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BRINGING BIG DATA TO HEALTHCARE hile much of the data generated by healthcare organisations continues to be stored in hard copy form, the trend is towards digitisation. Many healthcare organisations are now adding terabytes of data to their data centres annually. A large percentage of the unstructured data sits unused, in many cases it is being retained solely for regulatory reasons. These massive quantities of data hold the promise of supporting a wide range of healthcare functions. It is possible to do more with less if we can put the idle data to work by deploying analytic capabilities. The e-commerce companies, which, due to the heightened competition, are struggling to deliver good value at reasonable cost, have been on the forefront of deploying analytics for developing insights that will help better serve consumers and improve the bottomline. However, the healthcare providers have been latecomers in the digitisation and analytics game—perhaps this is because they are not facing market pressure to the same extent as the e-commerce players. Concerns related to data privacy, and the large investments that are needed to standardise, digitise, analyse and act upon the information that is generated, are also the reason behind analytics being low on the list of business priorities for healthcare companies. The challenges in healthcare in India are same as that around the world—analytics can be the answer to many of these challenges. Few of the Indian healthcare organisations are now realising that when properly implemented, advanced analytics can lead to seminal improvements in the economics and outcomes of healthcare. Recently, Max Healthcare entered into a partnership with Australia’s Deakin University for using predictive analytics to analyse its patient history records. Few hospital chains are looking to deploy analytics for benefits such as the ability to detect diseases at earlier stage, when the treatment can be provided easily and effectively, and for combining and managing the health related data of an individual or a large group. The implementation of healthcare analytics is still in nascent stage, but as the platforms mature, they must guarantee privacy and be available in a format that is menu-drive, user-friendly and transparent. Also, much of the massive amounts of data owned by India’s healthcare institutions is not standardised; it is often fragmented and stored in legacy IT systems with incompatible formats. The public and private healthcare organisations must come together to resolve the issues of ownership, governance and standards. These challenges have to be overcome to ensure adoption of advanced analytics that can bring real-time, actionable information to the decision-makers.

THE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DATA OWNED BY INDIA’S HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS IS NOT STANDARDISED; IT IS OFTEN FRAGMENTED AND STORED IN LEGACY IT SYSTEMS WITH INCOMPATIBLE FORMATS

anoop.verma@expressindia.com

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contents

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

REIMAGINING HEALTHCARE THROUGH TECHNOLOGYAND AYUSH “Innovative technologies are changing the face of healthcare in the country by enabling healthcare practitioners to automate operations and provide healthcare services in a cost-effective manner,” says Shripad Yesso Naik, Union Minister of State, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Case Study

feature

ZHL DIALS INFOTRACK FOR 108 EMERGENCY SERVICES

HEALTHCARE: THE ERA OF DIGITAL HEALING

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY ASPIRES FOR CLOUD NINE

A wide array of challenges are making it imperative to deploy new technologies for meeting the rising demand of services through fewer resources

There is a surge of interest among healthcare institutions in cloud computing and data analytics

10 4

With the aim of making the emergency ambulance services in India at par with the 911 service in USA, ZHL has opted for InfoTrack's Vehicle & Staff Management System for managing the 1000 ambulances that the company is running under 108 emergency services

REALISING GROWTH THROUGH VIRTUALIZATION

Anthem Biosciences has deployed virtualization for better business outcomes

20 EXPRESS COMPUTER

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interviews

feature 34

ACTION ON THE MOVE

At Safexpress, warehouse managers are using mobile app connected to real-time GPS for managing their work

RISE OF ENTERPRISE FLASH STORAGE Flash storage is gaining the confidence of the enterprises in India with faster system performance

ANALYTICS THE MOBILE WAY Enterprises have started deploying mobile analytics tools for gaining a better view of the exact needs of customers

column 54

RETAILCIOs ON FOREFRONTOFADOPTING MOBILE,CLOUD

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C K MISHRA

Universal Medical Care

C K RAMAKANT

Mobile Technology is Driving Innovation in FMS sector

BIKRAM S. BEDI

Business in the Cloud

» eGov to fight corruption and red tapism » Now enjoy wi-fi facility at Taj Mahal » Payment to light houses goes online » Rural women to get paid to view videos about health and nutrition

event TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMART GOVERNANCE

BlackBerry’s Prescription for Success in Healthcare

in the news

Most retailers are aiming to ensure that up to 90% of their enterprise systems operate in the cloud

ANNIE MATHEW

58 60

ASPECT: ACE 2015 HUAWEI NETWORK CONGRESS 2015

» Visa & FireEye to co-develop tools for payment data' » Computer that operates on water droplets developed

JULY, 2015

MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express (P) 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. 7. July, 2015 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Editor Anoop Verma* Chief of Product Dr. Raghu Pillai Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar Copy Desk Aditi Gautam Mumbai Jasmine Desai, Abhishek Raval 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 Mathen Mathew

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INTERVIEW SHRIPAD YESSO NAIK UNION MINISTER OF STATE

REIMAGINING HEALTHCARE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY AND AYUSH “Innovative technologies are changing the face of healthcare in the country by enabling healthcare practitioners to automate operations and provide healthcare services in a cost-effective manner,” says Shripad Yesso Naik, Union Minister of State, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

What is your view of eHealth in the country? Do you think that we are making adequate progress in deploying new technologies for improving the scope of healthcare? There can be a difference of opinion about what we have been able to achieve with the help of technology in healthcare sector. However, everyone will agree that technology is the way forward. In a populous and geographically large country like India, the healthcare sector is bound to face many challenges. For meeting these challenges in a cost-effective way, we need to deploy latest technology. There are many innovations that make it possible for us to improve the quality of the existing systems and bring down the actual cost of delivering healthcare. Today our primary healthcare centres are taking care of different types of patients, some of these patients are those who may require a referral to any advanced hospital for undergoing complicated treatment—in all such cases, telemedicine can be used for providing an efficient connection between the primary healthcare centre and the district healthcare centre or even with expert medical practitioners based in any part of the country. By enabling proper diagnosis and smooth referral, such a system will make life easy for people living in remote areas of the country. This government understands the importance of technology, we have proposed to set up a National e-Health Authority (NeHA), which will be responsible for development of an Integrated Health Information System 8

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and enforcing the laws & regulations for the privacy and security of the patients health information and records. The Authority will help us to integrate multiple health IT systems in a way that ensures security, confidentiality and privacy of patient data. This has the potential to transform the present practice in which the patients have to undergo fresh tests every time they switch doctors. A centralised electronic health record repository of all citizens will ensure that the health history and status of all patients is always available to all health institutions. This will also expedite diagnosis and treatment.

their entire diagnosis done. This government believes in promoting traditional arts of healing, along with modern medicine, to meet the healthcare needs of the people. That is why we are focussing on both, AYUSH and new technologies. The Ministry of AYUSH has been recently created.What are the key objectives of the ministry? Earlier AYUSH was a department within the ministry, but now with the vision of providing affordable healthcare to the entire country, the government has created a separate Ministry of AYUSH, which deals with the aspects of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. Many initiatives are being taken under this ministryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the result of the work that is being done will soon become visible. We are devising a policy for using paramedical staffs, AYUSH doctors and alternate medicine practitioners to provide healthcare to the people. This kind of system can lead to early diagnosis and a flawless system of referral to district level or larger hospitals.

The cost of quality healthcare is on the rise. What steps is the Ministry of Health and FamilyWelfare taking to ensure that all sections of society have access to healthcare services? Our National Healthcare Policy 2015, clearly states that our vision is to ensure the availability of quality and affordable healthcare in the country. Under the new tax devolution formula, the share of state governments in central taxes has been increased from 32% to 42%. This will enable the states to provide more funding to their healthcare projects. Recently the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana for ensuring that everyone in the country has access to financial services. This scheme will greatly improve the ability of the people to get health insurance and accident insurance. Most doctors are reluctant to serve in the smaller towns and rural areas.Do you think that technology can be deployed to cover the shortfall of doctors that certain areas in the country constantly face? Certainly, technology is the way out. Innovative technologies are changing the face of healthcare in the country by enabling healthcare practitioners to automate their operations and provide effective healthcare services in a costeffective manner. Telemedicine can be deployed to enable people living in smaller towns and rural areas to remotely consult with expert doctors, who are mostly based in urban centres. We are developing telemedicine systems that will allow patients in remote locations to get connected with expert doctors and have EXPRESS COMPUTER

Our vision is that every state should have one national level AYUSH institute.In Delhi,we have started building an AYUSH AIIMS. Within six month,we will inaugurate the building

CurrentlyAYUSH does not have a regulatory body.How do you plan to ensure quality, standardisation and compliance? Regulatory body is must for ensuring quality, compliance and standardisation in the delivery of healthcare services. We have formed a task-force to look into the intricacies of creating a regulatory body. The task-force is expected to submit its report in six months and after that we will have a regulatory body. We are also planning to establish a highest body in every stream of AYUSH. The body will ensure quality and compliance in its stream and thereby improve the credibility of the system. Today the AYUSH doctors are in dilemma, they do not have enough job opportunity and job security. That is why they are unable to match the confidence of an MBBS doctors. We are aware of all the challenges and we are taking the necessary measures to overcome these challenges. Our vision is that every state should have one national level AYUSH institute. In Delhi, we have started building an AYUSH AIIMS. Within a six month, we will inaugurate the building. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

COVER STORY

HEALTHCARE

THE ERAOF

DIGITAL HEALING The healthcare industry is mired with numerous challengesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;budgetary constraints, ageing population and rise in lifestyle related ill-health. The current and impending challenges are making it imperative for the sector to deploy new technologies for meeting the rising demand of services through fewer resources BY ANKUSH KUMAR

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JULY, 2015

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ndia’s healthcare industry is currently valued at $99 billion, and is growing at the rate of 12% annually, to reach $139 billion by 2017 [source: PwC Analysis]. Hospitals have a share of 71% in the sector, while the Pharmaceuticals segment contribute 13%. Despite the growth that the sector has been witnessing during the last few years, the healthcare space continues to be under considerable pressure. Shortage of medical staff and the modern infrastructure to cater to the healthcare needs of a large country like India is a major problem that the sector faces. As per the PwC estimates: “The ratio of doctors per 1,000 people is just 0.6 in India whereas in Brazil and China, it is 1.8. India has only 1.3 hospital beds per 1,000 people—significantly lower than the guideline of 3.5 beds defined by the World Health Organisation. To meet the desired outcomes in terms of hard and soft infrastructure capability, the healthcare delivery system will need to add 3.6 million beds, 3 million doctors and 6 million nurses over the next 20 years. This would require an investment of around US$ 245 billion through traditional means.” During the last decade roughly 100,000 hospital beds have been added annually. If India continues to maintain this rate of additions, it will still be short of 1.6 million beds by 2034. The healthcare organisations will have to make massive investment for getting the required manpower and infrastructure in place. Considering the paucity of healthcare infrastructure in the country, it is essential for the sector to leverage innovative solutions, which can lead to the maximisation of productivity of the systems that are already in place.

Leveraging Innovative Technologies India is on the verge of becoming the heart disease capital of the world—it has been predicted that by 2020 cardiovascular diseases will be the cause of over 40% deaths in India as compared to 24% in 1990. Diagnosis in the early stages of cardiac-related illness can help slow the progression of disease, and it can result in a significant lowering of the

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COVER STORY

Connected care and mobility solutions,which are cost effective and simple to use, are gaining traction Srikanth Muthya, Director- Patient Care and Monitoring Solutions, Philips HealthSystem

Our platform captures critical patient data points through clinical devices and wearables helping patients in preparing for clinical procedures Madhavan Satagopan, CTO,Altimetrik 12

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healthcare costs. Companies like Philips are in the forefront of developing new systems for diagnosing and treating cardiovascular conditions. Recently the company introduced a cardiograph that measures and displays 12-channel ECGs in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Srikanth Muthya, Director- Patient Care and Monitoring Solutions, Philips HealthSystem, says, “Connected care and mobility solutions, which are cost effective and simple to use, are gaining more traction. But the best results can only be achieved when the systems are in tune with the local conditions. We have kept the local conditions in mind while developing the 12 channel ECG, which is very simple to use. The device connects with cardiologists via the 2G or 3G networks.” Sankara Eye Hospitals, a nonprofit organisation, which is a part of the Kanchi Kamakoti Medical, has devised an innovative way of using an ordinary smartphone as the ophthalmoscope. “The smartphone can be used to diagnose most of the common eye problems. Images taken on the device can be transferred through social media, MMS and emails, and can also be archived in a simple and affordable way. Although it cannot totally replace a real ophthalmoscope, it will help in seeking the opinion of eye specialists, even if they are away from the patient. Anyone with the basic understanding and knowledge of ophthalmology can use it,” says Kishor Joshi, Country Head, Business Development, Sankara Eye Hospitals. With the growing popularity of wearable technologies, healthcare is on the cusp of a new digital revolution. Wearable technology, coupled with cloud and big data, can lead to tectonic changes in the way healthcare is delivered. Wearable sensors can monitor movement, heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels and other health-related statistics. Such information can be recorded, reported and analysed through smartphone apps, watches, and other wearable devices. “Our care management platform captures critical patient data points through clinical devices and wearables

and helps patients in preparing for clinical procedures. With the patient data being easily available, the caregivers can respond quickly in case of medical emergency,” says Madhavan Satagopan, Chief Technology Officer, Altimetrik.

Apps & Analytics Gaining Momentum Fuelled by the widespread availability of smartphones and tablets, mobile apps have become ubiquitous in many aspects of our day-to-day life. Apps for managing a variety of healthcare tasks are already available in the market. There are apps for electrocardiogram (ECG), monitoring blood pressure, monitoring blood glucose, and much else. The use of healthcare apps has the potential of bringing efficiency in the overall healthcare system. The apps can lead to reduction in the frequency and cost of the direct interactions between healthcare professionals and the patients. A patient’s vitals can be recorded remotely and shared in real time with healthcare professionals. This is already being practised in India. The patients are able to consult the pharmacists, physicians and nurses without having to physically meet them. ICICI Lombard in India has launched its mobile application ‘IL Insure’ in 2013. The mobile application empowers new and existing customers to buy insurance cover through the app. “Customers can use the ‘IL Insure’ app to purchase health insurance and locate the nearest hospitals, OPD centers and pathology labs. The interface allows the customer to track the status of their health claim. The application also provides access to one’s health card. We are seeing steady growth in numbers of people seeking quotes on health policies through the app,” says Girish Nayak, Chief – Service, Operations and Technology, ICICI Lombard General Insurance. With analytics, the healthcare companies can explore the possibility of the occurrence of a serious health issue without incurring any additional cost or performing physical experiments. In the United States, based on the hospital’s rate of actual to expected re-admissions, JULY, 2015

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KET FACTS

Pharmaceutical

$139

Medical Equipment

BILLION India’s healthcare sector expected to reach $139 bn by 2017

71%

Medical Insurance

Hospitals

Diagnostics *Segment wise Split of Healthcare Industry (2012)

1000/0.6

1000/1.3

India has only 1.3 hospital beds per 1,000 people

The ratio of doctors per 1,000 people is just 0.6

lower than the guideline of 3.5 beds defined by the WHO

In Brazil and China, it’s 1.8

TO MEET DEMAND WE NEED TO ADD IN NEXT 20 YEARS

3.6

6.0

MILLION

BEDS

DOCTORS

NURSES

■ A report published by Deloitte reveals that in 2012, the telemedicine market in India was valued at $7.5 million, and it is expected to rise 20% annually, to $18.7 million by 2017.

