews

Aptec Ingram Micro, NetApp launch pre-configured platform for SMBs

Kaspersky Lab launches affiliate programme in the Middle EastKaspersky lab has partnered

with affiliate network,

avangate, to offer the

Kaspersky affiliate Program to

partners in the Middle East.

Commenting on the launch,

Tarek Kuzbari, Managing

Director, Kaspersky Lab Middle

East and Turkey, said: “We

are proud and very excited to

announce the launch of a new

Affiliate Program. Introduced

worldwide, we are now

introducing this unique initiative

in the region in order to give

our many partners in the Middle

East an opportunity to boost

their business. In addition to the

significant commission rates, as

part of this programme, affiliates

will get access to localised

links and creative resources to

promote the latest products and

launches. Through this initiative

we hope to generate innovative

ways for partners to boost their

business while simultaneously

contributing to the growth

of Kaspersky’s leading edge

solutions in the region.”

According to the company,

commissions are based on

three affiliate levels – Standard,

Advanced and Premier Affiliates.

Partners begin the programme

as Standard Affiliates and as

they generate a higher value

of sales every month, partners

progress to a higher level of

affiliation and a higher rate of

commission.

With the Kaspersky Affiliate

Program, partners can successfully

increase their own Web traffic,

earn regular incentives and

bonuses, and enjoy special

promotions and discount coupons

in addition to gaining access to

creative resources completely free

of charge

The Kaspersky Affiliate

Program is aimed at driving

traffic to Kaspersky online stores

with the Affiliate receiving

commissions based on sales

results. Kaspersky’s generous

commission scheme is designed

to reward successful affiliates –

by providing higher commission

rates for affiliates that make

higher sales.

Govind Haridas, business unit manager, Security & Storage at aptec Ingram Micro

Tarek Kuzbari, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab Middle East and Turkey

to enjoy enterprise-class performance with

limited IT budgets.”

Critical to the success of FlexPod and

ExpressPod customers are the more than 660

certified FlexPod Partners, including 33 Premium

Partners in EMEA and the Americas, who help

deploy the infrastructure. In addition to a wide

range of sales, and marketing resources designed

to help partners grow their businesses and

accelerate customer success, Cisco and NetApp

offer a Plan, Design and Implement Help Desk

that allows partners to collaborate with NetApp

and Cisco on solving real-world implementation

challenges. Clear deployment guidance and

training, coupled with support, marketing, and

demand-generation resources from Cisco and

NetApp, provide the tools to help partners build

and extend infrastructure solution practices to IT

departments globally.

Aptec is the only VAD in the region that

distributes NetApp, Cisco and VMware. The

company has launched extensive marketing

campaigns to promote Expresspod and is

also driving initiatives to enable channel

partners to support the various customer

engagements, according to Haridas.

ExpressPod implementation guides are

already available to partners beginning

December 2012 through VADs.


Canon hosts partner conference

The solutions distributor avnet Technology

solutions has joined the nviDia Tesla

Preferred Partner programme to help high-

performance computing (HPC) customers

drive business growth in expanding

industries, including life sciences, finance,

oil and gas and manufacturing.

The Tesla Preferred Partner programme is

a sales, marketing and business development

programme for VARs, OEMs and ODMs that

are driving the growth of the HPC market. As a

programme member, Avnet will provide partners

and resellers across EMEA with advanced

server and workstation platforms with the new

NVIDIA Tesla K20 family of GPU accelerators,

which are based on the next-generation NVIDIA

Kepler GPU computing architecture.

Rajesh Suman, Vice President of Computer

Components, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA,

commented, “Joining the NVIDIA partner programme

Avnet collaborates with NVIDIA

Building on its “closer to customers”

strategy, Canon Middle East has hosted its

2012 Partner Conference in Morocco under

the theme: “Build the Future”.

The conference, which brought together

over 100 partners from 45 countries in the

Middle East, North, West and East Africa region

aimed to shed light on some of the new Canon

innovations which will pave the way for the

future of imaging technologies and connectivity.

Over the years, Canon has seen its Middle

East business catching up rapidly with global

trends. While the global cloud computing

market is anticipated to increase to $241 billion

by 2020, the Middle East and Africa region

is expected to have the highest cloud traffic

growth rate – estimated at 79% Compound

Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), followed by Latin

America (66% CAGR), and Central and Eastern

Europe (55% CAGR) – by 2016. Similarly, the

number of Web-connected devices is expected

to grow more than fourfold by 2020, reaching a

watershed of 50 billion devices globally.

In light of these industry trends, Canon

Middle East and its partners discussed a

new phase of continuous innovation within

hIghLIghTSNews

the imaging industry, which constitutes the

company’s vision for the future and the direction

in which the industry at large is heading.

Anurag Agrawal, Managing Director,

Canon Middle East, said: “In an ever changing

environment, new technologies are constantly

being integrated in everyday life. From input

through cameras, to output through printers,

Canon’s integrated cross media imaging

solutions enable connectivity across different

technology components including Canon’s

own devices as well as other devices such

as smart phones and tablets, Wi-Fi and cloud

enabled devices.

“From consumers to businesses, we

aim to be everyone’s imaging partner. We

foresee that the world is moving towards more

integration and Canon’s unique strength in

this respect lies in the wide range of products

and services which provide an end to end

solution to consumers and businesses.

Catering to integration is thus allowing us to

become closer to our customers and making

technology more usable, thus enabling

everyday life.”

expands our ability to provide resellers and partners

with solutions that improve application performance

up to several orders of magnitude faster, addressing

some of the most challenging computational tasks

such as processing financial trades, gridding oil in

the sea and evaluating solar systems”.

“Our channel partners can also

leverage our extensive portfolio of

complementary off-the-shelf components,

distribution and integration services to

improve time to market adding significant

value to their business,” Suman added.

Server shipments grew in Q3, Gartner says

Meta Byte emphasises on data governance

The regional solution provider

Meta Byte Technologies has

unveiled its new approach to

help enterprises in the region to

implement Data loss Prevention

(DlP) projects in a much more

meaningful, informed and

successful manner.

Salil Dighe, Managing

Director at Meta Byte

Technologies explains, “Meta

Byte’s approach is like a first

step for enterprises who

aspire to have the ultimate

data protection. Meta Byte’s

approach allows organisations

total visibility and control over

their data, ensuring that only

the right users have access

to the right data at all times.

Enterprises that have tried

to limit access to only the

right people have found that

there is a lengthy and manual

communications process

between IT and data business

owners when it comes to

answering the question, who

should have access to this

data? We give enterprises the

visibility and the intelligence to

eradicate the problem with a

fraction of the resources they

devote to it today.”

Salil adds, “Our unique

approach to protect data revolves

around the concept of data

governance that defines the

framework of people, processes,

permissions, privileges or access

rights to ensure proper data

use. Enterprises in the region

need to have a strategy and

processes in place to govern

appropriate and authorised use of

business data, thereby significantly

lowering the risk of data misuse.”

in the third quarter of 2012 worldwide

server shipments grew 3.6 % year-on-year,

while revenue decreased 2.8 from the third

quarter of 2011, according to Gartner.

“The third quarter of 2012 again produced

shipment growth on a worldwide level, but

server revenue was weak due to ongoing

economic weakness and market segment

differences,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice

president at Gartner. “Only the North America

and Asia/Pacific regions managed any revenue

growth, and even those were essentially flat

year to year, with North America showing a 1.1

% increase and Asia/Pacific a 0.7 % increase.

The picture in terms of shipments was slightly

more positive with North America, Latin

America and Asia/Pacific all growing, but both

EMEA and Japan continue to struggle and

hIghLIghTSNews

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa

(EMEA), server shipments totaled almost

590,000 units in the third quarter of 2012,

down 2.8 % from the same period of 2011 (see

Table 3). Server revenue totaled $3 billion, a

decline of 9 % year on year (see Table 4).

“Against a backdrop of continued

economic and business challenges, EMEA

remains the weak spot for global server

sales,” said Adrian O’Connell, research

director at Gartner. “Each of the three EMEA

sub regions saw revenue contract: Western

Europe by 7.6 %, Eastern Europe by 11.8 %,

and the Middle East and Africa by 14.0 %.

We’re not seeing signs of demand weakening

significantly, but EMEA continues to present

a very challenging environment for server

vendors to operate in.”

both saw shipments contract, compared to the

same period last year.”

“x86 server shipments grew 4.3 % in the

third quarter of 2012, and revenue increased

4 % from the third quarter of 2011. RISC/

Itanium Unix servers continued to fall globally

for the period – a 31.1 % decline in shipments

and a decrease of 16.4 % in revenue

compared to the same quarter last year.

The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily

mainframes, showed a decline of 17 % in

terms of revenue,” Hewitt said.

In terms of server form factors, x86

blade servers declined 7.1 % in shipments but

increased 2.3 % in revenue for the quarter.

The x86 rack-optimized form factor declined

0.2 % in shipments and decreased 0.3 % in

revenue for the third quarter of 2012.

Salil Dighe, Managing Director at Meta Byte

Greg Clark, chief executive officer at Blue Coat

Blue Coat snaps up Crossbeam

hIghLIghTSNews

Blue Coat’s leading Unified Security solution,

the X-Series is an ideal control point in the

network for managing applications that

secure both inbound and outbound traffic

from all users in any location.

“Blue Coat and Crossbeam are natural

partners. The combination of Blue Coat’s Web

security solutions and Crossbeam’s scalable

X-Series platform is an exciting proposition

for us,” said Matthew Gyde, Global General

Manager of Security at Dimension Data. “We’re

confident that this union will appeal to our

clients that are looking to innovate securely and

cost effectively.”

