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THE IMPACT OF WEARABLES IN THE WORKPLACE imilar to the impact of IoT on machines, can wearables improve productivity in the workplace? While this is still a nascent trend, there is already evidence that wearable technology will help in improving safety, productivity and collaboration. A case in point is the Tata Group, which has created a safety wearable watch for the factory floor worker that will display important information about the workerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vital signs such as body temperature, pulse rate or excessive gas in the environment, which can be harmful to the health of the worker. While Tata has developed a wearable device for factory floor workers, the same concept can be used in every workplace with customization. For example, Bank of America placed wearable sensors in the ID badge of its call center employees to measure how its employees interacted socially. The bank analyzed the data which led to a surprising finding. The more the employees interacted, the better was their productivity. The bank then introduced a small coffee break as part of the daily routine. The result â&#x20AC;&#x201C; productivity improved by more than 10 ten percent. Besides productivity, wearables can be used to improve the health of employees, and track the stress levels of people. This can have a long term effect, as companies can save money by having more productive employees, and even reduce cost of providing medical healthcare. A case in point is Autodesk, which distributed Fitbit units to its staff to encourage a healthier lifestyle. Wearables are predicted to have a huge impact, if one looks at statistics provided by independent research agencies. Gartner predicts that by 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment. This is applicable for people employed in jobs that can be physically demanding. Similarly, researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, found out that wearables helped in boosting employee productivity by 8.5%, and job satisfaction by 3.5%. That said, it is important that employees see wearables as a tool that enhances their productivity, and not as a tool that intrudes on their privacy. Employers too have to ensure that they use data in an aggregate form for analysis, and not track individual patterns. If designed appropriately, a wearable policy can help employers have greater engagement from staff, and gain greater understanding about the health of employees. Workplace policies can then be redesigned, which can only lead to greater productivity.

BESIDES PRODUCTIVITY, WEARABLES CAN BE USED TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF EMPLOYEES

srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

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DIGITALWORKPLACES From papers to paperless offices, and now from people to virtual offices, enterprises are adopting digital technologies in a big way to create digital workplaces

feature

HOW STATE BANK OF INDIA IS APPLYING ANALYTICS

TECH CAFE: THE BLOCKCHAIN BLOCKBUSTER

VEDANTU SEEKS TO DEMOCRATIZE LEARNING

Kajal Ghose, CGM (ESS), SBI on how analytics is helping the bank improve its competitiveness

Bitcoin is revolutionary, but it is Blockchain the technology behind it that is generating curiosity

Vedantu, an Indian education technology startup, delivers a personalized training model

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54 EXPRESS COMPUTER

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opinion

interviews 10

ANIL SWARUP Secretary, Ministry of Coal

HOWMILLENNIALS ARE TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL WORKPLACES INTO DIGITAL Millennials demand stateof-the-art technology from their employers that is not rigid or burdened by legacy systems

AFINTECH PROFESSIONAL'S JOURNEYWITHOUTUSING CASH FOR 50 DAYS A quest to understand the consumer side of story

CIO, Apollo Hospitals Group

ANJANI KUMAR

DHIREN SAVLA

CIO, Safexpress

Group SVP & CIO, VFS Global Group

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ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN

GEORGE FANTHOME

DR. KAILASH NADH

Group Head IT, Vedanta and CIO, Cairn

Head of Technology, Zerodha

SOMSHUBHRO PAL CHOUDHURY

MD, Analog Devices India

news analysis 26

KALYAN KUMAR Executive Vice President, HCL Technologies

SATISH YADAVALLI General Manager & Practice Head, Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited

KEN CHENG Chief Technology Officer, Brocade

STEPHEN DANE MD, Cisco’s (GSSO) for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China

ANAND SUBRAMANIAN Sr. Director – Marketing Communications, Ola

event 46

INSURANCE INDUSTRY FORMS CUG TO FIGHT FRAUDS Experian has partnered with Life Insurance Council to provide a platform to the Life Insurance Industry

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DIGITALWORKPLACE EVENT SHOWCASES ADVANTAGES OFAUNIFIED WORKSPACE

DEFENDING THE CYBER FRONTIERS OFSTATE ADMINISTRATION JULY, 2016

Vol 27. No. 7. July, 2016 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Editor Srikanth RP* Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar, Rashi Varshney Mumbai Jasmine Desai, Abhishek Raval DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rushikesh Konka Layout Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West and East Prabhas Jha - North Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Ranabir Das Ajanta Sengupta Amit Tiwari Mathen Mathew Navneet Negi Circulation Mohan Varadkar Scheduling Ashish Anchan PRODUCTION General Manager B R Tipnis Manager Bhadresh Valia

MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar, Ranabir Das 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 Ranabir Das Mobile No. +91 9820097606 Email: Ranabir.das@expressindia.com Branch Offices NEW DELHI Prabhas Jha, Navneet Negi The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com Navneet Negi Mobile No. +918800523285 Email: navneet.negi@expressindia.com CHENNAI Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 8th Floor, East Wing, Sreyas Chamiers Towers New No.37/26 ( Old No.23 & 24/26) Chamiers Road, Teynampet, Chennai - 600 018 Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com BANGALORE Amit Kumar Tiwari The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 502, 5th Floor, Devatha Plaza, Residency road, Bangalore- 560025 Mobile No. +91 8095502597 Email: amit.tiwari@expressindia.com HYDERABAD Amit Kumar Tiwari The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 6-3-885/7/B, Ground Floor, VV Mansion, Somaji Guda, Hyderabad – 500 082 Mobile No. +91 8095502597 Email: amit.tiwari@expressindia.com

KOLKATA Ajanta Sengupta The Indian Express (P) Ltd.. Business Publication Division, JL No. 29&30, NH-6, Mouza- Prasastha & Ankurhati, Vill & PO- Ankurhati, P.S.- Domjur (Nr. Ankurhati Check Bus Stop), Dist. Howrah- 711 409 Mobile: +91 9831182580 Email id: ajanta.sengupta@expressindia.com KOCHI Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd., Ground Floor, Sankoorikal Building, Kaloor – Kadavanthra Road, Kaloor, Kochi – 682 017 Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com COIMBATORE Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. No. 205-B, 2nd Floor, Vivekanand Road, Opp. Rajarathinam Hospital, Ram Nagar, Coimbatore- 641 009, Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com AHMEDABAD Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express (P) Ltd. 3rd Floor, Sambhav House, Near Judges Bunglows, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad - 380 015, Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com BHOPAL Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com JAIPUR Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India. Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270, Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com

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Express Computer® Reg. No. REGD.NO.MCS/066/2015-17, RNI Regn. No. MAHENG/49926/90 Printed for the proprietors, The Indian Express (P) Ltd. by Ms. Vaidehi Thakar at Indigo Press, (India) Pvt. Ltd. Plot No. 1c/716, off Dadoji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027 and Published from Express Towers, 2nd Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021. (Editorial & Administrative Offices: Express Towers, 1st Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021) Editor : Srikanth RP (*Responsible for selection of News under the PRB Act.) Copyright © 2016 The Indian Express (P) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, electronic or otherwise, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited.

