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NOFN IS CRITICAL FOR e-COMMERCE & eGOVERNANCE B
THE GOOD RESPONSE THAT THE E-TAILERS ARE RECEIVING CLEARLY INDICATES THAT NET-SAVVY INDIANS ARE READYTO TRANSACT ONLINE
uying a cellphone can be as complicated as buying a secondhand car. Like the secondhand car salesmen, the cellphone retailers offer a limited selection of models, which makes it difficult to believe their recommendations, especially when new devices are being introduced every week. Recently I needed to buy a new cellphone and I took the route that has elements of both, online and offline. The practice is normal nowadays—select few models with e-tailers, test them in a regular store, go back online to make the final purchase. The price that I paid to the e-tailer for the cellphone was about 10% less than the lowest price quoted by the brick-and-mortar shop that I had visited. The logic of lower prices is unbeatable: it is one of the main reasons behind the rising popularity of e-tailers. In 2013, India’s e-commerce market was worth $3 billion, it is likely to hit $50 billion by 2020. The good response that the e-tailers are receiving clearly indicates that net-savvy Indians are ready to transact online. The level and quality of broadband penetration in the country is still abysmal, but once the penetration of high-speed broadband deepens, the sale of online travel, books, fashion products, cellphones, laptops, etc., by e-tailers will see a massive surge. According to the new Telecom Subscription Data released by TRAI there were only 85.74 million broadband users in the country by the end of December, 2014. The TRAI report also reveals that 70% of the users are relying on their smartphones or dongles to access the Internet—the reason why 30% of the traffic in the e-commerce platforms is from mobile devices. NOFN, which seeks to connect 250,000 gram panchayats through broadband optical fibre network, can be an important driver for e-commerce. Unfortunately, NOFN has been mired in delays since its inception in 2011. The project was supposed to be completed by 2013, but now the deadline has been shifted to December 2016. It is time for the government to invite private players - from telecom, internet, content and e-commerce sectors - to invest in NOFN and ensure that the project gets completed on time. In this issue of the magazine, we are having a coverage of the 17th edition of the Express Technology Sabha. The Digital India programme, whose first pillar is broadband highways, was the topic of discussion in many sessions at the Sabha. There was overwhelming consensus at the Sabha that NOFN must be completed for realising the vision of Digital India.
anoop.verma@expressindia.com
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contents
The 17th edition of Express Technology Sabha was amazing and gigantic—200+ guests from areas of governance, industry and thought leadership came together to exchange knowledge on the best ways of achieving the vision of Digital India.
DAY - 1
DAY - 2
Express Technology Sabha | PG 36
Power Breakfast by Vodafone India | PG 45
Welcome Address | PG 37
Power Breakfast by Dell India | PG 46
Smart Cities: The New Frontier in Digital Governance | PG 37
Passport Services in Digital India | PG 47
DAY - 3 Public Finance Management Automation | PG 55 Power Solutions for Digital India | PG 56
Launch of the Smart City Report | PG 38
Innovate and Rapidly Implement Government Projects-Cloud Deployment Options with PaaS | PG 47
Security in Digital Transformation– Brave the New World | PG 56 IT Enabled Smart Governance | PG 57
How Smart are Our Cities? | PG 39 Security In the Age of Digital India | PG 48 Smart Solutions for Digital India | PG 39
Next Generation Security for Datacenters | PG 57
Achieving The Vision of Digital India | PG 40
Leveraging Actionable Security Intelligence to Defend Against Targeted Attacks | PG 48
Digital India: Leading e-Participation with Innovation | PG 40
ICT for Better Delivery of Healthcare Services | PG 49
Transforming Indian Cities | PG 41
Security Essentials | PG 50
Chhattisgarh Geographic Information System | PG 59
Smart Solutions for Smart Governance | PG 41
‘Make in India’Technologies for ‘Digital India’ | PG 50
Improving Governance with Technology: Cloud, Big Data Analytics & IoT | PG 60
Emerging Innovations | PG 51
Power Discussion by ESDS Software Solution | PG 60
Power to Do More | PG 42 and more....
Best Practices in Cyber Security | PG 58 Smart Transactions | PG 59
and more.... and more.... 4
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interviews
THE DISTANTDREAM OF eGOVERNANCE
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“eGovernance is a partnership between the government and the private sector,” says Tapan Ray
DR. PARAKALA PRABHAKAR
Transforming Andhra Pradesh into ‘Digital AP’ 18
CONNECTING THE LASTMILE
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Once NOFN is fully rolled out, it will facilitate the implementation of eGovernance initiatives such as e-health, e-banking and e-education
SANJAY KAUL
India needs digital highway 23
INTEGRATED,MOBILE & PERSONAL
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At the heart of client computing there exist the aspects of mobility and BYOD, the two forces that are now driving innovation in enterprises.
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SHEKHAR AGRAWAL
Mobile Solutions for Better Governance
CYBER SECURITYA CHALLENGE FOR MANKIND
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“Issues related to cyber security encompass the components of globalisation and our very way of life,”says Sanjay Sahay
RAJIV KAPUR
NOFN is of Strategic Importance
case study 32
ESSAR GETS VIGOROUSLY COMPLIANT When Essar wanted to modernise its global HR portal, it turned to Red Hat JBoss Web Server
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VDI CHECKS-IN WITH DIAL For ensuring a comprehensive solution to various inadequacies in its desktop environment, DIAL opted for VMware’s VDI solution
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MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express Ltd Business Publication Division 2nd Floor, Express Tower, Nariman Point Mumbai- 400 021 Board line: 022- 67440000 Ext. 527 Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com Vol 26. No. 4. April, 2015 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Editor Anoop Verma* Chief of Product Dr. Raghu Pillai Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Heena Jhingan, Pupul Dutta Copy Desk Aditi Gautam Mumbai Jasmine Desai DESIGN National Art Director Bivash Barua Deputy Art Director Surajit Patro Chief Designer Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rushikesh Konka Layout Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West Prabhas Jha - North Sanghamitra Kumar - East Dr. Raghu Pillai - South Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Navneet Negi Ajanta Sengupta Amit Tiwari
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Express Computer Reg. No. REGD.NO.MCS/066/2015-17, RNI Regn. No. MAHENG/49926/90 Printed for the proprietors,The Indian Express Limited by Ms. Vaidehi Thakar at Indigo Press, (India) Pvt. Ltd. Plot No. 1c/716, off Dadoji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027 and Published from Express Towers, 2nd Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021. (Editorial & Administrative Offices: Express Towers, 1st Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021) Editor : Anoop Verma (*Responsible for selection of News under the PRB Act.) Copyright @ 2012 The Indian Express 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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INTERVIEW DR. PARAKALA PRABHAKAR ADVISOR (COMMUNICATIONS), GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH
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TRANSFORMING ANDHRA PRADESH INTO ‘DIGITAL AP’ On the sidelines of 17th edition of Express Technology Sabha in Hyderabad, Dr. Parakala Prabhakar, Advisor (Communications), Government of Andhra Pradesh, spoke to Anoop Verma on the steps that the state government is taking to attract investments from IT and electronics companies.
The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh has declared his vision for transforming the state into ‘Digital AP’. In the united Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad used to be the major centre for IT industry. How difficult will it be for the new state’s IT industry to recover from the loss of Hyderabad? When the present Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh was the Chief Minister of the united Andhra Pradesh, we had built a significant infrastructure in Hyderabad for IT companies. We had also built another city called Cyberabad, where some of the world’s major IT companies have their development centres. Microsoft, Oracle, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and many others are based here. There is no doubt that the loss of Hyderabad has created a major challenge for us. Currently, the state does not have any other IT centre like Hyderabad. But, lack of an existing IT hub can also be seen as an opportunity for building a new greenfield city, one that will have world class infrastructure and facilities for catering to the needs of a new wave of IT companies that are keen on doing business in India. In your opinion what kind of IT companies will be willing to set up their development centres in the new greenfield cities that you are planning to develop? The scenario for the IT industry in India is now quite different from how it was two decades ago. Earlier, the companies used to focus on software development, BPO EXPRESS COMPUTER
operations and back office When the west sleeps, India is awake—so a software code written in USA during the day can be tested in India at night and shipped back through the Internet to be put to use in time for start of the work on following day. But now India’s talent in IT has grown phenomenally and the companies all over the world have realised that. They are now keen to make better use of this talent. Also, the nature of the IT industry has changed significantly. Now SMAC is having a huge impact. The state government is concentrating on creating greenfield projects where the IT companies can do their cutting edge work in developing solutions for social, mobile, analytics, cloud, etc. There is a huge demand for electronics and hardware in the country. Going by the current estimates, it is expected that by the year
We plan to provide every household in the state with high-speed broadband connectivity at the cost of only Rs.150 per month
2020 the demand for electronics in the country will rise to $400 billion. Currently, most of our electronics requirements are being imported. This situation creates a unique opportunity for Andhra Pradesh to develop an electronics industry for fulfilling the burgeoning domestic demand in the country. Accordingly, the state government has initiated several initiatives for the development of electronics sector in the state. What steps are you taking to facilitate rapid growth of the electronics industry in the state? Andhra Pradesh has developed a policy for the electronics industry and in this we are offering huge incentives to the interested companies. For every person who gets employed in the electronics industry there is a certain incentive. The incentives being offered are not only in the form of rebate on taxes, but also in the form of reduction in the cost of land that the IT company is buying. Several electronics manufacturing clusters are coming up in various parts of the state. Visakhapatnam is going to be a hub for both hardware and software. A startup village has already been started in Visakhapatnam, where an innovative ecosystem is being developed to ensure that the new software and hardware companies are easily able to set up and operate their development centres. APRIL, 2015
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DR. PARAKALA PRABHAKAR ADVISOR (COMMUNICATIONS), GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH
What kind of response are you getting from the electronics industry for investing in Andhra Pradesh? Much of electronics manufacturing in the world has shifted from Japan to China and also to countries like Taiwan and South Korea. But now even in these countries the cost of doing business is going up, and hence, the electronics companies are looking for alternative locations for starting new manufacturing facilities. Due to its large coastline, Andhra Pradesh offers several advantages. To begin with, the state has 14 deep water ports and the potential to develop 10 more. In Visakhapatnam the ports are already quite developed. We are of the view that the coastline of Andhra Pradesh and the availability of large number of deepwater ports is a very attractive point for electronics companies. Once they set up their manufacturing centres here, it will be easy for these companies to ship the finished products to different markets. The policies that the state has developed for helping the electronics industry is also a major attraction for these companies, many of which are now keen to relocate or locate their plants in the state. We are having good response. The government of Andhra Pradesh is planning to provide broadband connectivity of 10 to 20 Mbps to twelve million households in the state. What steps are being taken to implement this scheme? We plan to provide every household in the state with high-speed broadband connectivity at the cost of only Rs. 150 per month. This project is being executed through the PPP route. The government will be the driver of the project and the private sector companies will be the partners. The cost to the consumer will be minimal. We are also going to involve the content providers and the service providers for enriching the quality of the broadband that the people are having in their homes. For instance, if someone has an internet connected television at their home, they should be able to browse 10
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through the content that has been developed by the digital content providers. The children in the house should be able to access educational material. The digital content providers can share some of the cost of the broadband. The device manufacturers and software providers can also share some of the cost. The government too can share the cost. Essentially this project of providing high speed broadband to all the households is going to be a partnership among players from many different sectors. Are you talking to the private telecom companies regarding this initiative? Yes, we are. The response that we are getting is quite positive. We have already established the Andhra Pradesh Fibre Corporation for managing the network and owning the assets. We will also be leveraging the ongoing National Optical Fibre Project, which aims to connect 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the nation by December 2016, for implementation of our broadband project.
Dr. Parakala Prabhakar presenting the “eGovernance Champion Award” to Dr. Neeta Verma, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), at the 17th Express Technology Sabha
Andhra Pradesh is planning to develop a new capital city.What steps are you taking to ensure that the new capital will be a Smart City? The good thing is that the new capital of Andhra Pradesh is being conceived and built in the 21st century—this is an enabling factor, as it will provide us with the opportunity of using the best city development technologies and techniques. The new capital of Andhra Pradesh will be the most beautiful city on this planet. It will come up on both sides of the River Kirshna—about 30 kilometres on each side, so almost 60 kilometres of riverfront will be there. It will also be a smart city. The city administration will use latest technologies for water management, power distribution, garbage disposal, sewage management, etc. It will have state of art facilities for managing transportation, healthcare and education. It will be a healthy and a happy city. anoop.verma@expressindia.com
APRIL, 2015
INTERVIEW SANJAY KAUL MANAGING DIRECTOR, SERVICE PROVIDER SALES, CISCO INDIA & SAARC
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“Broadband market in India is at an inception stage, we are yet to scratch the surface. There is demand for digital content, but we are yet to build the digital highway,” says Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director, Service Provider Sales, Cisco India & SAARC. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley
India needs digital highway What is your view of the broadband market in India? Broadband market in India is at an inception stage, we are yet to scratch the surface. The government has laid out an ambitious target of 600 million broadband subscribers by 2020. However, today we are having only 70-75 million subscribers. In next five years, we plan to have an eight fold increase in broadband subscriber numbers in India. So the industry and the government have this mammoth task of engineering an 8 fold rise in subscriber numbers. Multiple technologies will come into play, but there is no denying that mobile has huge advantages because of its penetration across the length and breadth of the country. I feel that newer technologies such as cable broadband can be an affordable alternative. With DOCSIS technology operators can offer internet speeds of up to 100 Mbps. We are providing our technology to companies such as SITI Cable, DEN Network, Hathaway and others for the introduction of next generation cable broadband. It has been a slow start for broadband in India. Industry needs financial injection and entry of couple of big players. How do you look at online video market in the country? To understand the video market, it is important to understand the user behaviour. In last 3 years, user behaviour has changed 180 degree. People who did not dare to touch smartphone are now consuming video in various forms on WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, etc. It is not only about messaging, we see large numbers of videos being embedded in social networks. So the demand for video consumption has tremendously increased. Video has an added advantage—one does not need to be literate to understand it, one simply consumes video. Now it has been proved beyond doubt that video has huge play in India, but can we have a digital highway, which takes videos to the people? This is where the role of government and industry becomes crucial. Initiatives like National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), provision of extra spectrum to mobile operators, make in India to boost ecosystem of devices and EXPRESS COMPUTER
endpoints, initiatives around driving digital literacy etc., must be executed. What are the verticals in which you see opportunities in India? We see momentum in many verticals. There are huge opportunities in education sector. Healthcare sector can be another big opportunity, even though it is very complex given current regulatory environment. There are opportunities in the financial sector, utility sector, etc. Security and surveillance, automotive and logistics are also areas of interest. Telecom operators are already offering payment services via mobile wallet system, the segment will become more diverse and offer more opportunities after payment bank licenses getting in place. We are bringing in technologies and business solutions for Service providers to front-end the execution in many of these verticals. You need the entire ecosystem technology players, services providers, application providers and vertical specialists to work in tandem to make it happen.