Together, Blue Coat and Crossbeam will

continue to embrace an open ecosystem

and support best-of-breed ISV applications

that allow customers to cost effectively

deploy the security solutions that best fit

their needs.

Blue Coat systems has entered into an

agreement to acquire the network security

vendor Crossbeam systems. By acquiring

Crossbeam, Blue Coat says it is laying

the foundation for a broader strategy to

transform the way businesses secure and

optimise their networks.

“Our service provider and enterprise

customers are excited we are bringing

together two complementary technologies,”

said Greg Clark, Chief Executive Officer

at Blue Coat Systems. “With Crossbeam,

Blue Coat gains a best-in-class support

infrastructure and a high performing platform

that scales to meet the needs of even the

most complex enterprise IT environments.”

The Crossbeam X-Series

portfolio provides the platform that allows

businesses to consolidate their security and

networking infrastructures. Combined with

December saw HP unveil its biggest storage announcements in over a decade and, along with it, ‘Project Dawn’ – the code name of the ambitious channel strategy HP hopes will win it new business.

ANALYSISHP

it is no secret that it has been

another challenging 12 months for

HP, a true veteran of the iT industry.

Meg Whitman became the

fourth CEO of HP in just seven years when

she took on the role in September 2011, and it

has been by no means a smooth ride for her

as profits have continued to dip.

“It has been an incredible year for this

company,” Whitman said as she took the stage

at the HP Discover conference in Frankfurt.

“There have been a lot of challenges but

there have also been a lot of victories.”

“Despite what you may have heard,

innovation is alive and well at HP. Our culture

of great engineering and innovation is a

tremendous asset and it’s not that we don’t

have enough innovation at HP, it’s that we

need to work harder on commercialising that

innovation and getting those ideas to market

faster. That’s one of the things we’re focusing

on in the next 12 months.”

Meg Whitman, CEO, HP

14 Reseller Middle East november 2012

That innovation was evident as HP chose the

conference to unveil the most significant updates

to its storage portfolio in over 10 years, which it

claimed will lead a revolution in data storage.

It attributed this revolution to the use

of a modern single storage architecture to

provide ‘polymorphic simplicity’, which is a

new concept that enables a single-system

architecture to exist in several forms whilst

retaining common data services for block,

object and file applications.

The first announcement centred on the

latest result of HP’s acquisition of 3PAR. The

new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 range was

billed as the industry’s only midrange quad-

controller platform offering tier one storage

availability and quality-of-service features at

an easy entry price point for organisations.

The second portfolio expansion to be

revealed was HP StoreOnce 2000 and

4000 Backup with support for HP StoreOnce

Catalyst software.

These new models provide efficient data

movement and high-performance deduplication

to reduce data protection costs in remote sites

and data centres, and perform backup operations

up to three times faster at a 35 percent lower cost

than the closest competitive system, HP said.

The final product to be unveiled was HP

StoreAll Storage, a highly scalable platform

for object and file data access, providing a

simplified environment for big data retention

and cloud storage that reduces the need for

additional administrators or hardware.

vital strategy

However, it is the channel that HP is relying on

as it sends these products to market in the hope

of resurging the company to former glories.

As a result, HP has spent the last few months

investing extensive time on ‘Project Dawn’, the

code name for its vital channel strategy.

This strategy has involved the rigorous

training of HP’s 800 resellers, which make up

the biggest channel of any IT vendor in EMEA,

to convert them from EVA to 3PAR and the

new midrange platforms.

“We’ve invested all the time up front in

getting them trained, enabled and ready to

go, and now we’ll try to get all of those guys

selling 3PAR as quickly as possible,” said

Chris Johnson, EMEA VP, HP Storage.

“The reaction is superb – they’re super

excited. This is something that is pretty

disruptive for them to sell and get behind.

We’re going to be very competitive in the

midmarket. We’ve got the opportunity to

refresh both our own and our competitors’

base, and win on the new business.”

HP also hopes the new range will help

it take on the high end market, which is

currently dominated by EMC.

“If you imagine that data is growing 50

percent per year, for a lot of the customers

that have traditionally bought high end

storage, it is becoming absolutely paralysingly

expensive for them to do that,” Johnson said.

“So we see a lot of the big banks, telcos,

retailers and manufacturers – all of the high end

customers – starting to look at tier II storage and

how they can get some of the applications of

tier I to manage on tier II. 3PAR is perfect for that

environment, so you’ll start to see us positioning

midrange storage for the big enterprise

customers. This is why we are super excited – it

is game changing in the industry.” //

a New dawN

Rich pickings in 2013 for those who prize value over price, predicts Sushma Kajaria, Channel Manager, Trend Micro

forecast for tHe cHaNNel laNdscaPe

OpINIONTrend Micro

Well, it’s that time of the year

again: time to engage in some

amateur crystal ball gazing to

pick out the channel trends of the

next 12 months. in all honesty, i think 2012

went better than any of us could have

hoped, given the continued macro-

economic slump throughout Europe.

Considering the less-than-glorious forecast

for the coming year many will fear the

worst, but there is definitely success to be

had as long as channel players don’t get

sucked into a price war.

According to analyst Canalys, UK

distributors grew their business by a

negligible amount in 2012, vendors did a bit

better, while resellers topped the lot with

around 10 percent growth. Vendors could

have done better but as competition grew for

the best resellers many were caught giving

away margins to offer more attractive deals.

That kind of short-term strategy is simply not

sustainable for any length of time especially

if the economy gradually recovers, and could

well lead to a few casualties next year.

There has definitely been more stability

in the reseller world than in vendor sphere

or in distributor land, which has helped their

success in 2012. When it comes to generating

sustainable success going forward however,

those that follow the path of value rather

than price and look to offer managed service

packages or bundled solutions rather than

cheap point offerings will prosper.

This has already been happening to an

extent in 2012, for example in the sphere of

virtualisation security. It’s been one of the

key growth areas for Trend Micro while more

traditional segments such as AV have barely

increased at all. We’ve seen huge increase

in project-based virtualisation, and there is

optimism that VDI roll-outs, especially among

government customers, are going to be in

huge demand next year.

Virtualisation is one of those areas

where resellers can really provide that

value-add, that expertise and know-how

to offer customers a holistic solution to a

business problem. It’s good for them, for the

vendors and the channel as a whole if we

move towards these kinds of deals and away

from the high volume, low value contracts

which can only end in a destructive race to

the bottom. Another benefit of virtualisation

for the channel in this time of economic cut

backs is that it perfectly fits the CIO agenda of

consolidating and cutting infrastructure costs.

Looking ahead, advanced persistent

threat technology is another area where

resellers and vendors have a great

opportunity to work together to respond

to huge customer demand for a solution to

their security problems. Again, we’ve seen

the larger customers, including public sector

bodies and some big name banks looking at

this area in 2012 and we’re likely to see more

next year, with the mid-sized market following

suit as market awareness grows.

Mobile and consumerisation is another

area where the channel can tap a growing

industry trend to provide solutions to business

problems. With BYOD snowballing in 2012

and set to continue next year there’s an

opportunity for resellers to use their expertise

to knit together different but complementary

technologies into effective mobile device

management/security solutions. Mobile

products from Good Technology and Trend

Micro fit together well, for example, but are

sometimes thought of as non-complementary –

it’s the resellers’ value-add that will bring such

offerings together in a compelling solution.

This year also saw a fair amount of

consolidation in the distributor world, and

given these things tend to run in cycles,

2013 could well see more of the same but

in the reseller space. SecData has already

acquired Quadrant, so expect more deals

of this nature. However, if this does set off

a domino-like acquisition spree it is likely to

lead to a return, in the short term at least, to

more low margin deals as the acquiring firms

try to generate RoI from their purchases. Let’s

hope for the channel’s sake that this doesn’t

become the norm again. //

Sushma Kajaria, Channel Manager, Trend Micro

“Virtualisation is one of those areas where resellers can really provide that value-add, that expertise and know-how to offer customers a holistic solution to a business problem.”


pARTNER wATChAptec-an Ingram Micro Company

Dr ali Bagdhadi, VP and CEO of aptec- an Ingram Micro Company

The global technology distribution giant Ingram Micro has taken a significant step forward into the value business with the acquisition of Aptec. The combined company will now benefit from an expanded geographical footprint and customer base. Dr Ali Bagdhadi, VP and CEO of Aptec-an Ingram Micro Company, talks about the plans and strategy to address the rapidly growing market.

a differeNt league What does this merger really

mean to both ingram and aptec?

Ingram Micro is keen to find

new ways to increase the value

to shareholders, and enter high growth,

high profit areas. They have embarked

on two directions in addition to broadline

distributions- one is value-added distribution

and services and the other one is telecom.

So they have acquired Brightpoint to offer

device lifecycle and solutions for the mobile

industry. Similarly, the Aptec acquisition gives

them two things- they get a foot in the VAD

business services, both in terms of vendor

relations and expertise, which they don’t have

in abundance. In addition to that, we also

bring to the table a geography they were not

present in, and the whole Middle East and


I just came back from a board meeting at

Ingram’s HQ and they believe in the ideas we

have discussed around value and services.

What are the advanced technologies on your

radar? any plans to expand the portfolio?

Cloud is going to be really big for us. I

don’t think any other distributor globally has

invested more than Ingram in cloud. We have

five different solutions areas right now, and

we are looking to strengthen our offerings

in the areas of security, storage, enterprise

computing and business intelligence with

vendors. In addition, we are looking at

two other solutions areas that Ingram has

created – one is point of sales and warehouse

management systems for retail and the other is

the graphic design solutions area. We do have

a wish-list of vendors that we want to bring in

but we will not incorporate any broadline or

consumer types of vendors in our portfolio.

