The journey that began for us over six years ago has been an exhilarating ride at time and at times quite challenging. The fact is we have stayed committed to our vision and has helped us stay on course. On the way, we have reached some milestones and at the end of 2011, when we rolled out the 150th edition of VAR Magazine, it was a moment of great pride for us.

VAR magazine is one of the lead-ing channel Magazines in the region and is consolidating its reach further with every passing month. Today VAR magazine has branched out into several strate-gic initiatives and the foremost among these include ‘In Search of a Champion’, VAR Arabia, VAR Conclave and very recently our new print edition for the value segment which is ‘The Integrator.’ We are committed to these ini-tiatives and would be consolidat-ing all of them through the year.Success has come with great ef-

forts from the team but wouldn’t have been entirely possible if the industry hadn’t reciprocated to the value propositions that we promised and delivered consis-tently in our initiatives. Overall, the journey has been phenom-enal and as a team, we stay committed to being a reliable media partner for companies doing business through the ICT channel.

We have brought out this special edition to commemorate the milestone and are happy to include some of the success stories from the industry in this compilation. I am hopeful this would be a useful and interest-ing read.

Vivek SharmaMDVAR MEA Magazine

Disclaimer: While the publishers have made every attempt possibleto get accurate information on published content in this handbookthey cannot be held liable for any errors herein.

Miles to go…

Publisher: Vivek Sharma Managing Editor: R. Narayan Art Director: Faiz Ahmed Sales Director: Alishan ZaidiSr. Sales Manager: R. Subramanyan Business Development Manager: Mallika RegoSales Coordinator: Smitha Jithesh

P.O. Box: 121075Montana Building 404Zabeel Road, Near GPO Karama, Dubai-UAETel: 04-3705022Fax: 04-3706639 Cont

entsAvnet - 8

Pioneering valuepropositions

Belkin - 10A formidable legacy

Despec - 12Strategic expansions

Netgear - 16Steadfast tomaking technologyaffordable

OPTI-UPS - 18Thriving onchannel loyalty

Optimus - 20 Building theexpertise to lead

SanDisk - 22Seizing theinnovation edge

SonicWall - 24Committedto excellence

Published byVAR Magazine

4

With the Dec 16th edition, VAR MEA Magazine crossed the significant milestone of 150 print editions, a significant milestone, since it commenced over six years ago as the only fortnightly magazine for the channel.

The magazine continues to be more popular than ever with its readership in the channel and therefore enjoys the confidence of the top brands among the vendors as well as the leading distributors in the channel who continue to rely on it as the essential media platform to dis-seminate Business critical mes-saging to the MEA IT channel.

VAR Arabia celebrates 1st an-niversaryVAR Arabia, the bilingual channel magazine unveiled for the KSA IT

channel in 2010, is now well on its way to rep-licating the resounding success that VAR Maga-zine has built over the past few years. It is

steady on course to becoming the sought

after channel publication by vendors and distributors who are keen to grow visibility and Business reach in the strategic market of KSA. The magazine is positioned to gain more momentum in 2012 with a more dedicated focus as well as several initiatives in KSA that

will strengthen its bond with the market’s channel readership.

The Integrator unveiledAt this year’s GITEX, VAR maga-zine showcased ‘The Integrator’ and broadcast its plan to launch an exclusive title that focuses on the value add reseller / systems integration channel. The Integrator has been launched in February this year. It comes as a logical extension of VAR Magazine’s ambition to provide distinct products that address the unique needs of the readership targeted in separate markets and segments. VAR MEA Magazine continues to focus on the volume channel while the Integrator fouses on the value channel.

Launching East Africa edition of ‘The Integrator’ soonVAR Magazine is set to unveil a new exclusive channel publica-tion for East Africa. As a precur-sor to the new edition, VAR magazine brought out a special newsletter edition that was distributed widely at ITEL Expo in Nairobi in November 2011.

A Milestone& Miles to go2011 was a year of milestones for VAR magazine as it consolidated its opera-tions, entered the strategic market of Africa and unveiled a new print publica-tion for the Value channel. The strategies through the year demonstrated VAR magazine’s vision to be in sync with the evolving market.

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150th Edition Celebrations

The new publication is due to soon and will bring a focus as never before on the East Africa IT channel in the same way that VAR Magazine has does year after year for the Middle East. It will also have a significant focus on the value reseller channel in East Africa in terms of the content mix.

5th COC Awards held at a glit-tering ceremony The 5th COC Awards ceremony (felicitating the best of 2010) held at the now iconic Meydan Hotel was a grand success and reinforced the growing stature of the awards. The awards celebrated the leading brands and some exceptional individual

performances in the channel. A galaxy of some of the most recognizable faces in the region’s channel descended to attend the awards ceremony.

Showcase at GITEX 2011For the second successive year, VAR Magazine was a prominent media exhibitor at GITEX this year and showcased its growing portfolio of products to visitors from across the region. The magazine’s commitment was visible throughout the year as it went ahead with several new initiatives in spite of the overall challenges that the market threw up.

