UNWRAPPING 2015

 As we prepare to bid goodbye to 2014 and  welcome the New Year, we make a concerted effort to look at some of the interesting trends in IT that are going to shape up the technology landscape in 2015 and set the stage ready for development of futuristic  technologies in times to come

According  to Gartner, while worldwide IT spending will grow at a CAGR of 3.2% to reach $3.16 trillion; India will see a growth of CAGR 6.8% to reach $93.4 billion by the end of 2018 with communications, media and services currently being the largest market. This trend is going to continue in 2015, with significant investments made in specific areas like Cloud based services, telecom infrastructure, security & surveillance and collaboration. Enterprise Business Server, Storage & Networking Technology when it comes to IT infrastructure is being influenced by the rising technology trends that are affecting the current IT environment namely Big Data, Mobility, Cloud and Software Defined Everything. “At Dell we believe these new forces will transpire into several new data center trends. •    Hyperscale computing paradigms - Vendors will start to leverage hyperscale design principles as a model to meet broader enterprise needs – but in a way that works for each business. •    Converged infrastructures will gain ground. For new projects, more and more datacenters will choose a converged infrastructure approach •    Microservers will solve important niche requirements. High density, energy efficiency and a space-saving form factor will be the key factors •    Datacenter Management will go increasingly mobile. Administrators will find a growing number of options for monitoring,  infrastructure hardware from a mobile device. With the new GTM strategy working well for us, we will continue with our focus on channel and distribution to strengthen our coverage and reach across India,” says Sudharsan R, Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India. Modern data centers look far different than they did just a decade ago. The emerging challenges with businesses are motivating the new innovation of the networking and storage in the data center. “We are building and developing efficiency around the modern data center where evolution of new technologies demand more power for new hardware requirements. To consolidate all hardware equipments at one place in order to improve efficiency, industries use racks,” explains Ravi Raj, Brand Head, Director Sales & Support at NetRack.

The year 2015 is going to be the year of Data. The entire volume, velocity and variety of this data will further transform the IT landscape. Businesses that use data-driven decision making methods are 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than those that don’t. “To store, retain, access and transform this massive volume of data, storage has become the new engine of the IT universe. HGST plays a vital role in unlocking the value of data with innovative and industry-leading storage devices and solutions,” replies David Chua, Director of Distribution Business, Asia Pacific South, HGST.

A common trend in data storage is what according to Quantum is “Backup’s Busted”, which means that with data doubling every single year it is getting just impossible to manage or tame this data. “As a response to this problem, we help customers simplify their backup, reduce their costs, and monetize digital assets that may otherwise be inaccessible. We help educate customers that by segmenting their data by data type such as structured and unstructured data can help them improve their backup process,” says Sanjay Hasija, Country Head, Quantum.

According to S Sriram, CEO at iValue InfoSolutions, Data, Applications, Analytics, Mobility, Privacy and Productivity are growing as some of the key business needs now. “With an objective to help business grow profitably through effective protection and management, iValue continues to focus on evolving Business and IT challenges around Data, Network and Application.”

However, the next big thing to look forward to in 2015 is software defined datacenters (SDDC), which will encompass a host of functions and technologies, including servers, storage and networking. “As the IT industry continues its tectonic shift to cloud computing and virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to deliver support across the major hardware architectures and commercial cloud providers, allowing customers to adapt by simplifying the transitions between physical, virtual and cloud deployments,” explains Jagjit Singh Arora, Director – Regional Sales, Red Hat India

Agrees Santosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, “In the infrastructure space, technologies such as SDx (Software defined Compute/Network/Storage), converged systems and cloud computing promise to bring in the much needed agility to an IT organization. While SDx can help protect existing IT investments, converged systems consolidate compute and storage on the same platform and help to scale capacity linearly along with business.”

ign="center"> The past 12 months has seen a scramble of trends such as cloud, BYOD and big data, which compelled CIOs to work closely with business decision makers and further compelled them to rethink towards their overall IT strategy. “A major focus for vendors will be on developing tailor made solutions to cater to this mobility shift – for BYOD initiatives in the internal IT space as well as in the rapidly evolving customer facing mobile app space,” asserts Abhilash Purushothaman, Country Head, Solution Sales, Enterprise Management, CA Technologies.

