March Issue

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FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs. MARCH 2021

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE

AND CHALLENGES P-15

EDITOR’S LETTER

THREE THINGS TO BE DONE NOW OR NEVER

Hello Friends.

The new strain of Covid is already there. There has been curfews and lockdown in various cities and states. Do you think, we are at ease now? Not at all. Things are taking a different shape now. Many of the businesses which were suffering from the lockdown tried to open their businesses – specially the manufacturing facilities and automotive sector would be down and out now. Similarly, tours and travels, airlines and many of the businesses are still under the effect of slow down. With the lockdown coming in again the situation is going to be bad for them.

So the learning is that organization need to invest in digital transformation, Cloud computing, Automation and cyber security.

Of course organizations have already started their investment in Digital Transformation journey but management of many of the organizations have delayed their process as they were thinking that the pandemic would go away and they can manage on premise. Now the situation is reversing and they have to think seriously and start slowly in adopting

NEXT MONTH SPECIAL

digital solutions.

Second priority to do is migrating applications to cloud. Many of the organizations are still comparing on premise vs cloud. Imagine if the situation becomes worse which anyways is going to be; even the Delhi government has agreed to implement night time curfew, which may soon turn to alternative days’ curfew and there might be possibility of full day curfew. So start migrating applications to cloud. You can start from mail messaging to Cyber security other applications which are not critical and in the end Business continuity solutions.

Third priority should be cyber security. Today, the employees are working in hybrid environment and social distancing still there as a norm. They are beyond the boundaries of Network and security of the corporate perimeter. So the threat from external and internal can be multiplied. Along with increase of spam and hacking, data leak is very critical and happening also. Therefore, IT and security leaders need to add extra security solutions in their premise. So that any traffic coming to their corporate environment – specially hitting their core data centre should be filtered out. For example, on top of existing UTM and Firewall there should be next generation firewall, access should be with Zero Trust and DMARC should be implemented. One should also take care that SAM is implemented if there is any old software in the system without being monitored or managed.

Last but not the least is the automation piece. Two types of automation we need not. Apart from physical automation there should be RPA kind of things in order to avoid errors and involvement of staff in ERP and CRM.

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

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

QUOTES FROM TOP CIOS

The next issue is an Anniversary issue of Enterprise IT World. 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 MARCH 2021

CONTENTS

FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Chief Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra

V O L U M E 0 5 | I S S U E 1 2 | MARCH 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 Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New

SECURITY

Delhi-110016,

16 MAKING SD-WAN TO DELIVER ON ITS PROMISE SECURITY: /18 Network Security Best Prac tices to Block Ranso mware

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

20

22

SECURITY

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

“Aruba Accelerates Digital Transformation From Edge-to-Cloud on Microsoft Azure”

NITIN SETH

MICHAEL TENNEFOSS

Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@

“Maximizing Returns from Digital Technology Investments”

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30

BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

TECH PREDICTION

“Tata Tele Business Services highlights the emerging role of new tech-infrastructure from ‘Reviving to Reinventing’ the businesses post pandemic”

RANGA POTHULA

“Infor’s Top Techn ology Predi ctions for 2021”

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

5

ITWORLD

ROUND UP

Druva Cloud Platform Surpasses 2.5 Billion Annual Backups B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

Druva Inc., the leader in Cloud Data Protection and Management, announced it has surpassed 7 million daily backups as it continues to set the standard as the industry’s largest cloud data protection platform operating at scale. Daily backup activity surged by more than 40 percent over the last 12 months as Druva has expanded its footprint across 16 global Amazon Web Services (AWS) Regions and has helped thousands of organizations embrace cloud data protection to navigate unprecedented challenges. With more than 2.5 billion backups completed annually, 169PB of data under management, industry-first innovations, and a platform purpose-built for the cloud era, Druva has also once again been named Data Management Company of the Year by Data Breakthrough, an 6

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

independent market intelligence organization.

“With all the complexities of the modern IT landscape, organizations deserve a simple, secure and automated solution for backing up their data, no matter where it lives,” said Thomas Been, Chief Marketing Officer, Druva. “Business resilience has become dependent on data resilience, and whether you’re facing a cyber attack, data privacy regulations, or seeking insights to drive your business forward, data protection has become entwined with everyday operations. As the world moves to the cloud, Druva is uniquely positioned to help customers in this moment.”

Druva Cloud Platform is designed to simplify data management and transform backup data into an asset.

D ATA BRIEFING

External Storage Market Witnessed 21.8% YoY Decline in CY 2020.

Source: IDC India Reports

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Versa Networks Publishes ‘SASE For Dummies’ Book

Readers Will Learn about SASE Business and Technical Background, Best Practices, RealWorld Customer Deployments, and Benefits of a SASE-Enabled Organization Versa Networks has published the book SASE For Dummies. Readers will learn about the business and technical background of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), including best practices, real-world customer deployments, and the benefits that come with a SASEenabled organization. A complimentary copy of the book SASE For Dummies is available beginning today at https://versa-networks. com/resources/ebooks/sase-for-dummies/.

SASE brings pervasive, cloud-native, and trustworthy networking and security to the modern enterprise. Its capabilities extend far beyond traditional networking and security architectures by incorporating capabilities such as identity, trust, and context regardless of the connection, user, device, or application. SASE

CIO

8

also enables policies to be delivered pervasively, consistently, and ubiquitously, so organizations can meet security, networking, application, user, and business requirements.

SASE For Dummies was written by Versa Co-founders Kumar Mehta and Apurva Mehta who have more than 75 years of combined experience in the security and networking industry. “SASE is the fastest growing category in networking and security and Versa is the clear leader and fastest growing SASE vendor,” said Michael Wood, Chief Marketing Officer for Versa Networks. “Versa Co-founders Kumar and Apurva are pioneers in networking and security and have been architecting and designing the requirements, services, and capabilities of SASE long before the industry term was coined. This is an opportunity for readers to learn from their extensive industry experience, expertise, and best practices in the new book SASE For Dummies.”

ADLINK Launches Compact SMARC AI-on-Module

A future-proof, open standard formfactor of rugged industrial grade design with up to 15 years longevity and software portability through NXP® Semiconductors eIQ™ AI SDK ADLINK Technology has launched the LECIMX8MP SMARC module, the first SMARC rev. 2.1 AI-on-Module (AIoM) that uses NXP’s next-generation i.MX 8M Plus SoC for edge AI applications. The LEC-IMX8MP integrates NXP NPU, VPU, ISP and GPU computing in a compact size for future-proof AI-based applications across industrial AIoT/ IoT, smart homes, smart cities and beyond.

“The i.MX 8M Plus AI-on-module in the SMARC form factor from ADLINK is great for industrial edge applications,” says Robert Thompson, Director of MPU Ecosystem, NXP. “We are trying to provide competitive solutions, such as this embedded module with AI capabilities, and the long-standing partnership and collaboration with ADLINK will enable us to continue driving more future market innovations.”

“As long-standing partners in an industry where our customers rely on us for top-of-theline solutions, SMARC AI-on-Modules (AIOM) are the future of AI, with ADLINK at the forefront of this technology so critical to industrial edge applications,” says Henri Parmentier, Senior Product Manager, ADLINK.

EVENTS

01 APR 2021

6 APR 2021

9 ARP 2021

3:00 PM 5 Azure Backup Tips

8:30 PM The 9 Essential Activities For Successful Innovation

7:30 PM Create a Culture of Smart Spending in IT

VEEAM

GARTNER

GARTNER

ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

STT Global Data Centres India Unveils an Experience Centre for Data Centre Skill Development in Bengaluru

S/HE SAID IT

AMIT CHADHA

DEPUTY CEO & MEMBER OF THE BOARD, L&T TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

“LTTS’ partnership with AspenTech will provide holistic, end-to-end solutions in delivering asset performance and enhancing operational efficiency.”

