Issuu

B RO U G H T BY

SPIRIT OF A START-UP; SOUL OF A VETERAN

MESSAGE FROM THE MD

INSIDE WATCH

CONTENTS OCT 2015

1 2 3 STORIT EMPOWERING PARTNERS TO LEAD THE MARKET

YOU ARE HERE

4 MELLANOX

UNMATCHED INTERCONNECTIVITY

6 7 SUREN VEDANTHAM, Group Managing Director, StorIT Distribution

“A constant endeavor to create sustained long-term growth opportunities for both our vendor partners and our Reseller Channel network, based on superlative technological prowess and a robust solutions delivery model, has been the fundamental mission of StorIT. With the spirit of a startup & the soul of a veteran, StorIT continues to be the leading technology solutions distributor in the Middle East for more than a decade.”

8 9 UNITRENDS

‘RECOVER MORE THAN JUST YOUR DATA’

10 11 QUANTUM

INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS TO REDEFINE STORAGE

SOCIAL

12 BIG DATA ‘BIG DATA’ MEANS BIG BUSINESS FOR THE CHANNEL

BIG DATA DEMYSTIFIED

THE HUMAN-SIDE OF TECHNOLOGY

ABOUT

EMPOWERING PARTNERS TO LEAD THE MARKET StorIT Distribution is the Middle East’s leading Specialist IT Distributor of Enterprise Data Storage, Data Protection and Data Management Solutions. Incorporated in year 2002, StorIT is based out of Dubai, UAE, with branch offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Doha, Qatar. Over a period of more than 13 years, StorIT’s proven track record of successfully introducing the very best of breed technology providers of the world to the Middle East market, by establishing and enabling a robust reseller channel, has been a key factor in sealing its credentials as one of the most reliable, resilient and far-sighted value distribution organizations in the region. Supported by enhanced distribution services, viz., presales consultancy, sales & marketing support, post-sale professional services, project financing options, though, warehousing & logistics facilities across the Middle East, StorIT has witnessed stupendous year-on-year growth over a decade by offering great value proposition to both its vendor and reseller partners. StorIT’s superior domain expertise helps it identify, train and enable knowledge based reseller channel that is highly competitive in generating demand and successfully delivering cutting-edge solutions to consumers across the region. The ultimate mission is to provide best of breed turnkey solutions in Data Storage, Protection and Management domain including consultancy and professional services, based on Domain Expertise. StorIT constantly evolves itself to remain, at the forefront of the fast evolving industry innovations and translate them into Profitable Business Propositions to Clients.

CURRENT PORTFOLIO

hat’s the main focus of StorIT at GITEX 2015?

Gitex continues to be one of the key events of the year where we get to reconnect in person with all our key partners and new prospects at a single venue. It gives us a platform to showcase our domain competencies to our customers and also share the road map of sustained growth opportunities that we create for them.

With the evolution of storage technology, how is StorIT evolving to rise up to the challenges and demands of the new-age enterprise customers? StorIT has been the leading Specialist Value Distributor in the Middle East with an unmatched track record of being a pioneer in introducing emerging technologies over the last 12 years. StorIT has been the first, and only, Distributor to have sold and implemented turnkey solutions related to High Performance Computing, Data Analytics and Big Data Infrastructure for our Reseller Partners in the region. Recently, StorIT had secured the privilege of selling the very first Hyper Converged Infrastructure solution (EMC Vspex Blue) in the Middle East. Without stopping at our achievements so far, we strive to remain focused in our mission to bring cutting edge technology solutions that can create sustained value proposition for our reseller partners while adding enormous brand equity to their business in the long term.

Whatâ€™s the value addition provided by StorIT to the vendor partners? StorIT continues to bring cutting edge technology solutions coupled with turnkey project implementation capabilities that enable our reseller partners to compete, win and sustain customer relationships successfully. The underlying mission of our business is to empower our reseller partners with the prowess to compete at the highest level and stay on top of the technology curve.