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INTERVIEW SOMSHUBHRO PAL CHOUDHURY ANALOG DEVICES INDIA

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Somshubhro Pal Choudhury, MD, Analog Devices India, speaks to Abhishek Raval on the necessity of processing only the critical data on the cloud to get fast and targeted results

Moving all IoT data to cloud is a recipe for disaster How cloud can be used for processing IoT related data ? To directly transport sensor data onto the cloud through a gateway is a recipe for disaster. This leads to a surge in the Opex. The Capex investments will also have to be made at the same scale. The radio that enables wireless data transmission has to be always on, which will abuse the battery capacity. IoT is all about creating a ‘Sensor to the cloud’ system, which is solving a business problem at a good RoI. On the contrary, we are spending more energy transmitting wirelessly compared to doing computing at a given node. It requires a fat pipe. The right way would be to do the initial analysis on-premise, sense the data, analyse it and only send the relevant data that needs to be processed upon on the cloud. for e.g. In case of a CCTV footage at a particular showroom has to be transferred to a nearest police station in case of a theft incident, the conventional method is the police takes the DVR and checks the footage frame by frame however by then the culprit has gone too far. How about writing an algorithm which triggers a series of snapshots from the footage about the incident, when it’s happening? It is then relayed in real time to the nearest police station. This way the police can respond to the situation immediately and not after the culprit is at large. Analogue devices’ forte is about writing such algorithms. If IoT has to be realised at a cheapest possible cost, not all but selected data has to be moved to the cloud. Where do India stand globally, in terms of IoT ? India is at the crossroads. We missed the PC revolution altogether, late- by about ten years. But with IoT, India already has a grip over a lot of the essentials. We understand the IT infrastructure, cloud, analytics, networking. On the hardware side, India doesn’t have the same grip. In other cities like Boston, Silicon valley, Israel, a lot of these pieces are happening together. This is an opportunity for India to leapfrog with IoT. The good news is on the talent front, India is at par or a tad low compared to standards attained by the likes of Silicon valley. EXPRESS COMPUTER

We are strong in designing a cloud based IoT platform, however we lack in the following areas – designing a new IoT protocol, IoT database, a new IoT wireless protocol, designing specific algorithm for machine analytics, the fundamental innovation, is where we are behind. From a business standpoint, the opportunities are flowing in steadily due to the Government’s Digital India, Make in India programmes. These initiatives are greenfield and thus, there is potential for workplaces, factories to be designed smart from the ground up.

What’s the profile of customers in India? We have 1000+ clients both in the PSU and the MNC space.DRDO,ISRO, SMEs providing ancillary support to the defence sector have been our customers for many years. The second bucket of customers are from the SMEs located in western India.The Nashik, Pune,Ahmedabad, Jaipur,Delhi belt. These are smaller size SMEs,single family owned. Another set of customers are coming from the space of startups.I personally track about 250 IoT startups.

What kind of work ADI is doing on the IoT space in India ? Innovation remains the key to Analogue Devices India (ADI). We plough back close to 20% of the revenues back into R&D. ADI is a semiconductor company. Most of our peers play in the processor and consumer domain because of volumes lucrativeness. ADI has chosen a different path. Majority of the information generated, stored and consumed in enterprises is stored digitally however, the important information generated in the physical world – radiowaves, temperature, vital signs monitoring, motion is still captured in the form of analogue signals. What we do is convert this physical parameter information into an electrical signal, which has to be filtered from the surrounding noise. It needs to be amplified, converted into digital from analogue and finally it becomes processor friendly, to be digitally processed. This is our DNA. We are an analogue bridge to the digital world. Texas Instruments, Linear Technology and Maxim Integrated are our top three competitors. We have close to hundred thousand customers globally. Some 20 – 30 strategic customers are handled directly by us while the rest are handled by our partners. Meteorology and energy are the key highlights of the verticals we operate in. Some 300 mn energy meters globally run on sensors provided by us. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW ANIL SWARUP SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF COAL

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COAL MINISTRY PLANS MASSIVE TECH MODERNIZATION PUSH When Anil Swarup, Secretary, Ministry of Coal, took over the charge as secretary in 2014, the coal ministry was going through a rough phase with allegations of coal block scam, bribery, extortion and outright theft of coal. State-miner Coal India which has a near-monopoly in India’s total domestic production has however been able to raise its output in the past few months. “From situation of acute scarcity about a year ago, we are fairly comfortable in terms of the availability of coal as most of the power plants are sitting on an inventory of 27 days,” says Anil Swarup, Secretary, Ministry of Coal. In an exclusive interview with Ankush Kumar, Swarup talks about how the adoption of advanced technologies has helped in bringing in transparency and efficiency in the entire coal ecosystem

Over the years, the Coal Ministry has been targeted with cases of corruption, nepotism and majorly the coal block allocation scam. How was the environment when you initially joined the ministry in 2014 and what were the challenges that you have faced? The past year and a half has been the most difficult, but the most enjoyable period of my life. The environment prevailing in the ministry was such, that decision making was very difficult. The team here comprises of extremely efficient people, but going by what has happened in the past few years, people were reluctant to commit themselves on files. They were not as upfront as they ought to be for doing things that were required to be done. I don’t think they are to be blamed; it is the environment as it emerged as the consequence of the coal blocks scam and everything going to the court and the CBI getting involved. So, on account of all these factors the environment here was not good enough. The other challenge was in terms of the EXPRESS COMPUTER

time that was available with us. As the Supreme Court has come out with its judgement in last September and we were supposed to complete the auction process by 31st of March, especially of those mines where mining has not even started. Therefore, we had just five months to come up with the legislation and complete the entire auction process in a transparent manner. How is technology being used by Coal India and its subsidiaries for boosting productivity and bringing efficiency in the entire system? Technology has played a critical role in increasing production and bringing efficiency in Coal India. Also in the context of preventing theft, the role of technology has been significant in the recent past. Over the years Coal India has been beset with the issues of pilferage and hence we are using various kinds of technologies to prevent such incidents. We use technology for a variety of purposes beginning with improved

technology for mining where we are using Longwall technology and surface miners etc. Longwall has been a proven technology across the world which is more environment friendly as compared to opencast mining, but so far it has not worked very well in India. We recently had a workshop in Singrauli where Longwall was installed and has shown better outcomes, therefore, we hope to implement it in other regions. But apart from influencing mining in the country, technology is also being used for a variety of other purposes including data management and pilferage. By 30th June we have decided to make all the trucks of Coal India GPS enabled. Therefore, sitting at a place we can make out the exact position of a truck and in case it’s going beyond the particular boundary then it can be easily traced out. We are also using the RFID code for automatic weighing. By 30th June again all the mines would be video graphed and from a different location, we can easily see what is happening inside the mines. JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW ANIL SWARUP SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF COAL

Coal India has been struggling with issues of coal theft and coal being sold in black markets. Could you elaborate more on the use of GPS, RFID tags and CCTV cameras for preventing coal theft and pilferage? Coal India and its subsidiaries are being restrategized to sync traditional mining operations with technology by introducing a number of e-initiatives for improving performance, growth and productivity of the organization in a transparent & fair manner. In-motion Weighbridges, RFID/IP cameras have ensured weighment of more than 800 tippers in one shift as against 200 tippers through electronic static Weighbridges. This has resulted in a drastic increase in the coal weighment percentage from 10-15 percent to 90-95 percent, thereby reducing the chances of erroneous reporting in coal production figures on a daily basis. The use of RFID tags and RFID reader has ensured the entry of authorized coal tippers only inside the mine boundaries. IP cameras in electronic and in-motion weighbridges have led to increase in surveillance of coal tippers. CoalNet has ensured real time transmission of coal weighment data to the central server. This has resulted into accuracy in reporting of coal production and dispatch figures on day to day basis. The installation of GPRS based VTS and geo-fencing of mine areas have enhanced the transparency & effective monitoring of coal transportation. System based alerts on geo-fence violation is also being monitored through e-surveillance & monitoring units at the HQ and area level. This has resulted in enhanced/strict monitoring of movement of coal out of the mine premises. As the government has set a target of one billion ton of coal production by 2020, how is the ministry planning to achieve this goal? It’s not that a target of one billion ton has been given in one go, it’s a mine wise plan that has been worked out and in each mine, we have clearly identified the land required for acquisition, the environment and forest clearance that was needed. We have worked out a clear cut evacuation plan for each of these mines. The detailed plan that you have 12

