CRN India (Vol.2, No.10) January, 2020

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Vol 2. No. 10 January, 2020

THE DEMOCRATISATION OF AI

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Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr. Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Asst. Vice President - BPD Harit Mohanty Editor Srikanth RP* Sr. Associate Editor Sudipta Dev Sr. Assistant Editor Nivedan Prakash Delhi Sandhya Michu Vishwas Dass Mumbai Mohit Rathod Salvi Mittal Abhishek Raval

Srikanth RP, Editor srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

Bengaluru Moumita Deb Choudhury DESIGN Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Chief Designer Prasad Tate Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Designer Vinayak Mestry Photo Editor Sandeep Patil DIGITALTEAM Head of Internet Viraj Mehta MARKETING Ravi Nair Prabhas Jha Durgaprasad Talithaya Debnarayan Dutta Ajanta Sengupta Deepak Patel Praveen Soman Vivek Thakur

n India, AI is becoming pervasive and has now seen adoption in a huge number of firms that are looking to automate some of their key processes. While the usage of chatbots is common now, the potential of AI is being explored to solve some unique problems. For example, Uttar Pradesh is using an AI powered video analytics tool to monitor prison activity across 70 prisons in real-time. The AI solution will ensure that law enforcement authorities are notified immediately when an unlawful activity is detected.

Similarly, in the case of jewellery giant, Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, AI is being used for automating product and attribute identification. TBZ is using AI to look at the design of each jewellery and automatically capturing all the attributes.

HDFC Life is using AI to build applications such as Face Sense which compares the images of customer visiting its branches for payouts with their KYC submitted at the time of policy issuance. This helps the insurer to determine whether they are the same customer, thereby reducing the risk.

At ICICI Lombard, when a motor policy comes for renewal past its due date, a surveyor comes and checks the vehicle for any damages. This process

has been made AI enabled.

Currently, close to 60 per cent of motor policy renewals, that are past their due date and require an inspection, are processed through AI. At Wockhardt, an AI-based solution alerts the probability of an employee leaving the firm. This has helped the company curb attrition. AI is being used as a teaching assistant to help students learn at their own pace at IIT Guwahati.

Titan has taken AI to a different level, and has used AI to create new designs of watches. The firm has created an AI based design tool, which after learning from images of existing watches is able to create new watch designs. The AI tool has the ability to blend aesthetic elements of successful watches and reimagine watch forms. This not only helps in reducing design turnaround time, but also augments the capabilities of its watch designers. Over a period of time, as AI systems analyse massive amounts of data, they will be able to solve some of the biggest problems known to man (example, urban flooding, cure for cancer).

In the future, as AI systems learn and unlearn, expect IT to push the benchmarks of excellence in every business process.

IMPORTANT

Circulation Mohan Varadkar

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Printed and Published by Vaidehi Thakar on behalf of The Indian Express (P) Limited and Printed at Indigo Press (India) Pvt.Ltd., Plot No.1C/716, Off. Dadoji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (East), Mumbai 400027 and Published at 1st floor, Express Towers, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021. Editor: Srikanth RP * * Responsible for selection of news under the PRB Act. (Editorial & Administrative Offices: Express Towers, 1st floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021) Copyright Š 2017. The Indian Express (P) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, electronic or otherwise, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited.

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Content

5 | Cover Story

20 | Special Focus

AWS re:Invent 2019 resonates cloud success for partners, customers

HOWAI IS BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL The investment of Indian enterprises in artificial intelligence is on the rise, as they have started leveraging the power of this technology to transform their businesses

13 | Uber employs AI to connect physical world with digital in real-time

Every day, AWS adds 50 new partners to Amazon Partner Network. In last five years, the channel strength has grown five-fold, with several traditional and global SIs and ISVs joining the stream for amplifying the cloud story for AWS

Event

14 | ‘We are working on truly cutting edge AI and NLP technologies’

Cover Story 6 | AI is used across entire customer value chain in HDFC Life

16 | JK Tyre uses AI for making tyres smart and predictable 18 | How Hike is redefining social connections with AI

7 | The key milestones in Titan’s AI journey

Channel Chief

8 | Bajaj Allianz GI working on advanced applications of AI

24 | ‘We will continue to invest aggressively in as-a-service opportunity’

9 | ICICI Lombard uses AI for claims processing, fraud detection & policy renewal

26 | Why cyber security channel partners are keen on RSA Security

10 | AI powered app at PNB MetLife gives a fillip to customer service

News Analysis

12 | Tata Capital to soon use AI in running marketing campaigns

28 | Acquisition of Inflow Technologies will double Tech Data’s India operations

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30 | Bhubaneswar: An emerging hotspot for IT 32 | Explore Bharat Kochi rides on digital transformation 34 | Creating synergies between Microsoft and partners 36 | Dell Technologies’ Next Data Decade

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HOW AI IS BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL The investment of Indian enterprises in artificial intelligence is on the rise, as they have started leveraging the power of this technology to transform their businesses

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AI is used across entire customer value chain in HDFC Life HDFC Life uses AI across various processes, and believes that AI provides strategic competitive advantage to the company. Parvez Mulla, COO, HDFC Life, shares his perspective on the critical role of AI for HDFC Life

By Srikanth RP What are some of the key processes in which you are using AI? AI is used across the entire customer value chain in HDFC Life – right from the lead generation stage, where we use computer vision to create a selfie quote to the claims processing stage, where we use machine learning techniques to predict early claims.

We have looked at AI in five categories – Vision AI, Speech AI, Text AI, Machine Learning and cognitive bots.

With computer vision (Vision AI), we have built applications like Face Sense which compares the images of customer visiting our branches for payouts with their KYC submitted at the time of policy issuance. This helps to determine whether they are the same customer, thereby reducing the risk.

Age-timer uses generative adversarial networks to help customers visualise how they would look when they age. This nudges them to save for their retirement.

We also have built an in-house chat bot Etty, which is deployed on WhatsApp and provides 24/7 service to customers. Sentilyzer uses text mining to read customer e-mails and identify the ones who are unlikely to renew their policies.

Our work on Speech AI has enabled us to automate simple renewal calls through our speech bot sVar. We are also able to automate the analysis of

Significance of AI in the digital journey of your firm?

PARVEZ MULLA, COO,HDFC LIFE

calls through Emolyser thereby identifying the ones which result in unsatisfied customers. These calls are further analysed for more details.

What have been some of the key benefits?

Machine learning models at the underwriting stage have enabled detection and avoidance of likely claims of over `200 cr. Our voice-bot sVar has enabled us to generate PTP (Promise to Pay) from deep lapse customers. Face Sense has been implemented in some of our branches. It enables us to mitigate the risk of wrong payouts. Data lake coupled with Amazon Elastic Search allows us to de-dupe customers instantly.

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AI is a critical piece of our digital strategy. As a part of Data Labs, AI is one of the five key pillars of our corporate strategy. We have invested in building an AI Centre of Excellence in Bangalore. Here, we have a team of fulltime data scientists and AI engineers of HDFC Life, who have, within the short span of about a year, delivered several interesting products. At the same time, we are interested in learning from the insurtech, fintech and startup ecosystems and have launched an initiative called Futurance, to reach out to the startup ecosystem with clear, well-defined futuristic use cases.

What have you been able to do today that would not have been possible without using AI? The investment in analytics and AI has enabled several new capabilities.

While the list of benefits is long, here are a few use cases which we have successfully implemented at HDFC Life: ◗ Investment in data lake has allowed real-time customer de-dupe and several cloud native applications ◗ Machine learning models have enabled us to write the right kind of business and facilitated in predicting and improving persistency ◗ Face sense and liveliness check have reduced the risk of wrong payouts and fraudulent annuities

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The key milestones in Titan’s AI journey Titan has been a leader in its space, with brands such as Fastrack, Raga, Nebula and the eponymous Titan. The company is training its AI system to learn from images of its watch portfolio and create new watch forms. Krishnan Venkateswaran, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Titan, speaks about how AI is providing new capabilities for Titan

By Srikanth RP How is Titan leveraging AI?

What have been the key benefits?

We use AI in the following key processes: ◗ Forecasting: Titan uses cutting edge Deep Learning techniques (LSTM, ELM) to forecast retail sales. These forecasts are widely used in areas such as sales planning, merchandising planning, inventory management, marketing intervention planning, among others. Delivering accuracy levels of over 95 per cent, our forecasts have been instrumental in delivering tangible business outcomes such as significant inventory savings, higher merchandise alignment and so on. ◗ Marketing campaigns: AI models (CNN,LSTM networks) are being utilised for enriching Titan’s customer database. This enriched data is leveraged at Titan to run personalised marketing campaigns, a key driver of enhanced customer engagement and revenue. ◗ Product design: Utilising a cutting edge AI technique called GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks), Titan has created an AI based design tool, which after learning from images of existing watches is able to create new watch designs. An ability to blend aesthetic elements of successful watches, re-imagining watch forms and reducing design turnaround time are some of the ways in which this tool will augment the capabilities of our watch designers. ◗ Chatbots : Titan has built its own AI based chatbot platform, which is being

Some benefits include: enhanced consumer insights, significant inventory savings, cost savings, improved customer experience and new capabilities in design.

How critical is AI in the digital journey of your company?

KRISHNAN VENKATESWARAN, CHIEF DIGITAL & INFORMATION OFFICER,TITAN

used both externally (for customer queries) as well as internally (for employees queries). Key benefits of the platform include: Cost savings (30-40 per cent automation), improved agility (catering to customer requirements) and enhanced consumer insight (understanding of requirements and issues). ◗ Customer feedback analysis: NLP based Machine learning techniques such as word embedding, topic extraction, sentiment analysis are being applied to extract insights from customer feedback. These consumer insights are shared across the organisation and help address customer pain points across areas such as product, pricing, store and staff experiences.

Titan is levering digital technologies across our business value chain in order to deliver industry leading products, services and experiences, both physically and digitally. AI - Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms are playing a critical role in this journey, by providing new capabilities (real time, design creativity, etc) or vastly improved capabilities (prediction, recommendations, etc). Key areas where AI is being utilised at Titan include : merchandising, marketing, customer experience, design, inventory management and retail operations.

What have you been able to do today that would not have been possible without using AI? Many applications such as chatbots, synthetic design tools, image recognition applications, real time recommendation systems, NLP etc cannot be built without using AI technology. Additionally, in applications such as forecasting, merchandise optimisation, using AI based models gives superior results to other options.

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Bajaj Allianz GI working on advanced applications of AI The company has completed the first phase of the automation journey and will soon implement AI in claims, underwriting, etc. A robust data infrastructure is also being built, says Avinash Naik, Senior VP, Technology, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance

Abhishek Raval abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

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n the mid of 2016, Bajaj Allianz started the AI journey as a part of the Innovation Program. The easiest to automate were taken up first – beginning with customer services (implemented chatbots on the mobile app, website, Alexa and Google Chrome), some operational processes, which includes making certain mundane tasks in the financial operations to be RPA enabled.

AI will now be used in some matured use cases – claims adjudication. “We are evaluating how the motor insurance claims can be automated without any manual intervention. AI can be used in scanning the photographs sent by the customer and the claims can be decided upon by the algorithm itself. In terms of the amount of claims that can be offered based on the AI enabled damage evaluation. We are also looking at the underwriting engine that learns on itself and adjusts rates based on the

claims experience,” says Avinash Naik, Senior VP, Technology, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.

While the machine learning platform is updating and learning in the background, the real intelligence will be built over a period of time.

