In My Opinion:
S. ‘Soma’ Somasundaram, President & CEO, Dover Energy
CIO Insights:
Michael L Capone, Corporate VP of Product Development & CIO, ADP
View Point:
I.P. Park, EVP & CTO, HARMAN International
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Startup of the Year: Financial Technology
Vasant Ramachandran, Co-Founder & CTO, Daric
WORKDAY: The Enterprise
Cloud of Choice for HR
and Finance
Aneel Bhusri, CEO
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Cover STORY
Startup of the Year
16
Pg 20-25
Financial Technology Connecting lenders and borrowers through technology Vasant Ramachandran, Co-Founder & CTO, Daric Cloud Security CipherCloud: Easing Security Concerns in the Cloud Pravin Kothari, CEO
Aneel Bhusri, CEO, Workday
CIO INSIGHTS
CXO VIEWPOINT
Pg 27-36 32
Three Disruptive Trends Influencing the Innovation Pipeline of the Future I.P. Park, HARMAN International
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The Consumerization Revolution: Redefining Business, Redefining IT Somesh Singh, NetIQ
37
Robert Worrall, CIO, NVIDIA Corporation.
Michael L Capone, Corporate VP of Product Development & CIO, ADP
38
Security Should Be Looked at With a Service Perspective Gary Eppinger, Supervalu Communication Services Redefined Badri Rajasekar, TokBox.
Cloud Computing ScaleXtreme:The Cloud and its Infrastructure Management on a Single Platform Nand Mulchandani, CEO
In my Opinion 06
CEO SPOTLIGHT 12 Himanshu Bhatnagar,
CEO, Excellicon 13 Ashish Pandya, CEO, Infosil 14 Sheeroy Desai, Co-Founder
& CEO, Gild Inc. 44
42
CEO VIEWPOINT
Jeff Theiler, SVP & Chief Information Security Officer, Hancock Bank
Entrepreneur's Corner Naveen Bisht, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE), Silicon Valley
Made in Silicon Valley Ashok Chalaka, OnChip Devices
VC TALK Vinod Bidarkoppa, Director (IT) & CIO, Tesco HSC
Driving Profitable Growth in a “Multi-Speed” World S. ‘Soma’ Somasundaram, Dover Energy
26 Healthcare in Focus
Parag Shah, Hercules Growth Capital
08
VC Chakra
10
IN FOcus siliconindia
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December 2013
siliconindia Editor-in-Chief
Harvi Sachar Managing Editor
Christo Jacob Editorial Staff Anamika Sahu Dylan D'Souza Durgesh Prakash Nandini Mukherjee Mewanshwa Kharshiing Rachita Sharma MewanshwaSandeep Kharshiing RachitaChristuraj Sharma Sen Sagaya SandeepSingh Sen Sagaya Sudhakar VigneshChristuraj Anantharaj Sudhakar Singh Vignesh Anantharaj
Sr.Visualiser Ashok kumar Sr.Visualiser Ashok kumar Circulation Manager Magendran Perumal Circulation Manager Magendran Perumal Visualisers Ranjith C Visualisers
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November 2013 volume 16-11 (ISSN 1091-9503) December 2013 volume 16-12 (ISSN 1091-9503) Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc. Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.
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siliconindia’s circulation is audited and certified by BPA International. siliconindia is available through mainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Tower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores in major Indian hot spots across the U.S. The magazine is also distributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, Internet World and PC Expo. siliconindia
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December 2013
Editorial A Peek into an Entrepreneur's Mind
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iliconindia is 16 years old -- yet as we grow, we still aim to retain the nimble, adaptive culture of a startup. We have always admired the power of entrepreneurship and continue to highlight its substantial impact in the U.S. in terms of innovation and economic growth of the country. Let’s peek into how these entrepreneurs are buckling themselves for the rollercoaster ride in these changing times. Currently the growth trajectory the startups follow is all about “Lean”. Lean is all about fast, validated learning. It's a simple but powerful ideology for building a business and today a lot of entrepreneurs are adopting this Lean strategy to take their product to the market at a quicker rate. This month, we have chosen to celebrate the startup world -- and to encourage you to join it and know more about how innovative startups achieve break through at a faster pace. Ambitious entrepreneurs such as Daric’s Vasant Ramachandran, CipherCloud’s Pravin Kothari, and ScaleXtreme's Nand Mulchandani have played a key role in reviving the wider economy, so we have devoted few pages narrating their stories of how they built their successful startups and are helping the enterprises. We also have the successful tale of Human Capital Management and Financial Management Cloud software company Workday founder Aneel Bhusri. Bhusri is one of the most successful Indian entrepreneurs who was quick in building his startup, winning the investors mind and leading his company to one of the most successful tech IPOs of the year. Workday debuted on NYSE in October, 2012 with an initial offer at $28 per share and raised approximately $628 million in the offering and was valued at a whopping $4 billion, making it one of the most successful tech IPOs of the year. We've also pinned down some of the most inspiring CXOs and CIOs to discover what they are looking for and how they are executing the multi-channel strategy which can become successful only when technology becomes a key enabler to implement the strategy. Let's hope they inspire you to take the plunge yourself. Please do let us know what you think. Christo Jacob Managing Editor editor@siliconindia.com
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Driving Profitable Growth in a in my opinion
“Multi-Speed” World By S. ‘Soma’ Somasundaram, President & CEO, Dover Energy
Dover Energy provides highly-engineered solutions for the safe and efficient extraction and handling of critical fluids worldwide in the drilling, production and downstream markets. The company is a segment of $8 billion diversified global manufacturer Dover Corporation (NYSE:DOV)
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t’s a well-acknowledged aphorism that the only constant in the business world is change. However, in recent years our ways of looking at and quantifying change as it relates to market growth have been modified, thanks, in large part, to the global economic crisis that hit in late 2008. Fast forward to 2013. Markets around the globe have recovered from the 2008 collapse at different rates, while the collapse itself strongly affected a lot of the traditional growth dynamics, leading to the creation of what I call a “multi-speed” business climate. In the past, it was often enough to know “how” to compete and drive market growth. In today’s climate, it is much more important to know “where” to compete. This means drilling down into a market to identify the areas that have the most potential for growth, and knowing that growth within the overall market will take place at multiple “speeds.” Additionally, companies that know “where” to compete in a given market consistently are shown to grow much more significantly than companies that simply know “how” to compete. A perfect example of this is the recent “boom” in United States oil and natural gas production. A decade ago, only the most astute members of the U.S. oil and gas industry knew what the word “shale” portended for the future of domestic exploration, production and supply. Now, “shale” has become a permanent part of the industry’s lexicon. In fact, the historically high amounts of oil and gas that are now being produced in unconventional shale formations in the U.S. led PIRA Energy Group to recently predict that by the end of 2013, the U.S. will be the world’s largest liquids (oil, natural gas liquids, condensates) producer, a status that would have been unthinkable as little as five years ago. In other words, companies operating in the oil and gas industry now know “where” to compete. The challenge, then, for leaders in all industries is to develop a focused plan that will drive profitable growth from that knowledge in a still-tricky S. ‘Soma’ Somasundaram economic environment.
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Get Granular
Knowing “where” to compete is only half the battle. To maximize your growth potential, you need to take more than just a macro view of an industry. The historic ways of planning for growth do not work anymore; you now need to implement a more granular approach. Going back to our previous example, it is insufficient just to know the overall growth rate of the U.S. oil & gas market, because within the market you have different regions of the country that are producing oil and gas at much different rates, and through the use of much different drilling and recovery technologies. There are multiple basins within a market and not all basins are growing at the same rate; some may even be declining. And while all of this is happening domestically, an eye must be kept on the wider global market, identifying the areas like Central Europe or China that might be poised to experience a similar shale boom, and other areas, like Europe, where the potential for growth might be adversely affected by excessive regulation and other political realities. In other words, deeper analytics are required to take a micro view, break down markets by sub-segments, applications, geography (regions, countries, states, districts, counties, cities) and customers. Using the power of data and analytics will help you develop a deeper understanding of what it takes to win in each sub-segment of the market, which will enable you to more effectively capitalize on a multitude of growth opportunities.
Aligning Talent With The Task
In the end, a growth strategy will only work if the right people and the right number of people are in place to execute it. This requires new thinking. Traditionally, a large emphasis of the sales person’s job was on social networking, going out to meet people and building relationships that ideally
lead to an increase in equipment sales. That’s not good enough anymore. It’s not about social skills alone, it is about having the innate drive and passion to make an impact, then understanding where the opportunities lie and capitalizing on them. In other words, growth is a behavioral thing, a type of mindset and orientation. Therefore, when you identify a market primed for growth and develop plans to participate, you need to insert people into that market who are “growth” people, meaning they possess a specific set of characteristics, such as an adventuresome nature, willing to experiment, continuous learning, adapting to changes or a willingness to take a calculated risk. You need to align growth leaders with your growth areas. Somebody who only follows a strict process may not be the type of person for a high-growth environment, you want somebody who can think ‘outside the box.’ Keeping that in mind, it is important to hire people who naturally possess significant elements of the growth mindset. For many years, hiring has been more of an art than a science, but to drive growth in the current economic climate you have to identify a potential employee’s personal behaviors—What motivates them? What drives them? — and whether or not they possess that growth mindset. Much like analytics can help determine areas of market growth, assessing and collecting as much data as possible can help create a more scientific and effective hiring process. Aligning your resources is a continuous process; those who have shown the ability to perform well in a high-growth environment should be reassigned to the next high-growth environment. High performers must also be rewarded and recognized appropriately to keep them motivated.
