Partners are the frontrunners who help customers embrace Digital Transformation - SNA 2022

VARINDIA witnessed a tremendous growth and momentum among the partners who attended the 21st edition of VARINDIA Star Nite (SNA) Awards, held at Hotel Roseate House, Aerocity, New Delhi on 11th November 2022. As both online and offline buying behaviour changes, Indian VARs find massive opportunities and they continue to grow their business.

Transformation drives innovation and the Industry Brainstorming sessions are the most effective way to engage in a Face-To-Face conversation. The 12 hours marathon hybrid event started at 9.00 am and went on till 9.00 pm at night. The event attracted over 2347 attendees - Physical attendees were 400 and the rest of the attendees attended online (VARs/Partners/OEMs) from 30 different cities from across the country.

SNA is well recognised as “the DNA of the Channel”. The Partners and VARs who got together took this opportunity to share best practices, network with peers, and gain exclusive market intelligence from the industry, which will result in bottom-line growth. This event was a true testimonial to how companies are well prepared to go physical and digital (Phygital). The event was presented by GoTo.

The day-long session SNA was opened with a welcome note by VARINDIA Editor-in-chief Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, where he acknowledged the role played by the VARs and Partners on how they are accelerating the digital transformation for the IT companies and customers at large. He also discussed the opportunities for partners such as rapid digitization and how OEMs are pushing sales through their website, online platform and brand show-rooms, with an intention to cut down the intermediaries.

“There has been a radical shift in channel sales and marketing towards online and virtual models, with over 80% of channel partners increasing digital sales, and almost two thirds growing their digital marketing activities. The metaverse is considered the next evolution of the internet, whereas the multiverse is a collection of different and separate digital spaces with unique traits and characteristics. We are witnessing a huge market shift by the Cloud service provider marketplaces, which are a rapidly growing route to market for IT vendors. We have seen how AWS, Azure and Google are dominating the industry. Today, we need to work as Partnerverse, is the need of the hour to stand united as an All India IT partner’s network,” Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu said in his speech.

The Super session was addressed by Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General - CAIT, followed by other industry leaders including Devesh Rastogi, President, FAIITA; L Ashok, Chairman – ISODA; and Alok Gupta, President- PCAIT.

The Channel Empowerment Session-II was presented by INTEL and LENOVO. The objective was to enlighten the audience about Lenovo’s roadmap on the technology innovation. The session was presented by Amit Luthra, Managing Director- Lenovo ISG; Ananda Sekhar Bhattacharjee, Head for HPC & AI- Lenovo ISG and Abhilash GK, Director- Software Defined Infrastructure & Alliances - Lenovo ISG. The leaders have covered on the complete SDI portfolio powered by Intel.

The Session - III (VAR SYMPOSIUM) was started with an interesting Fire Side Chat session with Santanu Ghose, Director Sales, APJC - AMD Pensando and Suryanarayan CS, Country Category Manager- Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. The session was moderated by Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-chief, VARINDIA. The discussion was centered on how Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company and AMD Pensando partnership is helping the 4th generation Datacenter to move closer to the cloud story and how partners are taking this to the market.

The VAR SYMPOSIUM also witnessed two corportate presentations, by Deepak Sar, Director (Distribution & Alliances) Hitachi Vantara and Amit Deshmukh, Head of Channel & Distribution- Cohesity.

For the first Panel discussion on ‘How Technology is empowering Enterprise & SMBs as a catalyst for growth”, there were six Marketing leaders from the Industry participating as the panellists. They were Amit Sinha Roy, VP Global Head of Strategic Alliances - Tata Communications; Naved Chaudhary - Head of Marketing and Public Relations - Ingram Micro India Pvt. Ltd.; Amit Deshmukh, Head of Channel & Distribution- Cohesity; Puneet Chadha, CMO - Redington Ltd; Subir Mahapatra, Vice-President- V5 Global (A First Meridien Company) and Prama Bajaj, Vice President, Global Marketing & Strategy- Cloudsek. The session was moderated by Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-Chief-VARINDIA.