Whatâ€™s the basis of vendor choice by StorIT? StorIT has always been ahead with introducing emerging technologies and solutions in the data centre and the storage space. Our current offering is in itself revolutionary to what we were offering a year back. StorIT is among the very few Distributors, who pro-actively invests in resources and channel, and approaches the market in a focused way with enhanced solutions. This approach gives our channel partners & our vendors confidence that their business will grow year on year. Before signing on a vendor, we examine if the vendor and its partners will enhance the overall business in the region and bring the latest revolutionary technologies to customers as it is being made available to the market. We take care to ensure that the customer is fully supported through our vast channel Group Managing Director, StorIT network, which is a win-win for all parties. Distribution StorIT invests in resources to identify the most capable vendors and their ability to support our vast channel with appropriate partner programs that will help the channel and end-user customers.

SUREN VEDANTHAM,

With the light pace at which technology is evolving, itâ€™s necessary for partners to be trained properly- how has StorIT revamped its training programs? We have a robust time-tested reseller training program that enables our Reseller Partners to stay on top of the technology curve. Our training program gives our partners the ability to meet the growing demands of Enterprise Customers and also compete at the highest level.

The market has been witnessing tech giants entering new domains; any new domain that you are planning to venture into? While we continue to make significant strides in Big Data Analytics and Open Compute Infrastructure, we plan to roll out a comprehensive Managed Services program to our resellers this Gitex. This will be another path breaking service by StorIT that would redefine value distribution.

RECOVER MORE THAN JUST YOUR DATA Unitrends delivers award-winning data protection solutions for any IT environment. The company’s portfolio of virtual, physical and cloud solutions provides adaptive protection for organizations globally. To address the complexities facing today’s modern data centre, Unitrends delivers end-toend protection and instant recovery of all virtual and physical assets as well as automated disaster recovery testing built for virtualization.

“We are looking forward to extending with StorIT our highgrowth strategy into the Middle-East, and continue to provide to our customers easy-to-use and well-positioned enterprise-class backup and recovery solutions .”

MICHAEL ORANGE, Regional Manager – Middle-East & Africa at Unitrends Focus at GITEX 2015 Unitrends offers more than ‘just’ a backup solution. We will show visitors how Unitrends can help organizations with their backup and recovery needs allowing them to focus on other things and recover things such as time and peace of mind Come see us at booth A7-50 - Hall 7

Solutions Galore All-in-one backup and recovery solutions providing integrated backup, archiving, replication, recovery testing and instant recovery. l Physical appliances – Unitrends Recovery series l Virtual appliances – Unitrends Enterprise Backup (UEB) l Automated Disaster Recovery testing ReliableDR

Why Choose Unitrends Over Others

l Unitrends is uniquely positioned as a true allin-one backup and recovery vendor. l With all the features such as backup, archiving, replication, recovery testing and instant recovery integrated you don’t need anything else. l Unitrends also offers disaster recovery assurance through ReliableDR. ReliableDR provides

automatic recovery testing as often as you need, and sends alerts when the results are outside of the set RTO’s and RPO’s. l Unitrends philosophy is to remain as flexible as possible to all configuration. We support over 220 different versions of hypervisors, operating systems and applications. Whether you are 100% virtualized or just beginning the journey consolidate, we can deliver a single agile product that can protect everything from legacy Unix systems to the latest converged infrastructure running vSphere 6. l Unitrends Cloud allows enterprises to get backup copies for disaster recovery or long term retention offsite without having to invest in a second location, or purchase additional infrastructure. In addition, enterprise can utilize their backup copies with Unitrends DRaaS to guarantee business continuity of their critical applications in the event of a disaster.

Industry Recognition l Ranked number 1 (best-in-class) in the DCIG buyer’s guide for hybrid cloud backup appliances. (Four of the top six appliances were Unitrends.) l Recognized as the Champion in the Info-tech Research group – Select and implement a backup solution guide.

UNMATCHED INTERCONNECTIVITY Mellanox Technologies is a leading supplier of end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions and services for servers and storage. Founded in 1999 Mellanox is a publically listed company; manufacturers of their own silicon Mellanox solutions deliver the best price/performance solution available today. Put simply, whatever your interconnectivity needs; Mellanox has a solution to optimise your infrastructure

“Building a strong and understanding relationship with partners is key to Mellanox and StorIT’s knowledgeable and professional team have been key to establishing an efficient and effective presence in MEA.”