Review And Follow-Up
So, you’ve identified your areas for growth, developed the plans and have the right people in place. Now, it is time to plan for the unexpected, as even the best-laid plans can fall victim to the vagaries of the market. That is why monitoring progress through frequent reviews of where your company is winning or losing when compared to the plan are
Knowing “where” to compete is only half the battle, to maximize your growth potential, you need to take more than just a macro view of an industry required. Countermeasures that have the ability to get the plan back on track must also be created and deployed when the progress falls short. In the final analysis, growth does not happen by itself. It is through active and focused leadership that companies will be able to drive growth, successfully and profitably through the new realities of the multi-speed business world. siliconindia
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December 2013
Freshdesk secures $6.99 Million in Series C Round Funding
Aurigo Software bags $6.3 Million Funding
os Angeles, CA based Freshdesk, a provider of SaaSbased customer support platform to enterprises has secured $6.99 million in Series C round from Accel Partners and Tiger Global. The company had raised Series B funding of $5 million from the same investors in April Last year also raised $1 million in Series A from Accel Partners in December 2011, it had. Thus, with the current round of funding, a total capital of $13 million was raised by Freshdesk. The company was founded by Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and Shan Krishnasamy, CTO in 2010. Mathrubootham holds an MBA from the University of Madras, has earlier worked with Zoho Corporation. At Zoho, he met his co-founder Krishnasamy who was an engineering graduate from Thanthai Periyar Government Institute of Technology, Vellore and was a technical architect at that time. The company provides email and website integration customer support and also Twitter and Facebook support. With a customer base of 11,000 from over 18 countries worldwide; the organization caters to a clientele like MakeMyTrip, Pearson, Stanford School of Medicine and Toshiba, Kuoni and Amazon’s Goodreads to name a few. The firm has just introduced an integrated telephony feature called Freshfone which is a virtual cloud based contact centre software which allowing businesses to handle telephone based queries through its collective services such as work stations and mobile phones. Freshfone lets businesses directly talk to customers and keep a record of the conversations as well. Businesses can opt for a local number or a toll-free number. It is a single-window Girish Mathrubootham platform for receiving calls, transferring the call, triggering IVR, organizing tickets and more. “We will use the capital raised from this round for expanding further in the US market and also for marketing and sales activities,” says Mathrubootham in his intentions from acquiring such funds.
urigo Software Technologies Inc. has received $6.3 million as funds from four investors including venture capital firm and angel investors. “The capital will be used for product development and marketing. Balaji Sreenivasan Investors include venture capital firms and angel investors,” said Balaji Sreenivasan, CEO, Aurigo Software Technologies Inc. The company is a provider of capital planning and project portfolio management software, with plans to use the capital for product development and marketing. Aurigo, which was founded in 2003, develops a suite of business automation tools for capital planning, property management, capital project management, and collaboration and document management. Major agencies across the globe use Aurigo, to plan, manage and deliver hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of capital programs. Masterworks, the flagship product of Aurigo, is a leading capital planning and project portfolio management system that helps cities, counties, DOTs and other owners around the world to plan, manage and deliver over $100 billion worth capital programs. The company offers another cloud based product suite called Projectworks, which is used by document controllers and project owners to collaborate, communicate and share documents effectively. The Austin-based company is owned, managed and funded by individuals and private equity companies with vast investment resources and a long history of experience in starting successful software companies and managing software groups of large US corporations. The company stock is completely owned by the management and the founders of the company. Aurigo has established and expanded its corporate headquarters in North America at Austin, Texas, to keep pace with its growing traction and increased demand for its products and solutions in the US and Canada. Today, it also operates offices in Canada and India. Aurigo, apart from its offices, has state-of-the-art Research & Development and support centers in the United States, Canada and India.
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CIOReview siliconindia
September December 2013 2013
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India wants U.S. To Address 'Discriminatory' Clauses in Immigration Bill
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ndia has sought Congressional help in addressing its concerns over what it calls certain ‘discriminatory provisions’ of the comprehensive immigration bill, which if passed into law would adversely impact Indian IT companies. “One of the concerns, Indian businesses are seeking to address, and where the U.S. Congress can help them, is about the current debate, on restrictions on the movement of high-skilled non-immigrant professionals employed by Indian IT companies into the U.S.,” says Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Charges d’Affaires of the Indian Embassy in the U.S.. “These discriminatory provisions, if enacted, will essentially create a market access barrier for Indian IT companies in the U.S. and will not only cause damage to their operations, but will also impact the ability of U.S. companies, who depend on their services to innovate, grow and be competitive and affect the local economies.” India is benefiting from sending its skilled professionals to the U.S., and the combined trade and economic partnership could provide jobs for thousands of people across both countries. Today Indian top companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys and HCL employ well over 50,000 U.S.
citizens, and support more than 280,000 other local U.S. jobs. He also added that such Indian companies are integral to the operations of many U.S. companies as they are helping them in developing new products and improving operations Taranjit Singh Sandhu and efficiencies. Sandhu addressed the ‘Indian American Meetup’ event organized by the GOP Conference and the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the Capitol Hill and said, “These discriminatory provisions, if they are enacted, will essentially create a market access barrier for Indian IT companies in the U.S. and will not only cause damage to their operations, but will also impact the ability of U.S. companies, who depend on their services to innovate, grow and be competitive and affect the local economies.”
India will overtake U.S. in Internet Reach By 2014
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ndia has crossed the 200 million threshold for internet users in October and is expected to reach 243 million by June 2014, overtaking the U.S. as the world's second largest internet base after China according to a recent report. With China holding the first rank in the world by being hugely populated with around 300 million people who use internet in China; the U.S. currently comes in second with 207 million users. India, at present has 207 million internet users, but according to IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India), there are 205 million people who are not active users but only use the internet once a month. However, as per the statement given by Nilotpal Chakravarti who is the Associate Vice-President, IAMAI; keeping India’s current infrastructure in mind, India is really doing well in internet scenario. "There is every reason to believe that they will turn into active users in the near future." Internet penetration in India is mainly through mobile phones, as even the cheapest and basic handsets also offer siliconindia
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access to the internet. 70 percent of the rural India’s internet user populations access the web through their mobile phones. English language could be a barrier for internet use in rural India as they prefer to use it in local languages. College goers Nilotpal Chakravarti are the largest internet users and young men are behind in tally. Indians mainly use internet for communication as in the form of email and social media. This is indicated with India having 82 million monthly active users of Facebook. Evidently, the statistics further throw light that the second largest geographical region for the Facebook after the U.S. and Canada as Facebook does not operate in China. So, the report by IMAI can stand true that India is expected to reach 243 million internet users by June 2014, overtaking the U.S. as the world's second largest internet base after China.
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CEO Spotlight
Addressing the Complexity in the Evolution of the EDA industry Himanshu Bhatnagar, CEO, Excellicon
Excellicon is a privately funded EDA (Electronic Design Automation) company established in 2008 and headquartered in Orange County, CA.
Himanshu Bhatnagar
D
uring early 80’s, most semiconductor companies developed and maintained their own CAD software for chip design. In late 80’s, with the emergence of EDA industry, the transition occurred with semiconductor companies relying on commercial EDA software. The 90’s saw tremendous growth in the Semiconductor as well as the EDA industry, as more and more automated EDA tools became available reducing the chip design cycle. These commercially available synthesis tools enabled designers to describe design functionality at higher level of abstraction using languages like Verilog and VHDL and subsequently synthesize it into lower level hardware gates. The ability to synthesize massive amount of logic and automatically place and route it in relatively short duration gave rise to what is known today as siliconindia
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“System-On-Chip” or SOC. During this time, the sub micron geometries kept on shrinking at a fast pace. Each shrinking node of the technology introduced its own timing sign-off criteria such as increased number of timing corners and other parameters. Also, the fabrication cost associated with deep sub-micron technologies exploded. In order to mitigate the cost factor, most semiconductor companies design large SoC’s targeting diverse market applications and pack enough functionality in a single die so as
Semiconductor industries are in pressure to produce low power dissipation chips incorporating multi-functionality on a single die to differentiate themselves from competition. Today we are at a turning point where the process geometry is shrinking at a much faster rate than before. With bewildering number of devices and connected platforms, the unrelenting pressure on semiconductor industry is to produce chips with lowest power dissipation while incorporating
numerous functions on a single die; all the while doing that faster than anyone else in order to meet the ever critical market window. Change from the norm is generally resisted. However, with continued design cycle shrinkage, change is inevitable. Two components make up the chip design; functionality and timing. Excellicon was started with the realization that the continued rate of explosive chip production cycles cannot be sustained. There was a need for new generation of EDA tools that were more intelligent, sophisticated and provide higher level of automation. Management of vast amount of timing data during the implementation phase of chip design requires analysis and verification of the timing data. Excellicon uses disruptive technology to manage and to automatically generate the timing constraints needed for the chip implementation phase. Every year new companies announce cutting edge products that differentiate from traditional products. Some succeed while others do not. It is not just about the product but also about establishing market presence, working with customers who are resistant to change and finally a product that uses disruptive technology yet provides a gradual link to existing solutions. In the end it is all about sustainability, focus towards the goal and finally passion for what one believes in.
CEO Spotlight
Beyond One Million Apps! Ashish Pandya, CEO, Infosil
Ashish Pandya
El Dorado Hills, CA based Infosil, is a provider of mobile applications for IOS and Android platforms and a provider of performance next generation security systems for anti-virus, anti-spam, intrusion detection and other information security needs.
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earch, social and mobility have shaped all aspects of life in the last decade. Apple's iPhone changed the mobile landscape overnight and now there are over one million apps in the app store. Google's Android platform boasts nearly the same number of apps. There are hundreds of apps for even niche market areas. In five years the market has changed from being very conducive for indie developers to succeed to being very difficult for developers to rise above the noise and succeed. App discovery is a huge issue for new developers which can significantly hinder growth. We are now in an
era of a generation that has not seen life without computers, internet, and mobile phones. A phenomenal shift in use of these technologies, particularly smart phones and tablets, is upon us. One area that has been under served so far is education. There are estimated 10 million tablets available to students around the world and this number will explode to over 70 million in a couple of years as a large number of school districts adopt them. This presents an enormous opportunity for developers that understand the market and are willing to develop solutions in a systematic manner. Unlike the most visible consumer focused app market of casual games, education space offers opportunity to establish and build long term sustainable businesses. The key to success in this market is to have solutions that appeal to two distinct constituents simultaneously, students and teachers. Solutions that can excel in meeting the needs of teachers and can en- gage students have a great chance of success. New developers must treat their venture in the app space with a business perspective from the beginning. Understanding customer needs
It is imperative that apps have social elements built-in to enable viral growth and competitive landscape are critical as always but even more important is marketing of the solution. A strategy that relies on Apple or Google to showcase your app as a means for customer acquisition is unlikely to succeed on a sustainable basis given the number of apps released daily. Hence, it is imperative that apps have social elements built-in to enable viral growth. Equally important though are non traditional ways of creating awareness for an app to reach critical mass from where viral elements can drive growth. New ventures focused on apps for business, healthcare and education spaces are likely to thrive in the coming years.
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CEO Spotlight
Entrepreneurs Must Break Through the Noise Sheeroy Desai, Co-Founder & CEO, Gild Inc.