The panellists felt that the Partner Transformation Program helps organizations address a critical and thriving sector of unprecedented need brought about by the public cloud. It helps partners define their value proposition and cloud strategy, and enables businesses to more effectively communicate their offerings to public sector and commercial customers.

Following the discussion there were presentations from four corporates including, Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director - Commercial Sales & Area Partner Director (India & South Asia) - Juniper Networks; Sunil Sharma, Managing Director (Sales) - Sophos (India & SAARC); Ganesan Arumugam, Director- Channel sales (India & SAARC)- NetApp; and Khalid Wani, Sr. Director India & SE Asia-Western Digital, who shared their views on how they are fully focused as the partner friendly company.

In his presentation, Amol Srivastava, Director, Channels North- Dell Technologies India said, “One of the most important things that takes precedence at Dell over other things is the question – how do we inspire loyalty and deliver business growth. You will see this in the guiding principles of our channel engagement policy - first, how do we make it easier for you to transact with Dell. Second, partner profitability and third is how do we enhance your experience so that you come back and do business with us again. You hear about that we are in a process of digital transformation but I would really like to think about is if we have the leadership, the tools and the technologies to build and manage processes in a way that we get the best advantages of this and how do we avoid the dangers of it. So we are going to build on these processes, define the processes as there is transformation happening across organizations, economies and in many ways in our lives.”

There was one breakout session, where 30 IT Associations joined from across the country. The session was led by FAIITA and its GB Members. The session started with the presentation by Shantaram Shinde, Director Channel sales - NTT Global Data Centers and Cloud Infrastructure, India, followed by discussions among the partners.

The Corporate presentations were followed by the second panel discussion session focused on the topic “PARTNER PROFITABILITY” with six VARs from the Indian Tech industry participating in it. They were Ranjan Chopra, Chairman & Managing Director- Team Computers; N. K. Mehta, Managing Director & CEO - Secure Network; R S Shanbhag, Founder, Chairman - Value Point Systems Pvt. Ltd.; Kamini Talwar, Director- Iris Global Services Pvt Ltd; Suresh Ramani, CEO - TechGyan and Triveni Rabindraraj, India Sales Head – GoTo. The session was again moderated by Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-chief, VARINDIA.

During the discussions, the VARs felt that Digital transformation is an ongoing process and there is a strong focus on technology and modernization. The transformation is an opportunity to gain strategic and competitive advantage through IT infrastructure capabilities. The Partners got a glimpse about the industry during the two panel discussion sessions by the Marketing and VARs who shared their viewpoints.

The VAR Symposium witnessed the vision of the leaders who are working strongly to keep their channel programs effective. There was also the recognition of 100 Eminent VARs of India, followed by Five Channel leaders who were recognised as the Channel Chief in Indian Technology Industry. They are –

· Anil Sethi, VP & General Manager (Channels) - Dell Technologies in the category of Digital Transformation

· Prakash Krishnamurthy, Director- India, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company , in the category of Wireless Networks

· Ganesan Arumugam, Director - Channel Sales - India & SAARC, NetApp India Ltd. in the category of Hybrid Cloud

· Khalid Wani, Senior Director (India & South Asia) - Western Digital in the category of Data Storage Company

· Sunil Sharma, M.D. – Sales (India & SAARC) Sophos Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in the category of Cyber Security

The session also witnessed the unveiling of the “Channel Policy Hand Book”, which speaks about the best practices adopted by the Top 50 Channel leaders in the Technology Industry in the country. Out of the 50 respondents, the event witnessed Five Channel Chiefs for this year in the Indian Technology Industry.

After the power-packed and insightful partners and sponsors’ sessions, the evening session commenced its most awaited Star Nite Awards 2022. The evening session of the Star Nite Awards is the most awaited and exciting session every year, which commenced with S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA speaking about the importance and the methodologies of the Channel Leadership Survey, followed by two corporate presentations by IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE).

