February Issue 2022

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ISSUE 11

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs. FEBRUARY 2022

INDUSTRY 4.0

TECHNOLOGIES DEPLOYMENT ON THE UPTAKE

There is significant upswing in adoption of Industrial 4.0 technologies post Covid and it presents an opportunity for organizations to re-imagine businesses for the new normal P-20

VISHAL RALLY Sr. Vice President (Product & Marketing), Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS)

CORPORATE STORY (P-16) IN 2022, THE NEXT-GEN TECHNOLOGIES - IOT, CLOUD, AI, ML WILL DRIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

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EDITOR’S LETTER leaders should be cognizant about.

Today most of the organizations are connected over cloud computing which is a common ground of inter connectivity. It is therefore very difficult to gauge the threat movement and source. Therefore, the responsibility is manifold now. Remember we have a long way to go.

The credit rating agency Moody’s has raised India’s GDP growth to 9.5 per cent from 7 per cent. Our performance in the bourses is constant. We are growing faster than other developing countries including China and USA. On the other side, we can see massive infra development happening across the country. Thousands of kilometres of express ways and highways being created enabling goods to move from one part to other parts of country quite swiftly. At the same time, airports are being built up and ports are being renovated, rivers are being cleaned and desilted so that movement of the cargo can happen smoothly.

These are the steps that China had taken 20 years back and today the country is the largest exporter of industrial goods. India is moving in that director.

May be in next 5-10 years we would reach that level.

So, the pressure on IT is imminent as the industrial growth is going to be aggressive for next 5-10 years.

The need of upskilling and cross skilling is also very high. Dependence on the consultants and subject matter experts is going to be very high. So be ready for the new era challenges and opportunities!

LIFE AFTER PANDEMIC

Hello Friends.

Live after pandemic is so cool! It is like birds coming out of the case– very independent and free to fly. Most of the people in India are vaccinated.

Even though Covid situation is not over it is to a large extent alleviated. People have started moving without masks. But then another challenge is on the horizon. It is the war between Russia and Ukraine, which appears to be imminent. It may not be having direct impact on India but would create global crisis for sure. It can lead to more cyber warfare too.

Countries in both the boarders would engage the cyber criminals to attack each other and would have spill over effect on each country.

India being a neutral country does not mean that it would not be attacked by cyber criminals.

Rather being neutral, the weak country is not being supported, which means the threat actors in that country and sympathising country would certainly be aggressive on India due to its position. Therefore, CIOs need to be extra careful now for some time.

So, when I say that post pandemic life is cool, it is not. It is a new set of challenges now that the IT

NEXT MONTH SPECIAL

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

COVER STORY

SUPPLEMENT

INDUSTRY 4.0

QUOTES FROM TOP CIOS

The next issue is dedicated to the Industry 4.0. We would like to take feedback from the CIOs and OEMs and create our judgment on the same.

The supplement story of the magazine would have relevant quotes from the top CIOs in India.

PLUS

Interviews and Case Studies

Catch interviews, guest articles and case studies of recent applications from the Industry stakeholders, IT/ITES Vendors and IT leaders and CIOs from the Enterprise IT World CIO Community.

Send in your inputs to sanjay@accentinfomedia.com FEBRUARY 2022

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CONTENTS VOLUME 06

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ISSUE 11

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FEBRUARY 2022

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Chief Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra

W W W. E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M 1

Managing Editor: Anisha Nayar Dhawan Sub Editor: Kumari Ambika Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Sangeet Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Marketing Manager: Vaishali Shukla SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 E-mail: info@accentinfomedia.com

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New

20 INDUSTRY 4.0 TECHNOLOGIES

Delhi-110016, Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@ accentinfomedia.com

DEPLOYMENT ON THE UPTAKE There is significant upswing in adoption of Industrial 4.0 technologies post Covid and it presents an opportunity for organizations to re-imagine businesses for the new normal.

Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016

CIO TALK: /24 Change Management is Very Important as the message must reach all users and stakeholders

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INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

ABHINAV JAIN

MILIND WAGLE

DR. SRINIVAS MUKKAMALA

“Financial Services Accelerate Digital Capabilities To Remain Competitive”

“Our Vision is to Help Brands Mitigate a Massive Dependence on the Physical Workforce”

“4 Digital Infrastructure Predictions Defining the Next Decade”

“One Ivanti Means that we are Committed to Maximizing our Performance”

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

FEBRUARY 2022

TECH PREDICTION 2022

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FEATURE STORY

BANKING TRANSFORMATION

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ITWORLD

ROUND UP

India@100 Budget: A Much Needed Booster Dose for the IT Industry

B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

The budget has been presented. Setting an ambitious blueprint for steering the economy towards India@100, the growth-oriented tech-intensive budget has made a strong push to develop the country’s infrastructure through the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan, which will be a game changer not just in triggering economic activity but also developing skilled human capital and generating employment.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman set the tone of the budget by carrying the budget in a madein-India Tab in a slim red folder and presenting a paperless budget for the second consecutive year — a welcome break from the past when traditional briefcase budgets stuffed with stacks of paper used to characterize the union budgets presented by the previous FMs. Rather than dallying with the broader announcements for various sectors of the national economy, we 6

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shall restrict our budget analysis here to the budgetary announcements vis-à-vis the IT sector.

At the first glance, it seems the uncontrolled economic ravages spun by the Pandemic, and the pivotal role played by the IT industry to keep critical sectors like education, health, even the running of the government as well as the private sector afloat, has propelled the Government to rise up to the occasion. A series of big-ticket announcements pertaining to the IT industry is a clear pointer towards that.

The IT industry, in general, has received the Union Budget with applause. Prabhakar Iyer, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, Ingram Micro India, says, “It is a forward-looking budget and will have an impact in the years to come. The government has embraced technology and digitization in all sectors of the economy viz. defense, agriculture, health, education.”

D ATA BRIEF

By 2024, in response to performance, security, and compliance requirements, 40% of organizations will implement dedicated cloud services either on-premises or in a service provider facility.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

Ending 2022 in a Better Financial Position at Your Business

If there is one thing that all company owners want today, it is to put their company in a better financial position. One of the ways in which this can be done is by making sure that all of your clients pay their invoices on time.

Of course, you then need to look into ways to make more money as well. There are lots of avenues to explore, so let’s take a look at some suggestions.

Look for ways to diversify – if there is anything that we have learned from 2021 and 2020, it is that you simply do not know what is around the corner, and so you need to be prepared. Diversifying your business is a great way of making extra money while protecting yourself from risk at the same time.

Right any wrongs – Don’t be afraid to hire a merchant account lawsuit lawyer if you have been wronged by another company. You could be entitled to a lot of compensation.

Send your invoices on time – If you do not send your invoices on time, your clients may assume that you don’t care about being on time,

CIO

and so they may put your invoice at the bottom of the list.

Research clients beforehand – Another vital step in improving your company’s finances is to research new clients before they come on board. If someone has a reputation for failing to pay on time, or even worse, not paying at all, you may decide that it is simply better not to waste your time.

Provide a number of payment options – It is certainly going to be easier for people to pay you if you offer a number of finance options.

For example, PayPal can be quick and convenient, whereas bank transfer can often mean that a card reader is needed. Offering PayPal may result in faster payments a lot of the time.

Considering hiring an accountant – You may also want to think about the possibility of hiring an accountant for your business. This is a great way of getting a handle on your finances.

You can understand how you are performing at the moment and what areas of concern there are from a financial standpoint.

Atlassian acquires Percept.AI, continues investing in Jira Service Management offering

Atlassian Corporation Plc, a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software and the maker of Jira Software, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello products, has announced the acquisition of Percept.AI, an AI-powered virtual agent technology provider, to expand frontline support capabilities in Jira Service Management. This acquisition builds on its previous investments in AI and machine learning, designed to deliver best-in-class, seamless employee and customer support experiences at high velocity, crucial in today’s digital and remote-first world.

Edwin Wong, Head of Product Management for Jira Service Management, Atlassian said, “By integrating Percept.AI with Jira Service Management, support teams will be able to deliver exceptional service even faster and, more importantly, at scale. Our broader vision is to create a unified platform for any form of support and service desk. This acquisition further advances Jira Service Management’s smart experiences, enabling seamless chat-based conversations between customers and agents.”

EVENTS

2-3 FEB, 4-5 MAY, 5-6 OCT 2022 Digital Workplace Experience: Virtual Conference Series

LOCATION: ONLINE COST: FREE

15-17 MAR, 2022

29-30 MAR, 2022

10-11 MAY, 2022

Adobe Summit

MIT Technology Review Presents: EmTech Digital 2022

IBM Think

LOCATION: ONLINE COST: FREE

LOCATION: IN-PERSON AND ONLINE, COST: VIRTUAL-$850, IN-PERSON-$2,895

LOCATION: ONLINE AND IN-PERSON COST: TBD

FEBRUARY 2022

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NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

CyborgIntell Raises $1.19 Million In Pre-Series A Round

S/HE SAID IT

MIKE KELLY

CIO, RED HAT

“As their teams become more inclusive and collaborative, leaders must shift their strategies and tactics to harness the energy this new style of work generates.”

“To me, personally, business centric areas and projects are most fascinating. This is where I’d get a maximum high.”

CyborgIntell, an enterprise AI software company, today announced that it has raised $1.19 Million in funding from SenseAI and Pentathlon Ventures, followed with extended additional investments from existing investors and Ghosal Ventures. The current funding will be harnessed for strengthening the talent pipeline in Sales, Marketing and Product R&D, scaling operations geographically across the North American Markets, accelerating customer acquisitions and expanding in existing markets of India and South Africa.

The investment is an indicator of the high interest in next gen technologies like AI and the journey of empowering the growth of start-ups that are unlocking this value proposition. SenseAI Ventures invests in early stage Artificial Intelligence first startups and works closely with founders from the initial stages to provide support in product and go-to market strategies.

QUICK BYTE ON

Rahul Agarwalla, Managing Partner at SenseAI Ventures commented on the investment “Suman and team are building an Enterprise AI platform which is an essential component of any organization seeking to leverage AI. As AI becomes a part of every product, service or business, CyborgIntell will be an integral part of this future.” Pentathlon is a VC fund by the entrepreneurs, for the entrepreneurs focussing on B2B SaaS products. They act as a bridge between Angel Investment and Series A funding by investing in companies that have achieved product market-fit and are ready to Scale. Congratulating the founding team of CyborgIntell, Sandeep Chawda, Managing Partner at Pentathlon said they saw huge potential for companies which are helping simplify the development of AI/ML solutions for enterprises whereby business owners can use AI/ML solutions without the need for Deep Data Science expertise.

SUSHMA CHOPRA, SENIOR MANAGER-IT, SONY E N T E R TA I N M E N T T E L E V I S I O N

SECURITY

SonicWall Threat Intelligence Confirms 981% Increase of Ransomware Attacks in India “The frequency and variety of cyberattacks continue to expand every year, with an increasing cost to organizations worldwide. As per 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, there has been growth in ransomware attacks. It has now reached 623.3 million globally. Nearly all monitored threats, cyberattacks and malicious digital assaults rose in 2021 including: ransomware, encrypted threats, IoT malware and cryptojacking.