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AVINASH NAIK, SENIOR VP,TECHNOLOGY,BAJAJ ALLIANZ GENERAL INSURANCE

The benefits have been many. “We have been able to improve the productivity of the customer service representatives and divert them to more intelligent tasks,” says Naik. The operations team is freed up from doing the mundane policy-form handling job, which has been completely automated.

Bajaj Allianz is building a data lake on the cloud environment, using some of the native services available on the cloud to make the infrastructure ready for advanced use cases of AI. The current solutions are more pointed for certain use cases. Going forward, the matured application of AI for complex use cases will work on tremendous amount of data. It will require a stable and scalable solution to process data seamlessly. “This will help us leverage some of the out of the box services for AI – image recognition, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), etc.

There are platforms within the cloud model, which allow companies to write their own analytical models, algorithms to scale quickly, instead of beginning from scratch,” says Naik. This journey has just begun at Bajaj Allianz and within a year, analytical models are expected to be launched.

The company has adopted a two pronged strategy to acquire data for AI applications – dumping all the historical data residing in the company’s systems. The second part of this is to enrich the current data with external data sources like the Government and third party data available in the public domain. This will be pooled into the data lake. A data management platform will also be implemented to make this data available on a single platform.

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ICICI Lombard uses AI for claims processing, fraud detection & policy renewal Insurance major ICICI Lombard has always looked at adopting new technologies like AI and ML that can help the company in acquiring, retaining or in better servicing customers Abhishek Raval abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

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eading insurance company ICICI Lombard has an internal team of data scientists developing AI and ML models for some of these use cases. The results thus far have been impressive and they will continue to improve as the AI programs becomes smarter with more accurate data ◗ Medical claims processing: AI is being used to process the cashless claims as requested by the hospital.

The policy related information; doctor’s diagnosis and the course of action recommended by the doctor is ingested in the AI algorithm, which decides the admissibility of the case.

This was decided by a doctor at the insurer’s end, earlier. Based on the case admissibility, an ML program decides on the optimum claim amount to be sanctioned based on the overall policy sum insured and other parameters. For example, if the claim amount requested is for an amount of `1 lakh, then an ML algorithm could potentially predict an initial sanctioned amount of 80,000 based on the information provided by the hospital and the policy terms and conditions. The ML program sends a message to the effect to the hospital.

The final sanctioning amount is established during the discharge of the patient from the hospital.

This entire initial sanctioning process takes about 90 seconds. The same process when done manually would take three to four hours. “We have introduced this a few months ago

GIRISH NAYAK, CHIEF – SERVICE,OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY, ICICI LOMBARD GIC for corporate health claims. It started with a single digit success rate. In the last few weeks we have reached 40 per cent. In effect, of all the corporate health claims, over 40 per cent are processed using the AI/ML process.

The rest of the 60 per cent goes through human intervention. The doctors can thus dedicate more time doing the investigation for more complex cases leaving the simple cases for AI to process,” says Girish Nayak, Chief – Service, Operations & Technology, ICICI Lombard GIC. ◗ Policy renewal: Typically when a motor policy comes for renewal past it’s due date, a surveyor comes and checks the vehicle for any damages. This process has been made AI enabled. The vehicle owner can take a few photographs and upload it for the AI

algorithm to check for any damage. In case the vehicle has dents, spots, any kind of damage – then the AI engine decides, based on the photographs whether the policy is eligible for renewal or not. This has been operational since December 2018.

Currently, close to 60 per cent of motor policy renewals, that are past their due date and require an inspection, are processed through AI. This renewal process, when done manually used to take about 72 hours depending on the availability of the customer. Now, it happens almost instantly and at the time the customer chooses. The surveyor visits the place personally, if the motor renewal case isn’t qualified to be handled by AI. ◗ Fraud detection: Previously, there were certain hard coded triggers and rules that were set for isolating the claims to be sent for further investigation. They are potentially, fraudulent claims. “Earlier, this was done manually but now, it’s being done

by AI and ML. It’s giving us results, which are as good as was previously delivered by the fraud detection team,” says Nayak. It will only improve over a period of time as the algorithm learns and auto-corrects through continuous self-learning.

The entire processing for AI and ML is done on the cloud. “We started off this journey working with a couple of vendors to get started. However, over time, most of the technology for AI has been built by the internal team of data scientists. This gives us a competitive edge,” concludes Nayak.

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AI powered app at PNB MetLife gives a fillip to customer service In an exclusive interaction with CRN India, Samrat Das, CIO, PNB MetLife Insurance Company speaks about the strategy for their AI powered app KhUshi - a customer service application, and also highlights the company’s Robotic Automation Process journey for driving operational efficiency

By Salvi Mittal

What are some of the key processes in which you are using AI? At PNB MetLife, technology enables us to align to two of our core values – ‘Make Things Easier’ and ‘Put Customer First’. Our strategy is structured around the concept of 3Ds – Digitise, Data and Disrupt.

We digitise our day to day processes, which enables us in seamless customer delivery; we mine data and draw insights to mark predictable behaviour of the customers, thereby paving us the way to be future ready; we believe that

the digital landscape is constantly evolving and hence we disrupt to keep our digital journey ongoing.

Digital transformation had been a challenge for Indian companies for various reasons. Overcoming this challenge has been the main agenda of many CIOs, including myself. However, at PNB MetLife we are able to constantly evolve our technology seamlessly through sets of processes that help in the transition.

While implementing newer technologies, we aim at creating an environment of cost and time efficient

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processes that ultimately enhance the customer’s experience. Being a life insurance company, our main focus during the transition period stays on keeping the information and data secure. We take intense measures during this period so that there are no lapses during transition phase.

In today’s times, we need to realise that digital transformation cannot happen in a silo. A business needs to see benefits from digital assets and solutions. We are happy to state that at PNB MetLife, our digital processes are based on the benefits, which add value

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to the business.

Last year we launched “KhUshi”, a customer service app, an AI-powered app from an insurance company which is capable of understanding the language via text and speech and provide assistance to consumers.

processes as well, an aspect not possible for manual systems.

We deployed RPA technology in our organisation six months back for driving operational efficiency. Going forward, as a part of our digital journey, we would come up with process enhancements and our robots will be capable of handling more complex operations then.

Our AI initiatives such as the app KhUshi has allowed us to making better predictions and providing more personalised and customised solutions and services to our customers.

What have been the key benefits?

KhUshi has enabled better customer services by improving our response time. These processes have also helped us in better analysing the sentiments of our customers through the chatbots.

Our chatbots help us to automatically provide information, facilitate a purchase and help stay connected to our customers and deliver them the service they need, 24×7.

Also, since we now have an upcoming set of customer “the millennials” we have moved from “being served to self-servicing mode of service” and hence, providing a personalised experience has become even more paramount than ever. Our apps such as KhUshi allow us provide hyper personalised services to our customers, giving us an edge over the competitors.

How critical is AI in the digital journey of your firm?

We abide by the principle of digitising data to create disruption. We have constantly tried to disrupt the life insurance industry in India with our technology. In today’s digital era the technological ability of any firm depends on how efficiently are they able to process the vast amount of available unstructured data for better predictions or business processes. We believe technology is a continuous process and at PNB MetLife, we are constantly innovating. Be it new regulations or practices, we develop technology, which are imperative to business.

With everything becoming dynamic in this ever-changing era, it has become imperative to embrace meaningful technological solutions and embed them with the business operations to enhance business capabilities. One of such technologies, which was designed with an agenda of aiding sales force with better

SAMRAT DAS, CIO,PNB METLIFE INSURANCE COMPANY efficiencies, is eBranch. We launched eBranch in 2016. This 24X7 virtual branch eliminates any dependency on physical infrastructure across bancassurance distribution partners, thereby enabling faster transactions, resulting in enhanced operational efficiency and better productivity. We have integrated such value driven technologies for several functions – all resonating one of our values – ‘Make Things Easier’.

In terms of security, we have robust compliance processes which mitigates such risks. All our technological innovations are regulated by such guidelines.

What have you been able to do today that would not have been possible without using AI? At PNB MetLife we have embarked into the journey of driving operational efficiency through the lever of Robotic Process Automation. One of the process we have automated is Auto Debit Mandate process.

We introduced RPA for rule based high volume transactions, which are repetitive in nature. RPA plays a vital role in shaping up our digital journey. It allows us to continuously relook at our existing processes and optimise the efficiencies. Besides, the robots which we have deployed are inter-operable, which means that during month ends or high-volume days, we can make them multi-task and involve them in other

Regarding evolution of AI in your company - do you see AI handling more complex processes now or will it be in the future?

At PNB MetLife we have embarked into the journey of driving operational efficiency through the lever of Robotic Process Automation. One of the process we have automated is Auto Debit Mandate process.

We introduced RPA for rule based high volume transactions, which are repetitive in nature.

RPA plays a vital role in shaping up our digital journey. It allows us to continuously relook at our existing processes and optimise the efficiencies.

Besides, the robots which we have deployed are inter-operable, which means that during month ends or highvolume days, we can make them multitask and involve them in other processes as well, an aspect not possible for manual systems.

We deployed RPA technology in our organisation nine months back for driving operational efficiency. Going forward, as a part of our digital journey, we would come up with process enhancements and our robots will be capable of handling more complex operations.

Recently, about eight months ago we have also implemented robotics for 30 internal processes. We implemented these robotics processes based on two principles - substituting only the efficient process with robotics and enabling interoperability to optimise value. We plan on further building these capabilities.

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Tata Capital to soon use AI in running marketing campaigns Experiments in the areas of intelligent search, smart ads, sharper content delivery and seamless learning Abhishek Raval abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

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he endeavour of Tata Capital is to democratise data in such a way that all functions can take decisions based on data. This will help in making decisions far sharper, will increase efficiency, productivity and effectiveness across the organisation.

AI is leveraged throughout the customer journey: from the on-boarding stage and right through the exit stage.

“We use machine learning for scorecards, underwriting thus enabling faster and seamless loan disbursal decisions,” says Abonty Banerjee, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer, Tata Capital.

Recently, the company launched the VoiceBot ‘TIA’ within the Tata Capital mobile app for personal loans.

Powered by artificial intelligence, TIA is designed to voice-assist the personal loan customer journey, check loan eligibility and aid the customer through the loan approval process in minutes. TIA aims to create a whole new conversational experience for customers using speech recognition technology, natural language understanding and text-to-speech technology. TIA has the ability to answer customer queries, assist in simplifying the loan process, help customers choose the right offering and help the customer avail a loan sanction within the Tata Capital app.

Following are some experiments done with AI in marketing campaigns and some of them will be implemented soon. AI influencing marketing

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“

WE USE MACHINE LEARNING FOR SCORECARDS, UNDERWRITING THUS ENABLING FASTER AND SEAMLESS LOAN DISBURSAL DECISIONS ABONTY BANERJEE, CHIEF MARKETING & DIGITAL OFFICER, TATA CAPITAL

outcomes is possible in the following areas: ◗ Intelligent search: As advanced technology solutions grow smarter, it’s important to remember that audiences are becoming smarter as well. Thanks to social media and rapid-fire search engines (like Google!), people find what they are looking for faster than ever before. AI and big data solutions can actually analyse these search patterns and help marketers identify key areas where they should focus their efforts. ◗ Smart ads: Marketers like Tata Capital are already experimenting with smarter ads, with account-based marketing solutions, but AI helps teams take this a layer further for truly insightful analysis. AI solutions are dig deep into keyword searches, social profiles, and other online data for human-level outcomes. ◗ Sharper content delivery: Audience analytics can go past the typical demographics level, to understand people on an individual basis. Now, marketers can use AI to both identify potential clients or buyers, and deliver the ideal content that’s most relevant to them. With big data, machine learning, and AI combined, a marketer can do all of that ◗ Seamless learning: Past learnings can be implemented seamlessly in current and future campaigns. Over time, these AI solutions will become even more intelligent, effectively eliminating waste, greatly increasing conversions, and promoting real-time decision-making.