Based in San Francisco and with offices in Salt Lake City and Milan, Gild Inc. is the provider of a platform that helps companies hire skilled developers by ensuring that candidates stand out on their proven abilities. The company has raised a total funding of $12.7million from Baseline Ventures, SAP Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Mark Kvamme, TMT and Correlation Ventures.
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he hot trends in the industry will remain consistent as we move into the New Year. For instance, innovations in the mobile space will continue to disrupt how people do business and consumers live life. Big Data, which is an interesting trend, will transform every facet of life from education to healthcare to commerce. The fact is the quantity of data in the world is doubling roughly every 18 months. Currently there is a lot of misunderstanding about Big Data. In 2014, we will see a greater reliance on machine learning; a concept originally introduced in the 1980; to help us make sense of the data. The convergence of consumer and mobile technologies has created a dramatic change in the physical workplace. The most progressive companies are redesigning work processes by changing the way they handle functions ranging from HR to customer service to sales and marketing to IT. This redesigned workplace results in happier employees which ultimately equates to greater efficiency and productivity across the entire organization. Looking at the consumer side of the market, the whole retail experience is also going through a major evolution. We are seeing innovations in the way people book travel, reserve a taxi, order food. Even grocery shopping is
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going through a break-through change through the use of sensors. It is all about connecting people and information and more importantly interpreting and using that information to make the world a better place. The other thing is the adoption of technologies already proven in the consumer space within the enterprise. The adoption of mobile devices has enabled workers to work in a comfortable and productive way. Beyond nice mobile applications, greater use of machine learning in the
Connecting people and rightfully interpreting information is important to make the world a better place enterprise may be seen leveraging Big Data to work smarter.
Mantra for Entrepreneurial Success
The biggest challenge entrepreneurs face today is noise. It is really tough to break through the noise. Everyone is working on the next “big� thing. The question is how do you get in
Sheeroy Desai
front of your end market when that market is already being hit from every side? Entrepreneurs tend to focus exclusively on product development, funding and often forget the need to tap into channels that can help them create awareness among their end market. Things like marketing and public relations touch the physical world. It is not enough to simply come up with the next big idea but to figure out how to get that big idea to market. Another challenge entrepreneurs face today is finding the right talent. With so many companies getting funding today, finding and hiring the right talent is a growing problem. Increasingly we are seeing companies with fewer than 50 employees hiring a dispersed workforce drawing from a global talent pool. While this model can work early on, it can pose challenges as the company grows.
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COVER STORY
WORKDAY: The Enterprise
Cloud of Choice for HR
and Finance By Durgesh Prakash & Sagaya Christuraj
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Aneel Bhusri, CEO
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he 2012 saw one of the most hyped IPOs in the U.S. i.e., Facebook’s IPO. While the media went gaga, reporting and speculating every aspect related to Facebook’s big day, the ultimate result was rather disappointing as the company’s shares went plummeting down. The same year saw strong shares like Zynga and Groupon take a hit as well. It was safe to assume that 2012 was not a very forgiving year for tech companies. But away from all this media frenzy, there was another company that was steadily moving towards going public. Workday debuted on NYSE in October, 2012 with an initial offer at $28 per share. The Human Capital Management and Financial Management Cloud software company raised approximately $628 million in the offering and was valued at a whopping $4 billion, making it one of the most successful tech IPOs of the year. Today the company’s shares are at an all time high. Workday has also attracted a list of more than 230 prestigious companies across eight industries include manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, retail and hospitality, technology, education amongst others. This feat only illustrates the fact that Workday as a company commands
Emerging From Shambles
The gentlemen who have found so much success with their revolutionary handiwork had more than their fair share of meanders. Until 2004, Aneel, and his billionaire partner Dave who also shares a similar position had a great run at PeopleSoft, which was a company that provided Human Resource Management Systems, Financial Management Solutions, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Enterprise Performance solutions amongst others. But the software giant Oracle had plans to spoil their party. It required an antidote, from the two gentlemen and their crew even to attempt to free itself from what was going to be a hostile acquisition from the tech giant in 2004. After a titanic struggle from the two valiant men, a bid of $10.3 billion from Oracle acquired PeopleSoft and resulted in cutting off 6,000 of its employees out of the total 11,000. Adding salt to the wound was the fact that the rest of the board members had surrendered. This left a dejected Aneel and Dave licking their wounds. But just when the whole world thought the story was over and that both Dave and Aneel had been sent packing for good, the men surprised the cynics by resurfacing in 2005,
and they resurfaced with a bang. Using their own money, a reported ten million dollars, out of the $600 million Dave received from the buyouts, and additional funding from Greylock and Aneel himself, they began their new venture, Workday.
The Mantra for Customer Attraction and Retention
Most often Enterprise applications being used today are not built for today's dynamic business environment as they rely on a static and aging data model that was developed more than ten years ago. They are rigid, inflexible, and built with yesterday's technology. Enterprises are looking for a solution that can provide ondemand, hosted enterprise applications with native components that deal with governance, compliance, legislative and reporting tasks to these firms. Also in an enterprise people and
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immense respect from the industry owing to two distinct factors; its impressive technology proposition of delivering human capital management, financial management, and analytics applications and the enviable founding team. Headed by Aneel Bhasri, Chairman and Co-CEO along with Dave Duffield, Co-CEO who are seasoned industry veterans, the duo identified a big gaping hole in the HRM industry and went on to device an all encompassing cloud based solution to solve it. But the story of how the company got to its current position is one that makes heads turn around very often.
reducing the IT costs through its radical SaaS model. The company’s highly intuitive and collaborative solutions have attracted customers nd investors alike. A $75 million fund raised through New Enterprise Associates (NEA) back in 2009, saw a significant change in setting the ERP platform to leverage a big market opportunity. When Workday originally began its operations it was still into on-premise computing everywhere. But the greater shift towards remote based services offered them an unbeatable advantage of more software updates with lesser investments. Through right investments in HR system, the sweet spot to other system of records, accounting and order management systems, Aneel had hit the hit the bull’s eye as these were the areas that required more solution frameworks. The firm’s cloud integration platform which was unveiled in 2011,
Workday's services are cost effective involving robustness and hence alleviates the burden of maintenance
money spend a lot of time together as people drive financial performance, and financial goals drive people performance. The tech duo realized that there was no reason why enterprise would you run separate systems for HR and Finance since the two functions were counterintuitive. Aneel and Dave understood that enterprises required a solution that unified all these applications into one seamless system. Workday through its Human Capital Management (HCM), financial management, payroll and worker spend management is raising the bar on employee life-cycle productivity by
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intended to reduce cost and complexity associated with application integration. The glory road would begin by the platform operating at a scale of more than 100,000 integrations in the first quarter of 2011 alone. This enabled Workday’s customers and partners to run, deploy and manage custom integrations for systems and applications that connected to Workday. A testament to the above is Fairchild Semi-conductor which enriched itself with a fine grant through Workday studio which offers the user, a drag and drop facility of re-usable components to cope to integration building, and siliconindia
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Workday EIB (Enterprise Interface Builder) which provides a simple GUI to define inbound and outbound integrations without requiring any programming. As a result through 20 studio integrations and eight EIBs, the company successfully deployed HR, Payroll, time tracking and recruiting services across 17 countries in less than eight months. Workday currently serves nearly
The Exercising Mind
Aneel’s all round diligence and smart operative methods are making many big wigs of the industry a lot to think and implement to, as competitors. Technologies like Cloud, Hadoop, flash memory and many others, have made companies in using their strategic brains and aim at each other’s jugular and leveraging the same, Workday aims in bringing out a market-leading
Workday through its Human Capital Management (HCM), financial management, payroll and worker spend management is raising the bar on employee life-cycle productivity by reducing the IT costs through its radical SaaS model 300 businesses including Aviva, Chiquita, Time Warner to name a few. In 2010, the company reported $160 million in billings and doubling that to $320 million in 2011. According to Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman, Workday’s user base is now growing nearly 100 percent annually and what more the company is drawing clients from giants like Oracle and SAP. The reason for this big shift towards Workday was explained by Cowen and Company analyst Peter Goldmacher that Workday’s services offer to be of lesser cost and involves robust features and only act as pure service alleviating the burden of maintaining at a certain cost. Aneel however digs on the business point of view to reason out the shift. He percepts that as big players grow with establishment outlook, their innovative triumph slows down as they look for more profit margins and thus stop innovating favoring lesser investments.
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product through faster distribution. Aneel has certainly found the sweet spot to align his focus on large enterprises, against the conception of many experts that on-demand models in large accounts would be a push back. The fact that legacy players may not be keen on targeting to build on-demand systems, it is up to the new vendors to take on the service. As Workday tailors solutions to large companies, it is Aneel’s innovative methods that chugs the engine forward. Here the intention is a yielding one, as the software is configured rather than time bound customization to fit the customer’s business model.
Planning For the Future
The geography for Workday is expanding and it is a fierce challenge for the counterparts as the company aims out to build a global distribution channel in the next 24 months. Workday from being a one product company through human resource looks for an
expansion in the European market by shaping themselves as a multi faceted resource. With its financial products on demand and cloud to leverage, it is adding functional features with every update. On course, Workday envisions a potential in financial market surging ahead of the HR market in almost a double scale. Apart from this, realizing that analytics are impacting the data consolidation in a very feasible way, Workday has envisioned a Big data product that would inculcate all the data from HR and financial into one. Along with this, Workday has announced the move to Basho Riak NoSQL database technology from its existing usage of mySQL. Through NoSQL, a more efficient and distributed platform, Workday aims to store many petabytes of data across multiple data centers. These frequent innovations are a testimony for the company’s commitment to be dependable, and its commitment towards customer retention and in magnetizing more. Add to this the fact that the company rewards its employees through recognition programs which encourages a humble, hardworking and trustworthy environment in the firm which only helps it to be more customer focused.
Testament to the Warriors
Jim Collins’ once said “Great vision without great people is irrelevant”, and that would be the lesson that one should take back from Aneel’s story, so much so that this ideology seems to reflect even in the company’s visional towards people. It is evident that the company’s objective is to become an ERP Replacement company further highlighting the intensity of his competition with the established players. This time around the company has put its shields up to ward off any unwelcomed attempts at a hostile buy out. If a problem comes knocking at their door this time, ‘it will find the doors tightly shut’.