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For every hector of land that is mined,we are foresting 2.4 hectors of land and this can be ascertained through satellite imagery.We are using satellite imagery to establish how much greenery is coming back right now is about actually 908 million tons and as more and more mines gets added it would probably reach one billion ton or beyond depending on the requirement of coal within the country. What we were seeing in the past three to four months, I think we are producing more that what is required. From a situation of acute scarcity about a year ago, we are fairly comfortable in terms of the availability of coal as most of the power plants are sitting on an inventory of 27 days. The situation has improved as imports have come down by 15 percent with savings of foreign exchange of 27000 crores. There are serious environmental concerns with respect to coal mining in India.As Coal India has to nearly double the production by 2020, how are you planning to address the environmental issues arising from increased production? One of the allegations against mining is that it destroys the environment – the forest cover is ripped off. Now we are trying to dispel that because for every hector of land that is mined we are foresting 2.4 hectares of land. And this can be ascertained through satellite imagery. We are using satellite imagery to establish how much greenery is reverting back. We have pictures taken year after year that show the movement of green cover. Satellite based monitoring is being

currently used for satellite surveillance for land reclamation monitoring of opencast mines, settlement mapping for land compensation, monitoring of coal mine fires in Jharia, Raniganj, Bokaro and Karanpura Coalfields. Also used in vegetation cover mapping of coalfields, land use / cover mapping for environmental management plans, topographical survey of coalfields in association with GSI, DGPS survey of forest area and mine lease boundary. What has been the significance of e-auction of coal blocks in bringing in transparency and expediting the entire process? In an e-auction, since blocks have been allocated they had to be cancelled and a mechanism had to be put in place which was transparent and where decisions were taken objectively. Fortunately, organizations like MSTC and SBI Cap were selected that helped us through a transparent auction process. There again technology was used to an extent that there was hardly any paper used in the entire auction process. Everything was available on the portal and the applications were to be filed on the web. The auction was done live and one could actually see auction happening on the web. So everything was totally transparent and hence there wasn’t any need for using paper except when the final approval or the processing was done on the file. But beyond that, I don’t think much was done on the paper. What are the advantages of considering e-auction of coal over the traditional MoU method? MoU was an interim and an uncertain arrangement whereas e-auction is a permanent arrangement for one year. In an e-auction one can know from which mine, which quality of coal will be provided for full one year. So there is a greater certainty in terms of availability of coal. However MoU is opted only when there is additional coal available. So there was no certainty about it. Coal India could easily say no to MoU if coal is in shortage, but in an e-auction it’s a commitment of Coal India for providing a certain quantity JULY, 2016

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of coal over a period of one year. Secondly, the determination of price in this case is through market forces which are much more transparent. Through MoU route the determination was notified price plus 40 percent. Here the pricing is through market mechanism. The present Indian Government has a huge focus on digitization.What is your ministry’s outlook on digitization? Huge investment is happening in digitization. I receive the maximum 10 to 12 files a day, which is a big come down from the original number of files that generally comes to secretaries. This was very simple as what we felt in this ministry was that we should not move any files for just receiving data or sending data. This data should be available on the web and anyone who wants it should be able to access the data easily. We, however ensure that the data should be EXPRESS COMPUTER

By 30th June we have decided to make all the trucks of Coal India GPS enabled and all mines video graphed periodically updated. Once the data is available the number of files will come down to 60 percent. Most of the data is available on the portal which can be downloaded as required. In the Government, you have this concept of ‘JaRi’ (Issue). In the paper system, it happens that when I sign a letter it is ‘Ja’ and when it reaches the person it is ‘Ri’

and there is a huge time lag between ‘Ja’ and ‘Ri’. Now in just a click of a button the information is sent and received with proper evidence. There has been a serious concern on the quality of CIL coal. How do you plan to address this issue? What we are doing now is that we are focusing a lot on quality of coal. As another criticism of Coal India was that the quality of coal that was supplied was very poor and secondly there is a lot of grade slippage. The focus is to use technology for ensuring quality testing through third party sampling. So we have engaged an independent agency which is now taking samples to test and see the actual quality. And the user has to pay only the amount which relates to the quality of coal that is supplied. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

COVER STORY

DIGITAL WORKPLACES From papers to paperless offices, and now to people to virtual offices, enterprises are adopting digital technologies in a big way to create digital workplaces BY RASHI VARSHNEY

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n the digital era, employees seek access to resources and data anywhere, at any time and using any device without having a compulsion to be physically present in the office. The exponential adoption of mobile and cloud has become a boon for enterprises having large number of offshore centers and border-less workplaces, which is why they are adopting digital workplaces in a big way.

The advent of Digital Workplaces A digital workplace is a virtual environment that the IT function creates and delivers to end-users and the environment that end-users leverage for anytime, anywhere access to business critical applications and desktops using any device running on any platform. A digital workplace enables organizations to target key areas of improvement, shifting core business processes and operations to a mobile model. This transformation has the potential to make organizations more competitive and there by more successful. This trend is bound to accelerate as more and more employees use mobility functions for transforming their work. For instance, according to Global Mobile Workforce Forecast, 2015-2020, the global mobile workforce is set to increase from 1.32 billion in 2014, to 1.75 billion in 2020. A case in point which highlights how a digital workplace can be an advantage, is Vodafone. The telecom giant was looking to unify hardware, software, and services from multiple catalogs into one to improve overall productivity and cut support cost. Vodafone deployed a software solution from BMC called ‘MyIT Self Service’ to empower employees with self-service access to the answers and tools they need based on their location, role, and preferences. Available through a desktop or laptop browser, or through a mobile app, MyIT is suited for the company’s highly distributed and mobile workforce. The company is now reaping uninterrupted productivity from 1,50,000 people, working from office, home, or away. BMC, a software giant itself has a EXPRESS COMPUTER

large part of its product development workforce in Pune and has embraced mobile workplace in a big way. The IT giant has adopted its own mobility solutions to ensure that the employees can access resources securely from anywhere through various computing devices including smartphones. Another case point is Intelenet, a large global Business Process Outsourcing player, which is now witnessing a scenario where all its management processes and approvals are being made through the mobile. Rajendra Deshpande , Chief Information Officer, Intelenet Global Services told that the company has deployed various mobility solutions such as employee assistance on mobile. The company realized that Intelenet’s 80% of employees are youth and the traditional method of interacting with them was undergoing a huge transformation. “Our solution now allows us a new mode for interacting with our employees especially the youth which is through mobile and social media,” he told. Intelenet has also opted for micro training, which means with the help of technology, the firm is breaking training modules into bite size and sending it on mobiles for employee consumption. This has enabled the company to increase worker productivity with an integrated mobile workplace. “We have also deployed mobification of Corporate Policy Awareness, under which we have condensed our corporate policy for consumption on mobile and have now made this available via the internet moving beyond the organizational intranet,” added Deshpande. Not only large enterprises, but businesses of all sizes are creating a digital workplace, delivering anywhere , anytime access to all, apps, services and resources across all devices-desktops, tablets, and smartphones. For instance, Safexpress, one of the key logistics and supply chain Management Company, provides high-speed, door-to-door delivery services for commercial goods and cargo throughout India. The

As the idea of a Digital Workplace is gaining traction,it is also important that we make a costeffective workplace that accrues us maximum benefits with minimum capital investment Rajendra Deshpande Chief Information Officer,Intelenet Global Services.

Vodafone deployed a software solution from BMC called ‘MyITSelf Service’to empower employees with selfservice access to the answers and tools they need based on their location,role,and preferences. JULY, 2016

COVER STORY

CIOs veryoften rank mobilityat the top of their list of priorities, but mobilityis not just transforming business – its transfixing business Ramesh Vantipalli Director EUC – Systems Engineering – VMware India.

company sought to deploy tablets and rugged hand-held terminals to about 1,500 delivery vehicle drivers. It also sought to provide communication and CRM tools to its business development and customer account management teams, and arm its operations managers located throughout India with mobile devices to enhance decision making. The deployment of AirWatch-VMWare helped the company to enhance its delivery operations by capturing realtime data and in providing speedy updates to the transport management system and in improving its efficiency by tracking the company’s workforce. “For years, businesses have struggled to address the proliferation of mobile devices, playing defence against employees with their own devices and customers with mobile-driven expectations. CIOs very often rank mobility at the top of their list of priorities, but mobility is not just transforming business – its transfixing business. While the potential for business transformation is huge, very few companies have begun leveraging mobility to its full potential. A recent survey of 1,000 customers conducted by VMware found that as of today only 17 percent of global companies have shifted a core business process to a mobile model,” said Ramesh Vantipalli, Director EUC – Systems Engineering – VMware India.

Apps, Analytics, & Collaboration

Steep fall in the cost of hosting, storage, connectivity and hand-held hardware has made mobile workplace a reality Malav Kapadia Global Director & Head of Indian Outsourcing Partners,BMC 16

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Digital Workplace comprises solutions to the four pillars of the digital workplace: apps and desktop, unified end-point management, collaboration and identity, as well as security. Speaking about trends and pillars, Manoj Kumbhat is Senior VicePresident and CIO of a global technology company HCL Technologies told about the digital journey at HCL. He said that the company has three major tenets of digital focus areas -- digital apps, digital analytics, and digital workplace of the future. “In this specific area of digital workplace of the future, we have three specific business goals. We want to drive more consumer like IT experience for

our young workforce. We also want to ensure that our employees are engaged to deliver discretionary work. And lastly it is also about ensuring that we are able to deliver a seamless experience across different work environments that we work in,” Kumbhat elaborated.