Participation at GITEX KSAVAR Arabia was an exhibitor at GITEX KSA in 2011 for the second year in succession. Along with a special edition that provided a preview of the ICT event, the participation at the expo enabled the magazine to further reinforce its commitment to focusing on expectations of the local readership.

In Search of a Champion crosses new frontiersIn Search of a Champion (ISC), an exclusive series of sustained training workshops for frontline sales executives completed its second edition in 2011. ISC has also successfully expanded its reach into KSA with the inaugu-ral events happening this year in Riyadh and Jeddah. It is on course for expansion initiatives into other new markets.

Leading brands such as Cisco, AMD, Sage, Symantec, Canon, Iomega, Belkin, Western Digital, BitDefender, Gateway and distributors including Ashley, Grand Stores and GCT have been among the participating compa-nies at ISC sessions so far.

VAR Conclave in East AfricaVAR Magazine successfully organized VAR Conclave as part of ITELEXPO at KICC in Nairobi,

Kenya. Leading IT distributors including Redington Value, Mindware, Despec and FRT who are looking at expanding their Businesses in East Africa were part of the VAR conclave showcase. The conclave provided extensive network-ing opportunities for Business visitors from the local channel in Kenya looking to team up

with some of the distributors to expand their business.

VAR Magazine wins acclaimVAR Magazine won an apprecia-tion award from the Computer Society of Kenya for its pioneer-ing efforts in initiating VAR Conclave for East Africa as well as contribution in encouraging more IT companies to initiate channel business in Kenya’s IT

market. The award was received by Mr. Vivek Sharma, founder and CEO of VAR Magazine at the exclusive ICT Kenya Awards. IT Channel meet in Nairobi On the 28th of November this year, VAR Magazine held a channel meet for the Kenya IT channel at the prestigious Laico Regency hotel. The event was on an exclusive invitation basis and witnessed a significant turnout of the who’s who of the ICT channel in Kenya.

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How pivotal is the new Technology centre called ‘The Resource’ to the way you can help the channel drive more sales and for customers to see the value of the solutions designed?Avnet has made a major commitment in the market by providing a unique environment for customers to develop, test and evaluate risk-free solutions through its state of art facilities spread across the globe. At AVNET Solution Center The [Resource]; you can try out your concepts, size your systems, test performance scalability, and see working prototypes on best of breed equipment, all at no charge. You can lever-

age the combined expertise of Technology specialists and our dynamic environment of third-party vendors, ISV and systems integrators. AVNET Technology Center in Dubai brings together the right products and the right partners - so you can get it right the first time.

Where is this facility based? What is the infrastructure of this facility?The facility is located at Avnet Technology Solutions Center in the heart of Dubai internet city. It is the first state of art facility to host the latest technology of ExaData and ExaLogic Highest Speed Machines ever in the planet for Databases Solutions

Avnet Technology Solutions is keen on setting benchmarks in value add distribution and one of the standout invest-ments in this direction has been its recent launch of its proof-of-concept demonstra-tion facility in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for Oracle’s Engineered Systems, includ-ing the Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Henry Godwin, Regional Managing Director, Avnet Technology Solutions, Middle East and Africa elabo-rates how the facility will help Avnet’s business partners in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region address the business challenges of their end-user customers.

Pioneering value propositionsHenry Godwin

Regional Managing Director, ATS, MEA

In Focus | Avnet

9

and Middleware Applications. The Facility is also equipped with mixed of oracle Technologies like SPARC T4 series, ZFS Storages and X64 Platforms.

How exactly does Oracle Exadata Database machine and Oracle Exalogic help build solutions? What bottlenecks does it remove?The Exadata Database Machine promises outstanding perfor-mance as being the first ideal and unique platform for extreme performance for all online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing, and mixed workloads. In some cases the extreme performance alone makes customers adopt Exadata technology rapidly. Still many customers stack up their ROI by consolidating a large number of Oracle databases, saving on licenses and storage. All custom-ers win big on performance, manageability, and radically shorter time-to-deploy. Consoli-dated to Oracle Exadata environ-ments run at 50% lower cost starting from year two. Definitely this will help customers shortcut the move to Exadata. With our ”The Resource” environment; they get real-world metrics from their own workloads.

Since this is a dedicated Oracle authorized technical centre,

what would be the involve-ment from Oracle be on this?Oracle involvement is based on coordinating with all engaged parties within the channel and make sure that all deliverables meet customer expectations. For every proof-of-concept deliverables at THE [resource] we look at forming a virtual team. This team will ideally be comprised of resources from Avnet, Oracle, our business partner, and end-user to get the most out of the engagement. In summary we consider this facility to be a tool for Avnet, Oracle, our business partners, and end-users hence we consider all of them the extended team of the demo facility. How would you be building the team to support the deliv-erables of this facility? Avnet demo Center facility is managed by Technical experts and high skills engineers within Avnet Global Network. Avnet Solution Centers Global Network and high Tech resources will enable customers to share ideas and knowledge with profes-sionals and partner Network experts while providing access to a wealth of intellectual capital. This collaborative environment allows you to work with your established partners (ISVs, SIs, etc.) and with your local team to

architect, create, and test your solution before making one of your most critical business decisions. In fact, we offer an atmosphere that simulates true production environments. Using real world configurations and best practices we enable you to evaluate and test solutions with minimal risk, reduced cost, and without disruption to your production environment.