FEBRUARY 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

IBM Acquires Neudesic, Leading Microsoft Azure Consultancy

Zoho Workplace Achieves Exceptional Growth Spurred by Market Demand and Record Migrations from Competitor Suites Zoho, a global technology company offering the most comprehensive suite of business software applications in the industry, today announced that its enterprise collaboration and communications platform, Workplace, now serves more than 16 million users globally. The company attributes this substantial growth to increasing business demand for contextual applications with utmost standards for user privacy as well as rising costs from other collaboration platform providers. Since the start of the pandemic, Zoho Workplace adoption has accelerated as businesses of all sizes transitioned to digital-forward,

EXECUTIVE

remote work.

“Zoho has always been about persistent long-term execution, and our investment in Zoho Workplace attests to that. As competitors continue to raise prices or eliminate free editions for those who need them most, Workplace continues to serve businesses and professionals with a feature-rich suite that increases productivity while remaining broadly affordable,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho Corporation.

“Our ad-free approach and respect towards user privacy will add to the overall experience that our solution provides.”

Adds deep cloud and data expertise to seize the $200 billion cloud consulting market opportunity IBM has acquired Neudesic, a leading U.S. cloud services consultancy specializing primarily in the Microsoft Azure platform, along with bringing skills in multicloud. This acquisition will significantly expand IBM’s portfolio of hybrid multicloud services and further advance the company’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy.

IBM continues to invest in its hybrid cloud and AI strategy, expanding its cloud services technology, skills and capabilities to meet the growing demand of clients’ hybrid cloud needs. Including Neudesic, IBM has acquired more than 20 companies — 12 in IBM Consulting alone — since Arvind Krishna became CEO in April 2020. Today’s news builds upon IBM’s prior acquisitions of cloud transformation capabilities, including Sentaca, SXiQ, BoxBoat, Nordcloudand Taos.

To improve operational agility, businesses are investing aggressively in their application portfolio, and according to IDC, 69 percent of companies worldwide view application modernization as a top or high priority. The ability to accelerate digital transformation through application development, modernization and data capabilities, powered by the cloud, plays a significant role in achieving their operational goals.

MOVEMENT

Web Werks Data Centers appoints Kamal Goel as Director-IT & Chief Evangelist

Ecom Express appoints Ashish Sikka as Chief Strategy Officer

Kaspersky promotes Sandra Lee to Managing Director, APAC

Ajeya Motaganahalli appointed as Managing Director, India R&D

10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

FEBRUARY 2022

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

BOOK

SHELF

Think & Grow Rich

GLOBAL UPDATE

BY

NAPOLEON HILL

ABB India Strengthens its portfolio of Energy Efficiency Devices with a New Range of Smart Metering Solutions for Efficient Energy Management PRICE

Energy management is one of the biggest challenges in business applications and has a huge impact on the cost of operations.

To ensure optimal energy efficiency, ABB India has launched a new series of electrical measuring and power monitoring meters for the digital panel meter market which is growing at a CAGR of 6% for the period between 2017 to 2023 globally. With this introduction, ABB India offers a comprehensive portfolio in addition to the existing range of single, multifunction meters and network analysers, catering to the Panel Meter market across industries such as healthcare, hospitality, infrastructure, and F&B to name a few.

These smart solutions in metering and energy monitoring enable users to make better choices to monitor their power consumption. The meters guarantee basic to complete power quality analysis and accurately monitor the energy assets for residential, industrial, and commercial building segments. The newly introduced M1M11, M1M DS, M1M 20B and M1M

30B cover the main submetering easily and cost-effectively by powering quality monitoring requirements inside power factor correction boards, motor control centres or sub-distribution switchboards of commercial and industrial buildings.

Kiran Dutt, President-Electrification at ABB India, said, “The emerging Panel meter market and our introduction of new range of meters offers a huge potential for customers to better manage energy performance across industries. Thanks to their connectivity capabilities, M1M can now leverage on the integration in ABB’s Ability™ Energy and Asset Manager cloudcomputing platform to monitor, optimize, and control the complete electrical system.”

The complete M1M range offers the following benefits in submetering: · Complete offer: Thanks to integrated functionalities and communication protocols, the same product version fits an increased number of projects and wide applications range.

RS. 99.00 (PAPER BACK ) WHERE

AMAZON.IN

About The Book Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.? since its first publication in 1937, think and Grow Rich has been considered the best selfhelp book in the world. A Bible for people seeking riches and prosperity, this book draws on the life stories of the wealthiest and most successful people of all time.

About the Author Napoleon Hill, born in Pound, Southwest Virginia in 1883, was a very successful American author in the area of the new thought movement— one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success.

Fortinet Launches FortiGate 3000F, the latest NGFW Fortinet announced the FortiGate 3000F, the latest Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) powered by Fortinet’s purpose-built NP7 and CP9 security processing units (SPU) to support organizations in building hybrid IT architectures that accelerate digital innovation and fuel business growth. With built-in network and security convergence, dynamic network segmentation, automation, and natively integrated Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) capabilities, FortiGate 3000F enables ultra-scalable, security-driven networks that seamlessly converge networking and security without compromising security performance. FortiGate 3000F also offers

the highest performance figures in the industry with Security Compute Ratings of up to 6x greater connections per second than competitive offerings.

John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO, Fortinet, said, “Hybrid compute will be around for the foreseeable future. The FortiGate 3000F, powered

by Fortinet NP7 and CP9 security processing units, continues to move the performance bar forward, but just as importantly adds more converged networking and cybersecurity applications to the traditional network firewall. These applications include SD-WAN central hub, SSL inspection, and zero trust network access proxy.

FEBRUARY 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Giving Data Centers Infrastructure Status- a Highly Progressive Measure In this year’s budget, giving data centers infrastructure status represents a highly progressive measure to accelerate growth of digital infrastructure. This announcement of the Government is a recognition of the importance of data centers and the need to boost financing required for this highly capital-intensive industry. Getting access to funds and long-term loans at a lower cost and from additional lenders like insurance and pension funds will be key.

This measure, along with the announcement of 5G spectrum sale for this year, will have a positive impact on the data center industry. Many sectors like education, finance, entertainment and e-commerce, as well as work from anywhere, are highly dependent on digital ecosystem, which will drive the demand for data centers and digital infrastructure.

With India’s geographical location advantage, existing and upcoming undersea cable links, access to skilled resources and a growing domestic demand, coupled with states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh rolling out data center incentive policies, and now with the infrastructure industry status, India is well positioned to grow as one of the most important hubs in South Asia and will play a key role in the global data centers market in the future.

Kyndryl and Pure Storage Announce Global Alliance Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, and Pure Storage, the IT pioneer that delivers storage as-a-service in a multicloud world, today announced a global alliance that joins the expertise and operational experience of Kyndryl with the best-inclass storage technology of Pure to deliver mission-critical capabilities to enterprises.

As part of the new alliance, Kyndryl will become a key delivery partner for Pure, expanding on already integrated solutions and increasing its existing Pure skills and capabilities to drive transformative business outcomes for customers.

Together, Pure and Kyndryl will deliver jointly optimized solutions to address the complex challenges enterprises face related to application and infrastructure modernization, automation, multicloud management, containerization, and more – providing cyber resiliency elements natively at the storage layer to enable cloud-based applications coupled with data portability in the cloud or on-premises.

Kyndryl is advancing a strategy that combines deep technical expertise, global industry knowledge and best-in-class technologies from partners to deliver comprehensive and differentiated offerings to customers.

DigiCert, a leading provider of TLS/SSL, IoT and other PKI solutions, backed by Clearlake Capital Group. L.P. (“Clearlake”), Crosspoint Capital, and TA Associates, today announced that it has acquired Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity provider Mocana.

The combination of DigiCert and Mocana technologies provides IoT manufacturers and operators with a comprehensive platform for managing security across the full IoT device lifecycle. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition strategically accelerates DigiCert’s presence in the fast-growing IoT market. IDC estimates there will be more than 55 billion connected devices by 2025, with growth fueled by organizational 12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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investment in IoT platforms for achieving operational efficiency, digital transformation and competitive differentiation.

DigiCert CEO John Merrill, said, “IoT security has been a challenge for device manufactures and operators,” “With the addition of Mocana, DigiCert is building on its vision for delivering digital trust, a growing necessity in the IoT market as smart devices become ubiquitous in every corner of our personal and professional lives. We are excited to introduce new and existing customers to our integrated platform and welcome the addition of Mocana’s expertise in IoT technology and the industrial and manufacturing verticals to the DigiCert team.”

DIGEST CREDENCE SECURITY ANNOUNCES THIRTEEN-CITY ROADSHOW ACROSS MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA, AND INDIA In its sixth edition, the much-awaited roadshow features insights from 28 leading vendors, spread across three weeks, and focuses on four key pillars of cybersecurity Credence Security, the leading regional distributor of specialized solutions in cybersecurity, forensics, governance, risk and compliance, has announced the sixth edition of its most sought-after roadshow, which will be hosted in 13 cities, across three weeks in the Middle East, India and African markets.

To be held under the theme, ‘Working Together Towards a Cyber-Resilient Tomorrow,’ the roadshow will bring together pre-eminent technology experts, vendors, and speakers to discuss the latest trends, strategies and innovations in today’s security landscape.

LOBALLOGIC’S ROKU CHANNEL PARTNERSHIP REACHES MILESTONE OF 150 APPLICATIONS DEVELOPED Deep Platform-specific Expertise in OTT Streaming Service Speeds Time to Market for Digital Media Companies GlobalLogic, a Hitachi Group Company and leader in Digital Engineering, announced that as part of its development partnership with Roku, to date, it has developed 150+ channels on the Roku platform. This milestone is the result of nearly ten years of working directly with Roku application development frameworks and tools. That platform-specific knowledge positions GlobalLogic as a proven developer integral in bringing to market higher performing Roku channels quickly and cost effectively.

MANAGEENGINE TO HOST 10TH MIDDLE EAST USER CONFERENCE IN DUBAI ManageEngine will host its 10th Middle East User Conference in Dubai on March 1 and 2 at the Ritz-Carlton. The company will celebrate its 20th anniversary during the event as part of its “Pillars of Support: Customers” campaign, showcasing its long-standing customers, employees and partners at the user conference.

Utico, a major utility infrastructure developer and investor in the Middle East, is a longtime customer of ManageEngine.”Utico is proud of its association with ManageEngine for almost a decade now. In today’s competitive business environment, to stay ahead, any company, startup or enterprise, needs solutions that enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness,” said Joel Fernandes, deputy IT manager at Utico.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

MANAGEMENT

MANTRA

“Digital transformation is a journey that needs to be done bottom up and top down.”

Khushro M Mistry, CIO, Eureka Forbes

Apu Pavithran, Founder and CEO, Hexnode & Mitsogo

LTI Partners with IIT Madras to Innovate in 5G Space

Larsen & Toubro Infotech, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company is partnering with IIT Madras, one of India’s leading research institutes for collaborative research in the field of 5G. Through this collaboration, LTI and IIT Madras aim to innovate in the emerging 5G space and enable 5G frameworks validation, low frequency RF deployments and use case testing with 5G test bed.