Once, we address the challenges of affordability and last mile connectivity, the goal of Digital India will be easy to achieve
Government of India has announced the Digital India initiative.What kind of role can Cisco play in this initiative? We are excited about the Digital India initiative and making massive investment to make it happen. From technology stand point, we have all the capabilities that are needed to make the vision of Digital India realised. We come from IP background and have made significant investment into mobility, video, security, data centres and collaboration etc. We are very keen to partner with the government, telecom service providers and vertical specialists to drive the execution of digital India program. We shall continue to invest in innovation, talent and growth in the country. India is a strategic market for Cisco globally and we are committed to India. India is our second global headquarter, here we have made significant investments. Our India site is the largest outside of our global headquarter in San Jose. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com
APRIL, 2015
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FEATURE
DeitY
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THE DISTANT DREAM OF eGOVERNANCE “eGovernance is a partnership between the government and the private sector. It can succeed when both sides cooperate and collaborate in the fullest possible way,” says Tapan Ray, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY) BY ANOOP VERMA
“A
fter joining the IAS, my first district posting was in Baroda as the District Development Officer. During those days, personal computers were a rarity. Hardly any government office had one,” reminisces
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Tapan Ray, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY). But despite the low level of computerisation, Ray was fascinated by computers and he decided that his office in the district needed one. Hence, he purchased a Personal Computer for his office.
He says, “In those days, I think, it was called PC-XT. Such was the significance of a Personal Computer in that generally computer-less era that my Chief Secretary came all the way from Gandhinagar to the district for inaugurating the PC-XT.” He also informs that next day the news was everywhere in APRIL, 2015
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the media—in the newspapers and even in Doordarshan’s news broadcasts. “The level of computerisation was so low in those days that the purchase of a simple PC-XT was enough to make news.” When asked about the kind of contribution that the PC-XT made in the overall development of eGovernance in EXPRESS COMPUTER
the country, Tapan Ray says, “You can think of that purchase of PC-XT as a small initial step in the direction that has now brought us to the stage where we can start working for Digital India.”
First Steps Towards Computerisation What kind of work did the PC-XT do in
the district headquarter in Baroda? Ray informs that during those days the district Panchayat used to collect lot of information for the ‘village amenities survey’. The information collected was mostly related to the status of approach roads to the villages, the number of schools, drinking water facilities, health, APRIL, 2015
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toilets and other amenities that the villages had. However, much of this work of data collection and analysis was done manually. “I thought why not computerise the process? Why not store the data in a digital format in the computer, so that it can be easily retrieved and analysed? It was then that I decided to get the PC-XT,” he says. “Ours was the first district panchayat in the country at that time to use a personal computer for this kind of data crunching work,” he adds. He accepts that the PC-XT was quite slow to work with. “It was funny,” he says, “if you put a query regarding the number of villages without an approach road, the PC-XT took as much as 3 minutes to type out the result. In 1989, when Tapan Ray was transferred to Godhra as Collector, he got a VSAT connection from the district to NIC Centre in Delhi. It was used to communicate election results to the headquarters. Ray is of the view that this connectivity led to more efficiency in the 14
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was reduced by at least six hours.”
Digital India Programme
eGovernance does not have to be a distant dream for this country.It is achievable work being done in Godhra district headquarters. After this when he was appointed the Collector of Baroda, he tried to bring computerisation to the election process. At that time the Lok Sabha elections were being held, and it was found that the manual counting of votes took too much time. “To speed up the process, we created a Local Area Network with a PC on every counting table. The counting officers at each table would feed roundwise results to the returning officer for aggregating the data in real time. With this system, the time needed for the process
Now posted as the Additional Secretary in Department of Electronics and IT, Ray is working with the aim of driving the government of India’s most ambitious development programme—Digital India. He says, “The Digital India programme has nine pillars. This programme puts together many existing schemes, which are being restructured and re-focussed, so that they can be implemented in a synchronised manner. In some cases we only need to make process improvements, which are low on investments but high on returns. Progress is being made on all the nine pillars at a steady pace. During the last few months we have successfully rolled out many eGovernance projects.” Ray is enthusiastic about the way the large number of mobile phone connections in the country can be used for providing information and services to APRIL, 2015
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the citizens. He talks about the IT platform that DeitY has created for quickly sending messages to large numbers of recipients. The Mass Messaging Application has already been developed and it has 1.36 crore mobile numbers and 22 lakh email IDs in its database. When asked about the steps that have been taken to ensure that the system does not get misused for rumourmongering and spamming, Ray says, “We have taken steps to have all the security related safeguards in place.” “In order to ensure the success of the Digital India programme, we need to get the people across the country to participate in it. This is what MyGov is doing,” says Ray. He explains that MyGov which has been launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister has been created to generate an atmosphere of partnership between the citizens and the government. The government aims to encourage Citizen Participation towards Good Governance by seeking their ideas, suggestions and grass roots level contribution. “For the first time in the history of this country, technology has been used in this manner to enable the citizens to participate directly in nation building,” he says. So what kind of response is the MyGov programme having from the people? Ray says, “Currently the programme has 7.5 lakh members. More people are coming in on a daily basis.” But when so many people are expressing their opinion isn’t there a danger of the best ideas getting lost in the crowd? Ray does not think that to be a problem. “We have a team to go through all the ideas that are being provided at the MyGov website. The ideas that have a merit will be forwarded to the relevant departments, where they are further analysed and if they are found suitable, they are put to use,” he informs. He feels that the biometric attendance system, which has already started covering all the central government offices in Delhi, is leading to seminal improvements in the efficiency and performance of the government departments. “The manual system of keeping attendance is being phased out gradually,” he says. “The Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system is leading to much better productivity. EXPRESS COMPUTER
IMPACTOFDIGITAL INDIABY2019 ●
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Broadband in 2/5 lakh villages, universal phone connectivity Net Zero Imports by 2020 400000 Public Internet Access Points Wi-Fi in 2.5 lakh schools, all universities; Public WiFi hotspots for citizens Digital Inclusion: 1.7 crore trained for IT, telecom and electronics jobs Job creation: Direct 1.7 crore and indirect at least 8.5 crore e-Governance & eServices across government India to be leader in IT use in services - health, education, banking Digitally empowered citizens - public cloud, internet access
Those who are habitually late can now be easily identified and penalised.”
Overcoming Challenges in eGovernance What is the key challenge that the government faces in developing eGovernance in the country? Ray says that the lack of high-speed connectivity in most parts of the country is a cause for concern. Unless there is high-speed connectivity, it is not possible for the government to provide online information and services. “Once there is high speed connectivity in all parts of the country, it will open up new avenues for Access service providers such as Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, and Cable TV operators, Content Providers etc., to launch next generation services and spur creation of local employment opportunities in a big way. This will enable us to bridge the digital divide
significantly,” he says. As of now high speed connectivity through optical fibre cable is only available in larger towns and cities. What steps are being taken to connect the villages? Ray says that the government has started the National Optical Fibre Network(NOFN) to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats in the country. “This will be done by utilising existing fibres of PSUs (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) and laying incremental fibre to connect to Gram Panchayats wherever necessary. Dark fibre network ,thus created will be lit by appropriate technology for creating sufficient bandwidth at the Gram Panchayats,” he says. He also informs that the estimated cost of the project is Rs. 20000 crore, which is being implemented by the Department of Telecommunications. How does the government ensure that there is enthusiastic participation of the private sector in the government? Addressing this issue, Ray says that the present government is keen to ensure that the private sector is involved in execution as well as financing of the eGovernance projects. “We understand very well that eGovernance should be a win-win proposition for the private companies,” he says. “If the companies are unable to make legitimate profits, why should they work?” “Private sector should also take cognisance of the fact that now the country is having a stable policy environment, and if the companies are creating effective systems of eGovernance, they will be able to make reasonable profits.” He goes on to say that eGovernance is a partnership between the government and the private sector. It can succeed only when both sides cooperate and collaborate in the fullest possible way. Digital India has the potential to open up huge opportunities for the private sector as well. “eGovernance does not have to be a distant dream for this country,” says Ray. “The private sector in the IT industry is doing quite well, so there is no reason why India cannot have world-class eGovernance.” anoop.verma@expressindia.com
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INTERVIEW SHEKHAR AGRAWAL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, VODAFONE INDIA
MOBILE SOLUTIONS FOR BETTER GOVERNANCE “Being a global leader in mobility, Vodafone has worked with governments in many parts of the world. We have a very good understanding of the eGovernance and mGovernance space and we are in a position to partner with the government for taking the vision of Digital India forward,” says Shekhar Agrawal, Senior Vice President, Vodafone India. In conversation with Express Computer
What are your views on financial inclusion schemes that have been rolled out? To ensure good governance, it is critical to have economic growth that is inclusive in nature. We are very positive about the financial inclusion agenda of the new government. We have been having conversations with government departments about the need of a trustworthy and transparent funds and subsidy disbursement process. Our mobile payment service M-Pesa can be an integral part of public distribution and direct business transfer (DBT) mechanism. Vodafone M-Pesa is the world’s most successful money transfer service. It enables millions of people who have access to a mobile phone, but have only limited access to a bank account, to send and receive money, top-up airtime and make bill payments. In India, Vodafone M-Pesa with over 85,000 agents and over 2.5 million registered customers, is the largest banking business correspondent. Our distribution network, built in the last 20 months, since launch in April 2013, is equivalent to 80% of the total bank branches in the country. We are working with Governments of Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand and other states for scholarship, NREGA wage and NRHM subsidy disbursements. So in our own small way we are contributing to the financial inclusion agenda of government through our unique M-Pesa platform. Government of India is using mobile platforms for delivering eGovernance 16
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services to the people in the country.What kind of work can Vodafone do in the area of mGovernance? The earlier system of governance was based on G2C (Government to Citizen) model, but now the government is working towards the C2G (Citizen to Government) model, which is a step in the right direction. eGovernance is transitioning into mGovernance, which is based on leveraging the omnipresence of mobile devices. As with businesses, the interactions between government and citizens are becoming a real-time two-way street. As a global leader in mobility Vodafone has worked with governments in many parts of the world. We have a very good understanding of the eGovernance and mGovernance space and we are in a position to partner with the government for taking the vision of Digital India forward. We are looking forward to playing a larger role in supporting the state and central governments, through smart solutions and smart governance. We can help leverage the power of the mobility platforms. Be it Internet of Things, mobile based payments,location based services or managed mobility–Vodafone can support it. Globally we have multiple use cases where we have supported government projects in terms of reducing costs and improving efficiencies. Back home in India, mGovernance based citizen impacting solutions are not new to Vodafone and we have been active in education, health and agriculture space. For over a year, we have
a dedicated account management and service team in place to cater to the ICT needs of the central and state governments. What kind of opportunities does Vodafone see in the Digital India programme? Under the umbrella of Digital India programme, big strides are being made by the government for creating a more technologically advanced society. We see in the Digital India as an opportunity for making a difference to the lives of millions of people. Vodafone has worked with government entities in overseas markets to deliver connectivity and solutions for several such initiatives. These global solutions address issues as diverse as urban traffic management through networkenabled analytics, use of smart devices to help increase police force productivity and smart metering for utility companies. The mobility solutions developed by Vodafone can significantly expand the government’s capacity to deliver positive outcomes to the citizens and businesses. We endeavour to be a steadfast partner in the government’s efforts. The government of India is planning to create several Smart Cities in the country. Tell us about the mobile solutions that Vodafone can provide for Smart Cities? Simply put a Smart City is the one that puts the citizen at the heart of everything, be it services, infrastructure or the socioeconomic fabric, irrespective of whether it is a greenfield, brownfield or whitefield city, A Smart City is a future ready city, which APRIL, 2015
uses ICT to ensure better health, education and overall wellbeing of its inhabitants. Technology can help reduce cost, resource consumption and improve G2C and C2G communication. The key components for such cities are transport, energy, health care, education, water and waste management. A Smart City must leverage IT and Telecommunication infrastructure. We have use cases in energy management, traffic management, citizen safety, waste management and interactive learning. We feel Smart Cities will essentially be the smart building blocks enabled through smart solutions. Vodafone is a market leader in M2M technology, it can support Smart City initiatives through connectivity, enterprise mobility, unified communications, cloud-based services and hosting services. VBS is actively engaged to bring our global best practices around these products and services to India. Give us an overview of the work that Vodafone is doing for various government departments in the country? We have a team of account managers dedicated to serve the needs of our government customers. They are constantly engaged with health, education, urban development, rural development and home ministries, to name a few, for understanding their challenges and accordingly tailor solutions for their needs. We are also in the process of building a partner ecosystem to address issues related to mHealth, mEducation, mAgriculture and mCitizen. What are Vodafone’s plans for Indian market? What kind of growth do you expect in the mobility and the enterprise market? Today Vodafone is the market leader in enterprise mobility. We would like to continue this dominance. We also plan to grow our fixed-line business which has seen a traction in the recent years. Our business roadmap is also driven by innovative offerings that we are planning – we will continue to lead the market innovation in M2M, in which we are recognised as the number one communication service provider in the world. The upcoming launch of cloud marketplace will enable us to become a total telecommunications provider. As far as the strengthening of our presence in government space is concerned, we are keenly looking at Digital India, Smart Cities and the various mGovernance opportunities that are emerging. We wish to be seen as a capable total solutions partner for the government vertical. EXPRESS COMPUTER
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CONNECTING THE LAST
MILE The government has a vision for connecting 2,50,000 panchayats in the next three years. The 3G networks are already in operation and 4G is now set to be spread across the country. NOFN is about to be fully rolled out. With these initiatives the vision of connecting India will soon be realised BY PUPUL DUTTA 18
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he Digital India programme has nine pillars. The first of these nine pillars is ‘development of broadband highways’, while the second one focuses on ‘universal access to mobile connectivity’. The first two pillars of the Digital India programme are indicative of the importance that present government is awarding to mobility and broadband. The success of the other seven pillars of Digital India programme will to a large extent depend to a large extent on the success of the first two. The latest telecom subscription data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of APRIL, 2015
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to 85.74 million at the end of December, 2014 with monthly growth rate of 4.28%.” The data clearly indicates that there is a lot of work that the nation needs to do for complete Internet penetration in the country.