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Startup of the Year: Financial Technology
lenders and borrowers Connecting
through technology By Pankaj Kundwani
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he knock-on effect from the Great Recession has been compelling consumers, investors, and lenders around the world to reduce their debt by shedding assets, lowering spending, and halting lending, which in turn makes reducing debt harder and harder. The fundamental paradigm of finance has a lot of problems in its current space and people have to struggle a lot to access capital. Small businesses also find it difficult to get loans with reasonable interest rates in rough economic times. Small businesses and consumers
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alike have a very hard time accessing capital; there is a need to revolutionize the lending system by taking away all inefficiencies in the lending process that makes it expensive and time consuming. Reducing those cost with technology can actually make a difference. Redwood City based Daric is a technology based lending platform that connects people who are willing to invest in other people’s debt or other people’s business plans, to borrowers who are looking for loans at reasonable rates to make their small businesses grow. Founded in 2012, Daric is a web
based peer-to-peer lending marketplace that matches and connects investors to borrowers. The company has developed technology to automate the lending process that can save time and money. It helps investors earn higher returns and make their investments put to work faster, borrowers also can borrow at some of the lowest APR (Annual Percentage Rates) in the industry and receive money as early as possible.
Going Beyond the Traditional Financial Paradigm
Founders of Daric, Vasant Ramachandran, Greg Ryan and Cooper Dawson observed that there is a monopoly of traditional financial paradigm in the capital market, the large and small banks and the entire financial system that exists today really does not provide good lending services and are not very keen on handling customer’s responsibilities. In most countries, lending is primarily based on appreciation of the past. “Banks have a cumbersome process that really does not focus on the positives of someone’s ability to pay back a loan. Financial institutions look at the past credit history, credit profiles, trade lines and so forth which does not reflect situations like what the business is doing currently,” says Ramachandran, Co-Founder & CTO, Daric. Daric propounds disintermediation of banks and other financial institutions in the lending process allowing for financial technology to take the place.
It gives multiple funding options to the lenders and works at building proprietary algorithms to understand borrower’s and small business’s credit profiles in a better way enabling them to access capital whenever they are in need to grow or expand. It would also help the investors in diversifying their investments to increase returns and minimize risks. As borrowers pay back the loan, investors receive a steady income every month which could generate earnings for many investments that otherwise yield no returns.
Making Place for Technology based P2P Lending
Today we have humans doing what a computer algorithm should be doing; the finance teams in businesses think from a banking ground and are
Vasant Ramachandran, Co-Founder & CTO
running peer to peer lending platform just as an extension to online banking. They are following the same 100 years old methodology of understanding the credit profiles. Ramachandran has changed this by adapting a computer based and sophisticated approach to understand every aspect of an individual’s financial profile, their credit profiles and all those indicators which could help in assessing the credit worthiness of individuals and businesses. Daric consists of a team of engineers, technologists, product aficionados and entrepreneurs from MIT and Standford who are passionately dedicated to using technology to expand the horizon of peer to peer lending. One of the best things about services of Daric is that customers can load up money into their account and be relaxed. Daric will look after everything right from finding borrowers to running them through their eligibility checklist and manage the repayments. “We rely heavily on technology, external partnerships and additional PI’s and some other tools that allow us to understand borrowers beyond a mere credit report,” adds Ramachandran. The process at Daric is quick and simple. It starts from registration in compliance with federal law, adding a bank account to profile, and applying for loan. The application and financial history is then analyzed to determine if loan can be offered. If approved, the loan will be posted onto the Daric’s platform to await funding from investors. Once it is funded, the amount of the loan will be deposited into specified bank account. Daric will then facilitate the repayment process also. The Borrower Origination Fee is the compensation for the services that Daric provides. This fee is included in the APR calculation, and varies depending on the size of the loan and the financial history. Similarly the investment can also be made in
Automating the lending procees saves time and money helping investors with high returns two ways, using automated Portfolio Builder, or selecting individual notes manually browsing individual Notes.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
There are many peer to peer websites providing technology based lending platforms in the market but Daric aims at being fundamentally different. The existing competitors could be appreciated for creating idea of peer to peer lending, but they have largely failed to understand what makes a good borrower, understanding the correct profile and doing that in a truly disintermediating technology based approach. Looking at the market structure, about 98 percent of the market is still dominated by the traditional banks and institutions. The approach of peer to peer lending has already been tried successfully in the developing countries like Bangladesh where Muhammad Yunus won Noble prize for his microcredit and microfinance idea. The challenge for Daric will be to take this forward with technology as a base with an aim to provide a marketplace for those looking to generate return on a static asset to connect with those seeking credit in exchange for that return.
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“I
Startup of the Year: Cloud Security
f CipherCloud had existed ten years before, the cloud would have been comprehensively adopted today,” says Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and famously known as the founder of Mosaic, the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It is no wonder that Andreessen did not hesitate to fund $30 million for CipherCloud’s initiative, as the technology in question, had the power to redefine cloud computing with its cloud security solutions. With the cloud gaining more traction today, 25 percent of organizations are poised to use cloud information protection technology to gain its benefits on a safe basis. Answering to these needs is San Jose based CipherCloud, a provider of solutions that delivers cloud encryption and tokenization gateways that secure sensitive information in real-time. Under the leadership of CEO Pravin Kothari, CipherCloud works towards meticulously enabling organizations to securely adopt cloud applications by eliminating concerns that revolve around data privacy, residency, security, and regulatory compliances. The company stands today as an affirmation to harbor trust in the Cloud as its foremost goal. When CipherCloud was founded with the tagline to ‘harbor trust in the cloud’, the entire enterprise market was accelerating its move to Virtualization. Kothari hence envisioned the company to create solutions that enables organizations to safely and securely complete the cloud journey while maintaining a high level of security and retain control of information. The cloud security provider first hit the limelight when Kothari showcased CipherCloud’s offerings at the Dreamforce Conference in December 2010 by presenting a prototype of a product to recruit early customers and offer exposure for his new company. The startup landed the award of “10 Hot Cloud Computing Vendors to See at DreamForce”. The booth was a success with Kothari
CipherCloud:
Easing Security
Concerns in the Cloud By Vignesh Anatharaj
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If CipherCloud had existed ten years before, the cloud would have been comprehensively adopted today
Pravin Kothari, CEO
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Pravin Kothari leveraged his previous experiences and understanding of the security market to start and quickly ramp up CipherCloud to a comfortable position running the one man show for up to 10 hours a day for a total of four days.
Ramping Up by leveraging Past Experiences
Having already built four successful startups and the current being his third security startup, Kothari leveraged his previous experiences and understanding of the security market to start and quickly ramp up CipherCloud to a comfortable position. Furthermore, the exploits at the Dreamforce 2010 conference led the security provider to be chosen as the 'Most Innovative Company' finalist at RSA, the larg-
est annual security conference in the world. Ever since, awards and accolades have become a daily routine for CipherCloud. The cherry on the pie was placed in April 2011, when Gartner, the world's leading IT research firm, selected CipherCloud as a "Cool Vendor in Cloud Security". The CipherCloud product portfolio today consists of popular cloud applications that are out-of-the-box and provide for companies such as Salesforce, Chatter, Gmail, Microsoft Office 365, and Amazon AWS. Additionally, CipherCloud Connect AnyApp and Database Gateway enable organizations to extend data protection to hundreds of third-party cloud and private cloud applications and databases.
Offerings in Niche Verticals and Expanding Horizons
If awards are anything to go by, the company has rapidly built credibility among several industries where information protection is absolutely critical. CipherCloud now possesses a skilled team of 150 employees, a dozen industry awards and more than 40 Fortune 500 customers. Providing cloud security Solutions in Niche verticals are not much of a concern for Kothari as the clientele spans the verticals of BFSI, insurance, healthcare, public sector and high-tech industries. Trusting the cloud security provider’s prowess in the space, two top U.S. banks migrated their consumer loans
portal to the cloud, which is protected today by CipherCloud’s virtual firewall. CipherCloud today continues to grow into a global organization and has already spread its wings into the regions of Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Germany, New Zealand and UK. Servicing US and Canada as its main strongholds, the company has recently opened its European headquarters in London to help drive expected growth in Europe to reach 20 percent of their annual turnover in 2013. As European organizations increasingly adopt the cloud, CipherCloud is helping them to ensure their sensitive information is fully protected and all government guidelines from the European Union Data Protection Reform and UK Information Commissioners Office are complied with. Moving forward with a clear focus on harboring trust in the Cloud, and with the rapid growth of Cloud solutions, CipherCloud looks set for a few giant leaps and consolidate its position as the go to provider of cloud security solutions in the near future.
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Startup of the Year: Cloud Computing
ScaleXtreme:
The Cloud and its Infrastructure Management on a Single Platform By Pankaj Kundwani
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n today’s highly heterogeneous IT environments in which the enterprises thrive, Machine- and usergenerated data is rapidly growing and dealing with big data is becoming a major defy across all industries. The organizations are looking for a simple and unified platform to trim down systems management burden on IT and accelerate the provisioning of new cloud services for end users. The growing popularity of cloud based applications is driving businesses to spread computing across a number of platforms and locations rather than a single set of systems in one place. With all these to confront, California based ScaleXtreme provides enterprise-class powerful, cloud- based server automation solutions for the modern distributed datacenter for automating the delivery and management of IT services, applications, and server
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infrastructure across multiple public and private clouds. Founders of ScaleXtreme, CEO Nand Mulchandani, and CTO Balaji Srinivasa, realized that the very products that were intended to help companies manage their infrastructure were turning management nightmares themselves- expensive, complex, and hard to scale. The customers were not able to take advantage of modern tools and techniques to manage their increasingly complex and fast-changing IT infrastructure. Keeping this as a base, ScaleXtreme was started to give customers a new and better way to manage cloud applications, services and the underlying infrastructure. The company has a long history of building enterprise software, including some of the most successful and widely-deployed systems management and datacenter automation products in the market.
Founded in 2010, ScaleXtreme provides a unique span of capabilities enabling the creation, deployment and management of enterprise cloud applications across private, public and hybrid cloud environments, It also provides autoscaling capability of cloud applications across clouds and enforcing access control, governance, and compliance to multiple cloud environments, It aims at empowering business users with self-service access to enterprise cloud applications and services on demand and also offers server management capabilities such as monitoring, patch management, provisioning and automation to give customers the broadest set of server, application and service management capabilities in a single platform.