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3.0

■ 57% of all healthcare data is useful if tagged and analysed efficiently.

$245

BILLION

INVESTMENT

■ According to an estimate by 2020 cardiovascular diseases will be the cause of over 40% deaths in India as compared to 24% in 1990.

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COVER STORY

Market Size of Healthcare industry in India (USD Bn) 160

CAGR 12%

120

“Cloud is being deployed to ensure efficiency, effectiveness,and flexibility–it ensures a better,cheaper and faster wayof doing things Varun Sood, CIO,Fortis Healthcare

Robust telecommunication links and good video quality are essential for proper clinical consultation Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals Group 14

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CAGR 15%

80 45

2010

2011

139

2008

2009

2012

2017E

Source: PwC

penalties are applied to all Medicarebased diagnosis-related group (DRG). Dr. Manish Gupta,Vice President, Xerox Corporation and Director, Xerox Research Centre in India, says, “Through analytics, healthcare providers are able to derive insights that help them make more informed medical decisions and gain operational efficiencies.” Healthcare accounts for $2 billion of Xerox business in the US alone. In the US, Xerox helps in the administration of the medicare programme in 37 out of the 50 states. “Advanced algorithms for predictive analytics on re-admissions can analyse real-time information-such as vital signs, lab results and medications-to identify which patients are likely to return to the hospital. Clinicians are immediately alerted, so that they can modify care and avoid the potential financial impact. This new breed of analytics not only predicts patient and financial risks, it also guides clinicians on specific procedures that must be taken,” adds Gupta.

Telemedicine for Better Collaboration Technology continues to be one of the key focus areas of various super-specialty hospitals. Fortis Healthcare has invested in developing an effective IT backbone and recently the company began the implementation of ‘Project F1’, which is a popular Oracle-based ERP system. The Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (FEHI),

New Delhi, has deployed electronic intensive care unit (e-ICU) that blends critical care skills, technology and innovation to deliver 24x7 intensive care to patients in remote locations. Varun Sood, CIO, Fortis Healthcare, is of the view that there are multiple technologies gaining foothold in the healthcare sector. Cloud is being deployed to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility–it ensures a better, cheaper and faster way of doing things. Analytics is gaining a stay now, earlier the focus of analytics was towards the business side, but now it is moving towards gaining clinical advancements and excellence. More and more data is now available electronically from the clinical side as IT experts are working on predictive analytics. Mobility is no more treated as technology, it has now become a reality of life. Telemedicine is a fast-emerging market in India and most of the modern day CIOs in the healthcare sector have a strong focus in this area. “What people used to refer as telemedicine is now being called ‘Virtual consult’. In my view also, Virtual consult/ Virtual clinics is a much better way of looking at telemedicine,” says Sood. Technology is being used to crosscheck if the right drug is being giving to the patient at the right time and in the right dosage. A report published by Deloitte reveals JULY, 2015

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Telemedicine is the key technology for improving collaboration and communication in the healthcare sector

We are seeing a lot of interest from the mid-market hospital segment for hospital-IT-in-aboxsolution

Data from medical records is being crunched at a much higher speed than ever before

Veera Raghavan,

Amit Mehta,

Kapil Mehrotra,

Executive Director & Global Practice Head Healthcare & Life Sciences,Dell Services

Head – ITand Medical Informatics, Artemis Hospitals

that in 2012, the telemedicine market in India was valued at $7.5 million, and it is expected to rise 20% annually, to $18.7 million by 2017. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Chief Information Officer, Apollo Hospitals Group, believes that tele-health solutions can greatly enable healthcare access and delivery in the rural sector. “Robust telecommunication links and good video quality are essential for proper clinical consultation. While the telecom links are available today, the reliability of the service is a point of concern,” says Arvind Sivaramakrishnan. “At Apollo hospitals, we consider technology to be a strategic element of our healthcare delivery model. Our solutions works around eICUs, telehealth, patient health records which is on the cloud, our completely interconnected HIS (Hospital Information System) and supporting solutions. Our mhealth enabled disease management initiatives are giving us positive results,” adds Arvind Sivaramakrishnan. Kapil Mehrotra, Head – IT and Medical Informatics, Artemis Hospitals, EXPRESS COMPUTER

says, “Telemedicine is the key technology for improving collaboration and communication amongst patients, doctors and other stakeholders in the healthcare sector.”

Increasing role of HIMS In today’s overcrowded hospitals, an efficient Hospital Information Management System (HIMS) is a must for managing all aspects of hospital management. The HIMS systems ensure that the healthcare professionals at the hospital have real-time access to the right information and there is automation in many of the routine tasks. A wide range of hospital management and administration process are covered under the HIMS. Ashok K Laha, CEO, InterraIT, says, “All the multi-speciality hospitals are equipped with HIMS and many of these provides advanced digitisation of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). Using PACS complex scan images, such as CAT Scans can be exchanged from hospitals to specialist

Country Manager,Isilon Storage Division,EMC

doctors office and recommended treatment is decided without having ailing patient physically meeting doctors with a bundle of reports and medical records.” Veera Raghavan, Executive Director & Global Practice Head Healthcare & Life Sciences, Dell Services, says that it is an exciting time for Dell to be a part of the Indian healthcare IT industry. “We are extending Dell’s proven capabilities and global healthcare leadership to India. We have brought best-of-breed combination of Hospital Information Systems (H IS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions to help providers achieve their goal of providing efficient, informationdriven healthcare in an affordable way. We launched the hospital-IT-in-a-box solution in 2014 exclusively for the Indian market,” says Raghavan. “We are seeing a lot of interest from the mid-market hospital segment for hospital-IT-in-a-box solution as it is enriched with unique capabilities, delivery model and pricing. We believe JULY, 2015

COVER STORY

Hospitals are reinventing themselves… Concierge medical services

EHR

Improved health outcomes

HIS

Reduction in cost and re-admission rates

Cloud computing

mHealth/ Tele-medicine

Improved clinical workflows

Source: PwC

this solution will be a game-changer for the Indian healthcare provider market where hospitals are burdened by huge upfront capital investments for hardware, and high cost of licenses, big investments in maintenance and support personnel,” Raghavan adds. Adoption of Clinical Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) applications will drive the re-evaluation of access, privacy, and data retention policies.“Data from medical records is being crunched at a much higher speed than ever before. Most importantly, the insights derived from them are being taken into account with much more wider outlook,” says Amit Mehta, Country Manager, Isilon Storage Division, EMC. This is enabling the doctors to provide a better diagnosis and treatment to the patients, stay updated on the emerging trends and also provide a holistic approach to a certain case. Data crunching at such scale is also 16

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helping the medical world to cross reference between patients from different age groups and demographies. “EMC provides products and services for healthcare providers, payers, government agencies and life sciences to improve patient care quality. 57% of all healthcare data is useful if tagged and analysed efficiently. Keeping that in perspective, EMC offers ‘Advanced Medical Imaging Solutions for Healthcare’ to consolidate, virtualise, and manage clinical and business applications and ‘Backup and Recovery Solutions for Healthcare’ for providers to strengthen their data protection, streamline backup and recovery, and meet a wide range of service levels for even the largest data volumes,” adds Amit Mehta.

The Road Ahead As the movement for digitisation of

health-related data spreads in India, there is the critical urgency to ensure that the data is properly collected and stored. It is also necessary to ensure that the data is in a format that can be accessed by healthcare professionals across the spectrum. “Data gaps, data quality, compliance with methodological standards and non-availability of disaggregated data are the major challenges that healthcare professionals face while monitoring the health status and health system performance,” says Dr Arun Thapa, Acting WHO Representative to India. There is the need to encourage innovations in this sector. The successful technology implementations must be well publicised, so that all the stakeholders are aware of the innovations that are happening in this area. “The government should acknowledge the fact that public investments in the health sector are not going to be JULY, 2015

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ICTcan be leveraged to act as a link and a force multiplier to clinical support systems Sri Krishnan, Vice President,Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions.

The sector must welcome the new providers and their potential to lead healthcare to a new digital age sufficient. Incentives for investment and innovation from the private sector must be encouraged,” says C N Raghupathi, VP & Head – India Business, Infosys. Shibasish Pramanik, Managing Consultant- Healthcare, PwC India, believes that a robust HIS system is most critically needed in India. “Too many HIS solutions are in the market, but not all of them take into consideration the exact needs of the doctors and the nurses. We need efficient HIS systems.” Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions is working on rural healthcare delivery. There are number of challenges, mostly related to well-trained medical professionals, that the company faces while working in this area, but the company’s vice president, Sri Krishnan, is of the view that all these problems can be resolved through the use of technology. “We are thinking of using new innovations for channelising limited resources to maximise utility. ICT can be leveraged to act as a link and a force EXPRESS COMPUTER

multiplier to clinical support systems,” says Sri Krishnan. Poonacha Machaiah, Founder and CEO, ABOVE Solutions, is of the view that the government should give adequate subsidies and tax benefits to the companies operating in rural healthcare. “Support from the government will ensure that the business models are sustainable. This will encourage large and small industry players to develop new solutions for the market,” he says. In a nutshell, the challenges ahead are too great for us to keep depending on the older methods of managing healthcare. The sector must welcome the new providers and their potential to lead healthcare to a new digital age. Only digital healthcare can support a future where everyone can access healthcare in the way that it suits their lifestyle and budget. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

There is a strong potential for web enabled Cloud deployable technologies Shibasish Pramanik, Managing Consultant- Healthcare, PwC India JULY, 2015

Advertorial

Odisha – The Promising destination for IT / ITES / ESDM Companies The Government of Odisha plans to drive the state towards the status of a holistic and preferred IT /ITES /ESDM destination. The vision statement for the State’s ICT Policy is “To develop IT/ITES/ESDM industries for inclusive growth and employment in the state of Odisha and leverage IT & ITES in governance to transform the state to a knowledge driven welfare society for improving the quality of life of citizens”. For that Government of Odisha is striving on leveraging ICT to improve the delivery of public services, eliminating the digital divide and bringing every citizen, every home and school, every business and administration online, creating a digitally literate Odisha transforming it into an entrepreneurship society from that of a salaried society and ensuring that IT deployment is socially inclusive, build citizens trust and strengthen social cohesion. The Government aims to transform itself into e-Government and to become ideal state in the field of e- Governance by mandating appropriation of two per cent of plan budget for e-Governance initiatives and departmental modernization in all departments, promoting e-Delivery of services through CSCs, which enables the services to be accessed by common man in his locality, 24X7 ubiquitous delivery of services to the citizens, focusing on Government Process Reengineering and change management for the effective delivery of citizen centric (G2C) services, using free and Open Source Software in all e-Governance projects to the maximum extent possible, structuring State’s e-governance projects aligned to the Digital India, focusing on providing feasible Informational and transactional services. The combination of following components makes Odisha a preferred IT/ITES/ESDM destination.

Policy Drives • •

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IT/ITES/ESDM Units declared as Public Utility Services. Exemption from routine inspection by regulatory Authorities of State & Central Government. Eligible for self-certification of the records, registers and electronic filing of all legal returns. Reimbursement of Sales Tax and VAT for a period of Five years. New MSMEs are exempted from payment of Entry Tax on purchase/receipt of raw materials for a period of five years from the date of Commercial Production. IT/ITES/ESDM Units are exempted from Electricity Duty. Units in IT Parks, STPI Complexes are provided with uninterrupted quality power. New units are entitled for interest subsidy @5% p.a. for five years from commercial production limited to maximum RS.10.00 lakhs on term loan. Energy tariff at industrial rate subject to approval of OERC. Stamp-duty exemption on land allotted by Government and Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation. Attractive incentives up to 80% of rent on Incubation Space and up to 50% on lease rental. 20% investment subsidy on fixed capital with a maximum limit of RS.50 lakhs for IT/ITES and Rs. 5 crore for ESDM industry. Attractive recruitment assistance, patent assistance, Human Capital Investment Subsidy and specific incentives for IT Parks/STPs. Preferential Market Access (PMA) to local Enterprises participating in e-Governance projects of the State Government

Infrastructure •

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Infocity: Spread over rnore than 300 acres comprising of 150 acres IT SEZ and 100 acres IT Park integrated with modern facilities including a 9-hole golf course. Fortune Tower: State-of-the-art incubation center with modular spaces on rent/long term lease. IDCO Tower: Centrally located, 11 storied Business Park. Tower 2000: 94,000 sq.ft facility equipped with all amenities. OCAC Tower: 7 storied building with 1, 50,000 sq. ft. of world class office and incubation space. Infovalley: IT SEZ over 384 acres, 15kms from the city. Infopark: IT Park by DLF Ltd. with quality built-up space corning up close to Infocity. ITIR (IT Investment Region) covering 41.32sq. km. (10,210 acres) area near Bhubaneswar proposed to Govt. of India.

The State Government aims to make Odisha a cosmopolitan place for working. This will bring more people from outside Odisha and outside India to work in Odisha. The Government also wants to bring the local talent back to Odisha. The Government encourages the investments in PPP mode for bringing world-class schools and hospitals, which can increase the demand for Odisha as an IT/ITES/ESDM destination. In order to reap the benefits out of the Central Government’s plan to give a big push to the hardware manufacturing sector by way of attractive incentives and other packages. The Government shall working closely with industry associations like NASSCOMM, MAIT, CII,CITE and IT expo and others to ensure a coordinated and smooth industry-Government interface on all matters of common concern, for the vibrant development of the IT /ITES/ESDM industry in the State.

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The State is taking steps to set up and operationalise six more STPIs apart from existing four STPIs in the next three years. The State is planning for setting up an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) in Bhubaneswar with an initial investment of Rs 209 Cr. Bhubaneswar and few important cities of the State will have the facility of WiFi in next one year. IT Department would bring out a Rural BPO Scheme to create at least 5000 - 10000 seats in all the STPI locations of the State to provide employment opportunity to the youth of the State close to their home towns. The scheme is going to be ready within three months. The Government is in the process of setting up of another Indian Institute of Information Technology in PPP mode and an Electronics & ICT Academy in IIT, Bhubaneswar in the year. IT Department would expand the existing Data Centre and set up a common Data Centre for all Govt Dept., PSUs and Autonomous bodies with Cloud enablement. The State is coming up with IT Procurement Procedure for IT related procurement across the departments of Government of Odisha. To achieve a gross ICT Turnover (including exports of software and IT Services, ESDM, Domestic consumption and Training) of USD 4 Billion (Rs. 24, 000 Crores) by 2020

advantage odisha IT Destination Bhubaneswar

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A Proactive State with Commitment of spending 2% of its Plan budget every year for IT and e-Governance as per Odisha ICT Policy’2014.

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Having presence of Major 5 Indian IT companies namely Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Mindtree at Bhubaneswar.

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Developed a well planned, robust and futuristic IT architecture to ensure good governance, ushering higher economic growth and attracting investment in IT, ITES & ESDM Sector through Industry Friendly Policies. Bhubaneswar, one of the most preferred IT/ITES/ESDM destination for its inherent advantages like low attrition rate, Surplus quality Power, Good connectivity, Hassle free traffic, Excellent social infrastructure & health facilities and talent pool.