What will be the impact of the cloud model

on the traditional distribution model?

If you look at cloud, public cloud in particular,

there are types of offerings – platform-as-a

service, infrastructure-as-a-service and

software-as-a-service, which accounts for

50% of the market. We are committed to

both SaaS and IaaS. But what is it really

going to change? Some of the smaller start-

ups and SMBs might opt for an off-premise

model. But on the enterprise level, we

see a hybrid model emerging and we are

providing solutions to enable this model.

We are going to be a cloud aggregator and

we don’t see any change in our business

model. What is going to change is the role

of distributors; the industry is moving more

towards services and consulting rather than

just supplying boxes. //

Africa, and Turkey region is one of the fastest

growing markets in the world today.

Will ingram bring into this region the same

level of infrastructure it has elsewhere?

Ingram is very committed to this region and

they have already invested significantly in

working capital and so forth. We are looking

for other things as well such as opening

up in new countries, investing in new

infrastructure services and offering financial

services to our partners.

It’s a phased approach and today we are

present in 73 countries within this massive

region. Because of the Brightpoint acquisition,

we will establish Aptec in South Africa in the

first quarter and also set up a new office in

Kenya to address the east African market. In

Turkey, we are moving to larger premises,

hiring more resources, and in Egypt we are

taking a new office and warehouse.

What are the implications of this merger on

your partners in terms of credit, choice of

suppliers, etc?

To start with, no one should see any

change in terms of credit, relationships

and suppliers. Instead, they will see more

offerings from us and we’re expanding

training centres, enhancing our logistics

services by looking at Ingram’s best

practices, and working on a cloud

aggregation platform. Ingram has invested

in three data centres, and we are offering

our infrastructure as a service to partners.

We will develop the market for software

and infrastructure as a service, and offer

business consulting training programmes for

our partners to adopt and make money out

of this new cloud model.

now, as part of a massive us company,

are there many processes that you need to

comply with?

If you look at Aptec’s history, we’re part

of a Nasdaq listed company and we have

always been very strict on compliance.

All of our vendors are US-based and

our company culture doesn’t believe in

anything that deviates from compliance.

In fact, it was one of the biggest reasons

why Ingram felt comfortable in entering

into this merger. There aren’t many other

companies in the region that adhere to

compliance like us.

vendor partner programmes can often get

very difficult to navigate and distributors

have to take the lead in educating the

channel. What are your initiatives to train

and certify the partners?

When you are a broadline distributor, you are

focused on fulfillment. But when you are a

VAD the role changes because you have to

do the right intelligence gathering, and recruit

the right partners and enable them through

training and certification. This is why we are

expanding our training centres, not just in the

UAE, but in Saudi, Oman, Egypt and Pakistan

as well. This enablement programme is what

makes the partner capable of delivering and

we will continue to handhold them through

our ATS division.

How many of these resellers are looking at

the services opportunity?

Many of the big resellers have already

managed cash in on this opportunity and

we are enabling and encouraging others,

especially the SMB resellers, to tap the

services potential.

How does ingram plan to drive the value

business? Would it be a hybrid model to has

done with its azalan division?

On the global, there are initiatives within

Ingram to drive the value business, which can

be done through solutions. We are exploring

options to see how best to grow the value

business within Ingram and I believe you have

to differentiate value from broadline from a

branding point of view and the kind of skill sets

you need for value business is very different.

“Many of the big resellers have already managed cash in on this opportunity and we are enabling and encouraging others, especially the SMB resellers, to tap the services potential.”


pARTNER wATChRedington Value

B ramkumar, VP of Value Business at redington Gulf

Within first five years of operation, Redington Value has already made its mark in the regional value-added distribution landscape. B Ramkumar, VP of Value Business at Redington Gulf, is now eyeing the top slot with a strategy backed by its geographical footprint and strong network of partners.

leadiNg tHe Pack so how was 2012 for you?

We are still in an evolutionary

phase where we are acquiring

new relationships and what we

have been trying to establish since inception

has now become very mainstream. From

an industry point of view, 2012 may not

have been the best year but for us, it was

one of the best years because we have

achieved more than 80% penetration into

the markets where we serve. Also, we are

probably the only distributor, which has the

best positioning in Saudi and the English-

speaking Africa.

Do you see this increasing trend of

broadline disties getting into value business

is really working out, given the fact that

dynamics are completely different?

I think it’s working out beautifully. In the

past there were questions about whether a

broadline distributor can really be a VAD and

how effective it can be. In my experience

in building this business, this model can

work as long as you manage the business

separately. Being a VAD within a broadline

distributor is a sweet spot because it gives

you access to the best of logistics capabilities

and infrastructure in every location. For

example, we have 32 people in Saudi

alone, spread across three locations and we

have a huge presence across the Middle

East and Africa. And if I compare myself

with a pure-play VAD, there is no way they

can deploy this kind of infrastructure and

manage the overheads. Except for sharing

logistics, warehouses and finances, we are a

completely independent entity and we sit in

separate offices with dedicated marketing,

pre-sales and back-office resources. We have

built everything from scratch to emerge as

one of the top two VADs in the region, and

this has happened only because we operate

under the Redington brand. If we started

as a stand-alone entity, we wouldn’t have

been able to scale and one of the reasons

why vendors choose Redington is our reach,

diverse channel and the ability to execute

their channel programmes in-country.


already account for 30-40% of their bottom

line but the real value-added reseller channel

is missing out on the services opportunity

because they are not willing to invest.

Do you think the cloud computing paradigm

will have an adverse impact on distribution

of infrastructure products?

I believe cloud is still hyped up and no one

is really making money out of it. The real

opportunity is in the private cloud. I can’t

think of any distributor globally, which has

an established go-to-market strategy to

address this paradigm or know how to

monetise cloud. However, we are exploring

opportunities within the infrastructure-as-a-

service domain.

You have won a number of awards this year

including our reseller Hot 50…

We were recognised as the best distributor

by four different vendors across the Middle

East and Africa. This includes Trend Micro,

Dell SonicWall, Red Hat and Avaya. We

got the Reseller Hot 50 for best pre-sales

and I thought this was a nice recognition

as it is an unsung community and no one

gives them credit for the value they bring

to table. What is really special about these

awards is that it’s not about sales figures

but about the value we offer by taking

these brands into difficult markets and

make it work. Our real USP is our proximity

to channel and I believe we are breaking

away from the pack in the value-added

distribution game. //

How do define value-added distribution,

as it often means different things to

different people?

Two to three years back, the basic pre-

qualification that you required in order to

become VAD was resources, pre- and post-

sales capabilities. However, in the current

context it means two fundamental things

– are we able to build a relevant channel for

our vendors? Can we provide an end-to-end

portfolio for our channel partners and enable

them to win business? To get this right, you

have to do a lot of work in the back-end;

you have to have highly skilled and certified

resources, a robust marketing engine and

evangelise technology.

To give you an example, in the first 6

months of this fiscal year, we have done

around 50 unique events for our vendors.

For mainstream vendors such as EMC

and Cisco, it’s about their proposition and

product bundles. But for lot of other new

vendors that we have brought to the market,

it’s all about educating the channel about

their technologies.

Do you have any plans to expand the

portfolio?

We have five focused business units. One

is dedicated to Cisco and EMC, and the

other for HP enterprise group. Then we

have software and security, convergence

and infrastructure, and servers and storage.

We have recently signed up five or six new

vendors and by the end of this fiscal, it should

be around 30 vendors.

are you looking at vendors who can

complement your existing portfolio?

Largely complementary. However, the

beauty of our model is that we can sign up

competing vendors as well. For example,

we might be working with particular vendor

in Saudi and the competitor in Africa. As

a VAD, it’s our responsibility to provide a

certain amount of choice and options to

our partners and it’s highly unlikely that we

will have exclusive contracts. We have very

mature systems and management practices

in terms of how we handle competing

vendors internally to ensure there is no

conflict of interest.

Within your portfolio, which are the faster

growing technologies in terms of demand?

I would say storage and security. The recent

breaches in Saudi have opened up new

opportunities for the security business. If you

look at virtualisation and mobility, the hottest

technology trends today, people have paid

no attention to security in these areas. We

expect regional enterprises to make huge

investments in security in the coming years to

address the threats.

Do you up-skill your partners and encourage

them to specialise?

We do that for a living. A major part of our

compensation and rebates with vendors is

directly linked to how we are able to skill,

certify and bring the channel forward. To sell

a product to a non-certified partner is not a

viable option, so by default we drive channel

enablement through training and certification.

Sales enablement is easy but technical

enablement is an on-going process.

services offer a hugely untapped

opportunity for partners. How do you enable

them to transition towards it?

To be honest, that’s an area where there

is a lot of work needs to be done, as a

vast majority of resellers are not able to

understand the potential or have limitations

in terms of investing in services capabilities.

For the large and mid-tier partners, services

For the large and mid-tier partners, services already account for 30-40% of their bottom line but the real value-added reseller channel is missing out on the services opportunity because they are not willing to invest.


manageability

without thecomplexity.

This communication has been created for you by a company reselling Dell products.

© 2012 Dell Products. Dell, the Dell logo and Latitude are registered or unregistered trade marks of Dell Inc. in the United States and other countries. Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Windows and the Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks or trade names may be used in this document to refer to third-party products (such as operating systems and software) included with the products o�ered by Dell and the entities claiming the marks and names of those products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. [Dell Corporation Ltd, Dell House, The Boulevard, Cain Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1LF.