National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)
India (TRAI) says, “The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 964.20 million at the end of November, 2014 to 970.97 million at the end of December, 2014, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.70%. The urban subscription increased from 568.72 million at the end of November, 2014 to 572.29 million at the end of December, 2014 and the rural subscription increased from 395.48 million to 398.68 million during the same period.” However, a vast majority of the connections in the country are in the urban areas. The TRAI report, “The EXPRESS COMPUTER
urban tele- density increased from 147.38 to 148.06 and rural tele-density increased from 45.76 to 46.09 in the month of December 2014. The shares of urban subscribers and rural subscribers at the end of December, 2014 were 58.94% and 41.06% respectively.” Delhi has maximum tele-density, while Bihar has lowest. While the country is doing well, especially in the urban areas on the aspect of mobility, when it comes to broadband, there is a cause for concern. According to TRAI, “The number of broadband subscribers increased from 82.22 million at the end of November, 2014
With the aim of connecting all parts of the country with high speed broadband, the government has launched the NOFN (National Optical Fibre Network) programme. The programme seeks to connect all the 2,50,000 gram panchayats in the country through high-speed optical fibre network. In this task the existing fibres of PSUs (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) will be used for laying incremental fibre to connect the gram panchayats . Once NOFN is fully rolled out in the country, it will lead to major improvements in governance, quality of healthcare, skills and education delivery and e-commerce. It will also open up multiple business opportunities, improving the life of millions of people across the country. “NOFN will give an impetus to the government’s Jan Dhan Yojana. Banks, telecom service providers, and other financial institutions will be able to leverage the broadband highway to provide mobile financial services to deliver basic to advanced financial services to millions of unbanked and under-banked people, especially in rural areas,” says Anshoo Gaur, President and Head of Amdocs India. “The government’s decision to leverage the experience of several private sector players will help accelerate the deployment of Wi-Fi in rural areas to achieve the goal of connecting 600 million rural citizens of India across 250,000 gram panchayats. The private sector can bring in their expertise and innovation in technology, applications, and services to implement the project faster and in a cost effective manner,” adds Gaur. However, the NOFN initiative is likely to miss its first target of linking 100,000 gram panchayats by March of this year. The work of laying the fibre network is behind the schedule due to a variety of reasons.“While the success of NOFN depends on many factors, some of the APRIL, 2015
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The growth in traffic generated on fixed networks will be more than that on mobile networks Neha Gupta, Senior Research Analyst,Gartner
4G will certainly play a key role in enhancing consumer’s experience and addressing their needs for seamless connectivity Nishant Batra, Vice-President-Engagement Practices,Ericsson India 20
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areas that need immediate attention to fasten the deployment are building of stronger cooperation among government agencies (for example the right of way permission from local civic authorities has been cause of slow progress), formation of strategic partnerships with private sector companies, including telecom operators and technology suppliers with proven experience and expertise in deploying broadband infrastructure,” explains Neha Gupta, Senior Research Analyst at Gartner.
Challenges in providing online services As of now the government is struggling to ensure that all parts of the country get connected through a high speed network. But connectivity is not the only challenge. Another major challenge is to provide services over the Internet. “Building networks is not the only thing that is needed for providing seamless customer experience. If it was so, we would not have customers lining to sign-up for only few of the operators rather than all. The interest of a customer in any particular network is directly proportional to kind of service delivery and content that is being offered,” says Pankaj Kitchlu, Service Provider Systems Engineering Leader, India and SAARC at Juniper Networks. As per Ericsson’s Consumer lab report, network reliability, coverage, call quality and data speed are key drivers of consumer satisfaction. Achieving the government’s broadband vision will require significant attention to factors both on the supply and demand side. On the supply side regulators and operators need to tackle the issue of limited spectrum availability, device availability and network performance gaps. On the demand side, the industry needs to ensure that it can meet the pent-up demand for mobile broadband, while stimulating interest and uptake of services in new markets with innovative revenue models. “Operators will need to pay close attention to customer experience, network quality and services while facilitating innovation in local apps and content,” says Nishant Batra, Vice-
President-Engagement Practices, Ericsson India.
Smartphones replacing PCs? According to Ericsson, across all technologies, the total number of active mobile connections (measured by active SIMs) in India are expected to increase by around 1.2 billion (about 85% penetration) by 2020. This will be driven primarily by rural penetration. Among these, the number of mobile broadband subscribers is expected to increase to 600 million by 2020. Given these trends, mobile broadband will be the key to achieving last mile connectivity. “Mobile is now the preferred device for consumers when they want connect to the Internet. With the creation of the broadband highway, Gartner expects that the overall Internet market (mobile and fixed) will grow. The growth in traffic generated on fixed networks will be more than that on mobile networks,” says Gupta of Gartner. Gupta further adds that the possibility of any kind of competition between the two types of networks (mobile and fixed) is very low. “It has been observed that in developed economies, where both (mobile and fixed) infrastructure are available at equal levels, there are very few people who depend solely on the mobile networks for their internet connections. Only about 10% to 15% of the population are mobile only users,” she adds. While the quality of experience is going to be more predictable and programmable per user, wireless will continue to be the first choice of users in India due to the coverage. This is primarily due to the fact that wireless connectivity is more easily available. “Once smartphones become viable for a number of users in an access area the fibre will start making in-roads,” notes Kitchlu.
4G a game changer The huge expansion in the number of mobile consumers during the last few years has led to a massive expansion on the industry that provides data of voice based services. The thirst for services that the mobile subscribers in the APRIL, 2015
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Reliance 8.29% Others 12.76% Bharti 22.38%
Idea 15.11%
Vodafone 19.42%
country have, simply can’t be quenched. The mobile services in the industry continues to be on an expansion spree. The entire telecom industry is now seeing a massive shift from the traditional mobile services such as voice and SMS to value-added and data services. While 3G adoption is still picking up three years after its launch, the focus has now shifted to 4G technologies, especially LTE (Long-Term Evolution). The extension and upgrade of networks to 4G in India will lead to a larger total addressable market. It will also lead to greater revenue, especially data revenue, as more consumers get access to mobile data networks and affordable datacapable mobile devices and/or USB modems, data cards and mobile phone tethering services. This will help increase data ARPU and the number of mobile broadband connections. “4G will be a game changer in both B2B and B2C. It offers higher potential for faster download or video experience and it is also going to push the envelope inside the operator community for transforming the legacy networks,” says Kitchlu of Juniper Networks. It is noteworthy that in order to provide a seamless experience to EXPRESS COMPUTER
BSNL 22.04%
customers, the operators have to upgrade both packet handling connectivity networks such as mobile backhaul, circle aggregation and core networks. They also need to upgrade their service terminating networks like packet cores, policy deployment engines and operational support systems, all of which are necessary for making 4G a real revenue generator for the service providers. “4G will certainly play a key role in enhancing consumer’s experience and addressing their needs for seamless connectivity. As per our study, around 20% of mobile broadband subscriptions will be on 4G by 2020,” notes Batra of Ericsson. “In future, as operators improve their 3G network coverage and launch 4G services, subscribers’ usage patterns are likely to move towards consumption of high-bandwidth content and video. Average data usage of a 3G subscriber is expected to increase from around 600MB (including3G dongles) in 2013 to around 1GB (conservative scenario) and around 1.6GB (aggressive scenario) in 2020. This effect will primarily be seen on high-end smartphones and large-screen devices (laptops and tablets),” he adds.
The interest of a customer in any particular network is directly proportional to kind of service delivery and content that is being offered Pankaj Kitchlu, Service Provider Systems Engineering Leader,India and SAARC at Juniper Networks
The major deterrent to Internet penetration is the lack of availability of appropriate infrastructure and low awareness level for Internet usage among the masses. APRIL, 2015
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Challenges in internet penetration
Poor last mile connectivity, coupled with assumption that better work deals can be materialised only through personal connects are the biggest hurdles for Internet to reach the grassroots Milind Kamat, EVP & CEO,Atos India
In a country like India, the major deterrent to Internet penetration is the lack of availability of appropriate infrastructure and low awareness level for Internet usage among the masses. Milind Kamat, EVP & CEO, Atos India, further explains the point saying, “Poor last mile connectivity, coupled with assumption that better work deals can be materialised only through personal connects are the biggest hurdles for Internet to reach the grassroots. Also, the lack of knowledge about the potential of collaboration that Internet provides, further dampens the growth.” There is also a problem in executing only infrastructure plans and nothing else. “This infrastructure take decades to build and there has to be commitment from policy makers and private players for participating and start making exciting business cases to drive these projects continuously,” asserts Kitchlu. Delays in obtaining RoW (Right of Way) permission is another area that the country needs to get in order. Getting the RoW permission in India is a costly and time-consuming process. “As per industry estimates, network providers spend almost 50% of the overall CapEx on RoW fees,” says Gupta of Gartner. The high cost of PCs is a hurdle that the industry and the government must try to deal with. PC penetration is quite low in India. For majority of the people, it is unaffordable. Even modems and splitters are priced beyond the reach of the average Indian. The picture is slightly better in the smartphone front. The prices are coming down and the penetration is increasing. However, quality devices, which can access Internet at high speed, cost as much as any average PC.
Trends for 2015
The extension and upgrade of networks to 4G in India will lead to a larger total addressable market. 22
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The existing trends make it clear that most Indians are going to access Internet through their mobile devices. The release of additional spectrum in the relevant bands will contribute to affordability of services and harmonisation of spectrum will allow a lower-cost of device ecosystem to evolve. “The year 2015 will see significant
growth of mobile broadband in India— both in terms of active SIMs and revenue generation. Between now and 2020, the mobility in the country will be driven primarily by 3G and 4G based data services. Perhaps the ultimate vision of ‘Digital India’ will become a reality through networks riding on 3G and 4G,” says Batra. “In 2015 we will have a more clear visual of the ‘Networked Society’, where everything that can benefit from the connection will be connected, becoming mainstream in near future. It has started to happen in pockets already and will pick up, considerably, in the coming year.” According to Gartner, the amount of time consumers spend on the Internet, whether via mobile phone, tablet or PC, will continue to increase. CSPs will focus on creating new pricing with a focus on data access, such as shared plans. They will also need to refine the services they already provide, with a focus on creating richer, more immersive and more personalised experience, to increase their customer numbers. “Newer and faster networks, a rise in the number of users of these networks, and more affordable 3G handsets will lead to a significant change in the way people communicate. There will be an increase in the use of social media platforms, IM platforms, video calls etc. This is because these provide richer communication experience, are easy to use and sometimes provide other features like gaming etc,” says Gupta. It is still early to say whether 4G will be a game changer for the telecom market in the country. The success of 4G will depend the quality and price of the services, and also on the price at which the 4G smartphones are available. “Today the 3G services are still struggling to provide seamless connectivity across the nation. So we can only imagine how much time the 4G penetration will take. Those who have used 4G services in the past are often complaining about not getting 4G speed on their devices, even though they are paying a premium price for the 4G services,” says Asif Gani, Senior Consultant at AMI-Partner. APRIL, 2015
FEATURE
PCs, LAPTOPS, TABLETS
Âť www.expresscomputeronline.com
INTEGRATED, Mobile & Personal At the heart of client computing there exist the aspects of mobility and BYOD, the two forces that are now driving innovation in enterprises. BY HEENA JHINGAN
T
here is now a discernible shift in the way that employees work. This shift is being led by the range of devices that the employees are using for
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executing various professional and personal tasks. This has led to an interesting trend, where the enterprise IT innovations are now being driven by the consumers. Hail the arrival of
Prosumer! And what is the Prosumer— it is a market segment that lies between the professional and the consumer. Industry veterans believe that as the enterprises are focussed on attaining
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agility, there is bound to be a greater penetration of mobile devices for work. Going by industry reports India’s mobile workforce will reach 205 million by 2015, and the client devices, including PCs, laptops and tablets will evolve in order to support critical enterprise applications.
State of PC Market
Across all the mobile devices used within the enterprise,the average worker is bearing 63% of the device cost and 62% of the mobile data service cost Peter Chang, Regional Head - South Asia & Country Manager – System Business Group - Asus India
The real difference can only be made when there are software add-ons, which are supported by the all-in one devices Tarun Pathak, Senior Analyst-Devices and Ecosystems,Counterpoint Research 24
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In Q1 2014, the PC market in India was slow but it managed to rebound towards the second quarter. In India, PC shipments suffered from repercussions of the global decline. Though overall PC shipments rose due to special educational projects by some Indian state governments, the demand for consumer PCs remained low as expected. According to IDC, in Q3, 2013, the overall PC shipments were 3.24 million units, a growth of 8.4 % over Q3, 2012. IDC attributes the growth in the commercial segment to special education projects in states like Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and a much delayed spending in the year by the BFSI segment. In terms of market share, HP took the top spot in India with 32.3% share in Q3, 2013. The shipment boost was due to the large educational project sanctioned by the Uttar Pradesh government. HP also maintained better pricing against competition for both desktops and portable PCs. Lenovo took second place with a share of 13.6%; Dell was at the third spot with 11.8 % market share. IDC has predicted that seasonal festivities and price hike may disrupt PC buying in the quarter ending December. Transition to Haswell family of Intel processors could also be a cause for disruption.
State of Tablet Market The Tablets market in India started slow, and picked up pace in the later quarters. India’s overall tablet shipment for the third quarter of 2014 stood at 0.94 million units, recording a quarter-on-quarter rise of 10% over Q2, 2014. Earlier the market was suffering due to lack of proper standards. But recently new standards and compliance requirements for tablets have been announced by the Bureau of India Standards (BIS). This is serving as a solution to the many issues that the
vendors were facing. About the Tablets, Indrajit Belgundi Director & General Manager, End User Computing, Dell India, says, “Despite a sizeable market of close to four million tablets in FY2014-15, partners expect the consumer tablet volumes to shift to online retail.” He adds that as the PC makers are expected to dominate the commercial tablet market, buying patterns will be similar to regular IT purchases. This will present the IT partners with a much larger opportunity. “The last decade has seen massive innovation in the devices space. From 2in-1 devices we have now moved to 5-in-1s. Tablets have evolved into phablets, laptops to Ultrabooks, watches into smart watches; brands are innovating all the time to woo customers,” observes Peter Chang-Regional Head - South Asia & Country Manager – System Business Group - Asus India, adding that usability and experience will be critical not only to impress, but also for compelling buyer to purchase. As of now the two major trends that have been driving the client computing devices segment are mobility & BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).