Mr. Nachiket Deshpande, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Board Member, LTI, said, “5G promises to facilitate the

next level of innovation to build a smarter society, but it is important to ensure that these benefits reach every part of our country. LTI’s partnership with IIT Madras reflects our commitment to leverage this technology to connect people from remote parts of India in a better way.”

Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, said, “IITM’s 5G testbed project is an effort to encourage Indian startups and the industry to take an early lead in 5G. The goal of the project is to build a test bed that closely resembles a real-world 5G deployment.”

Dr. Radha Krishna Ganti, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras and Principal Investigator for this CSR project, said, “The 5G technology has immense potential and could prove to be the best option to bridge the digital divide in India. For evolved urban areas, it will help advance and enhance the benefits of digital technologies over a faster connectivity network. Our core strength of academic excellence will provide the right partnership platform needed to contribute towards these digital goals of our nation. We look forward to our collaboration with LTI and aim to create positive impact for society at large.”

“The future we are soon going to be a part of is a connected one” 1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization and the services that your company offers.

Answer: Mitsogo Inc. is a leading provider of endpoint management and security solutions.

Headquartered in San Fransisco, California the company has offices in Australia, Germany and a large presence in India. Our customers include SMBs to Fortune 500s: enterprises of all sizes have leveraged Mitsogo’s prowess in device management to drive business productivity and compliance. Our solution adapts to the most complex of business environments and has been helping organizations in over 100 countries to stay agile and competitive in an increasingly mobile world.

Our flagship product is Hexnode UEM and is currently the sole offering. We are working on a few new products and the next product is in the beta stage. If all goes well, it is expected to be rolled out soon.

2. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? What new products and solutions are you building?

Answer: The future we are soon going to be a part of is a connected one.

IronNet Expands Global Reach in Singapore with Addition of Leading Healthcare and Finance Customers IronNet, an innovative leader Transforming Cybersecurity Through Collective DefenseSM, today announced that it has expanded its international footprint with the addition of a leading wealth management platform as well as a private healthcare service from Singapore as customers.

As cyberattacks increase in scale, sophistication, and frequency, Singapore’s critical sectors are re-evaluating their traditional approach to cybersecurity and looking to the latest technologies and models to give themselves a clear advantage when protecting their customers and their business.

Gaurav Chhiber, Vice President of APJ at

IronNet, said, “It’s no coincidence that critical sectors, managing the most sensitive of data, look to IronNet to safeguard their information and their business,” “Collective Defense combines advanced behavioral analytics with sector and nationwide intelligence to help ensure the security and resilience of the most critical sectors and infrastructure.

“We chose IronNet over other options after demonstrating in-depth Proof of Value criteria,” stated the Director of IT for the Wealth Management Platform. “Through the detections, IronNet’s solution clearly showed its value, and we are

looking at a long-term partnership with IronNet to augment our existing investments.”

The IronNet Collective Defense platform analyzes threat detections across the community to identify broad attack patterns and provides anonymized intelligence back to all community members in real time, giving all members early insight into potential incoming attacks. This increased visibility of known and unknown cyber threats, combined with the ability to collaborate in real time, can help improve effectiveness of cyber defenders by allowing for faster triage and stronger response capabilities.

FEBRUARY 2022

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

On Safe Internet Day – Acronis Recommends Integrated Cyber Protection Solutions to Stay Safe

Sophos Announces Plans for a New Data Center in India Sophos plans for a new data center in Mumbai, India in March. The new data center is planned to enable organizations across the country to meet strict data sovereignty laws and regulations, which are increasingly required for those in banking, government and other tightly regulated market sectors. The new data center would expand Sophos’ existing base of data centers around the world in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Germany, Japan, and Australia.

“The data center in Mumbai would help Indian organizations accelerate digital transformation and cloud migration,” said Sunil Sharma, managing director of sales for India and SAARC, Sophos. “India is one of the most important markets for us and we have heavily invested in the country.

We already have a large base of our research and development in India,

and the data center would enable Sophos to further build its leadership presence in the region by providing local data sovereignty and security solutions.”

The new Sophos data center in India would also provide organizations across all industries with the ability to store, manage and access data locally from Sophos Central, the cloud management platform that supports Sophos’ portfolio of advanced, next-generation cybersecurity solutions and services. Products and services with access to the new data center would initially include Sophos Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Sophos Intercept X, Intercept X for Server, Sophos Encryption, and Sophos Managed Threat Response services. Other offerings within the Sophos portfolio are planned to be enabled over time.

Modern cyberattacks, data leaks, and ransomware outbreaks have all revealed the same thing: cybersecurity is failing. This failure is the result of weak technologies and human mistakes caused by clever social engineering. In cases where a backup solution was working well and wasn’t compromised, it usually would take hours and days to restore systems (with data) to an operational state.

Backup is essential for when cybersecurity solutions fail; but at the same time, backup solutions can be compromised, disabled, and perform slowly, causing businesses to lose a lot of money due to downtime. To solve these problems, we recommend integrated cyber protection solutions that combine antimalware, EDR, DLP, email security, vulnerability assessment, patch management, RMM, and backup capabilities into a single agent running under a family of Windows operating systems. This integration lets you maintain optimal performance, eliminate compatibility issues, and ensure rapid recovery. If a threat is missed or detected while your data is being altered, the data will be restored from a backup immediately – because of its one agent, it knows that data was lost and needed to be restored. This isn’t possible with an antimalware agent separate from a backup product with its own agent. Your antimalware solution may stop the threat, but some data may already be lost.

Ivanti Extends Neurons Platform with Risk-based Patch Management Ivanti launches new integrated solutions: Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management, Ivanti Neurons Digital Assistant, and enhancements to Ivanti Neurons for Healing with automatic ticket classification. With these releases, Ivanti continues to deliver on its mission of enabling and securing the Everywhere Workplace.

Ivanti Neurons is a hyperautomation platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to address the growing demands placed on IT and security teams amid the global shift to remote and hybrid work. It autonomously self-heals and self-secures devices and provides personalized self-service experiences to end users.

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Ivanti Neurons uses automation bots to provide real-time intelligence across all assets in the Everywhere Workplace, including every endpoint and the IoT edge, while delivering a consumergrade employee experience. Ivanti plans updates to Ivanti Neurons on a quarterly basis, in addition to continually enhancing solutions across the entire platform, to further help customers quickly and securely embrace the future of work. See below for details on the latest innovations:  Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management is a cloud-native solution that enables IT teams to efficiently prioritize and remediate the vulnerabilities that pose the most danger to their

organizations. This is critical as a recent study by Ivanti revealed that 71% of IT and security professionals found patching to be overly complex and time-consuming. This stat is alarming as the longer vulnerabilities remain unpatched, the more exposed a business is to the risk of a data breach or ransomware attack. By delivering real-time intelligence on known exploits and threat-context for vulnerabilities, Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management helps businesses evolve their vulnerability remediation strategy to better protect themselves from data breaches and attacks by allowing for remediation to be prioritized based on adversarial risk.

DELL TECHNOLOGIES // TECH PREDICTION 2022

DELL TECHNOLOGIES: 5G ROLL-OUT IN INDIA IN 2022 Upgrading to 5G is inevitable; Drive revenue growth and enable network providers to stay ahead of customer demand

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

A

s 5G rolls out in India in 2022, we will witness enterprises and network providers seeking use cases to implement 5G in business operations. This will see business use of 5G move out of its nascency and the adoption of advanced features such as Ultra Reliability Low Latency Communications (URLLC) and Massive Machine Type Communicators (mMTC) for faster and better results. The ecosystem will expand to include public cloud providers and new open infrastructure for an Open 5G ecosystem, delivering private 5G networks with more capabilities.

The availability of a faster and more reliable network presents an opportunity for businesses across various sectors to ride the tide for digital growth and boost business productivity. 5G will bring in better connectivity, a promise of quicker digital functions, more flexibility and wider reach, enhanced customer experiences, and easier management of data-driven processes.

Capitalizing on these opportunities will help organizations improve their productivity and enable them to save and devote the necessary time for operations that are intrinsic to innovation and business success. With 5G, enterprises will also be able to connect with their customers across wider markets with ease and efficiency.

AIoT will see further momentum Industrial processes increasingly rely on sensors that collect data and edge computing to provide

almost instantaneous insights to actuators that control processes. The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 will reduce manufacturing costs, improve quality and yields.

Data Analytics, AI and Machine Learning (ML) will penetrate newer market segments and enable better, data-driven decisions for businesses. This will result in more precise, real-time, and predictive analytics for better customer experience.

The growth of private 5G networks Organizations are also realizing the benefits of private 5G networks. These include the flexibility of control over applications and devices; high bandwidth and low latency support for AI and ML use cases involving thousands of endpoints; and a capacity to generate large volumes of data within a single facility. Private 5G networks will be instrumental in tackling the growing demands of edge-based, data-intensive workloads and delivering seamless and simplified solutions for organizations.

5G-enabed transformation across sectors 5G is capable of creating billion-dollar market opportunities across sectors. The flexibility and reliability of 5G will make it the network of choice across industry verticals, but its real potential lies in leveraging the unification of 5G and edge computing to open doors to unlimited technological possibilities. In healthcare, for example, remote

SAURABH TEWARI DIRECTOR & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER (TELECOM), DELL TECHNOLOGIES, INDIA.

“5G is capable of creating billion-dollar

market opportunities across sectors.”

surgeries, improved image processing, access to patient reports, and faster data processing will help provide better healthcare facilities and patient treatment across geographies.

5G transformation will not be an overnight or simple upgrade, but a gradual architectural evolution. 5G globally is seen as a game-changer for economies. In India, it is expected to create an impact of more than USD 1 trillion by 2035 and pave the path for a new wave of innovations that can transform communities.

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CORPORATE STORY // TATA TELE

In 2022

NEXT-GEN TECHNOLOGIES

- IOT, CLOUD, AI, ML

WILL DRIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

What is the overall service portfolio and key product offering of TTBS? As India’s leading B2B brand of digital connectivity, collaboration and communication solutions, Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) enables digital transformation for businesses. We provide businesses with smart solutions to develop better digital capabilities, build resilience and operational efficiencies across their value chain to make them future ready. TTBS has an extensive, high quality and robust wireline network and offers a large portfolio of solutions and services including Digital Connectivity, Cloud & SaaS, Collaboration, IoT, Marketing & Cyber Security.

Our company has expertise in both digital and connectivity space which enables us to take end-to-end ownership of the entire solution, be it devices, applications, or connectivity. These solutions appropriately address the need for reliable connectivity, enterprise grade security, flexibility and scalability in a distributed working environment that we operate in today. Thus, enabling businesses to collaborate effectively while serving their customers with enhanced efficiency.

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What is your prime strategy to help enterprises go digital?

Enterprises today understand that orchestrating their digital transformation efforts will not only help them stay ahead but also build the flexibility and resilience to address any future uncertainties.

We have been working with enterprises across the country to successfully deliver digital ecosystems that provide robust connectivity, greater cyber security and end-to-end IoT solutions.

With our industry first offerings and deep understanding of the SME sector, we drive our digital services around the following enablers.

