July Issue 2021

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs. J U LY 2 0 2 1

DATA CENTRE

2021

EDITOR’S LETTER

ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE: CYBER SECURITY FIRST

Hello Friends.

In all our efforts we have been trying to pinpoint trends and priorities for the enterprises. For last 2 years we were talking about digital and cloud and cyber security. Now that the covid is almost gone from India and people are coming back to the offices, the priorities of the enterprises have swiftly shifting to cyber security.

This is for two reasons that there are imminent attacks from all corners as there is a need for the enterprises to ramp up their investment on every corner so that they can make up with the lost momentum and manage the loss for last 7-8 quarters. This is where they are investing in technology to handle the growth. This is a big opportunity for the hackers and cyber security perpetrators to push their activities. The other reason is that the hackers and the perpetrators are finding it to be conducive environment as they are of thought process that pandemic may strike again and would make their task difficult too.

So, starting from DevOps to internal core IT to customer login IT and manufacturing everywhere

NEXT MONTH SPECIAL

there is cyber security. Customers are thinking about how to save their infra from bad people. So thy want to ensure their applications development till go live everything should be immune from cyber attacks.

The recent Pegasus row is an extension of an ethical way and a demonstration of what can happen to once privacy and data. Therefore, there are many such solutions developed by various hacking groups who can attack in various way to destroy ones privacy and database – whether you know it or not. You cannot just check it. So, the magnitude of the severity is so high that one cannot imagine the damage.

So, any investment on security is good investment and there is no limitation too. The other thing is that the CISOs specially need to create regular awareness and adopting best practices prescribed various consulting houses and always need to be compliant too.

I know there is a change of performance delay by having too much of security, but it is better than losing the chance of performance. Of course, there would be criticism from the internal system and complaints from the customers. Let us have it but at least you would ensure that your organizations is not hacked or your assets are not compromised.

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

CYBER SECURITY

QUOTES FROM TOP CIOS

The next issue is dedicated to the Cyber Security. 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 4

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

CONTENTS

FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Chief Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra

V O L U M E 0 6 | I S S U E 0 4 | JULY 2021 | W W W . E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M

Managing Editor: Anisha Nayar Dhawan Sub Editor: Nidhi Shail Designer: Shadab Khan Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi, 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 EDITORIAL OFFICE

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Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New Delhi-110016,

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Editorial~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04 News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06

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26 SECURITY

SECURITY

GUEST TALK

SURVEILLENCE

“How to Keep Yourself Safe When Online”

“Adoption of cloud native to accelerate digital transformation”

“Is Your Business Protected From Threats That Seek To Hurt It?”

GURPRIT SINGH

JESPER ANDERSEN

“Infoblox 3.0 Unites Hybrid DDI and Security to Drive Cloud-first Strategies”

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD

ROUND UP

Salesforce Completes Acquisition of Slack B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

Together, Salesforce and Slack are creating the digital HQ for success from anywhere Salesforce has completed its acquisition of Slack Technologies, Inc. “We couldn’t be more excited to have Slack as part of the Salesforce family, combining the #1 CRM and the trailblazing digital platform for the work anywhere world,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce. “Together we’ll define the future of enterprise software, creating the digital HQ that enables every organization to deliver customer and employee success from anywhere.”

“We’ve learned over the past year that the workplace isn’t snapping back to the way it was,” said Bret Taylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce.

“Together, Slack and Salesforce Customer 360 will give every company in the world a single source of truth 6

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

for their business and a single platform for connecting employees, customers, and partners with each other and the apps they use every day.”

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink and reshape how and where we work,” said Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Co-Founder.

“Salesforce and Slack are uniquely positioned to lead this historic shift to a digital-first world. I could not be more excited for what’s to come.”

“Salesforce and Slack coming together will help us become more connected, more productive, and more innovative so we can better serve our clients.”ARVIND KRISHNA, CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF IBM “We are obsessed with continually delighting our clients and offering them the best experience and value across every interaction,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM.

D ATA BRIEFING

Gartner Forecasts End-User Spending on IT Services in India to Reach $18 Billion in 2021.

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Pine Labs Gets Fresh Invest of USD 600M

Pine Labs, one of Asia’s leading merchant commerce platforms, announced an investment round with the entry of new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, funds managed by BlackRock, Ishana, Tree Line, a fund advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC. IIFL AMC via its ‘Late-Stage Tech Fund’ and Kotak are also participating in this investment round, which is subject to approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), bringing the total round size to over USD 600 million.

Pine Labs continues to be well-financed and has been EBITDA profitable for several years.

The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Actis, PayPal and Mastercard amongst other leading global investors.

“Over the last year, Pine Labs has made significant progress in its Offline to Online strategy in India and the direct-to-consumer play in Southeast Asia. Our full-stack approach

CIO

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to payments and merchant commerce has allowed us to grow in-month merchant partnerships by nearly 100% over the last year. We are excited to bring on board a marquee set of new investors in this round and appreciate the confidence they have placed on the Pine Labs business model and our growth momentum,” said B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

“Pine Labs has rapidly transformed from a single product company allowing retail acceptance of payments to a broader payments platform. The company now serves hundreds of thousands of merchants across payments acceptance on cards and UPI processing tens of billions of payment volume; the company also has the market leading PayLater offering with ~$3B in annualized PayLater transactions.

Through its acquisitions of QwikCilver and Fave, Pine Labs now has the market leading pre-paid platform in this region as well as the top consumer loyalty product in this market.

Capgemini and Dassault Systèmes Accelerate their Alliance Partnership

Capgemini and Dassault Systèmes accelerate their alliance partnership to help organizations evolve towards becoming intelligent enterprises On Thursday, July 1st, Capgemini and Dassault Systèmes announced a joint collaboration to address challenges related to intelligent products and systems, intelligent operations, and intelligent support and services by developing new capabilities. The new alliance partnership, based on Capgemini’s belief that the future of industry is intelligent, combines Capgemini’s deep sector, technology, and data experience with Dassault Systèmes’ cutting-edge 3DEXPERIENCE platform to help clients at every stage of their intelligent transformation journey.

Capgemini and Dassault Systèmes plan to pool resources to help their clients realise business value throughout their transformation journeys and enhance performance by providing new capabilities in important domains like:  Digital Engineering Lifecycle Management (DELM), a forward-thinking expansion of traditional Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) that makes use of cutting-edge holistic simulation and digital twin technology.

EVENTS

28 JUL 2021

29 JUL 2021

11 AUG 2021

27 AUG 2021

2:00 PM IST Sangoma’s Zero-Touch provisioning to set up your PBXact today.

8:30 PM IST Coaching Your Boss to Innovate.

1:00 PM IST EASTERN TIME Redefining Customer Support’

2:00 PM - 7:00 PM Security Symposium 2021 and Cyber Sentinel Awards (Virtual Event)

THE ORGANISER IS SANGOMA

THE ORGANISER IS GLOBAL INNOVATION INSTITUTE

THE ORGANISER IS REUTERS EVENTS IS PART OF REUTERS NEWS & MEDIA LTD

THE ORGANIZER IS ACCENT INFO MEDIA PVT. LTD.

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

HID Global Expands its WorkforceID Unified Identity and Access Management Platform with Cloud-Based Multi-Factor Authentication

S/HE SAID IT

SENDUR SELLAKUMAR

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, SPLUNK

“As the types, sources and volume of data our customers need to analyze continually grows, having a trusted data-centric platform is imperative for our application development, cybersecurity, IT and business users’ success.”