Mobility and BYOD Mobility as a phenomenon has made its way into the life of the consumer. Enterprises now realise the need of supporting mobile workforce and offer them the facility to work on an anytime, anywhere basis. What is more interesting is the fact that the users now not only demand flexibility to work from any location, but also exercise their choice to pick their devices to work with. As enterprises have started accepting the mobility related needs of their workers, the workforce is now free to take their devices with them wherever they go. As per the 2014 Dell Global Evolving Workforce Study, in case of companies where BYOD is not allowed, more than one-third of the employees would prefer to use personal devices if they could (including a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet). About 76% of the Indian workforce surveyed are part of organisations, which approve BYOD. The study finds that Indian employees APRIL, 2015
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of both private and public sector, display a need for mobility, connectivity and secure technology. From 71% who prefer laptops, to 29% who are interested in 2-in1s, there is now an apparent shift in how work is getting done as technology becomes increasingly embedded in the core of the modern workplace. Belgundi of Dell argues that in the previous year these factors were driving consumers to adopt mobile devices — tablets, phablets and the sleeker and more compact and portable laptops. While one dimension of the workforce emphasises on going mobile, a large part of heavy industry, which requires intensive tasks to be carried out for long durations, warrants the need to have sturdy desktops as the primary device of use. This is the niche segment to which the desktop market caters. The Q3 India PC Market report from IDC states that while the commercial desktop category accounts for 27.7% of shipments in the overall PC market, the commercial notebook category accounts for 20.7%. Chang says, “The employers and the IT departments are facing the pressure of allowing BYOD, which is a revolution that threatens the category of devices that are owned by the enterprises. Across all the mobile devices used within the enterprise, the average worker is bearing about 63% of the device cost and around 62% of the mobile data service cost. “In the last year we saw a clear move towards the usage of employee owned devices. This is something that led to the proliferation of new devices in the workplace,” says Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director, Commercial Business, Lenovo India
Form Factor, Feel, Flexibility It is clear that mobility is dictating the form factor of new computing devices.
Ultrabooks, convertibles, tablets and converged devices are in vogue, and the product form factors are becoming smaller, while at the same time being packed with performance. “Keeping these factors in mind Dell launched a number of new devices across the category in 2014,” says Belgundi. “Earlier in the year, we launched the new mainstream and performance tower and rack workstations - the Dell Precision Tower 5810, Tower 7810, Tower 7910, and Rack 7910 in India. The range has been designed to help create beautifully complex projects and for customers to be able to design without limitations.” Dell also launched the two versions of the Optiplex Micro Desktop PCs, namely OptiPlex 9020 and OptiPlex 3020. These desktops are the answer to a number of space-related woes voiced frequently by businesses of all sizes. The Optiplex Micro Desktop PCs are built to fit into the most compact workspaces and are inviting enthusiastic response from small and medium businesses, healthcare organisations, etc. In any organisation where IT does not form the core function of the business, these devices offer powerful computing without taking up lot of space or maintenance. He adds, “We completed the year with the launch of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme notebook and the Latitude 12 Rugged Extreme convertible notebooks in India, for customers who require sturdy machines for ruggedised work environments. As a provider of end-toend IT solutions for our customers, the Client Solutions business is the starting point for almost every new customer acquisition.” In an environment with consumerisation of IT widespread, the vendors need to understand that the
In the heavy industry intensive task have to be carried out for long duration.Hence,they can't do without desktop.This is the niche segment to which desktop market is catering EXPRESS COMPUTER
2014 witnessed a move towards employee owned devices,and it triggered the proliferation of new devices in the workplace Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director,Commercial Business,Lenovo India
The commercial device user base is leaning towards hassle-free sleek, sturdyand light devices that can be easilycarried around Indrajit Belgundi, Director & General Manager, End User Computing,Dell India APRIL, 2015
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PCs, LAPTOPS, TABLETS
23.1% HP Lenevo 22% Acer 16.5% Group
employees are naturally inclined towards consumer-focused technologies and at times, they even consider the consumerist technologies to be better than the corporate tools. Hence there is need for systems to help employees improve their productivity at the workplace through devices that can facilitate integration of their personal and corporate productivity tools in a single unit. On the issue of catering to the needs of the BYOD segment, Agarwal opines, “We have a range of convertibles that combine the best features of tablets with the full power of a notebook leveraging the touch capability of Windows 8.” “For our commercial customers, we have the ThinkPad Yoga, an ultrabook that can flips 360 degrees to also serve as a tablet. There is ThinkPad Helix, an ultrabook with a detachable screen. ThinkPad X1 Carbon, is a premium business segment ultrabook, and there is the ThinkCentre TINY, which is the world’s smallest desktop PC,” Agarwal adds. Asus has launched a wide range of products, including phablets, notebooks, desktops like the Asus Transformer Flip Book, ASUS Transformer T200, ASUS Transformer TF103, ASUS Pad Fone Mini. At the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show, HP announced its HP Slate 21 Pro, an Android powered all-inone device. With an impressive list of software being incorporated into the device, the company is confident that this product will be a good fit in the environment of hotels, classrooms, hospitals, etc., because such institutions will be keen to the leverage the preloaded Kingsoft Office, Evernote, Skype, HP Classroom Manager, 50GB of lifetime Box storage and the Citrix Receiver for remote Windows access. The company also announced the HP Pro x2 410, an 11-inch detachable laptop and its first hybrid for the business market.
Others 12.9%
Tech Transformation
HOW INDIAN WORKFORCE LIKES TO WORK THE DESKTOP IS THE TOP DEVICE FOR GETTING WORK DONE IN THE OFFICE IN INDIA
55%
62
Touchscreen usage for work is high
those not currently % among using touchscreens desire
18
Others
device performance % ranked as the #1 consideration which people look for in a work device
Shipment share by segment (%) Indian PC Market 35.6% 28.1% 27.7%
25.8%
Commercial Desktop
29.7% 20.7%
Commercial Notebook
Q2 (AMJ) 2014
26
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16.4% 15.9%
Consumer Desktop
Q2 (JAS) 2014
Consumer Notebook
Where as 11% consider battery life
Shipment share by Vendor (%) Indian PC Market Q3 CY 2014
Dell
25.5%
With consumers becoming more discerning about the kind of devices or technologies that they wish to spend their APRIL, 2015
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money on, the tech companies have to keep innovating to ensure that their products offer better consumer experience. Belgundi says, “Dell believes in innovating not only at a technology level, but also to provide comfort to the end user.” “The commercial device user base is leaning towards hassle-free, sleek yet sturdy and light devices that can be easily carried everywhere. This has resulted in innovation, which in turn leads to devices that use lighter materials in their build and offer anti-glare display for intensive work hours, enhanced dexterity through comfortable touchpads and keyboards, etc,” adds Belgundi. “Several new innovations are also being done to provide compact devices without compromising on the performance. Such innovation is being done to cater to the space-saving related needs of the companies, especially the small and mid-range businesses. As organisations become more conscious of their environmental footprint, technology solutions providers have to make concerted efforts to ensure that their device is green to the largest possible extent,” adds Belgundi. Tarun Pathak, Senior AnalystDevices and Ecosystems, Counterpoint Research, is of the view that at present the tracking of client computing devices is tricky; this is primarily due to the acceptance of BYOD in most enterprises. “While designing their devices, the vendors have to keep in mind that there can be two kind of users for their product—personal and professional. The real difference can be made only when there are software addons, which are supported by the all-in one devices,” he says.
Prospects for 2015 If we go by the trends of 2014, then it is obvious that 2015 is going to be a very exciting year for enterprises in the technology space. Innovation is gaining acceleration and 2015 will see a flurry of new products in the market. BYOD will become a much stronger force in the enterprise environment. The overall PC market in 2015 will generate momentum as personal EXPRESS COMPUTER
TRENDS IN ENTERPRISE COMPUTING
◗ Buzz around the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to rise and change how people stay connected and do things faster on the move ◗ Rise of enterprise cloud storage and real-time data analytics with mobility solutions ◗ Mobile devices will be at the core of data consumption and business sign-off processes ◗ Trend among large Indian enterprises to provide employees with tablets ◗ Mobile Device Management (MDM) will become a must-have standard in enterprises with more than 200 employees
computing devices will continue to get thinner and lighter based on commercial customer demand. This will be supported with devices having even longer battery lives. Vendors will focus on understanding the workforce trends. Belgundi says, “Investing in a strong ecosystem of OS partners will be crucial as it helps in building differentiated solutions for businesses.” “We are focusing on solutions and devices, based on practical innovation and simple, efficient technology that will help organisations improve the productivity of their workforce while also protecting and managing their infrastructure. We are also focusing on creating strong relationships with our channel partners,” he adds. In 2015, the industry should expect
traction around enterprise computing devices, data and device management strategies and delivery of business solutions. Though the consumer desktop market will continue to shrink, the commercial desktop market is projected to grow at 12 % during the fiscal because of technology refreshes. The biggest growth would come from small-footprint, low-power PCs which currently constitute less than 3% of the commercial desktop market but are projected to account for 12-15 % by 2015. One thing is for sure, the PCs will continue to remain the primary computing devices in the workplace as it is the most preferred device for content creation and for many enterprises with limited infrastructure. APRIL, 2015
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CYBER SECURITY
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CYBER SECURITY
A Challenge F O R
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“The cyber world is now as vast as the real world and issues related to cyber security encompass the components of globalisation, communication, cost effectiveness and our very way of life,” says Sanjay Sahay, Additional Director General of Police, Government of Karnataka
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uring the last four decades, the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds. From the first email in 1971 to a whopping 40 trillion emails at present. From one website in 1991 to staggering 30 trillion individual web pages at present. Today we have the reached the stage where Internet of Things (IoT) is taking root. IoT is adding a new all pervasive dimension to the cyber world— we have 8.7 billion devices connected to the Internet and by 2020, the number of net connected devices will reach 40 billion. We are fast approaching a world where the real life is essentially being
led online. In 2008, Pentagon defined cyber space as the global domain where the information environment consists of interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems and embedded processors and controllers. The demand from this system is availability, integrity and confidentiality on a fail-safe basis with an inbuilt resilience. The system should be able to tackle any disaster, natural or manmade, so that the businesses remain functional. APRIL, 2015
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The problem with cyber space is that its building blocks were not created while keeping the aspect of security in mind. That is why there are many vulnerabilities that the hackers are able to exploit. 97% of the Fortune 500 companies have been hacked. The sophistication of the attacks is going up constantly and today we are having threats like Stuxnet. The complexity gets confounded as the myriad good, bad and the ugly players happen to be using the same technological platform.
Present Scenario Recently Julian Assange shook the world through leaks of official documents / communication / diplomatic cables on Wikileaks. Assange says, “You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way we can get anywhere.” Edward Snowden wanted to expose the duplicity of the superpower game and so did Bradley Manning. It was simply beyond their capacity to digest what came to their notice in their official capacity. The leak was technically avoidable. Whatever hue to which hacker may belong, there is no disagreement that he leads the way, the corporations and governments are forced to play the catch up game. The general misconception that cyber crime is another variant of crime does not hold good. As in normal classification of crime, from pickpocketing to murder for gain to organised crime to terrorism, cyber crime has in its fold not just the microcosm of the world, but the world itself. From money laundering to medical insurance to providing public platform for ISIS, lot needs to be done to classify these crimes from the techno-legal angle, leave aside providing an effective legal framework and stringent enforcement of the same. We are also seeing a kind of weirdness to the cyber security issues—the hackers group Anonymous has taken the responsibility of policing ISIS on the internet and has been successful in disabling hundreds of Twitter accounts belonging to it. The government is completely at a loss in devising methods to deal with this monster which is successfully using internet for wrecking havoc on businesses, government EXPRESS COMPUTER
The problem with cyber space is that its building blocks were not created while keeping the aspect of security in mind
for lots of other purposes. McAfee’s Malware Zoo in undoubtedly the world largest with 110 million species. Many hackers are in this trade and they deploy a variety of extremely sophisticated methodologies. Groups like Anonymous have targeted government organisations and businesses in the past, but now they are engaged in the cyber war with ISIS, the mostly deadly terror group in the world.
The Critical Factors departments, institutions, etc. In case of the high-profile Sony breach, fingers have also been pointed towards rogue states like North Korea. But we are yet to have any conclusive evidence. There is a huge underground economy that thrives in the digital world. The public web displays only 4% of the web content and there is the deep web, which comprises of the rest 96%. It is on the “deep websites,” protected by passwords, that we have data running to the tune of 7.9 zettabytes. Underground cyber crime enterprises are running their businesses in full swing, providing all kinds of information and services for the right price.
Nature of Attacks The nature of the attacks depend on the tools used and the intensity and precision. Collaborative efforts leads to even more damaging consequences. The nature of collaboration inclusive of the one adopted by Anonymous makes it near impossible to crack. The common threats to internal systems and online channels are social engineering (phishing) vulnerability exploit, malware infection leading to fraud scheme execution and consequent money loss, data exfiltration and consequent enterprise breach. Every company in the world is being hit by viruses, worms and trojans. Malware, botnets, web based attacks, denial of service, malicious code, phishing and stolen devices add to the woes. Source code, which is at the root of malicious code, is generally free and available to anyone through well-known kits posted on underground forums. Zero day or a vulnerability being exposed for the first time is the prize catch for the hackers and is being sold for a price and
The foregoing discussion might give a feeling that technological issues must have technological answers. But there is also a human angle to these cyber security challenges. The truth is that majority of the security breaches occur due to human intent or error. In fact, the human factor accounts for approximately 80% of the breaches. Building a risk-aware culture, of zero tolerance with management pushing change relentlessly from very top down, while also implementing tools to track progress can be an extremely good initiation point. Managing incidents and responding in a professionally matured manner, contextually, through a companywide effort to implement intelligent analytics and automated response capabilities is essential. Where do we start? The key step that must be taken to address the vulnerabilities must include—the building of a risk free culture, automating security hygiene and managing incidents with intelligence and protecting the network and end points. The top 5 reasons why attacks are possible pertaining to system hygiene or user knowledge are 1) end users don’t think before clicking, 2) weak password/default password in use, 3) insecure configuration, 4) use of legacy or unpatched hardware or software and 5) lack of basic network security protection/segmentation. In today’s knowledge driven world, technology is all set to become the mankind’s DNA. We definitely need out of the box thinking to address today’s cyber security challenges. We have to keep in mind that the transformational changes always demand transformational answers. APRIL, 2015
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CASE STUDY
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ESSAR Gets Vigorously Compliant When Essar wanted to modernise its global HR portal, it turned to Red Hat JBoss Web Server, which ensures secure access to personal information of the employees and is complaint with the UK Data Protection Act 1998. BY JASMINE DESAI
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s data flows between countries with disparate data protection laws, firms need to ensure the safety of their customers and employee data through regulatory compliance and due diligence. However, multinational organisations often find global data privacy laws exceedingly challenging,” says Christopher Sherman, Analyst, Security & Risk Professionals, Forrester Inc, in his blogpost. This view reflects clearly the kind of issues that Essar was facing. Essar has investments in steel, APRIL, 2015
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Area Network (WAN). “Although none of our employees were accessing the portal over the internet, accessing it over a WAN raised security concerns, as the data being accessed was personal and sensitive in nature,” says Prabhu. Security concerns were also raised when the company planned to migrate the UK Stanlow website of Essar Oil to the Myequations portal. It was essential for Essar to align itself to the UK Data Protection Act 1998 to ensure secure access to the personal data of its UK employees. “One of the key guidelines of the UK Data Protection Act was to ensure that the data is being stored in secure manner and that the data is not transferred outside the European economic area without adequate protection,” informs Prabhu. Essar has clear expectations when it comes to partnering with vendors. The vendors need to support the organisation’s strategic goals and objectives, while continually looking for ways of managing our costs. Essar Sourcing and Supplier Management evaluates suppliers with regard to the best value with a particular emphasis on quality, total cost, delivery, innovation and management expertise to meet our requirements. Accordingly suppliers/vendors are evaluated on their ability to meet on certain criteria, that includes supplier capability/compliance to specifications, customer service, quality system for deliverables, competence and past performance.