STT Global Data Centres India (STT GDC India), as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, today unveiled an Experience Centre at its STT Bengaluru DC 3 facility in collaboration with Schneider Electric India Foundation (SEIF). The Experience Centre located in STT GDC India’s Centre of Excellence was inaugurated by Smt. K. Ratna Prabha, IAS (Retired.) Former Chief Secretary, Chairperson of Karnataka Skill Development Authority, Government of Karnataka. This initiative aims to address the existingskill gap in the industry and provide students with practical training on data centre-related projects in a live simulation data centre environment. This unique corporate citizenship initiative by STT GDC India aims to help students build essential skills for a career in the data centre industry and

QUICK BYTE ON

support their overall development through life skills coaching as well.

Smt. K. Ratna Prabha, IAS (Retired.)

Former Chief Secretary, Chairperson of Karnataka Skill Development Authority, Government of Karnataka, sharedher views and vision for the project, “A great push for the data centre industry has poised it to become the fastest growing segment in India, given the rapid rise in data generation and the country’s evolving digital ecosystem.

The Experience Centre will ensure that the segment keeps growing and shall address the lack of skilled workforce in this space across India. The vision we hold for the state and eventually for the entire country is to better enable our youth by helping them harness relevant skillsets and raise their employability prospects.”

“The process manufacturing industry is undergoing a significant change as more companies take advantage of advanced technologies like AI, machine learning and the cloud to better operate their critical assets. Our partnership with LTTS is about giving our joint customers the capabilities they need to optimize their operations.”

A N TO N I O P I E T R I , P R E S I D E N T & C E O , A S P E N T E C H N O LO G Y

SECURITY

Mandiant Introduces New Services to Counter Dynamic Threats “FireEye unveiled two new insider threat security services from Mandiant. The new services help organizations establish or scale up insider threat programs and are designed to provide ongoing protection against rapidly evolving and dynamic malicious activities within organizations. Insider threat events impact organizational reputation, customer trust and investor confidence. In 2019 and 2020, Mandiant responded to numerous customers who experienced corporate and economic espionage, data and backup destruction, and intentional data theft and leakage.

The rise in incidents is an increasing challenge for organizations of all sizes and missions as insiders are, by definition, those organizations trust most.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Pure Storage Brings Block Storage to Microsoft Azure

Oracle Announces Java 16 Oracle announced the availability of Java 16 (Oracle JDK 16), including 17 new enhancements to the platform that will further improve developer productivity. The latest Java Development Kit (JDK) finalized Pattern Matching for instanceof (JEP 394) and Records (JEP 395), language enhancements that were first previewed in Java 14. Additionally, developers can use the new Packaging Tool (JEP 392) to ship self-contained Java applications, as well as explore three incubating features, the Vector API (JEP 338), the Foreign Linker API (JEP 389), and the Foreign-Memory Access API (JEP 389), and one preview feature, Sealed Classes (JEP 397).

EXECUTIVE

Oracle delivers Java updates every six months to provide developers with a predictable release schedule. This offers a steady stream of innovations while also delivering continued performance, stability and security improvements, increasing Java’s pervasiveness across organizations and industries of all sizes.

“The power of the six-month release cadence was on full display with the latest release,” Georges Saab, vice president of development, Java Platform Group, Oracle. “Pattern Matching and Records were introduced a year ago as part of JDK 14 and have since gone through multiple rounds of community feedback.”

Pure Storage announced the general availability of Pure Cloud Block Store on Microsoft Azure Marketplace. With a common dataplane across multicloud environments, customers can move to the cloud on their terms, allowing for seamless application portability to the cloud or the ability to complement on-premises workloads with Dev/Test, Disaster Recovery and High Availability solutions in the cloud.

While enterprises increasingly desire cloud attributes including simplicity of management, pay-as-you-go consumption, and non-disruptive upgrades, they know the best way to achieve their goals is to implement a hybrid approach to IT. According to predictions from IDC, by the end of this year, more than 90% of enterprises worldwide will meet their infrastructure needs with a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, several public clouds, and legacy platforms.

“From global enterprises to ground-breaking startups, Pure Storage is trusted by thousands of customers worldwide. Storage consumption has grown at an exponential rate and the ability to meet customer demand is critical now. With our Cloud Block Store on Azure, Pure will continue to support partners, enterprises, and organizations with their block storage needs, offering modern cloud storage infrastructure and Pure’s industry-leading data compression, thin provisioning, and deduplication. Pure is committed to deliver seamless data mobility, resilience, and a consistent experience wherever their data lives,” Ramanujam Komanduri, Country Manager, Pure Storage India.

MOVEMENT

Teradata Appoints Ashok Shenoy as Country Managers

JK Technosoft appoints M. Natarajan as Senior Vice President- Head of Finance & Accounts

10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

Arun Parameswaran joins Salesforce as Managing Director India

Sanket Atal Joins Salesforce as Managing Director for India

Saurabh Saxena appointed as Intuit’s India site leader

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

BOOK

SHELF

The One Minute Manager

GLOBAL UPDATE

BY

KENNETH BLANCHARD (AUTHOR)

Sophos Named Common Vulnerability and Exposure Numbering Authority Sophos has been named a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Numbering Authority (CNA) in the CVE program, a recognized international standard for identifying and naming cybersecurity vulnerabilities. With this status, Sophos is authorized to assign CVE identification to unique vulnerabilities within the scope of its products. Security researchers can now work directly with Sophos to open CVEs for the company’s products, making the process of reporting issues and assigning CVEs more straightforward.

The CVE program is an international, community-based effort that maintains a community-driven, open data registry of vulnerabilities. The program catalogs CVEs in a publicly available registry that is available to security researchers, vulnerability disclosers and information technology vendors. Using a common identifier makes it easier to share and cross-check data across the industry’s several and separate security databases and tools that track vulnerabilities.

“Sophos’ new status as a CNA is another example of our commitment to be transparent, and by having the ability to assign

CVEs, we can provide the industry with pertinent information about our products faster. This allows organizations to more quickly assess security issues, determine the scale of urgency and prioritize updates,” said Ross McKerchar, vice president and chief information security officer at Sophos. “Sophos’ CVEs will also get entered into the multiple CVE-compatible databases within the industry. By working collectively on these databases with other vendors and industry standards watchguards, we can together improve defenses against persistent attackers.”

“The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Team welcomes Sophos as our newest CVE Numbering Authority. Sophos has a strong reputation of contributing to the global digital security community, producing antivirus, encryption and cybersecurity capabilities for over 30 years.

Their experience brings real value to the CVE Program. We are very pleased to have Sophos as a contributing member of the CVE Team,” said Kent Landfield, CVE board member.

PRICE

RS. 499.00 (HARDCOVER) About The Book Ken Blanchard is the founder and Chairman of The Ken Blanchard Companies. His One Minute Manager series has sold over thirteen million copies and been translated into more than 25 languages.

Key Feature: Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online – a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

Web Werks to Unveil 2nd Data Center in Mumbai Web Werks announced the acquisition of a land parcel to build a standalone purpose-built Greenfield data center in Navi Mumbai with an estimated investment of INR 400 crore. This new standalone 1,00,000 sq.ft. structure will be a well-equipped, next-generation and an Uptime Tier 3 designed data center with 12.5MW of power and rich interconnectivity. The facility will benefit from Web Werks being SAP Certified and incorporate Global Go-Green concepts. The data center is

expected to be ready for service by the mid of 2022.

Web Werks recently announced that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM), who will invest US$150mn primary equity into Web Werks over the next two years. TThe announcement of the 2nd data center in Mumbai is Web Werks latest initiative to build capacity to cater to one of the fastest-growing data center market globally.

Nikhil Rathi, CEO, Web Werks data centers said, “We are pleased to announce the 2nd data center facility in Navi Mumbai. Our existing data center in Mumbai runs at 80% occupancy, and we see increased demand from OTTs, Enterprises for our services. Even our existing customers’ demands are growing, and with this new data center we will be able to support that as well as hyper-scale demand who need a connectivity rich ecosystem”.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Aruba Accelerates Digital Transformation From Edge-to-Cloud on Microsoft Azure Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, in collaboration with Microsoft, announced two new solutions that enable organizations to accelerate their digital transformation from edge-to-cloud by delivering deeper integration between Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and Microsoft Azure. Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021, the first solution is Aruba IoT Transport for Azure, a service that enables IoT devices connected to Aruba access points (APs) and controllers to bi-directionally communicate with the Azure IoT Hub. In addition, Aruba announced the introduction of the Aruba Central cloud management platform hosted on Azure, bringing Aruba’s enterprise-grade cloud networking solution, with more than 1 million devices already under management, to Azure.