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Uber employs AI to connect physical world with digital in real-time Megha Yethadka, Director, Program Management Tech, Uber shares how AI, ML and data science are extremely important for daily operations in Uber

By Salvi Mittal How is AI impacting the digital agenda at Uber? And, how is it a critical factor in the digital journey?

We want Uber to be the operating system in everyday lives for millions of Indians and around the world.

Achieving this goal requires effortless prediction and optimisation at every turn. At Uber, opportunities range from matching riders to drivers, to allocating jobs to food delivery partners, to suggest optimal routes, to finding sensible pool combinations, and even to create the next generation of intelligent vehicles. All these challenges need to be met at the Uber scale - 700 cities across 63 countries for rides and 500+ cities in 36 countries for eats. Hence, we are combining state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) techniques with the rich expertise of data scientists, engineers, and other users.

AI is at the core of tech at Uber and extremely important in our journey to connect the physical world to the digital world in real-time. Hence, we have an exclusive team within Uber called, Uber AI, responsible for the research and advancements in artificial intelligence to solve challenges across Uber.

How is Uber leveraging AI for predictions and monitoring of customer and driver behaviour, leveraging data to empower the customers?

Uber’s daily operations generate a

and probabilistic programming have shown great promise in generating accurate forecasts. In addition to standard statistical algorithms, at Uber, we have build forecasting solutions using these three techniques.

How is AI helping you identify and react to problems, and propose the right services?

MEGHAYETHADKA, DIRECTOR,PROGRAM MANAGEMENTTECH,UBER

humongous amount of data, such as the number of trip requests or food orders, which gives us visibility of how and where to improve our services. We apply data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other innovative technologies in our daily processes.

For example, predicting the traffic and the patterns over the course of the day to provide our users with better traffic predictions, ETA and hassle-free routes. We also extensively leverage data science and AI methods for personalising experiences, automating processes, scaling customer services, building the next set of innovations such as self-driving, etc.

Machine learning, deep learning,

Uber is about igniting opportunities around the world through mobility. AI is at the very core of the digital world guiding physical mobility.

For instance, we are driving selfservice and resolutions on the app.

Through NLP, we would understand customer issues and route them correctly to agents and solve issues efficiently. AI also performs ticket analysis to identify how to best handle these queries and issues, forming an approach of feeding it back potentially into the product to improve user experience and leading to more defect-free products.

The broad streams where we extensively deploy AI to develop stateof-the-art computer vision and machine learning solutions, conversational AI to make all Uber interactions as natural as talking to a friend.

Further, leveraging sensors along with algorithms to solve for crash detection, enhanced location accuracy innovations, and even sent phone mounts to drivers for safer driving. We also invest in AI research areas which are very relevant to Uber.

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‘We are working on truly cutting edge AI and NLP technologies’ ÝES Bank has made significant investments in the futuristic skillsets of AI and ML to leverage enterprise data and derive key customer insights using AI/ML models for superior customer experiences, says Ritesh Pai, Chief Digital Officer, YES Bank

By Abhishek Raval What are the core guiding principles that you have learnt about AI over these years?

From India market perspective, over the past three-four years, AI has evolved from being a nascent phenomenon to becoming a credible strategic tool for addressing business problems. We will witness more action in next six months compared to the last couple of years. This is primarily because a larger ecosystem, outside of traditional banking and financial services is leveraging AI and bots as a service, and creating a lot of valueadditions. Besides industry trends, every organisation should have a clear vision of what they want to achieve using AI solution, with some degree of creativity and innovative approach.

One needs to use the platform to their advantage. The winning strategies employed by banks that are undergoing an AI-enabled transformation reveal how to best capture the opportunity. These strategies highlight the need for a holistic AI strategy that extends across banks' business lines, usable data, partnerships with external partners, and qualified employees.

solutions / tools?

RITESH PAI, CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER,YES BANK

What kindAI solutions are being used by YES Bank?

solutions. From simple pre-defined FAQ knowledge database creation for our enterprise YES Bot to a far more sophisticated Microsoft LUIS NLP and cognitive services enabled YES ROBOT for our customers, we are now doing POC for more complex use cases.

Certain repeat transactions such as monthly rent payment, utility bill payments and mobile recharges can be entirely automated with limited or no human intervention. These scenarios unlock the true potential of AI banking of future.

During our AI journey of over three years, YES Bank has experimented with and experienced the entire gamut of AI

What kind of questions should be asked to vendors when buying AI

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Sophistication of the machine learning tool and robust AI model training using quality data are key parameters to gauge the effectiveness and relevance of any AI solution to the business problem at hand. Next comes the augmentation of core AI engine with ancillary services such as Natural Language Progression (NLP), facial recognition, speech to text, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and so on.

Vendors should be comprehensively evaluated for core AI features, complementary services and integration with other external applications for holistic AI solution.

Specific to BFSI domain, vendors should also be assessed with respect to data security, privacy, compliance, data storage and adherence to regulatory guidelines.

What are your views on having a robust supportive IT infrastructure for AI, for example, the required amount of data integrity and consolidation / data lake or warehouse, etc?

It is critical to have a computationally robust IT infrastructure in place to support huge and varied data pool for advanced analytics, machine learning and deep learning activities for AI based projects.

YES Bank effectively leverages its

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private cloud infrastructure to address such demanding requirements.

Consequently, our systems are flexible and scalable enough to handle applications which have an elastic workload such as statement printing.

At the same time, our platform is capable and future-ready for leveraging any cognitive and bespoke service which suits our requirement and best fit for the use case in hand.

What kind of AI roadmap have you set for AI at YES Bank?

Our flagship AI powered chatbot YES ROBOT - is a comprehensive, secure, 24*7 Personal Banking Assistant for customers and is currently available on our website and Facebook Messenger. Almost three years ago, YES Bank understood the importance of AI in banking and made it an integral part of the bank’s digital transformation journey. With several industry first initiatives launched on YES ROBOT, we have witnessed tremendous acceptance from our customers with total interactions reaching to a cumulative of 11 million as of today. We introduced various services such as booking of deposits with just an OTP for both domestic and NRI customers, managing nominee, instant application for 65+ banking products with CRM integration and many more to ensure utmost convenience to our customers at their home without need to visit a branch or

IT IS CRITICAL TO HAVE A COMPUTATIONALLY ROBUST IT INFRASTRUCTURE IN PLACE TO SUPPORT HUGE AND VARIED DATA POOL FOR ADVANCED ANALYTICS, MACHINE LEARNING AND DEEP LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR AI BASED PROJECTS call up a human for assistance.

Currently, we are working on powering more customer touch points such as phone banking and customer care support with our core AI engine. In the near future, we would be extending AI bot services to additional channels/applications such as Whatsapp, IVR and to IoT interfaces like Alexa and Google assistant.

Benefits from AI at YES Bank?

The adoption rate and feedback towards our flagship AI chatbot, YES ROBOT has been encouraging especially with the launch of Industry first feature of booking FD/RD using AI channel. A total of `12 billion worth deposits are already booked using YES ROBOT within a year of enabling this feature and has become the most preferred digital channel for booking

deposits. With recent addition of nominee management feature, the entire deposits booking service is now paperless. It has helped the bank enhance its customer service by reducing the time-of-first-response to just a few seconds. The chatbot is witnessing over a million interactions per month responding to approx. 5.3 lakh customer queries last month.

Benefits are immense, it empowers users to get their basic banking queries and requests addressed anytime anywhere. Also, it allows our branch staff to be effective in addressing more complex customer requirements.

YES Bank has a dedicated budget for AI. Please share how is the allocation done and what themes have been picked up?

The bank has done significant investments in the futuristic skillsets of AI and ML to leverage enterprise data and derive key customer insights using AI/ML models for superior customer experiences. We are working on truly cutting edge AI and NLP technologies to revolutionise chat and voice bots for offering industry first innovative experience. AI projects drive value across the business, especially in customer service, cost optimisation and revenue generation.

Projects promising maximum and quickest RoI are prioritised for execution.

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JK Tyre uses AI for making tyres smart and predictable Being the pioneers of radials in India, the company has done it yet again by introducing ‘Smart Tyre’ as an extension to its initiative of providing mobility solutions to both commercial and passenger vehicle owners Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com

L

eading tyre manufacturer JK Tyre & Industries, has been a pioneer in using emerging technologies at its different manufacturing plant across India for making the company more agile and scalable. Currently, it has been testing several pilot projects using artificial intelligence, machine learning, RPA and analytics. Recently, two of its Mysore and Chennai plants have been migrated from legacy IT infrastructure to modern hyper converged infrastructure that has helped the company to keep operational and maintenance overheads to the minimum. JK Tyre has started embedding machine learning and AI for making tyres predictable and enhanced the tyre safety on the road.

Based on his 20 years of industry experience, Sharad Kumar Agarwal, Head – IT, JK Tyre & Industries Ltd is excited about the role of technology will play in the future of the tyre industry, “We are now entering an exciting, unprecedented time in technology – with the pace of change and innovation continuing to accelerate. We are poised to drive the biggest change since the dawn of the information age. Technology will continue to transform the way we work and live, raising many questions about both opportunities and challenges.”

JK Tyre is always keen to evaluate and adopt newer technologies to drive

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“

MOVING FORWARD WE ARE TAKING A BIG LEAP IN AI AND ML SO WE CAN HAVE BETTER CONTROL ON INVENTORY, ASSETS,WARRANTYAND CLAIMS PROCESS.WE INTEND TECHNOLOGYTO BECOME NOT JUSTAN ENABLER BUT ONE OF THE CORE DRIVERS OF OUR ORGANISATION GROWTH SHARAD KUMAR AGARWAL, HEAD – IT, JKTYRE & INDUSTRIES LTD

innovation and process improvement.

“We see great potential in industrial IoT technology, AI and ML, and look forward to scaling it into additional plants. In terms of IoT we have successfully completed our pilot projects and we are now planning to deploy horizontally across our plants.

Moving forward we are taking a big leap in AI and ML so we can have better control on inventory, assets, warranty and claims process. We intend technology to become not just an enabler but one of the core drivers of our organisation growth,” he continues.

Artificial intelligence and its ability to augment human workers is one of the most influential forces shaping the future of work. Together, AI and alternative work arrangements are creating an augmented workforce that challenges organisations to fundamentally reconsider how jobs are designed and how the workforce should adapt. AI can spark new ways of working that blend the best of what machines do with what humans bring to this collaboration.

Sharing the use case of AI, he informs that the company has recently launched a Smart Tyre, which can give data about how safe or unsafe is driving on the road. It has acquired a Punebased company for a product called Treel, which has the technology for tyre pressure monitoring system. “Being the pioneers of radials in India, we have done it yet again by introducing Smart Tyre as an extension to our initiative of

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providing mobility solutions to both commercial and passenger vehicle owners. The introduction of Treel Sensors is the first such high-tech move towards creating smart monitoring and maintenance of tyres. We have launched an app for the same. The driver can see what is the current pressure in the tyres to be safe on the roads,” Agarwal informs.

Moving beyond a back-end tool for the enterprise, AI is taking on more sophisticated roles within technology interfaces - from autonomous driving vehicles that use computer vision, to live translations made possible by artificial neural networks. AI is now consistently being used to add frictionless intelligence to people’s interactions with technology, creating opportunities to make any interface both simple and smart – driving wider, faster adoption of technology, and providing better outcomes for people.