• One-stop-shop for all ICT needs - Our portfolio of smart and intelligent solutions provides a range of products under Connectivity, Security, Cloud & Saas, Marketing and IOT to help companies re-imagine their digital infrastructure.

• Simple plug & play solutions – All of our solutions are designed to be easy to deploy, customised and comprehensive for diverse and evolving business needs.

• Best-in-class partnerships – Our wide network of partners hand hold and provide all the support necessary to guide a company’s

transformation journey.

• Cutting edge innovations - We bring award winning, disruptive technologies to enable and support growth at every stage.

All of these enablers when combined with our unwavering focus on customer-centricity has helped us deliver game changing, digitally transformative solutions.

TTBS has launched a slew of new solutions recently, please elaborate the thought behind these?

The pandemic has accelerated digital adoption across industries. While enterprises have realised the significance of digital solutions for survival and growth, the onus lies with digital tech companies like us to develop relevant solutions to support businesses in their transformation journey.

At TTBS, we are enabling our customers to harness the power of digital technologies and build a more connected and secure future. For many businesses, especially small and medium businesses (SMBs), lack of knowledge and resources remains a crucial problem when it

TATA TELE // CORPORATE STORY

VISHAL RALLY

SR. VICE PRESIDENT (PRODUCT & MARKETING) TATA TELE BUSINESS SERVICES (TTBS)

“At TTBS, our overall market strategy is to accelerate the adoption of digital solutions by businesses aspiring to Do Big.”

comes to taking care of IT and security woes. Our overall market strategy has been to accelerate the adoption of digital solutions by businesses aspiring to Do Big. We are committed to democratize technology, so that any business irrespective of its size can become digitally agile with our smart and affordable solutions which is backed by our highly acclaimed 24*7 services and support.

TTBS has strengthened its portfolio of enterprise grade solutions with products like: a) Smartflo: is an ultra-flexible, advanced cloud communication suite that ensures smart and intelligent business communication anytime and anywhere. Smartflo offers a range of solutions that include Hosted Call Center, Outbound Marketing Solutions, Hosted Call Connect, Multi-level IVR, Missed Call Solutions & Click2Call Services.

b) SD-WAN iFLX: an advanced networking solution with intelligent and flexible networking capabilities that help businesses accelerate their digital transformation. It provides companies operational simplicity, application-level prioritization and visibility, integrated security, enhanced overall business application environment and resilience at an affordable price point. c) Smart Internet: Industry’s first smart internet leased line suite combining high speed internet with cloud-based security and greater control at an optimized cost. The Smart Internet offering is a state-of-the-art bundled solution which helps enterprises get robust connectivity, security, manageability, and clear visibility of its users and network at an affordable cost. d) Ultra-Lola 3.0: This is a technologically superior point-to-point offering, with latency in

microseconds, which enables brokerage/BFSI companies to stay securely linked to process market data in real-time. As a tailor-made product for BFSI it is equipped to change the trading game with less than 200 microseconds latency to achieve maximised profitability. e) EZ Cloud Connect, is an all-in-one bundled solution which comes with an enterprise grade point to point connectivity, X-Connect and a Cloud Port access that will be configured (according to customer needs) with the Cloud Service Providers (CSP) that they choose. This solution enables ease across 4 dimensions i.e., it is easy on pocket, it is easy to scale, it is easy to manage and ultimately it provides easy security and protection.

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CORPORATE STORY // TATA TELE

Industry 4.0 has already started influencing sectors like manufacturing, supply- chain, construction and more. How is TTBS geared up to help businesses?

Industry 4.0 is gaining tremendous popularity due to rapid improvements made in the digital capabilities in the last few decades. The gap between the virtual and real world has been bridged by advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and others so as to create an interoperable platform between cyber ecosystem and actual physical operations. Smart factory is a core, fundamental aspect of modern manufacturing. Being equipped with interconnected smart assets and systems, its primary function lies in running efficient, secure, and reliable production processes. This is then combined with continuous optimization and flexible adaption to changing conditions in real time. Connectivity, real-time configuration, and automation are the essence of a smart factory. At TTBS, we are helping manufacturing and supply chain firms to develop high-scale automation, easy monitoring, operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness with our smart collaboration and connectivity solutions like Smart Internet, Smartflo, Cyber security solutions, SD-WAN iFlx, etc.

Can you share some insights on how Smartflo is helping enterprises in their cloud communication?

Smartflo is an award- winning, futuristic cloud communication suite that offers a sophisticated convergence of digital connectivity, business intelligence and productivity. It enables businesses to strengthen engagement with customers through seamless communication – anytime, anywhere. The setup is quick with no CapEx investment and comes with an uptime guarantee of 99.5% backed by 24*7 service and support capabilities, ensuring uninterrupted business continuity. Smartflo has been adopted by a variety of businesses across industry verticals like BFSI, IT/ITES, Manufacturing, Education, Fintech, Logistics, E-commerce and is helping them boost their customer experience. For instance, we have partnered with Mehsana Dudhsagar dairy, where Smartflo is helping farmers get access to the network of veterinary doctors to seek advice on their livestock health. Similarly, one of the leading education coaching companies, Vidyamandir classes is using Smartflo to enhance contact center reach out to their students.

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How is TTBS addressing the growing demand of integrated cybersecurity solutions across multiple industries?

Cyber-attacks like phishing, ransomware etc., have become more far more pervasive and sophisticated especially during the pandemic. This has had a profound impact on a company’s financials, reputation and sustainability. The large number of endpoints and rising cyber- attacks have made it imperative for enterprises to re-assess their digital preparedness and improve the security of their remote users, devices and critical data associated with them. Enterprises are transitioning beyond basic cyber hygiene to keep sensitive information safe. TTBS enlists tailored cyber security solutions for various industries, explaining how each aligns with different business requirements. We have also strengthened our cyber security portfolio to provide a world-class Cloud Content Security Platform (CCSP) that offers email security, web security, next-generation firewall, endpoint security and multi-factor authentication (MFA) security services. Our enterprise customers can now have easy access to a comprehensive, security that is robust, scalable and can be rapidly deployed at an affordable cost.

How do you see the unified communication space shaping up?

How is the TTBS and Zoom partnership unfolding?

Business communications went into full-digital mode owing to the pandemic. The situation necessitated innovation in communication and collaboration which led to solutions that are robust, secure, and reliable to serve as a proxy for real-life interactions. The fundamental idea behind TTBS partnership with Zoom is to offer an intuitive, scalable, and secure unified communications solution to enterprises. This partnership will enable businesses to have access to comprehensive conference services such as Zoom Meetings, Zoom Webinars and Zoom Rooms on our state-of the-art, high-capacity digital connectivity network. Businesses can use our bespoke Zoom customization that integrates with their existing solutions, helps keep tabs on all client-facing conversations and bolsters security.

The platform provides a host of unique features like live video, streaming of video webinars for up to 50,000 viewers, including one click access, video, voice, content sharing, recording, virtual backgrounds, company branding, multi-layer security, and meeting participation of up to 1000

people from locations across the globe, making communication more interactive and engaging.

How is TTBS Smart Internet going to help enterprises?

Businesses need robust, seamless, and secure connectivity to communicate and transact over the internet. Having basic connectivity is no longer an option as vanilla ILL services do not extend beyond connectivity, which leaves the business owner to contend with problems such as usage visibility, usage control, security, application maintenance, among others. Smart Internet has been developed with an objective to minimize cyber-attacks encountered by businesses especially SMBs and provide them with seamless connectivity and advanced security at an affordable price. With Smart Internet, businesses can now easily access bandwidth-heavy applications on our highly secure and high-performance network with real time usage control and manageability to enhance their productivity.

How are you supporting your channel network? Do you plan to expand your business footprints?

We have one of the largest channel network to support customers in their decisions of adopting the right technology. Our channel partners range from pure telecom partners, system integrators, data security experts, software selling partners and even non-ICT partners who have good reach across customer segments. We continue to enhance our channel network in every part of the addressable market. We are continually empowering and upskilling our partners under our ‘Certified Solution Partner’ program to enhance their capability as an ICT solution provider.

What are TTBS initiatives to drive innovation post pandemic?

Enterprises are now rapidly adopting next gen technologies to automate their business processes, build resilience and acclimatise for any future disruption. For the last two decades, our deep customer engagements have helped us to develop solutions that would enable enterprises to compete and win in their respective business segments.

In the pandemic, many SMEs adopted the hybrid work model with a sizeable staff working remotely. To ensure uninterrupted flow of business communication, anytime, anywhere, we launched Smartflo, an ultra-flexible and advanced cloud communication solution suite. Essentially,

TATA TELE // CORPORATE STORY

o Continued Acceleration of Digital Transformation  For any business to grow in the future, technology and sustainability will be at the core of their functioning. Over the last year, most of the enterprises, either big or small, have moved ahead on their digital transformation curve and accepted digital platforms as a viable way of doing businesses.

o Continued Pivot towards Anytime, Anywhere Economy with Cloud  Cloud will continue to be the backbone for all the transformational technologies. Cloud platforms can help deploy new digital customer experiences in days rather than months and can support analytics that would be simply impossible with traditional technology platforms.  Modern businesses aiming to be digital-first organizations, require cloud solutions that help in enterprise applications such as CRM, analytics, communications etc. Enterprise-wide cloud migration strategy will be at the forefront to drive efficiency across processes, cost optimisation and align with their future growth blueprints.

o Zero Trust Will Play a Larger Role in Cyber Security  There will be a shift from traditional cyber security practices that focus on a “castle and moat” model, where security protocols concentrate on keeping threats out to zero-trust security model which restricts network access to only those individuals who need it. This model assumes risk can come from anywhere and limits possibility of unauthorised movement across networks.  Businesses will continue to invest in making their processes secure through comprehensive security portfolio comprising of email security, endpoint security, web security, virtual firewall, and multifactor authentication.  Hyper automation with AI, ML and IoT will enhance the approach to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. It will enable scalability, remote operation, and business model disruption.

it allows employees, working in office or remotely, to access centralised resources in a secure manner.

We have also partnered with Zoom Video Communications to provide video communication services to our customers.

Our SmartOffice® solution is a complete officein-a-box solution, which became highly relevant during the pandemic. It is an attempt to create an office IT suite that will enable our customers to avail of services like voice, enterprise data connectivity, and productivity applications as an add-on feature.

Our product innovations have been widely recognized in the industry, winning us awards

like, CII Customer Obsession Award, Inn-Tech 2021 Award for Smartflo, CIO Select Awards for Smartflo, Product Innovation Award for SmartOffice® and more. At TTBS, we strongly believe that customization leads to innovation at a deeper level and provides higher value.

We have introduced ‘Customer Experience Platform (CEP)’; industry’s first highly engaging, innovative and integrated platform to bring the product experience closer to the customers, based on their availability and comfort. Customer Experience Portal lets customers understand and experience how our products and solutions can enable them to build digital capabilities. It serves

as a one-stop digital guide for customers to better experience TTBS products and make speedy and informed decisions.

At TTBS, we will continue to play the role of technology enabler to SMBs and will further strengthen our portfolio of services especially in the areas of SaaS, IaaS, IOT and Cloud. We will continue to invest in rolling out a high capacity, high resilience fiber network and deploying the latest IT tools and bespoke business applications for our enterprise customers enabling them to grow and Do Big.

