Business Transformation Asia Issue 12

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Recognising champions of transformation

In every country and region there are the business innovators and the leaders and the visionaries. They see the trends and winning curves of inflexion ahead of the markets. They are deeply tunned to the cycles of innovation, technology and market demand. Finally, they are also tuned to the capabilities and culture of their own organisation, their shareholders and their executive management. Out of all of this emerges business transformation. In this edition we feature the highlights of BTX Road Show

and Awards 2022, which concluded with the Asia edition in New Delhi on 16 September 2022. The event featured multiple invited keynotes, technology keynotes, panel discussion and four sets of awards. The event was joined by over 150 delegates including keynote speakers, panellists, guests, and attendees.

The roadshow was supported by various partners including OPX Technology, Automation Anywhere, 3i Infotech, Infinite Blue | ProBuddy; Finesse, Masterwork Automodule, Epicor and Global Trade and Technology Council of India.

The event recognised 75+ top transformation champions across four categories: BTX Top Executive Award, BTX Top Enterprise Award 2022, BTX Top Women Executive Award 2022, BTX Top Solution Provider Award 2022.

Turn these pages for picture highlights and summary details of the event.

Wishing you the best of business in the winter months ahead.

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Arun Shankar arun@gecmediagroup.com

HOW IS STORAGE AS A SERVICE DIFFERENT FROM HARDWARE LEASING

Storage capacity and performance should be underwritten by SLAs, and when more hardware is required, it should be delivered and deployed non-disruptively.

The public cloud’s gravitational pull is immense, and we live in an age in which it drags data towards it and away from the customer datacentre. But while the lure of the cloud is undeniable, many of its attractions come at a cost. The cloud promises flexibility in capacity and performance, with the ability to scale up — and down, in theory — and with pay-as-you-go pricing that make it an Opex running cost rather than a Capex spend.

However, the reality can often prove less rosy. Costs can spiral out of control; SLAs have to be monitored in hawk-like fashion and performance cannot be guaranteed as it can on-site. For these reasons many prefer the predictability of their own datacentre. Another option has emerged, a potential best-ofboth-worlds, Storage-as-a-

service, STaaS.

STaaS is the consumption model of storage procurement, which allows customers to deliver the capacity and performance they need, onpremises, in cloud or any other combination and paid for on an as-a-service basis.

Consumption models of storage purchasing turn the procurement of on-site capacity in block, file and object storage into a pay-as-you-go transaction. That’s in contrast to the traditional ways of onpremises hardware purchasing, where new products were bought on a three-year cycle to replace equipment bought during the preceding refresh three years before. And so on. Consumption models try to do away with that by turning storage procurement into a service-like experience.Treating storage as a service has the big

BY OMAR AKAR Regional Vice President, Pure Storage.

benefit of being potentially more flexible in terms of scalability and the ability to add more capacity or performance.

Meanwhile, being deployed in the customer datacentre means storage performance can be better than it would in the cloud and nowhere near as susceptible to suffering any degradation over the wide area network.

Also, bills and usage are likely to be more predictable, especially without costly cloud peculiarities such as egress charges, which can mount up unnoticed and result in huge bills. Concerns about security that go with the cloud are also mitigated.STaaS can also be filed as an Opex cost and so can be offset against tax.

To sum up, consumption models of storage procurement potentially offer flexible and scalable capacity and performance operated on-site but billed as if it were a service, with the potential to link to the cloud as an extension of the datacentre. And all treated as an Opex cost.

So, what should customers look out for in STaaS offerings? Core to consumption model offerings is the ability to deploy storage capacity on-site and be billed for consumption.

Key to watch out for here, however, is that the service is being truly delivered as a service. In other words, levels of capacity and performance should be underwritten by SLAs, and when more hardware is required to meet those, it should be delivered and deployed nondisruptively.

Most vendors offer something that is more like a leasing agreement, in which their products are deployed on a three- or five-year cycle with forklift upgrades at the end. By contrast, the best StaaS offerings work to guaranteed service levels with automated upgrades to meet performance and capacity

guarantees without extra cost and which are triggered by AIbased monitoring and telemetry.

Customers should also check the storage supplier’s ability to deploy file and block access storage as well as fast file and object storage in the same hardware, with tiers of performance defined by inputoutput speed, throughput and capacity. That way, all workloads are covered, from rapid transactional block access, via unstructured file data, to the rapid throughput performance needed for analytics and restores from backup data.

Monitoring software should give the customer an easy-toread view of capacity usage and performance across on-prem storage infrastructure and the cloud, that shows how things are matching up to SLAs. It should also allow the ability to provision storage. AI-driven tools should enable prediction of future usage and be part of the process of triggering performance and capacity upgrades.

STaaS is the consumption model of storage procurement, which allows customers to deliver the capacity and performance they need

CYBERSECURITY FALLOUT EXTENDS FAR BEYOND UKRAINE’S BORDERS

Geopolitical events underscore importance of maturing zero trust security controls across all organisations, from small businesses to critical infrastructure.

BY MOREY HABER Chief Security Officer, BeyondTrust.

The invasion of Ukraine is a harrowing ordeal for anyone impacted by the conflict. It is a time of heightened risk and uncertainty, with implications that are rippling across the world.

One area of increasing concern is the elevated risk of cyberattacks. As part of the greater cybersecurity community, we aim to share information that is helpful to those who are dealing with, or having to respond to, questions about increased cyberthreats.

Over the course of at least months, cyber strikes on Ukraine have escalated. Attacks in recent days have knocked government and corporate systems and websites offline, and defaced Ukrainian websites. A new data wiping malware, dubbed HermeticWiper AKA KillDisk.NCV, has also been leveraged to infect hundreds of machines across Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Security researchers have reported that HermeticWiper corrupts the Master Boot Record, resulting in failure to boot. This new malware family comes close on the heels of the discovery of WhisperGate malware, which was used to attack Ukrainian systems in early January.

As with NotPetya, these new malware families seem intended to incapacitate the assets they infect. The rapid emergence of these debilitating, novel malware families also reinforces the need for proactive, preventative security that goes beyond signature-based recognition.

However, the cybersecurity fallout of the geopolitical conflict extends far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Cyber threat activity is picking up around the world. A joint advisory, by CISA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, outlined activities and tactics used by state-sponsored cybercriminals. These activities include brute-forcing, spear

phishing emails with malicious links, using harvested credentials to gain access, and maintaining persistent access.

CISA also issued a SHIELDS UP advisory. In the advisory, CISA recommends all organisations— regardless of size—adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets. The advisory also provides steps organisations should take to help prevent or mitigate a cyber intrusion.

While nation-state threat actors may be increasing activity to disrupt the operations and supply chains of adversaries, and to increase their spheres of power, the usual cast of non-affiliated, opportunistic threat actors, such as ransomware operators and phishing scammers, could also be looking to cash in on global instability, like they did during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the last year, nations across the world, including the US with its issuance of the Executive Order EO 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, have made strides in ramping up their cyber defences and in fostering better cross-country collaboration. Recent geopolitical events underscore the importance of maturing zero trust security controls across all organisations—from small businesses to critical infrastructure and operational technology.

Right now, it is important for everyone to reassess their cyber risk and look closely at where they can mature their security controls. The specific security priorities— whether it be accelerating the patching of vulnerabilities, vaulting and automating management of credentials, applying least privilege, or better securing remote access pathways—should be directed by the findings of their assessment.

Opinions and comments are of the authors mentioned.

NATIONAL-LEVEL CYBER WARFARE CAN LAST FOREVER

A national-level cyber warfare onslaught can last forever, primary missions can run for years, some might still be running that could have been started decades ago.

Country vs country cyberwarfare requires significant planning, years if not decades of active espionage by government agencies and government-financed proxy groups, domestic and foreign. Some unplanned actions are operational or secondary targets of opportunity that present themselves during the planned activities. No country does or should not engage without significant pre-planning.

A national-level cyber warfare onslaught can last forever, primary missions can run for years, and some might still be running that could have been started decades ago. Espionage

missions require operational funding, these are budgeted at a national level, and funding is pre-allocated for the planned length of the assignment plus some.

As for energy needs, cyberattacks can be launched from a cell phone and could be staffed by proxy groups in dozens of non-aligned counties or run through your local cloud service like AWS and Google, all of which require no energy from the aggressor nation. The bigger the national budget, the more extended actions on objectives run.

A national-level cyber warfare event will include government units, attribution during

BY DAVID BROWN

Security Operations Director, Axon Technologies.

cyber warfare will be assumed, and proxy groups for distributed workloads. There will also be non-aligned opportunistic groups seeking financial gain from the chaos or creating more confusion because they can.