It’s not a fluke that AI is growing so pervasively; its reach reflects the value it brings to interactions, making each one more natural and simple. Advances in natural language processing and

machine learning make technology more intuitive to use.“We are looking forward to adopt the usage of above use cases of natural language processing to

launch a voice bot to interact with the customers and machine learning to derive analytical business insights,” shares Agarwal.

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How Hike is redefining social connections with AI Hike has brought in the hyper-personal and hyper-local elements by addressing eight-nine Indian languages and by doing sticker recommendations in an effective fashion at a low latency of few milliseconds. Dr Ankur Narang, VP- AI and Data Technologies, Hike speaks with CRN India’s Abhishek Raval

Please share the core guiding principles that you have learned about AI after having worked at some of the top technology companies in the world?

AI essentially is computer programming that learns and adapts from user behaviour. The potential waiting to be unleashed from AI to transform the world, as we know it, is immense. At Hike, we are deploying AI to redefine social connections and

empower consumers to supercharge expression. We are leveraging ML libraries like TensorFlow and some amasing homegrown talent at Hike, but some core principles that continue to guide me are: Focus on high impact AI projects, that can deliver solid business RoI to the company. ◗ Delivering through agile methodology; deliver initial output and ◗

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get buy-in from key stakeholders to stay invested. ◗ Data collection and cleaning critical to obtaining high-quality results. ◗ Cross collaboration with business, product, tech essential for AI and ML teams to deliver meaningful impact to the company. Hence, this collaboration should be at the core for ensuring success of AI projects.

Output can be probabilistic. Hence, that needs to be taken into account

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while deploying for real-world applications.

Output from the AI model needs to comprehensible to give rational explanations to the domain experts.

burgeoning data growth is pivotal to AI’s success in any organisation.

Enterprise Data Warehouse and Data Lake are needed to support diverse data sets that can be used for AI applications. Data flows need to be robust and scalable with high performance. Efficient infrastructure including CPU and GPU clusters are needed to build scalable and complex AI applications for large scale data.

Streaming data infrastructure such as Kafka pipelines are needed to provide AI solutions leveraging a combination of online and offline data. Last but by no means least, data security and privacy powered by a robust AI infrastructure are key to ensure the confidence of the user and customer enterprise.

What kind of AI roadmap have you set for AI in Hike?

At Hike, the belief is that technology should wrap itself around people and not the other way around and that AI is definitely leading the way to actualise this vision. We have achieved great strides at pushing ML models on the device to help users find stickers they like in real-time and we are on track to enhance the hyperpersonal and hyper-local user experience even further. AI & ML is at the core of the company. We’ve used it in amazing ways to scale expression like never before. Our areas of research and application include Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision and Social Network Analysis (SNA). From creating the largest library of conversational stickers of over 1 million stickers to pioneering research and development in the field, we’re excited to enable the next leap in the ecosystem.

We are pushing the boundaries and building a new social future with AI at the core of it. The world is evolving at such a rapid pace, it's only natural for social mediums to do so as well. Social connection is a core human need, important enough to dedicate a mission to. We believe the timing couldn't be better. We’re excited to do this with homegrown AI & ML talent.

What have been the benefits of using AI at Hike?

AI has opened the door for tremendous innovation, to further improve things that we today assume have reached their limits. So much more is possible today that wasn’t even just a few years ago.

From building radically unique products at the intersection of product, design, engineering and art to cuttingedge work across NLP, Computer Vision and more. We have been able to make some significant leaps here— from showcasing at renowned global

DR ANKUR NARANG, VP- AI AND DATATECHNOLOGIES,HIKE

platforms such as TensorFlow World, IJCAI & ECIR to live application of research through our powerful sticker recommendation and discovery features. It’s also interesting to note that Hike is the only player that is using NLP to solve for local languages at a mass scale.

With a huge focus on research-led innovation, we have also led partnerships with local academia such as Indraprastha Institute of Technology Delhi (IIIT-D). Our unique advantage of enabling locally relevant research, especially for a diverse market like India, has been key for these partnerships. Cultivating a culture of AI innovation has immense benefits both for Hike as well as the ecosystem. As an initiative in this direction, we have recently launched the Hike Patent Programme, which not only incentivises Hike employees with rewards and grants but also lends legal and market guidance to prospective patent filers.

What are your views on having a robust supportive IT infrastructure for AI; for example, the required amount of data integrity and consolidation/ data lake or warehouse, etc.

Data is the building block of artificial intelligence. Thus, a robust IT infrastructure enabling a solid data storage strategy equipped for the

Please tell us about Hike’s participation in the Tensor Flow World 2019 conference?

Hike’s vision is to build a new social future where social products are joyful.

A future which will see products built around people and not the other way around. To enable this vision the company is guided by six intrinsic principles. A key principle here is advancements in tech and AI. These advancements enable us to push richer and more personalised experiences in real-time to the users. This is where events like TensorFlow World 2019 play a key role. This is the first event this year that saw the best minds in ML come together and discuss the role and impact of TensorFlow and TensorFlow Lite in the community. It was great to represent Hike as the only ‘Made in India’ company and deliver a keynote on our AI-driven innovations and the unique aspects of how we deliver sticker recommendations. To further elaborate: With TensorFlow and TensorFlow Lite, the kind of work Hike has accomplished is pretty unique in the country. We have brought in the hyperpersonal and hyper-local elements by addressing eight-nine Indian languages and by doing sticker recommendations in a very effective fashion at a low latency of few milliseconds.

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AWS RE:INVENT 2019 RESONATES CLOUD SUCCESS FOR PARTNERS, CUSTOMERS Every day, AWS adds 50 new partners to Amazon Partner Network. In last five years, the channel strength has grown five-fold, with several traditional and global SIs and ISVs joining the stream for amplifying the cloud story for AWS

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he world’s biggest provider of cloud computing services and Amazon’s profitable division – having a growth rate of 35 per cent and an annual revenue run rate of US$36 billion – Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently concluded the eighth edition of the industry’s largest cloud computing conference, re:Invent 2019.

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AWS

Doug Yeum,

AndyJassy,

Head of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances

Chief Executive Officer,AWS

With over 65,000 attendees including technology enthusiasts, developers, consultants, technology partners and startups, 2500 sessions were held at the week-long conference, held in Las Vegas. The scale of the event is getting bigger, which reflects the base of AWS in enterprise, for its cloud offerings across the world.

With millions of customers globally using AWS' advanced infrastructure, storage, and compute services, this year, two big financial and healthcare giants, Goldman Sachs and Cerner Corporation, made their presence felt and shared their journey to the cloud.

In a three-hour keynote, Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS announced a plethora of services across its portfolio, covering compute, storage, infrastructure, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Emerging technologies like ML, AI and 5G were among the top discussed ones as he believes that every application and workload will be infused with these technologies. He also made a bold statement that modern companies are not looking for on-premise, paid software licenses and database software and solutions from Microsoft and Oracle. With companies betting big on digital transformation

and embracing cloud, AI and ML, AWS is looking at expanding its geographical foorprint and opening new zones, so it can reach out to newer companies and help in their digital transformation journey.

Jassy also reiterated that contribution of AWS' channel partners and startups has been phenomenal in the last five years.

Holistically, AWS has the availability of over 175 global services and platforms. With the announcement of new services and enhancements into existing services at re:Invent, each market and country – including India – will see the roll out of the same in the

WITH THE NEW SERVICES, AWS EXPECTS ITS CHANNEL TO INVEST AND INNOVATE MORE WITH AWS CLOUD SOLUTIONS AND SUPPORT CUSTOMERS IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND GROWING THEIR BUSINESSES

next six months.

APN gets bigger and stronger Interestingly, AWS has also seen a big shift among traditional and established global SIs and regional ISVs, who have joined AWS Cloud in the last 18-24 months, and have become AWS' consulting and technology partners, informed Doug Yeum, Head of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances, at the Global Partner Summit Keynote.

With the new services, AWS expects its channel to invest and innovate more with AWS cloud solutions and support customers in digital transformation and growing their businesses.

Empathising with the hard work and challenges faced by SIs in building a technology company, he assured partners that AWS is committed to making investment in partners' success. Some of its leading consulting and technology partners under APN, such as Alfresco,Velocity, F5, Tyler Technologies, App Associates and Amdocs shared their success stories on how they are innovating their businesses, at the same time, helping customers leverage technology and innovate digitally with AWS.

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On the partner front, AWS is not only adding born-on-the-cloud and new league of service partners, but also the established and leading partners. This has accelerated the growth of cloud for AWS. Presently, AWS caters to a diversified group of partners, covering established SIs, VARs, public sector partners and management consulting companies.

“Partners have been a key part of our business strategies from the beginning.

We did not anticipate such rapid growth of APN when we launched it in 2012.

Over the years, we have added numerous consulting and technology partners – an average of 50 new partners every day across the world,” added Yeum, who has been associated with AWS for last six years in different roles. He believes India is a hub for large SIs, ISVs and startups that are well established in major markets. Yeum is looking at expanding the partner network and evolving traditional partners to transform digitally.

With cloud being a new norm among SMBs and large enterprises, large SIs and ISVs from India are now becoming AWS partners. Today, not just born-onthe-cloud partners like Blazeclan and ISVs like Druva, even large, established GSIs such as Infosys, Wipro and TCS are working with the AWS. “We are seeing diversification in APN and more partners are joining it.

When we started APN, the vast majority of consulting partners were born-on-the-cloud SIs like Blazeclan, Cloudreach, Classmethod and Megazone. However, now the network has evolved and includes next-gen MSPs,” he continues.

Ackowledging that cloud is transformative and key to enterprise, these large GSIs have started moving their traditional on-premise customers onto cloud. “I expect GSIs will accelerate investment and more such partners will emerge from India.

Partners like to work with AWS, because we are customer obsessed.

We don’t ask our partners to sell more in the mid of quarters. We work backwards with customers and partners,” he remarks.

Sharing the channel perspective,

Milind Borate

Navdeep Manaktala

Co-Founder & CTO, Druva

Director & Head – Digital Native Business, Amazon Internet Services

Milind Borate, Co-Founder & CTO, Druva – one of the Saas based ISVs offering data protection as-a-service on AWS Cloud for last 10 years – says, “Druva has over 4,000 customers in the US, Europe and Asia. Our go-to-market strategy involves working together with AWS and its consultating partners and ISVs for giving complete data protection and data recovery to public cloud users.”

Borate added that enterprises in India have not fully gone on public cloud; however, mutual funds and insurance companies have seen good success. “Since the total cost of ownership is much lower in cloud compared to on-premise solutions, we guarantee 50 per cent savings to our customers. Today, less than 10 per cent of our customers are on premise and majority is on cloud,” added Borate.

The core focus of re:Invent 2019 for partners was on three big blocks: Service innovations, geographic footprint expansion and enterprise workload migration opportunities for partners.

New services hail innovation The pace of innovations at AWS is not slowing down. Currently, it has over 175 services for customers; and every time AWS launches new service, it brings new opportunities for partners.

New services like Wavelength, Outpost, Amazon Braket, Amazon Connect, Sage maker Studio and Data Exchange are some of the examples of futuristic services which will push its partners to start innovating and build deep skills around quantum computing, 5G networks and bring more potential for customer growth.