Maintaining The Standards energy (oil, gas and power), infrastructure (ports, projects, and concessions), and services (shipping, telecom, realty, outsourcing and technology solutions). The company operates in 25 countries across five continents; it employs over 73,000 people and has revenues of $39 billion. During the last few years Essar has undertaken significant initiatives to restructure its business verticals. It has incorporated important changes in its operational and management control processes. One of the major processes that has been revamped at EXPRESS COMPUTER
Essar is the company’s HR portal. Today Essar uses a single global HR portal called Myequations, which serves multiple functions such as payroll, leave, and travel.
Building New Equations “Myequations is accessed by our employees from different countries, including India, United States, United Kingdom and Indonesia,” says Jayantha, CTO at Essar. Essar’s HR portal is hosted in India and employees across the globe can access the portal via the Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide
“While talking to Red Hat, we discussed similar and higher standard software appliance solution NETSCALER & Apache Server; Citrix is our strategic partner in providing us Citrix Solutions. We compared the solution with our requirement. We analysed from the perspective of offering and cost benefit, as well as the objective of the project. We adopted the Apache Server, as it was available as open source software with no cost attached,” explains Prabhu. Essar’s criteria for this project included cost, customer services, product specification, capability, strategic support and innovation. APRIL, 2015
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CASE STUDY
ESSAR
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In order to comply with the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and to secure access to the personal data of its employees, Essar decided to implement advanced security measures for HR portal access and to encrypt the personal data. Essar realised that it needed an enterpriseclass web server platform to make sure that personal information is not only secure, but that the platform it is running on is easily configured. After rigorous technical discussions and analysis, Essar decided to move from its existing web server platform, which was the community version of Apache web server to Red Hat JBoss Web Server. “Red Hat JBoss Web Server met our business needs, as it is robust, thoroughly tested, has component integration, and is fully supported,” says Prabhu. Whenever Essar, recommences the previous implementation they follow certain processes to take advantage of previous learning from the project. The organisation documents the project closer summary that provides them with clues to decide on this aspect, for example: Vendor Performance What features were promised but not delivered? ● What are the missing feature and capabilities? ● How responsive the vendor was towards questions and problems during Implementation? ● What was the quality of training received by Essar IT Staff? ● What was the quality documentation received from the vendor on the solution? ● How well did the vendor work with internal staff at ESSAR? ● What was the level of the vendor on Technical support? ●
Business Department Performance What was the quality of IT Support? Was IT able to meet the requirements?
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Essar plans to execute the next phase of the project through its own team; the company wants to develop the 32
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Essar plans to execute the next phase of the project through its own team capabilities of its IT own teams. Before the implementation of Red Hat JBoss Web Server in the production environment, Essar tested the solution as a proof of concept (POC). The company carefully considered the solution’s features and performance.“The POC was highly successful, and it raised the confidence of our team,” said Prabhu. “The maintainability of the solution is excellent, which aligns with our goal of keeping long-term IT costs low.”
Smooth Implementation The JBOSS implementation, which took about a month, went smoothly without any noticeable setback on existing
operations. The process was completed in the month of August 2013. In his advise for organisations that are considering similar implementation, Prabhu says, “I would suggest proper planning, which is absolutely necessary for this kind of a project. Apart from that, clear understanding and use of key features, being careful not to underestimate the importance of accurate data for implementation, and being mindful about maintenance strategies.” Presently, Red Hat JBoss Web Server plays a key role in ensuring compliance with the UK Data Protection Act 1998. Secure HTTPS access to the Myequations portal is supported by Red Hat JBoss Web Server. This enables Essar to ensure that the sensitive data of its employees is not transferred without adequate protection.“The implementation of secure HTTPS access through Red Hat JBoss Web Server, along with the encryption of data, has helped us comply with the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and helped us in protecting employee data, which is a critical asset to our organisation,” says Prabhu. Red Hat JBoss Web Server supports the architecture of Essar’s Myequations portal, which is a SAP-based system with an Oracle back-end. Because Red Hat JBoss Web Server interoperates with both of these technologies, Essar can create a solution that works together seamlessly. The implementation does not stop here, as Essar has plans to build on it. The organisation will be interested in evaluating how to integrate web services: for instance, .NET. JAVA EE services and deploy secure, reliable and transactional web services/clients, in case of mobility projects. “We will upgrade the current version and take advantage of new features available on the new software. We are also using Operating Systems like Microsoft, AIX, other than Linux, since we are interested in testing these platforms and evaluating its usability in deployed solutions,” adds Prabhu. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com
APRIL, 2015
INTERVIEW RAJIV KAPUR MANAGING DIRECTOR, BROADCOM, INDIA
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“Even though there is a change in government, both the UPA and the NDA have been awarding equal importance to the NOFN,� says Rajiv Kapur, Managing Director, Broadcom, India. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley
NOFN is of Strategic Importance What is your view of broadband adoption in India? The broadband adoption has been quite slow in India. The number of broadband users is still very small when compared to the large size of our population But things are now speeding up, as the operators are adopting newer technologies and diverse strategies for reaching out to potential customers. Cable operators such as Hathaway are pushing fibre to home as the preferred way of delivering broadband services. Broadband will get a big push once the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project is completed. By connecting all the panchayats of the country with optical fibre network, the NOFN project will ensure that people in all parts of the country have access to affordably priced broadband. The adoption of LTE based networks will lead to significant proliferation in the broadband network. Can you elaborate further on the benefits that you are expecting from the successful execution of the NOFN project? NOFN is of immense strategic importance. The political leadership of the country understands the importance of this project. Even though there is a change in government, both the UPA and the NDA have been awarding equal importance to the NOFN. At present Optical Fibre Cable is only available in the larger towns and cities, but with NOFN there is a plan to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country. This will lead to huge improvement in broadband penetration. People in all parts of the country will be able to avail a range of the services that are available on the Internet. There will be better growth prospects for the business entities. Right now the price of broadband is high, but with NOFN and other options for connectivity coming up, the price will come down. This will enable many more people to get online. What kind of innovations is Broadcom bringing into the broadband market? EXPRESS COMPUTER
Broadcom, as you would know is the global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. There is growing demand for high speed WiFi. In recent past, the speed has moved from 802.11N to 802.11AC. We are also witnessing a high attachment rate at the device side as well as access point side. Lot of devices are being made around mobility and there is rise in Internet of Thing (IoT). We are very excited about IoT, it is one of the growth areas for us. In the high-end segment, we are highly placed and have the right and compelling answers and plan to keep investing in devices, IoT variables and accessories.
In the area of electronics, India has a chance to make the mark without trying to play catch-up, because the unique technology requirements of India can only be understood by people who live in the country
Where do you see India in the overall Broadcom scheme of things? Two things are very exciting about India. Firstly, it is a very well proven Research & Development (R&D) centre for us. We have seen high success of R&D projects. Cutting edge development, end to end ownership and next generation of things have come from Indian R&D. Secondly, India is one of the largest consumers of electronics products. The country has a huge population and a quite high GDP growth. The electronics industry is seeing a huge growth in the country and now that IoT has taken centerstage, even more growth can be expected in electronics sector. In the area of electronics, India has a chance to make the mark without trying to play catch-up, because the unique technology requirements of India can only be understood by people who live in the country. Someone who does understand technology and the end market is the very powerful combination when it co-exists. In Broadcom, we put an engineer to understand the market so that we could bring market relevant innovations. IoT opens the door for a new wave of Made in India products. We see ourselves playing seminal role in this evolution of technology. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com
APRIL, 2015
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The 17th edition of Express Technology Sabha was amazing and gigantic—200+ guests from areas of governance, industry and thought leadership came together to exchange knowledge on the the best ways of achieving the vision of Digital India.The event brought to fore the incredible energy with which the nation is pursuing the vision of eGovernance: it provided a sense of the achievements that have already been made, and also gave few shining examples of what's to come.
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EXPRESS TECHNOLOGYSABHA EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA 2015 Express Technology Sabha Welcome Address Smart Cities: The New Frontier in Digital Governance Launch of the Smart City Report How Smart are Our Cities? Smart Solutions for Digital India Achieving The Vision of Digital India Digital India: Leading eParticipation with Innovation Transforming Indian Cities Smart Solutions for Smart Governance Power to Do More Transformational eGovernance Digital India: ICTfor Improving Citizen Service Delivery 36
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he Express Technology Sabha began at 2.30 PM in an auditorium packed with key stakeholders of eGovernance. The brightly-lit stage became the proving ground for government officials, thought leaders, IT rofessionals and innovators. The delegates had the opportunity to have a close view of the dynamism with which the vision of eGovernance is being pursued in the country. APRIL, 2015
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Welcome Address
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Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director & Head - New Media, The Indian Express Limited
he 17th edition of the Express Technology Sabha took off with a welcome speech by Anant Goenka. He provided an overview of the role that The Indian Express Group has been playing in promoting eGovernance in the country through events like Technology Sabha and coverage in media outlets. “Since the Express Group’s founding in 1932 to present day in 2015, we have fought for holding governments accountable to the citizens. We have advocated transparency. We believe that technology can play a critical role in making India a better country to live in and as one of India’s largest media groups, we must do our part,” said Goenka. On the subject of Digital India, Goenka said, “Our Prime Minister mentions the words Digital India at every opportunity; never before has any Indian government taken technology in administration as seriously as this one. and it’s really, finally all happening.” Goenka informed the audience that Express Computer magazine and PwC had jointly done an assessment of some select Indian cities for Smart City transformation.The result of assessment was a highly informative book, which was being launched at the event.
Smart Cities: The New Frontier in Digital Governance
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From Left to Right: J. Satyanarayana; Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia; Subhomoy Bhattacharjee EXPRESS COMPUTER
his exclusive conversation revolved around the government's vision for facilitating the development of 100 Smart cities in the country. Many interesting ideas about urbanisation came to light during the discussion. J Satyanarayana said, “The engagement of citizens is important in the whole exercise of building Smart Cities because without people involvement there will be disconnect and dissatisfaction.” Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia pointed out that financial viability was the key to success of the initiative. She said “Given urbanisation challenges, governments must explore smarter ways of management, create strategies for smart city transformation, maximise environmental sustainability efforts and create new citizen services. For all these, state governments will have to play a major role.” APRIL, 2015
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LAUNCH OF
SMARTCITYREPORT The Indian Express Group and PwC jointly conducted a survey which is essentially an assessment of Indian cities for Smart City Transformation. The result of this path breaking survey, the book of eponymous name,“Assessment of Indian Cities for Smart City Transformation,” was launched at the summit.
From Left to Right: Anoop Verma, Editor, Express Computer; Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director & Head - New Media, The Indian Express; Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Chairperson, Board of Governors, ICRIER; J Satyanarayana, Advisor (eGovernance, Electronics & IT), Government of Andhra Pradesh; Neel Ratan, Partner and Leader, Government & Public Sector, PwC India; NSN Murthy, Associate Director, Government & Public Services, PwC India 38
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How Smart are Our Cities? NSN Murty, Associate Director - Government and Public Services, PwC India
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NSN Murty
n his presentation, NSN Murty explained the knowledge that was derived from the research work that had been undertaken for the creation of the report called - “Assessment of Indian Cities for Smart City Transformation.” He spoke in detail about the urbanisation related challenges that are propelling governments to develop new Smart Cities. He began the presentation by stating that large numbers of Indians have been migrating to the urban areas for improving the quality of their life; therefore it was
necessary to ensure that the city administrations made optimal use of technology for improving administration and citizen centric services. NSN Murty said: “Urbanisation in India is rapid and it is propelling social and environmental challenges. Cities are characterised by strained infrastructure which manifest itself in terms of power cuts and water shortages, high cost of living, and unaffordable real estate resulting in urban sprawl and slums, high volume of traffic resulting in pollution and delays.”
Smart Solutions for Digital India Amod Ranade, General Manager, Data Center Business Development, Schneider Electric
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Amod Ranade EXPRESS COMPUTER
he speaker focused on efficient energy management for serving the needs of the citizens and industries in our cities. He began the presentation by saying that with government focusing on building Smart Cities and Digital India, the requirement for clean energy was bound to increase in the future. He pointed out that by 2050, the world would require twice as much energy as it does today—hence it was necessary to ensure that efficient power solutions are developed and deployed for taking care of energy needs in an ecofriendly way. He said that Schneider Electric is the global specialist in energy management. The company has achieved 24 billion sales in 2013 of which 43% came from new economies and it devotes about 4-5% to research and development. According to him the company is fully geared to assist
Indian cities in achievement of energy efficiency, optimal usage of technology for providing public services and engagement of multiple stakeholders for providing collaborative business opportunities. “For us smart is a journey of change management system architecture in silos to smart integrated infrastructure, from urban challenges to urban attractiveness and from multiple stakeholders to engaged community.” Speaking on the various solutions provided by Schneider Electric, he spoke about the Smartstruxure Integrated BMS solution which manages process and production more efficiently while using less energy. He concluded by saying that there are five factors for making anything smart—share the vision, lay the foundation, integrate selectively, make stakeholders collaborate and innovate pragmatically. APRIL, 2015
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Achieving The Vision of Digital India J Satyanarayana, Advisor (eGov, Electronics and IT), Government of Andhra Pradesh
J J Satyanarayana
Satyanarayana began the session by informing the guest about the vision of Digital India. He said, “Vision of Digital India is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy. It is an umbrella program with the slogan IT+IT= IT.” Satyanarayana emphasised throughout his presentation that the engagement of citizens is important for the execution of the various initiatives under Digital India. “If we don’t have proper citizen engagement then there will be disconnect and dissatisfaction,
which is something that we don’t want,” he said. He informed the delegates that the nine pillars of Digital India are— broadband highways, universal access to phones, IT for jobs, public internet access programme, information for all, early harvest, eKranti- electronic delivery of services, electronics manufacturing. “When we are providing broadband for all, the speed should be between 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps,” he asserted. He also stated that the government of Andhra Pradesh is coming up with several new initiatives for developing IT industry and eGovernance in the state.