Wide-ranging Solutions on a Single Platform
ScaleXtreme provides a rich, flexible product that can help to solve numerous customer problems without needing custom development or implementation support. The Cloud Management Platform encompasses an all-inclusive set of products to cater for all aspects of server and cloud management. The company’s platform includes Interface and integration components, Application components and Core components that helps accessing management tools through any browser and any device, delivers features and functions needed for day-to-day cloud and aids server driving automation, monitoring and role based access throughout. Patch management is another outstanding cloud based product with a knack to distinguish which cloud and on-premise servers require patching and accordingly help automate remediation. It facilitates instant deployment of patches and updates it to the organization’s Windows and Linux servers taking away the need for manually keeping track and patching
the servers
Serving Enterprises of All Sizes
The organization aims to help world's largest enterprises, to small start-ups with big ambitions. For an instance, ScaleXtreme helped a leading household and commercial insurance company to reduce running costs and improve speed of deployment. At peak periods, the system was unable to process all web visitors’ online applications, causing the company to lose customers and underutilization of capacity in slower points in the year. Using ScaleXtreme's Cloud management tools they are able to monitor applications to continuously check the queue length of applications to trigger when new processing capacity is required, new applications are automatically provisioned at their cloud provider. Similarly the capacity automatically scales down as the demand goes down, they have also been able to attract and retain their customers and lower annual operating costs on this single application by about $750k. From managing existing underlying server infrastructure, to automatically provisioning new cloud applications, and just about everything in between, ScaleXtreme provides cloud management solutions to organizations of all sizes. Backed by
ScaleXtreme provides unique capabilities enabling the management of enterprise cloud applications across private, public and hybrid cloud environments
Nand Mulchandani, CEO
Accel Partners and Ignition Partners, the company manages missioncritical applications of customers including category-leading global 500 enterprises. ScaleXtreme has recently announced general availability of its new Advanced Cloud Management product, including a new workflow and orchestration system, autoscaling, multi-cloud management capabilities, and rich cloud access control. With thousands of customers using the product across the world, the company has a pretty good idea of general issues causing most problems using the product. Intending to help customers facing trouble with getting the product to work, the organization offers far-reaching support and has developed extensive documentation to answer customer queries ranging from Server and Cloud management, Application monitoring, patch/ update management and many others. ScaleXtreme aims at bridging gap between legacy and cloud-based applications deployments. It enables enterprises in transition from an IT landscape of virtualized servers to the one where applications are efficiently deployed across multiple clouds harnessing the benefits of cloud-based architectures. siliconindia
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VC Talk
Healthcare in Focus
Parag Shah, Group Head of Life Sciences and Senior Managing Director, Hercules Growth Capital
Parag Shah
Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTGC) is a specialty finance company providing venture debt and equity to venture capital and private equity-backed technology and life science companies at all stages of development. Founded in 2003, the company primarily finances privately held companies backed by leading venture capital and private equity firms and has a market cap of $988.78 million.
T
he firm’s Life Science team has deep domain expertise in biotechnology, pharmaceutical development and medical device technology. We aim at helping portfolio companies strategically navigate the regulatory environment and bringing new therapies to market through customized financing solutions.
Developing Opportunities
Investing in the Future
Oncology is a highly interesting area in the healthcare segment that will see great developments. Research in this segment has grown manifolds in the past 10 years. A lot has been researched about our genetic sequence, different types of cancer cells and what the cancer genome actually looks like. The level of insights we have today was not there before. We now know that cancer is not just one disease buy various different kinds of diseases. With such information in hand, it is easier to develop therapies which are more focused and effective. Although chemotherapy and other drugs increase the life span of cancer
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patients, it also affects the body in a lot of harmful ways. The harsh treatment not only kills the cancer cells but also the healthier cells in the body making one weaker. If therapies become specific, this side effect of chemotherapy can be reduced. Another interesting development in oncology in the research of Cancerbacked vaccine which help the immune system detect cancer cells and fight cancer on its own rather than strictly relying on external agents.
Another area that withholds great opportunity in life science and healthcare sector is the antibiotics segment. We look at companies that are developing novel types of antibiotics. By identifying and investing in such technologies we always stay ahead of the current trend among the larger population and hospitals. Another area where we see immense growth opportunity is the RNA interference (RNAi) space. RNAi, which is also called post transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), is a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression, typically by causing the destruction of specific mRNA molecules. It is an alternate approach to drug therapy which makes use of RNA interference and is a naturally occurring mechanism that leads to the “silencing� of genes. This natural mechanism for sequencespecific gene silencing promises to revolutionize experimental biology and may have important practical applications in functional genomics, therapeutic intervention, agriculture and other areas.
CIO Insights
The Key to Innovation is to Stay Open-Minded Robert Worrall, CIO, NVIDIA Corporation.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is a provider of visual computing technologies and high performance processors like the GPU. Founded in 1993, the company has a market cap of $9.12 billion.
T
here are certain smart and emerging trends rationalizing the functioning of many enterprises. Hadoop is one of those open-source software framework to eye at. For some of the IT companies in its cocoon, it is always a devil’s paradise to experiment considering the value of their expertise. User product diversification is always in its negation of negations, through which the current market
Sensitive data always jeopardizes itself on the cloud, many companies desire secured cloud solutions which is unfortunately not being majorly attended to
is always bombarded with product versatility, be it flexible display or wearable technologies or 4k and 8k displays, hence ranging competitors to collide for that extra inch with the inculcation of technology. Sensitive data always jeopardizes itself on the cloud, many companies desire secured cloud solutions which is unfortunately not being majorly attended to. The risk and data management systems have to impulse huge resources and tech savvy inputs thus encouraging more cloud based operations. As a CIO, being out-listed is the last thing. The factors that affect the operations will be the efficiency of our applications, dynamic consumer reach outs through mobility, security and optimization of resources. The major challenge is to adapt to any technology and converting them as solution providers and hence not making a stagnant solution platform for each innovations. The task of managing this huge pile of data amassing each day has become a toned segment altogether. So in a way innovation is a key thing to combat these challenges. The key to innovation is to stay open-minded. By welcoming and
Robert Worrall
encouraging fresh ideas, and involving the sharpest and brightest minds here in Silicon Valley, we always favor to edge over ourselves each time. Our bi-annual IT technology summit is a mark to celebrate those innovations and reward those thinking minds which are constantly striving to conceptualize those ideas into materialistic yet significant acts, thus laying a strong platform for the future. In terms of innovation, NVIDIA’S shield gaming portable is one of those gadgets which has turned into my doit all entertainment device. A portable DVD player for HD quality movies at 4k resolution, console-grade game controller, stream content from the web helping immediate access to resources and many more, and to boast our very own world’s fastest mobile processor propelling all these robust features. This currently is the gadget I am more inclined to nowadays.
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CIO Insights
Success in the future is ‘Glocalisation’ Vinod Bidarkoppa, Director (IT) & CIO, Tesco HSC
Tesco HSC is the group operating and technology centre for Tesco (LSE: TSCO.L), a $115 billion turnover company - world's third largest retailer with presence in 12 countries.
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ising GDP growth, burgeoning population, greater disposable income, and increasing consumer spending are combining to drive the global retail industry. The global retail markets are constantly evolving as the shopping habits of the consumers are changing rapidly while the demand is surging with growing population. We can observe a new phase of global connectivity which is changing the way we source and share ideas. A new wave of creativity has been unleashed where no single country or company has the lead on innovation today. The flow of ideas is multidirectional and the front runners will be those who can take ideas from all over and leverage them in different ways and across different places. There is a huge shift taking place from brick and mortar to online and mobile channels.
Increasing role of Technology in Retail Industry Technology possibilities
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has opened up new in retail today. New
December 2013
innovations are taking place at a breakneck speed and retail industry must keep up with the pace. Social media, mobile technology, big data and other upcoming trends are defining and changing the landscape rapidly. In the retail business, it is about executing the multi-channel strategy which can become successful only when technology becomes a key enabler to implement the strategy. Digital technology, in particular smart phones, have become a lifeline offering not just myriad choices, information, and access to bargains but also a new and more affordable channel for entertainment and socializing. Significant progress has to be made in this area by understanding and working to improve the customers’ experience by reacting quickly and taking advantage of the technological shifts occurring constantly. Keeping this in mind, TESCO has recently launched the HUDL tablet which hosts all Tesco content - grocery home shopping, general merchandise sales online, loyalty card, music and video streaming services, banking and many more.
In the retail business, it is about executing the multi-channel strategy which can become successful only when technology becomes a key enabler to implement the strategy
on the mobile across platforms and introduce concepts like virtual shopping at airports. Though retail industry is in the midst of a massive transformation driven by technological advancements, there are several challenges being faced by the retail industry. Following are some of the current challenges and the strategies to win over.
Growing Concern Over Food Wastage
Traditionally, retail companies have always dealt with structured relational databases with huge amounts of data and they were not focusing too much on getting the unstructured data into their main stream of analytics. But due to changing trends and rising competition, there are heaps of data being generated; it has now become imperative for enterprises to use big data-derived insights to identify important intelligence like hidden market trends, customer behaviour and others. TESCO’s internal social media platforms and expense system internally works on cloud hosted applications. TESCO is always looking to revolutionize offerings
Around the world, including Asia, a growing concern about the volume of food going waste is observed. According to an estimate, one-third of all food is lost or wasted. The solution needs to embark on with greater transparency to discern the points where waste occurs across the value chain. It is very essential to act more widely, reducing waste across the value chain. Just in time ordering, store ordering and depot ordering with calculated forecasting can help. To monitor and control wastage, TESCO uses video analytics which tells if a product is completely depleted, near end or full and fresh. This cannot be done manually. The replenishment sophisticated models to incorporate sales history and weather to only order what is required is also continuously updated.
Building Price Trust
Internet and hand held technologies have made it easy to check and compare prices of products offered by various retailers. To establish price trust, TESCO has adopted a “price munch” strategy where the contents of customer’s basket are taken virtually, and price of the shopping is compared with other competitors in UK. This technology was all built at Tesco’s India facility.