Mindware FZ LLC I Tecom – Cayan Business Center I Dubai, UAEP.O. Box: 55609 I T.: 04 450 0600 I E: [email protected] I W: www.mindware.ae

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lati_opti_20.7x27cm.pdf 1 12/26/12 3:57 PM

The inaugural reseller Hot 50 awards were presented at a glittering ceremony held at the H Hotel in Dubai, which rallied together all the key stakeholders from the channel universe. These companies, including vendors, distributors, sis, resellers and retailers, have worked effectively to create value for their customers and profit for themselves and their partners. We turned the magnifying glass on these stellar performers from vendor and channel communities and winners were picked by our editorial team.

HoNouriNg cHaNNel suPerstars

Brocade - Best Storage networking Vendor Imation - Best SMB Product Vendor


redington Value - Best Presales Support

EMPa - Best after-sales Support

Mitsumi - Best Emerging Distributor

Optimus - Best Partner Training Initiatives

jacky’s Electornics - Best Specialist retailer

Comguard - Best Software Distributor

Unatrac - Best Demand Generation Initiatives

FVC - Best Enterprise Hardware Distributor

Key Information Technology - Best reseller Performance Initiative

Westcon - Best Product Leadership

asbis Middle East - Best Consumer Hardware Distributor

Mindware - Best Strategic Partner Engagements

STME - Best Storage Integrator

Trigon - Best retail Distributor

Logicom - Best Convergence Distributor

aptec - Best Logistic Services


HelpaG - Best Security Solutions Provider

VIP Computers - Best Consumer Electronics Distributor

Emitac Distribution - Best Channel Marketing Initiative

BDL - Best Volume Distributor

almoayyed Computers - Best Infrastructure Services

Golden Systems Middle East - Best Brand Promotion Initiative

COMPUTErLInKS - Best IT Solutions Distributor

Promate - Best Lifestyle Technology Vendor

nanjgel Solutions - Best Security Integrator

Prologix - Best Infrastructure Distributor

almasa - Best Channel Enablement

Touchmate- Best Home-grown Brand

Emitac Enterprise Solutions - Best Project Management

FDC - Best Channel Management

Metra - Best Systems Distributor

HP networking - Best Partner Education Initiatives

Goodram Middle East - Best Memory Vendor

Bitdefender - Best Mobile Security Vendor

ESET - Best Channel Growth Initatives

HP PPSG - Best Product Innovation

Kaspersky - Best Internet Security Vendor

Lexmark - Best Print Services Vendor

Fluke networks - Best Test & Measurement Vendor

Dell - Best Data Centre Solutions Vendor

Targus - Best accessories Vendor

D-Link - Best Green Technologies Vendor

Fortinet - Best Enterprise Security Vendor

avaya - Best UC and Collaboration Vendor

Western Digital - Best Consumer Storage Vendor

ManageEngine - Best network Management Vendor

Cisco / Linksys - Best Wireless Vendor

Iomega - Best network Storage Vendor


AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTORS*

* Please check our website of respective distributors coverage of countries and channels in the region.

Tel: + 971 43552270 Email: [email protected]: + 962 65626440 Email: [email protected]: + 254 204442241 Email: [email protected]: + 971 048132400 Email: [email protected]: + 966 920000089 Email: [email protected]

Al Shadawi TradingDespec Levant

Despec East AfricaITE DistributionJarir Bookstore

Email: info@redington gulf.com

Tel: + 971 43734712 Email: [email protected]: + 973 17736363 Email: [email protected]: + 201 001562258 Email: [email protected]: + 254 738999344

Lifestyle by RedingtonNational trading house

Nordix EgyptRedington Africa

Designed for Life: Yours

Over 3000 businesses in the Middle East trust ManageEngine’s real-time IT Management products.

Network Monitoring | Servers & Application Monitoring | IT Help Desk

Windows Infrastructure Management | Log Analysis & Security | Desktop Management

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Everything around big data and BYOD will be

topical and challenging for the regional CiOs. The

adoption of smart devices as business tools has

also clearly impacted PC sales and will continue to

do so for the foreseeable future. Extending video to the edge

will be a key growth market, mobility and BYOD management

will also be top of mind and compliance will start to be a

greater driver of market growth. We aim to have specific

offerings to allow us partners a meaningful dialogue with

clients around these key opportunities.

Access control and data management issues around BYOD and

capturing business advantage from big data will be central to the

leaders in this region. Though enterprise IT spending may not gain

much steam in 2013, in addressing the issues of BYOD and big data

plus impending compliance reviews we expect a shift in budget from

classic infrastructure upgrade to these newer areas.

We will also continue to see greater maturity and specialisation

in the channel to address the needs of the regions CIOs. Greater

partnerships or development in the mobile applications space will

definitely yield results. Innovative applications that pull through

mobile devices and lucrative services opportunities and look for

opportunities to upgrade consumer grade solutions to truly robust

and secure mobile applications.

Key to profit and growth this year will be to get focus into the

commercial sector and specifically the SMB segment and ensure

partners are fully equipped to capture this growth.

Riding the BYod wave

Steve Lockie, MD, Westcon ME Group


2013 in this region will see a huge impetus on technology

infrastructure building. This was planned in 2012 but

political and economic delays led to a setback in the

number of projects that actually went into execution.

The Middle East and Africa is a highly diverse and heterogeneous

region. As such, the predictions on top trends for each of the

countries of the region will also vary. Whereas there is a lot of

sentiment of uncertainty in the economies of some countries across

the region, some countries are witnessing a huge inflow of investment

from these troubled geographies.

The Gulf countries are witnessing a huge real estate revival, which

is likely to spur technology infrastructure spending in these select

countries. This will mean that there will be a potential spend on IT

Infrastructure projects and projects involving IT applications roll outs.

E-Government projects seem to be pivoted to gain momentum as further

automation of citizen services and facilities will lead to greater use of

data collection, data mining and business intelligence technologies.

2013 will see a spurt in IT spending in banking, manufacturing

and industrial ventures as apart from IT infrastructure; the IT security

aspects of their technology set ups will need to be upgraded as well.

Many small and medium business enterprises will move

non-critical applications to public clouds. Government and

semi-government enterprises will see an impetus to move their

applications to private or hybrid clouds. There will therefore be a

huge spend on cloud infrastructure, data centre equipment, backup,

disaster recovery, storage and optimisation applications.

the YeaR of infRastRuctuRe

Meera Kaul, MD, Optimus Technology & Telecommunications


Middle East markets are leapfrogging developed

economies by embracing new business models and

technologies to achieve their social and economic goals.

In recent years we have witnessed many

governments in the region making significant investments in creating

and upgrading their respective national technology infrastructural

networks. They have done this by introducing new collaborative

technology which will help to drive innovation to make a difference

to every citizen’s life. Today, the network is the vital platform for

creating intelligent, sustainable solutions for public safety and

security, transportation, buildings, utilities, healthcare and education.

This network platform will be crucial for driving growth, innovation,

efficiency and productivity for the nation and its people.

Given the explosive growth of information and the applications

to access that information anywhere, anytime, the Middle East

is experiencing robust adoption of technologies such as cloud

computing, virtualisation, unified communications and internet based

voice and video.

The challenge that the industry will face by the BYOD trend is

introducing and managing a solid security strategy. As more and

more employees are using devices for both personal and business

activities, the issues with potential loss of confidential company data

increases as IT departments are less in control. Companies in 2013

will have to ensure that devices have business application and data

isolated and protected s that it is not affected by any malware coming

from games, email attachments and unsecure internet connections.

netwoRks get a facelift

Claire Jones, Regional Manager, Cisco UAE


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© 2012 Cisco. All rights reserved. Cisco, the Cisco logo and Linksys are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its a� liates in the United States and certain other countries. Mac and the Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

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in 2013 we can expect to see two key growth areas:

cloud computing and security.

The transition to cloud computing will not happen

overnight, but it will definitely become a major reality

within three to four years, with particular emphasis on the private

cloud. Public cloud adoption will take a bit more time, but a good

number of GBM customers will experiment with some form of public

cloud computing in the next 18 to 24 months.

Security is becoming an important concern for the IT industry,

and understandably so. Internet access, BYOD programmes and

almost unlimited access granted to all employees on server networks

require any company or government entity to set up security

requirements in order to operate safely. Each of those requirements

is unfortunately susceptible to intrusion.

The industry is generating increasingly sophisticated security

tools to protect company information. Meanwhile, more and more

threats are materialising at every corner.

We definitely think that enterprise IT spending will continue

to grow in 2013, and in the region we will continue to see a

progressive shift of IT investment from CAPEX to OPEX. Businesses

are increasingly understanding the importance of investing in IT

solutions, and they are realising the positive impact IT has on their

operations. Companies are now looking to adopt solutions that

will allow them to keep up with today’s fast-paced, competitive

and demanding business market. This is why we always work

very closely with our customers to evaluate the adaptability and

scalability of their IT infrastructure and help prepare them for the

changing IT environment.

secuRitY on top of mind

Cesare Cardone, CEO, GBM


We definitely see the demand for mobility

products increasing exponentially in 2013. The

hottest growth areas for us in the coming year are

tablet PCs and other mobility products.

We perceive a definite positive trend in the

market with customers inclined towards investments

to bring in efficiency within their infrastructure

framework. Organisations are additionally focusing on

increasing investments in new-age technologies such

as cloud computing and virtualisation for reducing

capital expenses. The emphasis is on driving greater

efficiencies within the organisations indicating an

increase in IT spending.

Our industry is facing a very unique set of challenges and

there is really no way to tell what the future will hold for IT

distribution. Nonetheless, the latest trends show an emphasis

on VAD and service and we feel that this trend will continue as

our markets continue to mature.