How can your channel part-ners make use of the facility in terms of bringing customer for POC demos etc? Avnet simply published an en-gagement process to all custom-ers and partners. Customers only need to send all POC requests to our mail system alias Oracle-Resource-MENA@Avnet.com.

How would you able to mea-sure the ROI on this initiatives/ the centre?By involving more custom-ers and partners engagement with the facility in which it will enhance the sales cycle time frame, increasing winning rate and Return on investment.

Are you looking at estab-lishing more such resource centres for other vendors?Sure, Avnet is looking for to expand its point of presence to extend its facility coverage in the whole region.

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In Focus | Belkin

Belkin as a brand is growing and extending into categories that

could be vital in consumer lifestyles going forward. These include home automation and energy conservation products and these are in addition to consolidating in categories like wireless networking as well as the fast growth Mobile acces-sories market. There is a resonance of simplicity and clarity in its vision to pursue growth in areas that help consumers enhance digital connectivity.

Youssef El-Arif, Senior National Account Manager at Belkin Middle east says, “Our mission is to simplify the technology and enhance the lifestyle of the con-sumer when using the technol-ogy. We are a consumer focused company, our philosophy is very simple, we have high quality products and we need to sell these products to the consumer. As a multi-category vendor, we have a wide range of products to give computer and consumer electronics users seamless inte-gration in their homes, cars, and on the go.”

A formidablelegacy

Over nearly three decades since it was founded in 1983, Belkin has created a formidable legacy and recall as an innovative brand and has an ideal platform set for further swift consolidation.

Youssef El-Arif Senior National Account Manager, Belkin

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In addition to a steady flow of new products into the market, the manufacturer has in-troduced several value add initiatives to help its stand out from competition. The manu-facturer claims that its home installation services have been a huge hit with consumers.

Youssef says, “There were many successes and achievements in terms of both products and growth. We are continuing in in-troducing new products in every category as well as supporting it with a unique initiative, for instance our free home installa-tion service to consumers who buy our networking products. That was a very successful initiative and both partners and customers have appreciated it. We expanded our presence in the region and became a solid player in every category we are present. I must add that the mobility category business for us is growing in parallel with the boom of the Apple line up and Samsung smart phones and Tab. Many factors have given us a chance to grow in this region and be different.”

Belkin has taken on home auto-mation as a strong area of focus. It has unveiled its new WeMo system which makes home auto-mation easy. The system is com-pletely modular which is conve-nient for buyers, and allows the

user control as

much or as little of his or her home as preferred. The system allows you to turn on a light in another room, or turn it off from across town. It helps the user put his house on a schedule—living room lights go on in the evening, kids’ TV goes off at bedtime.

Yousef says, “You can check to make sure you turned the iron off, after you’ve already left the house. Have a fan go on before you get home. WeMo can even guard the front door. These products will soon be available in the market.”

He adds, “Being a consumer focused company, we simplify the technology and enhance the lifestyle of the consumer. Our aim is to facilitate the life of the consumer by providing easy to install and easy to use products. Plug and play is all what con-sumer needs to do.”

Belkin is one of the channel favourites with a recall and brand appeal that is growing each day. Besides, the manufacturer has a wide array of products that deliv-ers more variety and options for its partners.

Yousef adds, “The channel partners are under a lot of pressure from different vendors and suppliers.

They deal with so many brands and so many suppliers every day. And of course every sup-plier comes with products and schemes. Being a multi-category vendor gives us an advantage to approach the channel as they have to deal with only one brand that has a wide range of unique products. Our product variety gives a chance to the channel to manage their volume and profitability. To keep the support going, we have loyalty program in place to motivate the channel as well as making sure they can be more profitable while work-ing with us.”

Belkin claims that it has been growing very rapidly in every country in the region and also perhaps the manufactures is in categories that continue to have a strong growth momentum. The outlook therefore is quite upbeat

“The opportunity is so big to an extent that no matter what the current economic situation has been, our products were still sell-ing and specifically our mobility category. We are on track and we can see that we will achieve our forecast growth by end of this year,” adds Youssef.

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In Focus | Despec

While Despec started as a distrib-utor of Office supplies and is a leading name in the printer con-sumables business, in the past several years, Despec has suc-cessfully diversified its product portfolio to include additional product categories like printers, accessories etc. In addition to these strategic extensions, the company has embarked on territorial expansion into African growth markets like Kenya, Tan-zania or Uganda that underline the ambitions of the company to increase its sphere of influence in the region’s distribution business.

