NetApp To Expand Partner Network
Storage vendor NetApp is now looking at expanding its partner base, especially in the tier-2 cities.“So far, our strategy was to strengthen our business in the top six cities and three key verticals—government, Telco and BFSI. We are now keen on expanding our partner base in tier-2 cities,” said Surajit Sen, Director, Channels, Marketing and Alliances, NetApp India. “We will also focus on high growth verticals like healthcare, media and manufacturing.”
The vendor is taking a solutions-centric approach to sell its storage offerings. “We are keen on signing partners that have strong competence in virtualization, Sharepoint integration, ERP and CRM,” said Sen.
To create awareness about its products, the vendor has set aside funds to open partner-led center of excellences (CoEs) in major cities. It has already set up two such CoEs, one at Hyderabad with Locuz Enterprise Solutions and the other at Mysore with Wipro. These centers would showcase NetApp products along with solutions from some of its large partners like Microsoft and VMWare.
NetApp’s claims that its recently refreshed range of products offers enhanced storage management tools. Sen opined. “Even our entry-level PAS 2000 series comes with deduplication capability built-in. This will give our partners an edge in selling our products.”
In a bid to further endear itself to its key partners, the vendor has launched a unique program to sponsors sales and technical staff to work with the partners. “We hire, train and pay salaries of the staff, but they work as the employees of our partners. So far, we have sponsored six such resources. We plan is to hire and train 12 more this year,” informed Sen.
Training and certification is also top priority. “We plan to organize extensive technical training boot camps of 10-day duration, which would offer free certifications to partners’ technical staff. This would be an extensive lab-based certification program held twice every quarter. Key partners would be allowed free access to such camps,” he added.

Netmagic Seeking Partners For Cloud
Managed service provider Netmagic Solutions is looking to channel companies, including resellers, ISVs and service providers, to sell its cloud computing services to customers. The company has recently launched an enhanced version of its cloud computing service—termed Cloud 2.0—based on Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform. Cloud 2.0 enables full online provisioning and management. It is also completely elastic, allowing customers to pay as per their usage.Netmagic plans to OEM its cloud services portal to partners so that they can customize their offerings and sell them to their customers.
“The majority of sales in India happen through relationships, and channel partners have a good connect with customers. Netmagic provides them a good opportunity to offer their own brand of cloud services using our infrastructure. We will have a revenue-sharing arrangement with them,” explained Sharad Sanghi, CEO, Netmagic.Netmagic plans to target resellers, ISVs and Web development companies in all tier-1 and tier-2 cities in India. It currently has a channel presence in six cities—Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune.
The company has a weak presence in the north and east, so it will be looking to enhance its presence there, informed Sanghi. He said Netmagic will also increase its focus on ISVs because the number of software applications that can be potentially served through the cloud had increased significantly.
According to Sanghi, Netmagic is looking at a 250-300 percent growth in its cloud computing-related revenue over the next two years. Currently, cloud computing services account for just 2 percent of the company’s overall revenues, but it hopes to take this figure to 16 percent over the next two years.
“When we first launched cloud computing services in 2009, we were expecting startups, Web developers and companies looking for DR sites to take up these services,” recalled Sanghi. “Surprisingly, mainstream companies also became our customers, and we were serving them for some applications such as online marketing campaigns, market data feeds, and Webcasts of events like the T20 World Cup—all activities which were business-critical. We have acquired more than 100 customers in just one year, and the growth potential is huge.”

HP Targets Mobile Market With Virtualization Buy
HP appears to be enhancing its mobile PC and smart device strategy with the acquisition of certain virtualization technologies from Phoenix that could be a nice fit with its future PalmOS strategy.Phoenix Technologies, the California-based software best known for its BIOS technology, said that Hewlett-Packard has agreed to purchase the assets related to its HyperSpace, HyperCore, and Phoenix Flip instant-on and client virtualization products.
HP will pay $12 million in cash for the assets once the deal closes, which is expected to happen sometime this month.While the three technologies HP is acquiring could apply to a wide range of HP's product portfolio, their most immediate application could be on future mobile PCs and smart devices resulting from technology HP is getting with its acquisition of Palm.
HP in April said it plans to acquire Palm, maker of the PalmOS operating system and related smartphones, for $1.2 billion.
Because the Palm acquisition has yet to close, HP has yet to disclose specific plans for how it will use the PalmOS technology. However, HP is widely believed to be planning to use it across a wide range of new mobile devices in the future.
In such a case, the new technologies from Phoenix could fit well with those plans, especially given HP's strength as a vendor of mobile PCs and its potential for expanding into the mobile device market.HP is acquiring three specific virtualization technologies, along with related intellectual property and assets including the software development team, from Phoenix.

IBM in talks to buy Storwize for $140 mn
CALIFORNIA: IBM corp is in talks to acquire U.S-Israeli data storage company Storwize Inc for $140 million, Israel's TheMarker financial news website reported on Sunday.
Storwize, which develops online data compression software that increases storage space in network storage environments, has raised $40 million since it was founded in 2004, the report said.
TheMarker said the deal was expected to close by the end of July.Storwize officials could not be reached for comment.
Investors in Storwize include Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Tenaya Capital, Tamares Group and Tokyo Electron Device.