Cloud

If the past one year is any indication, we’ve already evolved to an era of hybrid solutions spanning networking, mobility and virtualization. Cloud and mobile computing are converging at a rapid rate giving rise to the growth of centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device. “This also translates to the synchronized content across multiple devices and the ability to address application portability across these devices. Moreover, organizations are facing the need to employ agile programming right from basic infrastructure to application delivery to address the growing requirements of flexibility, reaction to market time and enterprise data,” says Parag Arora, Area Vice President and Country Head-India Subcontinent, Citrix

As IT organizations move rapidly towards Hybrid Cloud environments, the conversations around “software defined datacenter” (SDDC), has crystallized into something more meaningful. Clearly, though at nascent stage, Indian enterprises are realizing the benefits of SDDC. “EMC sees the capability of our customers to redefine their IT infrastructure using parts of or all of the federation company’s capabilities to then enable themselves in redefining their business,” asserts Abhijit Potnis, Director, Technology Solutions, EMC India & SAARC.

[caption id="attachment_1472674" align="alignleft" width="250"] Parag-Arora-Citrix[/caption] Furthermore, the rise of SDN technologies will change the dynamics around securing the data center network, offering opportunities for improved automation as well as new security concerns. “More advances will be made with software-defined networking which will maximize its benefits while minimizing or even eliminating its weaknesses. As a new technology, there is still a lot of work to be done though many businesses are pursuing the goal of better protection for their network, and SDN is just one way this goal may be achieved,” assures Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis. Mega trends (SMAC- social, mobile, analytics and cloud) have fundamentally changed the expectations of consumers and end-users. Mrityunjay Kumar, Director Sales Enterprise and Channels at Juniper Networks however adds a 5th element to the commonly trading SMAC term, which is IoT (Internet of Things), hence terming it as SMACI. Most importantly, Network will become the most important enabler in how these elements will be delivered to the end customer and will continue to grow at a faster pace. “Mobility and Analytics are at an advanced stage today. As for the Cloud, though we see Private cloud gaining traction and a lot of customers starting to move their non-critical applications to the Cloud, it is the hybrid Cloud that customers are looking at with interests,” he says. Santhosh D’ Souza, Director- Systems Engineering, NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd India shares a similar practice, “We are witnessing that CIOs of enterprises across the globe and in India are shifting their business applications from dedicated infrastructures to private and public cloud environments. The year 2015 will find enterprise platforms beginning to encompass hybrid cloud architectures. As CIOs realize the technology benefits of the hybrid cloud, it will become more important for organizations to figure out how and where the hybrid cloud will save them money.” In the views of Srinivasan R, Chief Technology Officer, Ramco Systems, hybrid cloud, big data, applications and wearable technologies are going to be the major buzz words in 2015. “Software defined networks and Fabric data centres and infrastructure that involve the amalgamation of many technological elements, is gaining ground in the industry. We believe that 2015 will be the year for growing economies. Hence, we will continue to increase our presence globally by offering products with user-friendly interface and increased mobility.” To the IoT story, Harsh Marwah, Country Manager, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, India adds, "As industry consolidation drives wider IoT adoption, enhanced tools in cloud computing, big data, and analytics—combined with more comprehensive security —will simplify machine-to-machine communications, resulting in higher user confidence, better outcomes, and more clearly defined return on investment."   Agrees Rohit Aggarwal, CEO - Koenig Solutions, “The entire world is today moving towards digitization and cloud which needs not only massive storage capacity, but also faster processing. Storage space is not limited to Gigabyte or Terabyte, but now we are managing data in Petabytes and ExaBytes. “Koenig already has systems in place that can support ZettaBytes of data.  As a company we are trying to imbibe complete cloud based access for all purposes. It not only gives freedom not to store data in local storage, but also allows all machines to run on multiple servers with help of Koenig Cloud, hence achieving best possible performance.” Mobility Another technology which has taken centre stage in 2014 is enterprise mobility. “In India, just as across the world, the mobility-transformed business is undergoing a transformation beyond tactical use —it’s not just about being able to move a draft email from your phone to your tablet, or answer a phone call on your laptop. Rather it is the definite ability to perform complex functions, collaborate with others, create quality content, process orders and manage a multitude of functions without the need to stop and think through which devices and applications you’ll need and how you’ll access them,” says Parag. Mobility has changed our lives, habits and the world around us in ways that we would not have even imagined a few decades back. In today’s competitive world, enterprises are realizing the power of mobility and a mobile workforce that has become an imperative to meet growing customer demands. Moving beyond boardroom discussions, mobility has emerged as a top priority across enterprises of different sizes and sectors in 2014. “At BlackBerry, we’re focused on meeting the needs of mobile professionals – business users that are productivity-driven and thrive on achievement – empowering them with mobile solutions that allow them to work smarter, collaborate better and achieve more,” says Manoj Khilnani, Country Marketing Head –Enterprise, BlackBerry India

The India telecom market is facing a mobile revolution. Users are embracing smart phones and driving mobile penetration up. As more consumers embrace the use of smartphones, they will naturally demand better coverage. With such a large potential consumer base the potential for small cell deployments in India is immense. “As existing mobile networks are increasingly congested and real estate for deploying new macro towers is harder to come by, mobile operators will look to lighten the macro tower traffic load through the rollout of an increased number of small cells, which will also significantly improve overall network coverage. We expect to see more small cell deployments in 2015,” Ryan Perera, Country Head for India, Ciena.