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COVER STORY // INDUSTRY 4.0

INDUSTRY 4.0 TECHNOLOGIES

DEPLOYMENT ON THE UPTAKE There is significant upswing in adoption of Industrial 4.0 technologies post Covid and it presents an opportunity for organizations to re-imagine businesses for the new normal

BY AMBIKA@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

I

ndustry 4.0 has been a buzz word for sometime, but now it is becoming a reality as more organizations embrace it to achieve speed at scale, just-in-time manufacturing, streamline supply chain and enhance competitiveness. Things are changing with the disruptions due to Covid pandemic pushing manufacturing companies to embrace digital technologies. According to Colliers, a diversified professional services and investment management company, digitalization amongst Indian companies accelerated by at least a decade resulting in Industry 4.0 technologies to make inroads into manufacturing, real estate, IT-BPM and other sectors.

Typically, Industrial 4.0 is characterized by intelligent and connected ecosystem of people and machines across the manufacturing value chain and is propelled by key technologies including Internet of Things (IoT); Artificial Intelligence (AI); 3D Printing; Advanced Robotics; and Wearables.

Advanced economies like Germany, Japan, the USA, and Singapore have embraced Industry 4.0 to increase the manufacturing competitiveness. However, India is lagging and adoption is primarily restricted to heavy and light 20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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engineering industries, and automobile and auto components industry. Migration to the Industrial 4.0 technologies is complex and organizations still in the early stages of preparation. With benefits becoming more evident and the government’s initiative of “Make in India” and “National Policy for Advanced Manufacturing” Industry 4.0 will surge and is expected to play a critical role in augmenting the manufacturing sector’s share in India’s GDP. Industrial 4.0 Uptake in India The Indian government is providing a massive push to Industrial 4.0 adoption with its Smart Advanced Manufacturing and Rapid Transformation Hub (SAMARTH). An initiative by the Department of Heavy Industries, Samrath Udyog Bharath 4.0 is a pioneering initiative to facilitate the adoption of best practices for the capital goods industry and aims at enhancing the competitiveness of the capital goods sector with pilot schemes and support initiatives.

This includes setting up Centres of Excellence; Integrated Industrial Infrastructure facilities; Common Engineering Facility Centres; Testing and Certification Centres, and funds to help technology acquisition.

The government also has its eyes on the MSME sector to provide a boost to profitability by leveraging Industry 4.0 technologies. MSMEs comprises 45% of the manufacturing output and contributes to 40% of the total exports. By embracing new technologies MSMEs will be able to integrate business silos across procurement, factories, supply chain and distribution into a seamless network. Emphasizing the need for investment in industry 4.0 technologies, Jitendra Singh, President and CDO, JK Cement Ltd, says, “It may be a far higher investment in robotics than in humans but the investment is worth it because the data it will capture will provide insights in years to come as part of historical insights.”

As cost of electronic items such as sensors and transmitters come down companies are able to capture data from operational activities. “Indian companies have adopted smart manufacturing in a large way post covid as they are working with reduced manpower. This is also because electronic sensors have become cheaper and it is more affordable for companies to embed chips in the entire manufacturing chain from supply chain, manufacturing to distribution to monitor and manage operational efficiencies,” Manish Gaur, Head IT – Patanjali

INDUSTRY 4.0 // COVER STORY

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21

COVER STORY // INDUSTRY 4.0

PRAKASH KUMAR HEAD OF IT BMW GROUP INDIA AND DEVOPS HUB INDIA

“In many factories if you go, robots are working all around and sophisticated

and adapt at performing complex task. So, the differentiation with the humans is slowly and gradually narrowing down.”

JITENDRA SINGH PRESIDENT AND CDO, JK CEMENT LTD.

“It may be a far higher investment in robotics than in humans but the investment is worth it because the data it will capture will provide insights in years to come as part of historical insights.”

With tons of data generated by IoT enablement, organizations are offloading data processing to different layers in the architecture such as Cloud, central data center and at the edge.

Data processing at the edge helps data management and processing, conserves bandwidth and expedites outcomes in business processes.

Most use cases in India are deployed to achieve specific business outcomes as broader, horizontal solutions are yet to arrive in the market and early adopters are still grappling with a range of issues such as inter-operability, standards, security and compliance. Yet many global companies have been able to overcome these barriers and achieved high impact business outcomes. For instance, HPE and Mercedez Benz have collaborated to help the F1 Team of Mercedez- AMG Petronas Motorsport achieve high performance in the racing track using millions of data points to deliver an average improvement of 2 seconds per season with continuous improvements in design implementations.

Similarly IBM has partnered with India’s leading automobile company Mahindra & Mahindra to enable continuous product innovation, increase efficiency and enhance governance with connected engineering solutions.

More and more companies are embedding chips to get real-time insights into business opera22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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tions and take decisions in real-time for activities such as fleet and asset tracking, precision cutting of metal sheets, warehousing and inventory management.

On the factory floor, use cases relate to monitoring quality and audits; maintaining systems and industrial equipment; achieving safety and compliance requirements; enhancing production and yield on the shop floor; enhancing customer experience; managing supply chain (logistics/ transportation); and boosting retail sales.

Prakash Kumar, Head of IT, BMW Group India and DevOps Hub India, is in the thick of action.

Speaking about how automation is aiding workers in factories Kumar says, “Amazon works with 15,000 robots who are working along with 50,000 humans. In many factories if you go, robots are working all around and they are becoming more and more sophisticated and adapt at performing complex task. So, the differentiation with the humans is slowly and gradually narrowing down”.

Adoption Patterns Across Industries Large manufacturing companies are embedding intelligence in the core processes such as product designing and precision manufacturing. This has enabled companies to achieve excellence at speed without sacrificing the quality of products when designing products for custom deliverables.

One of India’s leading industrial houses Kirloskar Brothers Ltd (KBL) manufactures water pumps which irrigates over 65 per cent of India’s land and provide 35 per cent of the population with drinking water. KBL has been at the forefront of technology adoption and leverages a robotic solution to design products for customers which aids crucial activities such as product selection and mapping specifications such as height of the equipment, power consumption designed to deliver optimum outcome and efficiencies.

Speaking AIML adoption in manufacturing and how intelligent prediction is helping the company to reap benefits in energy management, Jitender Singh, President and CDO, JK Cement says, “Bidding for the right amount of energy is crucial to buy it at competitive rates. The catch is if we bid more than what is required, we are penalized. And if we bid less and need to buy more, rates are very steep. So we have to find a way to calculate the cost of energy consumption based on the kind of material input and the process efficiencies and our AIML model is helping to achieve that.”

The robotic system has become central to all customer engagement and the company is using it extensively and even sharing access with partners to make accurate selections when ordering custom made pumps and AI recommendations provides the best configuration. The AI engine has helped the company’s engineers become more efficient as the machine can compute far more variables and provide accurate design recommendations.

In the oil and energy sector, M2M deployment is helping companies achieve efficiencies by streamlining operations with predictive maintenance of equipment, better manage hazardous

INDUSTRY 4.0 // COVER STORY

MANISH GAUR HEAD IT, PATANJALI

“Indian companies have adopted smart manufacturing in a large way post covid as they are working with reduced manpower.”

situations with recommendations and scheduling, prevent outages and perform root cause analysis.

This is helping energy sector to mitigate risks while maintaining pipelines which operate under high pressure, and regular maintenance of refinery equipment by capturing operational data on an ongoing basis which then provides alerts for maintenance.

Embedded chips and artificial intelligence is boosting oil exploration by accurately characterizing the reservoir. AI deployment is critical in upstream operations as it capital intensive and has enormous uncertainties in each stage of discovery, identification and extraction. AI based algorithms provide accurate and precise intelligence to guide drills on water and land and helps to reduce the risk of accidents, oil spills, fires, and enhances the rate of penetration. After extraction, IoT enabled AI algorithms help to manage storage facilities which are sensitive to temperature and environmental conditions and prevent fatal accidents arising out storage corrosion.

Automobile companies are employing AI in the visual inspection of cars for superior finish such as painted car bodies which is a highly specialized field and AI helps to detect differences in texture, shade, thickness. Auto companies are embedding chips and using deep learning algorithms to enhance the quality of core design and execution systems, and hydraulic engine by collating a wide range of data including data on fuel consumption and evaluating hundreds of

parameters on a continuous basis.

One area where AI is being widely employed is ensuring employee safety and screening of employees. High-definition camera and video analysis help to recognize employees by identifying through face analysis, mark employee attendance and monitor presence on the floor.

Most manufacturers work with a lot of contract employees and during shift changes employees entering the premises and leaving happens simultaneously and it becomes difficult to keep track of hundreds of employees. With AI-enabled cameras companies have been able to reduce the number of accidents significantly by monitoring employees on the factory floor.

Barriers to Adoption Most deployments are stuck at a pilot stage and stuck at a single site. The challenge is to ensure implementations scale across the organization as it does not yield desired outcomes without integration across the entire organization’s operations. McKinsey has identified 40 Industrial 4.0 Lighthouses globally, these are manufacturing sites where digital technologies have been implemented at scale with impactful business and operational impact. These Lighthouses are characterized by holistic transformation around business, technology and organization.

Industrial 4.0 has several challenges inhibiting adoption relating to the operating environment such as lack of bandwidth availability, data stan-

dardization, meeting data security and compliance requirements. Specifically, adopters are faced with some of the following challenges.

Security: Embedded chips in widely dispersed equipment and the distributed nature of computing increases organizational risks. There are challenges in collecting and storing information at a secure location and monitoring the process at remote locations.

IT OT Integration challenges: Interoperability challenges amongst devices, network, storage and connecting these with core systems create delays and even stall implementation of a seamless network. Legacy systems in organizations are not compatible with new standards in edge devices, sensors, gateways, etc. Without end-to-end integration, data collection is not comprehensive and AI is not able to provide accurate insights.

Lack of quality data: Collecting, cleaning and scrubbing data by weeding repetitive data is hugely challenging. Organizations are struggling to ingest, normalize, align, and then use data for actionable insights.

Lack of Skill set Availability: Significant gap in the availability of skill sets as these are new technologies and so many organizations are focusing on training internal employees with new skills in these technologies.

Unrealistic expectations: Management and stakeholders have unrealistic expectations even though Industrial 4.0 technologies, as with other new technologies, requires time to deliver results with teams navigating the learning curve. A sufficient data size is required for analytics to deliver impactful insights and deliver business advantage.

Culture barriers: Adoption requires times as employees must re-orient thinking with new technologies and embrace a different mindset to think as a data-driven organization. Different business groups must be open to sharing information for the greater good of the organization.

The Road Ahead Post Covid, there is significant momentum in adoption of Industrial 4.0 technologies. Insights from Microsoft’s Signals IOT Report conducted across several countries show that one in three organizations are increasing investments in IoT as a result of Covid 19 and 79% of organizations adopting IoT views AI as a core or secondary component of the strategy.

Organizations have an opportunity to reimagine businesses for the new normal with Industrial 4.0 technologies. The disruptions of the global pandemic have demonstrated the need for resilience and adaptability with digitization, analytics and AI-driven insights as foundations for organizational transformation to survive and thrive.