The company has several suc-cess stories to talk of in terms of

in-country expansion. Some of these markets include KSA, Ku-wait, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait in the Middle East with the region continue to contribute the ma-jority of its revenues. Its business in KSA has grown considerably through its local subsidiary and in part the growth has also come from the extensions in the prod-uct portfolio which now includes Samsung printers and products of Wacom.

In Africa, the major countries of focus have been Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania where it has its own teams transacting business through the local channel. In addition, the distributor has also

opened a free zone facility in Tanzania Dar-E-salaam, Tanzania, which will cater to the needs of the East & Central African markets. The free zone facility will drastically cut the lead time in getting the products to the local market and gives Despec a great advantage in the fast growing markets of Africa. The distribu-tor also has local warehouses in Kenya, Tanzanina and Uganda.

Faisal Jamal, COO at Despec says, “By stocking products closer to these markets, we are offering our partners an unprecedented advantage that was missing so far in those markets because of the absence of a regional hub.

StrategicexpansionsDespec has in recent years expanded its business into the emerging markets of Africa and simultaneously consolidated its operations in the Middle East.

Faisal Jamal COO, Despec

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We have made significant invest-ments in local operations in these markets. This is also in line with our commitment to the fast growing markets of Africa where we are seeing our volumes of Business growing faster than our expectations.”

Further, the company is looking at more expansion initiatives in the African continent. Next on the radar are opening subsidiar-ies in Mozambique, Rwanda and Ethiopia. The company’s enterprising team is participating in several trade shows in some of the interior markets and in the process tapping new partner prospects in markets that are expected to soon grow at a good pace. The distributor has also expanded the products lines it offers to its partners in Africa.

He adds, “We have opened up new product lines in East Africa. We are not only into the distribu-tion of printer supplies but have added Norton and the entire product lines of HP IPG. The sup-

plies business itself has grown significantly not just in East Africa but across all territories.”

Despec wants to ensure that its diversification strategy for faster growth does not come at the ex-pense of its current businesses. The company continues to see itself as a Supplies specialist that offers the complete range of brands with HP being the lead-ing brand.

Faisal adds, “We also want to focus on brands where we can actually bring in more value add such as building market share as well as the brand. While offering alternatives to the market, it also offers us a great opportunity to grow our business. We are quite careful in choosing brands we work with and work on long term associations with our ven-dors and partners.”

Despec is also very careful that it doesn’t add products and brands without ascertaining the value proposition. These decisions are

based on whether the product is a natural extension for its portfolio as well as how easy is it for its partners to sell.

He adds, “We will work on oppor-tunity basis and look at bringing in products that the channel can sell. We don’t want to just a do a cosmetic expansion. We need to provide products that make sense for our partners.”

Despec has built its business on its philosophy of nurturing stable relationships with its channel partners. As Faisal points out, the company is doing what it can to ensure that its partners are profitable in doing business with them and that they are seeing a stable and growing partnership with Despec. Through its ambi-tious initiatives in the emerging markets of Africa as well, Despec has ensured that it is ready to walk the talk when it comes to pioneering market expansion for brands it carries.

In Focus | Despec

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Netgear is moving into a consoli-dation mode and is strengthen-ing its focus in new market territories as well as the SMB seg-ment. Ali Ahmar,Regional Direc-tor ME –at Netgear, Middle East and North Africa says the growth has been impressive globally. One of the key strengths of the company is its channel strategies and the rapport that has been nurtured with the extensive partner networks on a one on one basis.

Ali elaborates, “Netgear has been a fast growing company globally. We have been seeing year on year growth of around 28% while globally it has been higher and been maintaining steady revenues along with healthy margins. This growth is being achieved together with our partners who have been selling our products for many years now. They have faith in the quality and performance of these products and they are happy with the way Netgear has dealt with them in terms of margins, protection and the personal touch provided in the relationships with partners.

Netgear has a growing portfolio of products which include storage, switches, security, access points and controllers and software. The company has relentlessly expanded its several product lines and is rated as the leader in the NAS market under 25,000 AED by Gartner. While Switches have been one of the core areas for Netgear as a Net-working company, Security has been a growing focus as well. These are all important parts of the jigsaw that Netgear has constructed to meet the need of its customers.

Netgear focuses on continuous value addition to cater to the needs of our customers. Some of the instances include the 5 years warranty initiative on its products, integration with VMWare platform on the storage side, inclusion of PoE in switches, 10 Gigabit uplinks etc.

The company’s

Steadfast tomaking technology affordable

Netgear has been consistently growing its networking and storage products portfolio and its channel business in the region. In a conversa-tion with VAR Magazine, Ali Ahmar, Regional Director ME at Netgear reveals the com-pany’s steadfast commitment to delivering technology that is affordable for customers which is one of the company’s USP competitive advantages.

Ali Ahmar Regional Director ME, Netgear

In Focus | Netgear

17

objective includes constant innovation to offer great Tech-nology at affordable prices and its recent launches exemplify that. Among its latest product re-leases include four new 12- and -24-port NETGEAR ProSafe Giga-bit L2+ Managed Switches with PoE+ connectivity. The latest ad-ditions are perfect for companies and organizations that require intelligence at the network edge and are also extremely cost effective components with converged voice, video and data networking solutions.

