Milestone Systems has been holding technology events for partners across the world based on region-specific demands for more than 10 years. This year, MPOP took place at Kochi in India during 13-15 November 2019 that witnessed over 140 partners including some of the most successful IP video system integrators, resellers and distributors. MPOP India 2019 served to demonstrate the power of video technology through the advantages of open platform. The event discussed industry hot topics such as access control, intrusion detection, analytics and the latest network camera technology. “Leveraging India’s fast-growing economy and an increasing demand for security, Milestone Systems is committed and focused on capturing the untapped opportunities in India. We are here to offer various open platform solutions to meet our end users’ security and non-security needs. Events such as MPOP serve as a great platform to further strengthen our partner relations and overall network across the country,” said Ritesh Deokar, Country Manager India, Milestone Systems. At the event, Milestone Open Platform Community partners also showcased their Milestone-integrated solutions (integration with XProtect®) such as the latest IP cameras, server and storage hardware, video analytics, cloud solutions, access control, wireless, body worn cameras and perimeter protection. The event also saw many ‘India first’ technologies such as Eins, InnerRange, Boring Lab, Quanergy and Awiros as part of the Milestone Systems portfolio. Sharing his experience at the event, Kandarp Jhala, Business Head, Safety and Security, Sigma-byte Computers Pvt. Ltd. stated, “The event offered an unparalleled opportunity for education, networking and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. It helped partners like us learn several effective ways to generate new business leads and gain a better understanding of how the Milestone Systems community creates the best video solutions for their customers. This year’s MPOP was full of great information and updates on both strategy and portfolio. The partner and customer success stories shared were also highly valuable.” “MPOP in Kochi provided an excellent opportunity for the world’s leading manufacturers and experts from the open platform community to come together to showcase technologies and solutions that are integrated to the open Milestone Systems software platform. I never knew that there are so many solutions built on the Milestone Systems platform. We are very excited about the future of the video technology industry in India,” said Gaurav Mangal, AGM Head SBU – Security & Surveillance, Toshniwal Industries Pvt. Ltd. Deokar concluded, “We have been contributing to India’s flagship program ‘Smart Cities Mission’ initiative, and we are glad that participants have learned more about the infinite integration possibilities with Milestone Systems’ video management software XProtect®. In the coming years, together with our partners, we look forward to working with both government and private partners to build smarter and safer cities that will go beyond security for the future.” MPOP is a region-specific initiative where Milestone Systems provides in-depth sessions for business partners and IT professionals to share trends and technological advances in video management. Milestone Systems also conducts frequent partner training programs, events, learning days and webinars to help partners align with the latest trends and gain better understanding of the Milestone Systems community.  

End-user spending on public cloud services in India is forecast to total $3.4 billion in 2020, a 25% increase from 2019, according to Gartner, Inc. This double-digit growth will position India as the No. 3 country for end-user spending on public cloud services. China and Indonesia will be the countries with the highest growth rates in end-user spending on public cloud services in 2020. “Moving to the cloud and investing in public cloud services have become imperative to the success of digital business initiatives. It’s no longer a question of ‘why,’ but a matter of ‘when’ organizations can shift to the cloud,” said Sid Nag, Research Vice President at Gartner, “We have entered the cloud 2.0 era, where organizations are adopting a cloudfirst or a cloud-only strategy.” Cloud application services (SaaS) remains the segment where end-user organizations in India will spend the most and will represent 42% of overall public cloud services end-user spending in 2020. End-user spending on SaaS cloud application services in India will total $1.4 billion in 2020, an increase of more than 21% year over year. Organizations are moving their legacy applications to SaaS because it provides them with the flexibility of subscription-based consumption, in contrast to expensive license-based on-premises consumption models. “SaaS adoption is associated with a lower cost of entry, which is one of the reasons for the high investment in this segment in India, which is a price-sensitive market,” said Sid Nag. The next wave of changes that Indian CIOs foresee is consolidation in the cloud services market. “The disinvestment in data centres by small and niche cloud service providers has increased the opportunities for hyperscale vendors, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Alibaba, to disrupt the cloud infrastructure services market rapidly,” said Sid Nag. Market leaders such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and IBM currently dominate global cloud infrastructure services market, and will retain the lead as the market grows. Gartner predicts that, by 2021, 90% of global enterprise customers using cloud IaaS will take a multicloud approach. “Multicloud and hybrid approaches are becoming inherent to cloud adoption. Organizations want to take full advantage of best-of-breed solutions, and are therefore working with one or more cloud service providers,” added Sid Nag. Gartner clients can read more in the report “Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2017-2023, 3Q19 Update” Gartner, Inc. is the world’s leading research and advisory company and a member of the S&P 500. They equip business leaders with indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities today and build the successful organizations of tomorrow. Their unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the issues that matter most. They are a trusted advisor and objective resource for more than 15,000 organizations in more than 100 countries – across all major functions, in every industry and enterprise size.  