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Most preferred “Education Hub” in Eastern India which boasts of producing more than 1 lakh Engineering, MCA, MBA and other graduates from National Institutes like IIT, IIIT, IIM, NISER, AIIMS,NIFT and more than 100 Private Engineering colleges. Presence of IT Parks at Infocity & Infovalley spread over more than 900 acres Integrated with modern facilities including a 9-Hole Golf Course. Presence of Greenfield Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) over an area of 216 acres within Info Valley with attractive incentives for ESDM Industries A number of IT Towers with facilities of Incubation and Built-Up Space more than 6 Lakhs sq ft is available at very subsided rent. Single window facility with proactive Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) & ICT Policy’2014 to facilitate the IT/ITES/ESDM industries.

Odisha Computer Application Centre

Odisha Computer Application Centre Technical Directorate of IT Deptt.,Govt. of Odisha OCAC Building, Plot No. N-1/7-D, Acharya Vihar, Bhubaneswar - 751 013, Odisha, India EPABX: +91-674-2588283, 2567151, Fax: +91-674-2567842 Email: itpromotion@ocac.in, Website: www.ocac.in

Department of IT, Government of Odisha N-1/7-D, Acharya Vihar, Bhubaneswar-751 013, Odisha, India EPABX: +91-674-2567584, Fax: +91-674-2567842 Email: itsec.or@nic.in, Website: www.odisha.gov.in

FEATURE

CLOUD & BI

Healthcare Industry

ASPIRES FOR CLOUD NINE There is a surge of interest among healthcare institutions in cloud computing and data analytics. The large scale implementation of these technologies will mean that the sector will never be the same again BY JASMINE DESAI

he healthcare industry, one of India’s largest and fastest growing industries, is contributing significantly to the growth of the IT sector. In 2015, the healthcare providers are expected to spend $1.2 billion on IT products and services—this represents an increase of 7% over the industry’s spend in 2014, according to Gartner. The industry is trying to reinvent itself by implementing IT solutions that not only improve productivity, but also bring the healthcare delivery models closer to the patients. According to IBEL (India Brand Equity Foundation), the overall healthcare market in India is worth $65 billion. “IT services, which include consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing and 20

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business process outsourcing, will be the largest overall spending category through 2019 within the healthcare providers sector,” says Dr. Anurag Gupta, Research VP, Gartner. “It is expected to reach $317 million in 2015, up from $295 million in 2014. The consulting segment is growing at 11%.”

The Cloud Effect on Healthcare Peter Mueller, Senior Analyst, Forrester, is of the view that the healthcare industry has historically operated with traditional IT systems and it has been rather slow in adopting new technology, but change is now on the way, with technologies like cloud computing and analytics making their impact on the ways by which healthcare is accessed and provided. “Through handheld devices, analytics and connectivity, virtual

$65 BILLION

the overall Indian healthcare market today is $ 65 billion

JULY, 2015

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$25-30

$317

India requires 600,000 to 700,000 hospital beds over the next five to six years, making an opportunity of $25-30 billion

IT services is expected to reach $317 million in 2015, up from $295 million in 2014 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; growing at 11 %

BILLION

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MILLION

JULY, 2015

FEATURE

CLOUD & BI

Healthcare institutions need to invest in making the customer interaction channels on their websites more user friendly and secure Srinivas Padmanabharao, Director,Product Marketing,APJ, Akamai Technologies

If a healthcare organisation opts for hybrid cloud platform,it can benefit from a considerably more flexible, powerful,and cost-effective IT Santhosh D’Souza, Director- Systems Engineer,NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt.Ltd 22

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teams can access patients or consumers based in remote areas,” says Mueller. “It is easier for healthcare providers to extend their reach to rural areas by deploying telemedicine.” Mueller adds that in a vast country like India, it is important for healthcare companies to leverage cloud technologies. Through the use of secure and proven cloud platforms, companies can share data across the entire enterprise, resulting in faster decision making and better quality of healthcare. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., says, "At Apollo Hospitals, we consider technology to be a strategic element of our healthcare delivery model. Our solutions for eICUs, Tele Health, Patient Health record on the cloud, interconnected Hospital information system, and mHealth enabled disease management initiatives, are giving us extremely positive results." Sivaramakrishnan informs that the HIS is on private cloud and it serves all branches of Apollo hospital in the country. Close to 7000 beds are there under a single system. Such a cloud based deployment of HIS means that all hospitals in the group can enjoy a wide degree of standardisation in their operational processes and in the implementation of various clinical guidelines. “We have put Patient Health Records (PHR), which goes by the name of Apollo Prism, on the cloud,” informs Sivaramakrishnan. “This is not merely a results disbursement system but an online health diary.” Through this system, the patients can chart their entire set of health related activities at Apollo. For getting a holistic picture, they can even upload scanned copies of the reports from healthcare institutions other than Apollo. “This system is very fruitful for enabling us to remain in touch with our patients.” The cloud is increasingly becoming a valid option for healthcare organisations, which are in need of developing a better integration between their various establishments and with their patients. Cloud systems make it easy to share

information, run various applications, and it is also scalable and reliable. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan is of the view that before deploying a cloud solution, the organisations must conduct a through evaluation of all the possible options. The healthcare data is rarely standardised, it is often fragmented—at times, it is generated on legacy IT systems, which might be incompatible with the new cloud systems. “Good planning is must for the successful deployment of any technology, including cloud,” asserts Sivaramakrishnan.

The Movement to Cloud Arun Shetty, Director of Collaboration Solutions - India, Avaya, says, ”With the adoption of cloud solutions, data sits at the heart of data centres and can be accessed whenever and wherever required. However, it has been observed that there are very few healthcare providers in India who are using cloud services. The reason for fewer cloud deployments can be blamed on issues relate to data security, privacy. It is an issue of the practitioner's need for ease of access to information versus the organisation’s need to have better privacy and security controls. Also, the heavy investments made on HIMS (Healthcare and Information Management System), the customisation and integration of this platform with the IT Infra, including computing, network and voice and video systems, can be one of the reasons for slower adoption of cloud." He is of the view that when the Indian Government is taking initiatives like Smart City and Digital India, there is going to be a large scale digitisation in the economy and this will lead to ‘Connected Healthcare’ becoming a reality. He says that through connected healthcare, it can be ensured that the Electronic Patient Records are available to the relevant medical practitioners. Public health professionals will be able to access medical information with due safeguards from anywhere. At the core of “Connected Healthcare”, there always is an efficient cloud based system. Most healthcare providers have a website, but in many cases the website is JULY, 2015

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not optimised for delivering information on a verity of devices. So someone accessing the website through his mobile device may have a rather poor experience. As the security related aspects are not fully thought through, both the care providers and the consumers are often reluctant to share their data through the online systems. Srinivas Padmanabharao, Director, Product Marketing, APJ, Akamai Technologies, says, “As healthcare institutions adopt cloud technologies, they also need to pay attention to improving the design of their website. They need to invest in making the customer interaction channels on their websites more user friendly and secure.” Padmanabharao is of the view that cloud has the potential to revolutionise healthcare by moving the “power centre” away from the healthcare provider to the consumer. “The change that cloud can bring to the healthcare sector is somewhat similar to the change that eCommerce is bringing to the ways by which people buy or sell.” Practo has adopted Akamai solution to develop a consolidated platform for allowing its consumers to access a wide array of healthcare options. The adoption of Akamai solution has led to a 100 percent improvement in the performance of Practo’s website—in three months the conversions have increased by almost 50%. On the subject of what cloud model can be ideal for healthcare institutions, Santhosh D’ Souza, Director- Systems Engineer, NetApp Marketing & Services Pvt. Ltd., India, says, "Healthcare industry should go in for private cloud infrastructure, which ensures that the data protection, security, and regulatory compliance requirements can be shared across many departments. If a healthcare organisation opts for a hybrid cloud platform, it can benefit from a considerably more flexible, powerful, and cost-effective IT infrastructure."

Analytics for Managing Healthcare Data In today’s business, data is the most important ingredient. The healthcare EXPRESS COMPUTER

sector generates massive amounts of data, but in raw form this data can only have limited value. Analytics can play an important role in converting raw data into usable information. A study conducted by IBM’s Institute of Business Value shows analytics is already being used by healthcare companies across the globe—out of the Healthcare & LifeSciences respondents that are using Analytics, 55% are focusing on Operations, 37% are focusing on Customers (acquisition and improved service) and 8% are focusing on Finance. David Bolton, Global Industry Solutions Director, Public Sector and Healthcare, Qlik, says, "Healthcare system in India is complex. With funding and administration undertaken by several levels of government, alongside non-government sectors, healthcare providers are under pressure to not only provide guidance on current data, but also remain transparent and accountable for their actions. As a result, the healthcare sector is generating data at an exponential rate on a daily basis." He adds that the large volumes of data can’t be put to good use because many healthcare providers lack the technology for making sense out of the data. The challenge before the healthcare providers is in drawing actionable insights from all their data. The budgetary concerns are the key obstacle in the way of BI adoption in healthcare enterprises. The upfront cost of BI implementation can range between $2 to $3 million—the enterprises need to spend over this amount to mine and maintain their data. Puneet Gupta, Entrepreneur in Residence, SAP Labs India, says, “Data standards in healthcare are still work in progress— this fact is primarily responsible for hampering the interoperability of healthcare systems.” The existing laws for import of technology and taxes only serves the purpose of making BI costlier for Indian users. The lack of proper IP protection is also a problem. Then there is issue of the lack of trained manpower for running BI systems. Also there is uncertainty about the ROI that can be derived by deploying

The challenge before the healthcare providers is in drawing actionable insights from all their data David Bolton, Global Industry Solutions Director, Public Sector and Healthcare,Qlik

Data standards in healthcare are still work in progress— this fact is primarily responsible for hampering the interoperability of healthcare systems Puneet Gupta, Entrepreneur in Residence, SAP Labs India JULY, 2015

FEATURE

CLOUD & BI

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

The top healthcare institutions are already taking steps for deploying analytics for management of healthcare related issues Abhraneel Sarkar, Healthcare and Life-Sciences Industry Leader - IBM GBS Global Delivery India

Healthcare organisations should encourage adoption of solutions,which do not involve heavy investment, but still offer business value Satyakam Mohanty, CEO,Ma Foi Analytics 24

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the technology in rural or semi-urban settings. Patient data security and privacy, and the issue of connectivity are also an area of concern. Abhraneel Sarkar, Healthcare and Life-Sciences Industry Leader - IBM GBS Global Delivery India, says, “There are several barriers to technology driven transformation in healthcare industry in India. The diversity and geographical spread of the Indian rural population is the first challenge.”

Data Visualisation On the subject of data visualisation, Bolton of Qlik says, “For effective management of epidemics, the accurate and timely analysis of data is critical. An analytics tool must be in a position to provide right information at the right time after shifting through the welter of data. By combining data from multiple government departments and private agencies, it is possible to predict the accurate location and the nature of the outbreaks.” He refers to the recent Ebola fear that gripped almost the entire world. “In such cases, it is critical to gather as much data as possible so that the healthcare practitioners can take the right decisions for the deployment of resources.” With data visualisation, aid agencies can easily determine where to send medical staff. They can accurately predict the exact amount of resources that will be required to counter the threat of epidemic. It is also critical to gain a perspective on the potential of the epidemic to cross national borders and infect people in neighbouring countries and elsewhere on the globe. Tracking people movements from the affected regions involves the collating and analysis of diverse data sets from multiple organisations – border police, airlines, shipping and even mobile phone locations have to be taken into account and analysed. Sarkar of IBM says, “The top healthcare institutions are already taking steps for deploying analytics for management of healthcare related issues. Systems are being deployed for acquiring diverse data-sets and analysing it for

developing meaningful insights.” He informs that large healthcare institutions in USA are using IBM Watson cognitive system to help the nursing staff make quick decisions regarding the kind of treatment that must be given to a patient. The system provides responses in seconds. Gupta of SAP Labs says, "In India, healthcare analytics is being looked at with lot of interest by various state governments. A large scale pilot has already been launched in a northern state to examine how this technology help in improving healthcare delivery." The pilot was conducted by SAP in association with National Rural Health Mission to demonstrate the healthcare analytic capability of SAP Health Central. The pilot spanned over 3 months and required screening of over 65,000 children by 10 Health teams. The process of screening included disease profiling of the screened children to recognise epidemics and identify the focus regions for further initiatives. It provided deep insight into the disease patterns in the regions successfully. Ma Foi Analytics is working with a leading Indian hospital chain for implementing an analytics solution that leads to improvement in the efficiency and efficacy of the nursing staff. The solution is designed for enabling the nurses to make informed decisions for staffing and scheduling. Satyakam Mohanty, CEO, Ma Foi Analytics, says, "Healthcare organisations should encourage adoption of such solutions, which do not not involve heavy investment, but still offer tangible business value.” While the healthcare companies evaluate the potential opportunities and risks around cloud computing and data analytics, they know that their competitors are also conducting similar evaluations. Some of them might quite possibly be adopting these technologies. During the next few years, the players who fail to move fast to implement the new technology solutions could as well find themselves loosing their customers and the market share. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW C K MISHRA MOHFW

UNIVERSAL MEDICAL CARE “The vision behind NHM is that no one in this country should be left without access to quality healthcare. Everyone should have equal access to modern medicine,” says C K Mishra, Additional Secretary & Mission Director (NHM), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India What are the key objectives of the National Health Mission? The National Health Mission has been formed by merging NRHM and NUHM. The NRHM was essentially conceived to provide primary healthcare in rural areas, which did not have adequate coverage of healthcare services. Subsequently we realised that there were pockets in urban areas too where healthcare services were not available to the poorer sections of society, even though most towns and cities may have many big hospitals. So to cover the poorer sections of the urban population, we launched the National Urban Health Mission. In order to improve the efficiency, we have now merged the two missions into a single mission. Our goal is to increase access, provide services, improve infrastructure and provide more finances for better healthcare to various states. People migrating from rural areas to the urban areas often lack the proper documentation for identification.What can be done to ensure that their medical data travels with them and is accessible through a system of identification? We are now planning to provide health cards to the beneficiaries of our schemes. Many states have already done it. Lot of work still needs to be done in the area of health cards, but this is the general direction in which we want to move. The NUHM was specifically created to cater to the health needs of the migrant population that keeps moving to urban areas temporarily or on a permanent basis. The vision behind NHM is that no one in this country should be left without access to proper healthcare. Everyone should have equal access to modern medical-care. We intend to use Aadhaar as a platform for identification of the beneficiaries for our healthcare schemes. This is because we don’t want to be in situation where one application is not speaking to another application. Aadhaar will ensure 26

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inter-operability and unique ID for everyone. If the records are kept in electronic format, they can be more easily accessible. Is there work being done to keep medical records online? Many states are currently experimenting with keeping records online. Electronic health record will ensure that a person’s health records remain with him. The records can reside in the cloud, can be accessed when he goes to another facility. For instance, I live in X city where I get a treatment done from some hospital. From here I move to town Y, where I go to another hospital. The hospital in town Y should be in a position to access my medical records, depending on my choice because confidentiality and privacy are the major issues. The Ministry has already notified the standards, and now within the system of the mission we are trying to develop the methods for facilitating exchange of medical data between hospitals while ensuring that the privacy related safeguards are adhered to. We are speaking to the states on this. The important point is that NHM is there to impose the Ministry’s standards and guidelines, and enable the states to achieve the target of universal healthcare. What is your view of the extent of ICT usage in the healthcare space? If you look at the ICT implementations in the healthcare sector, I would say that we have done reasonably well. Our HMIS system is capable of capturing the facility level data. We have access to the PHCs in smaller towns around the country. We can communicate with the various PHCs through our HMIS. We have created the web based system called (MCTS) Mother & Child Tracking System, on which more than 14 crore mother and children are registered. MCTS was introduced in 2010 to capture details such as name, address, mobile number, etc., of every pregnant woman and child up to 5 years of age. The scheme aims to ensure that every pregnant woman gets quality antenatal and post natal care and every child receives the full range of immunisation services.The system is already in place, even though it is still learning as many of the states are having EXPRESS COMPUTER

“Telemedicine is an efficient system for providing healthcare to people living in remote areas,unfortunately such areas also face the problem of poor connectivity”

problems in fully implementing it. We are trying to resolve all these issues. My personal view is that the MCTS should start working well during the next year or year and a half. The Kilkari Yojana has been started for mothers and children.What are the benefits of this scheme? The Health Ministry has started the Kilkari Yojana for mothers and infants. Under this scheme, mothers are informed through an audio about how to look after infants, vaccinations, and other such information. For instance, if the mother is in the sixth month of pregnancy, the system will send her a message that this is your sixth month and you need to undergo this medical test or treatment. These will be a pre-recorded message. A successful pilot has already been done on this project and we plan to roll it out this year.