Digital India: Leading e-Participation with Innovation Lalit Kumar Gupta, VP Public Sector & Education Industries Business Unit, APJ, Oracle Corporation
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he speaker began the session by saying, "Digital India is all about delivering e-services to citizens. The only way of achieving this objective is through citizen participation and when we talk about citizen participation and citizen inclusion we are essentially talking about an efficient, convenient and transparent participation in government services and policy, which includes formal and informal feedback mechanism.” Mobile, Social, Big Data and IoT are changing the way government delivers service. All services need to be mobile enabled. Taking advantage of the constantly evolving technology landscape is a big challenge for the government. Social relationship management is also important. Government needs to understand how citizens behave, engage in order to deliver right services. It entails listening,
analysing, engaging, interacting and publishing. The speaker touched upon Oracle solutions like Oracle Social Relationship Management, and Oracle Cloud Computing Strategy, which are helping governments across the globe. He said that Big Data analytics is going to be extremely important to the future of cities. “70% of world population will be living in cities by 2050. This will require the establishment of a city-wide nervous system enabling citizens and cities to share responsibilities.” Cloud is being looked at as an efficient and cost-effective way of achieving this objective. According to IDC, cloud adoption in governance is seeing high growth. Also there is growth in the maturity amongst users in terms of compliance, SLAs, security, etc. Primary driver for its adoption is cost savings. APRIL, 2015
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Transforming Indian Cities Padma Bhushan Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Chairperson, Board of Governors, The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
D Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia
r. Isher Judge Ahluwalia began the session by informing the audience that the 73rd amendment of the constitution talks about urban local government. The government has been mandated to deliver, and unfortunately the mandates remain unfunded. Financing of projects is a major problem. There should be a municipal finance list in the constitution. Presently, urban local government has to go to state government for approval. This
needs to change. Capacities have to be build on local level. Unless state governments start playing a major role there will not be any significant improvement in the state of affairs. On the subject of slums in our urban enclaves, she said that the key challenge that slums face is related to service delivery and shelter. How to get service delivery there? “If I say that I need 24/7 water in South Delhi, then there needs to be 24/7 water supply in all slums of Delhi,”.
Smart Solutions for Smart Governance Shekhar Agrawal, Senior Vice President, Vodafone, India
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Shekhar Agrawal EXPRESS COMPUTER
he presentation focused on the role that mobile systems can play for improving the quality of governance. Shekhar Agrawal said that if the vision of Digital India is to become a reality, there must be a healthy two-way communication between the government and the citizens. “Such twoway communication can only be facilitated when there is effective mGovernance,” he said. Shekhar asserted that mobility binds the country together by connecting every citizen, and it also provides cost effective means for driving digital literacy. He said “Cashless transactions, public redressal systems and real time availability of important information would create a more participatory approach towards governance through G2C & G2G communication.” He went on to say that the customised mobility application has the power to facilitate a governance model that has the citizen at the heart of
every initiative. He was of the view that the various wings of the government must collaborate extensively to deliver the dream of Digital India and Smart Cities. “In our interactions with the decision makers in the central and state government, we realise that that the immediate priority is to provide a secure system for citizen to government and government to citizen communications,” he added. According to him, mobility is now seen as the core backbone of all eGovernance programmes. Mobility is a system that can lead to vast improvement in the range of eGovernance services. He gave the example of Asha workers in Gujarat, where a simple application running on Vodafone network helps the authorities in tracking mother and child health status. The system has also helped in bringing down the infant mortality rate. APRIL, 2015
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Power to Do More Avinash Ramachandra, Director, Government Affairs & Public Policy, Dell India
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Avinash Ramachandra
he presentation focused on various IT Solutions provided by Dell to create more values for enterprises and government. Avinash Ramachandra said that the government departments are working in silos and they must be integrated for better service delivery and seamless transaction. He also gave the examples of Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, Chinese IT University and Dubai Culture & Arts Authority that have used Dell solutions for improving the performance. Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre implemented a highly available storage platform for medical imaging and patient records to meet data demands
for seven years. Stressing on the importance of Digital India initiative of the Government of India, he said that setting up integrated infrastructure and removing silos in all initiatives, including the Data Centers, is critical for the success of Digital India programme. He further stated that this programme has the ability to raise the demand exponentially for the Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) sector in the country. He informed that Dell was working toward meeting the demand of procuring 30% from local suppliers. He also highlighted various IT Solutions provided by Dell to create more values across enterprises and government.
Transformational eGovernance P H Kurian, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology & Department of Industries, Government of Kerala
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he presentation focused on Digital India and various IT initiatives of the Government of Kerala. P H Kurian commenced the presentation by saying that the conventional structure of governance can no longer meet the challenges faced by governments in this information age. Therefore, role of ICT in governance has become much more important. He also said that there was huge penetration of mobile phones in Kerala and government was trying to use this medium to achieve the target of 100% digital literacy in the state. On Digital India programme, he was of the view that for Digital India to succeed, it was important to have decentralised
delivery of services. “We must focus on improving the infrastructure, providing high speed internet connection and encourage people to participate in the digital revolution because without smart people, we can’t have smart city and system,” he added. Government of Kerala plans to provide 100 Mbps rural broadband connectivity to 977 Gram panchayaths and 152 Blocks through OFC by April 2015. He stressed that connectivity alone would not bring a paradigm shift, government also need to ensure that people are digitally literate. In Kerala, with the help of IT@School programme, government aims to digitally literate a student who is coming out of 10th class. APRIL, 2015
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Digital India: ICT for Improving Citizen Service Delivery
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he discussion began with Subhomoy Bhattacharjee putting the question—“Are we getting the building blocks in place when it comes to Digital India?' Tripurari Sharan, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Bihar, said, "There is an inherent intimacy between technology and philosophy. Are we in the middle or the beginning of Digital India? Technology can be showed up, apps can be developed, connectivity can be developed, but what are you going to deliver and how efficiently are you going to deliver is going to depend on level of this intimacy." Even today, one of the major roadblocks in efficient governance is land records, land reforms and efficient management of lands. This philosophy captures the political will to do away with backward systems, but it needs political will to do away with appeasement of certain society which thrives on rent seeking. “In agriculture, eight years, the money spent on state plan was in double digits. In 8-9 years it has moved to Rs. 2200 crores. From macro point of view, this money is not going to industrialists, but is supposed to go to the farmers. 2/3rd of that money goes into subsidising. It is the individual farmer who is standing to benefit. If somebody tries to thwart, then he will be at the receiving end of people’s fury. We are now moving ahead to give them the benefit of online registration etc. Through that we are putting it directly into their account. Such solutions are non-invasive,” added Sharan. Bhattacharjee then asked, "What type of government services can be available on demand? Have we started on digital evolution on 9 pillars? Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT), Government of India, “Most of the states have Data Center. For connectivity, they have SWAN. But there is a delay in creating of such infrastructure and in EXPRESS COMPUTER
From Left to Right: Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards,Government of Uttar Pradesh; Dr.Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT),Government of India; P H Kurian, Principal Secretary,Department of Information Technology & Department of Industries,Government of Kerala; Tripurari Sharan, Principal Secretary,Department of Information Technology,Government of Bihar; Subhomoy Bhattacharjee, Deputy Editor, The Indian Express
implementation. Hands-on experience is missing in implementations. There is just lot of theory. Private partners are not enthusiastic to work with us.” “In Digital India, one of the major component is skill development. One person per family must be e-literate. We have to go for government process re-engineering. We have to train manpower,” he added. P H Kurian, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology & Department of Industries, Government of Kerala said, "Mind-set change needs to happen to change the process. We are just beginning with Digital India. People also need to co-operate. Technology allows everything, inspite of it systems being complicated. The most important things is that Government of India should have national information infrastructure.” Bhattacharjee then went on to ask: “What are the changes do we need to make to make Digital India happen?” Tripurari Sharan, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Bihar, said “IT literacy is important. It has to be challenged in a comprehensive fashion. There is a long route to be covered
between mobile and digital literacy. Our biggest challenge is to make our population move from agriculture to industry. Make in India won't entirely solve unemployment issue. We have an offer from Japanese to set-up EMC in Rajgir. They want that space, and they would develop it. It would mean an entire network around it." Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards, Government of Uttar Pradesh said, "There have been two parallel wheels going on. Every politician wants to see things improved to get re-elected. Government servants are not people friendly. Government letter heads would usually bear name of the office. It won't have telephone, no email address. It is very people unfriendly." According to him, one has to cut the interface between citizen and government through technology. The trick lies in merging mGov with facilities of citizen centric centres. There is also the issue of Indian languages. We need to mainstream Indian languages. Unless we mainstream Indian languages, the progress will not happen. APRIL, 2015
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Power Breakfast by Vodafone India
Power Breakfast byVodafone India Power Breakfast by Dell India Passport Services in Digital India Innovate and Rapidly Implement Government Projects-Cloud Deployment Options with PaaS Security In the Age of Digital India Leveraging Actionable Security Intelligence to Defend Against Targeted Attacks ICTfor Better Delivery of Healthcare Services Security Essentials ‘Make in India’Technologies for ‘Digital India’ Emerging Innovations Epson Governance Biometric Attendance System Key Benefits Securing Data @Digital india Smart cities: Urban Mobility, Connectivity and Environment Sustainability Power Session byTrend Micro India EXPRESS COMPUTER
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hekhar Agrawal and Avinash Mathur of Vodafone gave an overview of Vodafone’s activities around different verticals. They put special emphasis on how their solutions are helping Asha worker in Gujarat for safe delivery of child. This has resulted in lowering of infant mortality rate by about 4%. They also informed about the significant role that services such as m-pesa in financial inclusion. Participants from government departments and SeMT heads from states shared their experience with telecom service provider and explained their requirements. Shekhar Agrawal also emphasised on the importance of capacity building and how mobile could be used as tool for reaching out to large sections of the population for making them digitally literate. Echoing the point raised by Agrwarl, Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma,
Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT), Government of India informed about the initiatives taken by Government of India to address the challenge of capacity building and raising digital literacy in the country. On the growing penetration of mobile phones, Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards, Government of Uttar Pradesh was of the view that mGovernance provides an opportunity to reach out to the people at all levels with the information they require and citizen centric services they needed. However, unavailability of the content in Indian languages seem to be a barrier, therefore telecom company such as Vodafone should focus on providing content in the language in which customer was comfortable with. APRIL, 2015
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Power Breakfast by Dell India
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ndia is the third largest market for Dell after US and China. The Dell power discussion began with the Dell team asking delegates on their expectations from service providers. The team mentioned that Unix is declining at about 7% every year. Over last five years Dell acquired storage, software, networking technologies. Delegates wanted to know what software solutions was Dell going to provide. Dell team said that it supports open philosophy. JBoss is going to be developed on Dell infrastructure. It is getting the application server to work well. Toad is part of Quest software. 46
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Users can decide which application server they want to choose, and Dell can get that application server to work well. Dell team made it clear that is going to get into infrastructure application and not into databases. One of its larger customers uses Apache Tomcat. Dell helps them get efficient with it. A good percentage of Openstack is on Dell. Why do so many people choose it? Dell team said that because setting up an environment is not very easy. There is a validation process. If government wants to go for cloud what would be the right way. Should they just throw away their legacy
infrastructure? He informed that Dell can help with components. Proprietary hardware and software often lead you a problem. It is not a good long term solution. Dell team also clarified that users can buy as much warranty as they want. For most of the contracts that Dell has with OEM partners, users can get pre-defined pricing for seven years. Delegates presented their dilemma at the end of the discussion. They said that basic requirement is to deliver services to citizen. When it comes to standardisation government lacks the quality because of mind-set which needs to be changed. APRIL, 2015
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Passport Services in Digital India Muktesh K. Pardeshi, Joint Secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India
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he session began with Muktesh K. Pardeshi stating, "Passport is a statutory service given to citizens. It is one of the rarest service which is global in application. In 2014, we have done more than 10 million passports." Only US, China and India are issuing more than 10 million passports. “The Passport Seva Project was rolled out in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, we made significant improvements in the project. Earlier we didn’t have the facility for online payments for passport fees. But we added this component for bringing further convenience to our citizens. Today most people make pre-payment through online system. In fact, appointments for passport applications are only given after the online payment
has been made. Other than the facility of online payments, we have also made vast improvement in the number of SMS alerts that we send at every stage. The Passport Seva Project has entered the era of m-governance with the development,” he added. “By 24 November 2015, all countries have to phase out handwritten passports. So all governments are trying to ensure that there are no handwritten passports with pasted photographs. We have estimated that there could be about 2.5 lakh handwritten passports still in circulation amongst Indian citizens. We have taken adequate measures to ensure that the holders of handwritten passports after can add renew their passports at a very quick notice.”
Innovate and Rapidly Implement Government Projects-Cloud Deployment Options with PaaS Dinesh Parekh, Sr. Director, Sales Consulting, Oracle India
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ocial, Mobile, Big Data and IoT are changing the market, and driving IT innovations in every area of technology, including cloud. Parker said. “Cloud is the foundation of efficiency and business agility. 44% of initiatives are targeted towards improving citizen experience. New business models are gaining momentum in private space. Cloud adoption in government has to go through the way of policy and infrastructure. There is a risk free way of add the this technology. Presently, governments are looking for an
ideal solution.” The speaker mentioned that some of the strategic services identified on cloud for government usage are PaaS, document as a service, middleware as a service, identity as a service, development & testing as a service, geospatial as a service. There are some cloud solution which are easier to deploy on public cloud, and there are others which would work well in a private cloud. As demand for application richness grows, there is a development gap which is crippling the pace of projects. APRIL, 2015
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Security In the Age of Digital India Gouse Shaik, Security Consultant, Check Point Software Technologies
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he speaker began the presentation by outlining the importance of security in the light of the new wave of digitisation that is expected form the Digital India programme. Government organisations, private companies, and ordinary citizens are already making massive use of mobility and broadband. There is data everywhere that can be targeted by the malicious elements. “The security framework has to evolve in order to tackle the new challenges,” he said. He informed the audience that Check
Points has developed Check Point Capsule, a solution for mobile security which offers a comprehensive solution for protecting business data and mobile devices everywhere. “Digital India envisages broadband for all, mobility for all. Hence it is now critical that we start deploying innovative solutions for securing the mobile data,” he stated. He reminded the audience that 82% of security professionals expect that the number of mobile security incidents will see a significant rise in 2015.