DARRIN NEIL CHEN, VP WorldWide Channels at Mellanox Technologies Focus at GITEX 2015: Mellanox Technologies – Boosting Performance of the Datacentre and Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership

Solutions Galore: 10/25/40/50/56 &100 Gb/s End-to-end Ethernet and InfiniBand Interconnect Solutions

Why Choose Mellanox Over Others?

l 10/25/40/50/56 &100 Gb/s End-to-end Ethernet and InfiniBand Interconnect Solutions l Highest bandwidth l Lowest cost per Gb/s l Lowest power requirements l Greatest Density Maximum ports in smallest footprint l 40% more throughput in end-to-end solutions l Lowest Latency & Zero packet Loss l Increase data centre efficiency by providing the highest throughput and lowest latency, delivering data faster to applications and unlocking system performance capability l A huge choice of fast interconnect products: adapters, switches, software and silicon that

accelerate application runtime and maximize business results for a wide range of markets including high performance computing, enterprise data centers, Web 2.0, cloud, storage and financial services l Fully interoperable solutions for simple deployment and post-deployment management. l Extreme scalability utilising VMS (Virtual Modular Switch) – guaranteeing consistent high performance networks l Multiple, simple options to upgrade either part or all of your data-centre including specific projects such as server or storage upgrades. l Mellanox CloudX allows companies to build the most efficient, high performance and scalable clouds based on Mellanox’s superior interconnect and off-the-shelf building blocks (servers, storage, interconnect, and software).

Industry Recognition l Grand Prize of Best of Show Award for Server and Storage at Interop Tokyo 2015 l 5-Star Rating in CRN’s 2015 Partner Program Guide. l Named to the CRN Data Center 100 (2014)

INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS TO REDEFINE STORAGE Quantum is a leading expert in scale-out storage, archive and data protection, providing intelligent solutions for capturing, sharing and preserving digital assets over the entire data lifecycle. We help customers maximize the value of these assets to achieve their goals, whether it’s top movie studios looking to create the next blockbuster, researchers working to accelerate scientific discovery, or small businesses trying to streamline their operations. With a comprehensive portfolio, we enable customers to address their most demanding workflow challenges and opportunities.

“Quantum has a longstanding partnership with StorIT, and they represent a key partner for us in the Middle East region. We particularly value StorIT’s expertise in data storage, their broad regional coverage, and their strong relationships with local resellers.” GABRIEL CHAHER, Vice President EMEA Sales & Marketing at Quantum Focus at GITEX 2015 Presentation of all solutions: Data Protection, Archiving, Hybrid Storage & StorNext solutions.

Solutions Galore DXi Deduplication Appliances / QXS Hybrid Storage/ StorNext Shared Storage / Artico NAS Storage Appliance / Scalar Tape libraries – SMB and Enterprise solutions

Why choose Quantum over others? l A different approach to Storage: at Quantum our mission is to deliver innovative, end to end storage than enables you to transform data into insights and value for your organization. l Ease of deployment of solutions: Quantum’s entry and midrange products can be installed easily by end users, although Quantum provides installation services for customers that prefer professional installation. Installation Services are offered as standard with all enterprise products, and Quantum additionally provides customers with training on product operation and handling procedures. l Scalability of the solutions: The entire product portfolio provides scalable solutions to match customer future needs and to protect customers’ initial investment.

l Efficiency of Integration with Existing Infrastructure: Quantum Data Protection solutions are compatible with all leading Backup ISVs, while DXi deduplication appliances integrate seamlessly into existing backup environments. StorNext solutions are compatible with all the major workflow software editors and hardware vendors, allowing integration into any customer ecosystem. l Cloud compatibility: Our solutions are design to support cloud connectivity. Both our Lattus extended online storage and DXi deduplication appliances support. Q-Cloud Archive leverages Quantum’s StorNext 5 software to provide automated, policybased movement of content to a virtually limitless pool of cloud-based storage.