What is your view of using telemedicine to provide healthcare services to people living in far-flung areas of our country? Telemedicine is a very important system for providing healthcare to people living in remote areas, unfortunately such areas also face the problem of poor connectivity. Unless the problem of connectivity is resolved, we can’t make progress in telemedicine. Now we are launching telemedicine in a big way, particularly for specialised consultations. We have tied up with four medical colleges to facilitate the expansion of telemedicine in the country. In order to ensure that everyone in the country has speedy access to medical care, we are taking the “time to care approach,” which means that a citizen, in any part of the country, should not have to walk for more than 30 minutes for reaching a healthcare facility. Today it is stipulated that you need to have a healthcare sub-centre for a population of 5000, but if the terrain is rough, we allow additional sub-centres to come up in the same area. Recently the Mission Indradhanush was launched.What are the benefits of this programme? By year 2020, Mission Indradhanush will cover all the children, who are either unvaccinated, or are partially vaccinated against seven vaccine preventable diseases, which include diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis B. The programme was launched on the Good Governance day. As of now we have identified 201 high focus districts in the country. These districts will be targeted by intensive efforts to improve the routine immunisation coverage. JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW MUKUND PRASAD WELSPUN GROUP

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JULY, 2015

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EVERY CIO NEEDS A COACH “While coaching the CEO/CIO level officers in life-coaching sessions, I have found that people quite often live a life that is not of their choice. They want to change their life, but they don’t have the means of engineering a change,” says Mukund Prasad, Director & Group CIO, Welspun Group

You have been in a leadership position as a CIO since 1999.When did you develop an interest in the area of CIO coaching? After managing the technology space for many years, I was given the additional charge of heading HR department for the entire organisation, and the realisation dawned on me that the management of IT leaders requires a completely different outlook and skills. I realised that a CIO must have skills that go beyond the area of technology and these skills can only be developed through coaching. People management is a very important part of being a CIO— this is because IT is evolving at a much faster rate as compared to most other areas and the rapid transformations create unique challenges for the IT leader. There are always few technology leaders who are not so fast in learning new technology; they don’t have the ability to recognise and accept change and they often become the cause behind delays in the implementation of new technologies in their organisations. It is important for the CIO to know how to manage all types of people and have the right blend of staff members, who can keep their organisation technologically savvy and businessfocused. In a nutshell, the role that the CIO is expected to play is highly complicated and therefore coaching is necessary to unlock his potential. Coaching can enable a CIO to develop the talent for meeting all kinds of challenges. EXPRESS COMPUTER

What are the common challenges that the CIOs face? CIOs are constantly challenged by the rate and pace of technological change. The complexity and the massive integration of systems, processes and applications, can result in outages and instability. There is pressure to cut costs, and at the same time there is also the pressure to innovate. A CIO must enable his organisation to implement technologies for business growth. He must ensure that the issues of cyber security and privacy are adequately addressed. He faces the risk of being swamped by issues related to regulations and audit. He has to deal with the issue of legacy systems. Also the rapid evolution of cloud and outsourcing services means that

CIOs are constantly challenged by the rate and pace of technological change. The complexity and the massive integration of systems,processes and applications,can result in outages and instability

he may not be able to exercise full control of the technology infrastructure that is being used by his organisation. While there are some things one cannot change about individuals, some leadership traits can be learnt. There are very few people who are natural leaders - leadership is something people have to work at. Knowing what their shortcomings are, and recognising them as such, is half the battle. The leaders and managers in IT, who don’t polish their knowledge on a regular basis, will find themselves being left behind. Whether you’re the CIO, an IT manager, or a developer—it is important for you to develop the personality traits that will help you grow personally. Coaching has the potential of steering a CIO in the right direction. How can effective coaching be established to cater to both, the individual’s requirements as well as the organisational needs? Unfortunately, the current models of coaching do not take into account the diversity that is inherent in various organisations or the issues that different CIOs may be facing. For individuals and organisations to create and sustain effective coaching relationships a wideranging framework is required, which is based on heterogeneous rather than homogenous methods of development. While it is essential to examine the effectiveness of coaching, it is also equally important to examine dysfunctional coaching relationships. Examining the JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW MUKUND PRASAD WELSPUN GROUP

impacts of dysfunctional relationships will help to highlight where the potential problems can occur and how such problems can be overcome. A coach has several roles to perform, but his main objective is to develop the person being coached. This can be achieved by way of increasing selfconfidence, identifying suitable topics for coaching and developing planned tasks as part of job knowledge. Coaching is not, however, telling someone what to do and how to do it. Occasionally, it involves overseeing what is being done and advising how to do it better. Coaches need to be patient, detached, supportive, interested, perceptive, aware, self-aware and attentive. They must also have knowledge, credibility, experience and

The identification of the biggest boulder on the shoulder is the biggest opportunity for individuals to progress in life authority. They require various core skills: the ability to create rapport; paying attention to content and process; keeping an open mind; paraphrasing and reflecting; asking probing questions; identifying limiting assumptions and beliefs; and giving and receiving feedback. People being coached also have an important role to play in establishing a positive coaching relationship. They must participate in the identification of suitable topics for coaching; jointly set realistic performance targets and creative methods of achieving them; take responsibility for their own development; undertake comprehensive preparations before coaching meetings to maximise the development process; be open and direct 30

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in discussion with the coach ; and accept constructive feedback on development that they are making. What kind of skills should the CIOs develop to bring maximum value to the organisation? The best-qualified CIOs are those who have strategic change experience, along with exposure to the marketing and strategy side of the business. Efficiency, productivity and cost sensitivity are taken for granted. The true expectations of CEOs relate to the strategic orientation of the candidate; they look for someone with a good market and business understanding. They need someone who understands how new technologies can lead to better ways of managing the business. They need leadership and communication skills, so that they can engage with the relevant stakeholders within the business. They need to be able to influence the rest of the business, which is something that is quite often lacking. Functional competencies are still important, but it is increasingly acknowledged that the CIOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s team has to provide these. Beyond the functional capabilities, though, the CIO needs to be a market-oriented strategic change leader. Outstanding leaders are proactive strategic thinkers who make a long-range organisational impact. You are essentially saying that the CIOs should not concentrate only on technology deployment, they must also work for improving the prospects of the business and the development of general business strategy.Are CIOs doing that? I can only say that there is a tremendous opportunity in this area. Some of the CIOs are definitely trying to make a difference, but any transformational agenda in the organisation has to be owned by the Board and the CEO. When the idea is on paper, it is nothing more than a wish-list, it is up to the board and the CEO to help the CIO and his team achieve their objective. If the IT teams are not adequately supported, then the sincere, committed and honest efforts of the people in the organisation may not fructify. The board and the CEO must support the transformational efforts of the JULY, 2015

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IT team by helping in the management of the organisational dynamics and politics. Personal agendas and petty politics should not be allowed to thrive in the organisation and stifle the efforts of the IT team in bringing innovation. You have been conducting coaching sessions for CIOs and CEOs.Tell us about your own coaching experience. Today we are seeing the trend of individuals taking greater responsibility for their own development. But individual still need support and advice of competent coaches. The coaching relationships provide employees the appropriate support they need in order to achieve their developmental aims. Establishing effective coaching relationships requires an in-depth examination of the needs of the individuals, as it is necessary to determine exactly what is required from a coaching relationship. While coaching the CEO/CIO level senior officials in life-coaching sessions, I have found that people are quite often living a life that is not of their choice. They want to change their life, but they don’t have the means of engineering a change. In one of the sessions, the client identified that playing drums with extremely high competence was his most important goal for inner happiness while the other person who was introvert by nature wanted to be known for his flamboyant personality. One of the CEO’s identified the path of his inner journey for his development and has much better inter-personal relationship with his professional colleagues. He was always looking at the problems in the outside world and was protecting himself through the defence-mechanisms and ignoring his inside voice. The identification of the biggest boulder on the shoulder is the opportunity for an individual to progress in life. Do CIOs have the power to bring real change in their organisations? Most CIOs come across opportunities to bring positive transformation in the business, but only a few of them are able to take action. This needs to change. EXPRESS COMPUTER

EXPECTATIONS THATEXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT TEAM HAS FROM CIO

1 2 3 4 5 6

The operational basics: Capability to run reliable, cost-efficient IT systems Tight security: Capability to ensure that the various IT risks and security issues are kept carefully under control Technology consultancy: Ability to provide an informed, business-centric view of how IT can support and enhance the business, both in the short and long term Change leadership: Potential for being an effective partner in leading change management projects

Flexibility: Ability to fit in with the shifting needs and demands of the business Don’t rock the boat: Ability to find the courage to challenge the executive team’s expectations.

Being from technological background, the CIOs already have the power of understanding what to change, who to influence and how to do it. But it will be up to CIOs themselves to find the courage to reinvent themselves. The CIO has long been positioned as a senior executive on the cusp of becoming a truly strategic partner to the business. The truth is that only few CIOs have so far managed to reinvent themselves sufficiently to actually become one. In my view, less than one in five of the CIOs have risen to become a full member of their company’s executive management team. Indeed, in their interactions with the

organisation’s leadership, today’s CIOs are typically talking most often about IT budgets and IT’s role in business transformations. They are far less likely to be discussing the overall performance of the business, or shaping the key decisions that influence it. Even when it comes to providing the data needed for strategic decisions, they are less likely to get invited by business for such discussions. They need to look for opportunities to use their communication and influencing skills for managing the organisational dynamics. They must endeavour to be part of the transformational agenda of the organisation. JULY, 2015

FEATURE

Âť

SAFEXPRESS

ACTION MOVE ON THE

You would hardly expect a warehouse manager to be using a super mobile app, which is connected to real-time GPS and integrated with the ERP & analytics engine in the backend. But this is exactly the kind of innovation that is being implemented at Safexpress

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

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JULY, 2015

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JULY, 2015

FEATURE

SAFEXPRESS

obile apps are common these days—we use them for managing all kinds of tasks, such as banking, travel, calendar, social networking, etc. The possibilities from mobile apps is just endless. It is nowadays quite common to find the delivery personnel from UPS and Fedex using handheld, app enabled, devices for recording specific transactions. However, the app usage is relatively uncommon in case of warehouse managers. You would hardly expect to find a warehouse manager using a super mobile app, which is connected to real-time GPS and also integrated with the ERP & analytics engine in the backend. But this is exactly the kind of innovation that is being implemented at Safexpress.

Android OS. He decided to call the app, “Action on the Move.” In few months time, the app was ready—it has the capability of providing instantaneous access to all the necessary information that the hub managers need on the floor. “Many hub managers used to come to me and say— when will the day come when I will have an app like Facebook or Twitter to manage my work?” laughs Anjani. “Well, now I am in a position to provide them the app.”

Action on The Move

An App for Hub Management Anjani Kumar, Chief Information Officer, Safexpress, was on a visit to a transhipment hub, which links smaller cities in the region with bigger cities across India. During the two hours that he spent at the hub, he was able to observe that the staff had to constantly travel back and forth between the office complex and the hub floor to get the necessary information related to scheduled departures, arrivals and the shipment tracking info. He also noticed hub managers moving around with papers containing the list of the arrivals and departures. The idea came to Anjani’s mind that lot of efficiency could be brought to the work by providing every hub manager with a tablet. On returning to office, he had a discussion with the Managing Director of Safexpress, Rubal Jain, who enthusiastically received the idea of empowering the hub managers with tablets. “I have been thinking on the same lines,” Rubal said. “We should provide the managers with tablets, which will run the app for sourcing the information regarding departures, arrivals, shipment tracking, etc.” Now that he had the go-ahead form the Managing Director, Anjani Kumar devoted himself to creating the application for tablets running on 36

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The benefits of the app will start becoming obvious once the app is enabled to perform the major tasks which can be done by ERP

The “Action on the Move” app provides information on all the trucks, which arrive at the hub. The information that is provided by the app is related to both scheduled, as well as the ETA time, like in case of the airline panels. The estimated arrival time is derived from the data collated from GPS. Delayed arrivals are presented as exceptions. The app features a departures dashboard, which displays the list of all the departures. As both arrival and departures are linked, the departures can be adjusted on the basis of the time of arrival. Since hub managers have accurate data about truck arrival, they can easily make a decision on whether to hold the next departure for an arriving truck. This leads to the creation of more efficient load factors. The app enables hub managers to enquire about the waybill very easily. They get instantaneous information about every step in the movement of any given consignment. The app can highlight the exact location of the consignment at any given point of time. The hub manager can instantly know if the consignment is lying in his hub or in the next. He can also see which material is over-ageing on the floors, by hours or days. Such information enables the hub managers to take quick decision on what consignment has to move first and thus there is drastic reduction in the instances of delayed shipping.

The App Efficiency Anjani says, “A good chunk of our shipments are B2B and we follow stringent guidelines for checking documents. The documents get checked JULY, 2015

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at every transit point.” With the app, the hub managers can instantly discover what kind of transit document is required for any particular material. This leads to a vast reduction in the average time that it generally requires for rechecking documents. The biggest challenge that the logistics setups face has to do with coordination between the customer care professionals and the warehouse. “This application has the provision for online collaboration between customer care centres and the warehouses. Online token for shipment inside the company is linked to this app. Anybody can raise a ticket for any hub manager if the shipment is shown pending at this hub. When they are using this app, the hub managers get an alert, so that he can take appropriate action for updating the tokens with the required information,” says Anjani. The hub managers, according to Anjani, are finding the application very useful. It has definitely led to an improvement in the team’s productivity. As the hub managers know the exact time when any particular truck is going to arrive, they are able to mobilise their workforce on time—this leads to reduction in the average time that it takes to unload a truck. The application has led to a significant improvement in the productivity of various hub management teams. As they know exact time of arrival of the truck, the workforce gets mobilised in advance and this in turn ensures that that there is reduction in the unloading time. With the truck’s exact position being visible on the tab, the staff at various hubs don’t have to call up the truck driver. This saves lot of time and money.