Additionally, improved coverage and download speeds will result in a significant increase in traffic across metro networks, which interconnect wireless access points. Therefore, broader adoption of 10GbE mobile backhaul connectivity between macro towers and metro networks is also expected to rise in 2015.

2015 will also be a special year in a way that it will affect the way team members work with each other via the use of Mobile collaboration tools, Social Collaboration tools (both Cloud-based and internal) over the ubiquitous desktops and e-mails. "Avaya is enabling engagement by providing technology that is effortless, flexible, contextual and complete to help companies create a more agile business. Our solution team engagement solutions are aligned against the business needs we’re hearing from our customers for evolving legacy infrastructures and generating growth, increasing productivity and efficiency and maximizing customer lifetime value," supports Arun Shetty, Director of Collaboration Solutions - India, Avaya. 2014 was a good year for Uninor too. It reported a growth of over 40 per cent in gross revenue in first nine months of 2014 and has added over 10 million to its subscriber base to cross 42 million mark. “While the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India aims to transform lives of people through connectivity, Uninor calls this ambition “Internet for All” and is aligned on empowering the society by connecting the unconnected through affordable voice and internet services. Our target is to grow our internet subscriber base in existing circles to 50% of our user base by 2017,” suggests Vivek Sood, CEO, Uninor.

Security & Surveillance Physical Security/ Electronic Security Physical security has come a long way since the advent of the lock and key. Being price conscious, customers cannot afford to have security personnel but a security camera can surely help them monitor the activities in and around the premises. In the surveillance space, the share of high definition (HD) is growing. Key technologies like HDTVI and AHD will emerge and a clear consolidation will happen in these technologies in the coming years. Adding more to this, Manoj Khadkikar, Head of channel solution, Zicom Electronics says, “Services riding on the crest of hardware will be the key differentiators. More and more technologies –CCTV, fire, access, and intrusion will merge into hybrid devices.  IP CCTV will also increase with resolutions of 2 MP/3 MP and above becoming mainstream. ”