“Big data” is at the top of many lists. That should

be no surprise, given the massive volumes of

information being stored and the promise that Big

data holds. The sheer quantity of data being

produced by all manner of iP devices is only part of the story.

Big data’s real value is in the ability to analyse data quickly,

and use it to make much better-informed decisions. The

ultimate goal is to make decisions in real-time, when the

impact is the biggest.

If history tells us anything, is says the new technologies

of today often become the normal everyday way of doing

things tomorrow. We predict the same will apply to “intelligent

infrastructure management systems”. Two or three years

ago these were systems associated with the high end or

with sophisticated end users. In the Middle East, as an early

adopter region, these systems will just be the normal way IT

professionals design, deploy and manage the physical layer of

IT networks.

Betting on moBilitY getting phYsical

Ehsan Hashemi, COO, Golden Systems Middle East Ciaran Forde, VP, Enterprise, Middle East & Africa, CommScope


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Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will

likely become the device of choice for casual content

consumption in the consumer segment of the

market. in line with this cloud-based storage will also

grow in popularity owing to the limited storage capacity of

mobile devices and the demands of users to have access to all

of their data. as more and more users adopt cloud storage for

their data, security solutions designed to protect user data will

be critical as attackers always follow the trail led by users.

Channel players should try to position themselves as enablers

by being knowledgeable about these trends and by offering the

right products for consumers as well as businesses.

The consumerisation of IT will also see an increasing number

of these consumer-focused mobile devices integrated into

business environments. Going hand-in-hand with this, products

that offer cloud storage capabilities will also become more

popular, as consumers will want access to all of their content

when they’re on the go.

Customer will wish to add value to their business

by the use of strategic iT initiatives. asking

vendors to deliver service led offerings allowing

customers to focus on their core business will build.

adding value through consultancy, post-sale excellence and

the provision of management data to drive efficiency and

excellence will increase.

Cloud Computing will grow in the mid space markets

as SMBs look to capture opportunities here. BYOD will be a

trend that is on an upswing, and clients will have to work with

vendors on the challenges this brings in security, application

development and mobile working. Xerox has the ability to

help clients with these challenges and provide users and IT

professionals with the best of both worlds.

Partners must work as groups of providers rather than

stand-alone resellers. They must train and align resources to

new realities and become familiar with the nature of delivering

against customer requirements as part of a greater whole.

cloud stoRage on the caRds cReating new value

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East, Africa & South Asia, WDDan Smith, Head of Integrated Marketing –MEA, Xerox ‘s Developing Markets Operations


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The rise of cloud infrastructure is predicted to the

biggest trend for the year 2013. With the intensification

of services exceeding future calculations, cloud

computing will drift even more into enterprises with

hybrid clouds. interoperability and standards in cloud computing

will keep advancing. Businesses will scrutinize the impact of the

cloud, its benefits, usage and rOi more than ever before.

Are deployments delivering the agility and cost savings

predicted? Are users benefitting? How can one measure

cloud ROI when, by design, the assets are not owned by the

organization? We predict that IT organizations will attempt to take

back control of their own assets and budgets and the deployment

of private cloud architectures will accelerate in later half of FY13.

In the coming year, we expect a sea-change in the evolvement

of channel ecosystem. New opportunities are on the rise with many

breaking grounds new technologies coming up in 2013. Video

conferencing and cloud computing will acquire a major chunk of

market share perhaps developing a wider platform for channel partners

to participate and grow. The net growth investment ratio might

see a spike with many people in UAE and Qatar choosing to make

investments in various IT ventures. With lots of infrastructure building

up, the ecosystem for the channel is expected to be positive for 2013.

i believe 2013 will witness a major shift in the iT

market across the Middle East, where only

companies who are capable of integrating in the

new world of iT will survive. Many companies now

are starting to develop their cloud strategy deciding on

deploying a private, public or hybrid cloud model.

Traditional “box movers” will need to shift more towards

being value added Distributors and resellers (vaD and

var) so they can direct and guide their customers through

the cloud evolution.

Virtualization of servers, storage and desktops is certainly

going to be one of the hottest growth areas in the coming

period. The market needs to be ready to embrace big data/

analytics and ‘social business’, which is the integration of social

media into the business mix. Consumer devices are increasing

in the corporate space. Additionally, I believe non-conventional

connected devices and the offering of complete integrated

solutions will be a key focus for companies in 2013.

IT vendors and channel partners need to be closer now

more than ever as this is a transitional phase where each

channel partner is defining the role he/she can play in the new

world of IT.

a cloudY foRecast BRave new woRld

Sarwan Singh, Director, Prologix Ossama Eldeeb, Regional Sales Manager – AMD META


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The GCC is witnessing an increasing demand for

data leakage prevention solutions and social media

monitoring tools. Other trends are the exponential

growth of data volumes owned by Gulf-based

companies, the increasing diversity of iT infrastructure and

corporate staff getting more involved in using various web and

mobile services, which is only going to increase going forward.

all these factors make corporate information protection a really

challenging task.

The amount of information owned by companies will continue

to grow steadily and it will be extremely difficult to control this

huge and unstructured data without the implementation of a

specialised data monitoring and control system. Another trend is a

telecom revolution where the widespread use of new generation

4G communication standard will inevitably lead to facilitation

of e-commerce and also indirectly to more data being stored

electronically. Companies will then need to think about data

categorisation and protection from unauthorised usage.

virtualisation will probably be the hottest

immediately followed by storage, which is directly

related and has already been on a strong growth

path for some time.

The distribution and reseller security channel has

acknowledged and factored in some of the major trends in

security consisting of providing more security to secure more

data and versatile and complex IT environments. In 2013

the already well-established security specialist distributor

and reseller channels should keep growing while in parallel

broadline distributors and resellers are expected to accelerate

the integration of security components and aspects to their

overall portfolio. On top of that the channel is also actively

developing its value added services offering and capability

overall but also more specifically when it comes to security in

order to be able to advise their more and more security savvy

customers, integrate security solutions in their environments

and support their implementations and evolving needs.

getting a gRip on data changing secuRitY peRspective

Alexander Zarovsky - International Business Chief, InfoWatch Miguel Braojos, VP of Sales Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, SafeNet


Market trends

within the security

sector are driven

by end customers

business initiatives - by

correlating business

potential with accumulated

security risks. The trends we

see are modern malicious

malware protection,

advanced DDOs prevention

and mobile device security.

information security strategy

plays a key role when considering investments within the right

technical security controls. Everybody wants to be mobile,

wants to carry private as well as corporate information on the

same device without sacrificing user-friendliness. This is a

challenge in itself and needs to be mitigated with a clear

separation between corporate data and private data.

Growth areas will be in areas of technology that

increases productivity, reduces complexity and increases

information security. If an enterprise organization wants to

succeed in their line of business they have to open up to

new marketing strategies and use social media.

in 2013, we see

a strong trend

of customers

looking for

more powerful devices

which help them stay

connected, enhance

mobility and entertain.

We anticipate growth in

lighter and thinner

devices which are

growing their presence at

a rapid pace in the

Middle East.

We see the channel becoming more aware of the

prominent role that accessories play in their product

offering and that focus is being given to driving attach,

which definitely is a healthier model, enhancing profitability.

It is instrumental that vendors share their strategies with

partners. Partners are vital to growth and expansion plans

for vendors, They are constantly updated with new products

launches and given their proximity towards the end user,

their feedback on customers trends is crucial for further

developing the business, hence a win-win scenario.

help ag taRgus

Stephan Berner, Managing Director, help AG

Riyaz Abdulla, Regional Sales Director, Targus Middle East

We will see more

investment in saas

as the region

becomes more in

tune with the benefits this

model has to offer. also i feel

that a mobile device

management solution will be

on the wishlist of many iT

managers in 2013 and you

can expect to see more

investment in big data.

GFI Software has

already introduced mobile security technology into our GFI

VIPRE suite of solutions, for both business and consumer

markets. I expect to see more MSP activity in the channel

and more value added services from distribution. At GFI

Software we are constantly assessing the landscape and

fine-tuning our strategy and partner activities to ensure we

maximise the potential of every opportunity.

We at Cambium

are seeing

several shifts in

terms of

technology choices. in the

operator space we are

seeing a shift towards low

cost unlicensed

equipment and in the

securities market we are

seeing a shift to the

licensed micro wave

equipment. if you

consider the amount of mobile data devices now in the

market i do believe we will start to see the need for more

capacity than ever.

Our channel ecosystem has changed year on year and

it is amazing to seeing new business developing application

driven networks are now really starting to come to the

service and work with across the region.

gfi softwaRe camBium netwoRks

John Spoor, Regional Director –MEA, GFI Software

Graham Owen, Rregional Sales Director, Cambium Networks


some interesting figures first. according to

iDC, the disk storage capacity shipped by

vendors worldwide has surpassed seven

exabytes for the first time in the third

quarter of 2012. This represents 24.4% year

on year growth.

The analyst firm says driving the double-

digit growth in storage was demand for

multi-protocol storage systems such as fibre

channel and Ethernet-based storage as well

as a strong demand for upper mid-range and

high-end range storage systems.

Despite concerns about global and

The burgeoning data storage market is opening up long-term revenue opportunities for channel partners. What does it take to succeed in this mature market?

tHe Next froNtier

regional economies, end users continue

to invest in storage infrastructure to deal

with the unprecedented explosion in digital

data. In the Middle East, storage sales are

witnessing a significant upturn fuelled by

demand for technologies such as data

de-duplication, thin provisioning, solid-state

drives and automated tiering. This, in turn, has

opened up new opportunities for the channel

looking to grow the business and margins.