IoT devices are the eyes and ears of any smart facility. When powered by a secure, cloud-native infrastructure, the value of the data they collect increases exponentially, especially when the infrastructure has the ability to provide data that interacts seamlessly with business and facility applications.

Huawei Thailand Receives Prestigious Prime Minister Award as Digital International Corporation of the Year Huawei Technologies Thailand has been chosen for the Special Prime Minister Award and recognized as “Digital International Corporation of the Year”. The award acknowledges Huawei Thailand for its valuable support and outstanding contributions to Thai society since its establishment in the country 21 years ago, as well as its efforts to support digital transformation. Huawei is the only international company to receive this award.

Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Technologies (Thailand) Co., Ltd., accepted the award from HE General Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister of Thailand in the presence of Mr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President/CEO of Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), during the award ceremony held at Government House.

“The PM’s Digital Awards recognize organizations whose products and solutions help drive digital technology and innovation development. The criteria for the PM’s Special Award include excellence in development of digital technology that supports enterprises, services and the society; application of digital technology that fosters a better and more secure economy, society, and culture for Thais; investment that creates jobs in Thailand; and social and environmental developments that support local and international economies. Huawei received the highest scores from our distinguished committee,” said Mr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President of Digital Economy Promotion Agency.

NEC India rolls out digital-first campaign ‘NEC Makes It Happen NEC Corporation India has launched its digital-first campaign titled ‘NEC Makes It Happen’. The first campaign following NEC India’s rebranding announcement, underpins NEC as a market leader adding value in people’s everyday lives.

The overall campaign premise underlines NEC’s promise to ‘Orchestrate a brighter world’ by leveraging technology to build a safer and secure society. The campaign seeks to strike an emotional chord with its audience through social and digital channels while showcasing the world-leading 12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

technological innovations that empower a billion Indians.

Here’s a look at some of the life-changing innovations implemented by NEC in India: AADHAAR, a nationwide digital identity system, enabling 1.3 billion Indians to access a wide range of valuable services Submarine cable project, powering highspeed internet in the Andamans, opening a world of possibilities for the islanders Biometric airport solutions enable faces to become boarding passes under the new normal.

DIGEST SPLUNK NAMED CLOUD OBSERVABILITY LEADER AND ONLY OUTPERFORMER Splunk has been named a Leader and the only Outperformer in the GigaOm Radar for Cloud Observability, 2021*. In its first year, the new report from leading industry research firm GigaOm evaluated observability vendors and products, ranking Splunk’s observability solutions as a top leader.

According to GigaOm, Splunk earned its ranking on the list for its “massive scalability, sophisticated in-stream analytics and native OpenTelemetry support.” GigaOm also noted Splunk’s ability to ingest full-fidelity data from logs, metrics and traces across the full stack environment as a key strength and differentiator.

ACCENTURE COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF IMAGINEA Accenture has completed its acquisition of Imaginea, a cloud native product and platform engineering firm that helps companies drive innovation through disruptive technologies to transform their businesses digitally and capture new opportunities. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and offices in London and throughout India, Imaginea excels in using its world-class product and platform engineering skills and leads with a design-thinking approach steeped in innovation. The company currently advises more than 200 global clients to deliver cloud-first transformations. The acquisition adds approximately 1,350 cloud professionals to Accenture, bringing a highly skilled, cloud native, full stack engineering team.

CHINA CHOPPER OBSERVED IN RECENT MS EXCHANGE SERVER ATTACKS On Monday, March 2, 2021, Microsoft publicly announced that the HAFNIUM APT group (a state-sponsored attack group operating out of China) is actively exploiting on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server in limited and targeted attacks by utilizing 0-day vulnerabilities that expose Microsoft’s customers to remote code execution attacks, without requiring authentication.

Initial analysis indicates that the impact is relevant to Exchange 2013, 2016, and 2019. It is important to note that an Exchange 2010 security update has also been issued, though the CVEs do not reference that version as being vulnerable.

From our investigation of customer environment activities and alerts, Cynet identified indicators that suggest other players are actively exploiting the CVEs in addition to the HAFNIUM group.

NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD

MANAGEMENT

MANTRA

Change is much easier when you are driving it, as opposed to when it is happening to you.

Dell Hybrid Client Delivers To Boost Productivit

Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Bank of Baroda Board

With 574% Growth InstaSafe becomes India’s fastest-growing startup

Bengaluru based cybersecurity solutions provider InstaSafe Technologies becomes India’s fastest growing cybertech startup, according to Deloitte India’s Tech Fast 50 India 2020 Awards.

The “Technology Fast 50” India 2020 programme ranks the fastest growing technology companies in India based on their percentage revenue growth over the past three financial years. Instasafe Technologies was ranked amongst the top 10 startups as it clocked a year-on-year revenue growth of 574%.

Commenting on the development, Sandip Kumar Panda, CEO of InstaSafe Technologies said, “With cybersecurity moving from the confines of security team discussions to conversations amongst

CXOs in the boardroom, it is apparent that businesses are realising the indispensable nature of a robust cybersecurity posture.

At the same time, give the incredible speed at which threat actors are evolving and innovating, a simplified, cloud ready security solution is the need of the hour.

This is what InstaSafe has been trying to achieve – securing businesses and simplifying the challenge of access from anywhere with a hyperflexible, scale as your go to solution. Our incredible growth story is testament to the fact that security, as a concept and a precaution, has started being taken seriously by CISOs. We hope to be able to continue to make the internet more safe and connected through a process of continuous innovation and improvement”.

An Underdog in the worldwide Cybersecurity market, InstaSafe has been quietly pioneering Zero Trust Security and Crowdsourced Security Solutions in India.

Today, InstaSafe serves customers across 20+ Countries and organisations across verticals from Governments, enterprises and MSMEs to leading startups. InstaSafe has helped corporates across diverse domains in their quest to stay productive during the COVID crisis and also secured companies from cyberattacks.

Dell Hybrid Client to boost productivity of the organization by meeting the changing needs of businesses, end users and IT. Dell Hybrid Client is a centrally managed client software solution that is ready to deploy with select Dell mobile and desktop devices, helping employees get to work quickly with a consistent experience. As the world’s first client computing software with hybrid cloud management, enabling easy access to applications and data regardless of where they live – in the public cloud, private cloud or on the user’s device.

“At the core of Dell Hybrid Client sits an elevated experience for both employees and IT teams,” said Brooke Huling, vice president, Modern Computing Solutions Group, Dell Technologies.

“For employees, Dell Hybrid Client delivers the same, personalized experience regardless of the device you chose to work on. Everything you need is at your fingertips. For IT, we’ve opened access to multiple clouds enabling experiences to be scaled and customized for workforces at rapid pace.”

IBM Collaborated with Joyalukkas in 11 countries to reimagine Digital Customer Experience IBM announced that Joyalukkas, India’s leading jewellery retailer, is collaborating with IBM Global Business Services (GBS) to design, develop and deploy a new cloud native e-commerce platform across 11 countries including India, UAE, USA, UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman.

Joyalukkas Jewellery, part of the Joyalukkas Group – a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate – is one of the fastest growing jewellery chains globally, with 160 showrooms across 11 countries.

To navigate the constantly evolving nature of the jewellery business, from handling daily price

fluctuations of precious metals and gemstones, to drawing insights from shopping patterns, the company was looking for a technology-driven solution that would enhance efficiencies, drive growth and boost resilience and adaptability.