HID Global Adds Cloud-Based Multi-Factor Authentication to its WorkforceID Unified Identity and Access Management Platform Global, a global leader in trusted identity solutions, announced today the general availability of the WorkforceIDTM Authentication solution, the latest addition to its cloud platform for creating a seamless, effortless experience for issuing, managing, and using identity credentials in physical and digital workplaces. Workforce ID Authentication expands on HID’s well-established and widely deployed multi-factor authentication platform for consumer applications such as online and mobile banking. It is the latest addition to a growing portfolio of employee ID badges, visitor management, and other trusted workforce identity solutions.

“A person’s identity has become the new security perimeter in a hybrid workplace that now extends from home to the office and

QUICK BYTE ON

everywhere in between,” said Julian Lovelock, VP Global Business Segment, IAM, with HID Global. “The addition of multi-factor authentication to the HID WorkforceID platform advances our vision of a unified and flexible approach to identity and access management for an organization’s employees, partners and contractors. This is the next step in providing a suite of applications that manage digital and physical identity credentials through one convenient cloud platform.”

The HID® WorkforceID Authentication solution, which is central to HID’s overall multi-factor authentication portfolio, enables organisations to provide a streamlined, simple, and secure login experience to every user and application in today’s diverse and dynamic enterprise environment. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s on-premise Active Directory (AD) or the cloud-based Azure AD.

“As manufacturing companies focus on enhancing their competitiveness in the new reality, disruptive technologies like additive manufacturing will provide them the necessary impetus to develop and deliver better products to its customers.”

A N A N D B H A D E , P R E S I D E N T & G LO B A L H E A D O F T E C H N O LO G Y S O LU T I O N S , TATA T E C H N O LO G I E S

SECURITY

Tech Data Launches Joint Initiative with IBM to Fast Track “Tech Data launches Tech Data’s Digital Transformation Series along with IBM, a go-to-market initiative tailored to fast-track transformation journeys for APAC partners. The Series is designed to meet the growing demand for big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions in the region, which is expected to reach over US$43.4 million by 2024, according to IDC. The initiative will expand and grow the region’s ecosystem of partners in the area of data and artificial intelligence (AI), supported by subject matter expertise via Tech Data’s Center of Excellence (COE).”

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Keysight and Qualcomm First to Achieve 10 Gbps Data Connection Using 5G New Radio Dual Connectivity

Micro Focus Recognized as the Global Leader in AIPA by Research in Action (RIA) Micro Focus announced that Operations Bridge with the embedded OPTIC (Operations Platform for Transformation, Intelligence and Cloud) platform has been collectively recognized as the global leader in the Research in Action (RIA) Vendor Selection Matrix: Artificial Intelligence Predictive Analytics, 2021.

Further strengthening its place as a trusted AIOps solution, Micro Focus Operations Bridge was also recently cited as a “Strong Value” for its product strength in incident, performance and availability management, as well as being named the most balanced overall use case value in the Enterprise Management Associates Radar Report for AIOps: Q3 2020.

“The Micro Focus Operations Bridge solution and its embedded OPTIC platform lead the category of AIPA with the company’s excellent

EXECUTIVE

integrations and data items, making Micro Focus a great partner for all digital business transformation projects,” said Eveline Oehrlich of Research in Action. “Micro Focus’ recent transformation towards OPTIC is a significant step towards the next chapter of digital transformation that enterprises need within both business and IT teams.”

Micro Focus Operations Bridge is an AIOps solution that includes powerful automated machine learning, anomaly detection and predictive analytics to identify root cause fast.

The embedded intelligence of Micro Focus’ OPTIC platform provides broad analysis as it normalizes, stores and makes sense of all data produced by the variety of solutions found across IT environments – including most third-party monitoring tools.

Keysight Technologies announced a demonstration at Mobile World Congress 2021 (MWC 21) of a ten gigabit per second (Gbps) data connection using 5G new radio dual connectivity (NR-DC), an industry-first milestone achieved in close collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. The demonstration included Keysight’s network emulation platform and Snapdragon® X65 5G Modem-RF System with Qualcomm QTM545 mmWave Antenna Module to aggregate 5G mmWave and sub-6GHz spectrum. The achievement builds on a long-term collaboration between the two companies to drive 5G commercialization across the device ecosystem. NR-DC allows 5G NR devices to concurrently connect and aggregate multiple NR cells, leading to significantly increased data transfer speeds.

“We’re pleased to collaborate with Qualcomm Technologies to reach another industry-first milestone that lays the foundation for consumers and enterprises to achieve wired-broadband grade speeds in this next phase of 5G,” said Cao Peng, vice president and general manager for Keysight’s wireless test group.

MOVEMENT

Cisco Elevates Daisy Chittilapilly as President of India & SAARC

Parag Arora Appointed Area Vice President of Citrix Business in Newly United Sales Region of India and Asia

Linode Announces Joseph Zhou as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

IESA announces the appointment K Krishna Moorthy as the President and CEO

Vijeth Shivappa of Hitachi Vantara Becomes Member – Technical Council, SNIA

Citrix appoints Safi Obeidullah as the Global Head of Value Advisory

10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

BOOK

SHELF

Amazon Unbound

GLOBAL UPDATE

BY

BRAD STONE (AUTHOR)

Sophos Acquires Capsule8 to Bring Powerful and Lightweight Linux Server and Cloud Container Security to ACE Sophos has acquired Capsule8, a pioneer and market leader of runtime visibility, detection and response for Linux production servers and containers covering on-premise and cloud workloads. Founded in 2016, Capsule8 is privately held and headquartered in New York, NY. “Sophos already protects more than two million servers for over 85,000 customers worldwide, and the Sophos server security business is growing at more than 20% per year,” said Dan Schiappa, chief product officer, Sophos. “Comprehensive server protection is a crucial component of any effective cybersecurity strategy that organizations of all sizes are increasingly focused on, especially as more workloads move to the cloud. With Capsule8, Sophos is delivering advanced, differentiated solutions to protect server environments, and expanding its position as a leading global cybersecurity provider.”

Capsule8 is dedicated solely to the development of Linux security and has established itself as a technology and thought leader in the market, with marquis customer wins and billings growth of 77%

in the year to March 31, 2021. Driven by the dramatic growth in cloud platforms, Linux has become the dominant operating system for server workloads. Capsule8’s high-performance, low-impact design is ideal for Linux servers, especially those used for high-scale workloads, production infrastructure and storing critical business data.

“The main idea behind Capsule8 is that providing enterprise-grade security for Linux systems requires deploying components that are designed specifically for that environment. These components are more adept at making the trade-offs between security and performance when needed, to achieve the desired levels of resilience and protection,” said Fernando Montenegro, principal research analyst with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, in reference to Capsule8’s solutions. “As organizations move to embrace concepts such as cloudbased delivery and DevOps, the underlying compute environments shift noticeably toward Linux as a frequent execution environment.

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AMAZON.IN

About The Book From the bestselling author of The Everything Store, an unvarnished picture of Amazon’s unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time.

With the publication of The Everything Store in 2013, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone revealed how the unlikely Seattle start-up Amazon became an unexpected king of ecommerce. Since then, its founder has led Amazon to explosive growth in both size and wealth.

Key Feature: Definitive, timely and revelatory, Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn’t imagine modern life without.

CMC Networks Selects Juniper Networks to Provide AI-Driven SD-WAN Solution CMC Networks is the first Juniper partner to offer a managed AI-driven SD-WAN solution in Africa. A dynamic and self-optimizing network will deliver a superior experience to CMC’s customers, allowing them to easily modify their services, add new locations and spin up and down network speeds. Time-to-market is significantly reduced, enabling CMC to provision services faster.

By leveraging Juniper’s unique Session Smart® Router technology driven by Mist AI, CMC is delivering a unique tunnelless solution that is designed for scale and agility, coupled with automated provisioning,

management and troubleshooting for maximum uptime, superior performance of real-time traffic and lower operating costs in both rural and urban environments.