“The data storage boom of the last few

years has, unquestionably, given a different

meaning to the word storage. It has not

become an essential requirement at all levels,

from personal all the way to enterprise.

With numerous studies predicting that data

needs will grow 50-fold by 2020, this makes

storage an impartial constituent of that

growth equation. It is a no-brainer that part

of this opportunity is there to be seized by

the channel,” says Nicholas Agyrides, MD of

EMPA.

Sid Deshpande, Senior Research

Analyst, Gartner, agrees that is a high margin

opportunity for the channel. “Buyers prefer

to purchase storage and wider integrated

STORAgE fEATuREData storage


solutions from one vendor or channel partner

so that they can make it responsible and

accountable for the products and offerings

and reduce operational complexity.”

He adds that while regulations differ

from country to country and do not always

mandate that storage hardware vendors

should go to market through partners, it is the

preferred way of doing business because of

cultural reasons and the better effectiveness

of the go-to-market strategy. Additionally,

the heavy inclination toward the “solutions”

approach (as outlined in the above section)

means that enterprise organisations are more

inclined to deal with a single point of contact

for the entire data center project.

While this does not

preclude storage hardware vendors

from being directly involved in the bid,

it is only in the case of some global

strategic accounts that Gartner has

observed storage vendors having a direct

presence. Alternatively, in some cases,

government organisations that use public

funds may be wary of going through system

integrators with a bidding process and

may directly approach data center portfolio

vendors in a closed RFP approach.

Gartner says regionally and vertically

specialised channel players are very

important to storage vendors’ go-to-

market strategies, not just for the reasons

outlined above, but also because of their

ability to identify and secure strategic

opportunities in individual countries. In

some of the smaller countries of MEA, the

larger storage vendor/system integrator

remains the technology expert while the

specialised local partner is the identifier

and facilitator of business opportunities.

“In many niche markets in MEA, it

becomes almost imperative to go through

a local channel partner, because they

have a closer pulse on the local market

dynamics and upcoming projects. The strong

penetration that local channel players have

in the MEA region overall is underscored

by announcements of system integrators

aligning or partnering with other vertical-

specific channel players to either increase

their strategic scope of coverage and/or

target specific deals,” points out Deshpande.

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director,

Middle East, Africa & South Asia, WD, says

that though storage offers opportunity

for high margins, the margins one makes

depends on the approach adopted when it

comes to selling. “If the approach is just to

move boxes then it is difficult to generate

decent margins on storage products. This

is why the approach should always be to

properly educate sales staff on storage

products that are being sold, so that the

product or solution can be pushed based

on merits such as performance, features,

value additions and its ability to satisfy a

customer’s needs. If you are able to satisfy a

customer’s needs in this way, it’s very likely

that you will be able to move the product

without needing to offer discounts in order to

complete the sale.”

Sarwan Singh, Director of Prologix,

echoes a similar opinion: “It is irrefutable

that organisations, in general, store massive

data demanding high data security. Mission

critical data might include employee details,

inventory, and customer information or

achieved files that have to be kept safely to

be retrieved easily. We anticipate money-

spinning opportunities for the channel with

Sid Deshpande, Senior research analyst, Gartner “In many niche markets in MEA, it becomes almost imperative to go through a local channel partner, because they have a closer pulse on the local market dynamics and upcoming projects.”


Data storage

increased buoyancy in data storage market.

The sound management of data is critical

for the enterprises, which further opened

many new avenues for channel partners.

IT spending in data backup and recovery

solutions is escalating due to increased

demand for storage capacity powered by new

applications including disaster recovery and

seamless business continuity. “

Buying trends and patterns

Gartner observes that the enterprise

segment in the Middle East and Africa

(MEA) overall still displays very traditional

purchasing behaviors, with storage area

network (SAN) demand being driven by

database workloads and other structured

applications, such as ERP and CRM. The

service provider segment in MEA is displaying

signs of innovation and adoption of the

data center technology stacks, fabric-based

computing architectures and storage arrays

that are specifically targeted at the service

provider cloud environment.

“A majority of storage purchases in

the Middle East are directly or indirectly

driven by government projects or initiatives,

across verticals. In the private sector,

the storage opportunity is very strong in the

banking and telecom verticals. Network-

attached storage (NAS) is expected to grow

its share from 24% of the storage hardware

market in MEA in 2011 to 41% in 2016,

indicating a strong opportunity for storage

hardware vendors,” says Deshpande.

Gartner believes that

the storage hardware market is still

underpenetrated in the MEA region overall,

with many organisations not having the

insight or education required to assess

the correct storage infrastructure for their

application and service requirements. In

the SMB segment and the lower end of the

large-enterprise segment, there is more

dependence on the storage vendors or

their partners to suggest products and

technologies that fit business requirements,

rather than IT departments taking the lead

and dictating their requirements to vendors

and providers.

Most of the prominent vendors and

their distributors are ramping up the support

to help their channel partner tap the

opportunities in the storage market. WD, for

example, works with all of its partners closely

and focus heavily on partner education

where it trains partner sales staff across the

full spectrum of products. “An educated

sales force is one that will be able to close

deals quickly, without resorting to discounts

in order to tempt the buyer into spending

his money. WD’s own sales staff is also on

the ground to assist partners whenever

the need arises. All of our partners have

access to our WD University online product

training tool and can also participate in our

myWD partner programme. The latter gives

partners access to marketing collaterals,

demos, future product information and there’s

also an incentive system that rewards sales

successes,” says Saifuddin.

Agyrides from Empa says it provides

training to the resellers with the involvement

of the vendors. “These include market

briefings, technology updates, upcoming

product roadmaps, and technical workshops.

Certifying our reseller partners on our

vendor technologies is another priority

as it helps them be more competitive as

well as it broadens their view in which key

technologies to invest in. Lastly, certification is

often correlated to receiving hefty rebates via

vendor programmes.”

Going by the projected data growth,

storage market exhibits strong growth

potential and is likely to sustain its double-

digit growth momentum in 2013 as well.

Channel partners who can differentiate

themselves with specialisation and solution-

focused approach can indeed make hay while

the sun shines. //

“Most of the prominent vendors and their distributors are ramping up the support to help their channel partner tap the opportunities in the storage market.”

nicholas agyrides, MD of EMPa

STORAgE fEATuRE


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Riverbed, which started off with making WAN optimisation gear, is evolving into a performance platform company. Philippe Elie, Director of Business Operations and Nino D’Auria, VP of Channels EMEA, spoke to us about the plans to work more closely with partners to grow the market share.

Programmed for growtH

How strategic is this market to

your growth plans?

Philippe: Riverbed has been active

in the Middle East and Africa for

four to five years and we’ve managed to have

some significant references like Petrofac and

Qatargas. We feel that there is still very big

potential and we’re going to put more and

more focus on the Middle East – not only

from a resource perspective, but also the way

that we position Riverbed in the market. The

latter will be achieved by transitioning from a

single family of products to a whole portfolio

of products which are aimed at addressing

the IT performance issues as a whole. This

may seem simple, but it has a number of

sequences. One is we have to not only deal

with networking people within the accounts,

but now we’ve got a value proposition that

makes a lot of sense for CIOs and CEOs.

When we meet CIOs and CEOs we can now

discuss more consolidation products, which

in the Middle East is a hot topic because

everybody wants to consolidate to simplify IT

and reduce costs.

What is your value-proposition?

The value proposition that we bring to

customers is evolving. It’s ramping up in

terms of potential attraction and relevance for

CIOs and CEOs. This is really why we want

to reposition Riverbed as the IT performance

company in the Middle East as has been the

case in continental Europe. This has a number

of implications in terms of how we manage

our partners because this is a brand new way

to address the market and to drive their skills

in different directions. The way we manage

our channel will have to adapt as well.

What is your partner strategy? Do you

consider your channel as an asset?

nino: This company is evolving. From an

engineering standpoint we are in great shape.

The portfolio is mature but is continuously

vENDOR fOCuSRiverbed


adding new features and keeping the focus

on performance. The performance is at the

centre of what we do every day, but we are

changing our typical counterparts within the

customer base and we are starting to be

more consultative in the way we propose

our philosophy. The same concept must be

followed for the partner community. Now

we are giving to the channel community

additional chances. First of all we have to

understand and agree who our ideal partner

is. Whether they are a system integrator or a

solutions provider, they must be able to build,

manage services and other activities around

our portfolio. We are not in the market to sell

professional services, but our engineering

portfolio resonates very well with a system

integrator or partner to build around the

solution. We are moving in this direction. I

joined with the task of moving and evolving

the EMEA channel to the next level. The

corporate Riverbed base in San Francisco

is very aware that 80% of the stuff can be

done and packaged and manufactured

in HQ, but we need to localise for a very

simple reason. We are working in 29

different countries with many different

languages and cultures so we have to be

very focused in following the differences in

the different countries. So 80% of the stuff

is invented in San Francisco, which then

needs to be translated to meet the needs of

each market.

Also from the channel perspective

I think that we in EMEA have been very

sophisticated so we are successful with

the service providers, and we are growing

a community of partners made up of real

systems integrators. Our distributor is a value

added distributor so fortunately we don’t

have to reinvent the wheel – we have a great

asset which we can count on. Even in terms

of the channel community, we have to be very

positive with them in saying it’s a matter of

decision because every 40 days we bring to

the table an additional part of our technology.