As for the national apparatus, attacks will be launched from systems sponsored by the aggressor nation, but they seldom are hosted in that nation; they are nearly always distributed throughout nonaligned counties.

More advanced nations deploy a national cyber protection grid, sometimes called a sovereign internet, cutting off all outside and foreign access to a now local domestic only Internet. This level of protection means that any offensive cyber-attack must come from within the isolated local domestic internet.

Human assets must be predeployed and are at significant risk to life with limited to no support or additional resources. Most nations will rely on private organisations to protect themselves with little to no government support. In contrast, government assets are protected by local network segmentation and, in many countries, cybersecurity contractors and vendors.

In some countries, the government has no power over local service providers to enlist their support. From the point of global providers choosing a side puts them in the fight; this is not worth the risk; it is better if they remain neutral as it protects their self-interest.

In nations with oversight of local service providers, they can enlist them to perform mitigation actions such as traffic dropping and geofencing. Geo-fencing will have little effect as a more mature and highly budgeted nation does not attack from their country; they attack from yours.

The technological elements change from country to country based on maturity and budget. There is no default tooling that everyone uses, like battle rifles and tanks. Some will have global deploy action stations and proxies in dozens of non-aligned counties with line signal interception, decryption, and payload injection financed via shell companies. Others might have a shed outback with two guys and an old TI-99.

Because attribution during cyber warfare will be assumed as the offending nation, attacks will not be as advanced or cutting edge nor as stealthily as during espionage missions. They tend to be more direct and overwhelming in noise and volume. The use of distributed denial of service DDoS to crush whole netblock ranges and the use of wiper-style attacks deployed to already breached networks are the most likely.

Opinions and comments are of the authors mentioned.

THESE THREATS REPRESENT AN INTENT TO DESTROY

Wiper malware is activated to render the system inoperable, and attackers enact this final stage once they have maximised their reach or if they are alerted.

BY OLIVER TAVAKOLI

CTO, Vectra AI.

As Russian activity in Ukraine has moved past heightened tension into a full invasion, the battlefield has been conducted in both physical and cyber arenas. To that end, novel wiper malware attributed to Russian State Actors has been deployed to destroy and degrade Ukrainian assets and infrastructure, but the blast radius almost certainly will not be limited to these targets.

This wiper malware is closely related to the Ransomware we have all

become familiar with over the past few years. The only real difference is in the end goal – to irreversibly destroy data and accessibility to systems.

As a result, we should lean on the hard learned lessons from Ransomware attacks in recent years - particularly those attributed to or closely related to Russian groups.

Like Ransomware attacks, the wiper malware campaign tends to leverage exploits against externally accessible services to gain a foothold within an organisation’s network. From there, C2 channels are established including web shells in the DMZ to ensure on-going control. Once this foothold is established, attackers dump credentials and use them to expand their access within the environment with the intent of maximising their ability to inflict damage.

In the attack’s final stage, wiper malware is activated to render the system inoperable.

Attackers enact this final stage once they have maximised their reach or if they are alerted that they have been discovered and are at risk of losing control.

Each step along the way from one compromised system to an entire network of compromised systems is about maximising that final impact. Attackers are only able to do this by using their initial point of compromise to move through the network and expand their access as broadly as possible.

As with Ransomware, we expect the disclosed IOCs and the malware used will change over time. It is easy for attackers to make those changes rapidly. Conversely, the techniques attackers use to implant malware and gain maximum impact within an environment

are unlikely to change.

Ultimately, these threats represent an intent to destroy, and organisations will do well to improve their resilience and put plans into place to ensure rapid recovery. There are practical steps to take, many of which are not new recommendations but may be somewhere in your organisation’s backlog. Given the changes in the threat landscape, we suggest that organisations re-run their risk calculus and make some or all of the following changes.

Remove the low-hanging fruit. Patch and protect publicly accessible assets. Public-facing assets with known exploitable vulnerabilities are easy targets and patching these assets must be a top priority. CISA maintains a good list of these. In a similar vein, accounts for VPN access and public logon portals or SaaS services must be protected by multifactor authentication.

Control the DMZ. Authorised outbound traffic from the network DMZ needs to be explicitly whitelisted to increase the difficulty of an adversary establishing a useful foothold there. Such a whitelist can be worked to maintain, but it materially complicates an adversary’s ability to effectively run command-and-control from your DMZ.

Trust and Least Privilege. We often relate this to administrative credentials but in this case, view it through the lens of your publicly accessible systems and the rest of the network. The accumulated risk related to all the times when systems and accounts were overprivileged to ease deployment and operation is often a key factor that enables the attack.

Opinions and comments are of the authors mentioned.

BMW’S ARCHITECTURAL ICON

On 22nd July, the BMW Group celebrated its corporate headquarters as a world-famous architectural icon, inviting over 200 international guests from the worlds of business, culture, politics and society. The keynote speech by architect and Pritzker Prize winner Francis Kéré, as well as the appearance by Nihal Saad, Chief of Cabinet of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, made the ceremony a special event.

The BMW Group Headquarters, with its suspended construction, is one of the most innovative engineering buildings of the post-war period, wowing onlookers with four cylinders suspended from a cruciform steel beam construction on the roof. Interestingly, the building did not grow from the bottom up, but rather the upper floors were first manufactured on the ground, then moved upwards hydraulically on the massive tower shaft made of reinforced concrete and completed in several segments.

BMW’S SUSTAINABILITY APPROACH

An average of almost 30% of BMW vehicles are already made from recycled and reused materials, so-called secondary raw materials. In the longer term, the Secondary First approach aims to increase this figure to 50%. The BMW Group is the first German car manufacturer to join the Science Based Targets initiative’s Business Ambition for 1.5°C.

This means the company’s path to climate neutrality is following a scientifically validated path that is in line with the ambitious target of the Paris Climate Agreement. At the same time, the company is committed to the goal of complete climate neutrality across the entire value chain no later than 2050.

The BMW Group is driving forward the electrification of its entire fleet. By 2030, at least one in two cars sold by the BMW Group is to be fully electric.

INNOVATION

Corning opens 5G wireless network software development center in Gurugram

Corning India announced the opening of its Wireless Software Development Center of Excellence in Gurugram. The center will support adoption of 5G wireless networks by making it easier for service providers, system integrators, academic institutions, and enterprises to test their services and solutions, acquire new capabilities, and achieve operational efficiencies.

TimesPro launches Web3.0 learning initiative boosting blockchain, crypto, Metaverse

In its quest to offer futurecentric and tech-driven programmes to learners, TimesPro has launched a Web3.0 learning initiative, through a unique interactive experience in the metaverse, to usher unmatched quality of modern and new-age learning through cuttingedge programmes in various Web 3.0 technologies like Blockchain, Crypto Currency, Metaverse, NFT among others.

At launch, TimesPro will offer a mix of certificate and self-paced programmes to enable learning in the emerging technologies domain. TimesPro will offer self-paced programmes on Getting Started with Web 3.0, Blockchain Fundamentals and Solidity and Ethereum Smart Contracts along with Certificate Programmes in

Blockchain, FinTech as well as a Blockchain Developer Programme to enhance the skillsets of tech learners.

These programmes have been developed in collaboration with leading industry and institute partners like Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, iHub Divyasampark and India Blockchain Alliance.

TimesPro’s Web 3.0 programmes will focus on learner-centricity and high engagement through case studies, projects, assignments, hackathons, and capstone projects. In addition to core learning, career services such as resume preparation, one-on-one mentoring with industry experts, and expert sessions will be part of the curriculum. The programmes will be delivered through TimesPro’s state-of-the-art learning management system.

As a part of the initiative, TimesPro will also launch a Web 3.0 Centre of Excellence to develop a robust virtual ecosystem of industry partners, resources, and a network of global SMEs to build a strong learner community.

Hughes helps advance India’s Digital Transformation

Hughes Communications India, a leading provider of broadband satellite and managed network services, previewed the future of connectivity in India, recently in New Delhi.

During the Technology Seminar for officials from government, Public Sector Undertakings and Defense, Hughes executives spoke about the connected future and showcased networking innovations – many of which are made in India – in support of Government digital transformation efforts across the country. The Hughes team was joined by leaders from OneWeb, the low Earth orbit satellite provider, for which Hughes is the India distribution partner.

During the Seminar, Hughes highlighted multi-transport and both geostationary and LEO satellite technologies, including

dual-transport software-defined wide area network routers and satellite equipment that enables anytime/anywhere connections. The SD-WAN products, Quick Deploy Antenna and Outdoor Satellite Router and are all proudly made in India.

Also, for the first time in India,

the Hughes team revealed a new electronically steerable flat panel antenna, engineered to enable OneWeb service. Hughes is both an investor and a technology partner to OneWeb, designing and deploying the system’s gateway electronics and the core module used in every user terminal.