Ali says, “Many IP telephony and IP camera deployments are still limited to Fast Ethernet switching, which enterprise vendors push on midmarket organizations because their Gigabit and PoE+ offerings are cost-prohibitive. Underscoring our commitment to smart IT, not big IT, NETGEAR Intelligent Edge managed switches now deliver reliable, affordable and simple Gigabit technology backed with lifetime support.”

Netgear is focusing on strength-ening those best practices and policies to make sure the com-pany delivers more clarity in its channel strategies to minimize the conflict in the channel. This is

one of the major initiatives especially in this region from

the vendor to ensure that partners continue to be compensated equitably for the work

they are doing, that they are able to keep seeing busi-ness growth

opportunities working with Netgear.

Ali adds, “We also want to make sure that partners are not competing amongst themselves but rather with the competition brands in the market. We will be simplifying the channel process in the region.“

Netgear is targeting a higher growth rate in the region than the global growth rates of the company. The vendor is quite bullish about the Middle East which is still relatively better placed than many of the other regions worldwide.

Ali explains, “The Middle East is part of the emerging markets and has a large youthful popula-tion that is quite Technology savvy. So we have a selection of products that appeal to them and cater to their needs like the Push to TV which is a wireless connectivity to stream anything from your Laptop to the TV. We have Range Extenders for users wherein you can use the power plugs to extend the range of wireless connectivity.”

To add to it, the governments in the region are keen about boosting the SMB sector, which

is a significantly large segment in the region and is a strong focus for Netgear. In order to sustain growth, these companies need IT infrastructure that keeps the TCO on the lower side and at the same time does not curtail their growth.

Ali says, “Netgear fits best in this scenario with products that offer very high quality and are at the same time very affordably priced. This is the essence of the philosophy behind Netgear’s vision to offer IT products that simplify installation, mainte-nance and management for the SMB customers. It ensures that these companies do not have a huge CAPEX investment and also their OPEX investment remains manageable.”

While Netgear sees itself as hav-ing seen reasonable success in the home networking segment, the company believes that it is very ideally positioned to leverage the great potential in the SMB sector, especially so in the Middle east region. One of the priorities for the company therefore would be to actively look at covering new territories in the region where the vendor hasn’t enough visibility as yet. In other words,

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Thriving onchannel loyalty

OPTI UPS specializes in modular UPS systems till 3000KVA and a wide range of redundant 3 phase UPS sys-tems with special emphasis on longer autonomy designs. They also provide Networking PDU’s, Software controlled ATS’ for varied applications and have a growing reach in the SOHO and SMB markets. Kamlesh Kumar Amesur, Sales & Marketing Director-MENA at OPTI UPS Middle East discusses some of the recent launches

What have been some of the standout successes for the company in the past couple of years?OPTI UPS has been highly suc-cessful in penetration & winning some of the key projects with Government, Banks & Oil & Gas institutions recently. We have also recently opened our exclusive retail showroom in main computer market in Khaled Bin Waleed street- Bur Dubai and a fully equipped state of the art service centre on Shaikh Zayed road to further support our partners and end users.

Elaborate on the green series UPS products and the success

you have seen with the cat-egory in terms of sales?Last GITEX we launched our Green Modular UPS series having a scalable range upto 400KVA catering to the Data Center & Telecom application markets with high efficiency features, lowest power consumption & heat signatures accompanied with full touch screen color smart LCD and extensive diagnostic features all built

Kamlesh Kumar Amesur Sales & Marketing Director-MENA, OPTI-UPS

In Focus | OPTI-UPS

19

within the smallest foot print. They are TIER 4 category Data Center designed UPS systems and offer the lowest MTBR rates with Hot pluggable, Hot swap-pable and Hot Scalable features offering highest UP TIMES to mission critical applications all at very aggressive prices afford-able to one and all. Most of our 3 phase UPS sales are now from this category due to its attractive price/ performance ratio.

What are the key attributes that have contributed to the company’s growth?We adapt quickly to market de-mands and technological trends and pay utmost attention to our QC. This helps us keep our RMA low and cut out unnecessary af-ter service expenses. We pass on the financial advantages in terms of aggressive prices back to the partner and effectively the end user benefits from getting a high quality product at truly afford-able prices. We also attribute our success to our hard work, timely response to the most complex inquiries and immense support from our loyal partners.

Discuss growth in other prod-uct categories?OPTI UPS has been also very strong in the Inverter market and Customized UPS solutions. We work with some of the niche

industrial sectors who have varied UPS demands which are not manufactured as regular Off the shelf products. We sit down with the contractors and engi-neers and design these made to order UPS systems due to our engineering and manufacturing strengths with the principles.