Geoff Dornan, Chief Technology Officer, CMC Networks said, “SD-WAN is not a new technology and every SD-WAN player gives customers speed and power on the network. However, digital transformation strategies require a high level of intelligence, support and the ability to underpin business-critical applications – attributes that many SD-WAN vendors can’t provide. Juniper’s AI-driven SD-WAN gives CMC a level of intelligence and operational insight that we haven’t seen before.”

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

InstaSafe launches Free Assessment Tool to analyse Enterprise Security Readiness InstaSafe has announced the launch of its free consultative Zero Trust Security Assessment tool, which has been designed to determine the security readiness of modern enterprise security setups, and make recommendations for implementing a Zero Trust model.

As per InstaSafe, operationalizing a Zero Trust Security Setup has become the top priority for companies due to increasing mobility of applications and workforces outside the confines of offices or on-premise data centers. As such, the actual implementation process for a true Zero Trust Model can be a tedious task.

Most security vendors lay forth the claim of implementing Zero Trust in an organisation without assessing their security readiness and recommending the right path to a Zero Trust approach. For some other enterprise, they may be well along the line of a Zero Trust Model, but may have a few chinks in their armour that have been left unattended.

InstaSafe’s free Zero Trust Assessment tool uses a combination of queries curated by cybersecurity experts to gauge the security posture of an enterprise.

Union Bank of India accelerates its Digital Transformation journey with the inauguration of Digital Vertical at BKC, Mumbai Union Bank of India, today, launched a Digital Vertical at Naman Centre, BKC, Mumbai to drive development of various Digital Banking Products, Fintech Partnerships &Digital Marketing.

The vertical has been setup to strengthen the bank’s digital footprint in the BFSI space with an aspiration to create a ‘Digital Bank within Bank’ by leveraging strengths of the recently 3 amalgamated banks.

With an intention to create smooth and hassle-free digital journey and superior customer experience, this first of its kind Vertical will act as ‘Digital Thought Circle’ of the bank. It will include research & innovation apart from establishing partnerships, development, explore UI/UX avenues to ease customer conveniences and implementation of various futuristic digital platforms.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Rajkiran Rai G, MD & CEO, Union Bank of India said, “To capture the growing digital business and to build a strong digital ecosystem within the Bank, the digital vertical will aid to re-orient the Bank’s digital vision. The vision includes exploring innovative solutions and new emerging technologies such as AI, ML, 5G, Blockchain etc. Union Bank of India has already initiated major digital initiatives like CRM, Trade Finance, Video KYC that are under various implementation stages.”

Also, on the occasion Shri Rajkiran Rai G, launched a new version of Umobile application with new User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX).

MongoDB Delivers the Future to Developers with MongoDB 5.0 and Serverless Atlas MongoDB announced a series of revolutionary product enhancements from the keynote stage of MongoDB’s annual conference, MongoDB.live. These updates include the launch and General Availability of MongoDB 5.0 with native time series support, the preview of serverless databases in MongoDB Atlas, and the continued evolution of its industry leading application data platform with enhancements to Atlas Search, Atlas Data Lake, and MongoDB’s end-to-end mobile data solution, Realm.

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“MongoDB is the world’s pre-eminent application data platform for building the applications of today and tomorrow. With the end of the global pandemic in sight, enterprises everywhere feel a sense of urgency to use software and data as a competitive advantage. The best way to do this is by giving developers access to technologies that align to the way they think and code to enable high productivity,” said Dev Ittycheria, President & CEO of MongoDB.

DIGEST YOTTA PARTNERS WITH COMMVAULT TO LAUNCH ENDPOINT BACKUP AS A SERVICE Yotta Infrastructure announced its partnership with Commvault to launch Yotta Safe – its Endpoint backup-as-a-service. Yotta Safe offers unlimited endpoint backup storage, at just Rs. 150 per month and comes bundled with advanced features including ransomware protection, auto-discovery and self-service dashboards for IT teams and administrators to manage their backup environment. All the backup data is stored in Yotta’s highly secure and compliant Datacenter in Mumbai – Yotta NM1– The world’s 2nd largest Uptime Institute Tier IV datacenter.

ACCENTURE LAUNCHES MYNAV GREEN CLOUD ADVISOR TO HELP COMPANIES Accenture launched Green Cloud Advisor, a new capability for the Accenture myNav platform that enables enterprises to operate more sustainable and efficient cloud environments. myNav Green Cloud Advisor helps companies design cloud solutions that reduce carbon emissions and lay a foundation for responsible innovation. First, Green Cloud Advisor establishes a baseline of existing data center energy consumption, computing requirements and sustainability goals. It then uses proprietary algorithms to quantify the “greenness” of potential cloud solution options, based on a range of information, such as the cloud service providers’ carbon emissions goals, locations, energy sources and readiness to transition to clean energy.

ATTIVO NETWORKS LAUNCHES CIEM SOLUTION, EXPANDING ITS IDENTITY DETECTION AND RESPONSE (IDR) PORTFOLIO Attivo Networks, the leader in identity detection and response, announced a new Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) solution, IDEntitleX, designed to deliver visibility and reduce the attack surface for identities and entitlements in the cloud. IDEntitleX expands the company’s leadership position in providing unprecedented visibility and prevention of identity privilege escalation and lateral movement threat activity. With this new product introduction, Attivo becomes the only solution of its kind to provide end-to-end analysis of identity and entitlement exposures and risks on endpoints, Active Directory (AD), and the cloud.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

MANAGEMENT

MANTRA

“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.”

Anthea Turner, Former English Television Presenter.

Rice Education Launches Rice Smart, the Complete Edtech Platform for Govt Competitive Exam Preparation

RICE Education, a leader in government competitive exam preparation market, has been a social change agent in Bengal, helping students to become bureaucrats and other government employees across central and state governments and banks since 1985. Students across all social and financial strata have found success and built their careers & lives with the help of RICE. RICE Education, with 36 years of experience and legacy of success, has now forayed into the online learning space with its EdTech platform – RICE Smart. With this, RICE is poised to provide quality education in online mode (RICE Smart

Pro courses), offline only (RICE Classic courses) and hybrid: online+offline (RICE Premium courses). There are multiple RICE Smart Pro courses that are launched to support the students – WBCS & PSC, SSC & Railways and Banking are few of them.

In today’s world, EdTech has proven to bring in the democratisation of education beyond the constraints of geography or other limits. RICE has embarked on a journey to provide its quality education through the online EdTech platform, named RICE Smart, thereby potentially supporting lakhs of students to do their best in all-India government job examinations.

Shri Samit Ray, Chairman, RICE Group said, “The proven capacity-buildup methodology of RICE, experienced faculty and researched study materials extend from the current deep offline experience to the online products, thus ensuring we keep on providing quality support to the multitude of students. In the last 36 years, about 1.5 Lakh students have found success through RICE and we believe that with the quality and affordable online support from RICE Smart, many more will reach success in government competitive exams.”

Alpine F1 Team Joins Forces with Fireeye Mandiant to Protect Data Across Racing Operations

Alpine F1 Team forges a new strategicpartnership with FireEye Mandiant to combat cyber threats – both on and off-track.

The Team will benefit from Mandiant’s profound understanding of planning and riskmanagement as it relies increasingly on artificial intelligence, connectivity between international locations, digital communication and advanced data capture across multiple platforms including telemetry, driver simulators and, of course, the cars on track.

The Mandiant logo will appear on Alpine F1 Team’s garage environment and on the A521 nose at this weekend’s British Grand Prix – the kick-off of this multi-year, multi-faceted relationship.