To help fulfil this objective, IBM has developed a highly flexible and secure cloud enabled e-commerce platform for Joyalukkas, built on Adobe’s Magento Commerce. The company has also engaged with IBM iX, the business design arm of IBM GBS, to develop a clear roadmap for their digital journey. By leveraging a design thinking methodology, Joyalukkas was able to define

the core objective of its new digital strategy as well as identify and narrow down its target audience which includes millennials and gold investors.

These insights are enabling the company to tailor a uniquely personalized country-specific experience for each of their customers on the new platform. The platform has further been developed as Progressive Web Apps, which deliver a mobile native experience for customers, providing them further familiarity and ease of use as they browse on their mobile devices.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Linksys and Fortinet Announce Strategic Alliance

Icertis Solidifies CLM Market Leadership with $80 Million Series F Round Icertis announced the closing of an $80 million Series F round at a valuation of over $2.8B. Icertis has now raised over $280 million, and the current financing nearly triples the valuation of its Series E round in July 2019. The latest round was led by existing investor B Capital Group, with participation from Greycroft, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, PSP Growth, and e.ventures.

The company will use this funding to invest in accelerating AI and Blockchain development, expanding its sales and marketing footprint, and building out its global partner network.

In addition, Icertis added two distinguished business executives to its Board of Directors. The new independent Directors, Penny Pritzker, founder and Chairman of PSP Partners, and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration; and Karyn Smith, general

counsel at Twilio Inc., will bring integral perspectives and expertise as the company’s business continues to grow rapidly.

“As a lawyer and corporate leader, I’ve had the opportunity to help guide many companies through rapid growth and global expansion, while managing risk and compliance. I know first-hand how digitally transforming contracting can benefit companies,” said Karyn Smith. “General counsels and C-suite leaders in every industry will increasingly look to their CLM system to strengthen key relationships, respond to new opportunities, and have the visibility into suppliers and agreements today’s marketplace demands. I’m excited to work with Samir and the rest of the Board, and I look forward to leveraging my experience to help the Icertis team continue their mission to be the contract intelligence platform of the world.”

Linksys and Fortinet announced a strategic alliance with the intent to further secure and optimize the performance and management of home networks in today’s work from home environment.

Together, Fortinet, Linksys, and FIT will offer enterprise-grade connectivity and security and unparalleled quality of service to organizations that need to provide seamless and secure connectivity for their employees to efficiently work from home.

As part of the alliance, Fortinet has made a strategic investment of $75M in Linksys, which provides leading and next-generation router connectivity solutions to consumers and businesses worldwide. In addition, Fortinet will appoint a representative to the Linksys Board of Directors.

“When organizations implement telework at scale, cyber criminals leap at the opportunity to exploit the numerous security gaps that arise. Security-driven networking—a strategy that converges networking and security across the connected environment, from the core, into the cloud, and to the branch and remote workers —enables organizations to see and defend today’s highly dynamic environments while preserving an excellent user experience. We are excited to partner with Linksys to deliver enterprise-grade secure, reliable network connectivity for home-based workers,” said, Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and CEO at Fortinet.

“We are pleased to welcome Fortinet as a strategic partner in providing secured connectivity for consumers and remote professionals. The collaboration is a testament to the ongoing strength and reach of the Linksys business. We look forward to leveraging Fortinet’s proven cybersecurity expertise to capitalize on new opportunities,” said, Sidney Lu, Chairman and CEO of FIT Hon Teng.

Radware Awarded “Leader in DDoS Protection” by Forrester

Radware was named a Leader by Forrester Research for DDoS protection. In The Forrester 14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

Wave: Radware was ranked in the Forrester report with the highest score in the current offering category.

DDoS protection is now more important than ever, as the size and sophistication of attacks continues to rise. Just in the past 12 months we saw the largest ever DDoS attack by size (bit per second), the largest ever DDoS attack by rate (packets per second), as well as targeted global campaigns against financial institutions, gaming providers, healthcare providers, and more.

In addition, the Forrester report gave Radware the highest score possible in 18 different criteria,

including: • DDoS detection and attack mitigation , • Threat detection • Response automation • Service delivery • Protection for public cloud assets • On-premise protection • Regulatory compliance • Service level agreements (SLA) “We believe Radware’s recognition in this report demonstrates Radware’s commitment to excellence across multiple domains”, shared Forrester spokesperson.

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE // SECURITY

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE VULNERABILITIES AND CHALLENGES

MARK LOMAN, DIRECTOR, ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY OFFICE, SOPHOS.

“Defenders should take urgent steps to install Microsoft’s patches to prevent

exploitation of their Exchange Server. In addition, the Exchange server should be scanned for web shells that allow attackers run commands on the server. If this is not possible, the server should be disconnected from the internet or closely monitored by a threat response team.”

SATNAM NARANG, STAFF RESEARCH ENGINEER, TENABLE

“We expect other threat actors to begin leveraging these vulnerabilities

Following the reporting of the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities and the out-of-band release of security patches on March 2, a growing number of new adversaries are exploiting these bugs to launch attacks. Last week Sophos reported on attacks by DearCry ransomware.

Sophos has now published “Black Kingdom Ransomware Begins Appearing on Exchange Servers,” detailing Black Kingdom ransomware that has been targeting Exchange servers that remain unpatched against the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities.

Some of the key findings are summarized in the following commentary from Mark Loman, a ransomware expert at Sophos and director, engineering technology office.

If you are writing a story about Black Kingdom (or “Black KingDom RansmWere” according to the ransom note), ProxyLogon, or other ransomware attacks, please feel free to use Mark’s comments. We can also arrange an interview with

Loman and other threat experts, as needed.

“It’s been three weeks since the release of security patches for the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities, and adversaries are racing against time to target still unpatched Exchange servers. As we saw with DearCry ransomware, this can lead to the release of prototype, rushed or poor quality code created by less experienced developers. Today we report on another example of this, perpetrated by the operators behind Black Kingdom ransomware.

“The Black Kingdom ransomware targeting unpatched Exchange servers has all the hallmarks of being created by a motivated script-kiddie. The encryption tools and techniques are imperfect but the ransom of $10,000 in bitcoin is low enough to be successful. Every threat should be taken seriously, even seemingly low-quality ones.

“Four zero-day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server have been exploited in the wild by a nation-state threat actor called HAFNIUM. The fact that Microsoft chose to patch these flaws out-

in the coming days and weeks, which is why it is critically important for organizations that use Exchange Server to apply these patches immediately.”

of-band rather than include them as part of next week’s Patch Tuesday release leads us to believe the flaws are quite severe even if we don’t know the full scope of those attacks.

“While Microsoft says that HAFNIUM primarily targets entities within the United States, other researchers say they have seen these vulnerabilities being exploited by different threat actors targeting other regions.

“Based on what we know so far, exploitation of one of the four vulnerabilities requires no authentication whatsoever and can be used to potentially download messages from a targeted user’s mailbox. The other vulnerabilities can be chained together by a determined threat actor to facilitate a further compromise of the targeted organization’s network.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

15

SECURITY // MAKING SD-WAN

SD-WAN promises several benefits, including the ability to deliver an optimal application experience for branch offices and remote workers.

In other words, these solutions are designed to connect a remote or branch user to an application – no matter where either is located – as quickly and reliably as possible. But just as important, it also works to secure these connections to ensure an ongoing positive user experience.

The ability for SD-WAN solutions to accelerate the delivery of cloud-based resources across multi-cloud environments plays a critical role in fulfilling this promise of an optimal user experience. This is always true, regardless of 16 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

whether assets are deployed in a private or public cloud environment or if users require access to business-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, streaming video, or others. Providing reliable access to this range of cloud-based resources requires granular controls, including dynamic failover, SLA-based application steering, and application availability, even during brownout or blackout conditions.

SD-WAN Requires a Cloud On-Ramp However, even with these tools in place, the main challenge is that the internet was not designed for

performance. Further, most traditional methods used for steering traffic through public networks (i.e., border gateway protocol (BGP)) don’t redirect traffic to avoid congestion. The answer to this problem is a cloud on-ramp solution that joins co-location sites to a cloud-based application accelerator for accelerated cloud connectivity. There should also be a simultaneous focus on middle-mile optimization using sensors embedded in backbone networks. When service providers combine SD-WAN acceleration with backbone-based route optimization and protocol acceleration, they can stamp out the inherent performance issues associated with traditional

MAKING SD-WAN // SECURITY

RAJESH MAURYA, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, INDIA & SAARC, FORTINET.

a multi-cloud environment without hindering performance.