Axis Communications concluded their three-day annual India SAARC partner summit – Axis Innovation Summit 2019 in Abu Dhabi. The summit, a combined event for the entire region, provided a platform to interact with key Axis channel partners from 5 countries as well as the Axis leadership team both from the region and Sweden. The event also helped facilitate a platform for technical showcase, and understand the challenges of key partners and cross pollination of ideas among key partners. The conference hosted interactive discussions around the growing importance of security in different verticals – retail, manufacturing, critical infrastructure, and education etc., in-depth panel discussion on innovation in cyber security and how it is interwoven with the organisation’s physical security needs, growing importance of surveillance in the middle-east, demonstration of new product launches and company’s vision, and way-forward. Axis Communications also felicitated their loyal partners and distributors for outstanding works in their respective fields. Speaking on the success of the Summit, Sudhindra Holla, Sales Director, India and SAARC said, “With a rich lineage of over 35 years globally and a strong Indian presence from 2007 we understand the pulse of the Indian market. At Axis Communications, we consider channel partners as our extended family and our strongest support system Axis Innovation Summit 2019 in Abu Dhabi Stimulating the Channel Partner Ecosystem in building customer relationships. We owe a significant amount of our success to our partners and we believe in recognising their efforts and contributions. Axis is a strong channel focused organisation and our association fosters company’s growth and helps in achieving our vision.” This Summit created a platform to share insights on how Axis can support them in leveraging new market opportunities both for small and mid-sized businesses. Additionally, a view on the business strategy, product innovations and solutions were also discussed in depth. The summit provided the channel partners and distributors an opportunity to engage and interact with top management from Axis Communications.  

BCD International, Inc. has recently received the commercial license from the Dubai Development Authority and thereby the company will open its Middle East branch in Dubai Internet City, Dubai in January 2020. The office will serve as the regional headquarters for Video Storage Solutions (VSS). VSS, one of BCD’s major divisions, will expand its global presence in the Middle East, Turkey, Africa & India (METAI) region to supply video recording and storage appliances to authorized security distributors of the region. These appliances are already engineered for video surveillance. “We are excited about the fantastic opportunity that our new Dubai Internet City office brings. As our client base and partner relations continue to grow in the Middle East, the decision to expand our physical presence is a logical step in order to be able to work more closely with them” -Rohit Khubchandani Regional Sales Director, BCD, METAI. “Along with the importance of proximity to our customers, this move also demonstrates a major commitment to the marketplace and ongoing growth of our company. Located in the heart of Dubai, the new location will serve as a regional hub enabling the company to service current clients more quickly and address the growing demand for our pre-engineered video recording appliances with guaranteed performance,” said Rohit Khubchandani, Regional Sales Director, BCD, METAI. VSS’ portfolio of video appliances come pre-engineered with Milestone XProtect®, Seagate SkyHawk surveillance grade drives, and its state-of-theart Storage Accelerator which significantly increases storage scalability, performance and reliability for Milestone Systems projects.  

