[Group Photograph of Western India IT Fair 2011, Mumbai ]
Through VARIndia, Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. has been a catalyst for many fruitful industry interactions & seminars since 1999. WIITF 2011 was yet another step towards bringing the ICT industry together in the western zone of the country. Pramoud Rao, National President, FSAI and M.D. Zicom India and Paras Shah, CEO, Neoteric Informatique and Dushyant Mehta, Chairman, Mediaman Group of Companies were amongst the Guest of honors.
As per the custom, the evening started with lighting of the lamp. This moment was graced by Vishal Chandane, Product Manager- CI (Converged Infrastructure) Solutions HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd., Ananth Padmanabha, Head-Strategic Business, Datacraft India Ltd., Cherian Varghese - Sr. Director for Alliances & Channel- Oracle India, Sunil Gafar, Security Consultant, Bluecoat India, H. T Fatabhoy, Director, CELLOP India, Soumitra Agarwal, Chief Sales Officer,- Allied Digital Services Ltd. Shri. Tarun Lalwani, Director, Telexcell Information Systems Limited, Champakraj Gurjar, Director, TAIT, Bhatt Bhavin P, Country Manager, M-Tech Solutions (I) Pvt. Ltd., Laxmi Narayan Rao, Marketing Director, Jam Cracker Inc. and Chris Chang - M.D- ADATA Technology India Pvt. Ltd.
 |
The event had speeches and presentations from the Industry body, Government and Corporate houses on the "Current Opportunities in Business", "Technology Empowerment", "Partners readiness for selling - Future Technologies". And, Last but not the least the topic of discussion was "To have Faith in the Cloud".
Being the first speaker, Pramoud Rao set the stage by speaking on 'How Surveillance and IT can work as convergence'. “Initially in 1995, security was more to do with stand-alone buildings, SOHO offices but as we graduated we saw convergence happening within security. We were not taking this seriously but before late, we saw software companies coming into the security domain and embracing this new trend. It made us realize that IT convergence is coming in and we need to be careful about it. Thanks to security, IT and telecommunication, consumers were looking to anytime, anywhere security without too much of cost and this made us grow expponentially,” he said.
If, Dushyant Mehta shared his perspective on the evolution of IT and role of channel he also presented MAIT's viewpoints on the coming of Cloud computing in the absence of Ashwini Aggarwal, Executive Director- MAIT because of some urgent work.
Speaking about Future Technologies Varghese of Oracle India said,"When 2011 began, there were a few predictions made for the year. Cloud computing has come to dominate the 2nd place in the IT predictions for 2011, a journey that we have gone through. The way business is going to transform itself in this new era is going to lay the foundation for our channel partners as well as for principal companies like HP, Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. Cloud is going to turn around the way we do business and this is something we would love to watch in the near future."
HP's Chandane shared with the audience their company's various Partnership Strategies when it comes to selling of Cloud Computing. He also talked about how the journey to cloud is going to happen and how it is going to be shaped. "There are obvious business benefits as to why today's businesses are looking for a cloud kind of an environment. It is actually helping IT to draw closer to businesses and become more agile, flexible and change as the way the business changes. It is actually helping IT to reduce costs of operations and management. Cloud is one such enabler which is going to make this happen."
At the same time, putting very simply, Shah from Neoteric shared his thoughts on the Cloud Computing and future of partners. He said, "Cloud in the channel community is normally termed as a threat. But there is always a brighter side to everything and we have realized that there are tons of opportunities here. From an end customer perspective, cloud is around for a while and it is finally here to dominate the entire landscape. It is increasing due to low bandwidth costs now, availability of datacenters, emphasis on disaster recovery and many more. For a distributor company like us, channel can play a very important role instead of just being a threat".
Bluecoat's Gafar shared the business opportunities in the Cloud environment when it comes to Security. He also used the platform to introduce their (Bluecoat's) Cloud Services offerings which is termed as Web-Security Cloud. This was further complemented by Sahai from Iomega who talked about the evolution and future of Personal Cloud. CELLOP India's Fatabhoy further added to the topic.
The final session was culminated by L N Rao, Director- Jamcracker INC. who shared his company's first hand experiences in selling Cloud in India, in contrast to global sales trends and the various opportunities and possibilities in India.
Speaking about the event and the topics discussed, Champakraj Gurjar, Director & Spokesperson, TAIT, said, “Though the partner community feels threat with the coming of Cloud, but on personal level I believe the situation is not that grave. And awareness programs and talks initiated by the vendors would further clear the ambiguity about its impact on channel. Above all today's initiative by Kalinga Digital Media is worth appreciation who has brought the various pillars of the industry face-to-face under one roof.”
Bringing the evening to an end, Deepak Sahu, Publisher - VARIndia, and Managing Director - Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. thanked the audience for making the event a success in spite of it being timed on the last weekend of the financial year closure. He said, "Cloud is here to stay, and it is our sincere efforts through the content of our magazine and these events that bring the industry together and make their seamless journey into the Cloud."
The company Kalinga Digital Media has already been successfully organizing VARIndia IT Forum and VARIndia Star Nite Awards events in the Capital. Complementing these two annual events, the company had already spread its wings in Odissa, Kolkata and Bangalore. The success of the recently conducted WIITF added another feather to their cap.