Analytics technology will take off within the surveillance industry from 2015 and beyond for getting valuable insights from the enormous amount of both structured and unstructured information collected.  More analytics are needed to help organizations make sense of the information such as images and videos.  Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC exert, "With intelligent applications and analytics, the information can be turned into actionable insight. With network cameras’ capability to provide higher resolution video and to be connected from everywhere and around the clock, security departments are getting more information from more sources." For the year 2015, Sparsh as a company and brand would like to lead the Digital Surveillance Space by continuous innovation and offering technically advanced product in the market. Sanjeev Sehgal, Managing Director, Sparsh India shares,” Due to our focus on technology, various global leaders in electronic security have partnered with us to further advance the technology and bring these products to market.” The infrastructure sector looks quite promising as we began to see better IT security and surveillance systems at malls, offices and other public places. There is likely to be growth witnessed from across verticals such as city surveillance, airports, seaports, metros and other greenfield projects. Cyber Security Security analysts called the year 2015 the year of the mega breach, and severe vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed and Shellshock in 2014 showed that the security community can never rest on its laurels. Naresh Padhee, Founder CEO, QCS Communication Technologies says, “This is a space where major IT firms are putting their efforts. WhatsApp is the latest enterprise to take action on this issue." Sanjay Rohatgi, President- Sales, India, Symantec adds, “All indications are that 2015 will bring more of the same, with the struggle between those wishing to create new threats and exploit vulnerabilities and those looking to protect against them likely to intensify. In general, in 2015, we can expect attacks to get smarter and sharper." Besides Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) will continue to rise as a threat with the increase in Unix servers being compromised and their high bandwidth being used in DDoS attacks. Aditya Khemka, CEO & Director at Aditya Infotech opines, "The growth of smartphones, internet coverage area and electronic gadgets strongly suggests that the customers are getting more tech savvy. They believe in user friendly, hassle free and quick solutions." However, advancements in the IoT space, smartphone penetration also means consumers will have increased connectivity across their devices, gadgets and machines – and with this connectivity comes the potential for a whole new range of security risks. Mobile devices will continue to become a target for cyber attackers in 2015 especially when mobile devices store up a trove of personal and confidential information. Agreeing to this, Govind Rammurthy, MD & CEO, eScan opines, “With the explosive growth and adoption of Smartphones, 2015 will see a huge rise in businesses clamoring to provide security that mobility devices may pose, within the corporate environment.  This we believe will be the area which will garner maximum attention from us, in terms of R&D funding.” Today’s security challenges require a fresh perspective on protection architecture. They mandate an architecture that adapts quickly and keeps pace with fast-evolving threats and the ever-changing requirements of advanced enterprise information systems. “As an organization, we provide customers new and innovative security solutions to protect organizations of all sizes and complexities. The Software Defined Protection architecture is a new-paradigm as it combines a solid, reliable enforcement layer and a fast-adapting intelligence-based control layer to deliver real time proactive protections to corporate networks,” says Bhaskar Bhakthavatsalu, Regional Director, Check Point Software Technologies. Substantial growth across industries in upgradation & innovation in systems also gives opportunities to cyber criminals for undertaking malicious activities. With increase in data browsing and free apps downloading, malicious activities have further become sophisticated. Amit Nath, Country Manager, India & SAARC, F-Secure explains, “We have witnessed constant evolution across platforms viz. mobile, iOS, etc. which remain unchanged. Simultaneously we see newer cybercrime emerging every year." Enterprises today have come to leverage online tools to either monitor or promote stronger collaboration between onsite and offsite staff. As a result there’s a clear link between how physical security and cyber security needs to be seen in tandem with each other. Sunil Sharma, VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam points out, “Today’s hackers are not yesterday’s amateur criminals but pose as evolved threat actors. When it comes to targeted attacks, they adopt a thorough multi-stage attack, leaving no stone unturned to gather all key information on victim.” In 2015, more and more data will be hosted on the cloud but as this move occurs, businesses will need to take a closer look at data governance and ensuring their data is cleaned before it is hosted there.  Sidharth Malik, Managing Director and Vice President, India, Akamai Technologies adds, “While the coming year will see IoT, Big Data and Cloud leveraged in a big way, enterprise organizations will also adopt technologies that will drive business innovation and provide a strong platform for future growth.” 2014 saw retailers being hacked and millions of emails lifted. Majority of companies lack confidence in their ability to detect targeted attacks in a timely manner. Offering an answer to this, Jagdish Mahapatra, MD India and SAARC at McAfee, part of Intel Security says, “Organizations can bolster their security posture by better leveraging their current solutions, without investing in new technologies. By understanding the most common Indicators of Attack (IoAs) and automating their next generation Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to detect those events in real-time, companies can dramatically reduce risk potential.” However, according to Fortinet's Global Security Survey commissioned, this year 75 per cent of IT decision makers at retail companies are rethinking their IT security strategies in India. Addressing this changing requirement, Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet explains, “Security buyers may seek a combination of firewall options, such as NGFW, unified threat management (UTM), virtual and stateful firewalls, to meet a wide range of enterprise needs, such as data center, small offices or highly distributed enterprises.” “Going forward, enterprise security solutions will have to become context aware and adaptive. Security organizations and leaders that fail to alter strategies to accommodate a more consumerized workforce will soon be sidelined,” says Sonit Jain, CEO at GajShield. Hardware & Peripherals Computing Devices In the last few years, the computing space has witnessed many changes with a one touch revolution gripping the computing world. There is a transformation taking place, where the core of the technology solution becomes increasingly complex and functionally superior, while the interface for users becomes simpler and more