Laurent Rossi, Chief Executive Officer, Alpine: “In Formula One, success is achieved by taking humans and technology to the limit while minimising risk. The fastest cars in the world are also amongst the safest and we needed a strategic partner who could help us extend the same approach to our data, the digital reflection of who we are. Mandiant will thus cover a critical aspect of our engineering operations and is a welcome new member of our Technical Partners family.”

With delivery of over 7000 non-disruptive controller upgrades Since 2015, Pure’s evergreen Subscription to innovation reaches a new milestone The latest achievement reflects Pure’s continued effort to deliver a Modern Data Experience, paving the way for flexible, Storage as-a-Service consumption Pure Storage, an IT company that provides storage-as-a-service in a multi-cloud world, announced on July 14th that it has reached a new growth milestone for its subscription-based EvergreenTM Storage program, with over 2,700 customers performing non-disruptive storage upgrades and the average number of upgrades increasing 38 percent year over year over the last five years. Evergreen’s consistent growth serves

as the foundation for Pure’s strategy of providing simple, reliable, and scalable storage as-a-service (STaaS) and a seamless cloud bridge.

Evergreen, which debuted in 2015, challenged the status quo of traditional storage delivery, which was characterized by high costs, 3-5-year technology refresh cycles, forklift upgrades, storage repurchases, unplanned downtime, high-risk data migration, and overall data storage complexity. Evergreen has paved the way for the new era of IT ownership by providing customers with a subscription to innovation that lowers costs, creates a longer and more sustainable technology

lifecycle, and allows them to continue modernizing their organizations with zero disruptions to respond to changing business needs Evergreen is committed to expanding and unifying subscription strategy in combination with Pure as-a-Service™, a true STaaS consumerbased offering and the Pure Cloud Block Store™, providing seamless mobility of data across on-site and cloud environments. Pure’s subscription services revenue increased by 35% year over year in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

NVIDIA and Palo Alto Networks Boost Cyber Defenses with DPU Acceleration

Web Werks to Set up DC in Bangalore Web Werks signed an MoU with the Government of Karnataka to set up a data center in Bangalore. Web Werks will be investing ₹750 crores in the project which will be fully operational in 2 years. This data center in Bangalore, the IT hub of India will have a potential of up to 20 MW with further expansion possibilities. The Government of Karnataka will aid this development through facilitating required permissions, registrations, approvals, and clearances.

According to Data Center Map, Bangalore is an emerging data center market. The city has been witnessing a demand for data-driven services, cloud/colocation, and captive IT infrastructures. Hence, India’s Silicon Valley remains an underserved

market.

Speaking about the development, Mr. Nikhil Rathi, CEO, Web Werks data centers said, “Digital transformation in India continues to accelerate with support from the Government’s ‘Digital India’ program. Web Werks’ Bangalore data center will cater to the increasing demand from hyperscalers and enterprises. We look forward to providing our new customers in South India with highly reliable and scalable solutions combining hosted infrastructure, cloud on-ramp, network, and security. The addition of this data center is part of our national expansion and we are extremely happy and grateful to the Government of Karnataka for their support”.

Cybercrime cost the American public more than $4 billion in reported losses over the course of 2020, according to the FBI. To stay ahead of emerging threats, Palo Alto Networks has developed the first virtual next-generation firewall (NGFW) designed to be accelerated by NVIDIA’s BlueField data processing unit (DPU).

The DPU accelerates packet filtering and forwarding by offloading traffic from the host processor to dedicated hardware that is separate from the server CPU. The solution delivers the intrusion prevention and advanced security capabilities of Palo Alto Networks’ virtual NGFWs to every server without sacrificing network performance. It also allows network flows that were previously impossible or impractical to inspect by intelligently screening the relevant parts of the flow and offloading the rest to the DPU. This hardware-accelerated software NGFW is a milestone in boosting software firewall performance and maximizing data center security coverage and efficiency by being first to market to be accelerated by a DPU. The recently announced DPU-enabled Palo Alto Networks VMSeries NGFW uses zero trust network security principles. The DPU operates as an intelligent network filter to parse, classify and steer traffic flows with zero ReCPU overhead, which enables the NGFW to support close to 100Gb/s throughput for typical use cases.

Airtel Business and Cisco Launch next-gen SD-WAN connectivity solutions for enterprises Bharti Airtel and Cisco announced the launch of next-gen connectivity solutions for enterprises based on Cisco’s SD-WAN technology.

The solution will enable businesses, large and small, to accelerate their digital transformation to serve their customers in a connected world. It allows enterprises to design, deploy, configure, migrate, and manage their WAN infrastructure at a fast clip while adapting to the real-time demands of their cloud computing, mobility, and digitization.

The Airtel Intelligent VPN solution offering 14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

comes with Cisco SD-WAN’s full functionality, including intelligent dynamic routing, optimized cloud connectivity, and visibility into applications and performance to its large customer base across India.

Cisco SD-WAN Connect any user to any application with integrated capabilities for Multicloud, Security, Unified Communications, and application optimization- all on SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) enabled architecture. This solution leverages the experience and expertise of Airtel Business and Cisco in building highly secure

next-generation networks that offer cost-effective, on-demand connectivity to customers. Airtel Business serves over one million businesses of all sizes with a wider range of connectivity solutions.

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO – Airtel Business said, “Secure and on-demand connectivity is a key requirement for businesses in today’s digitalfirst environment. We are happy to deepen our long-standing partnership with Cisco to serve this requirement by bringing together the strengths of both the companies.

IFS STUDY FINDS // SECURITY

BUSINESSES ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO DELIVER ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, IFS STUDY FINDS MICHAEL OUISSI, CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, IFS

Businesses are missing out on a significant opportunity to fix internal processes and address the root causes of customer experience issues in the wake of the pandemic, research from enterprise software specialist IFS has today revealed.

The global study, which surveyed 1,700+ executives and 12,000+ consumers, uncovered that despite the majority of companies (66 percent) investing upwards of $250,000 each year

evaluating the customer experience through Net Promoter Scores, reviews, and customer satisfaction surveys, 82 percent were unable to recall a single positive example of a recent frictionless customer experience—showing current customer experience processes do little more than wallpaper over the cracks.

While much attention is paid to customer service, the inflection points that occur throughout the lifecycle of an operation and encompass processes, technology solutions, and human coordination are even more important to business outcomes, yet even more frequently overlooked.

Only by careful orchestration of these components can companies deliver a quality ‘Moment of Service’, in which everything comes together to create a positive result for a customer.

However, while 79 percent of businesses have invested time and resources in identifying where these inflection points are, when problems are identified nearly a third of managers (29 percent)

admitted to reporting them but not taking action.

Furthermore, some 18 percent revealed they were too busy to report issues unless urgent, while just 15 percent said they proactively look to pre-empt problems. This begs the question of how companies can expect customer experience and loyalty to improve without taking necessary action, leaving revenue and market share on the table.

With 90 percent of businesses stating they have reengineered or are reengineering their business to ensure customer touchpoints and stages come together for better moments of service, it is vital that companies ensure processes are optimized across each of these inflection points to mitigate issues and fuel growth.

For enterprises that fail at the moment of service, the financial ramifications are significant.

A quarter of consumer respondents stated they would never engage with a brand again after just one bad experience, while over half (52 percent) would abandon a company after two to three. IFS also sought to examine the impact of negative experiences on wider brand perception and uncovered that 58 percent of consumers are very likely or somewhat likely to share their negative perceptions with their network, highlighting how easily a bad interaction can be amplified.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Over half (52 percent) of consumers are inclined to leave a positive review, underscoring just how much can be gained by keeping an open dialog with customers and focusing on delivering an exceptional brand experience.

“When it comes to delivering a positive customer experience, businesses have a limited opportunity to get it right. And if they neglect a single inflection point, they are gambling with their outcomes, including profits and margins,” IFS Chief Customer Officer Michael Ouissi said.