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ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23

CIO TALK // INDIAN OIL CORPORATION LIMITED

A L O K

K H A N N A

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR STRATEGIC IS, INDIAN OIL CORPORATION LIMITED

“As an early adopter of digital, we asked ourselves in 2017 how our business will look like in 2030-2040

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

and how technology should support our business and we came up with 80 to 90 recommendations which we are diligently implementing.”

What is the state of digital transformation journey in PSU Data search in India?

Every public sector undertaking some sort of digital transformation. The magnitude and scope of the digital transformation could be vary according to the needs of the PSUs but all the PSU’s have a mandate to replace manual and bring in digital, remove redundancy in processes, and bring in automation.

We started digitization early 2000 by implementing ERP. Then one of our biggest digital project was implementing direct benefit transfer of LPG which was done in collaboration with other corporations and it was a huge task involving almost 200 million customers connecting directly to their bank account linked with Aadhaar, that too within the SLA period. It required integration with many external systems including banks and so oil and gas sector PSUS are adept at adopting 24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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digital. Even for LPG cylinder now customers are demanding new facilities for booking and delivery of cylinders.

As an early adopter of digital we asked ourselves in 2017 how our business will look like in 2030-2040 and how technology should support our business and we came up with 80 to 90 recommendations which we are diligently implementing.

How is the organization structured as a business and how do you manage your employees?

Indian oil is present in every nook and corner of the country with refineries spread across India.

We have nearly 15,000 kilometre of pipelines, 750 oil and LPG terminals and bottling plants and these are serving around 200 million customers.

Plus there is a huge dealer network of 50,000 so it’s a big ecosystem which needs to be digitally

supported.

Over the last 30- 40 years we have been adopted new technology—when ERP came Indian Oil was the earliest adopter then we implemented CRM, and dealer management system The IT department is like a service department across refineries, marketing, pipeline and these systems are generating huge amount of data which needs to be analyzed and kept ready for future users. In addition, there is an OT system in the refineries and pipelines which is generating a real-time data about the health of equipment, SCADA system in pipeline which collects a lot of data about the health of the pipeline from inside and outside.

What are the real challenges that you have faced or still you are facing?

The challenges are same in every project. One

INDIAN OIL CORPORATION LIMITED // CIO TALK

CHANGE MANAGEMENT IS VERY IMPORTANT AS THE MESSAGE MUST REACH ALL USERS AND STAKEHOLDERS PSUs in India have already on the advanced curve of digital transformation and Oil and Gas sector is leading the game. We spoke to Alok Khanna, Executive Director Strategic IS, Indian Oil Corporation Limited to understand the latest trend. An excerpt… of the major challenges relates to user adoption so I think every digital transformation initiative must be sponsored by the top leadership to ensure adoption. Secondly, the need for transformation must come from business and they must work collaboratively with IT from inception, only then IT can support it better. We formed a core team comprising IT and business for every project.

Change management is very important as the message must reach all users and stakeholders about the vision, the step changes and organized engagement programs such as trainings and hackathons to involve the young people. We gave them the platform it’s a low coding platform to design solutions for themselves and it was a great success.

management to the corporate network.

Therefore we were well prepared when the pandemic induced disruption required our employees to work remotely. Most of our officers were working from home and only 40% people were coming to office but our systems were working efficiently as we have workflows with e-approvals in place. In fact I would say we achieved higher efficiency during the lockdown because of an enabling IT environment.

What kind of approach did you take—a big bang or a phased approach?

We followed a very step-by-step approach. First we had a vision of how the business will look like 15 years ahead and we employed a consultant to help bring that vision to life. We set up a small strategic team to focus on the digital and distinct from the traditional IT team and the digital group interacted with users to revalidate those 80 initiatives. At the same time, we also started implementing advanced analytics such as machine learning. We targeted low hanging fruits in the early projects and it helped generate lot of interest internally which paved the way for more projects.

How do you bridge the gap between IT and convincing the management?

Indian oil management has been very supportive as far as IT investment is concerned. When I started my career, everything was paper-based, today everything is digital and automated.

Internally we understand the changing behaviour of customers and the new generation of customers which have grown up with digital and therefore we need to equip ourselves with new capabilities while engaging with a new customers segment. Therefore digital channels and platforms have become a key plank of our outreach strategy.

The IT department has never had challenges with regarding to funding as the top management understand the changes in the external environment and the the role of technology to deal with those changes. In fact much of the technology demands come from business leaders taking the lead in identifying the need and we work together to design the solution.

How are you going to deal with this cyber security and hackers? What is your strategy?

We had a secure environment way before pandemic because we work with a large ecosystem of business partners such as dealers and distributers.

So we have a VPN in place and secure access

Where are you focusing these days or how do you seize these technologies that is going to bring value to the sector?

One areas where we have really picked up momentum is machine learning. We laid a robust foundation by implementing a Data Lake from

which we are now extracting data for different use cases such as predictive maintenance, customer sentiment analysis, yield optimization, or simply health monitoring of equipment. We are currently implementing around 35 machine learning use cases.

Another area that has great potential is robotic process automation. We are organizing hackathons to involve employees to identify repetitive processes so we can take them up for automation.

I am surprised to see that we are still doing many things manually, simple things such as sending out a message on Whatsapp to thousands of people. I think chatbots are very useful and can have dramatic impact on productivity. For instance simple queries related to the HR department such as leave application, status on salary, tax obkigations etc can easily be managed by chat bots via intelligent automation.

Apart from this, I think we have a huge potential to leverage AR and VR for training purposes which will not only scale the delivery but also make it more engaging and impactful. Blockchain is another area for which we are identifying use cases.

How much of Cloud you are using within your data center location?

As an organization that is of strategic interest to the county, Indian Oil has certain limitations in Cloud adoption from the security perspective.

We cannot host critical applications in the Cloud as we have lot of sensitive data so we have hosted core applications in our internal data centers.

However certain applications such as analytics leveraging machine learning is ideally suited for the Cloud given the inherent flexibility and scalability. So such applications are being deployed in the Cloud but within the boundaries of the country’s geographic boundaries.

What should be the top technologies that you will be investing and what would be your advice to IT leaders about your outlook for 2022?

I see analytics based on AI and ML have great potential and along with IT-OT integration, these technologies can deliver game changing capabilities. While IT data is structured, there are lot of opportunities to optimize OT data.

Another challenge I see is the availability of skilled people. Given that time is of essence, It is hugely challenging to upskill internal employees with new technologies, so I think we need to identify emerging start-ups specializing in new technologies and partner with them to co-create customized solutions to effectively harness advanced technologies such as AIML-based analytics, blockchain, AR-VR, etc.

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ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25

FEATURE STORY // BANKING TRANSFORMATION

FINANCIAL

SERVICES ACCELERATE DIGITAL CAPABILITIES TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE

Changing consumer habits and the competitive pressures due to the emergence of FinTechs is forcing banking and financial services companies to pursue digital transformation.

T

he disruptions caused by Covid pandemic has pushed banks and financial services companies to adopt digital technologies and has ushered in changes in consumer behaviour that are likely to last forever. World over consumers turned to online channels to shop for groceries, buy home essentials, watch movies, make transactions, buy medicines, learn hobbies and joined fitness classes. Businesses, in turn, responded to the crisis

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and turned on the digital play in full blast.

A global survey by McKinsey shows that companies have accelerated digitization of customer engagements, supply chain and internal operations by three to four years and the share of digital products in the portfolio leaped over by seven years.

The imperative of banks to have business continuity systems in place was significantly greater than other sectors as banks had to a critical role to provide access to financial resources

and support citizens and businesses during the disruption. Many banks had already embarked on the digitalization process and did not have to stretch too much, but some banking practices such as physical validation of identity, submission of physical papers etc had to be digitalized with process re-engineering.

For many retail banks it was a tall order to meet the immediate challenges of the covid disruptions. It called for juggling business priorities accompanied by concrete steps to deliver services

BANKING TRANSFORMATION // FEATURE STORY

ABDEALI LAHOR HEAD OF IT BAHRAIN BASED ALHILAL LIFE INSURANCE

“Digital transformation in last 18 months or more than that has been the core of our organization.”

while recalibrating strategies for the future. Banks were under pressure to keep the distributions channels open even as they practiced social distancing by leveraging digital channels. At the same time, they had to keep an eye on the supervisory and compliance functions that were not designed to work in a remote set up.

Digital Transformation for the New Normal With the economy opening up and pandemicinduced disruptions on the wane, digital transformation in banks are in full swing. At the recently concluded “CIO1000 Asia Conclave and Awards 2021” CXOs shared interesting perspectives about ongoing transformation efforts in banks.

Over the years, the banking sector has demonstrated transformational changes eliminating the need for customers to visit any physical location for banking needs. Gone are the days when visits to the bank was the chore of the day and standing in queues to withdraw or deposit money was the order of the day. Most of the banking needs can be fulfilled with the press of a button, that too on the go.

With banking apps becoming mainstream, convenience banking has become the new buzzword with all financial services available at the click of a mobile touch. To achieve this level of digitalization, banking technology infrastructure must undergo upgradation with modern capabilities that support high level of scalability, built-in agility and flexibility to respond to uncertainties.

The changing habits of consumers and the new competitive environment are forcing banks to address their digitalisation process as a matter of urgency if they are not to be left behind in

a market which finds itself in the throes of transformation.

Speaking about the digitalization efforts at the insurance Abdeali Lahor, Head of IT, of Bahrain based Alhilal Life Insurance says, “Digital transformation in last 18 months or more than that has been the core of our organization. Even as we speak, we are internally doing some sort of transformation projects in terms of operation as well as the sales side. We being an insurance the pandemic hit us big because insurance as you all know is a push market and nobody comes and buys products. Especially in this part of the world it’s still not that relevant, so far us it has been a learning new approaches as an organization and learn how to leverage technology. We have moved a lot in last 18 months or so, I would say definitely it has been fast learning for us in terms of digital transformation.”

How are Banks Getting it Right There are three successive stages in a bank’s digitalisation process: the first, where new channels and products are developed; the second, where banks move deeper into the transformation journey and embrace modern technological infrastructure; and the last, involving far-reaching changes wherein banks are modernizing applications, adopting serverless and containers that equip them with disruptive capabilities.

Sohyel Kadjani, CIO Retail Banking, Emirates NBD said “Technology cannot do it alone, that’s misconception. For example, when you deploy technology in isolation without considering the business goal, then the implementation ends in failure. Technology must be employed to achieve a business goal. Yet often the truth is that technolFEBRUARY 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27

FEATURE STORY // BANKING TRANSFORMATION

PRASANNA LOHAR

PINKESH AMBAVAT

HEAD TECHNOLOGY, DCB BANK

CIO & DIRECTOR OF IT, CIRF

“Transformation is for all around innovation— within and outside the organization. It must be at aimed

“When there is any technology change, we have to keep in mind regulatory requirements because

at enhancing the customer experience.”

ogy is so critical that it becomes the business differentiator—but only when technology is used wisely. New business models led by the FinTechs are disrupting different markets with innovative use of technology. Yet traditional businesses are also achieving transformational impact by adopting a comprehensive approach of combining the right technology with clear business goals and process re-engineering.”