intuitive. "We see the next wave of PC users coming from emerging markets. In a market like India, with close to only 10% technology penetration, we see the potential not only to cater to our existing customers but also to extend technology access to new users," says P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director & General Manager, Consumer & Small Business Dell India. With the introduction of high-end games and movies there is growing demand for high-performance I/O devices that allows for greater gamer customization and lighting effects than was ever possible on previous products. "Though a lot of end users prefer getting the best experience possible, the peripheral market is still latent and users need to indulge into the wholesome experience of video games and movies to know better. Next year will see Corsair trying to further improve on the user experience with advanced mechanical keyboards, ultra-light and customizable mice and stunningly attractive and comfortable headsets," states M A Mannan, Country Manager, Corsair Memory India. The peripheral market in particular has seen a combination of both functionality and aesthetic pleasure since the last few years. Consumers need functionality and stunning aesthetics with personalization to make a purchase. “The year 2015 will see Astrum developing channel partners in India. As a tech savvy organisation, we are proud to introduce better gadgets and peripherals. Our main focus has always been innovative design, and we are sure to gain from the immense efforts in product development,” says Raymond Li, Sales Head – APAC, Astrum Holdings Ltd. Motherboards Mini ITX form factor devices are slowly but surely spreading their wings in the mainstream market. The popularity of Mini-ITX form factor-based motherboards is expected to improve further mainly because it is power-efficient. "Most users in India are cost-conscious. They use PCs for their fundamental requirements, and not for extreme or high graphics-based activities. We are giving renewed focus on offering more of Mini-ITX form factor-based motherboard models and provide a wider range of models for each user category," explains Sunil Grewal, Director – Sales and MarCom, GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd. Additionally, users in India are increasingly going for motherboards with HDMI and USB 3.0 ports and SATA3 and those which support DDR3 and SSD drives. Storage Devices Today, the number of mobile-connected devices has exceeded the world’s population leading to more people creating, uploading, downloading and sharing information on-the-go. 2015 will see a continued surge in demand for both cloud-connected technology (software and hardware), and cloud operations and managed services. "Seagate in 2015 will then heavily focus on cloud storage systems and solutions that will deliver an Intelligent Information Infrastructure to help organizations manage the massive growth in digital data and deliver on evolving workloads," says Rex Dong, Managing Director, Asia Sales and Marketing, Seagate Technology. Subhodeep Bhattacharya, Regional Director, India & SAARC, NETGEAR is of the opinion that future is driven by wireless access point and controller. Due to large files demand for 10 gigabyte will go up in all form-factor from data centers to small businesses. “SMB adoption of managed network is going to be a trend and more of them are going to adopt it. There is general optimism in the market and 2015 is supposed to be good year for India,” he says.   Printing The printing industry in India is growing at a rate of 12% per annum and comprises of over 2, 50,000 big, small and medium printers. Supporting this is the package printing sector, which is growing at the annual rate of 17 percent, commercial printing at a rate of 10-12 percent and digital printing at robust 30 percent. The digital printing industry especially is seeing significant transformation with new technologies & innovative applications providing cost-effective and customized solutions. Another visible trend is the shift in the printing industry in India to a more solution-centric business model from a purely equipment dependent industry. This has prompted printing majors in the country to develop more applications and to further the use of various software and technologies to automate and simplify business processes. “By 2015, there will be more than 40 vendors with commercially available managed services offerings leveraging smart machines and industrialized services. With consumers' preference to use Internet and mobile services to drive business efficiencies and optimize time management, every industry is striving to improve the customer experience by simplifying, automating and making more intelligent end-to-end processes, minimizing manual interventions and allowing the consumer to self-serve,” says Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director, Technology, Channels & International Distributor Operations, Xerox India.   In the age where smartphone mobile usage is exceeding desktops and smartphones as personnel accessories will be used for accessing softwares & documents anywhere, there will also be a need of extra bandwidth on internet, data storage and server farms in the coming year. “However SSMS DocsTracker software will enable even small organizations to benefit from paperless office working by enabling their tabs, smartphones & desktops to access their office documents while in move. Scanned data is processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) allowing for comprehensive searching through information to which a user has been granted access,” explains Suresh Rao – Chairman & Managing Director, Software Support & Management services (SSMS). What's spurring these trends? While discussing the key technology trends for 2015, it will not be unwise to say that demand for technology will be truly driven by Customers. Indian customers have today grown matured enough to harness and leverage the power of IT and software powered business models and vendors on their part continue to innovate and invest into these rapidly increasing customer & market demands. This applies not only on commercial entities but also on government organizations eager to extend their benefits to citizens, with the right tools. In the coming year, with the government’s push towards ‘Digital India’, it can be seen that special-purpose clouds and applications will emerge to focus specifically on connecting devices and machines. In the Telecom space, the recent announcement of the Government’s National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) initiative which is overseen by the Department of Telecommunications is a great example showcasing the efforts currently underway by the government with hopes of spurring economic growth. Some of the other key verticals that are poised to contribute towards the Indian economic growth this year include BFSI, Telecom, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail, Public sector along with IT/ITES. However as many point out there is still scope to build an understanding of how intelligent and innovative solutions can help these industries derive significant business benefit. However, to achieve competitive advantages, businesses must try bringing all the technology pieces of the enterprise together and embed them into global business operations. Because it is then that the full potential can be realized. edit@varindia.com