“There are many points where you can either delight or disappoint a customer across the value chain and it is clear from these findings that consumers are willing to voice their opinions either way. As more and more businesses look to service provision as a key competitive differentiator, running the right enterprise software—engineered for the moment of service and capable of orchestrating a multitude of people, assets and customers—will separate the winners from the losers.

“To achieve this, enterprises must rethink how they architect their operations, and become a ‘composable enterprise’ that harnesses a combination of packaged functions and technologies to deliver outcomes and adapts to the pace of business.”

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

15

SECURITY // HYBRID CLOUD AND REMOTE WORKERS

16 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

HYBRID CLOUD AND REMOTE WORKERS // SECURITY

WITH THE FORTINET SECURITY FABRIC, A K CAPITAL SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATES SECURITY ACROSS ITS NETWORK, BRANCHES, HYBRID CLOUD AND REMOTE WORKERS On Monday, Fortinet announced that A K Capital Services Ltd., one of India’s most trusted bond houses, has deployed the Fortinet Security Fabric cybersecurity platform to improve user application experience, enable secure cloud transformation, simplify business operations, reduce costs, and manage security with limited skilled resources.

A K Capital Services Ltd. offers services in the fixed income market by managing private placements and public issues. It is the flagship company of A K Group, a leading financial conglomerate that operates and develops debt capital. It was founded in 1993. The company is a fund mobilizer for the largest public debt issues, tax-free bonds, and private debt placements, with clients including large Indian banks and the

government. With a variety of financial products, the Group has made an indelible mark in investment banking, attracting new investors and issues.

“Financial services organizations are adding more remote workers and branch offices while simultaneously adopting new cloud applications and infrastructure.They need secure connectivity solutions that can provide fast, compliant, and secure access to cloud-based applications and the core network,” explains Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet.

To consistently secure their application access, the company chose the Fortinet Security Fabric to bring together best-of-breed security and highperformance networking by leveraging Fortinet’s integrated security for users and applications, including their hybrid cloud environment. “The

AMOL JAWHARKAR, GROUP HEAD IT & CISO, AK GROUP.

Fortinet Security Fabric provides them with all the tools they need and enables them to control costs and optimize operational efficiency at the same time,”Rajesh Maurya adds.

At both the Data Center and the Disaster Recovery Site, A K Capital deployed FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls for advanced threat protection, including botnet protection, IPS, real-time AV, and AI-powered cloud sandbox, to achieve high performance while transferring data and help comply with ISO 270001 security compliance standards. The NGFW performs deep SSL inspection without interfering with performance, which not only saves time but also helps meet compliance requirements and provide better security when handling financial data.

“Fortinet’s integrated approach to security has eliminated the need to manage the network and security using two different solutions.The total cost of ownership has been lowered and the day-to-day security operations has been simplified through a single pane of management. With improved visibility, and response automation we are able to have better control over applications and provide users secure connectivity from anywhere to anywhere. Having a high level of security control across our network along with reduced downtime, is a big enablement factor in our Digital Transformation journey and business expansion plans.” declared Amol Jawharkar, Group Head IT & CISO at AK Group.

“With secure SD-WAN we are transferring huge volumes of data much faster between Data Center and Disaster Recovery site. As administrators, we can monitor content and data, identify hosts on which applications are running and identify users. We are also able to identify vulnerabilities and automatically quarantine suspicious hosts. The solution has Automated compliance auditing, which frees up administration resources to work on other critical technology requirements.” added Anil Bhagat, Senior Manager IT at AK Group.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

17

SECURITY // SAFE WHEN ONLINE

HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF

SAFE WHEN ONLINE

As more people globally learn to depend on the internet for everything in life, including running businesses, keeping up with friends, and even finding the information they need, it gets risky. Scammers and cybercriminals try to take advantage of people’s vulnerability.

They hack, bully, and carry out online crimes such as stealing information and accessing bank accounts leading to significant losses. They 18 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

also expose your private life, leading to more cyberbullying. With the risks involved, it gets even more important to know how to protect yourself when online. Here are tips to start you off:

Limit Access to Your Personal Information Exposing your personal information such as relationship status, home addresses, phone numbers, and other intimate details to strangers or potential

customers and employers can put you at risk of cyberbullying, hacking, and identity theft.

To avoid this, have a business phone number that you give out to clients or use online to make your contacts more private. If you run a home business, don’t give out your home address but instead have a virtual office address where you direct customers.

When you receive calls from unknown

SAFE WHEN ONLINE // SECURITY

platforms requiring high-security measures unless you have a VPN connection or are on your personal computer. Also, be careful with what you download and only download apps or programs from verifiable sources.

Use Strong Passwords It’s easier to choose a quick-to-remember password, but it also makes it easier for a cyber-criminal to hack it and access your online accounts. Select hard-to-guess passwords and use a mix of small, capital letters, numbers, and special characters.

Also, don’t use the same password on all platforms because when a hacker gets access to the password, they have easy access to all the other accounts. Also, make sure that you log out of all your accounts, especially when using shared computers or a public Wi-Fi connection.

Use Secure Systems When Online When making online purchases check the security systems on the particular site before giving out your details. Only purchase products from secure websites. The easiest way to learn whether a site is protected is to check whether it has HTTPS or HTTP next to the link.

Stands for secure, and sometimes it’s accompanied by a padlock icon which assures you that the site uses all set security protocols. The same applies when you sell and expect online payments.

Go the extra mile to protect your customers’ details by securing your platforms. You even attract more clients because they trust the security measures on your platform.

numbers, it’s essential to do a proper investigation enabling you to know their name, location, and other crucial caller’s details even before you pick the phone call.

When on social media platforms, keep your information private by checking the privacy details on every site you frequent. Remember to turn on the privacy features at all times. Always choose privacy-enhancing settings on major websites such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, ensuring that hackers don’t easily access your details.

Note that some of these privacy settings are hard to find on some sites, so take your time

looking for them.

Learn What Safe Browsing Practices Are Be aware of the dangers that loom behind your screen. Cyber-criminals use enticing content as bait, tempting you to click on the sites exposing your details or infecting your computer or phone with malware.

Don’t click on any links that pop on your screen and check the address details of every email received to ensure it’s from a verifiable source.

When using public Wi-Fi, limit your usage or use a secure VPN connection.

Don’t access your bank accounts or other

Be Careful with Who You Meet Online Technology has made it easier to meet new people and even create lasting bonds, but there are risks involved. If you meet a new person online, don’t disclose all your personal information, such as your home address, phone number, and everyday details.

Also, don’t let them know where you work or details that can enable one to track you down. If anyone tries to introduce you to an opportunity that involves giving out your identity and bank details, don’t be as good as it sounds.

Also, don’t be quick to meet someone but get to learn more about who they are. When you meet, let it be in a public place and let close friends or relatives know about the date’s details.

It also helps to use internet security software to block malicious activity from your platforms.

Antiviruses keep your information protected and even alerts you of attempted cyber crimes such as hacking or identity thefts.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

19

GUEST ARTICLE // DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

GURPRIT SINGH CO-FOUNDER AND MANAGING PARTNER, UMBRELLA INFOCARE

ADOPTION

OF CLOUD NATIVE

TO ACCELERATE

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

TRANSFORMATION The digital future is already here and it thrives on speed and agility. Organisations across industries are realising the importance of building intelligence into their applications to remain competitive. The constraints associated with legacy or traditional application development, such as huge costs, higher time consumption, lack of flexibility, among others, are more evident due to the fast-changing business environment and requires to be addressed immediately. It is time to move on from the old and traditional approaches for developing software and delivering applications to succeed in the digitally transformed world.