Most SD-WAN Solutions Struggle with Performance While SD-WAN promises flexible direct connectivity, advanced application steering, robust connection management, and full-stack security, most solutions struggle with a lack of horsepower required to appropriately scale these functions.

Part of the reason why vendors deploy their connectors in the cloud and relegate security responsibilities to their customers – leading to the deployment of overlay solutions – is that their SD-WAN solutions have been built using standard, off-the-shelf processors, limiting their ability to deliver the necessary level of power and performance.

Most technology-dependent solutions from leading vendors (i.e., smartphones and cloud platforms) rely on custom central processing units (CPUs) for acceleration and scalability to meet the needs of applications and the environments where they are used. For SD-WAN to meet expectations around flexible, scalable, reliable, and secure connectivity, those who manufacture these solutions must also work to fulfil these promises. If not, they will continue to offload performance responsibilities to service providers, cloud providers, and even customers, producing unsatisfactory results and increased overhead.

internet routing.

Another challenge associated with SD-WAN is that most solutions must be looped in with a vendor-specific cloud connector that manages matters like traffic steering and internet access before connecting to an application acceleration point. This element adds extraneous distance and delays to a system already unfavourably disposed to latency, jitter, and packet loss. With this in mind, it is recommended to leverage an SD-WAN solution featuring a built-in connector to enable intelligent connection flexibility without the need to backhaul application traffic through an SD-WAN vendor’s remote cloud connector.

Enabling Security Without Hindering Performance SD-WAN solutions featuring built-in security functionality should also be able to use open APIs to connect to identical virtual security solutions offered in the core provider’s marketplace; this enables point-to-point connections that are fast, reliable, and secure. In addition, these direct cloud connection capabilities help organizations address the challenges of unauthorized Shadow IT and data loss by pairing their SD-WAN solution to a cloud access security broker (CASB) solution.

This enables deep visibility into and control over application access, usage, and traffic across

Choosing the Right SD-WAN Solution Organizations are adopting new applications within their SaaS and multi-cloud environments daily, meaning establishing a secure posture around this access is more critical than ever – this is especially true for applications deployed in the cloud. With this in mind, organizations require an SD-WAN solution that can dynamically select the optimal path to SaaS applications in the cloud, optimize those connections, and also deliver full Layer-7 security and advanced security capabilities, all without impacting scalability and performance. And while this may seem like a daunting task, there are solutions that feature these elements – organizations just need to be aware of what they’re actually looking for.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

17

SECURITY // BLOCK RANSOMWARE

SUNIL SHARMA, MD – SALES, SOPHOS INDIA & SAARC

NETWORK SECURITY BEST PRAC TICES TO BLOCK RANSO MWARE

18 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

BLOCK RANSOMWARE // SECURITY

Back in December 1989, Eddy Willems, an employee at a Belgium based medical insurance company received a floppy disk that forever changed the cybersecurity world as it was known back then. The said disk contained malware that launched the first ever ransomware attack. Since then, ransomware as a threat has come a long way, and continues to plague organisations across

the world. As one of the most devastating attacks deployed by cybercriminals, it’s no surprise then, that when Sophos researched the impact, it found that more than one-half of organizations surveyed across 26 countries were hit by ransomware in 2019.

In the Indian scheme of things, 82 per cent of these organisations surveyed admitted to being

hit by ransomware, reiterating the heightened need for increased network security to help block the attack.

Below is an overview of what organizations need to know, including understanding how ransomware attacks work and guidelines for configuring firewalls and the network for the best protection possible.

How a ransomware attack works A typical targeted ransomware attack looks like this:

Best practices for firewall and network configuration to defend against ransomware Ensure the best protection: As a part of this, an organisation’s security solutions must include a modern high-performance, next-gen firewall with IPS, TLS Inspection, zero-day sandboxing, and machine learning ransomware protection.

Lockdown RDP and other services using firewall: A good practice to prevent attackers from entering a network is to ensure remote access to servers and systems is only possible via VPN and ideally using multi-factor authentication or a whitelist of sanctioned IP addresses.

Reduce the surface area of attacks: Thorough and periodic reviews of all port-forwarding rules help to eliminate any non-essential open ports. Each of these open ports represents a potential opening in networks. Where possible, VPN should be used to access resources on the internal network from outside rather than portforwarding. It is also advisable to secure any open ports by applying suitable IPS protection to the

rules governing that traffic.

Enable TLS Inspections: TSL inspection, with support for the latest TLS 1.3 standards on web traffic, ensures threats are not entering a network through encrypted traffic flows.

Minimize the risk of lateral movement within the network: A good way to do this, is to segment LANS into smaller, isolated zones or VLANs that are secured and connected by the firewall. When doing so, be sure to apply the recommended IPS policies to rules governing the traffic traversing these LAN segments to prevent exploits, worms, and bots from spreading between LAN segments.

Automatically isolate infected systems: When a ransomware or other attack strikes, it’s important that IT security solutions are able to quickly identify compromised systems and automatically isolate them until they can be cleaned up, to prevent spread to other systems on the network.

Use strong passwords: Last, but not least, strong passwords are critical. Attackers today

deploy brute-force hacking tools to enter systems, and hence passwords must be strong enough to withstand their impact. Sophos also recommend setting multi-factor authentication for VPN access, email, and other accounts that contain sensitive information.

Based on research from Sophos’ 2021 Threat Report, attackers are going to continue developing and using ransomware against organizations.

The report predicts the gap between ransomware operators at different ends of the skills and resource spectrum will increase. At the high end, the big-game hunting ransomware families will continue to refine and change their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to become more evasive and nation-state-like in sophistication, targeting larger organizations with multimilliondollar ransom demands. At the other end of the spectrum, Sophos anticipates an increase in the number of entry level, apprentice-type attackers looking for menu-driven, ransomware-for-rent, such as Dharma, that allows them to target high volumes of smaller prey.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

19

SECURITY // ARUBA

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, in collaboration with Microsoft, announced two new solutions that enable organizations to accelerate their digital transformation from edge-to-cloud by delivering deeper integration between Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and Microsoft Azure. Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021, the first solution is Aruba IoT Transport for Azure, a service that enables IoT devices connected to Aruba access points (APs) and controllers to bi-directionally communicate with the Azure IoT Hub. In addition, Aruba announced the introduction of the Aruba Central cloud management platform hosted on Azure, bringing Aruba’s enterprise-grade cloud network20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

ing solution, with more than 1 million devices already under management, to Azure.

Expressway for IoT Data IoT devices are the eyes and ears of any smart facility. When powered by a secure, cloud-native infrastructure, the value of the data they collect increases exponentially, especially when the infrastructure has the ability to provide data that interacts seamlessly with business and facility applications. The better instrumented a facility is with IoT devices, the more hyper-aware it becomes, thus yielding better, richer insights, which can then be utilized across the infrastructure in support of business objectives.

Yet, securely and economically implementing IoT monitoring and control of devices across a site can be challenging. The breadth of data and its sources, the interface with legacy IoT devices that use non-interoperable protocols, securing the data path, and the prohibitive cost of implementation are just a few of the hurdles that organizations may encounter when embarking on a facility modernization project.

Working closely with Microsoft, Aruba developed the Aruba IoT Transport for Azure service – the first of its kind for general purpose applications – to address these challenges. The Aruba IoT Transport for Azure multiplies the power of Aruba ESP by seamlessly enabling the

ARUBA // SECURITY

MICHAEL TENNEFOSS, VICE PRESIDENT OF IOT AND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS, ARUBA

secure, bi-directional movement of data from IoT devices connected to Aruba APs and controllers, enabling customers to take advantage of the vast array of services and applications available in Azure. Aruba IoT Transport for Azure eliminates the need for an intermediate gateway, server, or application, thus reducing processing latency.

