Discuss the Red Vault?
The Red Vault is really one of a kind initiative and encompasses multiple objectives. The Red Vault is a proper 80 ft container which has been transformed into a datacenter; it has a briefing centre and includes a showcase of every flavor of the hyperconverged platform, the journey to the cloud and how you secure the cloud environment. The front is a see through interactive LED panel. The datacenter is captured imaginatively on this panel. It is very intuitive. We are having this positioned across the region. It has been capturing imagination in social media etc. The intent is to offer customer a ‘wow’ factor and an easy interactive experience of everything in the datacenter and the latest in technologies which is easy to understand. There are about 25 solutions showcase and this will continue to grow.

How does it benefit the partner and his customers?
The operational value for a partner is that he can provide a proper PoC to his customer. It is possible to showcase a preview or simulation of how the journey to cloud could be. We can set up and showcase a lot many solutions as to how they will operate in his network. It is a live working simulation centre which is why we call it an innovation centre.
We are talking to ISVs to bring in their applications forte. We are inviting students to come and get an experience; we will offer internships going forward. So there is the purpose of technology showcase, a strong focus of PoC, of innovation, of training etc that are included among the key objectives.

How can this be replicated in other location?

The facility is now being expanded to Redington Value’s branches in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Nigeria. We use some collaborative technologies so while we have the datacenter here, in other locations, it will do to have a video wall wherein they can connect live to the datacenter and when a consultant demonstrates something here, it will be shown live and available in the other location. They can showcase something in the remote location by using collaborative technologies to access the datacenter. Therefore, we can recreate this in multiple solutions.

What do you think is the key outcome for you as a distributor and how has the responses been?

We are bringing differentiation. We expect the channel to take advantage of this. We want to play a critical role in training and facilitating transformation among our partners. The response so far has been wonderful.

Elaborate on the consulting practice that has been set up?
We have also set up a consulting arm called Uniplum. Part of the Redington group, it is however a separate company. Uniplum consists of a team of technologists and problem solvers from different verticals and solutions with an ability to inform, explore and confirm decisions, solve complex problems and bring new ideas into the market.
It will focus in three areas- Big Data, IoT and cloud transformation. these are primarily areas wherein you can take solutions to market successfully if you don’t have consulting expertise around the domains. That is because in the case of these solutions, you have to talk to LoBs and not the IT heads. Consulting is an integral part of the solution offering in these domains without which you cannot participate in such opportunities.
The most important aspect is to enhance our partners’ abilities to sell these solutions. And to do that they need to understand what the underlying business problems are, and there comes the need for greater consultation and collaboration.

Discuss the success of your cloud initiative?
We had also launched RedCloud last year which is now enhanced- a self service aggregation and billing platform. Today in addition to AWS and Microsoft, we have several other service providers whom we are getting on board the platform. With the platform for aggregating cloud services and the consulting layer on top of it, I believe we have a great go to market model. The response to the Red Cloud has been good and we expect some significant momentum over the next year.

Called the Red Vault, the centre fully integrates more than 40 different solutions from numerous vendors, thereby making it the only such facility in the region with a multi-vendor environment.
The innovative new solutions centre will create a platform for existing and new partners and customers to get trained in vendor-authorised training centres.

A soft launch of the solutions centre was held at the company’s headquarters in Dubai in January. The facility is now being expanded to Redington Value’s branches in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Nigeria.

The announcement comes as Redington Gulf, by far the largest distributor of IT products in the Middle East and Africa and a growing force in Turkey and CIS regions, plans to expand into new markets and strategically position itself as a value-added distributor for solutions.

The strategy behind setting up Red Vault is to position Redington Value into playing a much bigger role in speeding up its partners’ and end customers’ IT transformation journey. “We want to play a critical role in training and facilitating transformation among our partners,” says Ramkumar Balakrishnan, President, Redington Value Distribution.

He explains that Red Vault is an attempt by Redington Value to create a unique facility within the industry, especially in this region, for its partners and customers to get hands-on experience in the functioning of every possible mainstream IT Solutions in a live environment, aided by a giant display.

“Connected to our specialised training centres, the Red Vault shows technology in action and brings it closer than ever,” he says.

The fully functional solutions centre, with one of the largest interactive transparent display in the region, is currently operational at the Redington Value headquarters in Dubai, UAE.

The company’s solutions span across traditional technology domains such as networking, voice, servers, storage, software, security and infrastructure, even as it plans to grow more aggressively, catering to the newer growth potential areas such as Internet of Things (IOT), mobility, cloud and hyper-convergence.

The integrated touch panels of the solutions centre will connect to fully operational control and training rooms running live demos of various solutions such as Oracle’s ZFS Storage, xSeries servers, DB appliance, virtualisation software, enterprise manager and Oracle Cloud; Virtual Computing Group solutions such as Dell EMC’s VxRail and Vx Rack, Vmware’s software-defined data centre, virtual VSAN & NSX; security applications such as Trend Micro Deep Security & Deep Discovery Platform, Malware Bytes, Entrust, Cyberark, Check Point, Barracuda and Fortinet; Enterprise software solutions such as Red Hat covering virtualization, IaaS (Internet as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and JBoss Middleware; Disaster Recovery, Backup, Monitoring and Migration solutions from DoubleTake & Veam; Public Cloud services including Amazon Web Services and Azure; and hardware solutions such as Sonicwall, Fidelis Security, Alcatel Lucent, Fortinet and HPE Converged System and Networking.

“The key milestone that we have for ourselves is to elevate Red Vault – the solutions centre and the whole approach of building solutions – to the mainstream. The idea is to attempt to help our partners and end customers in the transformation journey. So being a catalyst in transformation of the channel and its enablement is really at the core of what we do at Redington Value. A visit to our office offers a chance to look at all these different technologies, to see and test the whole environment,” says Balakrishnan.

Earlier this year Redington Value moved its offices into a more strategic location situated opposite the Dubai World Trade Centre, primarily to cater to its partners and enable them to get their end customers to visit the premises and showcase the solutions being built.

At last year’s Gitex Technology Week, Redington Value launched RedCloud, an integrated cloud solutions platform offering customers a one-stop solution for all their Enterprise Cloud requirements. Among the key highlights during this Gitex Technology Week will also be the announcement of new vendors for the RedCloud and the company’s expansion into new markets.

Gitex Technology Week will be held from October 16-20, 2016, at the Dubai World Trade Centre. Redington Value stand will be located in Hall 3, #C3-1 at DWTC.