Key trends reshaping the workplace Intelenet Global Services’s CIO Rajendra Deshpande, says that some of the technology and trends that are reshaping today’s work environment to facilitate innovative working practices are Enterprise social media tools, Virtual meeting tools, Cloud and Mobility solutions, Analytics tools and Multi-Channel approach towards processes. “Speaking of cloud, it has enabled businesses reap huge benefits by offering them increasing flexibility, 24x7 access to data, cost saving and security. Some of the trends that we are witnessing today is that of companies gravitating towards a public cloud from a private cloud for better facilities and to avoid the complications of managing a private server. Additionally mobility applications, collaboration software solutions and tools are also being hosted and enabled via cloud,” Deshpande elaborates. Talking about Mobility, he says that that these solutions are unlocking value for employees as well customers. “Mobility Solutions enable real-time access to information, making it easier for the decision makers to take decisions instantly. These solutions also integrate infrastructure with processes thereby providing seamless business continuity in operations, reduced costs and improved service delivery,” he said. According to a research, by 2020, millennials are expected to make up over a third of the workforce worldwide. Talking about the youth dominated work environment, Malav Kapadia, Global Director & Head of Indian Outsourcing Partners, BMC Software said that employees now expect to access the resources & data they need anywhere, at any time and using any device. “The ubiquitous nature of cloud and exponential adoption of all mobile JULY, 2016

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platforms have made the digital/mobile workplace a reality. Steep fall in the cost of hosting, storage, connectivity and hand-held hardware has made mobile workplace a reality,” he added. Some key trends Kapadia pointed out around Cloud are, growth in hybrid cloud adoption, decreasing concern around security, exponential shift of enterprise workloads to private cloud as well as DevOps and SecOps led cloud adoption. “On the Enterprise mobility side we clearly see a surge in Custom Apps and increased focus on security and agility to allow a workforce to go mobile and be more productive,” he said. Jai Ganesh, Vice President & Head Mphasis NEXT Labs, Mphasis puts the trend of digital workplaces in five points, which are empowerment, engagement, experience, inclusivity, and insights. “Empowerment means, enabling the employees, and partners to collaborate better through more effective

Not only large enterprises,but businesses of all sizes are creating a digital workplace,delivering anywhere ,anytime access to apps, services and resources across all devices

collaboration mechanisms which are quite different from the earlier email based collaboration,” says he. Engagement is another significant factor in a digital workplace, “Even if we have the best tools, best practices or incentives in place, but unless the employees are engaged in terms of leveraging the digital workplaces to their potential, it becomes a failure. And, experience drives engagement” says Ganesh. Besides, differently-able people are also a part of many workplaces. Highlighting the same, Ganesh said that inclusivity is often ignored in designing and developing by many of the digital workplace enablers. “The workplaces should not only be easy place to work, but it should also have inclusiveness in terms for people of all walks of life, people with different abilities to engage and to effectively communicate and engage,” he pointed out.

UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI’S

GARWARE INSTITUTE OF CAREER EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

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POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA COURSE

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P.G. DIPLOMA IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ( 1 YEAR) (FULL TIME COURSE) Eligibility: Graduate in any Faculty Sem-I & II Fees: Rs. 65000/-

U.G. DIPLOMA COMPUTER APPLICATION ( 2 YEAR) (FULL TIME COURSE) Eligibility: H.S.C or Equivalent Examination (Any Faculty with English subject compulsory) Sem-I -IV Fees: Rs. 80000/-

As per new policy of dual degree of university of Mumbai students can enroll themselves for Garware institute courses along with their regular degree courses in various colleges. After completion of UG Diploma Computer Application candidate can secure admission in 2nd year B.SC IT. Industrial Training, I.S.O Certification & walk in Interviews for the placements are conducted. (For PGDIT) Scholarships & Free ship available to all the reserved category students enrolling for full – time courses. We have adopted credit based semester system for evaluation purpose since 2007-2008. Some of the courses are being conducted at and also in collaboration with other colleges affiliated with University of Mumbai.

ADMISSIONS STARTED FROM 9th MAY, 2016, PLEASE CONTACT Tel.no: 022-26530258/59 /63 | E-mail- garware@giced.mu.ac.in |Website:- www.giced.edu.in Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/Garware-Institute-of-Career-Education-and-Development EXPRESS COMPUTER

JULY, 2016

COVER STORY

Not only large enterprises,but businesses of all sizes are creating a digital workplace,delivering anywhere ,anytime access to all, apps,services and resources across all devices-desktops,tablets, and smartphones. Security – a key factor

It’s extremely important that the infrastructure we have is secured and is in compliance to the regulatory requirements of the customer industries Manoj Kumbhat SVP & Global CIO,HCL Technologies

While bringing end-user experience and simplified IT management, preserving reliability and security is a critical business requirement. As Madu Ratnayake, EVP/CIO & Head of Business Process Excellence of VirtusaPolaris puts it, security is a third word after cloud and mobility. Ratnayake says that digital workplaces comes with two major challenges as the young workforce is looking for a millennial, but on the flip side of that is security. So, there are two facets of this structuring -- one where the employees of the global structure work in a free manner and on the other hand customers or employers are looking for a more controlled environment. “We are driving mobility for productivity. However, one must note that mobility and cloud can hugely impact security,” says he.

More Roadblocks

In the future,service operators in BPOs will be bots with the help of artificial intelligence Madu Ratnayake EVP/CIO & Head of Business Process Excellence,VirtusaPolaris 18

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While IT leaders and CIOs are rethinking the way IT infrastructure is being deployed or managed to satisfy the needs of a digitally savvy workforce, the challenges of managing a huge number of desktops and associated applications, spread across multiple time zones and locations can prove to be a herculean task. While the potential for business transformation is huge, very few companies have begun leveraging mobility to its full potential. A recent survey of 1,000 customers conducted by VMware found that as of today only 17 percent of global companies have shifted a core business process to a mobile model. BMC’s Kapadia, says that desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones and other access devices present one set of challenges and the applications or the backend systems have their own set of

unique challenges. Says he, ”Some key questions that a CIO grapples with include: How do I give choice of devices but at the same time make sure they are secure? How do I give employees all the resources they need to be productive across all the devices? How do I make apps intuitive and fast on the mobile? How do I simplify user experience and provide consumer style self service? How do I create role based access and control for the employees? At the underlying infrastructure level the challenges are different but equally important, how do I manage all the data/apps/hardware that are now on cloud? How do I keep it all secure? The workforce is thin on patience how do I roll-out changes and new apps at the pace they expect? How do I automate workflows and workloads so that they can seamlessly get executed across all the different cloud options and yet make changes on the fly?”. However these are the challenges after certain level of deployment of digital workplace. The journey towards the digital transformation too poses a set of challenges. “The common problem we all face during the journey is that the transition of desktop site to mobile app is not smooth,” shares Maheshwar Kumar singh, Business Analyst at Tally Solutions. Moreover general issues such as Internet connectivity in India also poses a challenge for digital workplace success in India. While speaking about the technology challenges holding back an enterprise, Murthy Mulugu, Group CTO at Palred Technologies Limited said that Internet network connectivity remains an issue. With respect to BPOs which usually have larger number of offshore centres and employees working across geographies with different time zone, JULY, 2016

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Deshpande of Intelenet points out some of the real challenges which BPOs encounter. “Many organizations invest in productivity technology but do not sufficiently integrate it with their business applications. Others lack sufficient IT infrastructure,” he said. Intelenet Global Services works across 8 geographies viz North & Central America- USA, Guatemala, Europe –UK & Poland, Asia-Pacific – India, Philippines, Middle East - UAE, Saudi Arabia and are a 55,000 strong company servicing about 100 + clients across sectors. Telling about the challenges of a huge number of desktops and associated applications spread across different regions and multiple time zones, he told EXPRESS COMPUTER

that Intelenet have deployed solutions and platforms to centralize the management which benefits the firm in overall servicing of all clients across regions. “We make use of Patch Management and Power Management software centrally which is further enhanced by various tools such as Microsoft SCCM. This enables us in the centralized management of our desktops as well as associated applications,” says Deshpande. While companies, in an effort to make their workforces more agile and productive in the digital age are switching to best technologies, some cultural hurdles come as a huge part of their journey. According to Ratnayake of VirtusaPolaris, mindset or attitude

towards technology especially in Asia is a big challenge during the journey of digital workplace. “People do not see things such as sharing a document or sharing a password as a serious issue. So we try to use millennial ways like gamified trainings to educate employees on these issues,” says he.