Palo Alto based Unravel Data offering Data Ops opens second India office in Hyderabad

Unravel Data, the first DataOps Observability platform built to meet the needs of modern data teams, announced the opening of its Hyderabad office. The office is located in Hitech City and is Unravel’s second office in India after Bangalore. Unravel Data also said it plans to hire 60 employees over the next year across its Hyderabad and Bangalore offices to strengthen its India-base.

The Hyderabad office will house teams across functions like data science, site reliability engineering, and customer success. Unravel Data said it aims to attract the rich technology talent in Hyderabad and nearby cities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to support its growth plans. The company will be looking at candidates proficient in Big Data, DevOps, and Artificial Intelligence. The new office was inaugurated by Unravel Data’s co-founder and CTO Dr Shivnath Babu, and the company’s VP of Engineering Operations, Giriraj Bagdi.

Unravel Data’s technology applies artificial intelligence for monitoring and management of Big Data applications, helping modern, datadriven enterprises optimise the performance and

cost of their applications. The company’s DataOps Observability Platform provides data teams with the actionable recommendations they need to turn data into insights and deliver new innovations to market. Customers who have deployed Unravel have been able to double productivity of data teams, ensure data applications run on time, while being able to scale cost efficiently on the cloud.

Founded by Big Data and artificial intelligence pioneers Kunal Agarwal and Dr Shivnath Babu, Unravel Data was born from the realisation that the exponential growth of data in the cloud will require artificial intelligence to optimise the data pipelines powering modern enterprises.

Mubadala Energy continues to expand Asian operations with new gas discovery in Malaysia

Mubadala Energy, the Abu Dhabi headquartered international energy company, has confirmed the discovery of a good quality gas reservoir penetrated by the Cengkih-1 exploration well in Block SK320, off the coast of Sarawak province, offshore Malaysia. Preliminary analysis shows a significant gas column of more than 110 metres within the pinnacle carbonate reef reservoir.

The Cengkih-1 exploration well is located nearby the Pegaga field, one of the fields within the SK320 Block, which recently marked the successful production of commercial gas. The Pegaga field recorded the discovery of 1 Trillion Cubic Feet of additional gas initial in place, following the post-drill results which confirmed a larger and better quality reservoir.

Building on Mubadala Energy’s

strong position in Malaysia, these results also bolster the company’s strategy to expand its position in natural gas as a key bridge fuel in the energy transition.

Mubadala Energy is the Operator of Block SK320, with 55% participating interest in the Production Sharing Contract.

BharatPe marks its expansion to 400 cities across India

BharatPe announced that it has expanded its footprint to 400 towns and cities across India. The expansion is in line with the company’s commitment to driving financial inclusion across Bharat by enabling wider adoption of digital payments as well as addressing the credit gap for SMEs and offline retailers.

The company also shared that it has recorded consistent growth in payments TPV and has recently achieved the milestone of $20 Billion in annualised TPV.

Last year, BharatPe had announced that it aims to scale its presence to 300 cities by March 2023. The company has aggressively expanded to tier-2, 3 and 4 towns and cities since then, as it believed in the opportunity that tier-2 and beyond towns and cities of the country had to offer. The company has rolled out its UPI QR payment acceptance service and loans to merchant partners in the new cities in the first phase.

BharatPe also plans to top up these services with other fintech products like BharatSwipe in the second phase over the coming months.

BharatPe has been on an exponential growth

The remaining 45% is held by PETRONAS Carigali Sdn Bhd and Sarawak Shell Berhad. Since entering Malaysia in 2010, Mubadala Energy has made 6 gas discoveries displaying a success ratio of 75%, a significantly higher number than the industry average.

trajectory and recently closed one of its highest growth quarters. It facilitated over INR 3600 crore in loans in Q1, FY23; recording a staggering growth of 112% over the last quarter – Q4, FY22. The company facilitated disbursal to over 1.2 lac merchants in Q1, FY23, up from 66,000 merchants in the last quarter of FY22.

BharatPe also hit an all-time high of $18.5 Billion in annualised TPV in the quarter. The company also recorded consistent growth in its other business lines including card acceptance POS businesses and its Investment Platform for merchants.

Tata Power has achieved a rare landmark of setting up 450+ EZ Charging points across 350 + national highways in the country. Tata Power EZ Charging Points are now present across major national highways including the longest highway -NH 44 which connects Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, the busiest highway – NH 19 connecting Delhi, UP, Bihar, West Bengal, and Jharkhand and other highways connecting major states across south, north, east and west India – NH 65, NH 48, NH 16 etc.

This is in line with the company’s nationwide plan of setting up charging points from north to south, connecting Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from east to west, from Guwahati to Dwarka and Bikaner.

The widespread installation of Tata Power EZ Charging Points is making intrastate and interstate travel easy

Tata Power sets up 450+ EV charging points across 350 national highways

for EV owners. These 450+ EV charging points on the highways are installed at diverse locations like hotels, commercial complexes, car dealerships, etc., across more than 25+ states and 5 union territories to provide ease of charging to reduce range anxiety and ensure seamless green and sustainable mobility.

For effective operational management of pan India charging points, Tata Power has also set up a state-of-the-art Network Operations Centre. The NOC provides the backbone for robust charging support.

The centre has a real-time communication link with all the on-board chargers and is integrated with the digital platform that supports EV charging services of Tata Power. It plays a key role in the proactive identification of issues, and quick resolution in case of any technical snag through maintenance teams. This centre is responsible for providing back-end system support, quick resolution of issues, and ensuring proactive charging infrastructure maintenance planning.

Bidgely to Empower BSES in Transitioning Towards a Greener, More Digitalised Future

Bidgely, has announced a strategic partnership with BSES to accelerate its transition towards a greener and digitalised future by unlocking the power of artificial intelligence-based analytics.

Under the MoU, Bidgely will collaborate with BSES Rajdhani Power in the development and implementation of scalable artificial intelligencebased solutions to enhance operational efficiencies in several areas including:

1. Aggregate Technical and Commercial loss reduction / power-theft detection

2. short-term load forecasting solutions based on historical time series data, weather and network related inputs

3. detection and profiling of electric vehicles and solar rooftop PV and

4. energy efficiency through customised energy saving insights for consumers. It will also enable BRPL to leverage Bidgely’s strengths and benefit from its global experience and expertise in these and related areas.

Bidgely recently launched an Energy Theft Solution

that leverages the power of artificial intelligenceenabled data analytics to detect and resolve India’s energy misuse challenge. The company was selected by Rec, an undertaking of the Government of India, to participate in the Ministry of Power, GoI Technology Incubation Challenge Powerthon. Bidgely was the only provider selected for energy theft detection in support of the national Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme to reduce losses across India up to 15% by 2025.

Bidgely’s MoU with BSES further strengthens its commitment to an Atmanirbhar Bharat by eliminating one of the biggest industry challenges of today.

GAUTAM AGGARWAL Chief Revenue Officer, Bidgely

Hisense and FIFA launch environmental programme for South African children

Hisense has joined forces with FIFA, through its Football for Schools programme, to help increase environmental awareness among children in South Africa.

Football for Schools, a global programme to make football more accessible and fun to children by incorporating football into education, was launched in South Africa on 24 August at an event in Johannesburg.

In recent years, climate change has affected South Africa, which has affected people’s lives, and caused the loss of many green football pitches. In response, FIFA has collaborated with Hisense around the South Africa launch, hoping to bring the joy of football to children while helping build

a greener and environmentally friendly future for the next generation. Hisense also donated high-tech devices to provide a more enjoyable educational experience, such as Hisense’s eye-friendly tablet, a Hisense 100-inch Laser TV, and Interactive Digital Boards.

FIFA legend Portia Modise was present to support the Football for Schools project.

Over the years, Hisense has extensively focused on ESG sustainable development concepts to build a better world. Through this cooperation with FIFA, Hisense further enhanced children’s wellbeing and society’s sustainable development.

Tech Mahindra to assist customers in sustainability through ESG portfolio

Tech Mahindra, a provider of digital transformation, consulting and business re-engineering services and solutions, announced the launch of its end-toend Environment, Social, Governance portfolio to help businesses achieve their sustainability goals. Through these offerings, Tech Mahindra will enable businesses to configure, launch, analyse, manage sustainability targets, and help them achieve ESG goals.

Through these offerings, Tech Mahindra will help customers to reduce their current carbon emissions footprint by renovating across operations, supply chains, and processes. The offerings will enable Tech Mahindra’s

customers to strengthen their commitment towards sustainability goals, while maintaining and creating business value.

With the help of new technologies and a robust partner ecosystem alongside specialised team of experts, Tech Mahindra will

assist customers in measuring, monitoring, improving, and achieving ESG plans by offering tailored solutions for distinct needs.