Geo expansion-workloads migration

CURRENTLY, AWS HAS OVER 175 SERVICES FOR CUSTOMERS; AND EVERY TIME AWS LAUNCHES NEW SERVICE, IT BRINGS NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARTNERS

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Customers get excited when AWS enters new regions, as it enables its partners and customers to work more closely and avail services locally. The primary objective of AWS in addition of more regions is to tap enterprises across industries, pushing them start working with AWS and move away from legacy enterprise applications like

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SAP, VMware, Windows and Oracle, to AWS Cloud.

Giving an example of how AWS has been migrating SAP on-premise workloads to cloud since 2011 with the help of its partners, Yeum says, “Today, we have 5,000 customers using SAP on AWS. We have more customers than any cloud providers. Our wide network of partners has fuelled this growth in SAP migrations. We have wide SAP based HANA service offerings. These investments will lead to new businesses for our partners.”

The key take-away for partners, Yeum pointed out, “Wherever partners are located with expertise, there are many different types of opportunities for all of them to grow with AWS. In my opinion, the biggest opportunity lies in helping customers with their digital transformation journeys, so they can take better advantage of all the innovations that AWS brings to the market.”

Right tools for right job and right partners With the right tools for the right job, AWS also gives more importance to the right partners. One of the reasons why customers choose to go through APN is that, APN helps in identifying the right consulting and technology partners, having dedicated AWS experts, industry and AWS service specialisation, IPs and customers success stories.

“As AWS grows, we will continue to be customer-focused. Ninety per cent of what we build is driven by what matters to customers; whereas, the other 10 per cent includes things we hear from customers. They may not be able to articulate exactly what they want, but we try to read between the lines and invent on their behalf,” Yeum asserted.

AWS in India While globally, AWS is cracking new grounds for its cloud from mid to large enterprises and startups, back home the cloud story remains steady and growing. Navdeep Manaktala, Director & Head – Digital Native Business, Amazon Internet Services,

FOCUS AND ROADMAP FOR PARTNERS The fireside chat between Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS and Doug Yeum, Head of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances, set the tone and way forward for the channel Yeum: How important are partners to AWS and how do you see them evolve over the time?

Jassy: Since the start of our services, partners have been very strategic to our business. Our customers want to move to cloud with software they are using and take advantage of new software. They need support in migration to a new world of data.

We have a deep focus, working with partner ecosystems, in order to evolve their businesses. It’s a very broad and diverse ecosystem. Our partners have helped customers to move quickly to our services.

Yeum: You have been talking about digital transformation. How can partners think of transforming themselves?

Jassy: In my opinion, senior leaders have to prioritise, as you cannot do everything.

You have to make hard decisions for transforming and take leadership role, take topdown aggressive goals. Some of our top partners made decisions which have changed businesses. Many companies have to think of what they are great at. There are lots of opportunities for our partners to help customers in modernising applications, mass migrations, building data lakes, landing zones, helping customers move away from mainframes, and transition from Windows to Linux. Partners know customers well, which makes them instrumental in helping them move to new technology platforms.

Yeum: What are the top new services that partners should focus on?

Jassy: Companies with modern technology capabilities are not running vast majority of applications workloads using relational database. They are setting up data lakes, data stores, and the right analytics tools. Tools are now available to help your customers in building ML model and help them in their production. Apart from that, IoT, analytics, ML on the edge are some of the key areas where partners should start exploring new avenues.

shared that today AWS Cloud is being used by hundreds of thousands of active customers in India for a broad range of applications, including website hosting, big data analytics, AI, ML, IoT, social games, mobile applications, e-commerce platforms, and running mission-critical business applications like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft.

The breadth and depth of AWS services have been growing.

Manaktala said, “Our Mumbai region will start seeing the roll-out of new services within over the next six months. In the past, our conversation was around storage, compute, networking and database. Now, it has

changed to analytics, IoT and cloud.”

There’s a lot of traction in terms of analytics. Citing an example, he informed that Delhivery, one of the largest e-commerce logistics companies in the country, is built all-in on AWS. This is a good example of how analytics is being built on AWS. Lastly, as the cloud journey for AWS keeps getting bigger and deeper with its customers, winning and retaining partners' trust is also becoming critical.

With the launch of new services, competency capabilities for partners and startups, and renewed partner focus, the growth of channel ecosystem will be one of the key pillars of AWS Cloud's success.

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‘We will continue to invest aggressively in as-a-service opportunity’ HPE has recently announced several key enhancements to its industry-recognised Partner Ready Program. In an exclusive interaction with CRN India, Joybrata Mukherjee, Director Channel, SI, Alliances and Service Providers, HPE India, provides details on partner benefits, enhanced strengths, increased opportunities and more

By Nivedan Prakash HPE is helping enterprises envision and realise their digital future. How critical has been the role of your partners?

Organisations today have a great opportunity to adopt digital transformation to create new and compelling customer experiences, and differentiate and grow their business.

However, to achieve all this, they require a consistent cloud experience for managing all their apps and workloads, the ability to innovate at high velocity, and the freedom to choose the combination of technologies that best meet their needs.

At HPE, we are focused on helping customers leverage the economic potential of their data, from every edge to any cloud. This includes our commitment to provide customers our entire portfolio, through a range of subscription based, pay-per-use and asa-service offerings, by 2022. Of late, we have introduced several new offerings specifically designed to help companies accelerate their path to digital transformation.

HPE continues to lead with the ‘Partner First’ philosophy and views the channel as the front foot in delivering industry leading innovation to the market, through a clear strategy of collaboration, and specialist development. The channel represents HPE’s strongest route-to-market and

our partners are an important extension of our own sales and technical teams, and they are a powerful force in driving growth and digital transformation projects for customers.

HPE recently announced enhancements to its Partner Ready Program. Please explain in detail about the unique tenets of this enhanced program?

HPE Partner Ready is one of the IT industry’s oldest, and profitable partner programs. Our recently announced enhancements were designed to improve our ability to partner, conduct business or improve profitability through the channel. All of the enhancements we are implementing this year and developing for the future include elements to ensure partners can be successful today and are prepared to incorporate an as-a-service model by 2022. Firstly, the enhanced program maximises the partner’s experience through a full suite of programs and tools to help partners close deals faster.

These tools include easily-accessible HPE demo capabilities, competitive and instant pricing from first request with the option for differentiated pricing via deal registration, and faster time to partner on-boarding.

Secondly, the enhanced enablement opportunities allow partners to further develop solution mastery through self-

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selected, progressive continuous learning paths, competency curricula, and new technical certifications. Finally, the accelerated rewards and recognition will enable partners receive special pricing from the day of onboarding and protect margins while selling across the whole HPE portfolio.

Additionally, increased benefits are available to partners selling into new customers and/or selling innovative solutions to existing customers.

Partners will also work towards new HPE Tech Pro Community rewards and continuous learning badges.

What factors were considered while introducing these enhancements in the program?

Please highlight the feedback given by the partners?

The HPE Partner Ready Program is based on continual partner feedback and is designed to deliver consistency through a stable and predictable framework, compensation model and membership acceleration. Locally and globally, we spend time listening to our partners and take on their feedback when making continual improvements.

We receive feedback in three areas, which we deliver through the enhanced program. These were, need for stronger skillsets to meet customer demand, improvement in partners’ executive customer conversation, and personalise

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their journey to as-a-service. HPE promised programmatic consistency for FY20, and we have delivered. Partners will enjoy a consistent framework, compensation and membership acceleration.

Please explain the benefits of the enhanced HPE Partner Ready Program that partners can leverage?

The FY20 HPE Partner Ready Program enables partners to personalise how they engage and leverage resources with HPE, in order to best meet the needs of their clients and continue winning in the marketplace. To complement faster and more transparent on-boarding experiences for new partners, and predictable and automated pricing with simplified deal registration, we enhanced a comprehensive demo program that provides a full set of offerings. To provide customers with ample time with HPE offerings before installing full solutions, the updated demo program gives all HPE Partner Ready Partners discounts and easy access to equipment across the entire portfolio, both hands-on and remotely, and via HPE innovation centers.

Also, in June 2019, we introduced the ‘Pro’ series to deliver channel partners the solutions, skills and programs to further develop their teams, transform customer experiences and drive business growth together. By focusing on global consistency in three areas – Connect, Learn, and Grow – the ‘Pro’ series expand opportunities for partners to work with HPE teams, gain visibility, enhance their skills, grow profitably and enjoy an increased ease of doing business.

The HPE Sales Pro Community approach drives sales excellence for HPE and partner sellers through effective sales communications and sales enablement initiatives. The HPE Tech Pro Community initiative for solution architects introduced a new reward and recognition program as well as two new industry leading certifications and a full suite of continuous learning paths for technical expertise. Additionally, the HPE Marketing Pro Academy expanded its

JOYBRATA MUKHERJEE, DIRECTOR - CHANNEL,SI,ALLIANCES AND SERVICE PROVIDERS,HPE INDIA

offerings through a new online Digital Marketing Partner Learning Center, and new Accreditation Program.

Please explain how these program updates optimise the partner experience and empower them to further accelerate engagement and growth?

The enhanced HPE Partner Ready Program allows partners to customise their approach to developing enablement, achieving profitability and establishing differentiation in the market. These program updates specifically optimise their experience and empower them to further accelerate engagement and growth of HPE GreenLake. We will continue to invest aggressively in as-a-service opportunity, to capitalise on our market leadership, leverage our channel and partner ecosystem, and deliver our entire portfolio, from edge to cloud, under the HPE GreenLake portfolio.

How has been the growth of HPE GreenLake business in the country so far? How will this updated program further push the growth in 2020 and beyond?

HPE GreenLake re-sets the digital opportunity for customers by providing a robust as-a-service portfolio that provides flexibility and speed to market.

It gives customers a choice of

subscription-based, pay-per-use, and managed IT as-a-service offerings, providing them with a consistent cloud experience for managing all their workloads. Earlier this year, Infosys adopted HPE GreenLake to help enterprises accelerate their hybrid cloud transformation providing them increased agility and reduced total cost of ownership.

Building on the momentum of HPE GreenLake, we launched HPE GreenLake Central, offering customers a simple, unified, digital experience across public and private clouds, the data center and edge workloads. HPE GreenLake Central also provides CFOs a real-time view of technology spend across the hybrid IT estate, to understand spend by users, teams, and business units, and within public and private cloud, data centre and edge environments.

To personalise the as-a-service journey, HPE Preferred Service Providers who complete the HPE GreenLake competency, among others, can reduce their revenue threshold by 10 per cent as part of the skillset expansion membership acceleration benefit.

How will enhanced rewards program, rebates, and sales enablement tools accelerate and expand partners' revenue opportunities in the coming year?

Going forward, our key channel priorities are to recognise and reward the value add of our partners, enable them via competencies, certifications, learning paths and access to demonstration equipment. This is to ensure we are effectively serving the partner ecosystem, including all the differing types of businesses we partner with today. HPE Partner Ready gives partners direct access to all the critical business tools and information they need to do business with us. In FY20, partners will benefit from alignment across Partner Ready for solution providers, services, service providers, international partners, distribution and Aruba – one program, one communication plan, one core set of assets.

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Channel Chief

Why cyber security channel partners are keen on RSA Security One of the key initiatives of RSA Security has been the focus on region-wise budget allocation to ensure that every region is amply backed up to carry on their channel activities throughout the year

Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com

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ybersecurity company, RSA Security has its own unique way of working on enablement of channel partners and manoeuvring of channel strategies. The company, which is 96 per cent driven by channel, is however gearing up to getting all its resources aligned to work on what is most important to it.

Kartik Shahani, Director Channel, APJ, RSA shares how RSA is going around its channel ecosystem and its focus for 2020. “When I took over last year, the channel operations was in

silos. The marketing team would organise events and engage in lead generation in their own way.