This sentiment is echoed by Dr. Puneet Kaur Kohli, CTO, Universal Sompo, who highlights the need for hyper personalization. Coming from an insurance service provider, personalization is a critical denominator for distinguishing products and each individual has unique requirements and the provider must understand the customer and prospects needs beforehand to be able to design a unique solution. From the customer’s perspective personalization entails having the facility to preview products, compare similar product 28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

FEBRUARY 2022

whatever we do must be compliant with the regulatory requirements.”

categories to educate themselves then ask for a solution that meets with the unique needs. For instance, a family of five may seek to have a floating health insurance cover for all the members.

Says Dr Kohli, “Customers are very evolved these days and are asking for services at the click of a button. As businesses we must be able to offer customers a hyper personal journey wherein the customer is able to get a 360-degree view of all the financial products. A banking customer must be able to see the insurance products, funds and stock investment options on the same view to decide the portfolio of financial distribution. This becomes a win-win for both the customer and the provider.”

For most service providers, one of the end goals of digital transformation is to deliver a seamless customer journey—from opening an account to customer validation process to onboarding a customer to facilitating the claims process, pro-

viders strive to deliver a paperless and transparent journey to the customer. A robust technology system becomes a business enabler equipping the company’s employees to understand the customer’s needs with in-built flexibility to design unique products for customers.

Emphasizing the role of the IT team in ushering in organizational changes, Sohyel Kadjani says, “In my long years of working in different industry segments I have understood that the IT department has a critical responsibility to push boundaries and re-imagine business challenges and actively step in to persuade the organization of the new possibilities that technology can help achieve. This kind of commitment is necessary to bring in transformational benefits.”

Another critical aspect of technology deployment is that any new technology must be evaluated through the lens of regulation and compliance. Digital transformation must be

BANKING TRANSFORMATION // FEATURE STORY

SOHYEL KADJANI

DR. PUNEET KAUR KOHLI

CIO RETAIL BANKING, EMIRATES NBD

CTO, UNIVERSAL SOMPO

“Technology must be employed to achieve a business goal. When technology is used

“As businesses we must be able to offer customers a hyper personal

wisely, it becomes the business differentiator.”

tempered with checks and balances to ensure that regulatory and compliance requirements are adhered. Financial services sector is highly regulated and any technology initiative must ensure that security and compliance are embedded in systems and there is continuous adherence and monitoring.

Pinkesh Ambavat, CIO & Director of IT, CIRF, a leading credit rating agency said “When any technology change or transform we have to keep in mind regulatory requirements because whatever we do must be compliant with all the regulatory requirements. For e.g. adopting open source technology in production is not compliant because there are no security patches for that. So adopting a licensed version is safer as security patches are deployed on a regular basis. Typically, for new technologies the budget is spread for technology adoption and the transformation efforts.”

journey wherein the customer is able to get a 360degree view of all the financial products.”

This includes cost of buying the hardware, software and solutions as well as investing in developing the internal manpower and processes.

At CIRF, there is lot of emphasis on developing the internal skill sets of employees as there is always a scarcity of employees who understand and can manage new technologies.

For instance, when the company was adopting big data technologies, the internal team was educated and trained in the new technology for nearly a year and was ready by the time the systems came into production in 2016. The company is now gearing up to implement models that are based on machine learning to provide a boost to its core business of credit ratings.

Transformation is About Customer First In the end businesses exist for the customer and all technology initiatives must remember that and tie all initiatives to facilitate the customer.

Customer needs and expectations are evolving even as technology capabilities are advancing, and businesses must re-imagine existing business models and services aligned to new realities.

Speaking about technology innovation and customer expectations, Prasanna Lohar, Head Technology, DCB Bank says, “Transformation is for all around innovation within and outside the organization. It must be aimed at enhancing the customer experience. At the same time innovation must be aimed at enhancing the internal user experience, while facilitating collaboration with business stakeholders outside the organization.”

Technology remains the core to any organization that is in the service businesses and businesses must remain vigilant about customer needs and map that with new digital products and services to remain relevant and thrive in the market.

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ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29

Q&A // ALMOND SOLUTIONS

BRIEF BIO OF ABHINAV Abhinav is a technologist turned marketer, Co-founder & CEO at Almond, A Meta engagement platform that helps brands scale and power their channels, customers and audience engagements. Abhinav has 16+ years of hands-on experience in Digital, Technology, Mar-Tech with leading positions at SAP, Dell, Citrix, JetBlue Airways, PlaceIQ, OnDeck Capital in the USA. Abhinav travelled across the world and lived in 22 cities in 8 countries.

A B H I N A V

J A I N

CO-FOUNDER, ALMOND SOLUTIONS

“As we have Google for search Instagram for social, we will also

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

have Metaverses for unique interests’ sports, social, business etc. in future”

What is your opinion about the trend in virtual events?

Virtual events are here to stay parallel to the physical events and help event organizers scale up the audience for their physical events globally.

Do you know virtual events are most suitable for generating the leads for a company and effective cost is only about 30% of the typical per lead cost generated via physical events and other mediums?

Cost-effectiveness puts Virtual Events in the 30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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future Go-To-Market Stack of Smart CMOs.

inclining towards virtual events.

Do you think post-pandemic still people would go for virtual events?

They are already preferring and attending virtual events. A PWC report cited that 45% of the people are not looking forward to physically attending business conferences this year, and 20% said to only join when it’s in their city. These numbers indicate that the future is hybrid and

How can you make it more inclusive and exciting for people to go for it?

In 2021 I ran a poll on LinkedIn, which got 10k+ views, where I asked people to vote for the things they miss in virtual events. None complained about the content experience, and 80% said they miss food and souvenirs. So, we created a digital café on the platform for people to order free food

ALMOND SOLUTIONS // Q&A

OUR VISION IS TO HELP BRANDS MITIGATE A MASSIVE DEPENDENCE ON THE PHYSICAL WORKFORCE After pandemic ruling on the earth for more than two years, WFH, remote work or hybrid work has been accepted norms. People are more productivity in WFH mode than in office. With this, all the expos, events and social gatherings have become virtual too. However the question comes what is there Post- Pandemic. Abhinav Jain, Co-Founder, Almond Solutions spoke to Sanjay Mohapatra, Group Editor, Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd. from the café that gets delivered at their doorstep and built a souvenir shop on the platform to order free personalized souvenirs of the event. Lastly, we also implemented an instant poll feature to share their feedback with the organizers and get rewarded. Just the poll shot up engagements by 35%.

As India is more about touch and feel, do you think virtual things can ever replace physical ones?

A video call has replaced travel in many ways, and it’s not about touch and feels; it’s about convenience and saving time. While the virtual may not replace everything physical, it mitigates physical inconvenience in many ways. For example, we do virtual property shows for a leading property aggregator platform globally. There is a virtualreality-based property listing on our platform for buyers to get the 360-degree feel of the property and location without even visiting the property. If the buyer is interested, they can see the property physically. The lead pipeline increased by 25% with the virtual property show.

The second impediment is that our houses are not made for the virtual environment, what is your opinion?

Now, this is where it gets fascinating because the gadgets will crush the limitations of physical space and boundaries. You may know, in CES 2022, there were VR glasses displayed that can move you in the virtual space without having you move an inch physically. And not just that, glasses will also take your voice commands to take you anywhere you want to go in the virtual world.

Virtual is limitless, and we are just getting started.

Are you of an opinion like Mark Zuckerberg about metaverse that it

will be a reality?

Yes, I do, and I firmly believe there will be thousands of metaverses in future like we have websites for everything today. As we have Google for search Instagram for social, we will also have Metaverses for unique interests’ sports, social, business etc. in future. A retailer giant based in Africa and the USA recently approached us to build a metaverse shopping mall with worldwide brands, and they already have 800+ brands onboarded for the project.

Give us a note on the inception and growth of the company and its products?

We launched in 2018 as a digital solutions company for marketers, and 2020 shaped us into a product company. While we did some exciting work in the virtual events space in 2018, we officially launched Almond Virtex - a virtual and hybrid events platform in April 2020. For the Govt Of India, India International Science Festival, Almond Virtex also won 5 Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the world’s largest science conference. Later in Sep 2020, we built Almond Vingage - a short-format videobased interactive education platform, Almond Vgift - an Instant reward platform. This year we are launching Almond Vouch - a digital sampling platform. Our team has grown 20X, and business has grown 40x since its inception.

What is your vision around Almond Solutions?

As per Markets and markets reports, around 300bn US Dollars are spent on four key physical activities like events and exhibitions, product education and sampling, and rewards every year.

Our vision is to help brands mitigate a massive dependence on the physical workforce, be it for

events, education, sampling or rewards with our mobile-first products that work with or without the internet.

What kind of innovations would you like to bring into the virtual platform?

Personalization and engagement are keys to success for any virtual event or platform. We feel proud to share that we started with personalized digital business cards exchange on virtual events in march 2020 which now most of the platforms use this feature. Since the future is hybrid, we are developing a 5 point technology that connects the physical audiences or physical exhibitors to virtual audiences or virtual exhibitors under the supervision of the organizer. This is going to be game changing.

How is it different from other platforms?

Almond Virtex is one of the most customizable platforms out there in the market. We are a unique platform that can offer 2D, 3D, 3D 360 environments and now events in the metaverse.

Additionally, our products are integrated via a secure blockchain-based data hub, which means pre-event, during event and post engagement data can be unified to drive complete KPI analytics and calculate true ROI. Lastly, we are super-fast to market, and our customized events can go live in less than 24 hours.

Major customers who have used your platform, and what do they say about it?

80% of our business in either repeat or referral.

Brands like Coca-Cola, Nestle, Asian Paints, Udaan, EXL, The Guardian, PropTiger and associations like The World Bank, UNICEF, CII, PHDCCI, AIMA, The Govt Of India are using our platforms regularly. We have recently launched our business in the USA, working for the Ministry of textile and helping them host one of the most significant virtual fashion events. Our customers love our platform customization, speed of work and customer support.

What is the business model around it?

We are working with agencies as well as brands directly. With agencies, it’s a yearly/quarterly subscription model for several events that they can host from our SAAS panel. With brands, as they need more handholding, support and customization, we work on an event subscription model where we take care of everything end to end for them from creative to customization to execution.

FEBRUARY 2022

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

31

TECH PREDICTION 2022 // EQUINIX

4 DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE PREDICTIONS DEFINING THE NEXT DECADE How hybrid multicloud, AI/ML, security, sustainability will impact the digital landscape

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

T

oday’s CIOs—from all types of companies—are on an accelerated digital transformation journey. They realize their ability to dynamically deploy and consume the right digital infrastructure, securely and sustainably, will be the primary basis of competitive advantage in the future. According to IDC, by 2023, digital infrastructure will be the underlying platform for all IT and business automation initiatives anywhere and everywhere. Such a platform needs to enable the frictionless exchange of data and operations across ecosystems from edge to core.

As we collaborate with our more than 10,000 enterprise customers and partners around the globe to drive their digital infrastructure strategies, we see trends unfolding that will render the bespoke nature of deploying and consuming IT extinct within just a few years. Driven by the requirement for agile, automated, as a Service digital infrastructure that’s software-defined and self-operating, DevOps engineers will be taking the lead in delivering new on-demand IT services and applications.