Cloud-native goes mainstream Organisations that deployed ‘lift and shift’ strategy for cloud migration of legacy applications are now choosing to go ‘cloud-native’, by building applications directly on cloud, for gaining optimum performance and value. So far, ‘lift and shift’ has been a good option for quick cloud adoption.

20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

However, enterprises would have growing needs of scalability, greater flexibility and faster time to market, in future. They would have to take full advantage of a Cloud Native approach to fulfil these needs. Cloud native computing is the future of application development where the journey, from conceptualizing stage to production is fast and efficient, creating a significant increase in business value. There is growing evidence of cloud native technologies going mainstream. A recent, independent global survey of 700 CIOs

by Dynatrace, reveals 89% of them say digital transformation has accelerated in the last 12 months. It also said 86% of organisations are using cloud-native technologies, including microservices, containers and Kubernetes to accelerate innovation and achieve more successful business outcomes. These cloud-native applications are built for the cloud, from the beginning and is pivotal to successful digital transformation.

Cloud-native solutions empower developers by

building next-generation microservices-based applications that are run in containers. They leverage DevOps and agile methodology and empower teams to innovate, be agile and provide continuous delivery across different infrastructures and driver better business outcomes. Teams can be structured to leverage automation and scalability offered by cloud-native technologies.

App development, a key feature in digital transformation It is said that the infrastructure activities in the traditional business application development eats away around 20% of the time, from design stage to app release stage. Cloud-native platform accelerates application developments by removing barriers of the infrastructure, thereby saving time and cost.

Digital transformation is everything about enhancing customer experience. Apps enable businesses to connect and engage gainfully with

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION // GUEST ARTICLE

customers by identifying the relevant touchpoints of the latter. Apps are becoming an integral part of the any organisation’s digital transformation strategy.

Apps that are developed traditionally are huge and complex and slow to get updated. Its co-dependent architecture with other hardware and operating system leads to challenges in migrating to cloud and scaling up. On the other hand, cloud-native apps are smaller and presented in an independent, loosely coupled services architecture. Its very nature has provision for faster development and updates. The cloud computing environment will support in speed, scale, flexibility and lowers the risks upon deployment.

Cloud-native apps can quickly adopt changes to suit current or new requirements and hence deliver higher business value. The Microservices architecture supports apps to run each application process as a service, where it performs a single function and is independent of other services.

When any service has to be tested or replaced, this action does not affect the others, leading to making faster updates and addressing of issues in real-time. Furthermore, cloud-native app development brings in the value of agile approach and DevOps in addition to continuous delivery.

Cloud-native’s various facets bring several advantages Apps can accelerate productivity in manufacturing, track and reduce asset costs in construction, enable hassle-free delivery in retail, deliver online consultation in healthcare and the list goes on across different industry verticals and processes.

All these tasks require scale, speed, intelligence, updating abilities and enable continuous delivery, which reiterates the need to go for cloud-native app development.

To enjoy the competitive edge, organisations have to innovate to meet the evolving customers’ needs. New feature deployment, the key feature in the innovation process can be easily delivered across cloud-native platforms. Better agility with microservices brings in more efficiency in the deployment process. Higher flexibility is also provided where re-deployment is done effortlessly ensuring business continuity. Furthermore, cloud-native computing is cost-effective too, as companies do not have to invest in additional servers and hardware, but pay for only the resources used.

With cloud-native computing fast becoming part of digital transformation and business strategies, organisations should also address the growing complexities of this technology and carefully deploy necessary measures across the cloud.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

21

GUEST ARTICLE // PROJECT MANAGEMENT

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Use of Data Analytics in improving Project Management controls As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from Project Management Institute (PMI) and a Data Science enthusiast, I have tried to share my understanding based on my experience in developing and managing Mission critical projects. In this article, you will learn how Data Analytics can be used in improving the Project Management controls in a development project.

Managing projects means making decisions.

This process can be supported by data mining and machine learning techniques, based on selection and analysis of project data in order to make better decisions and resolve some typical project problems.

Data plays a significant role in any organization. Using analytics, managers and executives can watch for early signs of slippages in terms of budgets, costs, and timelines and take corrective action. Analytics also helps managers capture the rate of work, so they can easily predict whether the project will be completed on time. Managers can use a burn-down chart, for instance, which is a graphical representation of work left to do over time.

Moreover, deep and insightful analytics can help you improve resource utilization and better forecast revenue and costs. With analytics, organizations can take a broader view and combine unrelated data streams to offer deep insights into projections and early warning signs in complex projects. This role can be taken by Program Management Office (PMO) in an organization.

How can project managers make use of a data-driven approach to improve project outcomes?

Gartner says, 80% of today’s Project Management tasks will be eliminated by 2030 as Artificial Intelligence takes over. Artificial Intelligence will not be replacing anyone’s jobs just yet, however, AI will help make better decisions leading to improving the chances of delivering projects on time and on budget. Traditional project management functions like planning, data collection, tracking, and reporting will be taken over by machine learning algorithms.

The role of the project manager will gradually evolve into one that is more strategic as opposed to current tactical role. AI shall be a work augmentation tool, not a human replacement and AI cannot manage a project, so Project Manager’s tedious status reports and messy resource scheduling could be greatly improved with AI, Machine learning and Robotics Process Automation (RPA), but it can’t gather requirements or get stakeholder buy-in. However, Organizations will have to adopt the use of AI in projects and hence 22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

BOHITESH MISRA CO-FOUNDER, DECISIONTREE ENDEAVOUR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR BOHITESH MISRA PMP, WITH MORE THAN 25 YEARS OF IT AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE IN DEVELOPING AND MANAGING SOME LARGE MISSION CRITICAL APPLICATIONS IN THE FIELD OF MANUFACTURING, TRANSPORT, SOLAR, FINTECH, EDUTECH. BOHITESH IS THE CO-FOUNDER OF DECISIONTREE ENDEAVOUR (HTTP://NOIDA.DTEPL.COM), AN ALL-IN-ONE LEARNING PLATFORM FOR DATA SCIENCE, PROJECT AND PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT. WINNER OF MULTIPLE CIO AWARDS, HE TAKES PRIDE IN BEING A TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST AND A DATA SCIENCE ENTHUSIAST AT HEART. BOHITESH CAN BE REACHED THROUGH EMAIL AT BOHITESH.MISRA@GMAIL.COM AND CONNECT ON LINKEDIN AT WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/BOHITESH

USE OF DATA

ANALYTICS IN

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

they have to merge the power of humans with that of machines learning for better managing their critical projects.

With applications of artificial intelligence already disrupting industries ranging from finance to healthcare, technical project managers have to grasp this opportunity and learn how AI project management is distinct and how they can best prepare for the changing landscape for use of AI in project management. AI and Machine Learning will help in enabling a fully digital program management office (PMO) in future.

Data Analytics techniques can enable project managers to use various analytical reports and drill-down charts to break down complex project data and predict their behaviour and outcomes in real-time. Project managers can use this predictive information to make better decisions and keep projects on schedule and budget. A data-driven analytics approach enables project teams to analyze the defined data to understand

specific patterns and trends. Executives can use this analysis to determine how projects and resources perform and what strategic decisions they can take to improve the success rate.

A report by global management consulting company McKinsey, discovered that US $66 billion was “lost” across 5000 separate projects.

This was due to them exceeding their lifecycle, poor planning, and the wasteful expenditure on the wrong kind of talent.

Data plays a significant role in any organization. Using analytics, managers and executives can watch for early signs of slippage in terms of budgets, costs, and timelines and take proactive action. Analytics also helps managers capture the rate of work, so they can easily predict whether the project will be completed on time. Managers can use a burn-down chart, for instance, which is a graphical representation of work left to do over time.