ANJANI KUMAR Full Name

: Anjani Kumar

Current Designation

: Chief Information Officer

Work Experience

: 16+ Years of IT experience including 14 Years in IBM ( US and India) & 1.5 years in Cognizant Tech Solutions

Favourite Quote

: The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change. --Bill Clinton

Favourite Book

: Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? By Lou Gerstner

Favourite Food

: Thai cuisine ( Basil Sir Fry)

Favourite Destination

: Jungfraujoch, Switzerland

Favourite Gadget at Work

: Laptop

Favourite Gadget for Personal Use

: Smartphone

What Inspires You in Your Work

: The opportunity of continuously making difference to the user experience.

What Frustrates You

: Not trying hard to achieve something.

makes it easy to introduce new versions of the app or even new apps across many devices. The tablets serve many purposes, other than using the “Action on the Move” app. They can be used for checking mails, and watching other parts of the warehouse using the live feeds from the video cameras. The tablets can also be used for taking care of many HR related activities like checking staff attendance, taking or granting leave approvals,

A Must Have App After the pilot project with tablets running the “Action on the Move” app was completed successfully, the hub managers were asked for their views. Most of them were of the opinion that this was a must-have application, one that must be provided to every hub manager in the company. Also, the tablets are equipped with Mobile Device Management (MDM) software, which EXPRESS COMPUTER

The application has led to a significant improvement in the productivity of various hub management teams

regularising attendance, etc. Anjani and his team are already working for the creation of the next version of the app. They are planning the new set of features that could be added to the next version. “One feature that we are contemplating will provide alerts for vehicles that are waiting for unloading,” says Anjani. “We will also have a feature that will give alerts for vehicles that have been loaded but are yet to depart.” The evaluation of the performance of each worker after every unload is another feature that the new version of the app could have. With the evaluation of performance, the employees could get instant recommendation on the areas where they need to do better. The formulation of the loading plan is the most complex tasks for any warehouse or hub manager. “We are thinking about a feature that can help the hub manager in developing the most appropriate loading plan,” says Anjani. The best benefits of the app will start becoming obvious once the app is enabled to perform the major tasks which can be done by ERP and Safexpress’s IT team is definitely headed in that direction. JULY, 2015

CASE STUDY

ZHL-INFOTRACK

ZHL

DIALS INFOTRACK FOR 108 EMERGENCY SERVICES

iqitza Health Care Ltd (ZHL) was established in 2004, with the aim of providing world-class ambulance service in India. The company has partnered with state governments and National Health Mission to manage and operate emergency medical services, under the umbrella of 108 ambulance services. Currently ZHL is operating more than 1000 ambulances in public private partnership (PPP) mode in Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Odisha and Punjab. It is critical for ZHL to ensure that its control room can view the exact location of the ambulances that are parked at different locations to ensure that they can be dispatched to the area where they are required in minimum response time. To achieve this objective, ZHL has deployed technologies for connecting its control room with the vehicles on the ground. A further scaling up of the IT systems was required when the scope of the company’s operations expanded and it started reaching out to patients in rural and remote areas. The partners with which ZHL had 38

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been working, were not in a position to fulfil the IT requirements, hence the company started searching for a new partner for automating the process of ambulance dispatches and bringing efficiency to the entire operation. After meeting several vendors, ZHL finally selected Infotrack telematics, which deals with fleet management system. “Now we are having bigger forays in healthcare— we are providing ambulance, mobile health vans, medical assistance over the phone and much else. Our dependency on technology has increased. So we needed a new partner like Infotrack telematics to modernise our systems,” says Manjula Easwaran, Chief of Finance, Ziqitza Healthcare.

ZHL Dials InfoTrack for 108 ZHL purchased the 'Emergency Dispatch System' from InfoTrack. With the deployment of this software, response teams at ZHL are enjoying fuller control of the information that comes from the field. They are now in a position to respond to any emergency situation in record time. The software has the

capacity for clearly showing the geographical location of the nearby events and the response vehicles. This ensures that the response to any incident is efficient and effective. More than 1000 ambulances run by ZHL in different states for 108 emergency services are fully automated and connected to control room with the help of this software, which ensures that within a minute the control room is in a position to answer the crucial questions — Where is the vehicle? Is it mobile or stationed? On the basis of this information, the ambulance gets selected for being dispatched to the required location. For InfoTrack, meeting the technology requirements of 108 service was not an easy project. The company did have a highly developed dispatch system solution, but the dispatch system was mainly designed to take care of the needs of the taxi operators. CK Ramakant, Managing Director, InfoTrack Telematics, says, “We have been quite good in taxi dispatch system, but now we had to develop a system for managing JULY, 2015

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ambulance service. After understanding the requirements of ZHL, we customised our product to meet all the technology requirements of 108 services.”

The Deployment Challenges Usually, the deployment of ambulances is spread across the districts of the state which also include rural areas with poor roads, limited power supply, and no accessibility to connectivity. And, also training to use the technology for ambulance drivers and call centre staffs and proper co-ordination with hospital, medical staffs and patients are the key for the success of 108 services. For both ZHL and InforTrack, it was a challenge, however with their respective domain expertise, both were able to meet the expectation. “Actually, InfoTrack had something which we required, they were already using dispatch system for taxi business in India and abroad, we did not have to hire any third party as ZHL had the domain expertise and technical expertise was provided by the InfoTrack. And now we have the product completely suited for EXPRESS COMPUTER

the our requirement in India”, assert Easwaran of ZHL. Initially, the partnership started with one project and now solution has become an integral part of ZHL tech philosophy and the software is being used in all the projects in various states across India. Easwaran informs, “Software is the backbone of our operation.”

ZHL in winning many new contracts. Usually, there are two aspects to the contract – operation and technology. For technology, ZHL continues to rely on InfoTrack. “We always take CK Ramakant for technical presentation. We have got about 6-7 contracts post CK coming on the board,” says Easwaran.

The Tangible Benefits

The Road Ahead

After the implementation of InfoTrack's Vehicle & Staff Management System there has been a seminal improvement in the efficiency of ZHL. Inside its ambulances, the company has data terminals, which communicate with ZHL call centres and provide information related to attendance, consumption of medicines, consumer bills, electronics, PCR, etc. Easwaran says “This solution is helping us optimise our operations and save costs, but the most important benefit is that now we are in a better position to save lives.” InforTrack’s deep understanding and expertise in the area of dispatch system, GPS and vehicular technology has helped

Both ZHL and InfoTrack expect surge in the demand for their services. Apart from 108 emergency ambulance services, ZHL also runs 102, 1298, 1033 ambulance services. The company is also managing Punjab Police helpline -181 and the health helpline in Odisha -104. For majority of the players, FMS is the family run business—they don’t use technology, in the way it should be used. But with rapid growth of taxi services and e-commerce, the segment is witnessing rapid technology deployment and InfoTrack expects substantial growth going forward. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

CASE STUDY

ANTHEM BIOSCIENCES

REALISING

GROWTH T H R O U G H

V I R T U A L I Z AT I O N

Anthem Biosciences has deployed Citrix server and desktop virtualization for secured remote access, enhanced productivity for employees and better business outcomes BY JASMINE DESAI

he healthcare industry is in a transformative phase with several new innovations being implemented on a regular basis for improving the quality of healthcare and meeting stricter compliances. As these business changes have made the reduction of costs a top priority, IT is being deployed for bringing efficiency and enhancing the productivity of the workforce. The Anthem Group, which is the holding company comprising Anthem BioSciences, Anthem Collations and Anthem BioPharma, is a start-up on fast track growth path. The company’s applications reside in their in-house data centre. Whenever there is a need, the 40

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desktops are delivered to the end user. The Dell SAN connects users to the data centre. “We have end-to-end security including port blocking, firewalls, routers, monitoring tools, web filters, and anti-virus at the gateway level. We manage the critical infrastructure that supports all our operations,” says Ravi Kalla, Senior Manager - IT at Anthem BioSciences.

Meeting the Challenge of Expansion The company was in the process of doubling its capacity at the existing facility and there was also an expansion plan for a remote location. The recruitment process was in full swing to bring more talent into the organisation.

It was becoming a big challenge for IT to provision enough new desktops every month to keep up with the growing numbers of new employees. “We had to provision 25-50 desktops/laptops every month, and it was very time consuming for IT,” explains Kalla. He further explains, “Being a start-up, there was no way we could afford to have clustering and patch management software. So while looking for clustering solutions, we thought that server virtualization and desktop virtualization could help us address the challenges.” Recently, Anthem deployed four different server applications. In a traditional model, they would have needed four physical servers for support, JULY, 2015

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because some of them are Linux based and some are Windows based. The IT department would have needed to make substantial investment, if they went for the n+1 concept. Instead they chose the efficient way of virtualization to address this. “Since we went for server virtualization, we just created a virtual environment and hosted the servers. The cost of doing this was zero. This was a major business advantage of the Citrix XenServer virtualization solution for Anthem,” mentions Kalla. The company has now implemented complete virtualization, from server to hosted shared desktop service all provided by Citrix. On the other side, Anthem wanted to EXPRESS COMPUTER

extend a remote working opportunity to some of its employees but data and information security concerns had prevented them from taking any steps in that direction. The business requires them to send regular updates to their customers, so workflow breakdowns is not an option at all. “We wanted to get better control of data-flow because there was always the fear of security breaches. Whenever we sign a non-disclosure agreement with companies, security is a non-negotiable issue,” said Kalla. “For example, if we are sending an update to the customer and the desktop suddenly crashes, the email client and applications have to be reconfigured in a different location. This would

result in a loss of productivity and delay of at least 2-4 hours. This will definitely affect our business continuity,” says Kalla. Given such diverse business needs and the technology challenges, Anthem BioSciences decided to deploy a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) apart from server virtualization. Before selecting any product, Anthem did a full due diligence on every worthwhile option. They evaluated various options including VMware. “Of all the options, Citrix came closest to fulfilling our needs. It was cost effective and it had features like hosted shared desktop services. Citrix XenDesktop was also able to provide a much better ROI than VMware,” says JULY, 2015

CASE STUDY

ANTHEM BIOSCIENCES

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

Kalla on opting for Citrix. Anthem BioSciences has purchased 200 licenses of Citrix XenDesktop and is planning further expansion. “VDI is slightly expensive, because you have to buy Microsoft licenses and an annual subscription for VDI infrastructure, Citrix still made the most sense as compared to other products,” says Kalla. Anthem BioSciences opted for a Hosted Shared Desktop (HSD), as it is a lightweight component, and most of the users require only browser and Java.

Benefits of Virtualization With the implementation, the company has achieved the benefit of reduced costs, secure remote access and business continuity. “Citrix can run on any device. We do not require any WAN optimisation tools to achieve better access speed. We feel virtualization is the best way of addressing our secured remote access concerns. Now users can access their office desktops from remote locations. Whatever they need to do, will be at the data centre and not on the desktop,” says Kalla. The entire desktop is encrypted and delivered to the user, therefore leaving no room for any internal and external security breaches. With Anthem being a start-up, keeping cost under control is of immense importance. A well configured desktop costs a minimum Rs. 25,000. Plus the cost of Microsoft Windows 7 professional license costs Rs. 9,000. So the total cost of the desktop becomes Rs. 34,000 before adding the cost of other software like anti-virus, port blocking etc. “In the thin client model, the hardware cost is just Rs. 14,000. Even with the cost of licenses, the cost will not be more than Rs. 2200. This is an immediate saving of Rs. 12,000,” says Kalla. Since Citrix XenDesktop was deployed the IT team does not have to worry about business continuity. Even in the case of a system crash, the user can log in and start work from where they left. “We have created roaming profiles, so a user can go to any computer and access the applications that are tagged to their ID, including the mailing solution and printer access,” says Kalla. 42

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In the thin client model,the hardware cost is just Rs.14,000.Even with the cost of licenses,the cost will not be more than Rs.2200.This is an immediate saving of Rs.12,000 Lifecycle of a normal desktop is usually 3-4 years, whereas a thin client can work for as long as seven years. The power consumption of a desktop is 100140 watts, whereas thin client consumption is only about 40 to 50 watts. “There is a significant saving on power. If 200 conventional desktops run for 12 hours, the cost of power comes at Rs. 30 lakh per annum, as opposed to thin clients, which may only cost about Rs. 10-15 lakh,” Kalla says. With the Citrix XenDesktop in place, deployment can happen on the same day. “With Citrix HSD, one physical server with 128 GB RAM and Xeon processor can support 200 users in a lightweight environment. We were initially apprehensive about putting so many users on to the server but after seeing the performance in the last four months, we are confident that it can

support more than 200 users,” he states. In the past around 150 computers were never shut down, which meant that the company had to incur huge electricity bills. In the virtualization model, the power cost is much lower as the systems are shut down everyday. Other hidden costs are also being discovered and reduced. With the huge expansion plans now underway, the company has recruited 100 scientists in the last few months. Another advantage is that the Hosted Shared Desktop (HSD) does not consume extra bandwidth, Kalla can now access his desktop with the use of a TATA Photon data card. “I am able to access my entire desktop from a remote location. That is the biggest advantage,” says Kalla. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

FEATURE

FLASH STORAGE

RISE OF ENTERPRISE

FLASH STORAGE By enabling faster system performance and reducing the footprint and energy consumption of storage system architectures, flash storage has gained the confidence of the enterprises in India BY ABHISHEK RAVAL

anDisk, one of the world’s largest players in consumer data storage, recently launched it’s enterprise flash storage suite in India. The enterprise flash storage products that SanDisk provides worldwide continue to be popular in India. “We offer enterprise SSD, SATA & SAS and PCIe. Also, software solutions 44

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like Flashsoft (caching), Zetascale and also InfiniFlash, which is an all Flash array with up to 512TB capacity in one 3U box,” says Vivek Tyagi, Director Business Development & Sales, SanDisk India - Enterprise & OEM sales, SanDisk. As SanDisk is working globally with OEMs like Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco, many of their products are embedded with subsystems provided by SanDisk.

Components like flash based SSD or PCIe cards go along with the server or storage box solutions developed by these companies. Currently, the Indian enterprise flash storage has well-established players like HP, IBM and EMC, and now these companies will have to contend with a new competitor, SanDisk, in the enterprise flash storage market. JULY, 2015

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Demand for Enterprise Flash Storage The demand for enterprise flash is being driven by the increasing adoption of Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC). As Indian companies develop their strategies for tackling the SMAC phenomenon, they find that the deployment of flash is of great importance. “Digital data is growing exponentially in every DC and the failure to efficiently manage this data is one of the key things that slows down the infrastructure. This has direct bearing on the entire IT environment and on the business,” says Dan Baigent, Senior Director, Strategic Business Development and Global Technology EcoSystem, SanDisk. According to one statistic, Amazon can lose 1% of it’s revenue for every 100 milliseconds of latency—this is clearly a massive impact on business. Flash storage is one way of tackling this problem and safeguarding the business. “Enterprise flash storage is all set to grow and transition the storage landscape to support the accessibility and efficiency

needs of future. As applications grapple with performance and latency issues, flash storage is fast becoming the norm to address these in real time,” says Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager- Enterprise, IDC India. Santhosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner says, “From the perspective of the Indian market, there continues to be a significant amount of interest for enterprise SSDs in the banking, telecom and manufacturing segments where the discussion is led by requirements for lower latencies and ensuring higher availability and performance. There are great opportunities for deployment in Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), analytics and highly virtualized environments that include (but are not limited to) cloud data centers. Deployments are possible in database, data warehousing and highperformance computing environments, and in hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (HVDI) environments,” The performance issues of the IT environment of any company requires a different kind of handling. “SanDisk

Enterprise flash storage is all set to grow and transition the storage landscape to support the accessibility and efficiency needs of future Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager- Enterprise, IDC India

MARKETFOR ENTERPRISE FLASH STORAGE WILLBE OFAROUND BY2018

INDIA

$450 mn

APAC

$3 Bn $13.3 bn

GLOBAL MARKET GLOBALENTERPRISE MARKETIN 2014

INDIA $170 mn APAC GLOBAL MARKET EXPRESS COMPUTER

$1.25 Bn $5.7 Bn

SanDisk is vertically integrated.We have full control over supply, quality and cost. This is the primary differentiating factor for us VivekTyagi, Director,Business Development, SanDisk India JULY, 2015

FEATURE

FLASH STORAGE

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

works with it’s Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners like Microsoft, VMware and Oracle, in listing out the IO and latency related issues of the end user. After having a point by point dialogue, we best apply our technology to solve the issues,” says Baigent of SanDisk. SanDisk also brings the subject matter expertise from it’s five acquisitions.