Additionally, the solution allows customers to run IoT systems and services over their existing Aruba infrastructure, thus reducing the time, cost and risk of developing homegrown or customized solutions. This frees customers to focus on instrumenting facilities, achieving hyperawareness, and deriving deeper insights from their business processes.

Security is always front-and-center when it comes to IoT because many IoT devices are fundamentally untrustworthy. The Aruba IoT Transport for Azure was designed from the grounds up with security as a cornerstone.

Flexible, built-in credential management and authentication policies protect against security threats on both the northbound data plane and southbound control planes.

Enterprise-grade Cloud Networking for Azure Technology research firm IDC states that by 2022, 50 percent of infrastructure deployed will

be in critical edge locations, and by 2024, over 75 percent of infrastructure in edge locations will be consumed or operated via an as a service model.1 Yet, managing distributed infrastructure as a service requires an extensible, secure, and massively scalable platform. Aruba ESP combines unified infrastructure for IT, IoT, and operational technology (OT) devices, a Zero Trust security framework, and AIOps to deliver an automated, cloud-native platform that continuously analyzes data across domains to predict and resolve issues at the network edge.

A critical element of Aruba ESP, Aruba Central is a cloud-native service designed to unify management of campus, branch, remote and data center networks. Aruba Central on Azure will allow IT administrators to manage and optimize the network from a single point of control.

“Edge networking and IoT have had a profoundly positive impact on businesses, however, their recent convergence has surfaced interoperability challenges across platforms, applications, and systems,” said Michael Tennefoss, vice president of IoT and Strategic Partnerships at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

“Simplifying the integration of edge IoT and cloud services using the advanced cloud capabilities of Aruba ESP with the extensibility and power of Microsoft Azure overcomes these challenges. And it does so without sacrificing security, manageability, or reliability. The ubiquity of Azure, and its 99.99 percent regional availability, makes the solution attractive to customers worldwide that want better informed decisions and continuous process improvements.”

“IoT helps organizations make more intelligent decisions—so they can be more efficient, more resilient, and provide better experiences to customers and employees,” said Sam George, corporate vice president of Azure IoT at Microsoft. “Our collaboration with Aruba simplifies the process for IT Administrators who are adding IoT devices to their traditional enterprise environments, allowing them to use their existing Aruba network to connect devices to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub in a bi-directionally secured way.

It’s a cost-effective, seamless path to powerful transformation.”

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD

21

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION // DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS

Why is there such a gap between potential and impact, and how can companies narrow that gap? The biggest problem is that most businesses today are playing catch-up when it comes to digital transformation. Instead, companies should learn from the digital natives and play offence rather than defence. Full digital adopters are able to extract meaningful impact from their investments, such as a 25 per cent increase in productivity, twice improved customer retention rates and two to three times faster growth than their peers.

Nitin Seth, CEO, Incedo Inc. Nitin Seth is CEO of Incedo Inc., a technology services firm focused on Digital Transformation and bestselling author of “Winning in the Digital Age: Seven Building Block of Successful Digital Transformation”. Prior to Incedo, he was COO of Flipkart; Managing Director and Country Head of Fidelity International India; and Director of McKinsey’s Global Knowledge Centre in India. He graduated in engineering from IIT Delhi and received his MBA from IIM Lucknow. For more information on successful Digital Transformation and to reach the author go to www.

WinningInTheDigitalAge.com

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

MAXIMIZING RETURNS FROM DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS

D

igital transformation is one of the biggest trends of our generation, and enormous resources are being poured into it annually. However, when we look below the surface, we see that 70 per cent of digital initiatives fail, according to Harvard Business Review.1 Many firms see suboptimal ROI on their digital investments as the technology budget keeps increasing but results are not visible.

Overall, the rate of full digital adoption is fairly low. Based on my experience across key industries, the rate of full adoption has been only 5-10 per cent (though digital adoption has got a sharp

22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

boost over year 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic). For example, according to Celent (via The Financial Brand), only 11 per cent of banking institutions are executing an omni-channel strategy,2 while 50 per cent of banks are still only researching omni-channel capability. Personalization, in many cases, is also extremely limited.

While Red Point Global found that 63 per cent of customers today expect personalization,3 BCG found that only 15 per cent of enterprises are true personalization leaders.4 The rate of real- time data leverage is extremely low, with only 1 per cent of all data collected ever analysed and used,5 and only 16 per cent of brands are very effective at delivering real-time interactions6

Why problems persist for companies embarking on digital transformation When it comes to digital transformation, frequently large enterprises struggle finding the root of their problems. In my experience of working with large legacy enterprises, I have seen four common root causes: • Data infrastructure incapable of handling big data: The existing data infrastructure has limitations when it comes to leveraging unstructured data to drive insights. Originally created to deal with structured data, this infrastructure wasn’t prepared for the explosion of big data. The pieces are hard to change once defined since the addition of new data dimensions requires expensive design and reprocessing effort. Moreover, legacy data infrastructure makes it very hard to get to a deeper level of granularity of insights.

For example, when have you last seen a bank as precise at personalization as Amazon?.

• IT processes do not support experimentation and agile methods: Traditional IT deployment cycles, as they are currently set up in many legacy enterprises, are not designed to support and drive the ‘test, learn, adapt’ paradigm of modern analytics. These processes should be based on experimentation. If something has to fail, it has to fail fast. You try something, measure the results, fail, change things, try again. Instead, in a legacy enterprise, you have to first spend a lot of time doing the analysis and making sure you get it right the first time, because if you fail it may be fatal.

• Back-end systems cannot handle realtime transactions: In most legacy enterprises, these systems end up being a bottleneck. They simply aren’t designed to handle probabilistic choice-based workflows to enable real-time responsiveness to customer signals. Have you tried opening a bank account online? It’s not possible, precisely because in most banks the back-end systems are not able to support this service or deliver real-time customer services online. As a result, businesses are unable to realize

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS // DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

the true potential of tightly coupled systems and automation for real-time customer services and end-to-end transformation.

• Legacy business processes are too slow given changing expectations in the digital age: The basic ‘mindset’ of these processes is all about control, risk management and being comprehensive. These processes were designed to get things right the first time without fail. As a result, businesses have built very complex processes to avoid failure. But, as with anything very complex, it is hard for it to be fast in real-time. The legacy mindset of the ‘right-the-first-time’ process design makes it difficult to drive iterative experimentation-based improvements. In other words, even if the technology works, business processes end up slowing things down.

Changing the Game To achieve lasting change, I believe legacy companies need to stop playing defence and start playing offence. They should take lessons from the digital native companies that have leapfrogged them by reimagining these dimensions.

The main point is that digital initiatives themselves should be leading strategy and not the other way around. This will allow businesses to drive speed to market, unlock ROI and – most importantly – change the game from one of

defence to offence.

Here are some specific and actionable best practices from digital natives that can help legacy enterprises significantly increase ROI from their digital technology investments.

A. Cloud-native architecture This architecture is an essential piece of the puzzle, and luckily for us, it is already here. In recent years, cloud strategy has moved from enabling compute resources to providing an integrated platform as a service (PaaS). Gartner says that by 2022, 75 percent of all databases will be deployed or will have migrated to a cloud platform.

When fully realized, cloud standardizes technical skill sets, creating talent acquisition leverage and enabling improved development process, further accelerating time to market. Leveraging AWS, Azure and GCP (Google Cloud) provides the best-of-breed infrastructure, with the added advantage that these cloud providers continue to evolve and innovate at a rapid pace. That means enterprises can configure highly scalable end-toend solutions quickly. So, what businesses need to do is to develop comprehensive cloud application and data migration strategies.

B. Agile and adaptive by design

Modern infrastructures must be highly adaptive, agile and measured. Continuous adaptation and experimentation must be built into the strategy.

The good news is that cloud architecture allows new development models for maintaining continuity while integrating change. Agile architectures compose and avoid system/team monoliths, while adaptive portfolio management process is critical to success.