The organisation’s ESG offerings are developed by leveraging the research and insights garnered during the last 15 years of operations in the domain.

L&T Technology partners with Qualcomm to launch global 5G private network solutions

L&T Technology Services announced that it is collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies to deploy end-to-end solutions for the global 5G Private Network Industry utilising their combined core expertise in the Hi-Tech and Telecommunication domain.

L&T Technology Services and Qualcomm Technologies will bring together core competencies in telecommunication solutions and services for the benefit of end-customers in the manufacturing and warehousing/logistics sector. As the demand for a connected world continues to grow rapidly, L&T Technology Services engineers are leveraging LTTS’ chip-to-cloud expertise to unleash the power of 5G and transform global manufacturing and supply chain processes.

Qualcomm Technologies, an industry leader in 5G globally, is accelerating the expansion of 5G connectivity, and its end-to-end domain expertise is enabling the growth of the broader technology ecosystem spanning 5G Private Network RAN, devices, automation and management solution and partner initiatives.

As part of the proposed collaboration, Qualcomm

Technologies will engage Private Networks RAN Automation technology for the automation and management of small cells along with pre-integrated PN solutions. L&T Technology Services will facilitate end-to-end system integration, design and implementation of use cases, provide engineering consulting, and deployment services along with edgeto-cloud orchestration and management. Combining their diverse ecosystem strengths, both Qualcomm Technologies and L&T Technology Services are now enabling Industry 4.0 solutions for enterprises.

In line with the terms of the collaboration, L&T Technology Services will establish an engineering center of excellence in Santa Clara - California, US with Qualcomm Technologies’ support to accelerate the adoption of 5G private wireless networks.

Maruti Suzuki, Indian Oil partner adding 35,000 fuel stations into loyalty programme

Maruti Suzuki has collaborated with Indian Oil Corporation for its loyalty program ‘Maruti Suzuki Rewards’. The partnership will further strengthen the value proposition of the Maruti Suzuki Rewards program for its customers, by providing benefits pertaining to convenience and value across almost 35,000 IndianOil fuel stations across the country.

Maruti Suzuki Reward Program members can enjoy the ‘convenience benefits’ through this partnership with IOCL. Using the Maruti Suzuki Rewards App, customers can easily search for and navigate to nearby fuel/CNG stations. This will ensure enhanced accessibility and convenience for customers. The partnership will be valid across all IndianOil fuel stations pan India and

will provide a bouquet of delightful services to customers. Going forward, the partnership will seek to add more value-based rewards for customers.

With over 30 Million transactions at IndianOil fuel stations every day, the partnership with Maruti Suzuki Rewards program will now be more rewarding, convenient, and enriched with a superior experience for members. Additionally, members will get the latest updates on the CNG fuel pump network of multiple city gas distribution companies.

SAP Labs partners with Capgemini in India to launch Cohort 2022 for SaaS start-ups

SAP Labs India, through its Start-up Studio, is partnering with Capgemini in India to create a deep engaging experience for ‘early stage’ and ‘growth stage’ enterprise SaaS companies in developing innovative solutions for customers globally.

The Cohort program is specially designed to give burgeoning start-ups a platform to showcase their ideas and tap the large talent pool in India. This synergy will pave the way in creating value for all participants including clients, SAP, Capgemini and start-ups, crucial for a well-functioning ecosystem.

The Cohort 2022 program, launching on 29th September in Bengaluru, will see close to 25 curated start-ups participate in a 2-day kick-off event. The program will aid start-ups to tackle business challenges and respond to new growth opportunities. It will assist them to take their ideas to new, diverse markets and cater to wider audiences. The focus will be on building industry-specific solutions leveraging leading technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Intelligent Robotic

Process Automation, Industrial IoT and Analytics and Immersive Experience.

Cohort 2022 will help the start-ups to have a nuanced understanding of business issues by getting exposure to the real-world problems, their solutions can address. They will have access to the SAP Business Technology Platform to build world-class sustainable and innovative solutions that will enable deeper integration into the SAP portfolio.

Bizverse joins Meta’s fourth accelerator programme

Bizverse joined TTC Labs by Meta fourth accelerator program. The program is a collaboration between Meta and the Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority and Personal Data Protection Commission. The program will focus on supporting startups including Bizverse further our understanding of data transparency and consent in metaverse technologies.

Bizverse is a technology company that offers answers to business problems by utilising the social networking model and the contactless economy platform’s technologies. Blockchain, Digital Twin, 3D Map, VR360, and VRFairs are just a few of the technologies that Bizverse World has successfully integrated into the digital transformation process for businesses in the global market. No doubt about the popularity of Metaverse, that is the future of

the Internet and it is just getting started. Many of the new standards and methodologies differ from the Internet as it currently exists, it is required collaboration among many large enterprises in the world to derive and popularise the perfect standards of the Metaverse world.

Metaverse, together with Blockchain, is designed to influence the direction of future technologies. Many businesses are applying this innovative tech to effectively accelerate their business.

Mavenir launches 5G small cell to support distributed and centralised ORAN architectures

Mavenir, the Network Software Provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud and transforms the way

the world connects, announced the unveiling of its latest 5G small cell.

Mavenir’s 5G small cell, is a globally applicable product, with the flexibility to support both distributed and centralised ORAN architectures. Building on an established install base of over 2 million small cell units deployed globally, the 5G small cell forms part of an expanding small cell portfolio, that leverages Mavenir’s end-to-end RAN solution including a common Management System and CU. This flexibility, coupled with zero touch provisioning – ease of deployment, cost-effective, high-capacity solution is ideal for a variety of deployment use cases, including Enterprises such as office, retail, warehousing, manufacturing, and public spaces.

Infosys to support transformation of Telenor Norway’s digital, analytics, AI stacks

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, announced its collaboration with Telenor Norway, Telenor’s wholly owned Norwegian telecommunications operator, in its business transformation program to become a digital telecommunications company.

Through this engagement, Infosys will accelerate Telenor Norway’s modernisation journey while supporting its ‘Beyond Connectivity’ strategy. This collaboration will drive Telenor Norway’s business growth and make the company future ready.

Infosys was chosen to assist Telenor on this modernisation journey for its strong global transformation experience and diverse talent pool. As part of the engagement, Infosys will leverage its

tools and accelerators to support the transformation of Telenor’s IT stack in areas of digital, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, and operations. The collaboration will also focus on upskilling and competency development.

Infosys will jointly drive and execute Telenor’s modernisation roadmap for capability uplifting, business agility, and revenue growth while ensuring operational stability to meet the company’s transformation objectives. While assisting in Telenor’s ‘Beyond Connectivity’ strategy, Infosys will jointly build the required IT capabilities and enable them to become a digital-first organisation. This will result in faster time to market and new revenue streams for Telenor.

Vantage announces partnership with UNESCO to support education initiatives in India

Vantage, the international multi-asset trading platform announces its partnership with UNESCO –United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, as a part of its social commitment to strengthen education opportunities to emerging markets like India.

Within this partnership, Vantage is supporting the “State of the Education Report for India, 2022 – Artificial Intelligence in Education,” which was launched today in New Delhi, India. The Report covers a number of pertinent issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence and education, including the potential of artificial intelligence to empower teachers and enhance our understanding of the learning process.

Vantage’s partnership with UNESCO New Delhi brings together two organisations with a shared aspiration to ensure that no one is left behind. In the coming years, Vantage aims to leverage its financial and technological expertise to provide support for UNESCO’s education initiatives in India, by increasing

GT Motive closes deal with XA Group to supply automotive estimatics for India

GT Motive, a provider of repair data and solutions based in Spain, has signed an agreement with XA Group, a UAE-based global provider of digital, hardware and manpower solutions operating in Middle East, South Asia and Europe, whereby GT Motive will provide repair data and the GT Estimate software solution to be integrated by XA Group as part of the latter’s aftersales services offering to dealers and repairers in India.

GT Estimate is a cutting-edge repair software that accurately assesses vehicle damage and reports on reparability issues and vehicle condition.

This partnership will enable

the accessibility of teaching and bringing the benefits of education to those who need it most.

XA Group to offer dealers and repairers in India with a cutting-edge technology for repair cost calculations, based on Original Equipment Manufacturer data developed by GT Motive with the highest precision and that is always up to date.

Headquartered in Madrid and present in 28 countries, GT Motive specialises in delivering automotive data to the repair, insurance, fleet and leasing industries. The company envisages a more open and collaborative ecosystem, providing data access to enable claims and repair digitalisation. Utilising the latest technologies, GT Motive processes more than 5 Million vehicle estimates every year.

Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, and operating across the Middle East, South Asia and Europe, XA Group provides Digital, Hardware, and Manpower solutions in the automotive aftersales industry. The company thrives on providing customers with an array of next-generation capabilities, disruptive technologies and partner offerings that work in synergy to reshape the industry landscape.

(LefttoRight)EricFalt,DirectorandUNESCORepresentativetoBhutan, India,theMaldivesandSriLankaandMarcDespallieres,ChiefStrategy andTradingOfficer,Vantage.

(LefttoRight)AngelMartinez,CEO, GTMotiveandBenBarber,Managing Director,XAGroup.

Uber and ITW join hands for pathbreaking mobility initiative

The freedom of mobility is incredibly empowering – it allows people to be more productive, to break free of the anxiety of having to get from point A to point B. It’s a truth, companies often overlook. But ITW, a sports, entertainment, and future media consulting company is out there to change that. They will be rolling out a unique new program that gives their employees more than just the freedom of their own mobility, through a standard business account with Uber.

As an employee centric company looking to help employees live up to their true human potential, ITW has figured that the freedom from the hassle of anxiety about mobility of their loved ones is just as crucial. It’s something almost all other companies do not pay much attention to.

This mechanism, to be rolled out across all scales and levels, allows the employee to nominate one of their family members under their names for ITW’s Uber business account. Such dependent family members will be given direct access to the ITW Uber corporate platform wherein each of them can avail free local rides and free international rides every month for their personal family use, paid for by ITW.

The philosophy of this initiative is to provide a safety net and nudge the employees to pay more attention to, and provide more care for their loved ones. This self-help and family inclusiveness effort comes with no additional terms and conditions keeping the whole experience frictionless – a key requirement for being able to relax.

Mavenir announces OEM manufacture of 2G, 4G, 5G Open RAN radios for OpenBeam

Mavenir, the Network Software Provider building the future of networks with cloud-native software that runs on any cloud and transforms the way the world connects, announced to have commenced the production of 2G, 4G and 5G Open RAN Radios for the OpenBeam portfolio for Indian and other prominent worldwide bands.

OpenBeam offers an innovative radio portfolio, cost-efficient, intelligent radios that meet the critical demands placed on today’s networks including massive MIMO, mmWave and multiband remote radio heads allowing improved network capacity as the network expands. The OpenBeam Open RAN radio solutions are available across all frequency bands and can be used for a wide range of use cases, including enterprises and public settings across urban or rural environments.

Mavenir’s robust set of radio options address the needs of the CSPs to be agile and cost-

efficient with low power consumption, low wind load, and built with integrated intelligence and automation. Designed for the growing needs of private enterprises to public networks, the portfolio supports both new and legacy radio access technologies. All radios have a modular design, using proven technology to support both MIMO beamforming and multi-band needs.

Kwai signs dynamic global licensing agreement with Warner Chappell Music

Warner Chappell Music and one of the fastest growing short-form video platforms in the world, Kwai, have entered into a dynamic new licensing agreement to make WCM’s music available on Kwai around the world.

Kwai recently hit more than 180 Million monthly active users outside of China, becoming one of the most popular apps in MENA and Latin America, as well as in South and Southeast Asia, where it’s known as

SnackVideo. Under the deal, Warner Chappell’s music will be available for use on these platforms, offering exciting new content to Kwai’s userbase. WCM have offices in more than 20 countries and are home to a wide array of songwriters spanning all genres, with material ranging from top-charting contemporary hits to a rich catalog of influential standards.

Warner Chappell Music Senior Vice President of Global Digital, Natalie Madaj, said, “As the digital ecosystem continues to evolve in exciting new ways, social-sharing apps like Kwai are changing how people experience and discover music around the world. We’re very proud to be partnering with the team to bring our catalog of songs to Kwai’s engaged userbase and talented music creators.”

Kuaishou Head of Overseas Partnership and Communications, Calvin Liu, shared, “This is an exciting collaboration from the creative and business point of view. We are sure Warner Chappell’s immense catalogue will inspire Millions of Kwai users across the Middle East to weave music in expressive new ways as they share stories from their lives.”

Kwai recently launched martial arts legend Jackie Chan’s global live-steaming session debut, attracting over 130 Million users at its peak, 220 Million total views, and 320 Million “likes”.

Hong Kong’s extensive cargo efforts applauded

Following an increase in the cargo dedication of Cathay Pacific throughout the pandemic and beyond, the award-winning airline’s hub, Hong Kong International Airport, has been recognised for its cargo proficiency.

The international airport was named the world’s busiest cargo airport, as well carrying the most tonnage for 2021, beating last year’s top-ranking Memphis International Airport, which positioned second according to the Airports Council International.

Cathay Pacific’s cargo service is responsible for 25% of the airline’s annual revenue, connecting Hong Kong to 46 destinations globally through a raft of partners helping to provide an effective service.

Ensuring that customers looking to send cargo via Cathay Pacific have various options to fit their individual needs, the airline also launched its Priority solution, offering three service tiers: First – PR1, Essential Plus – PR2 and Essential – PR3. For general cargo shipments, customers can choose the tier best suited to their needs. In addition, PR1 and PR2 service tiers have been extended and are now applicable to all types of shipments requiring special handling, including but not limited to Pharma LIFT, Fresh LIFT, and DG LIFT for dangerous goods.

In addition, Cathay Pacific Cargo has become one of the first carriers to pioneer two new milestones in the Cargo iQ Master Operating Plan.

OPX AMERICA LAUNCHES

OPX TECHNOLOGY AT BTX ROAD SHOW ASIA IN DELHI

On 16 September 2022, OPX America, a leading service provider with captive, private label business services that deliver from international delivery centres, launched OPX Technology at the BTX Road Show and Transformation Awards 2022 in New Delhi.

The launch event took place in the presence of Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology; Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology; Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America, Ronak Samantaray, Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group and Sundip Sibal, Executive Director, GEC Media Group and Co-Founder, Business Transformation Asia.

OPX Technology also announced GEC Media Group as an official global marketing partner. OPX Technology is a global digital services and solutions

provider, that enables its clients to transform at the intersect of domain expertise and emerging technologies to achieve real-world business impact.

Speaking at the event, Rajesh Samantaray, CoFounder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology said, “OPX stands for Operational, Performance and Excellence. When I was working with large companies, we felt the need of being nimble, being fast and being focussed on some specific technologies. And we firmly believed to get operational, performance and excellence we will have to on the right side of technologies. And you know that is where we directed this company, which is focussed on cloud confirmation programs, cyber security, moving customers who have been in legacy ERP into cloud and getting the most out of data analytics, artificial intelligence. We have a bunch of data

(Left to right) Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology; Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America; Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology; and Ronak Samantaray, Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group.

scientists who have been working on churning out data models.”

He added, “I have been on both sides. I think the key thing is how do you understand what the customer needs. You will always find a bunch of vendors, partners trying to push him that what they have. Then they are trying to map out like they have something that you need it. That is not how we are approaching it. We exactly know that we just need to solve problems. If you are able to solve problems for your customers, they will see you as a partner. In 18-19 years of my life, I have done that story my friend.”

Speaking on the new partnership, Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology said OPX Technology focuses on three core areas including cloud transformation, artificial intelligence and data security. OPX America is involved in all types of operations. They also provide processing services and business services as an extension for your company. OPX is offering services from small to mid-size businesses.

Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America said right now focusing on expansion in the new markets for the existing base. As we are expanded in our new market outside of the western India, we continue to look for the right people.

OPX Technology delivers its clients Operational Performance Excellence using innovative technologies to achieve transformational change – Faster, Intelligent, Effective and Secure. OPX Technology leads with its product engineering approach and leverages Cloud, Data, Integration and Automation technologies to transform client businesses into intelligent, high growth enterprises.

Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology.

Lawson Hardwick, Co-Founder, OPX-America.

Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America.

ROAD SHOW 2022

SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDES IN NEW DELHI ON 16 SEPTEMBER

The three-city edition, BTX Road Show 2022 continued into Asia edition with the third event staged in New Delhi on 16 September 2022 at The Imperial. The event featured multiple invited keynotes, technology keynotes, multiple panel discussion and four sets of awards. The event was joined by over 150 delegates including keynote speakers,

panelists, honourable guests, attendees and four sets of awards.

The BTX Roadshow and Transformation Awards 2022 Asia was supported by various partners including OPX Technology, Automation Anywhere, 3i Infotech, Infinite Blue|ProBuddy; Finesse, Masterwork Automodule, Epicor and Global Trade and Technology Council of India.

Anshuman Jyothiprakash, Project Manager, GEC Media Group.

Sundip Sibal, Sundip Sibal, Executive Director, GEC Media Group and Co-Founder, Business Transformation Asia.

Ronak Samantaray, CEO and Co-Founder, GEC Media Group.

Lamp Lighting ceremony at the BTX Road Show and Transformation Awards 2022.