Matrix Comsec, a leading manufacturer and provider of telecom and security solutions, has been awarded with the Dun & Bradstreet Business Excellence Award 2019 in the mid-corporate segment for Excellence in the Electrical and Electronic Goods category. Matrix received this award for achieving superlative all-round performance in terms of quality and efficiency in all functions including R&D, manufacturing, marketing, sales and finance. SME Business Excellence Awards 2019 is a joint initiative by Dun & Bradstreet and RBL Bank for recognizing and felicitating the leading SMEs and mid-corporates in India. The awards were presented on 20 November 2019 at Hyatt Regency, New Delhi. On winning this prestigious award, Ganesh Jivani, Chief Executive of Matrix said, “Matrix is focused on designing and manufacturing world-class cutting-edge security and telecom solutions for modern organizations. Matrix offers these solutions in more than 50 countries including many first-world technologically advanced nations. With 250+ R&D engineers and world-class infrastructure and equipment, Matrix is committed to R&D and cutting-edge products. This award is a validation of Matrix’s world-class innovation and design capabilities. I thank all our customers Matrix Wins the Dun & Bradstreet Business Excellence Award 2019 and channel partners for their trust in Matrix and congratulate the entire Matrix team for this outstanding achievement. This recognition would encourage us to work harder towards building future technologies and products.” There were stringent yardsticks and tough competition in all sectors as the awards were decided by eminent jury on various parameters of performance and best practices across the industry. The parameters considered for the awardees were total income, net profit, net worth, net profit margins, and growth in total income, growth in net profit, return on net worth and return on assets, among others. Front-runners in various categories were chosen on the basis of a composite score of the weighted parameters. This is the tenth edition of the Dun & Bradstreet SME Business Excellence Awards to recognize the contribution of high-performing Indian SMEs and their contributions to increasing the adoption of technology by organizations across the country. The Awards showcased the achievements of the winners on a nationwide platform, and also lend them global credibility through the D&B worldwide network. The event was graced by senior management from SMEs, government institutions, banks, financial institutions and tech companies.  

Netrika Consulting India Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading risk management and fraud investigation company, has recently entered into a partnership with Skytouch Global Hotel Security Consulting of Australia to exclusively undertake security audit as per the Sky Touch’s ‘Global Lighthouse Certification Program’ in hotels located in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. “Security is globally a prime concern for travelers, and more so for corporate C-suite personnel and high net-worth individuals. We are proud to partner with Sky Touch Global to deliver world class audit services of hotels in India and other parts of the world. Security audit of hotels is a niche service and we are confident that we can effect a positive transformation in security standard and frameworks of hotels in our territories” – Sanjay Kaushik, MD – Netrika Security audit and certification of hotels is a globally accepted risk mitigation tool. It is preferred for C-level executives and high profile guests. The certification also provides a security framework that meets expectations of global travellers. Globally, the hotel market was valued at $147.57 billion in 2018 and is expected to generate around $211.54 billion by 2026. For business travellers form a significant segment of the market, security is and will continue to be of prime concern from business perspective and otherwise. “We are proud to enter into a strategic partnership with Netrika, India. Netrika is now the authorized auditing partner for the Global Lighthouse Certification Program in Central Asia, North Africa and Middle East. With offices in Delhi, Dubai and Singapore, Netrika will conduct Sky Touch audits in over 15 countries. Together, we are confident of making hotels in this part of the world safer for travellers” – Stefan Vito Hiller, Founder – Sky Touch Global Netrika Consulting is a premier risk mitigation & forensic investigation firm offering a bouquet of services including corporate fraud investigation, cyber security, forensic audit, forensic due-diligence, and background checks including employee screening, third party screening and vendor due-diligence for its clientele of large domestic and global corporates operating in the country. Today, Netrika is one of the largest Indian consulting companies with unparalleled spread of team across India, including tier 2 & 3 cities. Netrika is well poised to become the biggest consulting company in the next 4-5 years and has plans to go global. Sky Touch Global is an Australia based independent hotel consulting firm specialized in hotel risk management. Founded in 2013, Sky Touch operates globally to conduct risk assessment, auditing and certifying hotels and providing specialised training programs in security. Global Lighthouse Certification Program – Sky Touch’s branded hotel security certification, is the first security certification for hotels that focuses purely on guest expectations. It provides security solutions and certification suitable to most hotel segments.