Discuss some key highlights of your partner programWe conduct regular Product training seminars for our key partners and ensure that new models and their USP’s are well understood and passed on to the end user. Consulting the right UPS solution for the right kind of project is of prime importance so that the end user gets the most benefit commer-cially and technically. Our loyal partners and system integrators have stuck by us since they trust our quality, our commitment to serve them and our deep knowledge on the subject. We also ensure they are financially well supported by us and are rewarded by healthy margins for their valued efforts.

Describe your go to market strategy in brief?With our new retail showroom ready & local stocking facilities, we are planning to effectively develop and bring on board new partners from the local channel. This is our major focus for 2012.

Which are the major verticals/ segments that have been the most successful for you so far?Banking, Telecom, Corporate, Oil & Gas / Industrial sectors have contributed majorly to our core business and we are always ex-panding our reach & penetration.

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What is the vision that has in-spired the company’s growth since its founding?Having been established in 2008 with a mission to be a true value added distribution company, Optimus has in the last four years been successful in establishing itself as a true value added distributor. In its channel centric approach, Optimus helps leading technology; telecom

and services providers across the world leverage its local expertise, skills sets, network and financial strength to create business revenue streams.

As a value added distributor, Optimus provides value for its vendors and channel network of resellers, system integrators and solution providers across Middle East and North Africa Region. In the last four years, the distribu-tor has brought to the channel a whole portfolio of products which are not only technologi-cally superior but also conform to the latest industry standards worldwide.

We have created a strong team of technically and commercially qualified professionals with the

skills, knowledge and exper-tise to execute the vision of a dynamic organization that stand at the forefront of the regional technology landscape. We have rolled out unique value proposi-tions such as Wafa, Primero, Optimus on Cloud and Optimus Academy for the channel in the last 12 months. Optimus has been receiving consistent recog-nition from global vendors like

Swivel, Novell, Suse Linux ,Avaya, Netgear, Molex, and Interquartz etc in furthering a value focus in their regional channel.

What are some of the key highlights of the journey travelled so far?Optimus has, in a short span of 4 years, managed to be a strong contender for regional business, competing with regionally and globally established distribution corporations. A result of such a success story is evident from the recently won the coveted two industry awards for the Best VAD category for its value-added services, channel growth initia-tives, training programs, support services and strong commitment to its vendors.

Meera Kaul, Managing Direc-tor, Optimus Technology & Telecommunications has been a champion of customer centric technology and ITES ecosystem in the Middle East North Africa region for the last 12 years. Having focused on evolving a value- centric distribution network in her role as the owner and Manag-ing Director of Optimus for the last four years, Ms. Kaul has been instrumental in growing Optimus’ business across the Middle East and Africa by introducing global vendor’s portfolios to an enabled value channel. In the following conversation, she elaborates on the vision that has shaped the swift growth of Optimus in the VAD space

Building theexpertise to leadMeera Kaul

Managing Director, Optimus

In Focus | Optimus

21

What have been the chal-lenges along the way and the shifts in directions as the industry evolved further into areas such as cloud comput-ing, video conferencing etc?Optimus started out as a VAD for the telecommunications sector and evolved over the last four years to add several networking and security products and solu-tions as well as cloud computing services. Optimus also partnered with Cloud Security Alliance to be a certified trainer for the Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) examination.

Optimus has, through the path of its evolution, kept itself ahead of the regional technology curve by investing into creation of a very strong Technology research practice internally. This practice has been able to project Optimus’ business to a globally relevant technology space. Optimus has maintained its thought leadership in con-junction with its thought leader-ship position in a consistent manner. Therefore predicting market changes, requirements and positioning of newer tech-nologies into the local market has been an important part of Optimus value add proposition.

What are the areas of core competence for Optimus in its VAD business? Optimus provides a unique con-nection to collaborative business building opportunities within

the channel that help resellers keep pace with the changing demands of today’s top markets and deliver superior solutions to their customers. By leverag-ing our unique position at the centre of the channel, we’re able to build deep and lasting rela-tionships with top technology suppliers, software vendors and service providers that translate into competitive strengths for our partners--at every point of the sales cycle.

Optimus is one of the few Value Added Distributors in the region that has executed the value model in its essence. The ser-vices we provide include chan-nel partner capacity building through channel credit facilities, training sessions and channel enablement on new technolo-gies and products and driving end customer engagement to increase business for partners. Optimus provides to our channel a full service partner portal to facilitate online support and redressal of channel business. We also support partners with lim-ited financial abilities to execute large business deals. We are also one of the few distributors who offer local stocking options to our channel.

Through Optimus Academy, we train, support and strengthen our channel qualitatively on behalf of our vendor partners.

Last year, we launched WAFA, our

loyalty programme to acknowl-edge our performing channel partners and value their growing business with us. WAFA is a tiered Loyalty program launched to reward our loyal partners by en-suring that the more they spend with us the more they earn back. Through this program, our chan-nel partners are able to earn and redeem the accumulated points for conducting business with Optimus.

What is the outlook and focus for the future?Optimus will focus on mar-ket capacity building in the newer technology models while strengthening our portfolio by addition of more IT insfrastucture and security products to further cater to our reseller solution sell-ing requirements.