Matt Christopher Clarke, Co-Founder and Investor, OPX America and OPX Technology.

Rajesh Samantaray, Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman, OPX America and OPX Technology.

Alok Agrawal, Dy. General Manager Airport Systems, Airports Authority of India.

Rajeev Dutt, General Manager, Infinite Blue.

Dr Ranjeet Mehta, Senior Industry Advisor.

Jogendra Singh, President Finance, Hero Corporate Service.

(Left to Right) Arun Shankar, Chief Editor, GEC Media Group; Avneesh Vats, GM and Head IT, EESL and CESL; Anand Sinha, Global Head IT and Digital, Birlasoft; Anand Aggarwal, Chief Information and Security Officer, Asset care and reconstruction Enterprise Ltd; Mansi Thapar, Global IT Leader; and Vishal Raj Saini, Country Manager, India and Indian Sub-continent, EPICOR.

Dr Biswajit Mohapatra, Head of Customer Solutions Management, Amazon Web Services.

Amit Mathur, Chief Evangelist, Automation Anywhere.

(Left to Right) Sukanta Dey, Founder CEO, Sdela Telecom; Nikhil Kumar Nigam, Associate Director, Technologies, Amity University; Kunika Rathore, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Unknowns Agency; Mohit Tandon, General Manager IT, Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute and Action Cancer Hospital; Shivani Sharma, Founder and Director, KLEAP Technologies.

Vipan Sawhney, CTO, ODN Digital Services.

Mukta Arora, Founder and CEO, Gleeo Health.

Subroto Panda, CIO, Anand and Anand.

Chandan Choudhary, Chief Marketing Officer, Tecchef Data Recovery.

WINNERS

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LEVERAGING

is preparing to enter the Metaverse solution space by leveraging

partner relationships in mixed reality and its digital twin building skills.

BHASKAR RAMAN

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The Metaverse technology is rapidly expanding, with companies across several industries preparing for the virtual world. While Metaverse technology represents a comprehensive virtual world, digital twin is an exact replica of a physical asset, a machine, a vehicle, or a device and can be created through BIM or Lidar Scanning. Digital twins can be considered one of the building blocks of the metaverse, augmenting the physical world and making it accessible from the digital realm.

Omnix sees commercial opportunities across industries such as Manufacturing, Automotive, Retail and Ecommerce, Smart Architecture and Industrial IoT. In the manufacturing industry, for example, Digital Twin solutions can be used to create virtual copies of entire workshops and plants to easily identify flaws and visualise the production process. With this capability, manufacturing industries can design, manufacture, process, and maintain the production processes more efficiently.

In the Retail and eCommerce sector, digital twins in the metaverse allows people to shop in the virtual space where data is updated in real time via the Digital Twin technology. Smart Architecture also utilises the technology to manage resources and map out a city’s area, including predicting and managing carbon footprints and coming up with innovative ways to improve the quality of life of a city’s residents.

The technology is becoming embedded in building and manufacturing processes and is seeing significant value in the operations and maintenance phase of systems and products. Omnix sees an increasing demand for skills in this domain. Each of these broad lifecycle areas have specialised talent requirements, thus there is a need for technologists with a variety of skills is clear.

The channel partner community in the AEC, Oil and Gas and manufacturing space understand the advantages of 3D BIM data over 2D drawings. Hence digital twins as an extension of BIM is raising the bar for channel partners and will enable them to explore the vast opportunities it offers.

Solutions for digital twins

Omnix offers Unity Reflect for Autodesk Revit which is a design review and coordination solution that connects all project members and allows them to collaborate in real-time irrespective of location, device or model size. This enables faster decision making with effective results throughout the building lifecycle.

Unity Reflect for Autodesk Revit is a Business Information Management software. With BIM being made mandatory across some countries and cities, it helps designers and engineers to transfer Revit models in real-time 3D experiences. These can be viewed in AR and VR and helps transfer BIM metadata to real-time 3D.

The software is also capable of improving design reviews and coordination while allowing scalability to an unlimited number of projects, clients, and collaborators in real-time simultaneously.

Omnix also offers VisualLive apps and integrated plugins, which allow users to take their large BIM models to HoloLens and mobile devices within a few minutes of the process with just a few clicks.

Unity Digital Twin solution allows users to be prepared and equipped to make data-informed decisions, and monitor and manage operations of an existing facility, site, or system. Users can identify potential issues, make improvements, and anticipate future operations based on visualised designs, simulations, real-time data collection, and IoT predictive maintenance. The solution also enables upskilling of the workforce to improve information retention with hands-on immersive training, onsite or remote.

Data about an object is required by a Digital Twin to represent a virtual model that mimics behaviours or states of real-world events and hardware, and software components form an essential component of building an end-to-end digital twin solution.

Industrial use cases

Omnix believes digital twins is not limited to a particular industry and has uses across many industries. Other than its uses in industrial plants, Digital Twin is important in Geographical Information System as it interconnects information, systems, models, and behaviours with spatial context, creating holistic digital representations of environments, assets, networks, and cities.

More importantly, Digital Twin has become popular in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry which includes building and infrastructure projects. It integrates real-time data from a built asset with its digital representation to create insights across the project lifecycle. Omnix is focused on this technology because Digital Twin is not just a hype. It solves major challenges in both design and operations for our clients.

The technology has saved end-users and project teams countless hours updating models in the construction industry. Analog, unclassified, and disconnected data is often an insoluble challenge for owners and operators to monitor, manage, and finetune their asset. The end user community is keen on implementing this technology, and government bodies and municipalities are headed towards its adoption which will create a positive impact across all sectors.

Omnix’s digital transformation services range from simple 2D, 3D, BIM and capturing of physical assets in Construction and Oil and Gas projects, to projects in facility management. Solution offerings include Autodesk, TeamViewer, Vuzix, Faro, Unity, Chaos, Lumion, Adobe, Oracle, Bluebeam and GTX.

DISTRACT, CONFUSE, DENY, DIVIDE IS NOW STANDARD WAR PLAYBOOK

Information warfare is how Kremlin can control rest of the world’s response with false flags, misattribution, social media manipulation components of Russia’s playbook.

BY CHESTER WISNIEWSKI

Principal Research Scientist, Sophos.

With Russian troops amassing on the border with Ukraine and distributed denial of service DDoS attacks sporadically disrupting Ukrainian government websites and financial service providers, there is much talk about being prepared for cyber conflict, whether an actual war ensues or not.

While all organisations should always be prepared for an attack from any direction, it can be helpful to know what to look for when the risk of attack increases.

In 2022 the cyberpolitical tensions are rising again and near breaking point. On January 13 and 14, 2022, numerous Ukrainian government websites were defaced, and systems were infected with malware disguised as a

ransomware attack. Multiple components of these attacks echo the past. The malware was not actually ransomware, it was simply a sophisticated wiper, as was seen in the NotPetya attacks. Additionally, there were many false flags left behind implying it might be the work of Ukrainian dissidents or Polish partisans.

Distract, confuse, deny and attempt to divide seems to be the standard playbook now.

On Tuesday February 15, 2022, a series of debilitating DDoS attacks were unleashed against Ukrainian government and military websites, as well as against three of Ukraine’s largest banks. In an unprecedented move the White House has already declassified some intelligence and pinned the attacks on the Russian GRU.

What now? Regardless of whether things continue to escalate, cyberoperations are

While calling on fellow Russian patriots to help punish Estonia, this was unlikely to have been a grassroots movement that sprung from zero with tools and a list of targets at the ready. The same tactics were later deployed by Anonymous in defence of Wikileaks, using a tool called the low orbit ion canon LOIC.

On May 4, 2007, the attacks intensified and additionally began targeting banks. Exactly seven days later the attacks ceased at midnight, as abruptly as they had begun.

Everyone immediately implicated Russia but attributing distributed denial of service attacks is near impossible, by design. It is now widely believed these DDoS attacks were the work of the Russian Business Network RBN, a notorious organised crime group in Russia with ties to spamming, botnets and pharmaceutical affiliate schemes. Their services appear to have been procured for precisely a week to conduct these attacks.

sure to continue. Ukraine has been under a constant barrage of attacks with varying degrees of peaks and troughs since Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in 2014.

Information warfare is how the Kremlin can try to control the rest of the world’s response to actions in Ukraine or any other target of attack.

False flags, misattribution, disrupted communications, and social media manipulation are all key components of Russia’s information warfare playbook. They don’t need to create a permanent cover for activities on the ground and elsewhere, they simply need to cause enough delay, confusion and contradiction to enable other simultaneous operations to accomplish their objectives.