Riding on Acquisitions

Digital data is growing exponentially in every DC and the failure to efficiently manage this data is one of the key things that slows down the infrastructure Dan Baigent, Senior Director,Strategic Business Development and Global Technology EcoSystem,SanDisk

The perception that Flash can be a panacea for every performance related issue is false Santhosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner 46

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India has many players in the flash storage market, but SanDisk is the clear market leader. Since its inception SanDisk has been focused on flash. “The company pretty much invented NAND flash from its beginning in the consumer world,” states Baigent of SanDisk. Add up the five acquisitions—SMART Storage System, Schooner, Flashsoft, Pliant Technology and it’s latest- Fusion-io and on top of that, the products and solutions that we now have in our enterprise portfolio— there is no one else who covers that,” claims Baigent. Other companies providing flash storage solutions are not necessarily flash memory manufacturers. “SanDisk is fundamentally a flash memory manufacturer. Starting from wafer fab in Japan to another factory in Shanghai, to a SSD manufacturing set-up in Malaysia— we are fully vertically integrated. We have full control over supply, quality and cost. This is the primary differentiating factor for us,” says Tyagi of SanDisk. The pricing depends on the kind of solution purchased. The scenarios can range from the deployment of SAS SATA as a disk replacement; installing of PCIe which is in the server and closer to memory; implementation of shared storage device like ‘Infini flash’. According to IDC, the global enterprise flash storage market is around $13.3 billion currently. The market is expected to grow by CAGR of 11.5% in 2013-18. Gartner is of the view that the Indian market for enterprise flash storage will be of around $450 million by 2018. In the same year, the APAC market for flash storage will be of $3 billion and the global market will stand at $13.3 billion. It is interesting to see how fast the market is growing—for instance, in 2014, the global enterprise

market was $5.7 billion, the APAC market was $1.25 billion and the Indian market was worth a mere $170 million. The companies that were first in implementing SanDisk’s flash storage are mostly those that are providing data centre or cloud as a service in India. These are companies, which build data centres for renting out or leasing out to other companies. In Q1 of 2015, SanDisk has invested $0.9 billion in R&D. The company’s Bengaluru facility is the second largest SanDisk R&D centre, outside of the USA—the centre currently employs around 600 people. The facility has over 20 patents to its credit. Sharma of IDC says, “SanDisk enjoys the advantage of having partnerships with many OEMs selling the arrays. The company also owns lot of intellectual property, which enables it to develop innovative flash products. The investments in R&D result in products that are durable and reliable.”

Beyond Flash There is no doubt that the enterprise grade flash is more durable, reliable and has higher read/write speeds. Having no moving parts, the flash based drives consume less power, generate less heat and do not create any noise. But flash must not be seen as an answer to every performance related problem that the enterprises face. The perception that Flash can be a panacea for every performance related issue is false. “Flash is strictly meant for selected performance hungry, variable workloads. There are various use cases for flash storage. For instances in a VDI environment, in indexing of data, etc. Flash is also the most suitable option in a high transaction processing database. CTOs, who want to solve their performance related problems overnight, should try to deploy the server side flash solution. Looking for a short implementation time for solving the performance related challenge? - Server side SSD can be the answer. If the requirement is to manage a highly variable workload, you can look at an all flash array,” says Rao of Gartner. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW BIKRAM S. BEDI AMAZON WEB SERVICES INDIA

www.expresscomputeronline.com www.expresscomputeronline.com

“The Prime Minister has spoken about providing every citizen with access to digital lockers. But you can’t have digital lockers for 1.2 billion citizens through traditional data centres. Such a massive programme can only be achieved by going to cloud,” says Bikram S. Bedi, Head of India, Amazon Web Services

Business in the Cloud What is your view of the Indian market? India is an extremely important market to us. This is a high growth market. Today we have more than 12,000 customers—these include startups, media companies, SMBs, as well as large enterprises. We are providing different kinds of services to each one of them. Our services range from basic websites; management of digital workloads, analytics, mobility; the running of HR applications like talent management systems, learning management systems, and finance applications; mission critical and business critical applications like SAP, and Oracle Transport application. Popular brands like Dominos, Jubilant FoodWorks, etc., are running Oracle Transport Applications on us, along with rest of their web workload. Similarly, JD Edwards, Oracle eBiz, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Dynamics, are also being run on our platform. NDTV is achieving its footage on our platform. What kind of innovations are your start up customers making while using the AWS platform and services? The startup ecosystem in India is hot; there is lot of innovation happening in this area. The e-commerce companies are making lot of innovation while using our platform. They are conducting retail analytics, which enables them to develop lot of interesting ideas for incentivising their customers. When you buy something, the minute you pay, you get a coupon on your phone saying that in your next purchase you are eligible of this percentage of discount. Basically the analytics programs are helping the e-commerce companies to run their customer loyalty programmes. The media space has also been a very fast adopter of the AWS platform. Video being as important as it is, content monetisation is a big thing in the media industry. The AWS platform offers many interesting ideas for content monetisation. The popular TV channels, and the regional and national level newspapers are using the AWS platform. How are the large enterprises responding to the AWS platform? The large-scale enterprises are using our platform to archive old data, storage and backup. We work very closely with mainstream applications like EXPRESS COMPUTER

SAP HANA. We give the enterprises the ability to manage their SAP workloads, Oracle Workloads. There is a great variety in the work that is being done here. For instance, Tata Motors is running its fleet management service on our platform. They have put RFID systems on their vehicles and they are offering this as a service to the fleet owners. The Government of India has launched the ambitious programme for digitising the economy. What is your view for working with the government? We are working with 900 government agencies across the world. Our solutions are certified for a number of government agencies from the security standpoint. The CIA cloud in US runs on the AWS platform. In Philippines, we are working with the International Rice Research Institute, where they are doing genome sequencing of rice. There are enough global examples to show just how beneficial the cloud can be for Indian businesses. For instance, there is telemedicine. If you bring down the cost of telemedicine by using the AWS services, then you can provide quality healthcare to a number of people. The Prime Minister of India has spoken about ensuring that every citizen in the country has access to digital lockers. But you can’t have digital lockers for 1.2 billion citizens when you are running the service out of a traditional data centre. Such a massive programme can only be achieved by going into the cloud.

The analytics programs are helping the e-commerce companies to run their customer loyalty programmes

Considering that the Indian market is a highly price sensitive,are you trying to develop an India specific pricing strategy? All consumers are expected to demand the best service at the lowest price—that’s us. The AWS value proposition is based on this very idea, so we are a perfect fit for the Indian market. If you look at cloud business in general, it is a high volume and low margin business. Amazon is a retailer, so this is in our DNA. All our businesses, including AWS, are high volume and low margin. In this kind of business you succeed by increasing your capacities so that you get more economy of scale; as you get more economy of scale, you keep trying to take the cost out of the infrastructure that you’ve built. Now you can choose to take out the entire profit, or you can pass it back to the consumer as a price drop. It is very different from your 60-80% margin businesses, which traditional vendors run. JULY, 2015

FEATURE

MOBILE ANALYTICS

Analytics

THE MOBILE WAY With the hand-held devices becoming the preferred medium for accessing Internet, the enterprises have started deploying mobile analytics tools for gaining a better view of the exact needs of their customers BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

ocial, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) is the new powerful trend in the industry. The CIO community can’t afford to ignore SMAC; they have to steer their company in the direction where they can reap maximum business benefits from this trend. In the SMAC paradigm, it is the aspect of “Mobile” that is creating maximum waves in business organisations in India. The “Mobile” is the most preferred communication channel between the organisation and the customers. According to the recent telecom subscription data released by TRAI, the total number of high-speed mobile internet users in India was 81.48 million, as on 28 February 2015. The much higher growth in mobile internet, as compared to the wired broadband, is fuelled also by the easy availability of a range of applications and the efficient network performance of the mobile broadband services. The data released by Facebook shows, that out of 100 million users in the country, about 84 million access the site through mobile devices. As increasing numbers of Indians start using smartphones, they are realising that the mobile 48

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internet can be a good way of accessing all kinds of products and services. To reach out to such consumers, the enterprises are deploying innovative technologies, including mobile analytics. Organisations like Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and several property

portals such as proptiger.com, housing.com, and many others have already deployed analytics.

The Mobile Analytics Market A report from Nasscom and CRISIL Global Research predicts that the Indian analytics market is set to reach $2.3 billion by the end of 2017-18. Muralidhran Nadarajah, Head of Analytics Xchanging, observes that the growing need of organisations to access precise and practical information is fostering the growth in mobile analytics market. He says that the organisations are now realising that analytics is necessary for facilitating informed and profitable decision making. “Mobile Analytics is the top priority for enterprises; in many situations, the mobile apps have replaced desktop-based web browser as the primary medium for sharing information and attending to certain tasks. This trend is expected to continue,” sayssss Nadarajah. The problem is that in many cases, the mobile business intelligence tools and the analytics tools JULY, 2015

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get confused with each other. “These terms cannot be used interchangeably,” asserts Sudhir Kadam, Senior Vice President & Head of Analytics business, Mobileum. “The business intelligence tools serve the purpose of reporting, while the analytics tools are for predictive or prescriptive tasks.” Abhay Doshi of Flytext agrees. He says analytics are beyond descriptive reporting and can play a pivotal role in producing knowledge that can boost the revenues of the enterprises. “The telecom players in the country have been using mobile analytics tools for more than seven years to gain information on the user patterns of their consumers. Such data helps them to personalise the offerings to different customers and thereby improve their revenues,” he says.

Insights from analytics helped us improve conversion by at least 14% Shachin Bharadwaj, Founder & CEO,TastyKhana

Use Cases Aashish Kalra, Chairman, Cambridge Technology Inc., cites the examples of the customers of his organisation. He says, “A retail giant wanted to understand and predict purchase trend of its customers and behaviour on their mobile platform. They publish coupons via SMS, mobile push messages, newspapers, emails, physical mails and web advertisements. They wanted to predict demand on range of products after coupons are published and accordingly promote and stock their supplies. With our solution, we helped the retailer divert its energy and investment towards most useful campaigns and balance their inventory so that they never run out of their bestselling products.” A large energy management company wanted their customers to be able to view their energy consumption. For this, the company wanted to have the customer spend and demand analysed, projected and reported on a cloud and mobile platform. The challenge, in achieving this objective, was primarily related to the enormity and diversity of data. Their customers have thousands of buildings and industries worldwide. “We built a mobile platform using state of art analytics tools to allow each customer to drill down from a world view of their buildings to state, city, area, building, EXPRESS COMPUTER

Today almost all the OTT applications are dependent on mobile Sudhir Kadam, Senior Vice President & Head of Analytics business,Mobileum

account and then at meter level. We also used business intelligence with weather forecast data, to plot it in future through easy to use customisable analytical graphs and tabular representations,” informs Kalra. “Data is at the centre of every business and this is even more significant when it comes to online businesses where everything can be measured,” says Supam Maheshwari, CEO & Founder, FirstCry.com. “We have in house custom analytics solutions and we also use Google Analytics standard tool and their custom features.” The online food ordering company Tasty Khana has used mobile analytics to gain new insights into factors that can lead to higher customer conversion rates. Shachin Bharadwaj, Founder & CEO, TastyKhana, says, “Analytics helped us understand that menu with images had almost 50% better conversion rates. Initially we did not have a scrollable cart, but insights from analytics led us to introduce a scrollable cart, which in turn helped us improve conversion by at least 14%.” Sudhir Kadam, SVP & Head of Analytics, Mobileum, points out today almost all the OTT applications need to dependent on mobile. In fact data analytics is getting critical at PoT (point of transaction). At the end of the day what matters is enterprise’s data strategy.

Data Strategy

The mobile strategy of a firm must include the intuitive capturing of user and device data Rajiv Kumar, CEO & Founder at StoreHipp.com

Many enterprises do not have the knowhow for leveraging the benefits of mobile technology. They also do not have the sustainable strategy for deploying mobile analytics tools for gaining business information. Before deploying Mobile Analytics tools, an organisation needs to define the key objectives and meaningful KPIs. “Mobile Analytics can be used to assess operation details and user behaviours while Operation Analytics will typically focus on the technical performance of the mobile app, network conditions, potential bugs or performance bottleneck. Meanwhile Behaviour Analytics will reveal the favoured (and avoided) pathways of users JULY, 2015

FEATURE

MOBILE ANALYTICS

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

The telecom players have been using mobile analytics tools for more than seven years to gain information on the user patterns of their consumers

Aashish Kalra,

We have built internal tools to mine data from several sources.This ensures that our data makes holistic sense

Chairman, Cambridge Technology Inc

Vivek Phalak,

Retailer can divert its energy and investment towards most useful campaigns with the help of analytics

Abhay Doshi, Senior Director & Global Strategy Head,Flytext

and use this analysis to constantly improve the design of the next release,” says Nadarajah of Xchanging. “A majority of our clients prefer to focus their investments in overall Big Data Analytics framework that would also encompass mobile analytics. Recently we helped one of our telecommunications clients in analysing customer behaviour on the mobile app and websites to forecast sales trend, potential churn. Based on the predictions, they were able to optimise their network performance. In conjunction with the analysis, we collaborate with our clients to develop effective campaign by understanding the specific behaviours and preferences,” he says. Kalra of Cambridge Technology observes that there are various tools available in the market like Google Analytics for Mobile apps, AWS Mobile Apps Analytics, Net Biscuits, Count.ly, to name a few. The Enterprises typically are 50

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adopting mobile analytics alongside their web analytics and combining all data together to get insightful reports that help in decision making on product strategy. “The mobile strategy of a firm must include the intuitive capturing of user

Areport from Nasscom and CRISILGlobal Research predict the Indian analytics market is set to reach $2.3 billion by the end of 2017-18

Co-Founder & CTO, Shoptimize

and device data. Such a strategy can help in gaining understanding of visitor behaviour in a world of multi-channel marketing. To address this challenge, it’s therefore vital to have a dedicated solution to identify mobile user trends, and integrate these with other key metrics to reveal cross-device customer web usage,” explains Rajiv Kumar, CEO & Founder at StoreHipp.com. The SaaS solutions, which are necessarily the pay-as-you-go offerings, work best from a deployment standpoint, according to Vivek Phalak, Co-Founder & CTO, Shoptimize. “Most companies have stopped relying on one single tool or deployment. In our case, we have also built internal tools to mine data from several sources. This ensures that our data makes holistic sense. We use tools like Mixpanel and a few other tools,” he says. JULY, 2015