Optimus will also spearhead Cloud based services enable-ment in our market by ensuring world class skill enablement and education of our partners so that they are ready for the new business models being rolled out worldwide.

Optimus will be collaborating with several local educational institutions and ISPs to bring more product based expertise to meet a growing demand usable skill sets in implementation and usage of new technologies. The first of these ventures will be rolled out in the next quarter.

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As digital data continues to see an explosive growth, storage needs in the consumer seg-ment and the workspace are witnessing a steep growth curve. Manufacturers of digital storage products are among the greatest beneficiaries of this phenom-enal growth. SanDisk is ideally positioned to be at the centre of this growth story as a leading manufacturer of Flash storage products that cater to storage needs associated with usage of devices of different popular form factors including smartphones, cameras, PCs, Laptops and Tablets. As a brand, SanDisk has a growing appeal as a manufac-turer of a portfolio of innovative products that are known for their reliable quality.

Tareq Husseini, Regional Sales Director at SanDisk MEA says,

“ SanDisk executives had once said that flash is everywhere. How true this has become. With the growth of portable devices like tablets, mobiles and cameras the demand continues to grow. SanDisk produces manufactures and assembles all the com-ponents in our products. This makes SanDisk products more reliable and all the components are designed to work together. Besides SanDisk is continuously investing in new product re-search and development to push the boundaries of what flash can deliver.”

With the various memory card categories, SanDisk seem to be riding on the related boom in those product categories such as digital cameras, recorders, Mobiles etc. SanDisk has either kept pace or outperformed the

growth in some of those product categories. Compared to its direct competitors , SanDisk has set a scorching pace of growth.

Tareq says, “SanDisk as the leader in flash memory technology has maintained its leadership position through the research and development programs within the organization. This has allowed SanDisk to launch products to support the ever increasing demand for storage and in some cases have products available before the host device manufacturer has released the

Seizing theinnovation edge

SanDisk continues to innovate across a range of Flash stor-age product categories and is ideally positioned to lead in its domains.

In Focus | SanDisk

Tareq Husseini Regional Sales Director MEA, SanDisk

23

product. This focus and investment has en-sured we stay ahead of the competition with industry leading products.”

While Flash storage catego-ries have seen an impressive growth, SanDisk continues to also hold its focus in its popular Sansa range of music players and has unveiled very tiny players for convenient portability. Tareq elaborates “The Sansa MP3 range is an integral part of the product portfolio. SanDisk has recently introduced a new player called the Clip Zip. It is designed to enhance the current Clip+ range and offer superior playback performance. This includes FLAC, WMA, AAC and many more. It is a tiny player with a clip that can be attached to your sleeve. This is ideal for active people looking to listen to music or audio books while working out.”

True to its legacy of innovation, SanDisk continues to provide value even in categories like the USB Flash drives. A dogged determination to provide differentiation even in highly commoditized categories places SanDisk apart from its competi-tors. These strategies continue to pay dividends as the brands is one of most preferred in catego-ries that it is present.

Tareq says, “The USB category will continue to grow and deliver value to SanDisk’s overall performance. The trend is for more capacity and more security.

SanDisk is well positioned

to provide these re-

quire-

ments with capacities of up to

64GB available and secure access software available on all the drives. Although many tend to see the category as highly commoditized SanDisk continues to offer added value to the product.”

SanDisk has also incorporated a software layer in its USB products that adds further utility. The manufacturer is definitely reinventing the handy USB flash drive category with these nifty additions.

Tareq adds, “The cloud Catcher software is available on all USB products. The benefit of this soft ware is it will allow users to download their specific data be that storage files or e mail onto their USB drive and have access to it from any location provided there is a connection.”

SSD drives seem to be a segment that is getting stronger by the day with several Notebooks brands now offering SSD configurations as well as the increasing acceptability of the form factor among enterprise us-ers. SanDisk is seen as one of the

strong contenders in the space with its launches.

SanDisk recently launched its Extreme version of the SSD. It is available in 120GB/240GB and 480GB capacities. This product has been well received in the enterprise and reseller markets and has benefitted from some very encouraging reviews. SanDisk in the MEA region has been very active in creating demand generation programs in the retail channel. This can be seen from the recent Dubai Shopping Festival promotion where the consumers had the opportunity to win up to AED 40,000 in prizes. Prior to that, SanDisk had a promotion for cus-tomers to win Ford Mustang cars and shopping vouchers. SanDisk also has several initiatives in place to drives visibility and recall in the consumer market.

“SanDisk continues to gain visibility in the store with the educational memory headers we place in stores. These act as silent sales people helping consumers make informed choices when buying memory,” adds Tareq.

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SonicWall is seen as one of the leading network security brands, confirmed also by the fact of its recent acquisition by Dell to beef up its growing security portfolio. SonicWALL has been ranked in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner and has a relentless commit-ment to its customers to bring products that are easy to install, configure and manage.