Convenience Shopping
In today’s era of digitization, shoppers prefer to have the convenience of
Vinod Bidarkoppa
shopping without any time and place constraints. To enhance convenience in shopping, it is required to constantly innovate and develop offerings in online businesses so that customers can be provided a better shopping experience. Online and mobile channels for e-commerce increase conveniences for customers and give them more options. Adopting multichannel retailing where stores support online offerings and vice versa can notably help. Technology is a great driver for providing additional value to customers. Success in the future is not just about having a strong physical presence in any one region. It is about tailoring that presence to suit customers’ needs. This approach can be called ‘Glocalisation’. It is a powerful blend of global strength and local understanding. If we capture the opportunities of a world of connectivity, we can create new value, not just for customers and suppliers, but also for wider society. siliconindia
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CIO Insights
Translating Advantages of Emerging Technology into Tangible Business Strategy
Michael L Capone, Corporate Vice President of Product Development & CIO, ADP
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he market is currently being bombarded with trends namely Mobile, social, analytics and the like. At this point it is seen that consumerism has dominated the industry space and has become the prime pivot with clients expecting do to business the same way, whether it is B2B or B2C. Clients expect an enriching user experience on the device of their choice and they expect applications to exhibit predictive behavior to anticipate their needs. A great example is recruiting. A recent research by Simply Hired showed that 70 percent of candidates search for jobs on mobile devices. Only seven percent of businesses have their career sites optimized for mobile to accommodate these jobseekers. This is a huge disconnect that we are working to help companies address through advanced recruiting platforms with robust mobile/social capabilities.
Bridging the Gap Amidst Challenges
Current vendors, with their current
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Headquartered in Roseland, NJ, ADP速 (NASDAQ: ADP) is a provider of human capital management solutions for human resource, payroll, talent management, tax and benefits administration solutions from a single source. Founded in 1949, the company has a market cap of $36.43 billion.
solutions need to bridge the gap between enterprise and consumer where enterprise standards around technology, devices and security have not kept pace with the changing world. There has been notable progress over the last year or so, and is expected to continue. But until the line is completely erased, there will be some pent up frustration. Our mobile app for our clients’ employees to perform HR functions, such as viewing pay statements and benefits and entering time, has seen rapid adoption. We are closing in on 1.5 million users. This shows that the marketplace is more than ready and we need to keep delivering those kinds of solutions.
with market demand and technology, which is a full time job. Also, CIOs today are expected to not just enable business strategy but to actually drive it. Translating the advantages of emerging technology into tangible business strategy is where time is mostly spent. In translating these advantages and also pushing for efficiency, CIOs face the daunting task of keeping up with the velocity of change, particularly as it related to the rise of consumer technologies in the workplace. Other issues like developing effective strategies around big data and analytics crawl up as well. Data is clearly the currency of the future and those who use data best are going to win. This forces new alliances within the organization like the much written about CIO/CMO partnership. Also not to mention as always, winning the war for talent to ensure the procurement of the right mix of skills and creative thinking to continue to deliver marketleading solutions is an unending task.
Going against the Tides
Michael L Capone
Evolving Identities
It is all about velocity. Because of the need to deliver solutions at a constant pace, CIOs have to keep up
Despite issues that CIOs face; we are not deterred in leveraging a number of different things to drive innovation within the organization. We have become huge believers in crowdsourcing and now run multiple crowdsourcing events simultaneously to drive new, innovative ideas. There is no doubt that the best ideas come from the bottom up whether it is associates or clients. Social is also an incredibly powerful tool. Our last event generated over 300 ideas. However, we never build a new technology just because we think it’s a good idea. We always request feedback from the people who will actually use the product—clients and prospective clients—to make sure what we deliver are useful and
Consumerism has dominated the industry space and has become the prime pivot with clients expecting do to business the same way effective. It is also important to encourage teams to think about how something will be used which may seem counterintuitive, but it is incredibly challenging to build a product that is simple and easy to use. Particularly with the kind of platforms we develop, people will not judge based on graphics and features. They will judge our product based on how quickly they can learn to use and rely on it. We took a deliberately minimalist approach with our mobile app, and it has been a tremendous success. Apart from innovation with respect to the organization, my Fitbit is a great example of innovation. I am a big believer in healthy body and healthy mind. In the high-demand world of travel and meetings, it is good to have the little device in my pocket to ensure I do not neglect my fitness regimen.
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View Point
3
Disruptive Trends Influencing the Innovation Pipeline of the Future
By I.P. Park, EVP & CTO, HARMAN International
Harman International Industries, Incorporated (NYSE:HAR) is engaged in the developing, manufacturing and marketing of audio products and electronic systems. The company has a market capital of $5.61.
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eading companies in all industries are facing significant challenges and opportunities as we make our way through a period of transition in the realm of cutting-edge technology. The key to success will be the ability to evolve the way we approach technological development and how we address the current dramatic shift of the IT & Communications technology (ICT) paradigm of our connected mobile universe. Three new major “growth” technology themes are just as important for our future technology innovation. They are Big Data, Smart Connectivity and User Experience. Today, we are in the middle of a far more dramatic transition into yet another new era of mobile computing, in which smartphone sales now surpass desktop and laptop computer sales combined. Ever-smaller devices, thirdparty applications and robust mobile networking are already launching computing to new heights, forever changing the technology paradigm as we know it. This mobility-based, connected universe will very soon have trillions of connected devices and sensors, serving billions of users, with millions of apps. Virtually everything will be connected together and the collective intelligence that results will make devices and thus each life-action smarter - hence, the coining of the term “smart connectivity.” This new mobile, connected, appsiliconindia
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centric universe both consumes and generates data. Every day, 2.5 exabytes of data are created, and this number doubles each month. 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years. The Big Data universe captured in massive collections of virtual servers we call “the cloud” can now be processed by intelligent analytics, allowing for communications, solutions and services that are increasingly personalized, targeted and efficient. Continued exponential growth in the data universe is a given. Tomorrow's successful innovators will be those who provide users with access to this prolific content as a perfectly unified lifestyle experience. As consumer devices increasingly break from their current physical limitations and become even more intuitive they will have the ability to anticipate user needs and proactively serve up appropriate entertainment, information, and lifestyle services.
Big Data
Big Data has generated a great deal of ‘buzz’, but given the massive, unstructured and potentially overwhelming amount of information generated, there is debate over the amount of value that can be derived. However, new technologies are emerging to help solve the unique problems presented by Big Data, providing tools that could elicit real insight. The
promise of Big Data is not centered solely on efficient computer science techniques, which are critical, but rather the tremendous insight that the analysis of Big Data can bring. Yet, while the future potential is massive, it is important to note that Big Data is still in its infancy. According to a 2013 Actuate Corporation study, only a few large companies with revenues over $1 billion are actively involved in Big Data projects. Most companies not actively pursuing Big Data projects cite the lack of expertise and anticipated costs. Nevertheless, Big Data is estimated to be big business.
Convergence and Smart Everything to maintain relevance in the increasingly connected world.
User Experience
Smart Connectivity
From personal fitness devices that follow our every movement and transmit the results to precise fitness tracking apps, to cars that notify us well before a maintenance problem occurs, we are witnessing a transformative time in electronics— the era of smart devices that connect, communicate and inform. Smart Connectivity is built upon two main principles—TechnologyCentric Convergence and Smart Everything. The first, TechnologyCentric Convergence, allows for intelligent and seamless experiences to reach across domains. Taking this a step further, Smart Everything means that devices will become increasingly intelligent and aware of their surroundings. Communications capabilities will extend to products traditionally without electronics. While Big Data is still in its infancy, Smart Connectivity is upon us now and it presents major opportunities for the re-invention of entire product categories. About one billion people currently use the mobile Internet, but soon there will be trillions of sensors around us that form a connected network of lifestyle solutions to quickly and quietly help us with our daily life. Innovators must embrace the two large product trends of Technology-Centric
"
I.P. Park
User Experience (UX) is an area of design focused on the holistic interaction a user has with a product or a service. This includes the user interface (UI), but goes way beyond that, also covering the user's expectations and even emotions, as well as other intangible factors. Over the last few decades, UX design has evolved dramatically and is increasingly being made the center of the design process. UX is highly relevant for a product or service because it can become the main
The mobilitybased, connected universe will very soon have trillions of connected devices and sensors, serving billions of users
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product differentiator in otherwise mature product areas. But what are the qualities of a good UX? Intuitively, "ease of use" is often brought up as an initial criterion. However, when digging deeper, it seems that this criterion is not precise enough to provide successful UX design guidance. And by ‘digging deeper,’ I do not mean technically, but psychologically. Like all user interface-
related domains, UX has a deep root in psychology. This makes sense if one considers that a user interface is the interface between a piece of technology and a human. The best innovators understand both sides, the technological aspects and the human aspects (or human factors), to be successful in UI and UX design.
Future-Proof R&D
The three defining trends — Big Data, Smart Connectivity, and the future User Experience, require that innovation reaches beyond traditional hardware and software development. Modern R&D strategies for technology companies must holistically consider and incorporate multiple domain disciplines ranging from software technology and industrial design to human psychology and socio-cultural influences such as music, art and literature. Technology companies also need to manage and aggressively prioritize their company’s growing portfolio of technology building blocks and thirdparty applications. Open innovations with potential for reuse across the company and integration with thirdparty applications will take on an increasingly important role. Each technology building block should be evaluated not just for its merits as an incremental contribution to today's products, but also for its potential contribution to the customer experience of tomorrow. This process can help companies develop a pipeline of continuously flowing innovation to targeted divisions that hold the biggest potential impact – a process that I like to call “Future-Proof R&D.” This new way of thinking will be critical to the endurance of companies that wish to maintain relevance and a reputation for innovation in the new technology paradigm, and importantly, help companies be in a position for major profitable growth in this new era.
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View Point
The
Consumerization
Revolution:
Redefining Business, Redefining IT By Somesh Singh, Vice President, Product Management & Engineering, NetIQ
Houston, TX based NetIQ Corporation (NASDAQ: NTIQ) provides IT system management, security management, and performance management software for the modern enterprise. The company was acquired by The Attachmate Group, Inc.a $ 1.2 billion company.