Digital Workplace essentials Adding to the challenges, CIOs spells out a few essentials which are required to create a strong digital workplace environment. Ajay Bakshi, Chief Digital Officer & Sr. VP-Business Transformation of Aegis Limited said that there are 4000 people, but problem of digital workplace is with those 2000 people who are outside office premises. JULY, 2016

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“Certain menu of the mobile apps should be restricted to access outside the office premises owing to security and information,” says he. Speaking about security and agility, HCL’s Kumbhat says that their customers expect a lot of agility in the infrastructure, and they expect ability to secure their infrastructure in a manner that data is protected. “We also work in an environment where we are in highly regulated industries like banking and healthcare, and defence. So, it’s extremely important that the infrastructure we have is secured and is in compliance to the regulatory requirements of a lot of customer industries we work in. And, we also have to ensure that the end infrastructure, which our employees are using, that it has the right level of security controls and it is not adding any vulnerability to our customer infrastructure,” said Kumbhat. “As the idea of a Digital workplace is gaining traction, it is also important that we make a cost-effective workplace that accrues us maximum benefits with minimum capital investment,” said Deshpande. Suggesting CIOs regarding digital workplaces, Vantipalli said that before investing in a proposed application, it is important that employers assess the level of their workers’ trust in the application solution in order to download it to their personal devices and grant permissions for management.

GARTNER RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ENABLING A DIGITALWORKPLACE

Develop a common vision of the digital workplace, and make sure it is widely understood and has a consistent message.

Convey the digital workplace message using a variety of communication approaches such as town halls, videoconferences and social media.

Use peer advocates to translate the top-level vision into the specifics that enable stakeholder groups to engage and take action.

Actively promote self-organization and localized decision-making by employees to formulate and implement the digital workplace.

Encourage leadership to embrace and demonstrate digital workplace values (lead by example)

Source: Gartner

Future: Bots at Work The journey of digital workplace is nothing but bringing in disruptive valueadded elements led by new age technologies like mobility, mobile devices, cloud, social media and collaboration tools. Hence, the posture of digital workplace will change every time with new technology, and the journey will continue till the best. For instance, at present enterprises are already opting for, or will opt for automation to reduce manual intervention by leveraging emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. With respect to BPOs, Deshpande predicts that automation will redefine relationships. “Having 20

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exhausted the opportunities to move work to lower-cost people, ITO and BPO firms should look to on moving it to machines. Buyers with contracts designed to purchase people will need to reconcile their contracts to this new world. Both customers and providers will have to rethink their deals as they integrate more robotic process automation (RPA) into IT service delivery,” he elaborated. He also added that offshore captives will boom up as companies will leverage the experience they have gained in process maturity as a result of working with outsourced offshore teams and set

up their own shops. “This will allow for reduced costs, by taking away the provider’s margin, as well as increase flexibility by removing contractual constraints,” Deshpande said. Echoing the same view as Deshpande, Head of Digital of VirtusaPolaris feels that a company should be able to provide environment where the workforce actually can work in from anywhere. He said that in BPOs, work is getting automated. In the future, service operators in BPOs will be bots with the help of artificial intelligence. rashi.varshney@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

OPINION VIRENDER JEET NEWGEN SOFTWARE

HOWMILLENNIALS ARE TRANSFORMING TRADITIONALWORKPLACES INTO DIGITAL Today millennials are doused in smart technology and when it comes to work, they demand state-of-theart technology from their employers-one that is not rigid or burdened by legacy systems

orldwide the concept of workplace is being redefined it has transitioned from dedicated physical workstations to being infinite in accessibility and connectivity. This transition is being majorly boosted by advanced technology now available and with the millennial and upcoming GenZ as they call it, entering the workforce. It has been estimated that by 2020, millennials will make up 50% of the global workforce! If you are still wondering what is the connection between workplace restructuring and millennials entering the work force, then read on.

Millennials rooting for efficiency with technology

A digital workplace is about accessibility of the physical workspace virtually through any device- anytime, anywhere and connectivity through the right devices/apps so that your employees can access company information, data, resources and applications remotely 22

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If you have a teen/tween at home, you must be aware as to how easily they get things done; be it finding directions, gathering information, sharing information in no time and so it goes. And, all of this is fueled by technology. These millenials and the GenZ are growing up in an era where technology is at its smartest, most pervasive and still evolving and they know how to make the best use of it. The new age entrepreneur as well, knows exactly how to tap this trend. They are increasingly utilizing offbeat communication channels for getting work done. Brainstorming, idea generation, follow-ups happening over Whatspp groups etc - who would have thought of that just a decade back. Today millennials are doused in smart technology and when it comes to work they demand state-of-the-art technology from their employers-one that is not rigid or burdened by legacy systems. Organizations that have recognized this trend have already started transitioning towards a digital workplace model.

Microsoft, Google, Apple are some of the best examples of employers who have completely transformed the concept of workplace and have been successful in attracting the best of young talent around. Closer home you can find amazing workplace transformations in the ecommerce and start-up sectors, but the bigger established businesses are catching up as well.

Reinventing workplaces: Connecting systems, processes, people and things As per Gartner, digital workplace is â&#x20AC;&#x153;a business strategy for promoting employee effectiveness and engagement through a more consumer-like computing environment.â&#x20AC;? A digital workplace is not a revolutionary concept which requires a complete overhaul of the existing IT infrastructure of your organization. To break it down, digital workplace is about accessibility of the physical workspace virtually through any device- anytime, anywhere and connectivity through the right devices/apps so that your employees can access company information, data, resources and applications remotely. If you look at it more closely, companies are already digital, but they are digital in silos. Collaboration at workplace started with the Intranet, however it doesn't cater to all business needs. Your front-line employees might be logging on to your intranet or the attendance system or outlook for routine official tasks, but is it helping them to be more productive at work? How do you ensure that they have ready access to all company information and ensure collaboration on the go? How do you ensure they can feed data into your system while on the field? For instance, it JULY, 2016

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would be such a huge waste of time and resource if a sales employee of a bank had to wait for a day to physically report to his office before he could feed the data of customers he recently on-boarded while on a field trip. Hence the need for a digital workplace.

What’s fueling digital workplace? The combined forces of Mobility, Cloud and IoT are fueling the digital workplace trend. ■ Mobility: The rapid proliferation of smart phones, tablets, laptops and other smart devices, coupled with omnipresent data/internet connections is driving mobility like never before. ■ Cloud: Availability of cloud services (by third party or company owned) and applications available over the cloud has been a major booster in adoption of digital workplace. Office 365 and other office applications have seen a very positive response from employees all over. ■ IoT: It is more than a buzzword. Internet of Things will see a major adoption in times to come and it is believed will transform workplaces in a major way. From 3D printers to smart wearables- all are said to transform the way employees work and how things get done at work, boosting, efficiency, productivity and cost savings Some of the signs of workplace transformation are: ■ Decentralization of office spaceThe archetypal workspace is slowly crumbling to make space for a truly digital workplace. The concept of a physical workspace-as-a-cubicle is rapidly evaporating. With millenials in the workforce, offices are evolving with their needs. Some may prefer to work in a quite cubicle, while others may prefer to work in a cafeteria or a lounge. Employees are also spread across the globe and do video meetings. So, a workplace is not defined by the physical walls anymore. ■ Bring-Your-Own-Device (BOYD) to work- The new age employees are already using smart phones, tablets, smart watches and other intelligent devices in their personal life and they do EXPRESS COMPUTER

not want to compromise their work life productivity either. Looking at this trend, an increasing number of businesses are asking their employees to report with their own devices which sustains their level of productivity. ■ Social collaboration- Millenials are social animals and they collaborate best on social platforms. Activities like instant messaging, video collaboration are fuelling workplace productivity and has become an integral part of daily work life to the extent that offices have started incorporating social collaboration features on their intranet and other business process platforms. Employee engagement is coming into focus. Email exchange is not the only communication medium with employees or partners. Emergence of new work trends such a crowdsourcing, job sharing etc. Routine, repetitive work is giving way to more dynamic work models that allows employees to learn, grow and contribute meaningfully