Hybrid multicloud will become the predominant architecture in application modernization and infrastructure service delivery, giving rise to new complexity challenges that require more programmable infrastructure, transparent asset management and cost predictability. In the next five years, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) will increase in sophistication as enterprises demand infrastructure and applications that are operationally self-resilient. This shift will reduce the reliance on human involvement and leverage greater machine processing power that enables environments to autonomously anticipate and dynamically adapt to changing resource demands.

In this new world, security will no longer be an afterthought, as enterprises will assume that digital infrastructure services are secure by design and configurable through software. Sustainability is now an expectation for every business. It will be a core, non-negotiable measure of business success as companies and their supply chain 32 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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partners universally commit to a net-zero carbon footprint for every facility, product and service development.

Given this dynamic digital transformation landscape, our 2022 predictions dig deeper into the prevailing drivers that will accelerate and power digital infrastructure deployment and consumption over the next decade. Read on to hear from some of our leaders in regards to what businesses should consider as they set their organizations up to compete in an increasingly digital future.

Prediction #1: Overcoming hybrid multicloud complexity will dictate digital-first success By 2023, 40% of the Forbes Global 2000 will reset their cloud selection processes to focus on business outcomes rather than IT requirements. One of the biggest challenges for IT in this transition will be supporting the organization’s business strategy via hybrid multicloud, while managing increased complexity. Over the next decade, hybrid multicloud will play a prominent role in determining how organizations advance their digital-first strategies and consume IT Infrastructure as a Service. Digital leaders who overcome cloud, data and ecosystem complexity through automation, AI/ML, APIs and edge services will gain a significant competitive edge.

• Cloud automation will accelerate digital infrastructure consumption Hybrid multicloud complexity is increasing as the lines blur between private and public cloud and on-premises workloads. Cloud automation that leverages AI/ML-enabled cloud services will significantly reduce the management overhead and costs of public cloud infrastructure and operations. Cloud automation will also improve critical functions such as DevOps for application modernization and security for risk detection across hybrid multicloud architectures—accelerating labor-intensive functions for greater optimization.

Implications: Cloud automation will simplify creating and configuring cloud computing assets

and streamline complex billing and ordering systems across multiple cloud platforms. More importantly, reaction-driven automation systems will be able to detect when it’s time to allocate and deallocate dynamic resources as demand increases or decreases, eliminating the legacy processes that make this a more complex and time-consuming operation. Ultimately, emerging platforms and tools in cloud automation will significantly advance digital infrastructure development, management, consumption and security, as everything will be software-defined.

• Connected cloud ecosystems will ramp up infrastructure agility Going forward, hybrid multicloud will become a team sport. Working with an interconnected ecosystem of diverse cloud service providers will help unlock advanced use cases and new sources of business value. To keep hybrid multicloud environments functioning as a coherent whole rather than a series of disjointed pieces, enterprises will need to democratize cloud access and leverage AI/ML to move workloads between clouds dynamically. Cloud-native companies will also be switching sides as they come out of the cloud into on-premises infrastructure for greater performance and scalability, giving enterprises more hybrid cloud choice.

Implications: To hit the sweet spot of capitalizing on hybrid multicloud value while mitigating complexity and cost, enterprises will use ecosystem partnerships in new and innovative ways, driving greater cloud repatriation. The need to move workloads out of the cloud to on-premises infrastructure will drive enterprises to leverage Bare Metal as a Service and Edge as a Service offerings in a cloud-adjacent architecture to improve infrastructure agility, reduce data egress costs, and increase data protection and privacy.

In a vendor-neutral ecosystem, enterprises can use public clouds as an extension of their private infrastructure and vice versa, creating the infrastructure agility to maximize the value of both.

Open source tools such as Kubernetes, containers and microservices will continue to play a critical role in these workload migrations, while APIs

EQUINIX // TECH PREDICTION 2022

MILIND WAGLE CIO EQUINIX

“In this new world, security will no longer be an afterthought, as enterprises will assume that digital

infrastructure services are secure by design and configurable through software. Sustainability is now an expectation for every business.”

will help enterprises templatize and automate the deployment of migration circuits.

Prediction #2: AI/ML at the edge will power 5G and IoT Data at the edge is exploding as 5G and IoT technologies flourish, driving a global edge computing market that’s projected to reach $43.4 billion by 2027. Information from autonomous vehicles, drones, surveillance cameras and medical IoT devices will require real-time AI/ML model inferencing at the edge. Over the next decade, AI/ML will become pervasive in every aspect of human life: AI-powered robots will provide services from growing and transporting food, to delivering groceries, to cooking. Advances will be made in the arena of legal/public policies to better address the ethics of AI/ML with respect to fairness, explainability and privacy protection.

• Data control and governance needs will give rise to AI marketplaces Organizations will increasingly need to leverage external data (i.e., from public clouds, data brokers, IoT devices) to build more accurate AI/ ML models. However, data providers have been hesitant to share raw data that might get used for unauthorized purposes by the consumers.

Similarly, data consumers are concerned about the lineage of the data and models (in transfer learning scenarios) that they are getting from external sources for security, bias and quality reasons.

Implications: Enterprises will leverage AI marketplaces to trade data and algorithms between multiple parties in a safe and privacy-preserving manner in order to maintain the chain of custody.

AI marketplaces will be blockchain-enabled to help consumers keep track of the lineage of data

and AI models. They will also provide secure enclaves at neutral locations, where raw data never leaves the enclave, helping providers to keep control over their data.

• Federated and wafer-scale AI will enable next-generation AI scalability As data generated at the edge multiplies, it becomes less cost-effective and performant to move it to a centralized location for processing. It’s also critical that data remains within an organization’s/country’s security perimeter for privacy and compliance. Over the next five years, data gravity, latency and privacy will shift AI architectures from a centralized model to a distributed one, making distributed AI orchestrators and control planes the norm.

Increasingly, AI is being used to solve more complex problems that are using datasets that are 1000x larger than those from two years ago and require about 1000x more powerful computing power.

Implications: We are entering the era of federated AI/ML, where model training happens in a decentralized system of distributed computational devices at the edge, with organizations shipping algorithms to the edge instead of sending raw data to a centralized location. Models are trained at the edge and only model weights are then sent to an aggregation location to build a global AI model , thereby reducing cost and latency and preserving data privacy.

Over the next five years, more powerful AI model training hardware solutions will emerge that are much denser—hundreds of thousands of cores on a wafer to handle the training needs of these complex AI problems. This next-generation AI training hardware will consume 40KW+ of power per rack, which will require liquid cooling.

Furthermore, problem-specific ASIC/FPGAbased solutions will emerge for AI inferencing that will be more power efficient and provide better AI inference throughput.

Prediction #3: New trust models will top the cybersecurity agenda Cyberattacks are increasing sharply as the global pandemic continues, leading to a predicted cost of more than $6 trillion globally in 2021 and $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Despite the risks, companies will continue to embrace cloud services and extend traditional network boundaries to employees and partners that are essential to building digital advantage. As companies pursue their digital business models, cybercriminals continue to outpace the industry with their sophisticated attacks. Technology leaders must help their companies navigate today’s threats and balance the risks as they anticipate and stay ahead of what’s next.

• Converged security and zero trust will increase the difficulty and cost to attackers Many organizations still manage security from within siloed functions and do not share the same principles and architecture necessary to help drive greater visibility and control. Breaking down silos and establishing converged cybersecurity environments will be a top priority for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) as organizations extend their digital footprint. With cloud and edge deployments, increased operational technology footprints, as well as a distributed workforce, CISOs will prioritize viewing their business as attackers do, a converged physical and digital threatscape.

Implications: Security will become everyone’s job; however, CISOs will lead the charge, deploying zero-trust environments that integrate IT, OT and all digital visibility and control. Expect to see businesses and cloud providers strengthen forces to design shared responsibility frameworks and implement solutions that deliver continuous compliance, trust and transparency. Given that every company is now a software company, applying DevSecOps models and secure software development life cycles (SSDLC) will ensure automated security throughout the development process.

• Governments will take a more active role in cyberattack offensive measures Governments increasingly recognize cyberattacks and ransomware demands as national threats.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com

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ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 33

Q&A // IVANTI

ONE IVANTI MEANS THAT WE ARE COMMITTED TO MAXIMIZING OUR PERFORMANCE With the era of omni present IT workers and data access through any device, the vector of attacks are definitely high but there has to be some solution to protect the environment.

Enterprise IT World spoke to Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala, Senior Vice President, Security Products, Ivanti about it. An excerpt.

“We are working on finding more ways for our solutions to alleviate the strain IT and security teams are facing and that is opening up a tremendous avenue for growth.”

DR. SRINIVAS MUKKAMALA, SENIOR VICE

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

PRESIDENT, SECURITY PRODUCTS, IVANTI

Please tell us briefly about Ivanti?

Ivanti is an IT and security software company that enables and protects the Everywhere Workplace. In the Everywhere Workplace employees are accessing company networks from a variety of devices and locations. In today’s disparate workplace, IT is dealing with more devices, more platforms, more apps, more networks, hybrid cloud environments, and more services. To alleviate the pressure of IT Operation Teams and Developers, Ivanti has built an integrated solution that leverages our autonomous platform to find and protect every device, user, and software. This has never been more important than it is today.

Ivanti is a critical enabler of this new era of work with our self-healing, self-securing, self-servicing technology.

What is your expansion plan for India Market?

Our growth plans for the next year, in the Indian market and globally, include planned updates to our Ivanti Neurons platform and continually enhancing solutions across the entire platform.

We also are focused on different verticals and departments that historically didn’t utilize a service management platform and relied on 34 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

FEBRUARY 2022

manual processes, such as facilities and human resources. We are working on finding more ways for our solutions to alleviate the strain IT and security teams are facing and that is opening up a tremendous avenue for growth.

What is One Ivanti Identity, how does it help the customers?

It is through our One Ivanti Identity that our team builds and delivers world-class solutions for our customers. Teamwork is intrinsic to what we do and why we do it. Some of the commitments we have made to each other through our shared values is that we are accountable to each other, and support one another, we provide opportunities to grow, learn, add value and thrive, while also achieving new levels of performance, and we treat all with appreciation dignity and respect.

One Ivanti means that we are committed to maximizing our performance and creating the best possible outcomes for our customers.

How are you strengthening your head count in India?

We are currently recruiting for dozens of positions in India, these are overwhelmingly new positions to help with our astronomical growth.

We have also implemented an intern program that is an ongoing program with new interns coming to work with our team on a regular basis.

Many of these interns will then transition to fulltime jobs with the company. We are committed to training up and coaching new talent in India and investing back in the country in this way.

Briefly tell us about the products and solutions you are offering in India?

Ivanti is the provider of the Ivanti Neurons hyperautomation platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to address the growing demands placed on IT and security teams amid the global shift to remote and hybrid work. It autonomously self-heals and self-secures devices and provides personalized self-service experiences to end users. Ivanti Neurons uses automation bots to provide real-time intelligence across all assets in the Everywhere Workplace, including every endpoint and IoT edge, while delivering a consumer-grade employee experience.

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