CRN Network, May 18, 2011, 1330hrs
The CRN Virtual Channel Show started with a bang with more than 400 unique channel partners attending the show on the first day. Channel organizations from across 80 cities participated in this innovative virtual exhibition and conference on the first live day.
Partner visitors were full of praises for the innovative platform. “This is a very impressive and thoughtful event. A partner can meet up with his principals, meet new vendors and attend to a very relevant conference program. I would like to congratulate CRN of bringing such an innovative concept to India,” said Ajay Sawant, President, Orient Technologies.
Same views were expressed by Rahul Meher, CEO, Leon Computers, “Great concept and great execution. The interactivity of the virtual show, and the rich and relevant content make this a very good show. Compared to physical events this is so much comfortable and interactive. Kudos to the CRN team. The punchline for this show should be—Crossing boundaries, connecting communities.”
The conference program was well attended with an average 110 unique partners attending each of the four conference sessions.
IT investments to increase by double digit in 2011
Business alignment is among the top five priorities for IT investments amongst enterprise stated an Ernst & Young online survey. The survey was presented at the opening day of CRN Virtual Channel Show-the first virtual show in India-by Nitin Mehta, Senior Manager, IT Risk and Assurance, E&Y.
The survey which was taken by more than 200 CIOs stated that 61 percent of the respondents have identified business IT alignment as one of their top five priorities, out of which 78 percent of the respondents have identified it as their first or second priority.
Other areas of spending that topped the list include business continuity that received 54 percent response followed by information security attracting 47 percent votes. CRM/ Business Intelligence and data warehousing procured the fourth place in the priority list with 41 percent votes while cost reduction received 38 percent votes.
Other interesting trends in the survey included more spending on innovation by smaller companies rather the larger firms. Spend allocation on risk management and maintenance is on the decline and focus is more on innovation and helping businesses realize benefits.
According to the survey 41 percent of the CIOs opting for Capex investments think IT spend is likely to increase up to 20 percent while 45 percent of CIOs opting for Opex think that spend is likely to increase up to 20 percent.
In 2011 what most CIOs will explore is data leakage prevention and solution, single sign-on, data encryption and digital rights management stated the survey results.
Top three technologies identified by the respondent group are mobility or PDA technologies, unified communications and RFID systems.
Mehta highlighted that the 20 percent respondents who have not yet accessed the need for virtualization is because they are worried about its security concerns.
But scenarios are fast changing as most organizations have moved from having a cautious approach in IT to increasing investments in IT. The survey showed CIOs focusing on providing business with innovative IT solutions, being more customers centric for quick response to market situations, investing in technologies that aid in providing business with a competitive edge in the market and improving operational efficiencies and making IT agile and quick to respond to business requirements.
You can listen to Nitin Mehta’s presentation on demand by clicking here.
Exponential cloud opportunities
Research firm Access Markets International (AMI) Partners predicts that by 2015 a whopping 200,000 Indian SMB companies will join the cloud wagon. While presenting a report titled State Of The Cloud: Understanding The Indian SMB Landscape at CRN Virtual Channel Show, Neha Jalan, Senior Associate, AMI Partners, said that the Indian Software as-a-Service will grow at 32 percent over next 5 years.
Jalan said that as of first quarter 2010, 70 percent of SMB companies across Asia Pacific were willing to pay for 3rd Party solutions using flexible, monthly, per user payment infrastructure. “Infrastructure is in place to support accelerated cloud growth and the new Economic environment in India is accentuating cloud benefits, are key drivers to acceptance of cloud. Since more and more SMB companies have mobile executives, there's demand for ubiquitous data access. Also the value that cloud provides is in sync with modern thinking of Indian SMBs”, said Jalan, explaining key drivers to growth and acceptance of cloud computing in Indian SMBs.
“Other drivers include demand of remote managed services and also demand for solutions that are services oriented,” she added
As per AMI’s estimate, by next year almost 65 percent of SMB resellers will be involved with some kind of SaaS-based business either reselling third party solution or customizing an offering.
You can listen to Neha Jalan’s presentation on demand by clicking here.
Partners need to embrace the cloud
Cloud is for real and partners need to chart their growth strategy around it was the message from the presentation by Suresh Ramani, CEO, Techgyan and Founder President, IAMCP India West Chapter at the CRN Virtual Channel Show.
“Cloud addresses several pain points of on-premise IT infrastructure which include high Capex, service downtime during migration, 50 percent extra storage, user licences etc for future use, trained manpower, geo redundancies, lack of best practices and internal threats. Online model can provide features like data center redundancies, free upgrade to the next version which would not be possible in the on-premise model,” Ramani explained.
Ramani opined that over a 3-year period the cloud services model can be 30 percent cost effective as compared to on-premise.
Giving comparisons between on-premise and cloud, Ramani said, “Over a period of three years, a standard on-premise for Exchange for 75-user organization would roughly cost Rs 4,59,300 for hardware, Rs 3,37,500 while Rs 10,46,000 on services. On the other hand the cloud model would cost a total of Rs 6,82,000 for the same period including services.”
Citing another example, Ramani demonstrated the cost difference of unified communication solutions for 300 users between on-premise and cloud offering. While the on-premise UC solution consisting of Exchange, Share Point and Linc server with a complete BPOS suite of Microsoft costs Rs 70,60,000 for on-premise while it costs Rs 50,10,000 if availed over the cloud.
You can listen to Suresh Ramani’s presentation on demand by clicking here.
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