Industry Recognition l Q-Cloud Archive: Creativity in Content Management Award (Broadcast Beat) l Quantum: IABM Game Changer Award at NAB l StorNext Pro Solutions: Best of Show (TVB Europe) l DXi6900: Disk Based Product of the Year: Enterprise (The Storage Awards 2015) l DXi Deduplication Appliances: “Challenger” in Gartner Magic Quadrant

CSR

THE HUMAN-SIDE OF TECHNOLOGY THOT is a platform to get the regional IT fraternity together in reaching out in any way possible to make a difference in the lives of people and communities lacking basic needs.

ith strong support from its partners, StorIT Distribution launched its unique social initiative, ‘The Human-side of Technology’ (THOT) in May 2015 and announced its first cause - the ‘Adopt a School in Western Nepal’ with Dubai Cares, the program partner. THOT was conceptualized to be a platform to get the regional IT fraternity together in reaching out in any way possible to make a difference in the lives of people and communities lacking basic needs such as access to clean water or education. “While we strive hard by challenging ourselves at all times to raise the bar in everything that we do, we realize that we can actually work towards adding more meaning and purpose to our enterprise by sharing the privileges we take for granted with those who are deprived of them, though they equally deserve them. Out of this thought evolved the idea to start a social initiative called THOT, which stands for ‘The Human-side of Technology’,” Suren Vedantham, Managing Director, StorIT Distribution explains the thought behind the THOT initiative. StorIT plans to get together each year with its partners who intend to be part of the THOT initiative to sponsor a social program which may not demand much of their time or resources but could certainly touch the lives of underprivileged people around the world. The company believes that the cumulative effect of a collective effort is always much greater than disparate individual action. This year, through THOT, StorIT has been successful in sponsoring a social cause related to children’s education titled ‘Adopt a School in Western Nepal”, which was launched by Dubai Cares, a philanthropic organization launched in September 2007 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid

Amal Al Redha, Senior Fundraising Manager at Dubai Cares with senior executives of EMW, Pinnacle Smart Systems, Spusht and StorIT Distribution at the launch of the THOT initiative.

Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. As support partners, EMW, Pinnacle Smart Systems and Spusht cosponsored this program. Under the ‘Adopt a School’ initiative, Dubai Cares aims to address the challenges faced by children

in gaining access to quality primary education. This initiative is designed to make a genuine and tangible change in the lives of children, their families and communities. The ‘Adopt a School in Western Nepal’ program aims to build a school with three classrooms that will cater to educating 150 students and 60 adult women. In Nepal, the initiative focuses on improving the infrastructure of primary school classrooms and providing a safe and sanitary area for children to learn and for teachers to teach. It will also focus on improving access to adult education and literacy skills by providing training to local facilitators to teach illiterate women the fundamentals of reading and writing. The funds raised through THOT at StorIT’s annual technology summit will go towards supporting this initiative.

BIG DATA

‘BIG DATA’ MEANS BIG BUSINESS FOR THE CHANNEL WORDS: MR. SHASHI KANTH, SALES MANAGER, DATA SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES

usinesses today face new challenges. The conventional business intelligence no longer defines a typical customer or service and hence the core business data is now interpolated with a lot of other demographical, spatial, locational, behavioral data etc, which helps businesses predict complex patterns of customer demography, which in turn, helps the company to achieve or translate this

into an opportunity. The sheer volume and variety of data traversing today’s networks is growing exponentially. The Internet of Things (IoT) has been contributing significantly to this rising volume of big data. This highly distributed data is generated by a wide range of cloud and enterprise applications, websites, social media, computers, smartphones, sensors, cameras,

and much more — all coming in different formats and protocols. Big Data has created access in areas of businesses lesser known in the earlier models of doing business; for eg. Businesses today know or can predict: What to sell? Where to Sell? How to sell? Who to sell to? What to stock? Where to stock? When to stock? etc.