DESTABILISING DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS

The earliest known

activity dates to April 26, 2007, when the Estonian government moved a statue commemorating the Soviet Union’s liberation of Estonia from the Nazis to a less prominent location. This action infuriated Estonia’s Russian speaking population and destabilised relations with Moscow. Soon after there were riots in the streets, protests outside of the Estonian embassy in Moscow and a wave of debilitating DDoS attacks on Estonian government and financial services websites.

Fully prepared tools and instructions on how to participate in DDoS attacks appeared on Russian forums almost immediately after the moving of the statue. These attacks targeted websites belonging to the President, Parliament, police, political parties, and major media outlets.

On July 19, 2008, a new wave of DDoS attacks began targeting news and government websites in Georgia. These attacks mysteriously intensified dramatically on August 8, 2008, as Russian troops invaded the separatist province of South Ossetia. Initially they targeted Georgian news and government sites before moving on to include financial institutions, businesses, education, Western media, and a Georgian hacker website.

Like the earlier attacks on Estonia, a website appeared featuring a list of targets as well as a set of tools with instructions for using them. This ruse also attempted to attribute the attacks to patriots defending against Georgian aggression, yet most of the actual attack traffic originated from a known large botnet believed to be controlled by RBN.

DIGITAL DEFACEMENT AND SPAM

The attacks on Georgia also included website defacements

Low-level information warfare has been ongoing against Ukraine since 2009

malware had infiltrated the Ukraine Prime Minister’s Office and several remote embassies at the same time as antigovernment protests began in Ukraine. Near the end of 2013 and into 2014, ESET also published research documenting attacks against military targets and media outlets dubbed Operation Potao Express.

called BlackEnergy.

and massive spam campaigns designed to clog Georgian’s inboxes. All of this appeared to be designed to inspire a lack of confidence in the ability of Georgia to defend and govern itself and to prevent the government from effectively communicating with its citizens and the outside world.

Less than a year later, a further series of DDoS attacks began in Kyrgyzstan in January 2009. This happened to coincide with a decision-making process the Kyrgyzstani government was entering into to decide whether to renew a lease on an air base in their territory. Coincidence? It appeared to be conducted by the RBN once again, but this time no ruse of patriots expressing their digital opinions.

This brings us to the most recent kinetic conflict, the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

DISINFORMATION AND ISOLATION

Low-level information warfare has been ongoing against Ukraine since 2009, with many attacks coinciding with events that could be interpreted as threatening to Russian interests such as a NATO summit and negotiations between Ukraine and the EU for an Association Agreement.

In March 2014, the New York Times reported that Snake

As before a homegrown cyber group known as Cyber Berkut executed DDoS attacks and web defacements, without causing much actual harm. It did, however, create a lot of confusion and that alone has an impact during times of conflict.

Early in the conflict soldiers without insignias seized control of Crimea’s telecommunications networks and the only internet exchange in the region, causing an information blackout. The attackers abused their access to the mobile phone network to identify anti-Russian protesters and send them SMS messages saying, Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.

After isolating Crimea’s ability to communicate, the attackers also tampered with the mobile phones of members of the Ukrainian Parliament, preventing them from effectively reacting to the invasion. As noted in Military Cyber Affairs, disinformation campaigns kicked into full swing.

PARALYSING POWER SUPPLIES

On December 23, 2015, the power was abruptly turned off for about half of the residents of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. This is widely believed to have been the work of statesponsored Russian hackers. The initial attacks began more than 6 months before the power blinked out when employees at three power distribution centres opened a malicious Microsoft Office document with a macro designed to install malware

The attackers were able to acquire remote access credentials to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition SCADA network and take control of the substation controls to begin opening circuit breakers. The attackers then proceeded to brick those remote controls to prevent the breakers from being closed remotely to restore power.

Additionally, the attackers deployed a wiper to brick the computers used to control the grid and simultaneously conducted a telephone denial of service TDoS attack by clogging the customer service numbers, frustrating customers trying to report the outages.

Nearly one year later, on December 17, 2016, the lights blinked out once again in Kyiv. This time the malware responsible was called Industroyer, CrashOverride and it was immensely more sophisticated. The malware was designed with modular components that could scan the network to find SCADA controllers and it also spoke their language. It also had a wiper component to erase the system. The attack didn’t appear related to BlackEnergy or the known wiper tool, KillDisk, but there was no doubt who was behind it.

EMAIL EXPOSURE

In June 2016, during a close Presidential election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a new character named Guccifer 2.0 appeared on the scene claiming to have hacked the Democratic National Committee and proceeded to hand over their emails to Wikileaks. While not officially attributed to Russia, this appeared alongside other disinformation campaigns during the 2016 election and is widely believed to be the work of the Kremlin.

SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACKS: NOTPETYA Russia’s persistent attacks against

Ukraine weren’t over and they turned up the heat on June 27, 2017, when they unleashed a new piece of malware now dubbed NotPetya.

NotPetya was disguised as a new strain of ransomware and deployed through a hacked supply chain of a Ukrainian accounting software provider. In fact, it was not really ransomware at all. Although it would encrypt a computer, it was impossible to decrypt, effectively wiping the device and making it useless.

The victims were not limited to Ukrainian companies. The malware spread around the world within hours, mostly impacting organisations that had operations in Ukraine where the booby-trapped accounting software was used. NotPetya is estimated to have caused at least $10 billion in damage worldwide.

FALSE FLAGS

As the Winter Olympic games opened in PyeongChang on February 9, 2018, another attack was about to be unleashed on the world. The malware attack disabled every domain controller across the entire Olympic

network, preventing everything from Wi-Fi to ticket gates from working properly. Miraculously, the IT team was able to isolate the network, rebuild and remove the malware from the systems and have everything up and running for the next morning, barely skipping a beat.

Then it was time to conduct the malware analysis to attempt to determine who would want to attack and disable the entire Olympic network? Malware attribution is hard, but there were some clues left behind that might help, or they could be false flags trying to point the finger at an uninvolved third party.

The evidence appeared to point at North Korea and China, yet it was almost too obvious to attempt to blame North Korea. In the end, some brilliant detective work by Igor Soumenkov of Kaspersky Lab found a smoking gun that pointed directly at Moscow.

A few years later, just before the festive holidays in late 2020, word spread of a supply chain attack targeting the SolarWinds Orion software used to manage networking infrastructure for large and mid-size organisations

around the globe, including many Federal Government agencies. The software update mechanisms had been hijacked and used to deploy a backdoor.

The high-profile nature of the victims, combined with the access afforded through the stealthily deployed backdoor may make this attack one of the largest and most damaging cyberespionage attacks in modern history.

From a global perspective, we should expect a range of patriotic freelancers in Russia, by which I mean ransomware criminals, phish writers and botnet operators, to lash out with even more fervour than normal at targets perceived to be against the Motherland.

It is unlikely Russia would directly attack NATO members and risk invocation of Article V. However, its recent gestures toward reining in criminals operating from the Russian Federation and their Commonwealth of Independent States CIS partners will probably come to an end, and instead we will see the threats multiply.

Opinions and comments are of the authors mentioned.

NotPetya is estimated to have caused at least $10 Bn in damage worldwide

OPTICAL FIBRE IS INCREASINGLY PENETRATING OFFICE LANS

Fibre offers scalable bandwidth, low latency, flexibility needed to meet the demands of applications such as next-generation Wi-Fi, high-availability AV, and 5G within a single building.

Digitisation and the trend towards an ever more deeply networked world has been unbroken for more than 20 years—and is still in its early stages. Organisations that do not invest in the short term will likely fall behind in the medium term and risk not being around in the long term.

According to a Cisco VNI Report, the latest forecasts assume that the number of IPcapable end devices will double globally by 2030. One of the reasons for this is that a not inconsiderable proportion of these end devices will be integrated into the infrastructure via radio protocols such as Wi-Fi. Likewise, WiFi is used to a considerable extent for data offloading from mobile data networks such as 3G, 4G and 5G, thus helping to optimise the load distribution of mobile networks in the area and in buildings. As a result, fibre has increasingly found its way into the horizontal LAN.

It is no secret that copper cables are reaching their limits when it comes to high-speed transmissions and capacities as well as lengths. Traditional structured cabling also requires many cables in the horizontal path, leading to increased complexity. We must further consider the convergence of networks and integration of building services, which is difficult to manage over time.

Necessary network expansions and upgrades are a challenge for any operator due to ageing installations and overcrowded distribution rooms. It is therefore all the more important to design and implement a LAN concept that meets current and future requirements with minimal impact on the buildings and the daily work of the companies located there.

Optical fibre is the obvious solution for

connecting end devices in the LAN. This can be done directly or via converters such as media converters, classic area switches, or optical network terminals in passive optical pointto-point or point-to-multipoint networks.

As such, Fibre to the Edge FttE is ideal for businesses that require high capacity and flexibility in their network.