Why work towards a digital workplace? ■

Attracting and retaining talents: Millenials are swarming the workforce and organizations that keep up with the demands of the younger generation for a more free-flowing, collaborative and participative office environment, will have an upper hand. ■ Boost productivity: Today more and more employees are using their personal devices to check official mails, participate in video conferences while on a holiday, collaborate on social platforms to brainstorm-all of the above boosts productivity. Equipping employees with the right tool, with the right information at the right time has become a necessity today. ■ Employee satisfaction: The central force in driving digital workplace is the human element-your employees. The need for a digital workplace is primarily to help employees connect, collaborate and communicate seamlessly. ■ Faster-time-to market: A digital workplace brings with it flexibility and agility which allows employees to fulfill

business requirements in time and hence increases time to market of products and services. ■ Reduced costs: A digital workplace is synonymous with smart connected toolssoftware, hard ware, applications and IoT which provides intelligent alerts whether it be monitoring supply chains, monitoring mundane operations tasks or any other business processes- leading to reduction in costs.

Challenges and security Nothing however, is perfect. The journey towards harnessing technology for a truly digital workplace is marred with security concerns. It is so because with a diffused workplace where information can be accessed by employees from anywhere, there is a risk associated with confidential organizational information being misused. Therefore the onus is on the IT department and the business owners to strategize the transition towards digitization of the workplace, with robust security policies in place- one that balances the need for accessibility, flexibility and security of information.

How do you code the digital DNA in your enterprise? Connecting systems, processes, people and things lies at the heart of the digital workplace strategy. Reinvent the way your enterprise operates to get more responsive to the shifts in contexts – both internal as well as external. You need to reinvent your workplace and make your business infinite by connecting all of your systems, processes, people and things in innovative ways to create an engaging and responsive enterprise. Even though digital has been a part of your enterprise in some way or the other, possibilities are, they are fragmented and not leveraged to its full potential. One of the ways to integrate people, processes, systems and things of your business is by partnering with trusted platform providers that can help you tie up the pieces together and embark on the much needed digital transformation journey. – The author is Virender Jeet, Sr Vice President, Newgen Software JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW KALYAN KUMAR HCL TECHNOLOGIES

WE EXPECT DIGITAL WORKPLACE ADOPTION TO ACCELERATE ACROSS ENTERPRISES The entire discussion and objective around Digital Workplace is moving towards Employee-Centric Workplace, which enables employee productivity from all corners and enhances user experience, says Kalyan Kumar, Executive Vice President, HCL Technologies, in a conversation with Ankush Kumar How do you see the adoption of Digital Workplace? Enterprises have realized that the biggest contributors to a digital business strategy are their own employees. Hence, we are seeing a huge surge in demand from enterprises, across verticals, on constructing a workplace that makes use of technology to be highly unstructured yet highly collaborative and effective. There are many factors that are contributing to this trend, some of these include â&#x20AC;&#x201C; employee expectations, advancement in technology, reduction in cost of technology etc. We expect Digital workplace adoption to accelerate going forward across enterprises. What are the latest trends in this sector? Consumerization and mobility are two key drivers that have completely changed the expectations on simplicity and experience that enterprise IT should deliver. For example, Dropbox has set a benchmark on how data should always follow the users. Another emerging trend is, HR has emerged as an equal important stakeholder in digital workspace design. To give you an example, a large automobile manufacturer based out of US reached out to us to completely redesign their workplace strategy when they were planning to move their offices from mid-west to bay area. The reason was the business was planning to compete with the likes of Tesla for which they needed to hire the Gen Y coders and 24

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Consumerization and mobility are two key drivers that has completely changed the expectations on simplicity and experience that enterprise IT should deliver.For example, Dropbox has set a benchmark on how data should always follow the users geeks, and you just cannot hire and retain them by giving them a locked-down, completely controlled workspace. The entire discussion and objective around Digital Workplace is moving towards Employee-Centric Workplace, which enables employee productivity from all corners and enhances user experience. What are the core benefits that can be derived by enterprises? A digital workplace allows businesses to create and enable a workforce that is globally distributed, cross cultural and always connected. It also helps them attract and retain the Gen Y workforce that

has evolved from being technology savvy to technology dependent. Another important benefit is improvement in employee productivity through unified experiences and integrated systems. Digital workplace at its core is really an intuitive workplace that is personalized to understand each userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role and solves challenges endemic to his/her business profile. What are the key verticals where you are seeing demand? There is a steady surge in demand across verticals. Even, the traditionally controlled and regulated verticals such as pharma, BFSI are engaged with us on incorporating technology that would deliver a digital workplace experience. Different verticals at times, may have different approaches or preferences on their digital journey and may be faced with different challenges. However, the final objective is more or less the same to have Digital Workplace Management enabled within the enterprise for broad benefits associated with Digital Workplace adoption. Do you see any challenges for SMBs in moving towards Digital Workplace adoption? SMBs are actually better positioned to adopt and lead the digital transformation. They typically do not come with the inherent investment and infrastructure baggage that a Fortune 500 enterprise would have. Hence, the decision making process is quicker allowing them to be early adopters of digital workspace JULY, 2016

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blueprint. The agility and speed on Digital Workplace transformation within SMBs ensures that they realize the benefits sooner than other large organizations. How important is the relevance of security when it comes to establishing Digital Workspace? Security is crucial and paramount while embarking on a Digital Workspace initiative. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s implicit in each element of digital. As an example, mobility comes with certain controls that IT can exercise. For example, the IT function can wipe off e-mails if the employee leaves the organization. Key point here is that, security is no EXPRESS COMPUTER

longer a barrier, rather, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an enabler that gives organizations confidence that a digital enterprise is no way a less secure enterprise. In fact, it allows IT to move away from a device centered security model to a user centered security model. With new enhancements in security technologies on the Digital Workspace side, this has enabled both employees and organizations to adopt Digital Workplace solutions with more confidence. How are technologies like Mobility, Cloud, IoT being used within this space? Mobility has the ability to make employees more productive and deliver a radical experience when compared with traditional devices. These are especially

beneficial for sales users and people who work outside of traditional office locations. Cloud enabled solutions like Microsoft office 365 and Google apps for work has given businesses agility to onboard users and quickly ramp up or ramp down offices in geographies that they want to expand. IoT is even more interesting. As an example, there are wearables available that would tomorrow allow users to carry their corporate identity in a wrist band negating the need for user name, password and even company issued ID cards. This is a space on which we are keeping a very close watch. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW SATISH YADAVALLI WIPRO

NEW DIGITAL WORKSPACE SOLUTIONS FOCUS ON USER EMPOWERMENT In the digital era, users can now have faster access to business and productivity tools and services to carry-out their functional roles and responsibilities, states Satish Yadavalli , General Manager & Practice Head, Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited, in a conversation with Ankush Kumar How do you see the demand for digital workspace among the customers? Why do they want to move towards digital platforms? The sector is slowly moving away from the early fad of glossy devices to a more realistic way of work demands. The increase in the appetite and ability to consume data, has shifted the focus to visual informatics, aggregation and abstraction. The allure of multiple device form factors is giving way to a simple, unified device for most of the generic work (which is mostly about consumption and analysis rather than data or information production) and having specialized devices at work for creative or production workloads. What it means is that the focus is shifting to secure information access, crossorganizational collaboration and ability to use a single, light weight screen for most of it . Customers are also looking for newer offerings which can bundle the end point hardware, accessories and workplace services, all together in a subscription model similar to the SaaS models, to reduce their overheads of asset and contract management, and sunk-in costs. Workplace outsourcing contracts are truly becoming technology agnostic and outcome defined opportunities. How do you think security is a concern when it comes to adopting Digital Workspace? As organizations adopt digital, and the 26