The award ceremony started with a special address by Indian IT channel veteran and thought leaders Lata Singh, Director, Regional Technology Leader-NEB - IBM India -South Asia and Kiran Rajashekhar, Principal Ecosystem Manager, IBM India-South Asia, who spoke on how IBM is leading in a changing world. “Overall the industry is dependent on three things - Jan Dhan, Aadhar and mobile. What the industry is undergoing is a result of these three, the adoption of the UPI, the entire biometric system and then the mobile because everyone is using the mobile and that is what life is about. The critical thing that's happened in the recent past is the 5G rollout; with this we are going to have 10x propel, 10x the number of devices and a reduction of 15x on the latency. As a result from the business side data is going to be at the edge. Then how you really move that data, or analyze the data and how you use that data is critical,” Lata Singh.

Kiran Rajashekhar, Principal Ecosystem Manager, IBM India-South Asia said, “As partners, while we spoke about the market opportunities and the trends and investments IBM is making. This is what as partners you can make money from a software's point of view, you can make margins all the way up to 49% of the transaction. As long as you have the right competencies you are able to make close to 49% of the transaction value as your margins. This is very important as you are doubling down on software, where software is our growth engine.”

Amit Kapoor, Partner Business Manager-Hewlett Packard Enterprise India spoke on how Hewlett Packard Enterprise is focusing towards partners’ growth. “Innovation is a part of HP’s DNA and that is what we strive for. We aim to provide seamless experience to our customers and partners whether it is medical science, fan stadium, machine to Mars etc. We feel that everything computes, joins together. The moment you provide a seamless experience to customers – that is what they buy from you. They do not look at the underlying product but it is the experience that helps you in taking your relationship ahead. Partners are the key pillars of our strength and if you talk about HP India, 85% of our business comes from partners. We really invest in our partners because a large part of our business comes from partners.”

The evening session was attended by stalwarts from the Government and Corporate sectors including Prashant Kumar Singh, IAS - GEM (CEO); Prof. Triveni Singh, IPS, Superintendent of Police, Government of U.P.; Dr. Sanjay Bahl, Director General- Cert-in; Ashish D Jain, Executive President & COO (Telecom Division) – Polycab India Limited; Dr.Biswajit Mohapatra, Head of Customer Solutions Management (CSM), India and South Asia- AWS; Santanu Ghose, Director Sales, APJC - AMD Pensando; Suryanarayan CS, Country Category Manager- Aruba; Ganesan Arumugam, Director- Channel Sales-India & SAARC- NetApp; Khalid Wani, Senior Director (Sales)- Western Digital; Sunil Sharma, Managing Director (Sales) - Sophos (India & SAARC; Triveni Rabindraraj, India Sales Head – GoTo; Amol Srivastava, Director, Channels North - Dell Technologies India; Amit Kapoor, Partner Business Manager - Hewlett Packard Enterprise India; Harsh Vaishnav, Director Channels, Alliances and Ecosystem (India & SAARC)- Nutanix; Ganesh Supekar, Head - Channel and Alliances- Trellix; Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager India and SAARC - Allied Telesyn; Puneet Chaddha, CMO - Redington Ltd.; Devesh Rastogi, President, FAIITA; L Ashok, Chairman – ISODA; Alok Gupta, President- PCAIT; Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-chief, VARINDIA; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA and Sonal Kukreja, Miss Universe 1st Runner-up.

Dr. Sanjay Bahl, Director General- Cert-in spoke on how the whole shift is now towards services – Cloud-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and so on. “The most important thing today is to start investing in people, training, re-skilling and retraining so that one remains abreast with the services that need to be provided to the customers. So whether you are providing endpoint, network equipments or mobile, this is in way expanding the attack surface for the malicious actors. Channel Partners therefore have to make sure that they make available secured solutions to the customers.”