Maintaining its competitive advantage, the company offers solutions that suit medium-sized to large enterprises. As of today, SonicWALL has deployed over 2 million devices working across various networks, protecting millions of users and garnering a market share of over 40% in the Middle East. SonicWALL launched its wide array of prod-ucts focusing on next generation firewalls, secure remote access,

Web and e-mail security, backup and recovery, WAN Acceleration, Wireless Security and policy and management solutions. The product line ranged from TZ, NSA, E-Class and SuperMassive for small to medium to large enterprise networks respectively.

Shahnawaz Sheikh, SonicWALL’s Regional Director for Middle East, Africa and Turkey says, “While the Next Generation Firewall Tech-nology is the popular buzzword in the industry and SonicWALL was one of the first to introduce the NGFW in the SME space. There have been key feature en-hancements on most hardware platforms from Network Security, Wireless, CDP, Email Security and Secure Remote Access offerings.”

As the entire market is poised towards moving from UTM’s to

Shahnawaz SheikhRegional Director, META, SonicWall

Next Generation Firewalls, Son-icWALL already started reaching out to its existing customers, explaining the benefits of next generation firewalls and to trade-in with Secure Upgrade Plus program (which offers a new generation hardware with 2 or 3 years subscription services at a very affordable cost towards hardware upgrade. In the last 15 months the company has introduced the WAN Accelera-tion solutions for head-office and a branch-office connectiv-ity to be used to optimize the WAN performance. The launch of Mobile Connect to support IPhone, Android etc., is another move towards supporting mo-bility along with cloud based applications. Last but not least is the launch of Kaspersky AV as an option to protect PC’s and Servers within the network. With

SonicWall has seen significant success in its pursuit to recog-nized as a leading brand in advanced network security and data protection

Committed toexcellence

In Focus | SonicWall

25

this the customers today has an option to choose between McAfee and Kaspersky AV, fully integrated with Next Generation Firewalls offering a compre-hensive perimeter and desktop security.

SonicWALL has seen significant success in the Middle East re-gion, reflecting its growth world-wide as well. Today SonicWALL boasts a strong, fully qualified channel partner community in all countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

Shahnawaz says, “There have been plenty of milestones in this journey between 5 – 6 years starting with investing in right resources, having the right set of distributors and channel partners to cover the required markets from time to time. The regional move has been strategic, wit-nessing the gradual revenue and brand equity growth. The initial focus was in few selected major markets of GCC, which then expanded on to Levant and North Africa.”

He adds, “As a first step, building a strong channel community across the region was key to reach out to customers across various different verticals, which started acquiring SonicWALL products and services to mitigate security threats. Over a period of time, pre and post sales infrastructure was built, the team size increased to address the growing needs of chan-nel partners and customers. New innovation and product

technologies kept the channel community excited, giving them an opportunity to go after newer markets and newer verticals or existing customers with new state-of-the-art technology that became the need of the hour, hence giving them additional business opportunities to grow the SonicWALL revenue within their existing or extended cus-tomer base.”

SonicWALL continuously invests in the Middle East channel. Son-icWALL recognizes the valuable role that its channel partners bring and continuously invest time and money in growing the skill sets in every city in the Middle East market -through its on-going channel training, with CSSA (technical certification) and CSSR (Sales certification).

SonicWALL partners under the Medallion Partner Program are exposed to many benefits. Some of the key engagements with channel partners are on channel trainings, certifications, supporting the channel partners, conduct POC’s with success and many other benefits that are part and parcel of day-to-day engagement. SonicWALL says it has constantly delivered a true value to its channel partners by ensuring the required busi-ness tools are available at their disposal that can help them conduct business with profit-ability and sustainability. Some of the key attributes of our channel engagement are:a) Trainings and Certificationsb) On the field support to help

them win businessc) Ensuring their profitability without compromising quality of service towards their customersd) A streamlined pre and post sales infrastructure to support current and future business

Shahnawaz says, “SonicWALL is a 100% channel company and it brings all, 100% all business opportunities to the channel and services via them. Additionally, the margins are healthy with a good channel support extended via the Medallion Partner Pro-gram which keeps the partners in grip to be committed to grow and expand their SonicWALL businesses. SonicWALL strives hard to take the complexity out of the product at the engineer-ing level, bringing the products that are easy to use and manage. This helps the IT Managers to manage even a complex deploy-ment in a streamlined manner, using easy to use and manage interface. SonicWALL with its vast install-base exceeding 2 Million devices across the globe makes it a sturdy and reliable solution protecting over 40 million users that vouch for this strong brand with a state-of-the art technology.”

In Summary, SonicWALL in the Middle East has grown at a fast pace by acquiring tens of thou-sands of customers every year. As the growing testimonials from its existing customers suggest, this is a Brand that continues to deliver relentlessly to meet customer expectations.

MERA

Authorized Distributor

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Head Office: DESPEC MERA LTD | P.O.Box 61050, Jebel Ali Free Zone, UAE | Tel: +97148811191 | Fax: +9714 8811190 | Email: sales@despec.ae | www.despec.com

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