Fibre offers scalable bandwidth, low latency, and the reach and flexibility needed to meet the demands of applications such as nextgeneration Wi-Fi, high-availability AV, and 5G within a single building or on a large campus. The reach of fibre enables multiple devices to be connected via a single cable that extends to a common central collection point from which individual areas up to multiple floors can be served.

Like any corporate IT network, an FttEbased LAN consists of active routers, switches, etc. and passive cables, connectors, etc. components. Important requirements include long-reach, flexible power, and data. This must be coupled with intelligent remotepower solutions and ending rip-and-replace network planning. Let us look at these priorities in a bit more detail.

In the LAN IT architecture of a conventional company, data is transmitted either entirely via copper cable or via a combination of fibre optic backbone and copper cable up to the end device connection, which requires distribution cabinets throughout the network.

An FttE architecture is all-optical, so all data transmission is via fibre. This means that the network can be operated from a central equipment room. The main distribution frame MDF, in a form of collapsed backbone, makes

BY PIERS BENJAMIN

EMEA In Building Networks, Marketing Manager, Corning Optical Communications.

intermediate distributors area distributors, floor distributors superfluous and allows the space to be used as floor space.

Centralisation and remote power supply can also have a direct positive influence on the costs for power and cooling. The extremely high bandwidth and scalability that an FttE architecture enables, in combination with Wi-Fi technologies, meet the need for modern wireless working in a flexible office environment. This also reduces the need for individual cabling and porting.

As fibre itself is unsuitable to carry the power supply of end devices, it is recommended to use composite cabling in FttE networks that contains both fibre and copper. This combines the scalability and bandwidth capacity of single-mode fibre with the power-conducting properties of copper to deliver both data and power to devices at the edge of the network.

Composite cables take up much less space than comparable copper data cables and are much better prepared than them in terms of current density, voltage drop and transmittable power, and the maximum cable length they can achieve. This simplifies future upgrades, too.

have to be installed. Wi-Fi 6E requires up to 10G bandwidth and Wi-Fi 7 up to 40G. The latter can be achieved with four class EA channels based on KAT6A cables with a distance limit of 90 m, or with a fibre-optic composite cable that also offers longer distances for power and data.

Another integral part of a fibrebased design, especially with composite cables, is the possibility of remote power supply. A central DC power supply offers a simple solution that can be scaled up depending on the number of devices required. The central units can also be split according to PoE requirements, overall budget and distance to the endpoint. There are many long-range solutions that can support devices at the edge of the network - in some cases even over distances of more than 600 meters.

It is no secret that copper cables are reaching their limits when it comes to high-speed transmissions and capacities as well as lengths

Let US take a closer look at Wi-Fi design and the requirements of enterprise customers. Currently well-established is the sixth generation of Wi-Fi. The next generation, Wi-Fi 6E, is starting to become more widely adopted and offers an extension of this standard to the 6 GHz band, significantly reducing network congestion. Wi-Fi 7 should be on the market in the next 1-2 years.

What does this mean for building owners and operators? In order to support the maximum possible data throughput of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7, additional cables would

If a device doesn’t feature a fibre input output, conversion equipment such as a media converter can change the signal from optical to electrical and connect to the device with a short copper patch cord. This is another integral part of a FttE network design, and there’s a number of cost-effective options here that can support 10G speeds and offer backward compatibility to support 1G or 2.5G speeds.

While there is still a place for copper in the networked building infrastructure, its limitations in terms of bandwidth, power density, and distance mean that networks should be designed to move the aggregation of data. Hence, the transition point from fibre to copper, and closer to the edge of the network.

By reducing the space needed for network equipment and converging multiple networks into a single, streamlined one, the impact on resources is also reduced.

MANAGING A SUPPLY CHAIN FOR RESILIENCE, RESPONSIVENESS, COST

A supply chain that is 100% resilient will also be too costly, there will always be trade-offs, and the balance will look different for every company.

For decades, companies in the Middle East have embraced globalisation and lean supply chain operations to meet more demanding customer expectations while bringing down costs and reducing inventory. But the inherent weakness and vulnerability of this model has been exposed by a decade of supply chain disruptions that grew in frequency and magnitude.

Natural disasters, weather events, labour shortages, trade disputes, and other geopolitical issues showed the cracks in global supply chains. Then, over the past two years, several aspects such as the devastating Covid-19 pandemic and the global semiconductor shortage, made this vulnerability obvious to every business leader—and moved supply chain resilience to the top of the C-level agenda.

The worst of these supply disruptions have taken significant bites out of regional companies’ output, sales, profitability, and share prices, with recovery sometimes taking months or even years. The chip shortage, for example, is estimated to have curbed global automotive production by more than 7 million vehicles in 2021, and the industry, similar to others, has yet to fully recover.

Most of these disruptions understandably caught leadership teams by surprise. But the result is that they’re now constantly on edge, awaiting the next unforeseen disruption lurking around the corner.

A growing number of executives have decided they can no longer afford to get caught flat-footed. They recognise that while it is important to respond effectively to short-

term supply chain shocks, they also have to reposition their supply chain for the long haul because disruption is the new global reality. Companies that manage these disruptions best will have a distinct competitive edge over the next decade.

At the same time, pressure from consumers, regulators, and shareholders to increase sustainability is making supply chain repositioning an even more urgent priority— and creating another potential source of competitive advantage.

What it takes

The challenge is finding the appropriate balance among resilience, sustainability, responsiveness, and cost. These goals often run counter to one another. For example, a supply chain that is 100% resilient will also likely be too costly. There will always be tradeoffs, and the balance will look different for every company, depending on various factors such as their industry, geographic footprint, and size.

A few questions can help jump-start the process of striking the balance that’s right for your company:

In order to win in the marketplace, what does the business need from our supply chain in terms of resilience, sustainability, responsiveness, and cost?

Where do our existing supply chain capabilities fall short?

How often does the balance between these dimensions need to be refreshed in order to remain competitive?

What capabilities and processes will be required to continually monitor and assess the balance of priorities?

BY KARIM SHARIFF Partner, Bain & Company.

These considerations make it clear that incremental changes will not meet the challenge. Succeeding will require a bold strategy and fearless execution. What does this look like on the ground?

At many companies, there can be limited communication between supply chain leaders and the sales team, business unit heads, or C-suite about strategy or investment priorities. Often this is because the organisation is siloed, or the supply chain department historically has not had a seat at the leadership table. But the result is a lack of direction that can paralyse the supply chain team.

Leading companies look for ways to improve communications among the supply chain, C-suite, sales, and other commercial teams so that supply chain leaders clearly understand the trade-offs required to win in the market.

The most successful companies are also involving other key stakeholders in the supply chain balance equation discussion, including finance, R&D, regulatory, sustainability, and procurement. This ensures everyone understands all the implications of the proposed overhaul—and what’s feasible.

Tapping into the power of unconstrained thinking to set a bold vision. Only transformational thinking can solve the problems that supply chains now face. Leading companies start with a blank sheet of paper, set aside all constraints, and draw up the end-to-end supply chain they expect they’ll need in order to win in their industry 5 to 10 years from now. Then, they chart a pragmatic, detailed roadmap to the target.

The perfect supply chain is likely unattainable. Some limitations across operations, capital, commercial capabilities, suppliers, and regulations must be factored into the real-world scenario. But based on our experience working with companies around the globe, when business leaders give themselves the space to think boldly and they work backward from the end goal, it usually allows the company to get a lot closer to perfect.

Investing in digital capabilities that help connect the supply chain and change the economics in ways that weren’t previously possible. As they transition to Industry 4.0, companies’ investments in technology transformation and digitalising their operations also play an essential role in supporting supply chain redesign initiatives. Digital capabilities are enabling companies to rebalance their supply chains toward resilience, sustainability, and responsiveness without taking an untenable hit on cost or efficiency.

Leading companies are applying machine learning and other digital tools to improve demand forecasting, inventory management, production scheduling, early detection of supply chain disruptions, and a host of other critical elements. They are also using factory automation to bend the cost curve and increase resilience.

Over the past several years, effective deployment of these technologies—in combination with rising geopolitical uncertainty and the rising costs of shipping and overseas labour— has completely restructured the calculus for many companies’ global manufacturing and supply chain footprints.

The bottom line is this is not just an overhaul of the supply chain; it is a companywide transformation and a multiyear journey. The emerging leaders are acting as quickly as they can to remake their supply chain’s vulnerabilities into virtues so that they not only get ahead of the next global supply chain crisis but also accelerate past their competitors.

BY Joe Terino, Global Head of Bain & Company’s Supply Chain Practice and Karim Shariff, Partner, Bain & Company.

These considerations make it clear that incremental changes will not meet the challenge

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