Prof. Triveni Singh, IPS, Superintendent of Police, Government of U.P. in his address said, “We are more reliant on technology nowadays. The concept of GRC is mismanaged. Our main focus should be on human interface. Humans are the weakest link in the entire cybersecurity ecosystem. In all the cases of ransomware attacks, the private investigator investigates the case, and there is no involvement of police. In my opinion, if there is any cyberattack or data breach issue, it should be reported to the police to investigate the case. Organizations should properly train people how to handle the cyberattack situation. While selling any solution to the industry, organizations should include human interface along with the tools and technology they are providing.”

The keynote address was given by Prashant Kumar Singh, IAS - GEM (CEO). “The idea of the GeM portal was given by the Honourable Prime Minister in 2016, primarily to curb corruption. I say with fingers crossed that the GeM portal has not been attacked yet. In today’s world nothing is secured. There is the possibility of every single thing getting attacked and there are higher chances of losing your data and money to fraudsters. The idea is that we should devise optimal solutions and then keep hopes alive that nothing is compromised.”

The event also witnessed a Tech Talk session, which was an extempore session for 10 min. There were three corporates who presented on the emerging trends and how they are pitching their products in the market and they were Harsh Vaishnav, Director Channels, Alliances and Ecosystem (India & SAARC) – Nutanix; Ganesh Supekar, Head - Channel and Alliances - Trellix and Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager India and SAARC - Allied Telesis.

The Tech Talk session observed that today most of the business owners don’t predict recurring revenue forecasting accurately. Cloud, security, Collaboration and mailing solutions, managed services and software are among the biggest forms of recurring business. The System integration business is going through major changes in the last three months. Secondly, Artificial intelligence, Data Analytics & Machine Learning are very upcoming fields for partners to look after and enable customers to take the leverage out of the data. Going forward, as we embark on the journey into industry 4.0 which is digitizing the manufacturing organizations, we have to be driven by the vision of taking data driven journeys towards operational excellence.

The event’s most exciting moment was the recognition of the 10 Chief Marketing Officers, and the felicitation of 40 corporates, who have been recognised for their leadership in their respective product and solution categories. 5 corporates were also recognised in the Editor’s Choice Awards category.

The 10 Chief Marketing Officers felicitated were –

Puneet Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer- Redington Ltd.

Prasenjit Roy, Chief Marketing Officer- NTT ltd.

Rahul Nautiyal, Head of Marketing- Hewlett Packard Enterprise India

Jagannathan Chelliah, Director- Marketing- Western Digital

Arvind Saxena, Head Marketing & Corporate Communications- NEC Corporation India

Naved Chaudhary, Head of Marketing & Public Relations- Ingram Micro India

Nikhil Mehrotra, Director- Field Marketing- Nutanix Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.

Anupam Sah, DGM-Marketing- Aditya Infotech Ltd.

Nidhi Hola, Country Marketing Director-Dell Technologies India

Deepak Mathur, Head of Marketing- India & SAARC- Palo Alto Networks

The outcome of the event is that newer technologies bring newer disruptions, challenges and also opportunities for growth but at the same time the issues of Cyber security will remain a challenge. Supply chain attacks, software supply chain security, remote and hybrid workforce security, nation-state attacks, ransomware, staffing issues and phishing are far from the only information security challenges enterprises will face in 2022. Cyber Security is becoming a severe issue for individuals, enterprises, and governments alike.

We are witnessing a huge market shift by the Cloud service provider marketplaces, which are a rapidly growing route to market for IT vendors. We have seen how AWS, Azure and Google are dominating the industry. Going forward, 5G is expected to usher in a new era but as always there’s also the threat of cybersecurity.

Finally, Partners are the integral part for achieving long term business objectives for the Vendors. For channel partners, a digital presence is becoming more important for capturing customers at the earliest stages of IT sales cycles, in many cases well before they have engaged physically with an IT supplier.

There is a need for an alliance mindset among the Corporates, partners and VARs to serve their customers across the country. It is vital to get success in the fight among the online and Offline businesses. There is enough opportunity for everyone.