Experimentation and measurement drive impact-based prioritization. In other words, an agile mindset must be embraced by the organization to yield benefits. Outcomes must be continually measured and evaluated in order to keep up with changing business conditions.

C. Two-speed approach What is the best and most effective, practical way for legacy enterprises to tackle digital initiatives? Despite my recommendation that they play offence and not defence, going all-out or adopting a ‘big bang approach’ might not be the right strategy in most cases. This is because of the iterative nature of digital; you need to allow time for experimentation, learning and course correction. On the other hand, focusing on narrow use cases would amount to playing catch-up and thus would have little to no impact. So, it is critical to develop your ‘offence’ approach thoughtfully.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23

WORK PLACE TRANSFORMATION // GROW YOUR BUSINESS

With every market constantly developing, you should be making sure your business is constantly finding ways to change and grow, and it can be hard to do that if you’re not keeping on top of things. There are many ways you can improve your brand’s reputation, but it’s going to take time and money to do so. Investing money into your reputation can be a risky venture, as you need to make sure it’s an effective investment. Know what it is that’s going to impress customers and partners, and your money will take you a long way. You have to spend money to make money, and this is one of the best ways to do it.

Branding yourself online For years now, businesses have been putting themselves online so that they can reach and market to bigger audiences, but with that comes new responsibility. You’ve got social media to look after, a website to run, and online security to keep in check. A breach in any of your online fronts can severely damage your reputation, so you have to make sure that everything is kept under lock and key.

Putting your brand on social media means you can get yourself noticed all over the internet.

While it’s not all business when you’re working with social media, everything you do and say will contribute to your business’s reputation. Knowing how to appeal to your audience and interacting with customers can help your brand look a lot more trustworthy. Trust is something that every business needs if they’re going to thrive, so don’t hesitate to put yourself online.

Your website is also very important for your business, as it will be where a lot of people get their first impression of your business. Having a website made can be expensive, but if it shows others how professional you look and act as a business, that money is well-spent.

If you plan to keep customer information to make transactions easier, or for them to be able to make accounts, make sure that you keep that information secure. Even bigger brands face the risk of losing that information to malicious hackers, and if you want your customers to trust you, they have to know that their information is in safe hands.

Invest in your appearance Investing in your website is one thing, but investing in your appearance outside of that is even more important. You want to look professional, and adding some class to the dress-code of your workplace, along with the aesthetics of the building itself can help add to the professionalism.

Putting up some art, having graphics made, or even a statue, can all show that you’re committed to being professional. If you want customers to 24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

EVERYTHING YOU CAN DO TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS’ REPUTATION see you as a promising business, you have to look the part!

Word gets around

Your reputation is going to come from what others are saying about your business, and you can encourage positivity within those words!

Both your customers, and investors are going to

GROW YOUR BUSINESS // WORK PLACE TRANSFORMATION

you are there for them. You run your own business, but that shouldn’t stop you from listening to the demands of customers – within reason, of course.

Hosting networking events can be a great way to show off what you’ve been working on, and why you’re a promising business partner.

It’s your opportunity to meet new people, and investing money into it can make it memorable for everyone who attends. Being memorable is exactly what you want, so a networking event isn’t the time to cheap out!

Spend on new tech It’s not just about the appearance of your business that’s going to impress those on the outside, but the functionality. Investing in the latest tech to help your business proceed and function can improve the efficiency of work done, and give that edge on your competitors. Whether it’s new gear like the DJI, or the latest computer hardware to give your employees a better work environment, it all contributes to how others see your business! Show your clients that you’re not afraid to invest in their satisfaction, while also showing employees that they’re worth the investment!

Be more competitive A business cannot evolve without competition, and without that customer satisfaction will decline. Competition is healthy for many scenarios, and the more competitive you are, the more you can grow as a business. Your ultimate goal is to be the best choice for your customers, and you should be constantly striving for that.

Look at what your competitors are doing, and constantly look for ways that you could do it better. If you aren’t trying to be the best business on the market, then you’re not striving for success.

want to hear about how you operate, and how promising you are as a business.

Every business should be putting a lot of their focus into customer service, as every customer

wants to know that they matter to the business.

Letting customers know that they can reach out to you with concerns and complaints, while also listening to criticism, can show your audience that

Give back Everyone loves a business that can be charitable every now and then and having events where you donate a percentage of your profits to charity can look great on your business. If you give customers the opportunity to do good by buying your products, it’s a win-win for everyone, and while your profits will be less than usual – your reputation is going to improve.

Giving discounts to customers is a great way to incentivize more sales, and it offers a helping hand to your customers. You wouldn’t be where you are without them, so a discount isn’t too much for you to offer! That’s not to say you should discount your items so heavily that you lose profits, but having them low enough to draw in new customers along with your loyal customers is great for everyone. Most people love a good deal, and you have the power to provide that to your audience.

MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25

BUSINESS SOLUTIONS // TATA TELE BUSINESS

CXO Talk hosted by TTBS outlines the digital trajectory of Large Enterprises in reinventing their business models Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS), India’s leading enabler of connectivity and collaboration solutions for businesses hosted CXO Round Table Discussion with industry leaders on building a new mindset for business resilience and growth.

The discussion centered around Respond, Reboot and Reinvent as key imperatives; with Large Enterprises reinventing their business models as they continue to respond effectively to the aftershocks of the crisis. While the potential requirement for many organizations is to build digital competency, the larger goal is to be data-driven and leveraging the cloud capabilities.

Moreover witnessing variable cost structures, agile operations, and automation which could create stronger capabilities with digital presence and security.

According to an IDC report, ‘By 2022, 70% of all organizations will have accelerated use of digital technologies, transforming existing business processes to drive customer engagement, employee productivity, and business resiliency.’

Industry representatives such as Upkar Singh, Director IT, Fidelity Information Services India Ltd., Raj Neravathi – Head of Technology, Titan, Yogesh Kothari – Sr. Vice President, Quatrro Business Support Solutions shared their expertise upon business agility, examples from their professional career and how they are successfully driving the digital transformation journey for their organization.

Addressing the session, Shibhu Davies, Sales Head – North and East, Tata Communications Ltd. said, “There is a plethora of technology available in the market, understanding the most suitable one for a particular business is the key factor. To thrive in the next normal, companies must be data driven to make critical and timely decisions. While there is an uptick in the businesses investing in data and nimble technologies like cloud and AI, many are still struggling to maintain momentum. Businesses need to get out of cultural obstacles, address data privacy and governance challenges to enhance their degree of business transformation.”

Elaborating further on increasing adoption of Cloud communication, Shibhu Davies explained, “Cloud Communication suite like Smartflo being offered by Tata Teleservices are inherently designed for a digital or hybrid environment and is well-equipped to deal with the growing overlap between digital technology and enterprise operations. Besides enhanced efficiency and operational flexibility, it offers more robust security to your business with a pre-configured unified threat management system.”

26 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

TATA TELE BUSINESS SERVICES HIGHLIGHTS THE EMERGING ROLE OF NEW TECHINFRASTRUCTURE FROM ‘REVIVING TO REINVENTING’ THE BUSINESSES POST PANDEMIC Upkar Singh, Director IT, Fidelity Information Services India Ltd said “Covid has created an unprecedented impact across all regions – organizations that are flexible both from technology and operational perspective have been able to RESPOND in time, REBOOT their functions and are now REINVENTING result oriented approach” Raj Neravathi – Head of Technology, Titan said, “During times of catastrophes, leadership plays a very important role in adoption to change.

Composure, calmness, honoring and supporting every internal and external stakeholder through thick and thin helps revive business and defines

leadership by example.”

Yogesh Kothari – Sr Vice President, Quatrro Business Support Solutions said, “Challenges that enterprises are facing in the current times is resistance to change. There is a lack of vision for creating a digital journey for the customer and technology know how for their business” Highlights of discussion: Challenges in Technology Adoption The key challenges faced by enterprises for adopting new technologies extend both towards the changing customer experience along with

TATA TELE BUSINESS // BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

employee pushback. Merely purchasing and implementing a solution in response to a localized issue does not equate to technology adoption and agility. Organizations are considering two key points, recognizing and responding to the shifting trends in consumer behavior and avoiding the initiatives that target specific issues. The postcovid world has led to unexpectedly increased customer readiness towards trying new channels for interacting with businesses.