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An exciting solution that is currently being deployed to manage the digital workspace data backup requirements of users is via CASB (Cloud Acess Security Broker) solution.This enables end users to have secure data backup on public cloud storage solutions world gets flatter, information becomes the biggest asset and in many cases, the competitive differentiators for organizations. Additionally, the ever changing, and demanding workstyle, is leading the way to more sophisticated ways of data theft. Hence security is of importance and a focus of investment for companies. While cloud adoption has increased the centralization of data ( and to a great extent ease of loss protection), the data footprint is also distributed in local devices all over the planet, without people realizing the value of data they carry with themselves, and are prone to

be victims of easy theft. Authenticated access, digital rights management, data leak protection, apart from the threats posed by malware and ransomwares to the users and end point devices, are all vying for robust, prevailing solutions. There is an enhanced urgency now within the Compliance and Information Security (CISO) office of companies to realign the policies, procedures and technology to meet the new requirements. What are the latest IT tools used for Digital Workspace Management in Wipro? Wipro offers seamless workspace access. The focus shifts from device and software management, to application and resource authentication and access management, in a hybrid IT mode. Wipro also brings along user experience management and advanced analytics to move from reactive support to a predictive and preventive management model, and prides itself on being able to prevent incidents and carry out faster root cause analysis of problems. VirtuaDesk solutions can enable legacy applications to be available over the Internet to users, and help in quickly adopting the new way of work, while applications are still getting modernized. The company embraces a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Cloud Firstâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; approach in transforming customer data centers, from traditional infrastructure solutions to business applications. The focus is on moving everything apart from core IT to the cloud. One of the exciting JULY, 2016

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tools or solutions that is currently being deployed to manage the digital workspace data backup requirements of users is via CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) solution. This enables end users to have secure data backup on public cloud storage solutions. How do you think adoption of Digital Workspace has transformed the lives of the employees? New digital workspace solutions focus on user empowerment and freedom from IT. Users can now have faster access to business and productivity tools and services to carry-out their functional roles and responsibilities. This also helps them collaborate and share information seamlessly within their own organization and across the partner eco-system. With robust digital rights management and data leak prevention systems in place, users and organizations can operate more safely and confidently. The changes are driven with the right â&#x20AC;&#x153;Management of Changeâ&#x20AC;? approaches, to increase the adoption and get over the initial inertia. With consumerization and simplicity, there is an increased appetite and ability to process information, and identify patterns leading to increased productivity and higher selfactualization of the employee. An agile joiner and leaver process means the employees are able to contribute value sooner, and the organizational assets (which are now mostly digital) are protected when employee leaves. Employees no longer need to wait weeks for their company provided laptops to be delivered to them. And when they leave they no longer need to worry if a personal piece of data has been left behind on the organizational device. The enterprise can shift out that information ahead of time, and provide a guarantee to employees that personal data will remain personal. This leads to better trust between the enterprise and the employee. What could be the core benefits that can be derived by the enterprises? One of the core benefits will be, seamless EXPRESS COMPUTER

and simplified productivity across the enterprise value chain. Supply chain management is an easily identifiable structured process that has seen tremendous improvements due to IT. Next generation workspace suppliers can provide the same benefits to an enterprise that SCM provided to the manufacturing industry and in far more unstructured processes like R&D, marketing, etc. How are technologies like Mobility, Cloud, and IoT being used within this space? Mobility and Cloud have become the defacto options for any service provider hoping to enter or operate in this space.

The initial reaction of every CTO is to look at a cloud based offering of services, as that drastically shifts the focus from technical management to service governance. However the lack of standards, from a common framework for automation, to a common framework for incident classification across ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) means that making sense of the noise is very difficult. The lack of standards combined with the IoT explosion will provide a huge opportunity in developing the next generation of standards for the workspace. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

EVENT VMWARE

Prashant Pandey, EUC Solution Architect â&#x20AC;&#x201C; APJ, VMware, spoke about the promise and potential of digital workspaces

DIGITALWORKPLACE T EVENTSHOWCASES ADVANTAGES OFA UNIFIED WORKSPACE The roundtable discussions in Gurgaon and Bangalore conducted by Express Computer in partnership with VMware, brought out best practices and challenges in delivering a unified workspace, which is extremely relevant in the mobile cloud era

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he combined forces of mobility and cloud are changing how people work. People are no longer tied to their desks or devices. To satisfy the needs of a digitally savvy workforce, there is a distinct need to rethink the way IT infrastructure is being deployed or managed. However, for most enterprise IT leaders, the challenges of managing a huge number of desktops and associated applications, spread across multiple time zones and locations can prove to be a herculean task. To understand the unique digital workplace transformation that is underway in the IT/ITeS sector, Express Computer kicked off an exclusive roundtable in Gurgaon and Bangalore in partnership with VMware. The roundtable in each city featured the valuable views of top IT/ ITeS leaders on how they are ensuring that their IT infrastructure scales up to match the unique needs of a young workforce . The roundtable discussions in both the city brought out best practices and challenges in delivering a unified workspace, which is extremely relevant in the mobile cloud era, where employees, devices and applications are increasingly living beyond the physical walls of the JULY, 2016

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workplace, the data center, or the network. The event in Gurgaon on 13th May 2016, at The Leela Ambience, and event in Bangalore on 18th May 2016, at the Oberoi, was represented by renowned IT leaders from different organizations. The key speakers at the roundtables were Sachin Goel, CIO, HCL Infosystems Ltd; Manoj Kumbhat, Senior Vice-President and CIO, HCL Technologies, Jai Ganesh, Vice President & Head Mphasis NEXT Labs, Mphasis, Maheshwar Kumar Singh, Business Analyst at Tally Solutions, Murthy Mulugu, Group CTO at Palred Technologies Limited, Ajay Bakshi, Chief Digital Officer & Sr. VP-Business Transformation of Aegis Limited- to name a few. The events began with the powerful technology presentations about Digital Workspaces by VMware speakers. In Gurgaon, Prashant Pandey, EUC Solution Architect – APJ, VMware, spoke about the promise and potential of digital workspaces. An insightful session on outcome based borderless offshore development centers, was given by Umesh Goyal, Systems Engineering - EUC, VMware India. It was then followed by an insightful panel discussion, which was centered on the best practices of digital workspaces and the challenges around it. Alok Verma Regional Head - General Business (India - North & East), VMware, shared VMware’s optimism on the Digital Workspaces solution market in India. Ramesh Vantipalli, Director EUC, Systems Engineering, VMware, shared interesting insights and use cases on Digital Workspaces. Few of the challenges discussed at the events were, security associated with devices and cloud. The panelists of the roundtable were of the view that since world is moving towards mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence, no entity can be immune of security. Moreover, not only cyber security but the compliance with all the industry is also an important issue with digital workspace environment. A recent survey of 1,000 customers conducted by VMware found that only 17 percent of global companies have shifted a core business process to a mobile model. EXPRESS COMPUTER

Manoj Kumbhat, Senior Vice-President and CIO, HCL Technologies

Ramesh Vantipalli, Director EUC, Systems Engineering, VMware

Umesh Goyal, Systems Engineering - EUC, VMware India

Alok Verma Regional Head - General Business (India - North & East), VMware

The speakers also discussed a set of challenges for firms undertaking a digital workspace journey. “The common problem we all face during the journey is that the transition of desktop site to mobile app is not smooth,” shared Maheshwar Kumar singh, Business Analyst at Tally Solutions. Moreover general issues such as Internet connectivity in India also posed a challenge for digital workspace success in India. While speaking about the technology challenges holding back an enterprise, Murthy Mulugu, Group CTO at Palred Technologies Limited said that Internet network remains an issue. “2G networks mostly, is the challenge,” he said. Adding to the challenges, CIOs spelled out a few essentials which are required to create a strong digital workspace environment. Ajay Bakshi, Chief Digital Officer & Sr. VP-Business Transformation of Aegis Limited said that there are 4000 people, but problem of delivering a digital workspace is with those 2000 people who are outside office premises. “Certain menu of the mobile apps should be restricted to

access outside the office premises owing to security and information,” he said. Dr Kumar Saurabh, Head, Cloud Strategic Solutions Group, Infrastructure Services at Tech Mahindra, said that organizations needed to see adaptive infrastructure. HCL's Manoj Kumbhat also pointed out readiness of such environment during natural disasters like Chennai Floods. He also shared how HCL tackled the Chennai floods due to its IT readiness at the company. The discussion concluded with a quick Q&A round, where panelists at each roundtable cleared their concerns over digital workspace solutions in the industry with the speakers from VMWare. The speakers were of the view that, new technologies such as mobile, IoT, artificial intelligence etc are not only helping the businesses in transformation, but are also arming them with abilities to surviving the cut throat competition. rashi.varshney@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW ANJANI KUMAR SAFEXPRESS