BIG DATA Big Data analytics makes best use of statistical and quantitative data for explanatory and predictive modeling. Predictive analytics a big part of Big Data Analytics lets you standardize and automate this process, so decisions are fact-based instead of judgment or interpretation.

to accommodate all the data sets. With business cycles growing shorter by the day, it is important for organizations to access new and existing data and analyze it quickly to make critical business decisions. Though organizations in the Middle East are becoming aware of the challenges big data brings, the adoption of big data analytics in this region is Benefits of Big Data still lagging far behind as compared to the global Big Data if analyzed properly can bring in a lot adoption rate. Regional businesses are beginning of benefits for all kinds of businesses from to realize the benefits of harnessing big data in improved operational efficiency and services to understanding consumer trends and preferences increased productivity. CIOs of enterprises look to and using those in their marketing programs and gain valuable insights through big data to make sales promotions. The big data early adopter in the intelligent decisions about target customers, pricing, Middle East is the retail industry and hence other services and risks. Enterprises also use big data for industry early adopters will have to make do with different areas of their business such as marketing, tools created for this industry and exploit them to operations, performance management, security and their advantage. compliance. Amongst the other verticals, Oil The vast data sources whether companies are using real-time data structured or unstructured, to better manage remote drilling all contribute toward the operations, e-commerce organizationâ€™s â€˜big dataâ€™ websites are using data opportunity, which is from their operations how to extract the to personalise the wealth of information shopping experience and knowledge and radically improve from all that data customer support and use it to and an ever-growing their competitive number of start-up advantage. This companies are in turn, is forcing combining innovative companies to rethink cloud services with big their strategies towards data analysis to create big data. highly targeted products For enterprises to make and services sold directly business sense of the data to Educating the channel is flood, they need to transform the huge key to educating enterprises about pools of raw, stored, structured and the value of harnessing their big unstructured data from internal as well data. Not many in the channel have as external sources into meaningful, realthe knowledge or the skilled resources time business intelligence, which in turn to translate the potential of big data will help them make better business in enterprise organizations into decisions. To harness this big data, actionable insights. We hold seminars for they need to invest in adopting our channel and endbig data analytics. The intelligence Enabling The Channel to Sell users to offer them gathered will help enterprises Big Data complete insights improve productivity by focusing of We support the channel community into harnessing emerging trends, making betterby enabling their delivery capabilities their structured and informed decisions and customizing in the areas of Big Data consulting unstructured data services for customers. and professional services to meet the and optimizing this surging market demand. This would data to grow their Big Data in The Middle East also help the SI and VAR community to business further. Organisations in the Middle East plan their gradual transition from an IT are concerned about managing big hardware or software selling model to data but still have to understand what it is and what a service brokering model thus reaching out to their technologies they need to put in place to effectively customers and help them achieve the same level of manage such large volumes of data available to service they have enjoyed from the community in the them. It becomes really difficult for enterprises to past. In turn, it also helps the consumer to demystify sort and analyze such massive amounts of data and quickly roll out their Big Data plans and exploit and it is next to impossible to build a database the opportunities of information explosion. It is

SHASHI KANTH, Sales Manager, Data Science Technologies

said that if you do not have any kind of Big Data or Analytics built into your business practice, you are less likely to retain a competitive edge beyond 5 years. We hold seminars for our channel and end-users to offer them complete insights into harnessing their structured and unstructured data and optimizing this data to grow their business further.

Our Big Data Offerings On the Big Data front, we currently contribute from the infrastructure, integration, data scientist, domain expert and analytics analyst perspective. On the open source front, we use the Hadoop platform and on the packaged offerings front we have tools from SAS for Text Analytics, Social media Analytics, Sentimental Analytics, Video Analytics and in addition to the above we also use custom build tools on open platforms. IT vendors and value added partners such Data Science Technologies are helping channel partners to upsell value such as consulting, assessment and solutions around new technology in the space of Big Data and Cloud. Resellers and SIs are confronted with a challenging scenario of staying abreast with new and upcoming technologies and they need to constantly upgrade their skills on Big Data, cloud and the new business models to cater to customer and market demands. Data Science Technologies has initiated a channel development program to enable our reseller partners with the knowledge, tools and necessary skills to identify and address the high-growth potential opportunities in the Middle East.