Enablement happening through distribution partners for the other partners. Some enablement was happening from the side of RSA as well.

However, it had a programmatic approach. That is when we thought that this needs to be put into an integrated framework, whereby all the resources are aligned to work together,” says Shahani.

With the new initiatives now in place, things have been falling in line for RSA’s channel endeavours. The first thing the company did was to focus on

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region-wise budget allocation to ensure that every region is amply backed up to carry on their channel activities throughout the year.

The next effort was to properly comprehend the various aspects of channel enablement such as which partner should be enabled; how many of them should be enabled; and who will enable them.

“Here, we wanted to have a programmatic method of doing it, so that it does not become ad hoc. We look at how many partners we need, which are the partners who are going to do which technologies, and does it align with them? We also consider

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RSA Security

their commitment in doing that business with us, and then we train those partners to the best extent that we can and the marketing dollars can be used for enablement, pipeline generation and customer awareness.

This whole exercise comes together in an integrated manner. And that is what we did all of last year,” informs Shahani.

Focused programs There is a number of programs from the house of RSA to empower the channel. “Our marketing plan, itself, is like a program. There are other programs that we offer, such as the enablement exercise. There are projects that we do in a country or a region to see how they are going to be replicable.

For instance, in a two-day sales training, there will be learnings and, hence, content generation. This will be shared from India, all the way up to Japan and everyone will get the same training. In case of alliance program, we would want to have relationships with the big four and they will go with us jointly to the market. Within the marketing domain, there are different programs for the channel. There are also programs such as a 10-city road show,” adds Shahani.

There is also an RSA Tiering Program, which is for the Gold, Titanium and Platinum partners, with differing benefits for each. “The Gold partners have a standard set of benefits and we enhance them by giving them specialised accreditation training. We conduct marketing programs for those partners to give them more access to customers. There is a unique deal registration (DR) program which has been helpful for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Under this program, when a partner registers a deal with us, we work with them, and he gets all the benefits of driving that deal. An account is locked-in with the partner.

The special discount and the DR discount is transferred to the partner,” explains Shahani. RSA Security, with the backing from Dell Technologies, is positioned well in the market, providing technology, consistency and continuity to customers. For partners, it is a major

“

OUR MARKETING PLAN,ITSELF,IS LIKE A PROGRAM.THERE ARE OTHER PROGRAMS THATWE OFFER,SUCH AS THE ENABLEMENT EXERCISE.THERE ARE PROJECTS THATWE DO IN A COUNTRY OR A REGION TO SEE HOWTHEY ARE GOING TO BE REPLICABLE KARTIK SHAHANI, DIRECTOR CHANNEL,APJ,RSA SECURITY

benefit as they are backed by a company, which is stable, invests in technology and makes their customers feel confident.

Enablement The company is also strong in the area of enablement. “RSA Archer, our auto line of product, requires the most amount of skills. And that’s not because of the complexity of the product, it is because compliance needs a lot of knowledge base and enablement, which takes a while to be absorbed and should be of a certain level,” claims Shahani.

“Our another product, Net Witness, features the whole aspect of intelligent threat analysis. When it is put into a SOC, and all the information starts flowing into this product, which then starts analysing. It does tasks like user behaviour analysis and several other types of analysis,” he adds.

Moving ahead In 2020, the company’s focus is around the number of partners that can bring incremental business. “We are trying to figure out a methodology to gauge the amount of our direct business, vis-a-vis the business done by our channel partners. If we can recognise this, we can make higher investments in the channel space,” he stresses.

According to Shahani, in 2020, RSA Security has prioritised focused partner enablement.

“We are building an entire landscape, carving out spaces within our coverage model to determine where the partners will operate, what they will bring and what we will recognise. This gives us a complete clarity of what we are getting by having direct sales force to meet customers and have our channels do it as well. Once we get that picture, then all our programs become much easier and better to manage,” concludes Shahani.

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News Analysis

Acquisition of Inflow Technologies will double Tech Data’s India operations Jaideep Malhotra, President, Asia Pacific, Tech Data, speaks to CRN India about the details of this acquisition, which will strengthen the India operations for Tech Data. On the flip side, Inflow's partners and resellers are unsure of the impact this will have on getting better rates and pre-sales support, which they used to receive from Inflow Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com

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he Indian IT distribution space has been going through a major transformation since the time emerging technologies like cloud, AI, ML are getting matured in enterprises.

Majority of hardware-focused distributors are now realising the need to digitally transform either organically or inorganically to sustain in IT distribution. Recently, a global valueadded distributor Tech Data signed an agreement to acquire another niche networking and security distributor from Bangalore, Inflow Technologies.

The move is expected to scale Tech Data’s positioning as a strong distributor in the Indian market and will further expand its geographical footprint across Asia Pacific.

It is also believed that Tech Data, Inflow deal has come at a time when Tech Data itself is in the process of being acquired by Apollo Global Management for US$ 6 billion.

Nevertheless, Tech Data has been continuously acquiring companies to strengthen its distribution hold in major markets.

Traditionally, Inflow has been a niche technology distributor with expertise in areas like cybersecurity and networking, where Tech Data is

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“

THE ACQUISITION OFAVNET, AND NOW INFLOW TECHNOLOGIES WILL FURTHER DISRUPTTHE IT DISTRIBUTION BUSINESS. INFLOW IS KNOWN FOR ITS SERVICES AND TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES IN IT DISTRIBUTION JAIDEEP MALHOTRA, PRESIDENT,ASIA PACIFIC,TECH DATA

relatively a new player in the local market. With Inflow coming into the fold, Tech Data will certainly emerge as a significant distributor. Currently, Inflow enjoys a strong vendor partnership with over 40 networking and security brands along with a wide channel ecosystem of over 2,000 partners, since it was established almost 15 years ago, in 2005.

According to a Tech Data, the acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close during Tech Data’s first quarter of the fiscal year 2021. The detail of the exact deal size is yet to be disclosed. By acquiring the business of Inflow Technologies, Tech Data will optimise its presence in the APAC region and strengthen the company’s end-to-end portfolio, enabling customers to offer a broader set of capabilities, particularly around nextgeneration technologies.

Speaking exclusively to CRN India, Jaideep Malhotra, President, Asia Pacific, Tech Data, shared that with the changing business model of IT infrastructure, Tech Data has transformed into an end-to-end IT distributor with an offerings portfolio that spans across endpoint devices, most advanced data centre solutions and next-generation technologies. He says, “The combined entities will

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Tech Data

almost double our operations on assets, revenue, and geographical expansion front. India is the fastest-growing market for Tech Data. This acquisition will enable us to obtain a business platform in India to build a value chain by leveraging synergies between the two companies.”

In the last eight years, Tech Data has been preparing to meet the demands for third party platform technologies, including cloud computing, big data and analytics, AI and IoT. Moreover, the Florida based distributor is on a continuous spree of acquiring companies for bolstering its India operations. In the past, the distributor acquired Avnet Technology Solutions for strengthening its cloud operations.

“We have been investing in new emerging technologies such as IoT, analytics, cloud, security, and services.

It’s our core focus, followed by utilising digital capabilities to accomplish it.

We are also optimising our global footprints, including in Asia Pacific and India. The acquisition of Avnet, and now Inflow Technologies will further disrupt the IT distribution business. Inflow is known for its services and technical capabilities in IT distribution. We will leverage its technical expertise and distribution assets and will further grow the business as we come together,” mentions Malhotra.

Currently, Inflow has a presence across India and South Asia. The business represents more than 40 vendors, including Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Palo Alto Networks, alongside Oracle, Juniper Networks, Kaspersky and Micro Focus, among others.

Inflow Technologies is headquartered in Bangalore, India, and is a value-added distributor for a host of technologies, including cybersecurity, networking, unified communications and collaboration, storage and server management, infrastructure and application software, automatic identification and data capture, electronic security, and related services in South Asia. Inflow has more than 250 employees, 7,000 customers, and 1,4000

plus channel partners. Once the acquisition gets completed, there will be more clarity on whether Tech Data will integrate the existing employees, channel partners and customers.

“As a technology enabler, Inflow Technologies brings a variety of core competencies to Tech Data, including business development, channel engagement, training, and pre-sales and post-sales support,” says Byju Pillai, president and chief executive officer, Inflow Technologies. “Our combined skills, portfolios, talent and shared commitment to exceptional service with world-class execution will enable us to deliver higher value to our channel partners,” he adds.

Partner reactions

“

WE HAVE BEEN DOING MULTIPLE PRODUCTS BUSINESS WITH INFLOW FOR OVER 10 YEARS FOR PLATFORNIC,CISCO,MCAFEE BRANDS.IN THIS CASE,TECH DATAWILL DEFINITELY HAVE A STRONGER MARKET POSITION WHICH IT HAS BEEN LACKING IN INDIA,EVEN AFTER IT HAD ACQUIRED AVNET TECHNOLOGIES.FOR US, BUSINESS WITH BOTH THE DISTRIBUTORS IS GOING FINE SHITAL NAHAR, DIRECTOR,NAHAR INTEGRATED SYSTEM SERVICES

CRN India reached out to a few Inflow partners for their reactions on the acquisition. Partheeban L, Director, Ecaps Computers India from Coimbatore states, “Tech Data and Inflow combining together will help Tech Data to have a stronger presence in networking and security space.

While for partners like us, we will have negotiation challenges. Our margins will further be reduced as the competition will be intensified.

Moreover, the biggest advantage of working with Inflow was its strong presales team. So far the business is as usual and we have not received any communications from Inflow on this development.” Ecaps is Inflow's reseller for Cisco and HPE range of products. It generates `1 crore annual business for reselling the products.

Pune based partner Shital Nahar, Director, Nahar Integrated System Services, who is doing business with both Tech Data and Inflow Technologies, expresses mixed reactions. “I did not believe at first the news of Inflow getting acquired, as we have been doing multiple products business with Inflow for over 10 years for Platfornic, Cisco, Mcafee brands. In this case, Tech Data will definitely have a stronger market position which it has been lacking in India, even after it had acquired Avnet Technologies. For us, business with both the distributors is going fine.”

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Bhubaneswar: An emerging hotspot for IT

Abhishek Srivastav, Deputy General Manager, Channel Sales, Samsung Enterprise Business

Explore Bharat Bhubaneswar witnessed breakthrough discourse from industry veterans Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com

B

hubaneswar, which had to bear the wrath of Cyclone Fani a few months ago, is up on its feet and running again in full pace. CRN India stepped into Bhubaneswar with its Explore Bharat Initiative and engaged with the IT channel partners and the SME ecosystem in the conclave organised in November.

The same urge of growth and digital transformation was evident on everyone's agenda. The event was attended by almost 100 delegates and witnessed breakthrough discourse from industry veterans.

Channel Partners: The IT forerunners of Bhubaneswar The keynote speaker of the channel track of the event was Arun Kumar Dey, Proprietor, Computer Professional, Past President, Information Technology Association of Odisha (ITAO) and Joint Secretary, FAITTA. He said, "It is a great endeavour by CRN and ITAO to organise such a progressive event.

There is a lot of scope for penetration of computers and hence great opportunity for development in the field of technology."

The next presenter on stage was Abhishek Srivastav, Deputy General Manager, Channel Sales, Samsung Enterprise Business. He gave an overall

perspective of the company, whereby it operates in almost every sector and conveyed that it is much more than a mobility device company. He also comprehensively explained the benefits for the channel partners and promised further support.