Leveraging Actionable Security Intelligence to Defend Against Targeted Attacks Shraddha Tickoo, Technology Specialist, Trend Micro
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he speaker commenced the presentation by stating that the threat landscape had become murkier during the last few years. Today there is vast rise in targeted attacks on individual users, businesses, and government networks. Breaches have become fairly common. The presentation especially focused on rise in cybercrime in India. She informed the audience that CERT-IN had received as many as 96,383 complaints between January and September 2014, and in 2015 the number of complaints was likely to cross 125,000. She opined that although government was taking steps to tackle the challenge, the need of the hour was
to equip officers with latest cyber security tools. She informed that unlike the traditional solutions, Trend Micro Deep Discovery provides a comprehensive three-hundred and sixty degree view of targeted attacks. It provides with the network-wide visibility, insight, and control an organisation needs to combat APTs and targeted attacks. For advanced threat protection, Deep Discovery uniquely detects and identifies evasive threats in real time, then provides you with the in-depth analysis and relevant actionable intelligence to assess, remediate, and defend your organisation against targeted attacks. APRIL, 2015
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ICT for Better Delivery of Healthcare Services
From Left to Right: Dr.Ravi Kant Gupta, Director, National Health Mission, Haryana; Shekhar Agrawal, Senior Vice President,Vodafone, India; L.V. Subramanyam, Principal Secretary,Health,Medical & Family Welfare Department,Government of Andhra Pradesh; Dr. Neena Pahuja, Director General,ERNET(Education and Research Network), Government of India; Suresh Chanda Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Telangana; Darlington Jose Hector, Resident Editor - South, The Financial Express
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he discussion emphasised on the government’s proposed health policy. The Union government has stressed on telemedicine, tele-education and training for medical professionals, all these the priority areas for bringing change across the entire healthcare sector. The potential and opportunities are huge and there is a need to cultivate demand for IT-based medical services in the country, the panellists felt. Citing a pilot project in Anantapur, LV Subramanyam said that the Andhra Pradesh government is setting up diagnostic facility to provide services and generate electronic health records. Chanda highlighted that the EXPRESS COMPUTER
governments are working to provide healthcare to every doorstep. Chanda said the focus should be on services and there is a need to have database generation and usage for effective healthcare system. Gupta deliberated that though there has been awareness on IT in healthcare, the government has not groomed medical professionals on the usage of ICT. “It is necessary to use the data for various disease patterns and there is no meaning in mere collection of data,” he said. He explained maternal infant death reporting system and said a majority of medical professionals are ill-equipped to handle data and awareness has to be created to use the data for decision
making. One important development in emerging healthcare delivery is the usage of mobile phones. Since communication is the biggest challenge in healthcare delivery, automation gets importance. mHealth is part of m-governance, Agarwal of Vodafone India said. The mHealth field has emerged as a subsegment of eHealth, the use of ICT, such as computers, mobile phones, communications satellite, patient monitors, etc, for health services and information. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in collecting community and clinical health data, delivery of healthcare information and real-time monitoring of patient vital signs. APRIL, 2015
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Security Essentials Mannu Kalra, Senior Consultant- ATP, Blue Coat Systems
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he session commenced with the speaker introducing the audience to Blue Coat’s Business Assurance Technology, which uses automated analytics to perceive threats. The speaker stated that in today's threat heavy scenario, an organisation’s vital data is always at risk. Vulnerabilities that can damage or destroy assets can arise suddenly.
The forward-thinking organisations are taking steps to fortify their security infrastructure against advanced threats. He stated that Blue Coat empowers organisations to safely and securely choose the best, applications, services, devices, data sources, and content the world has to offer, so they can create, communicate, collaborate, innovate, execute, compete and win.
‘Make in India’Technologies for ‘Digital India’ Dr. Rajeev Papneja, COO & Exec. VP, ESDS Software Solution
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he speaker started the session by informing the audience that ESDS has made niche products for the cloud. Without effective success in areas like data privacy, data centres and cloud, the vision of Digital India can’t be achieved. ESDS is a SAP certified cloud hosting service. EnLight cloud is a unique auto-scaling cloud. EnLight does vertical scaling without reboot. It gives 70% savings. During his presentation he asked the audience, “What do nine pillars of Digital India mean?” He went on to present his vision of universal connectivity and post office that serve as multi-service centres. “It also means data and more data, which ultimately has to be transformed into information. The latest entrant is IoT, which will drive new consumer and business behaviour,” he added. He asked where will the organisations store so much data? How to protect privacy? How to manage and maintain the infrastructure? One has to think on data privacy policy. Data of Indian citizens and
companies is hosted in data centres all over the world. Much of the Indian data resides in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. Print media and digital media are hosting their data outside India. India lags behind developed countries in policies like data privacy, security considered critical for the future of cloud computing. It is forecasted that cloud computing is to create 2 million jobs in India by 2015. He questioned that how is it possible when no one is doing anything here? He suggested that there should be policies that force establishment of local data centres in India and insist on 51% ownership. He asked the delegates, "Can it be made mandatory for Indian companies to host their data in India? Because data is not in India, how will it be used for data analytics.?" According to him, joint acquisitions and mergers should be encouraged. This will benefit the governments as well. There will be local employment, security over data, huge tax revenue savings in foreign exchange, etc. APRIL, 2015
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Emerging Innovations Prashanth Chaudhary, Sr. Director- Sales, Government, CA Technologies
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very aspect of Smart Cities relies heavily on ICT components working properly. The speaker began the session by mentioning that the major drivers for Smart City are — app development, IT management, security and mobility. In today's scenario, applications are bigger problem than devices. Application performance management leverages and extends an organisation's existing environments. He said that applications are based on data centres and data centres are based on how hardware. Currently, organisations are facing lot of capacity management challenges. There has to be right tools to make complete provision.
There should be accelerated application time to market, there are gaps in between due to constraints like access to third party and legacy systems. Application economy means opening up of the business. There has to be security to enable open government. There has to be right security at the built stage. On the issue of security he said that MDM and BYOD should not be a huge security concern. One needs to secure all devices,manage entire device life-cycle, enabling user selfservice from a government’s point of view. Traditional perimeter defence is broken. 79% of organisations are using SaaS platform.
Epson Governance R V Ramprasad, Director – Sales – West & South India / Sri Lanka, Epson India
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he speaker began the presentation with an overview of the Epson presence in India and their products such as printers, scanners, projectors, display TFTs and LCDs. R V Ramprasad said, “We help an organisation take control of their productivity, cost, employee needs and finally growth with efficient and ecofriendly imaging and printing solutions.” He gave an example of Epson inkTank printer, which according to him was more superior to the laser printer due to low cost per page and environment friendliness. He informed that Epson is a US$ 9.75 Billion company with 23 manufacturing plants, 94 offices, employing 73,000 people worldwide. In India, the company
has 192 employees and has reported a turnover of 884 crore in FY2013. According to him, Epson is heavily focusing on energy efficiency, digital education and e-health sectors in India. “With government focusing on Digital India and Smart City projects, we see lot of focus being made to energy efficiency, digital literacy and eHealth, Epson provides products which can help the country in achieving the goal of these programmes,” he said. On the opportunity in rural areas, he said that Epson would focus on rural market with the low cost and environment friendly solution. He concluded with the fact that IT solutions for the country like India must consider the economic affordability of the people. APRIL, 2015
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Biometric Attendance System - Key Benefits Dr. Shefali Dash, Deputy Director General, NIC, Government of India
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he speaker began the presentation by stating that the Biometric Attendance System was started in the last week of August and it is already operational in more than 150 government departments in Delhi. In a matter of little over a month, NIC was able to develop the applications, procure the devices and have them installed. All the employees were enrolled and the training was imparted and the system became operational from 1st October. Anyone can log on at http://attendance.gov.in/ to have a broad picture of the time at which the employees are arriving at office and the total number of employees that are
present or absent. For having the specific data about who is present and who is absent, the person must have the valid user ID and password. Currently we are working with a plan for enabling all central government offices to have this system of attendance by December 2014. The beauty of this biometric attendance system is that it is highly scalable. In the phase 2 of this programme, we plan to offer the platform to the people who can themselves procure the device. As this is a cloud based solution you can keep on adding new departments, organisations, etc., into the system.
Securing Data @Digital india Anubhav Tyagi, Sr. Solution Specialist- India & SAARC, SafeNet
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hen we speak about a massive government programme like Digital India, we have to understand that it will surely lead to the generation of a massive amount of data. The various services that have been envisaged under the Digital India programme can only be provided once data sharing happens," said Anubhav Tyagi while beginning the session. When there is data sharing, security and compliance become a key issue. Data confidentiality, authenticity, integrity of digitised information and repudiation is what security should be able to do. It needs to be imbibed in every project. Other than biometric data, we also need to take care of the financial data.
As we develop new solutions for mobile, virtual and cloud, the threats also continue to multiply. Anubhav Tyagi stated that there was the need for being proactive. He said that we need to change the mindset, and accept that the breach will happen, only then we will think about how we can do away with those kinds of breaches. Security is an enabler and not a deterrent. It should enable more online transactions and services. It should enable shared infrastructure and cloud. Citizens trust is very important before initiating any project. They should not be worried about providing their data to any government department. Encryption is an essential process to protect sensitive data. It has to be used in a proper manner. APRIL, 2015
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Smart cities: Urban Mobility, Connectivity and Environment Sustainability
From Left to Right: Junu Rani Das Kailay, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre, Government of India; BN Satpathy, Sr.Adviser (E&F/S&T), NITI Aayog, Government of India; Amod Ranade, General Manager, Data Centre Business Development, Schneider Electric; Renu Budhiraja, Sr. Director & HOD State Data Centers, Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY), Government of India; Biju Katharapada, PwC India
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he panel discussion touched upon the interesting and pertinent questions related to investment, sustainability, interoperability and engagement of the citizen in smart cities projects.
“Presently, majority of IT systems are working in silos in cities, they must be integrated and efficient energy management system must be followed,” said Amod Ranade. Renu Budhiraja was of the view that interoperability of the
systems and applications would be key part of smart cities project. On the role of public sector in smart cities, BN Satpathy said that public sector would play major role in infrastructure development in the years to come.
Power Session by Trend Micro India
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he power discussion began with Trend Micro team saying that most vulnerable sectors are banking and government. There are more and more targeted attacks happening in the organisations. Organisations are moving to hybrid cloud, BYOD is a cause of security concern. There is lot of virtualization taking place, as it offers ease of manageability. Remote locations are accessing database and application. Attack on SKADA systems is the new trend. It is being accessed in realtime environment from outside. It is also being built on Windows. Even partners accessing network from outside have to be managed. Consolidation of data centres, is
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creating a hole in the perimeter. Firewall put earlier may not be so relevant now. Due to changing threat scenarios, government is advised not to follow conventional ways of security. Trend Micro then touched upon the latest entrant in security threats which is Ransomware. They have registered 85 cases of Ransomware targeted to high profile people. One of the ways to prevent it is to put sand-boxing technology at gateway layer. It is still not the only answer and is efficient only to a certain extent. Delegates thought that sand-boxing is very expensive. There are legal issues if the solution tries to get into packet analysis. APRIL, 2015
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Public Finance Management Automation
EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA 2015 Public Finance Management Automation Power Solutions for Digital India Security in Digital Transformation–Brave the New World ITEnabled Smart Governance Next Generation Security for Datacenters Best Practices in Cyber Security Smart Transactions Chhattisgarh Geographic Information System Improving Governance with Technology: Cloud,Big Data Analytics & IoT Power Discussion by ESDS Software Solution Express Technology Sabha eGovernance Awards EXPRESS COMPUTER
Dr. P V Ramesh
Dr P V Ramesh, Principal Secretary, Finance, Government of Andhra Pradesh
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r. P V Ramesh, the keynote speaker in the first session on the Day 3 of the Express Technology Sabha, began his speech by informing the audience that the government of Andhra Pradesh deals with Rs.1,10,000 crore every year. While many of the stakeholders are internal, there are also large number of external stakeholders like RBI, people who pay taxes, vendors, suppliers, PSUs, etc. Government also borrows lot of money from bonds, etc. Public finance is anchored in a system that has a long legacy. The challenge is that there is no real-time management system, and this is something that often leads to delay in processing of payments. The budgeting is very top driven and cumbersome process. A partial automation has already been
done, but this system has multiple silos, which are not integrated. manage. In order to bring efficiency and speed in the decision making process of the government, it is important that we have a real-time access to finance. "We went for ERP system which was fully integrated on all levels. Every single project will be Geo-taged and Georeferenced. It is a highly secured system with high level of availability," said P V Ramesh. The solution components comprises of solutions for debt and investment management, accounts management, revenue management, expenditure management, etc. He concluded by saying that Andhra Pradesh is first state in the country to have SAP based financial management system. APRIL, 2015
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Power Solutions for Digital India Anubhav Sabharwal, Country Manager- Sales, Schneider Electric
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he session started with the speaker broaching the subject of MP SWAN, CBEC, Gujarat Home Department case-studys. In this project there was deployment of 1503 numbers of UPS from 4 KVA TO 40 KVA capacity. The implementation was at 1200 places in the country. They benefited in terms of avoiding battery outage, better performance and better customer satisfaction. Anubhav Sabharwal speaking on Schneider Electric said that the company has 31 manufacturing facilities. The company has UPS manufacturing facilities in Bangalore and products made here start from
component level. Everyday 40 containers of products are shifted from Bangalore to Chennai for export. He mentioned that for critical applications there are online UPS systems. Organisations can choose between conventional or modular architecture. Nowadays it is imperative for us to make data centres into revenue centres. He concluded by saying that it is necessary for the customers to develop their own IT policy and define their uptime and business criticality. Schneider Electric can make the equipment that fits the customer’s exact requirements.
Security in Digital Transformation– Brave the New World Abhishek Sharma, Senior Sales Engineer, Websense
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bhishek Sharma started the presentation by giving an overview of the current state of security in government organisations across the globe and in India. He focussed on providing answers to the most pertinent questions such as — Why do we need a forward looking, adaptive security approach? What kind of technology can help in combating advanced attacks? He said “Internet has brought vast complications to the security landscape. During the past few years, threats have gone up. The industry is in serious shortage of skilled resources. Any security strategy revolves around three things — People, Process and Technology. If you choose the right
technology, you can minimise the effort for people and process dependencies”. He also pointed out that the current budget of 160 crore for security was not enough, it should be increased to fight the menace of cybercrime in India. He pointed out that security incidents are increasing across the globe. Quoting the data from National Crime Record Bureau, he said that compared to last year, hacking incidents are up by 26%, instances of obscene publications has gone up by 104%, unauthorised access attempts have increased by a whopping 800%, breach of confidentiality incidents are up by 102%. These kinds of challenges can only be addressed when there is better budget and more awareness amongst users. APRIL, 2015
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IT Enabled Smart Governance Sabarish Santhanam, CTO & Director, Agile Labs
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he speaker began by highlighting the fact that it is absolutely critical for people in key positions in government and in related areas to have a clear understanding of the data that they hold. It is only through such an understanding that they will be in a position to device effective policy for the country. The presentation focused on Axpert solution from Agile Labs which helps a government organisation taking informed policy decision and track implementation of schemes. He said, “Informed legislature is crucial for good policy formulation. Agile Labs provides solutions which assist the people in government to
scientifically analyse the data and formulate the policy and thereby plan for future”. He informed that with the help of Axpert the members of the judicial fraternity can access and track information about cases, judgements and hearing dates across a ll the states on a single platform. He pointed out that Axpert was an enterprise cloud software platform on which apps can be built five times faster with only SQL writing skills. “One can build apps for all government departments without code. Axpert comes along with an integrated dashboard, government metrics, work flow manager and data exchange server,” he added.