Organizations adopting to technology, lead to driving changes strategically through an ongoing process where being receptive to changing consumer trends helps in the formulation of effective roadmaps. These roadmaps can then be used to build better value propositions by leveraging the right technological advancements, leading to business growth and benefits.

Role of Leadership In Bringing Organizational Change Leadership plays a very critical role while dealing with catastrophes. From healthcare solutions to virtual classrooms, from facilitating remote work and learning, from re-imagining online business models and digital revenue lines, to stepping up the cyber security, organizations are working on new challenges. The pandemic has accelerated transformation multifariously for businesses in India. Organizations are re-imagining their business models, relooking at talent management strategies, and fast-tracking digitalization efforts to be more resilient to disruption.

Organizations are simplifying and enhancing their IT landscape, architecting systems for integration, balancing operational and capital expenses using the cloud. Investments are being made towards intelligent systems that provide incremental learning abilities.

Technology Investments for a Digital Future Over the last couple of months, it has become increasingly evident that digital adoption is not negotiable. Having the right technology to power up digital strategies is fundamental in today’s business world. It is a business requirement without which organizations are not able to grow in a rapidly evolving market landscape. A good business continuity solution that delivers digital workspaces to access critical applications, have accelerated the performance of organizational applications on remote connections. With right platform and solutions clubbed with excessive trainings, organizations have managed to continue with their operations without major loss in productivity or efficiency.

Digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern buyer. Today’s consumers are constantly connected and aware of what they can do with technology. Bringing the employees up to speed to cater to the new age customers has been one of the key form of investments for various organizations.

Mindset for Growth Organizations have taken immediate actions focused on keeping people safe and essential business functions operating. This has been relatively marked with high effort and possibly chaotic activity.

Organizations are adopting to the wholistic approach, recognizing evolving customer demand, channels of information consumption, building continued incremental intelligence including technology that provides agility. Agile decision making and strategy setting by enterprises have outsized performance and established a lead over the competition that sustains long after the initial disruption. By reinventing themselves, organizations have learnt to conduct operational processes and workflows in new, repeatable, and scalable ways.

Key Takeaways n Gaining New perspectives, relooking at business models and embracing new models of harnessing technology have become business priorities. n Reinvent on an ongoing basis to build an agile, adaptive & resilient enterprise for a sustainable future. n Uninterrupted connectivity between all stakeholders, internally within employees and externally with customers and vendors across platforms and touch points is of critical importance.

Respond, Reboot and Reinvent – The New MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27

CASE STUDY // MATRIX

BY SANJAY@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

SOVEREIGN SAFE CONTROLS ACCESS TO THEIR SAFETY DEPOSIT VAULT THROUGH EFFICIENT MATRIX SECURITY SOLUTIONS

Industry BFSI Customer Name Sovereign Safe Controls Locations Ilford, East London, UK Devices 10+ Users 1000+ Company Profile Sovereign Safe provides deposit facilities that truly push the global standards of the safe deposit industry. With the very latest modular high compression steel vaults constructed and installed by specialist manufacturers, state-of-the-art biometric access with complete audit trail from 28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

electronic alarmed lockers, Sovereign stands unrivalled as a leader amongst any high security facility anywhere in the world. No high street bank nor any safe deposit centre can match their credentials and the extraordinary security levels they have achieved.

Challenges Sovereign Safe provides deposit facilities that truly push the global standards of the safe deposit industry. With the very latest modular high compression steel vaults constructed and installed by specialist manufacturers, state-of-the-art biometric access with complete audit trail from electronic alarmed lockers, Sovereign stands unrivalled as a leader amongst any high security facility anywhere in the world. No high street bank nor any safe deposit centre can match their

credentials and the extraordinary security levels they have achieved.

Solutions Matrix solved these challenges by providing COSEC PANEL LITE, VEGA, PVR, PATH Series, and ARC DC100P. Matrix Access Control solution helps boost security along with barriers and door controllers. Offered solution is designed to address security concerns in a professional and systematic method without compromising hospitality and productivity. It allows enrolling visitor’s Fingerprint/Palm Vein Reader/RFID Card to provide the visitor with access to restricted area as per below criteria: n 2-Person rule: This is enforced by requiring the presence of atleast two authorized persons n Route based access: This allows user to access

MATRIX // CASE STUDY

the authorised route only n Anti-pass back: This restricts to enter a secured area second time without first leaving it .

Results n Peace of mind n Seamless experience n Increase productivity of staff n Quick actions on exceptions n Multi-layer authentication n Boost customer satisfaction Products Offered n COSEC VEGA CAX integrated with turnstile n COSEC PVR DOOR CONTROLLER n COSEC PANEL LITE n COSEC PATH Series n COSEC ARC DC100P

About Matrix Established in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Security and Telecom solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. As an innovative, technology-driven and customer-focused organization, the company is committed to keeping pace with the revolutions in the Security and Telecom industries. With around 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance Systems – Video Management System, Network Video Recorder and IP Camera, Access Control and Time-Attendance systems as well as Telecom solutions such as Unified Communications, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, VoIP and GSM Gateways and Communication Endpoints.

These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to international standards. Having

global footprints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Africa through an extensive network of more than 2,500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries.

Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.

For further information, please contact: 394-GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara-390010, India Toll Free – 1800-258-7747 E-Mail: inquiry@matrixcomsec.com https://www.matrixaccesscontrol.com/ MARCH 2021 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29

TECH PREDICTION // TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS

TOP

INFOR’S

TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS RANGA POTHULA, MD INDIA SUB-CONTINENT & SVP GLOBAL DELIVERY SERVICES, INFOR.

Cloud technology will reinvent event experiences.

“After the US Open tennis tournament successfully pivoted to cloud and AI this year to enhance the virtual experience for fans who could not attend the physical event, we will see an uptick in physical events leveraging cloud technology to give viewers tailored experiences. With 2021 primed to grip the world’s attention with several major events, such as the Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the Wimbledon Championship, cloud technology is poised to completely reinvent what we know about fan experiences today. The potential for using cloud technology to transform events is enormous — think real-time crowd excitement analysis to optimize highlights and advertisements, extremely low-latency live feeds, and moderated crowd interaction – all hosted on robust cloud platforms.”

Multi-tenant cloud architectures will be the new gold standard.

30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD MARCH 2021

FOR 2021

“Using multi-tenant cloud solutions means companies are automatically kept up-to-date with the most cutting-edge technology, without having to worry about manual updates or replacing hardware. As we move into a new year that likely will bring more uncertainty, multi-tenant cloud solutions will become critical technology differentiators, helping businesses remain agile and innovative, while also reducing their e-waste footprints and helping them move closer to their sustainability targets.”

AI will transform the hiring process.

“In the unpredictable job market of 2021, it will be critical for organizations to leverage AI to ensure they find the right candidate for the job. AI will enable HR departments to become more proactive in their hiring and help them determine a candidate’s cultural fit by using data to measure the quality of a hire. Innovations such as intelligent screening software that automates resume screening, recruiter chatbots that engage

candidates in real-time, and digitized interviews that help assess a candidate’s fit, will start becoming commonplace in HR departments. AI also holds great promise for creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces, given its ability to reduce biases and add objectivity into employment decision-making through AI-powered algorithms that will identify the unique qualities of candidates.”

AI in healthcare will become mission critical.

“Over the next year, we will see the accelerated adoption of AI across many areas of healthcare.

By applying machine learning to real-time global data sets, healthcare professionals can more accurately track contact between staff and infected patients, enable accurate diagnoses, utilize predictive analytics to track personal protective equipment (PPE), optimize workforce allocations, and develop more effective and lasting vaccinations.”

Transforming telecommunications enriching the customer experience atos.net

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