The next speaker was from the stable of Schneider Electric who spoke on the company's energy efficient and connected offerings. Dhritiman Ghosh, Senior Manager, Schneider Electric, explained how the company's products are a fit for every organisation at every location and how they can be remotely monitored. He also mathematically explained how the users of the product can cut down on their electricity expenditure.

The next session was the much awaited panel discussion, which constituted Rajesh Kumar Dora, MD, Printlink Computer & Communication; G B Gupta, Director, Trisoft Software; Parikhita Dash, MD, Nigam Computing; and Srinivas Tripathy, President, ITAO; and Soubhagya Raoutrai, Former President, ITAO. The panel discussion was moderated by Arun Kumar Dey. It was a power-packed discussion on how the channel can digitally transform itself and take up new opportunities.

SMB ecosystem: The backbone of the growing economy The SMB track was yet another interesting and informative one. The keynote speeches were made by D N

30 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JANUARY, 2020 I crn.in

Arun Kumar Dey, Proprietor, Computer Professional, Past President, ITAO and Joint Secretary, FAITTA

Atif Ahmed Shakir, General Manager, Enterprise Mobility, Samsung Enterprise Business

D N Dash, Director, RND Laboratories and Sampad Dash, Director, BG Pharmaceutical

Dash, Director, RND Laboratories and Sampad Dash, Director, BG Pharmaceutical. Dash said that allocation of IT budget is an important component of the entire organisation's budget. Automation will ease out a lot of workload and eventually result in efficient at ever front. He also pointed out that automation will enable work to process in a faster manner which will, inturn, help people get more personal time and time for leisure.

The next keynote speaker Sampad Dash, Director, BG Pharmaceutical said,

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Explore Bharat Bhubaneswar

Dhritiman Ghosh, Senior Manager, Schneider Electric

Panel discussion at the Channel Track

Sampad Dash, Director, BG Pharmaceutical

Schneider stall

Samsung stall

cites that operations previously were all manual, but now things have largely been automated. He also suggested that it is important to have an advisor.

Atif Ahmed Shakir, General Manager, Enterprise Mobility, Samsung Enterprise Business explained the various features of the products and how they can be put to use of SMBs. He also detailed out the usefulness of Samsung Knox mobile security platform which makes the mobility devices extremely secure.

Dhritiman Ghosh educated the

audience about the usefulness of Schneider products to the SMBs and how the products can fit into their budget and the environment. The participants then engaged themselves with the vendor partners – Samsung and Schneider Electric – to understand more about their products and solutions.

Booths were hosted by the vendors for easy experiencing of the products for the guests. The event was undoubtedly an effective knowledge sharing platform for one and all.

Audience in full attendance

that during his early visits to the USA and the Europe, he felt that there was a huge gap in terms of technology. The usage and implementation of technology in India was strikingly less in India. Computers were commonplace during 1980s in the Western countries, which at that time, looked like a distant reality for India. However, to his delight, he finds that the gap has been bridged now and India is extremely progressive in terms of technology. From his personal experience of his family business of Ayurvedic healthcare, he

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Explore Bharat Kochi rides on digital transformation The Kochi edition of CRN India’s flagship Explore Bharat series attracted a prestigious gathering from the SMB sector and channel partners who discussed the potential business opportunities in the Kerala market Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com

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RN India’s flagship Explore Bharat series achieved yet another height of success with its event at Kerala’s major port city, Kochi, which is one of the most flourishing cities in the state. Kerala is the eight largest state economy in India, with an abundance in business sectors and excellent road network with a huge capacity of 4.62 km per 1000 people as compared to the national average of 2.59 km per 1000 people.

The two-day event was attend by over 80 delegates spanning the SMB and the IT channel partner ecosystem.

Breakthrough speeches and presentations marked the event. The prospects, adoption and usefulness, and impact of IT in business was discussed during the program.

The event started with the keynote speech by N M Sharafudeen, Vice Chairman, Kerala Chamber of Commerce, who said, “Technology has invariably become a part and parcel of our existence. One evident instance is the use of mobile phones in innumerable ways in our daily professional and personal lives. However, today things have gone a great way where there is extensive use of robots in several business environments. We have seen that in the automobile industry, robots have taken up several tasks of humans, which also means that human jobs have been upgraded. For instance, a person who is working as welder or performing

other small technical jobs, will now have to go through skill up-gradation and get on with the work of handling and maintaining the robots. In the next 5 to 10 years, technology will take over 50 per cent of jobs. Also, driverless cars are coming in. All the companies which dream of becoming big will have to walk hand-in-hand with IT, or have to be IT-enabled. Several hi-end technologies have already been implemented in Kerala.”

Sharafudeen cited the example of companies like Uber and Swiggy, and pointed out that today’s big companies were once small, but they scaled due to their talent, business acumen and optimum adoption of technology. Giving an example of one of his companies, OMEGA Services & Consultants – which he claims to be the largest recruiter in Kelera – he mentioned that this technology driven platform gained immense exposure due to which a lot of spent on advertisement, travelling and sourcing was reduced.

Muhammed Ashraf N V, President, Kerala State Small Industries Association, explained, “Although the industrial growth in Kerala is less, compared to what it should have been and given that the state has produced several techies working at the state, national and international level, today it is catching up. Technology is doing wonders and Kerala has huge potential and adoption of technology that can expedite development. The present

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generation is aware of the boons of technology and is ardently using and promoting the same.”

In his session, Syed Ahmed Tameen, Deputy General Manager, Enterprise Mobility, Samsung Enterprise Business, said, “The enterprise market has evolved drastically when it comes to smartphones. It is of paramount importance for running the business. There are a large number of people who say that their PC is now obsolete and mobile phones are pivotal for the work they do.

Looking at the market today, we understand that from small shops to a large enterprise, everyone is adopting automation.”

Tameen further pointed out, “Even five years ago, automation was a big challenge, which required a lot of investment on infrastructure. But, now the products and solutions are more readily available.”

Speaking in his session, Moosa Anwar, Senior Manager, Schneider Electric, said, “All our products are energy efficient products and with that customers spend less on electricity consumption, and it can be monitored remotely or at a local level.”

Channel engagement The channel track was very successful, and attended by veteran speakers and delegates from the channel ecosystem. “This event is an opportunity for the system integrators in Kerala to get the focus from IT OEMs. We now need to

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Explore Bharat Kochi

Syed Ahmed Tameen, Deputy GM, Enterprise Mobility, Samsung Enterprise Business

N M Sharafudeen, Vice Chairman, Kerala Chamber of Commerce

D Vishranth, GM, Channel Sales, Samsung Enterprise Business

Audience in full attendance at different sessions of Explore Bharat Kochi event

Toshy P Mathew, State PRO, AKITDA

Panel Discussion at the Channel Track

Samsung stall

evaluate our readiness to accept the new changes in terms of sales, technology, products and markets,” said Toshy P Mathew, State PRO, AKITDA. Providing insights into how mobility devices have become so important, D Vishranth, GM, Channel Sales, Samsung Enterprise Business, said, “There was a great penetration of desktops in the enterprise space in the early 90s. As we moved towards the end of 90s and early 2000, we had an explosion of laptops, whereby every single individual in an organisation was given a laptop, so that there is more productivity, ease of data

Prateesh K, Deputy Manager – Sales, Schneider Electric

Moosa Anwar, Senior Manager, Schneider Electric

Muhammed Ashraf N V, President, Kerala State Small Industries Association

Schneider stall

access, convenience and so forth. But now, in last six or seven years, we have seen that slowly the tablets and the mobile phones are actually getting penetrated deeply into organisations.”

Prateesh K, Deputy Manager – Sales, Schneider Electric, said, “We are seeking out the big questions and answers like how we can make the most of our energy and resources. We, the people, employees, developers, partners, investors and inventors at Schneider are all passionate about doing what is right – which is to bring up energy efficient products.”

The next session was the muchawaited panel discussion titled, ‘Future of IT Channel: Are partners ready to take up digital opportunities.’

The panel consisted of Madhusudan Gupta, Managing Director, Radha Electronics; Binu Thomas, President, All Kerala IT Dealers Association; K. George, CEO, Digicom; and Shiju Balan, Managing Partner, Comtech Systems.

The panel discussion was moderated by Mathew. They conversed on how digital opportunities can be leveraged for the channel growth and what learnings they need to take.

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Event

Creating synergies between Microsoft and partners The Mumbai Chapter of International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), the pre-eminent global networking platform for Microsoft Partners, organised the first IAMCP Annual Conference, in Mumbai recently Mohit Rathod

ISV Club, wherein the association will publish a catalogue of ISV solutions and P2P engagements on its website. Any active partners in India, with its own IP, can join this club.

mohit.rathod@expressindia.com

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he Mumbai Chapter of IAMCP has marked 10 successful years of serving excellence among the Microsoft partners’ community.

Whereas, globally, IAMCP is celebrating 25th anniversary. IAMCP – which has over 4,000 partners across 40 countries – is slated to organise its worldwide conference in July 2020, which will set the roadmap for Microsoft partners globally, in terms of focus areas and business growth.

The Annual Conference in Mumbai identified the differentiation of the Indian market, through insightful engagements and charted-out the India-specific areas of focus, advantages, opportunities and business agenda for Microsoft partners in the country. The one-day knowledgeintensive conference witnessed deep deliberations by distinguished speakers including Rajiv Sodhi, General Manager, Partner Ecosystem, Microsoft India; and Suresh Ramani, President, IAMCP India.

IAMCP India Directions In his opening keynote address, Ramani said, “The primary objective behind organising this conference is to provide value to partners, and help them grow with this community.

Currently, there are five IAMCP chapters in India and more will be

Microsoft India Directions

Rajiv Sodhi, General Manager, Partner Ecosystem, Microsoft India

formed. IAMCP is a great platform for P2P interactions; however, more importantly, it is to be noted that IAMCP is a self-helped community, with a vast knowledge base. We organise sessions on cutting-edge technologies and build relationships with the Microsoft team. Partnerships are a crucial and integral part of IAMCP, which can help your businesses with international expansion.”

Ramani further informed that IAMCP India has formed an all-India legal body, Association of Cloud & Technology Service Providers. Giving an example of special initiatives such as Partner Azurification, Ramani said that IAMCP India has planned various upcoming initiatives in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and other locations.

At the conference, Ramani launched the a new P2P initiative, IAMCP India

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Setting the focus of Microsoft India and the importance of IAMCP, Rajiv Sodhi General Manager Partner Ecosystem - Microsoft India, stressed on the need for partnerships. He said, “We can’t do partnerships alone, thus IAMCP is of great importance to us. We believe in local communities, and we engage with city-based chapters and partner communities in order to address their concerns and support them. In the next 12-18 months, IAMCP India will scale up and form many more chapters across the country. The SMB business lies in various cities, not just in the metros. These local SMB companies will need engagements with partners, and IAMCP is well positioned to cater to that.”

Stressing that digitisation and digital transformation are different, Sodhi shared several Microsoft initiatives and technology use-cases in India. He said, “We live in an Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge world – this combination boosts digital transformation. Technology has a huge role in workforce, customer experience, operations and product transformation, which are the key pillars of digital transformation. Microsoft Cloud powers

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IAMCP Annual Conference

Suresh Ramani, President, IAMCP India

Aditee Rele, Director – Cloud Solutions, Microsoft India

Munesh Jadoun, CEO, ZNet - An RPtech Company

Chetan Shah, Vice President, IAMCP India

Rustom Hiramaneck, Country Head – South Asia, Acronis International

all of the above. Our platform approach is a key differentiator. This is important as it requires trust among our partners.

Our second differentiator is the partners, themselves. We help partners build their solutions, and take their products to the market. Moreover, we partners to sell their products, services and solutions.