FEATURE

MOBILE ANALYTICS

Data is at the centre of every business and this is even more significant when it comes to online businesses where everything can be measured

Businesses are moving to cloud for flexibility, scalability and accessibility Badal Bordia, Principal Consultant,Big Data and Analytics,Advaiya

Growing need of organisations to access precise and practical information is fostering the growth in mobile analytics market Muralidhran Nadarajah, Head of Analytics Xchanging

Supam Maheshwari, CEO & Founder,FirstCry.com

Analytics on Cloud Kalra says Amazon Mobile Analytics is getting heavy traction in the mobile analytics deployment. Besides Google analytics for mobile and its BIG Query for Big Data Cloud Analytics are getting adopted by various customers very fast. “Approximately 80% of the mobile analytics companies in India are service based while 20% have software products,” says Kalra. “We are helping numerous clients in the deployment of mobile analytics on cloud.” Most players seem to favour cloud over on premise deployment. This is because there are various advantages associated with cloud—agility, speed and time-to-market. All these allow the businesses to scale their solutions more easily. Kalra stresses the fact that cloud offers more storage options and better experience for the end users without any additional cost. 52

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While the ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) model remains popular for mobile analytics, it is still far from catching up with the real time business demand as it was constrained by the process. The cloud deployment on the other hand enables real time analysis by translating the structured and unstructured data into multidimensional data cube in runtime. “Cloud based solution is accessible on multiple browsers across virtually any type of devices,” he informs. According to Badal Bordia, Principal Consultant, Big Data and Analytics, Advaiya, many businesses are moving to cloud due to advantages like flexibility, scalability and accessibility. “Amazon Mobile Analytics collects, visualises, and understands app usage data. It delivers usage reports within an hour of receiving data from an app. Then there is Google Mobile App Analytics, which provides an understanding of user

behaviour. There are many vendors, ranging from startups to enterprise level, that are offering mobile analytics solutions on the platform of your choice: onpremises, public cloud, private cloud, virtual private cloud, hybrid cloud, etc,” says Bordia. Doshi of Flytxt sums it up saying that whatever be the enterprise’s strategy around analytics, three things are fundamental—knowing the objective, identifying the right platforms and making sure that tools and models fit into the existing workflows. “We see a disconnect here— enterprises still run in siloes and lack the ability to connect the multiple layers. The workflow layer should be such that it allows the enterprise to react to the findings of the analytics tools. If that is not the case, then there is no use of deploying these tools,” Doshi says. JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW ANNIE MATHEW BLACKBERRY

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“Technology and mobility will play a crucial role in revolutionising the healthcare system and propelling the next phase of growth in India,” says Annie Mathew, Director, Alliances and Business Development, BlackBerry. In conversation with Abhishek Raval

BlackBerry’s Prescription for Success in Healthcare BlackBerry is planning to launch a healthcare platform in India. How is the project progressing? We are currently holding discussions with healthcare solution providers and hospitals regarding the trials of NantHealth Clinical OS and the integration of the devices and apps that healthcare facilities are using. BlackBerry sees immense potential in the healthcare sector. Recently we made an investment in NantHealth, whose IT solutions are installed in about 250 hospitals. The NantHealth platform connects more than 16,000 medical devices and collects 3 billion vital signs annually. The reliability, security and versatility of BlackBerry’s end-to-end solutions will add incredible value to NantHealth’s solutions for the healthcare sector. In what ways is BlackBerry helping the Railway Hospital and Hiranandani Hospital to improve their services? The Railway Hospital is using Maestros Rhythms 24x7 eUNO, which has a remote ECG solution and securely transmits ECG data to medical professionals on their BlackBerry 10 device. This solution can be deployed across different scenarios of healthcare, including ambulances, community centers, primary health centres, and even in the homes of the patients. Hiranandani Hospital has implemented a mobile telemedicine application, which allows medical professionals to remotely monitor the patient’s health and provide care remotely. The mobile telemedicine app developed by UST Global, under the guidance of Hiranandani Hospital and BlackBerry India team, provides access to qualified doctors. Through telemedicine, the patients living in rural areas can gain access to quality treatments without having to travel to cities. How will the QNX and NantHealth acquisitions help in equipping BlackBerry for coming up with EXPRESS COMPUTER

solutions that are specially targeted at the Indian healthcare sector? We believe technology and mobility will play a crucial role in revolutionising the healthcare system and propelling it to the next phase of growth in India. There is a huge urban-rural divide, when it comes to healthcare services. Healthcare teams deserve an easier way of treating patients in remote locations. The next generation of the NantHealth Box, which is a portable medical device for capturing and transmitting secure medical data between the patient, doctor and the hospital, will be powered by the QNX Software System, which is wholly owned by BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Passport and NantHealth have launched a genome browser on the Passport,which gives doctors unprecedented access to the patient’s genetic data

In what ways is IoT transforming healthcare? What kind of changes can IoT bring in the ways by which the hospitals are managed? IoT is already incorporated in a broad range of healthcare applications. It is being deployed for the management of several healthcare issues, ranging from the cure of chronic diseases to preventing the disease. Hospitals are often understaffed and over-populated, but this is an issue that plagues the quality of healthcare in the entire world. Earlier it was difficult for the nurses and doctors to conduct round the clock monitoring of the patient, but with IoT the monitoring systems are easy to develop. For instance, the BlackBerry HBox makes it easy for the healthcare staff to gain access to the patient’s data. What kind of healthcare services can we expect from the BlackBerry Passport? BlackBerry Passport and NantHealth, have launched a genome browser on the Passport, which gives doctors access to the patient’s genetic data. Oncologists can view individual genetic alternations that make the patient’s disease unique. It also highlights the relevant treatment option. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

COLUMN MARCO DE VRIES CEO, OPENBRAVO

RETAILCIOs ON FOREFRONTOF ADOPTING MOBILE,CLOUD T Digital technology is exploding and compelling retail CIOs to adopt mobile and cloud mediums. While most retailers have around 60% of their systems operating in the cloud, a few others are aiming to ensure that up to 90% of their enterprise systems operate in the cloud

Real-time retail refers to the ability to gather,analyse and disseminate customers’ product,pricing and inventory data across all channels instantly,thereby providing a customer with a seamless and productive experience 54

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he prevailing landscape of the retail sector in 2015 is all about the balance of power resting firmly in the hands of the consumer. The good news is that digital technology is exploding and compelling retail CIOs to adopt mobile and cloud mediums. While most retailers have around 60% of their systems operating in the cloud, a few others are aiming to ensure that up to 90 per cent of their enterprise systems operate in the cloud. A recent survey from Boston Retail Partners says that, in the next two years, more retailers will adopt customer facing mobile services to enhance the shopping experience. The report states that the number of retailers offering advanced mobile technologies, including mobile POS terminals, geo-location and proximity payment solutions will skyrocket. Localisation technologies like beacons or radio-frequency identification (RFID) are also expected to grow considerably. According to Gartner, ‘brick and mortar’ stores will remain the dominant revenue-generating channel despite the fast online retail growth. Online shopping still constitutes less than 10 percent of revenues in most developed countries while physical stores continue to drive sales now and will do so, in the foreseeable future. Physical stores play a key role in today’s Omni channel reality and as a result, these retailers are investing heavily on technologies that help provide a superior, seamless, Omni channel, in-store, shopping experience. With these changes in the retail market, the role of physical stores is transforming. Retailers now focus on improving business processes and the overall customer experience; starting from the beginning of the supply chain

through to the final purchase. This process will be disruptive for many organisations; especially those entrenched in traditional business practices. In order to achieve Omni channel success, retailers must break down organisational silos and ensure that all stakeholders are accessing the same shopper data. To succeed in this transformation brick-and-mortar retailers must invest on creating a bond with the in store brands. Retailers should engage more with their customers, thereby gaining store intelligence for deeper actionable insights on store, products and staff performance. This will help a retailer in leveraging the potential of valuable multiple in-store data sources, provide a personalized shopping experience and finally become an Omni channel hub while excelling in store operations. Consumers are becoming more demanding – driven by new technology and the real time capabilities it enables. While shopping for a specific product, a customer can get instant access to prices from several competitors as well as identify the closest store that has the particular product he/she requires in realtime. With information at their fingertips, consumers expect a seamless experience in stores and on the web too. Hence “realtime retail” becomes the new imperative today. Real-time retail refers to the ability to gather, analyse and disseminate customers’ product, pricing and inventory data across all channels instantly, thereby providing a customer with a seamless and productive experience. However, with technologies such as mobile point of sale (POS) with assisted sale capabilities (clienteling, inventory visibility etc.), Sensors (beacons and RFID) and mobile payments, retailers are JULY, 2015

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making progress and are able to address the new age consumer demands. For instance, whether it is a single location, independent operator or a large chain, mobile POS can provide a substantial ROI for business. From streamlining order processing to improving order accuracy and increasing sales, increases in efficiency and profitability can be gained throughout retail operations. With mobile POS, sales associates can roam through the store check prices and even check out customers wherever they are. That minimizes lines, speeds up transactions and gets customers quickly on their way. Up and cross selling – to show available discounts or create loyalty cards and offer complementary products can also be leveraged using Mobile POS. One can utilise additional benefits using a mobile POS that is web responsive. Firstly a web responsive solution only requires a browser to be run, eliminating the need to install any application on each device, which usually are OS dependent. This means one can install them only either on iOS, Android or Windows. Secondly, the layout adapts automatically to the device size, allowing EXPRESS COMPUTER

users with different devices to access it with ease. In summary a responsive web and mobile POS provides more freedom to the retailer to select the terminals of their choice while simplifying all installation and maintenance tasks. The elegant simplicity of the mobile POS reduces effort and frees up staff to serve customers. Apart from mobile POS, in-store localisation technologies like beacons or RFID are also providing a high impact on the store shopping experience. Beacons are small wireless devices that broadcast radio signals using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Smartphones that are nearby connect with this device through signals and communicate with bean and deliver content and experiences. Using smartphones, the users can actually scout for what’s around them and retailers or any hosts, keen to promote their products, can take the advantage of this platform to provide content at the right time and at the right place. But many in the industry are yet to explore the power of this tiny device. Indian retailers are betting on a gradual change where Beacons play a crucial role. The power of Beacon

technology can offer context, personalization, insight, efficiency and differentiation to the brick-and-mortar experience. Retailers can place the sensors throughout the store, and using their branded mobile apps, they can send a signal to their consumers providing them with useful information: details about clothes and accessories, pricing, links to purchase items directly from the retailers website etc., when they are in close proximity. Some additional in-store technologies like Digital Signage, Augmented Reality, Self-Checkout, to name a few, also help today’s brick-and-mortar stores to drive their sales. An example that serves as a good representation of the impact of cutting edge technologies in a brick and mortar store is that of Rebecca Minkoff. Rebecca Minkoff recently unveiled its digitally ‘connected store’ in New York City. The shop showcases the all-new consumer experience that merges online and physical shopping in an intersection of ecommerce and technology. The ‘connected wall’ features a mirrored display that shows videos and motivational content, and enables interaction as shoppers can touch the surface to request associates to prepare fitting rooms, order drinks and even change the environment’s lighting, using RFID technology. In order to work around the intricacies of a rapidly changing technology driven retail landscape, brick and mortar retailers can bank on proper planning, training and execution to differentiate themselves in this competitive market. – not to miss out that they have the biggest advantage over online retailers, i.e., to have face-to-face interaction with the consumer for effective consumer engagement. While delivering a seamless customer experience is the driver, technology allows the customer to tailor her own experience. Leveraging this technology is the key to delivering real-time, retail experience. The author is a Chief Executive Officer, Openbravo. Views are personal

JULY, 2015

EVENT MICROSOFT

EXPRESS DIGITAL GOVERNANCE SERIES J A I P U R

1 5 T H

M AY

2 0 1 5

TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMART GOVERNANCE The Express Digital Governance Series placed the spotlight on the ways by which new technologies can be optimised for better governance and sustainable growth

he Express Digital Governance Series was organised at Jaipur on May 15, 2015. Powered by Microsoft, the event was primarily attended by the government officials from the state of Rajasthan. The technocrats from Microsoft were there to share knowledge on the various ways by which innovative technologies can be deployed for bringing efficiency and transparency to the government departments. The event was inaugurated by Shikhar Agarwal, IAS, Commissioner, Jaipur Development Authority, along with Neeraj Gill, General Manager, Public Sector, Microsoft. Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Shikhar Agarwal of Jaipur Development Authority, accepted that it was imperative for the government to deploy new technologies for reducing the cost of operations and bringing efficiency and transparency. He enumerated numerous challenges that the government departments face in selecting the most appropriate technology and deploying it in a time bound manner. The Express Digital Governance Series was divided in two different themes. The theme from 9.30 AM to 5.30 PM, was â&#x20AC;&#x153;Optimising Technology for Sustainable Growth.â&#x20AC;? Here the focus of

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Left to Right: Neeraj Gill of Microsoft, Shikhar Agarwal of Jaipur Development Authority, inaugurating the event JULY, 2015

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the presentations from Microsoft was on sharing knowledge on new technologies for smart digital governance, which can enable the citizens and various wings of the government to communicate with each other in an easy and seamless way. The idea that the development of such cross-silo governance model is possible only through the deployment of IT resources was forcefully presented by the speakers from Microsoft. Neeraj Gill of Microsoft said, “The truth is that public cloud is being used by governments all over the world. There EXPRESS COMPUTER

are enough examples of government departments using it, and it is easy to see why they are using it. If you look at purely from the perspective of compute capabilities, then there are immense compute capabilities in the cloud. The security standards that are maintained in Microsoft cloud are global in scope, which means that we always adhere to whatever best standards that are defined in any country at any point of time.” The theme from 6.30 PM to 8.30 PM was “Best Practices for Building a Trustworthy Cloud”. In this part of the

programme, the technocrats from Microsoft dwelled on advantages that the government departments can achieve by adopting “public cloud”. The presentations from Microsoft emphasised the significant advantages that cloud offers— Efficiency, Accessibility, Collaboration, Reliability, Security, Scope of Rapid Innovation and Reduction in Cost of Operations. The presentations were followed by an enlightening round of Q&A in which many government officials in the audience enthusiastically participated. JULY, 2015

EVENT ASPECT'S ACE 2015

Sanjay Gupta, MD, South Asia & Middle East, Aspect

ASPECT: ACE 2015 Aspect’s ACE 2015 event was primarily focussed on showcasing the vast array of solutions for customer engagement BY JASMINE DESAI

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oe Gagnon, SVP & GM, Cloud, Aspect, began his presentation by saying, “We are making technology more human-like. It is a profound opportunity. We have to do more for our customers, so that they can do more for their customers.” Workforce Optimisation (WFO), aims to provide rich customer experience. Contact centres must enable interactions in a holistic way and not in silos. Omnichannel experience enables a brand to be present across various channels. The idea is to ensure that the consumer does not feel constrained by time or space.

