Unwrapping 2015 for enterprise business

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.” 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 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. 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." Mobility 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.