A
quiet revolution is taking place in the world of business information technology. And like many revolutions through history, it began in the street, apparently spontaneously and was largely dismissed before it became too large to ignore. The revolution is “consumerization” and it is turning business IT on its collective head, changing both the type of technology that is used for business computing, and the way in which users think about information. Moreover, it is redefining the role of the CIO and IT department in light of business requirements and how enterprise software siliconindia
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is built. Consumerization is simply the adoption of “consumer” technologies within business IT. Rather than IT departments run as command and control organizations that set policies and define strategy for companyissued devices and applications, users are increasingly bringing their own devices – smartphones, personal tablets and laptops – into the office to use for business. With them users are bringing web-based or cloud-based tools that are more easy to use than corporate alternatives. It may seem like a small change, yet the ramifications are immense because they change everything we assume to be true about how technology enters the workplace, what happens to information processing and how users expect to interact and use business applications. In developed countries with decades of entrenched IT organizations with robust policies and processes in place, the first signs of consumerization usually appear in the boardroom, and in pockets of new-hires. Senior executives and board members start the consumerization ball rolling with demand to use personal tablets to run business applications such as email or to access corporate file servers, which pushes CIOs to reassess their policies, procedures and technologies needed to make the transition. In India and other emerging markets, consumerization is almost always driven from ground up by new generation of employees who have grown up with their mobile devices. And the challenge is little different than what we see in developed countries. In a fast growing market like India – yes, even a slow growth of 6% is fast by developed market standards – the IT organization faces dual challenges. On the one hand, burgeoning organizations
"
need standards and policies created and enforced to allow them to scale and prevent chaos. On the other, new hires—especially younger workers – want to bring their own smartphones, already laden with applications to connect them to the corporate plan to receive email and access corporate applications anywhere, anytime. In both worlds these behaviors have significant impact on IT. Both begin the inevitable shift of power away from a centralized IT function to the business user – and it is that shift of power, the democratization or de-centralization of control that really defines the impact of consumerization more than any individual technology or tool. Once the doors are open to using personal tablets and phones, the flood of personal devices, tools, applications and data services follows quickly behind. Enterprise applications need to be built to appear as if they are built to run on these devices. Neither these devices nor the new users have tolerance for old way of interacting with enterprise applications. No trend, even one as powerful as consumerization, is without its downside. The most often cited are a lack of control over the tools that are being used, difficulty in supporting a wide array of applications and infrastructure, and perhaps most concerning, security worries over the inherent risks of mixing personal and corporate computing tools. This last one is definitely worth examining in more detail. As attackers have grown increasingly sophisticated in breaking into business networks and stealing sensitive or valuable data, so organizations have improved security controls, tightened monitoring, and stepped up employee education. Yet consumerization constantly works to undermine those efforts. By mixing business and home computing so freely, greater risks are introduced that have to be managed. A device
Somesh Singh
Once the doors are open to using personal tablets and phones, the flood of personal devices, tools, applications and data services follows quickly behind
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that is used during the day to access business information might well be the plaything of an employee’s child in the evening. Data stored on non-corporate applications outside the network could well be at far greater risk than information that remains safely inside the perimeter. And smartphones have become a special target of attackers, who write custom malware designed to enable attacks on business systems and to steal information. The often over-worked security
team must constantly balance implementing ever-more stringent controls against the need to allow people to use their own devices. It is difficult to tell an employee what software they can, and cannot, install on their own tablet. Likewise, when an employee leaves the business, ensuring that the data on a personal laptop is deleted can be complicated and lead to legal problems if the employee resists. To best prepare for the impact of consumerization, embrace it. Think carefully about your organization’s business goals, and plan early. While some in the developed world may perceive the effects of consumerization as a shift of power away from the IT department, in emerging markets like India, still growing IT departments can be leaders by selecting the right technologies and architecting datacenters and applications to foster consumerization in a secure and organized way. Newly emerging Indian IT organizations have an opportunity to become leaders in harnessing the democratizing power of this trend and unleash the productivity of its workforce. This can be very liberating. Leadership can further help the business integrate the latest IT trends and even identify new business opportunities. At the same time, the security teams can focus more on the security of critical data as it moves between corporate, home systems and the cloud. Moreover, they can provide a similar role to the rest of the IT organization, offering advice on security and providing better risk management monitoring capabilities to business leaders. Consumerization is a powerful trend and trying to ignore it is foolish and futile. Visionary IT departments will seize the moment and shift their focus from command and control to harnessing the power and opportunities consumerization offers. And that’s a win for everyone. siliconindia
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CIO Insights
Managing Resources Needs Focus On Key Risks Jeff Theiler, SVP & Chief Information Security Officer, Hancock Bank
Hancock Holding Company (NASDAQ: HBHC) is the parent company of Hancock Bank in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and Whitney Bank in Louisiana and Texas with a market cap of $2.73 billion. Jeff Theiler
Resources to Meet the Security Challenges
For security professionals, or any management professional for that matter, the key to managing limited resources is to focus on the key risks. Sound governance, risk and compliance practices are an effective way to manage limited information security resources - they may even lead to more resources! The need for improved risk management focus, among other things, is changing the CISO role. The CISO role is transitioning beyond primarily a technical focus to include skill-sets related to business strategy integration and risk management principles. With these skills, CISOs are being asked to facilitate business solutions balancing the needs of securing information with the business needs for information access and convenience to achieve business objectives. That is not to say that IT and Information Security professionals have not been practicing risk management. Rather, I think the challenge has been translating those technology and security risks into understandable business impacts that can drive the resource discussion and enable the CISO to play a more integrated role with corporate and line of business executives in strategic business decisions. To facilitate resource discussions, CISOs can rely on several fundamental elements.
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First, for those organizations practicing ERM (Enterprise Risk Management), use the existing risk framework to develop or refine IT risk assessment processes - are these processes using the same scoring and rating methodologies as the rest of the organization? Same taxonomy? Basically, use the risk language of the organization to convey IT or security risks in terms of business impact without too much "techno-speak." Focus is on identifying critical security gaps, mitigation activities and resource needs to address gaps. This enables all involved to determine which risks to accept, avoid or resolve. Second, develop a corporate risk profile for enterprise security. This profile would clearly outline for
Develop a corporate risk profile for enterprise security directors, executive management, regulators, what the organization looks like, the playing-field if you will, as it relates to the organization's use of information assets, where located, access methods, along with the key risks, available resources and
top security initiatives to support the risk profile. Be sure to include reference to use of third-party technology providers supporting the organization and whether possession of customer data. Third, enterprise-level security metrics (key performance or risk indicators) are crucial to the resource discussion. There are any number of metrics available for IT and information security. The main focus is to reduce to a handful of enterpriselevel metrics that give clear indication as to the effectiveness and efficiency of the security program. For example, comparing your information security budget as a percentage of the IT budget with industry benchmarks and/ or peer data and further referencing key metrics around vulnerability management can certainly focus attention on the appropriate resources needed to address risks. Finally, determine the maturiy level of your security organization. If not following one of the security frameworks (ISO, COBIT, etc.) and even the most fundamental of "blocking & tackling" activities associated with effective security management are a challenge, then it may not be a good use of time or effort pursuing complex initiatives requiring significant investment or resource capabilities.
View Point
Security Should Be Looked at With a Service Perspective Gary Eppinger, VP - Enterprise, Supervalu
Eden Prairie, Minnesota based SuperValu, Inc. [NYSE: SVU] is the third-largest food retailing company in the United States. Founded in 1926, the company has a market cap of $1.61 billion.
Social Media’s Relevance in the Retail Industry
I would say my perspective for media is relevant especially for a company which has a close relationship with customers. We got full connection with the customers. It gives us the opportunity to provide services for them in real time. So you do not have to call to complain manager, you can post the complaint, we can see them and respond to it immediately when there is an issue or even more importantly when we have a chance to have real time training opportunity or to give delivery. We provided the application to our customers to make their shopping experience better. We think about
what marketing used to be, it was very generic. We used to send out the marketing merchandise to everybody in a certain zip code. Social media gives us an opportunity to give specialized specific marketing and discussion that’s very different for you and it would be for me based on my current needs.
Social Media at Supervalu an asset and not a Potential Threat
From my super value perspective, a social media strategy is all based on our marketing strategies which is aligned with the IT organization to ensure that we can deliver what our
We provided the application to our customers to make their shopping experience better customers need. So we try understanding customers better and ensure that we are building the platform that will make it different.
Maximizing Cost Efficiency for IT
Gary Eppinger
Delivering high security services is one of my passions. It helps to think of delivering security from the service perspective. Having a great security platform allows you to protect information and customer data in privacy of their conversation and allows you to have a higher sincerity to the customer. Looking at security projects in the same manner as looking at business applications, they need to be justified. All of those things need to be looked at as benefits, as there is cost saving and productivity that you can derive by giving security upgrading project.
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View Point
Communication Services Redefined Badri Rajasekar, VP of Engineering, TokBox.
TokBox is part of Telefonica Digital and headquartered in San Francisco. It provides a free API that allows anyone to add group video chat features to their own websites. TokBox has received $14 million in series A and B funding.
W
here I work in San Francisco, we see many new and innovative startups popping up around us seemingly every week. These new companies have a distinct advantage over established firms when it comes to how they use communication solutions to power their businesses. Unlike larger organizations, a new startup today can start with a completely clean slate of new technologies that works best for the team. Increasingly, these are so called “no footprint” communications solutions that are cloud based and purchased on a monthly basis. With little or no capital outlay needed and with everyone using the same new systems, employees can focus on executing the business strategy rather than having to wrestle with communications barriers and issues. siliconindia
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Legacy Systems Interoperability
and
Platform
We have all seen them – the powerful HD video conferencing hardware device that sits in the meeting room at the end of the hall. These systems are capable of delivering beautiful audio and video, but they mostly go unused. Why is that? One big reason is that they do not easily interoperate with the systems and devices we all use today – PCs, MacBooks, tablets, and smart phones, or with services we use like Hangouts, Skype, or HipChat. While these HD conferencing systems might work well for scheduled meetings, they will not work for more common ad hoc collaboration sessions used by highly performing, and increasingly remote, teams. Interoperability issues are not limited to hardware systems. Popu-
lar communications services today also require that everyone is using the same software. It is common in larger companies that individual departments prefer different, incompatible communications services. It sounds easy to say, “Just force everyone to use the same tool,” but that is easier said than done in larger organizations. One must also consider the expense. Each of these legacy systems can cost thousands of dollars each, and the infrastructure to power functionality, such as firewall traversal and multi-party calling, is even more.
Old School IT Policies and Procedures
It is not easy being the IT Director. One of this person’s primary objectives is to keep all systems online and running as normal. IT teams are accordingly motivated to minimize, even if that means limiting software and service
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Keeping up with Changing work Patterns Increasingly, today’s workers are leveraging flexible work schedules while taking advantage of the ability to work remotely. Why sit in San Francisco traffic for two hours so you can attend an 8:30 a.m. meeting when you could better use that time to work productively from home and attend the meeting on your laptop? These folks are not working less – they are
Badri Rajasekar
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options desired by employees. This risk aversion often leads to policies restricting access only to preapproved devices, programs, and services. In some companies users do not have administrative rights to add new communications solutions to their PC or Mac even though they would like to use something new to optimize/improve workflows with a customer or a vendor. In addition, delivery protocols favored by newer communications services, such as UDP, can be deemed too risky and are blocked entirely.