Moreover, deep and insightful analytics can

PROJECT MANAGEMENT // GUEST ARTICLE

use analytical techniques to monitor and control the risks as well as to estimate project schedules and costs more accurately with analytics-driven prediction. Project-based data with analytics can enable project managers and executives to measure, observe, and analyze project performance objectively and make decisions and commitments based on facts.

Digitization of Project Management process and application of Analytics will provide strategic value creation on the part of organizations.

help you improve resource utilization and better forecast revenue and costs. With analytics, organizations can take a broader view and combine unrelated data streams to offer deep insights into projections and early warning signs in complex projects.

Data Analytics in Project Management A recent Project Management Institute survey confirms that artificial intelligence (AI) disruption is happening—81% of the 551 survey respondents report their organization is being impacted by AI technologies.

As we say that learnings from the past helps makes our future better. As a Project Manager we should always connect the dots looking backward & forecast the projected path to future using Earned Value Management. This will bring a prospective whether the current projected path & pace will take us to the desired destination. The past performance & remaining quantum of work in project will help us for the course correction.

Project manager always does a balancing act among the various Constraints set at start of a project. To be in control of Project he always requires to have check on project performance matrices. Project Performance Analysis is key for project manager to decide the revised rate of efforts to achieve desired goals.

The complexity of managing projects within the Triple constraints has been increasing day by day. Quick browsing through the changes over

past one decade tells us how fast the “Complexity” of managing projects has been changing. Various factors contributing and will continue for next one decade to name few, as, shortening product development cycles, changing customer expectations, exponentially increasing usage of internet as well as a greater number of millennials in the project teams.

One of the ways to manage this complexity and the need of changing world, is using digitization.

The digitization of Project Development phases will provide all synchronized database available to each stakeholder appropriately and same can be used for Managerial decision making. Building Analytics on this database, Risks affecting Project Performance Parameters – Time, Cost, and Quality can be effectively predicted and controlled. In addition, status will be available for each project to individual project teams whereas Portfolio Dashboard will provide bigger picture for managerial decisions on Strategies & Organizational Priorities. Because of its real-time nature, it can be available across the world at the same time providing a common platform to network and common language to interact with team.

If you do not measure your data, how can you manage or optimize your business?

Project Management is no different. Effective management of projects entails efficient management of the uncertainties and risks on the project. It requires today’s project managers to

Project Analytics: Analytics can be defined as the systematic quantitative analysis of data to obtain meaningful information for better decision making. It involves the collective use of various analytical methodologies such as statistical and operational research methodologies, Lean Six Sigma, and software programming. Though Analysis and Analytics terms sounds similar but they do have some differences.

Project analytics can help project managers handle complex projects and keep them onschedule and on-budget. Using analytics, project managers have the ability to go beyond simply capturing data and completing tasks as they are completed. Now, they can find out a multitude of information, including exactly how projects are performing, and whether or not they are in line with the overall objectives. Analytics provides project managers the ability to make strategic decisions and improve project success rate Quality of Deliverable Managing a new project can be unnerving task.

There are different stakeholders, approvers, teams, budgets, outcomes and high expectations to manage. To manage all of these, analytics have become a major part of modern-day project management.

In decision-making, biases effect the decision making and it means that it is likely that decisionmakers will search, use and interpret only the type of information that supports their existing beliefs and will focus on only one alternative when making decisions, reducing the likelihood that it will be a good decision.

As a project manager, you need to understand how analytics can reduce your workload, improve processes and enhance the outcomes of your project. Quality is an ultimate measure of your project’s success upon delivery. Analytics help you plan, monitor and review the quality throughout your project.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23

SURVEILLENCE // BUSINESS PROTECTED

IS YOUR PROTECTED FROM THREATS THAT SEEK TO

Your business needs to be protected from all those threats that would seek to hurt it. It’s not difficult to protect your business to the best of your abilities, but it is difficult to make sure it is fully protected. Even with all the precautions you take, if someone is really determined to get into your business, they will find a way. But, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put measures in place to avoid this, as you will keep out far more than you will let in. Keep reading down below if you would like to find out more.

24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

Have CCTV Installed The first thing that you need to do is have CCTV installed to your business. The reason for this is that you will be more likely to identify who the person is if they break into your business and then get away without anyone really seeing them.

Just make sure that the business security camera wiring is secure and safe to avoid any kind of accident.

CCTV is going to be your best friend if you managed to get a facial shot of them on camera.

You can inform the police of what they have done, and they are going to want to take a look at the footage.

Don’t Forget Insurance You should also ensure that you don’t forget to purchase insurance for your business. There are some insurance policies that are required by law, so make sure that you have these or your business could be facing legal action if found out.

Other than the mandatory policies though you

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

BUSINESS PROTECTED // SURVEILLENCE

need to make sure that you have whatever you need to protect the company. For example, we recommend that you have business interruption insurance in case anything ever happens. You need to know that you aren’t going to be bleeding money while your business is done for a few minutes or a few hours.

The thing is that you never know how long the interruption is going to last, and that is why the insurance is helpful.

NDA For Employees Finally, you should think about introducing a non-disclosure agreement into your business so that employees can’t share information with other people. That is personal to your business, and if they break this NDA, they could be facing a massive fine. The last thing that you want is for your employees to be telling their friends secrets about your business who work for other companies that you are competing against. Sometimes it’s not possible to know what information is not to share

and what is okay, which is why it’s best not to share any at all and have this written into the NDA. We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that your business needs to do in order to keep it protected.

You don’t want to see your business harmed, so even though these things can be quite expensive, they are worth it in the long-run. We wish you the very best of luck.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25

SECURITY // INFOBLOX 3.0

26 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

INFOBLOX 3.0 // SECURITY

INFOBLOX 3.0 UNITES HYBRID DDI AND SECURITY TO DRIVE CLOUD-FIRST STRATEGIES Infoblox 3.0 focuses on delivering a secure cloudfirst network experience. Infoblox is uniting NIOS, the industry leading on-premises DDI solution, with its cloud-native BloxOne Threat Defense and BloxOne DDI platforms to help customers bridge core networking and security into cloud environments that underpin the needs of the modern enterprise.

Infoblox 3.0 harnesses the industry’s leading DDI and DNS security solutions to enable onpremises, virtual, cloud and hybrid deployments tailored to customers’ network modernisation needs, and further address the challenges that stem from cloud environments.

Cloud compromise continues to be a top cybersecurity issue, underscoring the urgency for security teams to ramp up defenses against DoS and DDoS attacks. Infoblox’s latest research looked into how the COVID-19 shutdowns challenged the financial services industry’s IT infrastructure and how cloud data breaches reportedly cost companies globally an estimated $4.2 million per incident. The results are based on more than 800 responses from IT professionals in the financial services industry in the Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe. n Data breaches are an increasingly significant cost burden for the industry: Worldwide, financial firms that experienced a data breach reported estimated average losses of roughly $4.2 million per attack, with organizations in Asia Pacific hit hardest at $4.5 million in estimated losses. n Network outages also result in costly burdens: Firms in Asia Pacific lost an estimated $3.2 million.

n The industry remains a popular target for cloud-based attacks: Asia Pacific firms were the hardest hit across the board, falling victim to more cloud networking attacks as a whole, with data breaches (69%) and cloud attacks (61%) being the most prevalent. n Cloud and network-based attacks will continue to be a major threat vector: 68% of respondents in Asia Pacific expect to face a combination of IoT attacks, cloud vulnerabilities including misconfigurations, and data manipulation attempts over the next 12 months – a figure higher than the global average of an estimated 50%. n Threat resolution teams are embracing network visibility for security hygiene: In the region, threat hunting (78%), network monitoring (76%), and threat intelligence (66%) are considered the most effective mitigation tactics against these threats.