We have created a co-selling model worth US$ 10 billion globally.”

A key highlight of the conference was the fireside chat between Ramani and Sodhi, wherein Sodhi answered numerous queries of Microsoft partners and re-affirmed Microsoft’s commitment to the channel community. Sodhi said, “We will always be partner-led – 97 per cent of our revenue is generated through partners. Customers are getting techsavvy, so we are investing in digital sales. But partners have a role to play here as well, in terms of deployment, training and certification. We have partnered with Reliance Jio, because it has aligned interest in micro businesses. Jio’s foray into Office 365

will expand the market for everyone, including partners. Jio will also come up with its own partner program.”

Sodhi reiterated that Microsoft’s first priority is building skills among the partner community. He is trying to ensure that every architect from Microsoft spends time in engagements with partners in each chapter of IAMCP. Responding to Ramani on advice to the partner ecosystem, Sodhi urged partners to pick one of Microsoft’s three cloud and become highly successful in that. He said, “Today, it is not about breadth, but depth. Partners should focus on providing lifetime value to customers. In the cloud world, upselling and cross-selling is important.

Customers may always ask for morem and that’s where P2P interactions play an important role, helping partners cater to customers’ needs.”

Furthermore, the conference featured a plethora of industry speakers across sessions. Some of the other speakers include Anand Jethalia

Director – Microsoft 365 Marketing Microsoft India Modern Workplace; Munesh Jadoun, CEO, ZNet - An RPtech Company; Rustom Hiramaneck, Country Head – South Asia, Acronis International; Murali Avanamuthu Founder, Director - CETAS Information Technology; Aditee Rele, Director – Cloud Solutions, Microsoft India; Dixit Roy Mahidhara, Director – Enterprise Sales, Citrix; Geeta Gurnani, Director – ISV and Next Generation Partnerships, Microsoft India; Suvrata Gayan, Director – Partner Recruit Programs & Communications, Microsoft India; Jyotil Mankad, Director & Business Head, Ingram Micro; Chetan Shah, Vice President, IAMCP India, among others.

Attended by over 155 people, the event served as a platform to maximise the business potential of members through peer-to-peer interaction, member advocacy, community outreach, growth, and education— while enhancing members’ ties to Microsoft.

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Dell Technologies’ Next Data Decade Dell Technologies Summit 2019 highlighted new generation technologies that can help enterprises make the most of the data. The summit further showcased Dell Technologies’ business strategies for 2030 and introduced new autonomous infrastructure Salvi Mittal salvi.mittal@expressindia.com

T

he explosion of data creates unprecedented opportunities for enterprises. All of the physical objects are becoming instrumented, connected and digitised, and that’s creating an enormous stream of data in the digital universe. Dell Technologies Summit 2019 highlighted new generation technologies that can help enterprises make the most out of the data. The summit further showcased Dell Technologies’ business strategies for 2030 and introduced new autonomous infrastructure. Dell Technologies Summit 2019, recently held in Austin, Texas, emphasised on turning data into action to change the way enterprises do business and address some of the world’s most pressing problems.

“Dell has always been about a culture of technology and optimism. We believe that technology amplifies human potential, and people form the centre of everything that we do. Dell was founded 35 years ago with the idea of democratising technology and helping advance human progress on scale. Today, technology is more accessible, it’s more connected and more powerful. But there’s always more to do, as we are rushing forward to a connected and intelligent world, with 5G coming ahead, along with artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning,” said Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO, Dell Technologies.

Now, just putting the technology in the hands of people is not enough. The greatest opportunities lie in really

Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO, Dell Technologies

putting this data to work. And this is where Dell Technologies unlocks the power of data to solve enterprises’ greatest challenges.

2030 goals By 2030, for every product that a customer buys, Dell Technologies will reuse and recycle. Michael stated, “We are committed to ensure that women will comprise 50 per cent of our global workforce by 2030. As we look forward to 2030, we need everyone’s participation in the digital economy.

There are hundreds of millions of new jobs coming up, and we need to prepare and provide access to everyone who wants to join us.”

One program, 40 million people While talking about the digital economy and new job opportunities,

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Michael asserted that they are working with the Government of India and Tata Trust to deploy a cloud-based analytics system to deliver preventive healthcare and assessments in remote villages across India. “So far, they’ve reached 11 million people, and our goal is to reach almost 40 million people that otherwise would not have access to the services,” he said.

The collective impact of technology, scale and expertise Over the next decade, Dell Technologies will use its global scale, broad technology portfolio and expertise to yield meaningful and measurable impact on the society and the planet. The company will use 100 per cent recycled or renewable material in all packaging and lead the circular economy with more than half of all

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product contents being made from recycled or renewable material.

Dell Technologies will drive a comprehensive, science-based climate program, setting emissions goals across facilities, supply chain and operations to customer use of products, including partnership with suppliers to meet a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 60 per cent per unit revenue by 2030.

of cloud and the control, performance and predictability of on-premise infrastructure. It offers flexible payment options for an extensive range of technologies across the full infrastructure stack, including compute, storage, networking and virtualisation.

More than 2,000 channel partners are already using payment solutions from Dell Financial Services (DFS), and partners who finance with DFS have historically grown twice as fast with Dell than those who do not finance with DFS. On Demand is AI and ML based support that provides proactive and predictive services and allows customers to drive better outcomes in the determinant of productivity.

Automation everywhere The next 10 years are going to be about exponential increase in data – a lot of it being generated at the Edge.

But it’s clear that the technology of the modern enterprise is going to be about multi-cloud, pointed out John Roese, President and Chief Technology Officer – Products & Operations, Dell Technologies.

Roese said, “We have recreated the expectation that we’re going to be connected everywhere. With technologies like 5G, we have created an expectation that AI powered experiences are going to work on our behalf and make our lives better. These technology innovations are going to transform our businesses into a productivity and disruption powerhouse.”

Roese further described the elements of their journey. He said, “Firstly, there is a need for a multi cloud operational hub to orchestrate and automate the multi-cloud. Secondly, we need to move from basic automation to AI-driven automation to make the products smarter. Every Dell Technologies flagship product is aggressively adopting machine intelligence to make them not just faster, more reliable or functional, but interestingly, also simpler, easier to use and more automated. We also need to make sure that this automated infrastructure is available everywhere.”

Dell EMC PowerOne The reality is that a vast majority of private clouds is built using server storage and network combinations.

However, for some reason, whether it’s the dominant dialogue from single product companies, or a fragmented

John Roese, President and Chief Technology Officer – Products & Operations, Dell Technologies

Moonshot goals

ecosystem, that type of design has lacked the kind of cloud life experience needed.

Roese revealed, “Now we have a way to bring the best-of-breed experience into the automated, orchestrated future architecture, PowerOne. The system has one goal – building infrastructure in a way that is frictionless and easier, compared to the current status-quo.”

Further, Dell Technologies Summit 2019 highlighted its 2030 goals in the areas of advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion, upholding ethics and privacy, and transforming lives. All underpinned by huge belief around ethics and integrity.

The summit featured a panel discussion to deep-dive into Dell’s moonshot goals. moderated by Karen Quintos, Chief Customer Officer, Dell Technologies.

On-demand consumption-based and as-a-service delivery model

Advancing sustainability

To add a significant amount of sales capacity and coverage for the business, Dell Technologies is providing its customers with more choice and flexibility in consumption and delivery of modern infrastructure, Dell Technologies On Demand.

“Organisations need to plan, deploy and manage their entire IT footprint.

They can choose how they consume and pay for IT solutions and enjoy the flexibility to evolve as their needs change over time. Our data centre utility delivers the highest degree of customisation capacity, which is delivered as needed,” said Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman, Dell Technologies.

On Demand is a set of consumptionbased and as-a-service offerings on the industry’s broadest infrastructure portfolio that delivers IT with the agility

For every product a customer buys, Dell will reuse or recycle an equivalent product. Hundred per cent of the packaging will be made from recycled or renewable material and create a circular relationship or circular economy with the customers.

The tech giant is addressing climate change by leveraging technology, supporting R&D, and promoting resiliency. Dell is leveraging AI, ML and predictive analytics to undertake smart city master plans and develop smarter options for mobility, safety, water consumption, renewable power generation and storage, power and water distribution, and healthcare.

“We’ve developed these recycling programs globally. With our customers, we can design a better product-line knowing that we get the materials

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back. And that's how we achieved our goal for integrating 100 million pounds of this recycled material back into our product,” said David Lear, VP of Sustainability, Dell Technologies, during the discussion.

“Dell emphasises to understand its most progressive customers who really want to integrate technology as part of their own sustainability program and their own social impact. We have to look at our own four walls and analyse how we use electricity, how do we increase the amount of renewable energy and decrease the amount of carbon emissions?” added Lear.

Cultivating inclusion By 2030, Dell expects that 50 per cent of its global workforce, and 40 per cent of its global personnel and leaders will be women. By 2030, there will be a potential global tech labour shortage of 4.3 million. By 2024, there will be 1.1 million computing related job openings in the US. Dell Technologies has partnered with the public sector, and there are programs focused on finding talent.

Dell is encouraging companies and educational institutions to research the rapidly changing workforce needs and solutions; partners to align curricula with industry needs and expectations; and to implement training and re-skilling programs as jobs and needs change, including in-the-moment and on-the-job learning.

“The best talent comes from diverse backgrounds and diverse mindsets. It's not just about attracting and building the talent, it is about making sure that talent is developed and everyone thrives within our organisation,” stated Brain Reaves, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Dell Technologies, while discussing the moonshot goals as a panelist.

Transforming lives By 2030, Dell Technologies will use its expertise and technology to help 1,000 non-profit partners digitally transform to better serve their communities. Each year, through 2030, 75 per cent of the employees will

Panel Discussion: Dell Technologies - Progress Made Real - 2030 Goals

practice volunteerism in their communities.

Reaves said, “We intend to achieve our moonshot goal and transform lives with our technology and scale. We will advance healthcare, education, economic opportunities, and deliver enduring results to one billion people by 2030. We see potential in the technology to address some of the most complex social issues across the globe.”

truly value that trust is to continue with commitment and transparency, which is the critical enabler for customers to continue to share their data with us,” asserted Sooji Seo, Chief Privacy Officer, Dell Technologies.

Said Quintos while concluding the discussion, “The bottom line is that our customers and team members trust us with their data. It is a business imperative that we continue to maintain the trust.”

Upholding ethics and privacy By 2030, Dell Technologies will fully automate its data control processes, making it easier for customers to control their personal data. By 2030, 100 per cent of its employees will demonstrate the commitment to values criteria. By 2030, 100 per cent of the Dell's direct partners will demonstrate their communities.

Dell is encouraging R&D in technology to adopt privacy by design approaches in government technology solutions. Implementing smart, open data platforms for governments to share their data, with appropriate data security and privacy safeguards, to foster innovative solutions to societal problems.

“We build technology with our customer’s privacy, right on the top of mind, as privacy is fundamental. During this time of rapid digital innovation, our customers, and our team members trust us with their data. And the best way to

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Role of data in a number of the other moonshot goals Jeremy Ford, Vice President of Giving and Social Innovation, Dell Technologies pointed out that technology plays a key scaling role for a country like India, where two thirds of the population live in rural areas.

Dell Technologies has developed a cloud application platform which enables healthcare workers across the country with the screening process. It provides doctors and medical professionals the ability to better diagnose, and provide information so that the Government of India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare can make smarter choices on how they invest and where they invest in population health initiatives to better enable treatment. “Harnessing the data is a catalyst to how we drive change, it enables us not to miss the one in one billion,” added Ford.

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