Self Service Solutions On the topic of self-service solutions, he said, “The move to self-service is very important. We now use different channels for it like text, Twitter, etc. 6070% of customers prefer to send a text rather than talk to an agent.” He spoke at length about the company’s portfolio for self-service solutions and informed that Aspect CXP is for self-service, Zipwire for agent contact, Aspect Proactive engagement suite for proactive information. These enables interaction mapping process. “Self-service can come alive with text JULY, 2015

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as it gives actionable insights,” he emphasised. “The company’s technology strategy will keep on converging. There will be portfolio convergence by 2017. 80% of R&D research is working on it. Thus, customers do not have to choose which platform to use. Ultimately, going ahead winners will be who will give one touch generation.” After giving a brief introduction to the company, Gagnon mentioned that the organisation has 200 channel partners worldwide and 2,300 customers. Eight of the top ten healthcare providers use Aspect solution. All of its internal solutions are cloud-based. In 2014 the company rolled out 30 new products and capabilities. Unified IP implementation and Aspect Workforce Optimisation Suite 8 is available in subscription cloud. The company currently has nine data centres, 1,50,000 ports. NOC in Bangalore, Singapore and Hong Kong. Aspect has announced that Aspect EQ Inform for Apple Watch will enhance agent management. According to Jim Davies, Gartner, “Aspect has gone from talk to action.” Gagnon explained the three seismic shifts, which are going on presently. Firstly, there is business model disruption, and market is rewarding disruption. For example, LendingClub, Uber, etc. Secondly, public cloud usage has been escalating steadily. Cloud is now part of the core. It has led to IoT becoming all-pervasive. These apps could generate $6.2 trillion per year. In healthcare, IoT will allow 80-100% reduction in counterfeiting drugs. It will have a huge impact on various sectors in BFSI, telecom, BPO, transportation as well. IoT will give a huge surge to building reporting and analytics and enabling visual alerting.

Prefect vision: 2020 The world is made up of stories and the best stories are always written by the customers. What will customer engagement be like in 2020. Perhaps it will be perfect, because 20/20 is a synonym for perfect vision. Gagnon spoke about customer engagement 20/20. According to him, companies EXPRESS COMPUTER

Joe Gagnon, SVP & GM, Cloud, Aspect gives insights on self-service solutions for workforce optimisation

The move to self-service is very important.We now use different channels for it like text,twitter,etc.60-70% of customers prefer to send a text rather than talk to an agent

must embrace a new model for customer engagement to achieve sustainable growth in ‘flat & frictional world’. The facility of self-service for consumers is a compelling long-term solution. Aspect’s value proposition 2020 is to increase customer interaction, improve customer satisfaction and decrease costs through self-service. Organisations on their part need to elevate the role of agents. They need to extend interaction model. Sanjay Gupta, MD, South Asia & Middle East spoke about the changing technology landscape in India and Middle East. He said, “With only 18% penetration of internet in India, connectivity has a long way to go in the country. The market scope is unbelievably huge.” An interesting customer testimonial was given by Deepak Bhosale, Asian Paints, CM-IT. He said, “Asian Paints has primarily grown through acquisitions. Customer centricity models enable the organisation to deliver relevant value through engaging experiences.” Asian Paints has completed the interaction process with Aspect solution. Pilot was conducted on Aspect’s Unified IP 6.6 in 2009. Following the success of the pilot project, a contact centre was set-up in Mumbai, enabling the customer interaction process on mobile platform. It enabled the dealers process as well. Asian Paints also consolidated all auditing. All 35,000 dealers are on Aspect solution. Over 95% of orders are now placed through the contact centre. 95% of calls are picked up within 15 seconds. Calls abandoned by customers gets captured using ETL tool of Informatica. Currently Asian Paints is trying to adopt real-time analysis to help agents with relevant information during live call. Customer sentiment analysis and omni-channel self-service are also in the pipeline. Aspect’ s integrated voice of the solution is being evaluated for the same. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

EVENT HUAWEI

HUAWEI’S AGILE NETWORK 3.0

ARCHITECTURE LAUNCHED ATHUAWEI NETWORK CONGRESS 2015 Huawei Network Congress 2015 focused on Agile Network 3.0 Architecture to enable enterprises to build an agile IoT infrastructure EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

rganised in Beijing, the Huawei Network Congress 2015, brought together more than 6,000 of customers, channel partners, journalists, analysts, and others from more than 43 countries around the globe and 41 exhibitors including Intel, SAP, IBM, VMware, Infosys and China Telecom. The theme of the Congress was “From Agility to Imagination”. Huawei announced the launch of its Agile Network 3.0 Architecture. As a highlight of the latest version of Huawei’s Agile Network architecture, Huawei introduced its Agile Internet of Things (IoT) solution. The solution enables enterprises to build an agile IoT infrastructure to capture infinite business possibilities and to realise the digitisation of areas such as production, manufacturing and logistics. Huawei launched its Agile IoT Solution, which consists of three core components: Agile IoT gateway, Agile Controller and 60

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William Xu, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Huawei

LiteOS, a lightweight IoT operating system (OS). At the Congress, Huawei predicted

that by 2025, a total of 100 billion connections will be generated globally and two million new sensors will be deployed every hour. The view was also expressed that today our networks today cannot provide the connectivity to support this. “Huawei believes that standardising ICT infrastructure will foster the development of Internet applications, including IoT applications. To address this, Huawei is launching our IoT OS, LiteOS,” said Mr. William Xu, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Huawei, at the Congress. William Xu informed the guests that the LiteOS is the world’s most lightweight IoT OS. It is small in size at 10KB and supports zero configuration, autodiscovery, and auto-networking. It can be widely applied to different areas including smart homes, wearable, connected vehicles and other industries. The LiteOS helps to simplify the development of smart hardware to JULY, 2015

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Liu Shaowei, President, Switch and Enterprise Communication Product Line, Huawei

Exhibition Hall at Huawei Network Congress 2015

enhance IoT connectivity. In addition, Huawei announced that LiteOS will be opened to all developers, which enables them to quickly develop their own IoT products. In his keynote speech, Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, explained part of Huawei’s approach to develop and provide Business-driven ICT Infrastructure (BDII). “BDII requires close business collaboration and joint innovation efforts between Huawei and our partners. We have been involved in industry alliances, worked with standard organisations in the area of IoT, and established innovative research centers, open labs, and development communities to foster industry development,” he said. “Over the last three years, Huawei has been involved in a number of in-depth technological collaborations with our global industry partners in IoT. We have developed a series of IoT solutions that EXPRESS COMPUTER

Yan lida, President of Enterprise Business Group, Huawei

have already been applied to buildings, electricity meters, vehicles, gymnasiums, factories, retail outlets, and street lights. In line with our approach to provide BDII, Huawei will continue to work with more partners to launch solutions based on our Agile Network architecture for different vertical industries,” said Liu

Shaowei, President, Switch and Enterprise Communication Product Line, Huawei. The Congress also saw Huawei launching the world’s first softwaredefined networking (SDN)-based Agile Internet of Things (IoT) Solution at Huawei Network Congress (HNC) 2015. The solution enables objects to connect to the Internet and communicate with each other, while enabling convenient network management and maintenance. “IoT is the future of our increasingly digitised world and networks are key to driving value creation for enterprises. With Huawei’s IoT technologies and offerings, we hope to support the digital transformation of traditional industries and the development of the IoT ecosystem”, said Li Xianyin, General Manager, Enterprise Gateway Domain, Switch & Enterprise Communications Product Line, Huawei. JULY, 2015

INTERVIEW C K RAMAKANT INFOTRACK TELEMATICS

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“With the use of mobile apps and advanced hardware, it is possible for the sector to achieve efficiency, accuracy and affordability. The incorporation of new technologies is good for the industry,” says C K Ramakant, Managing Director, InfoTrack Telematics. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

Mobile Technology is Driving Innovation in FMS sector What is your view of the logistics industries and the fleet management solution (FMS) segment? During the last 15 years, there has been a surge of growth in this segment. Last year, the market grew by 28% and going forward, it is expected to grow by 30-32% annually. The growth that we are witnessing is primarily due to the rise in the e-commerce sector. Today there is more awareness about logistics and fleet management, and there is a focus on doing things in a more organised way.

industry. We, at InfoTrack, are geared to provide the complete set of end to end solution across verticals to our clients. We are focusing on adding value to the eCommerce market by providing solution to improve the supply chain segment. We have clients, who we are helping to improve their last mile delivery (Door-to-Door delivery) and also long haul supply chain (Cityto-City transport). What new technologies are being implemented in this sector? The main technology that is driving the innovation in this sector is mobility. The mobile technologies lead to improvement in accuracy and affordability. With the use of mobile apps and advanced hardware, it is possible for the sector to achieve efficiency, accuracy and affordability. The incorporation of new technologies is good for the industry.

What are the key verticals that are driving the demand for FMS in India? Demand is coming from almost all the sectors. But, as I said earlier, it is the boom in the e-commerce sector that is playing a key role in streamlining the supply chain management. Also, from logistic point of view, we have few companies that have changed the way taxi business is conducted in India. Primarily, for logistic and transportation, the major demand is coming from public transport companies, employee transport segment, school bus transportation, public transportation like taxis, autos, etc., car rentals and tours and travels, logistics and supply chain. Have you done any Proof of Concept (PoC) with the eCommerce giants? We are working with some of the largest ecommerce companies in the country; we have done the PoC and we are likely to roll-out the services very soon. Broadly speaking, transportation and fleet management is still disorganised. We don’t have enough focus on quality as there are lot of companies, which are family owned—they don’t use technology, in the way it should be used. But the good thing is that now this is changing as taxi companies are giving lot of competition to them. Also, the supply chain management is witnessing a huge flow of funds and majority of these are coming with the cap that how you differentiate yourself from others. In totality, this is good for the 62

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With the use of technologies, can we expect more competition in terms of pricing? The companies in this sector run on very thin margins. Their profits are dependent on efficiency in their operation and optimisation methodologies. With the use of modern technologies, they can achieve profit even when they price their services low. A technology oriented transportation is the way forward.

Companies run on very thin margin, profit is dependent on optimisation methodologies, so a technology oriented fleet management and transportation is the way forward

What are your plans for expansion in India? We have been in the industry for over 14 years. We started our operations in Singapore. The India operations started in 2008 and we have seen huge growth and interest in the last 24 months. InforTrack has grown by 100 percent in terms of employees and we are expecting a 50% revenue growth year-on-year for the next three years. Our paid up capital has increased manifold in recent years. We have moved from 14 people to 200 people in last 3 years and we expect to become much bigger in time to come. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com

JULY, 2015

BUSINESS AVENUES

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JULY, 2015

NEWS eGOV

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MTDC to launch Kumbh Mela mobile app MAHARASHTRA TOURISM Development Corporation is all set to launch an exclusive mobile application for the upcoming Kumbh Mela in Nashik commencing from July 14, 2015 and will continue for a year, ending on August 11, 2016. The new application will be launched in the month of June. MTDC has invested

around INR five lakh to develop this new application. Speaking exclusively to Financial Express, Paraag JaIin Nainutiia, managing director, MTDC said, “We have lakhs of people visiting the Kumbh Mela. The objective of launching an exclusive application is to facilitate the people with all the information regarding the event.

We are also trying to workout an offline map facility, so that the tourists can easily access the map even without the internet.” MTDC is in talks with local tour operators and Tour Operators Association of Nashik to further increase the tour options and create packages.

Now enjoy wi-fi facility at Taj Mahal

Payment to light houses goes online

VISITORS TO TAJ MAHAL will soon be able to access internet through wi-fi hotspots with BSNL planning to launch the facility later this month. BSNL’s Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Srivastava said that network installation is complete and the service will be free of cost for the first 30 minutes. An official in Telecom Ministry said Ravi Shankar Prasad is scheduled to launch the facility at Taj on June 16. As part of the Digital India programme, the government is working towards enabling all cities with a population of over one million and tourist centres with wi-fi hotspots. In February, wi-fi facility was launched by BSNL at Dashashwamedh Ghat and Shitala Ghats of Varanasi. According to the official in Telecom

AS MANY AS 198 light houses across the country will get payments online in lieu of navigational aids provided to ships, Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said. Efforts are also on to convert some 1,300 islands and all light houses into tourist attractions in a bid to tap their vast untapped potential, Gadkari said while launching the online collection of dues. Till now, sailing ships were forced to make payments manually for navigational aids provided by light houses, causing the ships to remain stranded for 2-3 days. The Shipping Ministry has tied up with Syndicate Bank for online collection of light dues. The Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) has made first such online payment.

Ministry, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has identified 25 monuments all over the country where wi-fi hotspots could be set up. The monuments include Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, Sarnath Konark Temple Rad Fort and Ellora, among others.

Rural women to get paid to viewvideos about health and nutrition REACHING OUT TO rural women on critical issues of health and nutrition through mobile phones, a programme was started under which four informative videos will be sent and they will be “paid to view it”. The videos will be sent to Vodafone subscribers free of cost and the users will also get an incentive of Rs 10 for EXPRESS COMPUTER

downloading all four videos. The campaign is aimed to target rural people through videos to educate them on better nutrition practices and prevention of child malnutrition.. The videos have been produced by the ministry and Unicef and reinforce on diet of expecting mothers, lactating mothers, children under the age of two years and

information on importance of breast feeding for children between 0-7 months. The videos will initially be sent to the mobile phones of all our 24 lakh Anganwadi workers. Further, govt wants to use this platform to spread other messages like women safety and ‘Beti-Bachao’. JULY, 2015

NEWS ENTERPRISE IT

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Visa & FireEye to co-develop tools for payment data VISA AND FIREEYE announced their intention to co-develop tools and services to help merchants and issuers protect against advanced cyber attacks targeting payment data. Visa and FireEye Community Threat Intelligence (CTI) offering will bring together threat information from both

companies, allowing merchants and issuers to quickly detect and respond to attacks against their IT and payment infrastructure. Under the offering, FireEye will operate web based service to enhance stakeholders’ knowledge of attacks targeting the ecosystem, providing a

Computer that operates on water droplets developed A COMPUTER THAT operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets has been developed by an Indian-origin scientist and his team. The computer is nearly a decade in the making, incubated from an idea that struck Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science – an operating clock. The droplet computer can theoretically perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can crunch, although at significantly slower rates. “We already have digital computers to

process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this,” Prakash said. He further added, “Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter.”

significant improvement over current industry practices of sharing threat intelligence via e-mail or static documents. FireEye and Visa initially plan to offer tools that will provide greater cyber intelligence and enhanced threat monitoring.

Microsoft planning to roll out Skype Translator AFTER PREVIEWING ITS real-time translation for Skype over the last six months, Microsoft is reportedly ready to roll out the new feature this summer. The firm is planning on introducing the software straight to the existing Skype app for Windows desktop PCs. The news broke with the firm attempting to make Skype Translator available in more languages and offering a preview that’s no longer restricted by an invite. The software currently supports English, Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. Microsoft has seen a 300% rise in Skype Translator usage.

India’s BI Software revenue to reach $150 mn in 2015: Gartner INDIAN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) software revenue is forecast to reach $150 million in 2015, a 15% increase over the 2014 revenue of $133.8 million, says Gartner. This forecast includes revenue for BI platforms, advanced analytics, analytic applications and corporate performance management (CPM) software. 66

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“The BI and analytics market is undergoing significant change. The development of mobile, information, cloud and social media technologies has disrupted the market and shifted it toward self-service, cloud and analytics applications tailored for business users and information workers,” Bhavish Sood, research director at Gartner, said.

Two major trends are further shaping the BI and analytics market. “One is the inexorable move to the cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS); the other is the widening of access to analytics. More than half of the employees in many organisations now have access to BI. The buying of analytics is becoming influenced by business departments,” the statement said. JULY, 2015

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