Kingmax Announces Portable Hard Drive KE-91

Kingmax introduced its first portable external hard drive KE-91 recently.

The 2.5-inch SATA drive includes a 2.0 USB interface, 256 bit AES encryption technology, and file backup and enhancement software.
The drive has one mini USB port that supports plug and play. It boasts of 480Mbps (USB 2.0) and 3Gbps (SATA) data transfer rates. It is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista, Mac OS 9.x, 10.x or higher and Linux 2.4 or higher.
Available in black, gray and red colors, the drive weighs 170g and is available in two capacities 320 GB and 500 GB at Rs 3,200 and Rs 4,250 respectively with authorized distributors.

Symantec Enhances SMB Security Portfolio
Security solutions vendor Symantec has launched the enhanced version of its SMB products portfolio, Symantec Protection Suite Advanced Business Edition in India. The enhanced portfolio will provide SMBs with more comprehensive protection including endpoint and messaging security as well as desktop, laptop and server backup and recovery to ensure business continuity.
“Cybercriminals are going after SMBs, and those who are only using antivirus as a security solution are not protected completely, putting their businesses at risk.  Today’s SMBs need complete protection that can be easily deployed and managed while providing the highest level of protection,” said Vineet Sood, Head, Channels and Alliances, Symantec India.
The new portfolio also features hosted options for email and web security and new lower pricing for Symantec Protection Suite Small Business Edition.  In addition to protecting various endpoints, the suite can prevent data loss with advanced content filtering at the mail gateway.  In case of an outbreak or a system failure, the suite’s backup and recovery capabilities will help customers recover individual files and folders or complete Windows systems quickly, even to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments.
The suite will protect endpoints like laptops and desktops, provide messaging security, and can prevent data loss with advanced content filtering at the mail gateway. In case of an outbreak or a system failure, the suite’s backup and recovery capabilities will help customers recover individual files and folders or complete Windows systems quickly, even to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments.
It incorporates real-time security intelligence from the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, which provides early threat warnings and automatic backups when new threats emerge.
To simplify IT administration and enable lower TCO, SMB’s can purchase and manage backup, recovery and security for the entire organization in a single suite. The suite can be deployed with minimal disruption to a customer’s IT environment. Symantec Protection Suite Advanced Business Edition will be available in a SaaS model with add-on options for hosted email and Web security from Symantec Hosted Services.

Seagate Announces Momentus XT SSD For Laptops
Seagate has started shipping Momentus XT drive—claimed to be the world’s fastest 2.5-inch laptop PC hard drive, combining SSD-like performance.
The drive boots up to 100 percent faster than traditional 5400RPM drives. It combines a 7200RPM spin speed, 4GB of solid state memory and Adaptive Memory technology that learns and optimizes the drive’s performance to each user by moving frequently used information into the flash memory for faster access.
“We see the Momentus XT drive as a game changer, a product heralding a new generation of hard drives that combine SSD and HDD capabilities so that laptop users don’t have to make trade-offs on speed, cost or capacity,” said Dave Mosley, Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management, Seagate.
Asus’ new gaming laptop, Republic of Gamers (ROG) G73Jh will offer the Momentus XT drive as an upgrade option.

HP And Sify To Jointly Offer Cloud Services
In a bid to gain a foothold in the nascent but potentially vast cloud computing market, HP will allow Sify to leverage its channel network to promote its newly-launched cloud computing service in the SMB market. The cloud computing service jointly launched by the two companies is based on HP’s Converged Infrastructure, and offers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS on an on-demand basis to customers.
According to Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP India, “The industry is shifting rapidly, and going forward customers will adopt a dual model of IT infrastructure. They will have certain applications and infrastructure in-house, while others will be consumed as services. We want to expose our channel partners to cloud computing, and help them be prepared because this will be a big revenue-generating opportunity for them.”
Ghose said Sify was keen on leveraging HP’s ISV partner ecosystem for developing applications which could be hosted on the cloud. Applications such as mail messaging, industry-specific ERP, billing and payroll will typically be the ones initially considered for cloud adoption, he informed.
According to Ghose, certain micro-verticals in the SMB segment were expected to be the early adopters of the cloud computing service. “Health care, education, travel & tourism and broking are areas where you will see a lot of interest for on-demand cloud computing. Some verticals such as travel have seasonal spikes, and therefore their interest in and utility for an on-demand computing model is substantial.”
Ghose said that organizations were also increasingly interested in adopting virtual desktops due to the security and higher ROI they offered compared to traditional desktops.
On the pricing of the service and benefits of the service to its partners Ghose said that these details were still to be worked out, “but they will be sufficiently attractive for partners.”
Sify’s cloud computing service is based on HP’s Blade System Matrix which pools together Sify’s IT resources into a highly automated and virtualized resource pool. Specific application templates automatically provision resources for every new business requirement. Business users can request IT services on the fly by using a self-service portal powered by the HP Insight Orchestration tool within the Blade System Matrix.
“HP’s Blade System Matrix is meant to simplify the adoption of technology for customers. All the complexities that exist are internal to the system and are not exposed to the customers. It is important to have that level of simplicity, otherwise it is difficult to take any service to the market,” explained Ghose.