Next Generation Security for Datacenters Sameer Advani, Senior Systems Engineer Government Vertical, Fortinet Inc
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he speaker began the presentation by focusing on fast changing security landscape. He stated that while network speed was doubling every two years, we are also seeing a corresponding rise in cybercrime. “Less than 20% of the enterprise Internet connections are secured through next-generation firewalls (NGFWs),” he informed. The Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) are deep-packet inspection firewalls that move beyond port/protocol inspection and blocking to add application-level inspection, intrusion prevention, and bringing intelligence from outside the firewall. “Beyond the traditional NGFW requirements, organisations are
increasingly adding anti-malware and Web Filtering, both to increase security and consolidate devices and companies are also increasingly adding advanced threat protection and strong authentication to help secure the organisation against increasingly sophisticated attack by cybercrimanals,” he said. He also presented an overview of solutions provided by Fortinet for cyber security. He was of the view that Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) which incorporates contextual data to create and enforce network access policies is the way forward. He also informed that Fortinet has been providing security solutions to government organisation such as Income Tax Department, UIDAI, etc. APRIL, 2015
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Best Practices in Cyber Security
From Left to Right: Satya Narayan Pradhan, Additional Director General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department, Jharkhand Police; Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Sanjay Sahay, Additional Director General of Police, Government of Karnataka; Loknath Behera, Additional Director General of Police (Modernization), Kerala Police; Harmeet Kalra, Head - Strategic Accounts, Check Point
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his power panel discussion focused on the present status of cyber security in the country and the ways to address the challenges. During the discussion the panelist were of the view that we are witnessing a rather tepid approach towards security, especially in
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government departments. Because of shortage of officers who are qualified as cyber security experts, the challenges have been compounded. Sanjay Sahay said that the time has come to recognise cyber security as a separate domain from normal policing and officers must be given special training to handle the cyber
security cases. Ranjan Dwivedi pointed out that there was lot of solutions available in the market for cyber security but hardly any of them are in Indian languages. He was of the view that people and organisations would benefit once we have an architecture, which offers solutions in local language. APRIL, 2015
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Smart Transactions Vasudeo Behere, Businesss Head- Government Vertical, NetCORE Solutions Private Ltd.
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Vasudeo Behere
he session commenced with Vasudeo Behere saying that in a Smart City it will be natural for people to demand responsible governance. Messaging has become a very core component now. Even government is becoming innovative. Government has learnt that it can get backing if they do good marketing. It has realised that the mobile platform can be used to listen to grievances very effectively. He also emphasised upon the important role that the mobile medium is playing in our lives; it has now become a system that is closely identified with the individual user. He went on to present an overview of
NetCORE's Falconide product, which he told the audience is made in India. It is essentially a cloud-based delivery engine. Currently the system is being used by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. It handles 66 modules of e-seva. It is a prize winning application. NetCORE is also a key partner in Andhra Pradesh police for their mail delivery. They handle its entire marketing and digital infrastructure. The session concluded with the speaker saying that we need to improve citizen services by increasing digital services. We need to automate the right to communication.
Chhattisgarh Geographic Information System A M Parial, Vice Chairman, CHiPS
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hhattisgarh is the tenth largest state and 50% of it is covered by dense forest. The state has 27 districts. A M Parial began his presentation with these words: “The patwari map was very essential for land, cultivated land and for investment. However, it was in a really bad shape and not at all updated. At that time budget was miniscule and so we decided that every Panchayat had to contribute Rs. 10,000 for data-sets. CHiPS started with its own map grid. 27,000 villages were superimposed over satellite maps. Villages were mosaiced one by one, and then made into block maps. There was a problem when they tried to mosaic village maps. There was discontinuity in water bodies. Thus there were multiple rounds of error correction. As a security agency one needs to cover many of layers like where is the water body, where is the bridge, where is
the elevation, when entire demographic is made.” The topo-sheet maps were 50 years old and did not follow the natural boundary of the habitat. Some of the places due to satellite imagery, were constantly finding problem of water scarcity. Through new maps they could find out the cause of water shortage, in a particular area. It also shows extracted drainages. It was extracted from satellite images. It shows panchayat boundary, literate population. drainages body, roadmap, subsurfacial structures are shown like soil map, soil irrigability, village map, etc. People are now able to see what is the spread. When Nandigram fighting was going on it was difficult to find another land. But by using these maps, they could find a land and ensure compensation, and ensured minimum loss of environment and minimum displacement. APRIL, 2015
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Improving Governance with Technology: Cloud, Big Data Analytics & IoT
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he panel discussion focused on the use of modern technology such as Cloud, Big Data Analytics and IoT for improving the overall governance in the centre and states. G S Naveen Kumar said that Government of Uttar Pradesh was planning to create huge data centre and focus would be given to integration, digitisation and using data intelligently. Neeta Verma gave a comprehensive view of cloud deployment in central government. She said that although cloud bring paradigm shift, the template was not simple and therefore officials needed more training. Aniket Patange highlighted the challenge of energy and asset utilisation. Raheel Khurshid said that Twitter has worked with Indian Army during the J&K flood and that saved the life of about 12000 people.
From Left to Right: Raheel Khursheed, Head - News,Politics & Government,Twitter India; Neeta Verma, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre,Government of India; Dr. Neeta Shah, Former Director, eGovernance, Gujarat Informatics Limited,Government of Gujarat; G.S.Naveen Kumar, Special Secretary (IT & E), Chief Minister Office, Government of Uttar Pradesh; Aniket Patange, Director,Data Center Life Cycle Services,Schneider Electric; Aamer Azeemi, Managing Director, Cisco Consulting Services, APJC Emerging Markets and Head – IoE Practice,APJC; Anoop Verma, Editor, Express Computer
Power Discussion by ESDS Software Solution
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hat kind of impact will IoT have on Smart Cities—the discussion at this round table began with different speakers presenting their views on this subject. There was universal agreement on one point—the data growth is going to be exponential. ESDS team questioned where is this data going? When we are talking about a massive programme like Digital India, there will be data related challenges. Government would need to ask: ● How to protect privacy of data? ● Where to store data? ● How to manage and maintain the devices? ● How to maintain and manage the infrastructure? The ESDS team said that there is lot of complexity with data centres today. 60
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80% of India’s data is being stored abroad. And there is every possibility that this data is being used and analysed. Can there be a policy to ensure that the private companies’ data be stored in India itself? Many government officials and organisations use Gmail. 40% of WhatsApp users are in India, and when the Facebook deal happened, Indian government did not get anything. There needs to be handshake even in technology and e-commerce because these deals are going to get bigger. ESDS mentioned that EU, Singapore have policies on personal data. The team questioned that how do we get analytics sector developed here if we have no data stored here? The discussion concluded by delegates mentioning that majority of decisions taken in the country are business driven. APRIL, 2015
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EXPRESS TECHNOLOGYSABHA eGOVERNANCE AWARDS To recognise the outstanding work done by government departments in the area of eGovernance, the Express Technology Sabha eGovernance Awards were presented on the Day 3 of the Sabha. Dr Parakala Prabhakar was the Chief Guest at the Express Technology Sabha awards night. The awards distribution ceremony was enlivened by the performance of noted Bollywood singer Shibani Kashyap
Category - Outstanding Performance in Citizen Service Delivery
Category - Outstanding Performance in Citizen Service Delivery
Category - Outstanding Implementation of ICT in Urban Development
WINNER - Passport Seva Project (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India)
WINNER - Chhattisgarh Online Information for Citizen Empowerment (CHOiCE), Government of Chhattisgarh
WINNER - Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) (Government of Gujarat)
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Category - Best eGovernance Implementation WINNER - Traces CPC-TDS Team (Department of Income Tax)
Category - Outstanding Performance in Citizen Service Delivery Category - Best Implementation of Cyber Security in Government WINNER - Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) (Indian Railways)
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WINNER - Open data initiative, First National Cloud of Government of India and development of guidelines for the Government websites - (National Informatics Centre, Government of India)
Category: Other WINNER - MahaGov Cloud (Directorate of IT, Government of Maharashtra)
APRIL, 2015
EVENT EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA 2015
DAY - 3
» www.expresscomputeronline.com
Invigorating Performance by Noted Bollywood Singer - Shibani Kashyap
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APRIL, 2015
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CASE STUDY
DIAL
» www.expresscomputeronline.com
VDI CHECKS-IN WITH DIAL For ensuring a comprehensive solution to various inadequacies in its desktop environment, DIAL opted for VMware’s VDI solution. BY JASMINE DESAI
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elhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) is a joint venture between GMR Group, Airports Authority of India, and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB). In January 2006, the consortium was awarded the concession to operate, manage and develop the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in Delhi. IGIA is the busiest airport in India and looks set to maintain its position thanks to ongoing development projects. DIAL employs around 1,500 people, nearly half of whom use desktop computers. Of these, the majority are permanent members of staff working in areas such as finance, human resource (HR), airport security, baggage handling and air traffic control. A small number are employed on short-term contracts, working mainly on specific projects, often involving airport construction. Regardless of the role, each employee relies on the firm’s IT infrastructure to provide stable access to key applications. The applications that support airport processes such as check-in, baggage handling and traffic control are managed by the DIAL IT team. However, DIAL parent company GMR Group is responsible for business solutions such as SAP and Microsoft Dynamics NAV, as well as the DIAL Microsoft Exchange email environment. APRIL, 2015
BUSINESS AVENUES
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DIAL
» www.expresscomputeronline.com
VDI vortex GMR Group virtualized the servers at its main data centre with VMware vSphere to improve IT performance. The transformation paved the way for further virtualization projects across all business units. Following the virtualization of the main data centre, the GMR Group asked DIAL to study virtualization as a way of tackling inefficiencies around its desktop environment. IP Rao, Chief Executive Officer, DIAL, says “We were excited to be entrusted with the responsibility of rolling out the virtual desktop initiative at DIAL. The success of the project was a matter of prestige as well as challenge for DIAL, as it would pave the way for similar replication of technology across the group.” At DIAL, it could take up to two days to provision desktops for a DIAL employee, and GMR Group considered this too long to support new recruits or employees moving between teams. Furthermore, the turnaround time could be an additional two days if the request included deployment of a legacy application. Davesh Shukla, CIO, DIAL says, “These applications were outsourced to a service provider and we had to contact the company to complete the installation. It often meant more time was required because the service provider had to schedule an engineer to come on-site and do the work.” DIAL had other concerns. They saw that critical project data was stored locally on desktops. There was a constant risk that work could be delayed if a file was accidentally wiped or a local hard drive failed. Shukla of DIAL adds, “It was crucial to establish backup policies for our desktops to eliminate the risk of data loss. I wanted us to have greater control over the data that’s driving the expansion of the airport.” Indeed, airport expansion was a major concern for DIAL. He could see that the existing infrastructure of 655 desktops was already consuming significant amounts of electricity, and the figure would continue to rise as the environment expanded. What’s more, a larger desktop infrastructure would mean even more time spent on desk-side support visits. Mr Shukla comments, “Energy 66
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consumption was a big worry. But I was equally worried about supporting an expanded desktop infrastructure with our current resources IT administrators already spent a large proportion of their time responding to tickets for desktop support.”
DIAL counts on VMware DIAL team talked to VMware and subsequently began working with VMware Professional Services to design a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) pilot for 25 IT administrators based on VMware Horizon View. Apart from VMware, DIAL also evaluated Citrix, but ended up zeroing in on VMware due its existing install-base and strong key stakeholders mapping. After the success of the pilot, DIAL extended the infrastructure to support its entire desktop estate. The VMware team worked with Dell on building back-end platform of Dell PowerEdge coupled with Dell Wyse P25 zero clients, complete with monitors and keyboards. With the VDI, DIAL has addressed all the issues it faced with the previous desktops. The risk of delaying projects has been significantly reduced because data is no longer stored locally it’s held centrally on the servers dedicated to the VDI and backed up on a daily basis to ensure business continuity. Applications virtualized through this initiative are SAP Financial Accounting module, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office. By virtualizing the company’s standard software image and deploying it to the Dell Wyse clients using Horizon View, the IT team can quickly and easily install and maintain the image. “Previously, we needed around two days to update desktops. With Horizon View, it’s completed in no more than two hours. As a result, we’ve drastically reduced disruption to operations because users gain faster access to our back-office applications,” says Vivek Chandra, AGM of IT. Users often change roles during projects and it used to be challenging to accommodate these changes. “Today, it’s simple. The enhanced image management tools of Horizon allow access to software
and applications instantly. We can rapidly deploy the standard VDI image across the client infrastructure and we have minimised the storage required for maintaining software images. In turn, this has significantly reduced our costs of buying and managing physical storage hardware.” The VDI infrastructure not only lowers costs, but it also helps the IT team work proactively. According to Shukla of DIAL, “The IT team uses an evaluation version of VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View to monitor performance across the infrastructure, allowing us to react before the service is affected. We have gained a deep insight into the operations of our desktop environment, which will help us maximise the value of our VDI.” The benefits are obvious, the number of help-desk calls are falling fast. Chandra estimates that the number of support calls will have halved by the first 12 months of deployment. He says that DIAL is getting better performance at a lower cost through the VDI now in place. For instance, the spend on desktops will drop because the zero-client infrastructure has a longer life cycle. In addition, centrally storing data has made it easier to manage software inventory and eliminate unnecessary licenses. Along with these savings, Shukla predicts that the TCO for the desktop infrastructure will drop by 50 % over the next 5 years. This figure takes into account the benefits of centralising data and simplifying day-to-day management on clients. The maintenance costs will be lower for the virtualized infrastructure. “Provisioning desktops in two hours rather than two days represents a time and cost saving,” he says. Furthermore, DIAL is expecting to see a drop in energy consumption. “In terms of energy efficiency, our VMware-based VDI will perform much better than our previous PC infrastructure. DIAL expects to see a rapid return on investment. “We are proud to be the first airport in India to adopt VDI. The project is seen as a major achievement at the GMR Group level,” concludes IP Rao, CEO, DIAL. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com
APRIL, 2015
presents
A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FORUM
Chief Guest
Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu
The Hon'ble Union Minister of Urban Development Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation & Parliamentary Affairs
Ram Sevak Sharma
Amitabh Kant
Onno Ruhl
Bibek Debroy
Piyush Somani
Secretary Department of Electronics and Information Technology
Secretary Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion
India Country Director The World Bank
Full Time Member NITI Aayog
Founder, MD, CEO ESDS Software Solution Private Limited
Television Partner
Hospitality Partner
Knowledge Partner
Entry by invitation only
Tuesday, March 24, 2015 at Shangri-La's - Eros Hotel, Ashoka Road, New Delhi
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First Digital India Dialogue focussing on Smart Cities was held on March 24, 2015
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