Infoblox 3.0 addresses the foundational challenges of the modern enterprise by enabling teams to build cloud-first networks and protect them with faster threat detection and remediation. Enabling these deployments help ensure customers can build networks that are: n Simple: Automating and standardising the delivery of cloud-first network experiences with the richest set of cloud-native APIs, integrations and contextual data available on the market. n Reliable: Providing proven five-nines reliability for mission-critical networks, including the largest networks in the world, with the flexibility and cost efficiency of the cloud. n Scalable: Delivering services when and

JESPER ANDERSEN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, INFOBLOX

where customers need them with a seamless, uniform experience. n Secure: Enabling customers to automate anytime, anywhere foundational security for all users and devices with faster threat detection and remediation.

“The pandemic has pushed corporate networks into the cloud at an accelerated pace, and that modernization effort continues as companies turn to cloud applications and services for their hybrid workplace foundations,” says Jesper Andersen, President and CEO of Infoblox.

“Infoblox 3.0 enables organizations to reap the best of the on-premises and cloud worlds as they tailor networking and security for their cloud-first strategies. We’re giving customers the foundations they need — whether in the form of private clouds that stay on-premises, hybrid networks combining data centers with cloud offerings, or fully cloud networks.”

“Infoblox has been the DDI market leader since it pioneered this space back when network servers sat in closets on corporate campuses,” says Rohit Mehra, Vice President, Network Infrastructure, IDC. “Infoblox 3.0 is the culmination of the company’s work building out its BloxOne cloudfirst platforms. Connecting the on-premises DDI capabilities of NIOS to BloxOne DDI and BloxOne Threat Defense enables customers to build the hybrid and cloud-only DDI networks that modern enterprises need for workplace transformation.”

“We’re excited to see Infoblox deepen its push into cloud-first networking and foundational security because customers are eager for hybrid and cloud infrastructure deployments,” says Brian Hepburn, CEO of Empowered Networks.

“We’re seeing organisations double down on these foundations for flexible work as they reopen campuses.

To access the complete article log on to: www.enterpriseitworld.com JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27

DEALS // MICROSOFT AND NEC CORPORATION

TAKAYUKI MORITA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NEC CORPORATION

M

icrosoft and NEC Corporation on Tuesday announced an expansion of their decades-long collaboration. Through a new multi-year strategic partnership, the companies will leverage Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, NEC’s network and IT expertise, including 5G technologies, and each other’s AI and IoT solutions to help enterprise customers and the public sector across multiple markets and industries further accelerate their cloud adoption and digital transformation initiatives.

The partnership will see NEC adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform to deliver enhanced capabilities to drive sustained digitalization, help customers transform their business models, and build Digital Workplaces for the post-pandemic “new normal.”

To accelerate NEC’s Digital Workplace innovation and workforce transformation, the companies will work together to migrate NEC’s on-premises IT environment to Azure and deploy Azure Virtual Desktop and other Azure services among the NEC Group’s 110,000 employees worldwide. This modernization builds on NEC’s existing Microsoft 365 platform and will enable a highly sustainable environment that is more secure and robust, accelerating cloud migration for NEC and its customers throughout the commercial and public sector in Japan and around the world.

The companies will work together to help improve digital services for public sector and enterprise customers through workplace and 28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

workforce transformation. Greater speed and lower-latency data connections will provide highperformance network experiences to create more efficient workplaces and empower employees to realize more personalized work styles for public sector as well as private sector customers.

Leveraging the assets of both companies, including Microsoft’s Intelligent Edge solutions and NEC’s private 5G networking technologies, the companies will work together to help customers across industries transform. In retail, for example, the two companies will work together to analyze customer transaction data in real time using AI to better understand buying patterns,

improve operational efficiency and identify new market opportunities.

The combination of Azure and both companies’ AI and IoT technologies and expertise will enhance NEC’s customer experience through advanced solutions and enable more secure maintenance and operation of stores. In addition, NEC and Microsoft plan to explore network innovation initiatives built on Microsoft Azure for enterprise domains and specific industries.

Through the partnership, the companies will work together to double the number of digitalfocused engineers within the NEC Group who are specialized in Microsoft technologies. This invest-

MICROSOFT AND NEC CORPORATION // DEALS

SATYA NADELLA,

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, MICROSOFT

MICROSOFT AND NEC EXPAND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP TO BOOST BUSINESS RESILIENCY AND GROWTH

ment in technical capabilities and the expertise of NEC’s employees will help ensure customers’ digital transformation success, benefiting the market and society.

“As we’ve seen over the past year, digital adoption curves are accelerating across every industry and business function,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “Our strategic partnership with NEC brings together the power of Azure and Microsoft 365 with NEC’s services and infrastructure expertise to help public and private sector customers build resilience and transform during this era of rapid change.”

“NEC is pleased to enter into this strategic collaboration with Microsoft Corp.,” said Takayuki Morita, president and CEO of NEC Corporation.

“With Microsoft’s trusted cloud and services, the experience that NEC has cultivated in its own systems, and both companies’ AI and IoT technologies, we will enable companies globally to use digital services that are safer and more secure than ever before as they progress with digital initiatives.”

“The need for sustainable transformation to ensure business resiliency and growth has never been more important in the world and especially Japan,” said Hitoshi Yoshida, president & CEO, Microsoft Japan. “Our partnership will help accelerate the industry’s cloud-based digital transformation and utilization of data migration and help Japan’s continued success globally, leading to greater economic and societal prosperity.”

This announcement is based on a history of strong collaboration between Microsoft and NEC spanning more than 40 years.

JULY 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29

CASE STUDY // MATRIX

SWISS ARABIAN PERFUMES GROUP OPTS MATRIX SOLUTIONS FOR CENTRALIZED ATTENDANCE MANAGEMENT Introduction Swiss Arabian is the pioneer of Arabian perfumes that spans over 40 years. Over the years, the Swiss Arabian Perfumes Group has grown from strength to strength. Today, it stands tall as the first perfume manufacturer in the UAE. They operate five modern manufacturing facilities spread across an area of 165,000 sq. ft., producing more than 35 million perfumes annually and export the same to over 80 countries.

Challenges Swiss Arabian has a prominent presence across several cities in the UAE. Considering this, centralized data management of the employee attendance details, from all the units was critical.

Besides, overtime calculation and managing rollover shifts were tedious tasks as well. Furthermore, verifying the attendance data with detailed reports, bifurcated by locations was a part of their key requirements.

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

Solutions Matrix addressed these challenges by proposing a Door Controller at each location, connected via a centralized platform, COSEC CENTRA, to manage all the data, from one place. This TimeAttendance solution assists them in procuring accurate attendance details of an employee in no time!

Through the web-based employee portal, the solution offers efficient leave and shift management. Furthermore, it helped the HR team to generate customized reports in the most efficient manner.

Results n Centralized and Effortless Attendance Management of Multiple Locations n Streamlined Shift Allocation and Automated Shift Correction n Customized Attendance Policy Formation n Real-time Alert on Attendance Event n Auto-scheduled Reporting n Efficient Employee Database Management n Improved Productivity Products Offered n COSEC VEGA FAX Fingerprint and Card based Door Controller with Wi-Fi and Internet Connectivity Options

30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD JULY 2021

n COSEC DOOR FOT Optical Fingerprint and RFID Card based Door Controller for Time-Attendance n COSEC PATH DCFM Optical Fingerprint and RFID Card based Door Controller for Time-Attendance & Access Control n COSEC CENTRA PLT Application Software Platform n COSEC CENTRA ESS Employee Self Service Portal for Attendance Management

n COSEC CENTRA TAM Time-Attendance and Leave Management Module for COSEC Software Platform n COSEC CENTRA ACM Access Control Application Software for Enterprises.

For further information, please contact: Toll Free – 1800-258-7747 E-Mail: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com

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