What to do?
Increasingly, today’s workers are leveraging flexible work schedules while taking advantage of the ability to work remotely
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actually working more. If your enterprise’s legacy communication systems do not support these employees, this productivity gain is lost.
Bring your own Devices – and Services A rapidly growing trend in smaller companies is ‘Bring Your Own Device’. Forrester research suggests that as many as three out of every four employees want to use their personal mobile devices at the work place. While BYOD may be attractive to employees as a way of reducing costs, there can be security implications and compatibility issues. Enterprise security in particular is an increasing concern for employers, and there is a significant challenge in reconciling the preferences or demand from employees with the concerns of the employer.
So if my enterprise is struggling with the limitations of inflexible legacy hardware, software and services, and if IT wishes to keep tight controls on which services and software have free run of the network, how do I provide my increasingly mobile workforce the communication support they need, so we can execute at startup speed? It is tempting to think you can pick one system that serves the needs of the majority of your users and standardize on that. This is what Universal Communications platforms are supposed to offer. But UC implementations are time consuming and costly and, for many organizations, the one-tool-fits-all approach just does not work anymore. A more interesting option that many startups are already leveraging is the rapidly emerging WebRTC standard. With WebRTC, every device that can run a browser becomes a potential audio and video communications endpoint. If employees, customers, and suppliers can open a browser and click a link, they can engage in high quality video communications with one another, securely cross firewalls all without downloading IT-prohibited software. There are over a billion WebRTC end points out there already, and the number is rapidly growing. WebRTC is not magic and it should not be thought of as a solution by itself. It is instead a powerful standard around which companies can build integrated communications experiences. The good news is that there is a growing ecosystem of providers who are working hard to provide the tools and platforms that will make these browser end points work for businesses. When that happens, we will see the traditional communication barriers eliminated and productivity and innovation improve dramatically – all at a fraction of the cost of the legacy solutions.
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Find out why companies backed by leading VCs Partner with Synerzip.
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View Point
Made in Silicon Valley By: Ashok Chalaka, Founder, President & CEO of OnChip Devices
OnChip Devices, headquartered in Santa Clara, CA deals in Integrated Passive Devices. It has its own silicon fabrication facility and partnerships with full turn-keys assembly and test houses in Asia. OnChip offers silicon and ceramic solutions for High-brightness LED, Computing, and Consumer Electronics.
S
ilicon manufacturing appears to have diminished in its luster and seems to be on the verge of extinction in Silicon Valley. The buzz today in the high tech capital of the world seems to be driven primarily by software companies; the likes of Facebook, Google, Oracle, and Yahoo. The traditional silicon chips seem to have stepped aside to give way for Mobile Apps and iCloud. The Valley which was traditionally recognized largely for its dominance in Semiconductors still boasts the highest concentration of companies involved in the design and development of silicon Integrated Circuits (ICs). However, much of the silicon wafer fabrication facilities have moved offshore, primarily to the Asia Pacific region. This has led to a score of serious risks such as loss of IP (intellectual property), lack of control over the production process and the danger of finding these components in the gray market. There is literally just a hand full of companies that have found a way to continue both innovating as well as “manufacturing” silicon products in the heart of Silicon Valley. OnChip Devices, Inc. is one such company that has successfully found a way to produce a wide range of silicon components in Santa Clara, CA. OnChip’s products are by far the smallest Integrated Passive Devices (IPDs) produced in the world. With devices as small as 0.006” x 0.006” siliconindia
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x 0.004” (150um x 150um x 100um or 6mils x 6mils x 4mils or 0.15mm x 0.15mm x 0.1mm), these paper-thin silicon chips have a wide range of applications such as High Brightness Light Emitting Diodes (HB LED), Mobile Handsets, Portable Consumer Electronic Products, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Tags so and so forth. HB LEDs are largely built with Indium Gallium Nitride (InGaN) technology. LEDs using InGaN come with several design challenges such as ESD sensitivity and package thermal coefficient of expansion (TCE) issues. InGaN chips are generally considered Class one devices and in many cases, a discharge of only 10 Volts can destroy such sensitive components. In comparison, static charge of up to 30,000 Volts is not uncommon and can be generated quite easily. Studies indicate that ESD damage to electronics and associated equipment is estimated at over $10 billion annually. ESD-damaged LEDs can appear dim, dead, or shorted. TCE mismatch between the LED chip and the lead-frame or package is another significant reliability threat. OnChip produces silicon submount that serves as an inter-poser between the InGaN chip and the lead-frame. Submounts reduce the TCE mismatch, while providing ESD protection via integrated zener diodes. New generation mobile computing and consumer products are increasingly
Ashok Chalaka
susceptible to ESD events since they predominantly use Integrated Circuits with sub-micron geometries and low working voltages. Many of OnChip’s products are used inside highly sophisticated ICs to provide protection from damage caused by Electro-static Discharge (ESD). OnChip is an active agent of Passive Devices and continues to set the standards for silicon based Resistors, Capacitors and Diodes. Its products are used by several Fortune-100 companies such as GE, HP as well as IBM and was recently recognized for its product innovation and was awarded “Small Business of the Year” for 2013 by California District 25Assembly Member Bob Wieckowski.
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Entrepreneur's Corner
Morphing:
4KTA By Naveen Bisht, Co-Founder of Auriss Technologies Inc. & Board Member, Chair – Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE), Silicon Valley
T
his month’s article brings you lessons from Raj Parekh, an extraordinary entrepreneur, prolific angel investor, intrapreneur and co-founder of several companies. Raj is currently President and CEO of CloudVolumes, a virtualization and cloud computing company. Previously, he co-founded Virident Systems, storage class memory with highest performance Flash company in 2006 and managed as CEO/Chairman till 2012; cofounded and managing Redwood Venture Partners since 1998, a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley and Comstaller ($150M hitech incubator) in 2000. Redwood and its affiliated partnerships have raised funds representing over $250 million in invested capital in over 30 high tech companies. Raj has served as Board Member or as Chairman of the Board of over 15 high tech companies, including Magma (now
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Synopsis), Niksun, Pranalytica, eGtran, Virident, CloudVolumes, TiE Angels, PubNub and Aspex. Raj was member of the senior business and technology executive teams of several high technology companies known for his leadership and vision. He served at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) as CTO and Executive Vice President of Engineering of all system products, and as VP and General Manager of Java Products for Sun Microsystems Microelectronics. Before joining Sun, Raj was Vice President and General Manager with Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) managed all chip development including “Geometry Engine” and several system products. With special gratitude to him, here are four key take away (4KTA) points, which center around the concept of morphing based on my discussions with him recently. Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image into
another through a seamless transition. Similarly, creating success out of any entrepreneurial project entails morphing your company and yourself from one stage to next stage.
Naveen Bisht
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1. Continuous Learning – This concept of morphing occurred to me while working in various engineering roles in early stages of my career. I started my career in semiconductor process field making essentially resistivity, thickness and threshold parameters. Realizing early on that design engineers were not taking full advantage of my work, I morphed myself into designing integrated circuits. After some time, I decided to morph myself into a hardware engineer to ensure that system engineers took full advantage of the capabilities that I designed. Subsequently, I morphed myself into systems engineering role, than networking and storage and now cloud. This is continuous morphing of oneself to bring out the best solution instead of micro-optimization into any one particular product area. 2. Morphing Ideas and Products – Quite often, good engineering folks, when promoted into management roles turn out to be bad managers as they are unable to morph fully into what they are expected to do. Instead, they continue to act like super engineers rather than acting like a leader. For instance, as people get promoted higher and higher into an organization, it is easy to become arrogant whereas higher and higher you climb the ladder, humbler and humbler you need to become since you know less and need to manage more and more. For example, at Silicon Graphics, initially we started out with building graphics terminals and realized quickly that we needed to morph ourselves into a fully functional graphics workstation solutions provider. We realized that it is time to morph not only product but also engineering team. I had an opportunity to witness amazing transition; even today most of the employees will tell you SGI was the best company they worked for. 3. People Morphing – Typically a startup CEO is not the best IPO or big exit CEO, and so are VP of
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engineering and marketing and sales and more. Do not assume every one will be able to morph to next level. Identifying who does and who does not; when to make a change; replace or re-assign, while still keeping core team in place is critical. To accomplish people morphing, the best solution I found was to have few good advisors, not one who got lucky but one who had success in good time and bad since they themselves had morphed. Next, you need to manage conflicts. On one hand, you really want to believe in your product and your direction. On the other hand, you need to adapt to a changing market condition. There
To accomplish people morphing, the best solution I found was to have few good advisors needs to be fine balance between being flexible and being focused at the same time. Nine out of ten times, you need to remain focused on what you are doing and your eyes need to be open for one opportunity that could morph you to a higher level. As an entrepreneur, you also need to be intellectually honest about when to call
it quits or transition into a different and perhaps, even smaller role or even step down for the benefit of the company. For instance, one of our companies had an opportunity to go public at $900 Million market capitalization. The CEO was adamant on getting $1 Billion dollar market cap. The market suddenly changed in 2001 forcing the company to file for bankruptcy. The key take away is to morph yourself into being flexible and assessing an exit opportunity rapidly and grab it if it represents a fair value. 4. Expecting the Unexpected – Every entrepreneur needs to be ready to expect the unexpected regardless of all the market analysis and customer validation. For instance, Virident system was founded to solve significantly improve search, caching and analysis and decided to use special kind of flash memory from a multibillion dollar public company instead of generic flash. We made them as our partner, got over $10 Million investment from them. Additionally they invested $50 Million in their fab for us while we successfully developed and deployed the product. Customer list was fantastic; it felt like we were on top of the world! Unfortunately, the strategic partner filed for bankruptcy. Great product, perfect market, POs in hand, team in place but overnight no place to go, no product to sell, no cash in the bank, lots of bills to pay and nothing but sleepless nights for me as CEO. Fortunately, we successfully morphed the company into a storage-class memory company and recently, exited the company for over $680 Million. The key take away is that expect unexpected just in case everything you count on somehow does not work. In summary, the four key take away points for entrepreneurs are continuous learning, morphing ideas and products, people morphing, and being ready for expecting the unexpected.
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