Confed Concludes Annual Summit

The second Annual Summit of Confed-ITTA concluded in Kodaikanal. The two-day
event that begun on December 13, 2008, saw the convergence of more than 400
channel partners from 17 IT associations across South-Coimbatore, Erode,
Dindigul, Vellore, Trichy, Madurai, Salem, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Tirupur,
Kanyakumari, Nilgiris, Puducherry, Chennai (ITTA & Sneham) Cholamandala and
Karur. The summit was inaugu­rated by Raja Govindasamy, Principal, Thiyagaraja
Arts College Madurai.

President speak

In his presentation to partners, S Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITTA
thanked CAMS, Madurai and Microsoft for their help in forming Confed-ITTA. “But
for Microsoft's raids on partners and CAMS action to resist it by convening an
all association meeting in Madurai, Tamil Nadu IT Association (TANITA) wouldn't
have been born. Later, during the meeting in Puducherry, hosted by ITTA on April
15, 2008, Confed-ITTA was born,” Karthikeyan remini­sced. He also mentioned the
Confed-ITTA mail group that was started by PN Prasad, VP, Confed, which paved
the way for excellent communication among the members of Confed-ITTA.

According to Karthikeyan, Summit 2007 was one of the major achievements of
Confed-ITTA during 2007. He added that the Nagercoil, Tirupur and Cholamandala
associations were formed after being inspired by Summit 2007. He mention
Prasad's contribution in bringing in the Bhopal association to Confed and giving
it a national status. He recalled the incident involving Lenovo and Acer, due to
their tenders with Electronic Corporation Of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) in providing
desktops and laptops at a subsidized rate and explained the activities that
Confed undertook during those time to the members of Confed gathered at the
summit.

Karthikeyan informed that Confed-ITTA currently has around 1,000 members from
17 associations including two associations from Madhya Pradesh.

Areas of importance

Defining the key areas Confed needs to focus on this year, Karthikeyan
mentioned Com-Com, providing statewide service and Confed-ITTA branding
activities. He said that the formation of Com-Com has been well discussed and
debated among the members of Confed and it would be taken forward only if a
majority of partners wanted to. He stressed the need to take quick decisions on
branding Confed-ITTA, where the logo of Confed would be present every­where,
starting from their name boards to the customer invoices.

Expanding horizons

Speaking on the theme of the year 'Expanding Horizons', Prasad explained why
partners should look beyond the stereotypical way of doing business. “Partners
need to increase the goodwill of the company and try to include service in their
portfolio, which remains neglected in most companies,” Prasad claimed. He told
partners to change the way business is done and anticipate more changes.
“Primarily an organization should have a 7-S frame­work, which includes
structure, system, staff, shared goals, style, skills and strategy,” he said.

On the areas that the partner should consider expansion, Prasad sugges­ted
that servicing large clients, offering SaaS model, open source, training, retail
format store, distribution, application software and support, security,
surveillance products, e-services and green technologies would be some of the
areas that partners can look at. According to him, mergers and expansions was
another good way to grow in the industry and partners can look at options like
cross selling between other partners.

While the main sponsors like HP Procurve and Samsung made their product
presentations, Microsoft chose this platform for interacting with the partners,
where Vipul Sant, Director-Original Software Initiative, Microsoft India spoke
about the legal issues involved in using pirated software's in the companies and
selling it. He addressed the issues of partners in selling the original
software's of Microsoft. The summit also saw Chennai-based Sneham and
Cholamandala associa­tion joining Confed-ITTA formally.

Ethical practices

On the second day of the event, the proceedings started with sponsors Lenovo,
Akruthi Software and Cooler Master making their presentations. Followed by the
vendor presentations, all the associa­tions under Confed's belt were asked to
make presentations on their activities.

New team of Confed-ITTA: (L-R) Meenakshi Sundaram, Joint Secretary; Vinod Kumar, Treasurer; A Muthuswamy, Secretary; PN Prasad, President; C Balakrishnan, Secretary; P Shanmugam, Joint Secretary

Partners at the summit

S Prakash, Secretary, Confed-ITTA made a presen­tation on the ethical
business practices followed by members of Salem IT Association. Prakash stressed
that all channel partners need to deal with only ethical people in the channel
industry. He also noted that tampering with MRP stickers is strictly against the
law and asked partners to return materials immediately to the distri­butors or
vendors if they felt any malpractices in MRP stickers. “The dealers also need to
understand that no vendor or distributor operates in the market with lesser
margins and the channel needs to wake up in this aspect,” Prakash stated.

Insurance policy

There were a couple of other interesting presen­tations on the insurance
front, where K Babu, Coordinator for Insurance Tasks, Confed-ITTA said that
Confed has insured its members and their staff for Rs 59 crore and requested the
new associations that joined Confed to insure themselves and their staff
members. He also reques­ted the other members, who hadn't insured their staff
members to do so at the earliest. Suresh Kumar Soni, CEO, Auro Enter­prises,
Puducherry, also an insurance agent, made a presentation emphasizing the
importance of insurance to each and every individual citing the examples of the
four partners who died in various accidents this year.

Confed-ITTA also awarded students who won the paper presentation contests
conducted in memory of late Avudayappan, AH Saleem, Ponnarasu and Senthil, who
died in various accidents last year.

New team

In the final session of the summit, the new team of Confed-ITTA under Prasad
took charge from the current team. The new team felicitated the previous team's
office bearers by awarding them certificates of excellence for their activities
in Confed.

Prasad said that the new team would try to implement the ideas proposed by
the former President-Karthikeyan and his team. The other office bearers-C
Balakrishnan, VP; A Muthuswamy, Secretary; Vinod Kumar, Treasurer; Meenakshi
Sundaram and P Shanmugam, Joint Secretaries expressed their thanks to members
and the confidence in taking the fede- ration forward. The previous team,
including Karthikeyan, will remain as advisers of Confed.

Rendering his vote of thanks, Prasad thanked the sponsors of the
event-Microsoft, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, Akruthi Software, Gofrugal Technologies,
Syntesia and Cooler Master for their support in the event. He also thanked the
members of Confed-ITTA for attending the summit and making it a grand success.
Prasad thanked Coimbatore IT association for bringing in sponsors; CAMS Madurai
for taking care of the event in Kodaikanal; Erode, Salem associations for
working for this summit and the Executive Committee of Confed-ITTA for their
continued support.

NR Sethuraman

(sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in)