We have to make the decision together if it is

fitting with their portfolio offering, if they are

able to build services and we have to work

together to understand what is the feedback

from market on the proposition. That is the

key to what we are doing. We have a great

scale. We have partners in the UK that are

just focusing on the security part and we have

partners somewhere else that have already

built up an entire managed services portfolio

that are very sophisticated. So it is definitely

also a matter of transferring the right concept

to the community. From my standpoint, my

job is to give the opportunity to present in a

very candid and open way the potential and

now is a matter of decision of what to do

together. We are visiting many countries and

places because I wanted to meet one-to-one

the main players in each geography and be

clear in relaying our evolution concept that

change will be the only constant part of our

philosophy.

What is your message to the channel

community and what is the direction riverbed

is taking?

nino: The big difference between being a

vendor and a partner is as a partner all the

vendors come to you because the partners

are literally bombarded with additional

offerings or new vendors that want to sell

something – they must be selective. The offer

must resonate with what they do. There is no

room for improvisation because it takes a lot

of time to understand the offering, to certify

people, to educate them, and to be credible

because it’s all a matter of credibility and

reputation in this market. The goal for the

company is to get up to $2 billion by 2015.

We are such in acceleration mode that I’m

trying to keep all of the community together

in making sure we are fitting with our

partners’ offerings. We also have the goal of

being more consistent in investment, we are

adding people and we want to be successful

in the Middle East. //

“This company is evolving. From an engineering standpoint we are in great shape.”

vENDOR fOCuSRiverbed

Philippe Elie, Director of Business Operations, riverbed

nino D’auria, VP of Channels EMEa, riverbed


Security Information & Event Management

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Tel: +971 4 433 0560Fax: +971 4 453 7281Email: [email protected]

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Avaya’s VP of Emerging Regions, Nidal Abou-Itaif looks forward to a channel driven 2013 and believes it is the perfect time for the company’s 25 carefully selected regional partners to push new technologies.

tHe time is Now

vENDOR fOCuSAvaya

a few years back avaya’s channel

only accounted for about 60% of

its global business. Much of its us

sales, as well as some of its Europe

sales, were attributed to direct business.

However, the managerial decision was made

to reduce this direct business and become a

channel driven company. These days, the channel

contributes more than 80% of Avaya’s sales.

After seeing success through this

method, Abou-Itaif says 2013 will continue to

centre on Avaya being almost 100% channel

driven in the MEA region.

“We address the market through our

channel and have only a few customers

direct,” he says. “The direct accounts, which

we have no plans on giving to the channel,

are due to a special agreement for them to

utilise our technology. We deal with them like

a partner, whilst the remainder will continue to

be channel driven.”

He adds that “the time is now” to put new

innovation in the market because end users

no want to use IT to build for the future.

With this in mind, Avaya wants to reward

partners for adapting its technologies and

selling them to the market.

“We want to reward them with better

margins, discounts, selling next to them and

also certifying them to do that. I believe that the

partners that adapt to the change will be the

partners that will be the focus of our new work

and innovation. The majority of the business

will come from new innovation that the young

generation is demanding and we believe that

partners that are willing and brave enough to

accept the changes will work with us best.”

Avaya takes the approach of signing

fewer partners - 25 in the region - than other

organisations of its size and believes this

allows them to make more margin than with

its competition.

As further incentive, it now extends

what it calls New Product Initiatives (NPIs)

to its partners for extra discount. “We also


incentive tem on rebate and help them with

implementation,” Abou-Itaif says.

However, the key to mastering the

channel is convincing resellers to specialise

in your technologies. Abou-Itaif believes this

largely comes down to mindset.

“If a partner is not able to change

there is no way I can train them to change.

So it’s the business decision of the partner

to say that they are ready to change and

want to adapt to the technology. They also

need to understand they cannot do it all on

their own.

“They need to cooperate with other

partners to form an ecosystem around us

to put the solutions to market. If they are

a small player they may need to partner

with a big company or if they are a niche

player they may need to make themselves

available for acquisition. That’s how we

will encourage them to change. Over the

last three years we’ve made sure that if

people don’t change we’ll change them,

so today I have people talking about the

future now and understanding what the

customer wants.”

The right understanding

Avaya’s partners, Abou-Itaif says,

understand the customer more than they

understand the technology.

“The minute they understand the

customer they can bring the technology into

it, they can’t do it the other way around. We

moved from value selling to solutions and

training our partners. Some partners are

changing, some are not. I want them all to

consolidate, become stronger and acquire

companies to complement our solutions,”

he says.

“It’s a journey but we chose 25 partners

for 2013 and we have a business plan

together, we evaluate their people together,

we have a monthly meeting and every

five or six partners are sponsored by an

executive from EMEA who looks into that

transformation with the partner. For those 25

partners it has so far become positive and I

hope that continues.”

Avaya announced during GITEX

Technology Week 2012 in October the

signing of a memorandum of understanding

(MoU) with Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority

(DSOA) to open its Middle East, Africa and

Turkey training centre in the integrated free

zone technology park.

The dedicated training centre within

Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) will feature Avaya’s

latest video and networking products.

Partners and enterprises from the

Middle East, Africa and Turkey region will

be able to use the centrally located facility

to increase their knowledge of Avaya video,

networking and midmarket technologies,

while obtaining industry certifications on new

communications solutions.

“We already had a certified partner that

did training in the region but then we realised

it wasn’t fast enough in gearing up to the

technology we have,” Abou-Itaif says. “The

end user wants to have the training as part of

the solution.

“We also realised that for people from the

Middle East, even though we have a training

centre in South Africa, it’s not easy for them

to get there. So what I’ve managed to deliver

with the approval of my management is to

bring a training centre to Dubai Silicon Oasis

which is beginning as a video training centre

for MEA because video is the new way of

communication.”

He concludes that the new training

centre is proof of Avaya’s commitment and

investment in the regional channel.

“We’re adding more sales force in the region

to help sell the technology and are adding

more professional service to help them

evolve and make sure they’re not afraid to

brake that ‘it’s new’ barrier. As a company we

continue to improve our tools and processes

to make it easier to do business and adapt to

the new world.” //

Avaya’s partners, Abou-Itaif says, understand the customer more than they understand the technology.

vENDOR fOCuSAvaya

nidal abou-Itaif, VP of Emerging regions, avaya


Learn more at www.EMC.com/VSPEX

INTRODUCINGEMC VSPEXPROVEN INFRASTRUCTURE

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EMC_VSPES_ADV copy.pdf 1 11/1/12 2:27 PM

Want to get the most out of Windows 8 whilst still having the complete control of a laptop experience? Well, look no further than the Acer Aspire M Touch.

acer asPire m toucH – tHe fuN of tHe future

REvIEwAcer Aspire M Touch with Windows 8

Every now and then a piece of

technology comes along that

you just can’t put down - this

was one of those pieces. With a

large, beautiful, slim keyboard supporting

a 15.6 inch screen and the solid Windows

7 system available at the touch of a

button, the acer aspire M Touch is a

fantastic package for anyone, business or

professional.

The outstanding battery life and Nvidia

Kepler based graphic card makes it an ideal

platform for gamers, whilst sitting at 2cm

high and weighing only 2.1kg, complete

with a DVD writer and three USB ports, it’s

perfect for business.

The sleek brushed metal finish (albeit

mixed with plastic) makes the Aspire a

lovely looking thing, as well as sturdy

and solid when in use or in transit. The

keyboard is nicely spaced and very user

friendly, as is the rather large track pad

situated slightly to the left of the machine.

The point here is; the M Touch is big

without being big.

A key thing to note about the Acer

is that it’s a consistently cool and quiet

performance piece, even when gaming.

Add to this a nine second boot up time

from shut down and a two second boot up

time from sleeping and you’ve got a very

complete and solid machine. This can all be

This review was done by joe Lipscombe, Sub-Editor, CPI Technology

put down to the impressive third generation

dual-core processor Intel Core i5, complete

with 6GB of memory and a 120GB SSD.

Once you’ve finished doing your

homework or destroying enemies on COD,

you can start to really enjoy the Acer

Aspire. Now running on the Windows 8

operating system, arguably built for the

tablet market, the M Touch transforms into a

futuristic multi-touch device which feels like

something James Bond might be presented

with at Q branch.

As previously mentioned, it boasts a 15.6

inch screen which makes the Windows 8

tiled homepage look fantastic, and the apps

breathtaking. It really is where the fun starts. I

spent hours sliding apps around, painting my

face and researching worldly destinations via

the new Bing app (which is superb).

I have used Windows 8 on countless

non-touchscreen devices and I’m one of

those people who isn’t overly keen on it.

I find it a rather difficult tool to manage,

not to mention my chosen screen tends

to whizz off at any given moment leaving

me typing a web address into a Skype

conversation. So, back to the point, having

all the power of a large, powerful and swift

laptop combined with a classy, 15.6 inch

touch version of Windows 8 makes this

Acer model an absolute winner. I’m still

not convinced that the Windows 8 OS is

really very business friendly, however, with

the Acer Aspire M Touch you can take full

advantage of all the media communications

apps such as Skype and Lync, both of which

are smart and simple to use.

With my work completed, and therefore

Windows 7 and the keyboard rendered

completely redundant, I sat down and

watched all my favourite YouTube clips in

stunning HD as well as playing several apps

in the background, throw in a couple of

Skype conversations to friends across the

water and I managed to drain just under

eight hours of play time, more than you get

from many smartphones.

in conclusion – I loved the Acer Aspire

M Touch. It’s a brilliantly solid laptop with

the feel and look of a high end device

which draws the best out of the Windows

8 OS. For all you get, it’s well priced and I

would have happily held on to it for a much

longer time. //


The XPs 12 is two devices in

one: a fully-featured,

full-powered laptop

that easily becomes a

fully-featured touch-

powered tablet. The unique

flip hinge touchscreen display

is elegant and innovative and easily

transitions between laptop and tablet

mode with a simple flip. When in tablet

mode, the display completely covers

the keyboard, protecting it from dirt

and spills. The vibrant Full HD display

provides 90 percent more pixels than a

standard HD display for an exceptionally

crisp reading and viewing experience.

The XPS 12 works with the new

New dell coNvertible ultrabook

Windows 8 Pro operating system and

features Intel Smart Connect Technology

that automatically updates your email,

work contacts, social networks, and

favourite apps, even when the convertible

Ultrabook is in sleep mode.

hOT pRODuCTSNew launches

The new acer aspire Zs600 aiO desktop

with a 23-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080

lED backlit display and Dolby Home

Theater v4.0 audio enhancement, is

said to deliver exceptional image quality

for cinematic entertainment, graphics-

intensive application and games, as

well as immersive audio. The 10-point

multi-touch screen allows multiple

user scenarios, while the adjustable tilt

ensures more comfortable use. Thanks

to the wall-mount kit the aiO with HD

experience can be enjoyed on the wall

as well.

With an optional Blu-ray Disc optical

drive , multi-in-one card reader, TV-tuner, and

HDMI in and out ports, the Aspire ZS600 is

destined to become the hub of the family

digital life: from watching movies and TV to

playing games or enjoying pictures, all the

entertainment is within easy reach.

Running on 3rd generation Intel iCore

processors combined with advanced

graphics solutions, this desktop can

handle demanding tasks, enable smoother

multitasking and ensure maximized

entertainment and productivity.

The ThinkPad Helix is a premium

convertible for business

professionals featuring a “rip and

flip” design and first functions as

a high performance ultrabook.

For added mobility, the 11.6-inch

tablet can separate from its base to

become the thinnest full-function

intel 3rd generation Core tablet

with vPro. adding to its mobility,

the tablet weighs 835 grams, also

making it the lightest in its class.

unlike other convertibles, the “rip

and flip” screen lets users flip

the tablet 180° and snap it back

into the base – this mode, called

stand mode, transforms Helix into

a mini-movie theatre or business

presentation central. From here,

users can also fold the screen down

to use it as a tablet while keeping

the base connected for added ports

and connectivity.

To connect virtually anywhere,

ThinkPad Helix comes with optional

LTE high speed wireless and also

pioneers the emerging Near Field

Communications (NFC) technology

that allows devices to share data

seamlessly by simply tapping to

pair them.

leNovo iNtros tHiNkPad Helix

acer uNveils all-iN-oNe desktoP


Cisco linksys has expended its linksys

smart Wi-Fi portfolio with three new

802.11ac powered smart Wi-Fi routers, a

new compact 802.11ac usB adapter, new

features and new smart Wi-Fi apps. linksys’

latest additions to its smart Wi-Fi router

portfolio include the linksys smart Wi-Fi

router aC1200, aC1600 and aC1750. all

three of the new dual-band linksys smart

Wi-Fi routers are equipped with the latest

802.11ac technology, offering fast wireless

speeds—up to three times the speed of

liNksYs rolls out wi-fi solutioNs

amd debuts New server cHiPsThe Nokia Lumia 920 also comes

with Nokia City Lens, the latest addition

to the Nokia location suite. By pointing

the camera at a city street, City Lens

overlays information about restaurants,

shops, hotels and more on the surfaces

of buildings, for the most intuitive way

to explore surroundings. Nokia City

Lens is the start of a new augmented

reality experience that also enhances

Nokia Maps, making it possible to move

between maps view and augmented

reality view to help people check

their direction and surroundings.

Along with enhancements

to Nokia Drive and Nokia

Transport, the Nokia location

suite of services represents

the most comprehensive,

integrated mapping

experience of any

smartphone.

The Nokia Lumia 920

comes in yellow, red, grey, white

and black. The Nokia Lumia 820

comes in red, yellow, grey, cyan,

purple, white and black.

Nvidia debuts tegra 4 Processor

nviDia has introduced nviDia Tegra

4, which it claims, is the world’s fastest

mobile processor.

The Tegra 4 is based on ARM’s quad-

core Cortex-A15 processor and also packs

in 72 graphics processing unit cores – six

times the GPU horsepower of Tegra 3.

Among the Tegra 4 processor’s

breakthroughs is its Computational

Photography Architecture, which

automatically delivers high dynamic range

(HDR) photos and video by fusing together

the processing power of the GPU, CPU and

the camera’s image-signal processor.

nokia Middle East has launched nokia

lumia 920 and the nokia lumia 820,

based on Windows Phone 8 in the region.

The nokia lumia 920 is the flagship

Windows Phone 8 smartphone, including

arabic language capabilities and the

latest advances in nokia Pureview

imaging innovation.

Using advanced floating lens

technology, the camera in the Nokia Lumia

920 is able to take in five times more light

than competing smartphones without

using flash, making it

possible to capture

clear, bright

pictures and

video indoors

and at

night.

Wireless-n, excellent range and backward

compatibility with existing wireless

802.11b/g/n devices.

All three of the new Linksys routers

are also equipped with Gigabit Ethernet

and USB 3.0 ports. The USB ports allow

for storage devices such as USB flash

drives or hard drives, to be connected to

the router. With Gigabit Ethernet and USB

3.0 ports the routers can rapidly transfer

files between the connected storage and

other devices – ideal for using the router’s

USB storage capabilities to back up media

from consumers’ smartphones, tablets or

notebooks.

Linksys is also adding beamforming

technology to all new 802.11ac routers to

deliver better network range and faster Wi-

Fi speeds in the home. Linksys Smart Wi-Fi

Routers with beamforming technology are

designed to precisely adjust, steer and

monitor the direction and shape of the Wi-

Fi signals in order to send data back and

forth over the optimal path.


Hot productsNew launches

Huawei launcHes new smartpHones

new Zotac ZBoX

Huawei has launched three smartphones—

the Huawei Ascend Mate, Huawei Ascend D2,

and Huawei Ascend W1—as well as a home

device solution dubbed the MediaQ and a full

range of LTE mobile & desktop devices.

Featuring a 6.1-inch HD IPS+ LCD

screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 and

a screen-to-body ratio of 73%, the Huawei

Ascend Mate is perfect for both business

and entertainment purposes. It includes a 1.5

GHz Hi-Silicon quad-core processor and a

whopping 4050 mAh battery.

Huawei also unveiled the Huawei Ascend

D2 which boasts a 5-inch IPS Super Retina

LCD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080,

443 PPI and a 3000 mAh (typical value)

battery capacity. The Huawei Ascend D2

features a 13MP BSI auto-focus rear-facing

camera with detail capturing technology and

an ISO sensitivity level higher than other

smartphones in this category.

Its first Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the

Huawei Ascend W1 offers a smarter alternative

with its dual-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm

Snapdragon CPU and Adreno 305 GPU, a

4-inch IPS LCD screen, and 1950 mAh battery

with the longest standby time in its class.

ZOTAC International has given a

performance boost to its ZBOX with

greater graphics processing capabilities

using the latest AMD Radeon HD

iClass or MiFARE compatible. They usually

include a back-up of up to 1000 mechanical

key lock options that if necessary can

override the electronic lock to open or

close the cabinet door. Also, from a single

PDU connection you can cascade up to a

further three PDUs per cabinet.

The box itself includes two large visual

LED temperature monitoring windows. Two

other temperature monitors are also available

directly from each PDU giving a potential

of 10 temperature and humidity sensors

per cabinet. The additional temperatures

can be viewed either via the software or

on the PDU LCD screen itself. The 1U rack

mounted unit also has a dual AC / DC input

accommodating a power fail feature.

austin HugHes unveils caBinet controllerAustin Hughes has developed a cabinet

controller that can be used for either small

or large data room installations. InfaSolution

X allows cabinet control and monitoring of

door handles, switching and monitoring of

PDUs, control of cooling fan units, monitoring

of temperature and humidity, as well as

smoke, shock and water alarms for up to 800

cabinets over a local or wide area network.

The web based GUI (Graphic User

Interface) management software allows

up to eight simultaneous users to access

and control different cabinets. In detail

the handles are designed for use with

either inductive, mechanical or optical door

opening / closing sensors with alternative

smart card access that can either be HID,

7340 graphics processor. “The new

ZBOX gives users up to a 10-percent

performance boost for even greater

system responsiveness and usability in

applications and games. A media remote

is included with the performance-

boosted ZOTAC ZBOX for easy

navigation of popular home theater PC

applications such as Microsoft Windows

Media Center and XBMC. The new

performance-boosted ZOTAC ZBOX

ships as a barebone (ZBOX AD06) and

also available with 2GB of memory and

a 320GB hard drive preinstalled (ZBOX

AD06 Plus).


Redington Value is a value-added distributor for the following brands in parts of Middle East and Africa:

Redington Value is an end-to-end value-added distributor in Middle East and Africa. It assists value-added resellers with most optimalIT solutions across technology domains such as Unified Communications, Virtualization and Cloud Computing, Converged Infrastructure,

End-to-end security, Mobility Solutions, Power Solutions, Cabling Solutions, Storage, Back-up and Recovery. They are also supported with in-house pre-sales expertise and regular sales/technical training and programs.

For more information, contact [email protected]

Breathe easy. Partner with Redington Value.

Some recent recognitions:

Dell SonicWallDistributor of the Year 2012

Trend MicroDistributor of the Year 2012

Red HatValue Added Distributor of the Year 2012

AvayaDistributor of the Year 2012

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