LESSONS FROM SAFEXPRESSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; IOT JOURNEY Logistics is a fledgling vertical when it comes to implementing IoT , but the potential is immense. Anjani Kumar, CIO, Safexpress shares his experience of dabbling in IoT and the key lessons learnt What is the IoT story at Safexpress? GPS tracking is one of the initiatives that has been very common in the industry for past few years, and we have added our own twist to it as per our need. A separate window is provided by the GPS provider where one can track the vehicle. Our warehouse managers cannot go to multiple systems as they do not have time and they are not that technically adept to change their screens in a short time. So, we ask for the data from GPS provider every 15 minutes and we have integrated this GPS data with our ERP system and mobility apps. Through this system, people can see through the ERP and understand the time of the arrival of the vehicle. Since analytics is also integrated into it, they can plan for the departure based on the arrival. Once vehicle arrival is connected with the GPS, one gets actual ETA. On the other side, hub managers are on the warehouse floor. Previously, to get any information about the truck they had to call the truck driver. Now, on the tablet they can see which truck is arriving at what time and accordingly mobilize the whole workforce. Also, for few of the warehouses we have put airport style arrival terminals. There are TV displays at some distance through which one can see which truck has arrived at what time, through GPS. Presently, we are trying to connect the weigh bridge (where an entire truck is weighed). Before loading the truck is weighed and after loading the truck is weighed. Both the time it gets recorded on ERP online. However, it is at a primary stage, and we are looking at couple of 30

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vendors for this initiative. We are also looking at deploying door sensors which will look at how many doors are open in a warehouse at any given point of time. Another one we are trying to have is fuel sensor to check the level of fuel when a truck is moving. We are also in talks with a service provider for low energy radio frequency RFID tags which do not work on GSM but on the towers of service providers which are placed at every 5 kms. For example, a high valuable item like ATM machine which is getting shipped can be tagged. And since it is not GSM one can even put it on bottom of the truck as there is no problem of the signal. And a low energy RFID device can last for months without charging.

The choice of vendor is very limited who can do integration of IoTdevices and IoT framework.Secondly,sensors are available in the market but it is very disorganized.Security is a big challenge.Security vendors are themselves exploring the loopholes

What security risks does IoT expose your organization to, and how do you tackle it? For us security risks can come in form of data leaks. Secondly, if the connectivity breaks it is a major issue. Earlier, everyone was used to manual way of working. The moment any system is automated and IoT comes into the picture, expectations have gone high. Thus, if connectivity breaks, the whole operation comes to a standstill. Connectivity works well in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in India, but in other places it does not work so well. We have put secondary connectivity in such places apart from primary connectivity in major cities. But this cannot be done in smaller places as it is a very costly endeavor and there are not enough choices. Here, one can only hope for better connectivity from telecom companies in the future. For us life has not changed so much from a security perspective, but it has from a convenience and productivity perspective. Life has become easier. However, if we implement warehouse control through IoT, then the security risk becomes very high. Presently, since we have only done weigh bridge integration, tracking integration, if the data is not available then it is an inconvenience at this point but not a high risk situation. Also, from a data perspective we make sure to expose only certain data. We do not expose any customer data. All data is end-to-end encrypted. Also, when it comes to GPS we only send location and the truck information. And on the consignment side only weigh bill information, packet information is shared and nothing about the consigner or the JULY, 2016

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consignee. That particular data still remains in our ERP system. Thus, customer data is secured in all situations. One has to look at all aspects of security with or without IoT in the environment. We re-look at our security framework every six months. What best practices have you implemented for IoT? IoT as a framework has been used for a long time. Now it is much more organized. However, it has not reached a maturity peak. Before understanding best practices in IoT we should understand the challenges. Firstly, there is a serious lack of vendors when it comes to service. The choice of vendor is very limited who can do integration of IoT devices, integration of IoT framework. Secondly, sensors are available in the market but it is very disorganized. Among Tier 1 and Tier 2 very few vendors are available from whom these sensors can be purchased with confidence. Some of the vendors we are in talk with are in process of certifying and before that would not want to sell it to customers. We are getting involved with some of them in their own pilots. Thirdly, security is a big challenge. Security vendors are themselves exploring the loopholes and bugs in IoT arena. Fourth is lack of seamless connectivity across India. What advice would you give to organization who are starting out on their IoT journey? Organizations can decide what is their objective/ goal when it comes to IoT implementation and what results are they trying to achieve. Also, they should check what is the feasibility of doing it with existing set of data and tools one can get. The goal should be aligned with what is available in the market or what the organization can create in-house. Then, one can do gap analysis as to what is not available in the market and if it can be created in-house skill wise. IoT is very customized. Many vendors would not want to create such skills for just one customer. They should keep expectations realistic. Secondly, they should give sometime to unexpected bottlenecks as EXPRESS COMPUTER

this area is not fully explored. Thirdly, skill need to be created in-house. If the vendor does not have skill, then the organization has to create it in-house. For us, we trained one person who trained others. And in another scenario, we gave them web-based training and for some it was on the job training. Secondly, one should check all exposure that an organization will have in terms of security, how will it be addressed. Organizations should get a security audit done. Another aspect is testing, as IoT testing is very different in nature. Because of different connectivity environment, organizations should check if the connectivity is broken should it be

re-established in a millisecond, a minute or two minutes etc, what was the response in all three scenarios. What is the lag time of the connection, what is the impact of IoT application with the lag of connection as somewhere it could be 1,000 milliseconds and somewhere it could be 1 millisecond. Thus, how does application behave in that lag time. Organizations should try to develop it on cloud if possible. In fact, IoT applications are perfect case of going on cloud. After these organizations should finalize the sensors and their APIs. POC should be done before finalizing anything. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW GEORGE FANTHOME VEDANTA

WE ARE BIG USERS OF BIG DATA AND IoT Vedanta is at the cusp of a major transformation, enabled by IT. From being an enabler, IT is shifting towards being a partner at the frontlines, directly enabling businesses, states George Fanthome, Group Head IT, Vedanta and CIO, Cairn, in an extensive interview with Ankush Kumar How important is the role of IT in your organization? What are the key areas where IT has helped in bringing significant improvements? We are at the cusp of a complete transformation at Vedanta and the role of IT is changing in the organization. From being an enabler, IT is shifting towards being a partner at the frontlines, directly enabling businesses. This is happening through a digital program being sponsored at the senior most levels in the organization. Some of the areas we are looking to have significant impact of IT are logistics automation, connected mines, integrated operations center, mobility, IoT based analytics and wearables. Can you give us an overview of how IT is being used in Vedanta? We are going through a challenging cycle at most of the business units, including low commodity and oil prices. This is both a challenge as well as an opportunity and there couldn’t be any better time other than this for innovation and truly shifting gears. Traditionally, IT has not been at the core of business but it’s still a great enabler – we have started a few strategic initiatives at some businesses and others are being planned. The engagement model 32

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is being worked on to reduce costs and enable business. We work with our operational technology partners and are big users of Big Data and IoT, as most of the partners collect information from sensors in field which are used for variety of operational requirements. We have started to use this for front-end business applications as well and also integrating back-office applications and operational data. Mining and metals have not been early adopters of integration but that’s changing now. What are the major issues that are bothering CIOs in recent times? How are you handling these issues in your organization? It’s certainly not the oil price or lower commodity pricing or any such business constraints that is bothering CIOs today. I believe moving beyond presentations on digital to real world execution / value realization is the real challenge. We all hear the potential of digital in PPTs but it is only beginning to have real impact beyond proof-of-concepts. Talk to anyone in IT and business teams, most will share what POCs they have done till date, especially in India. Besides that, security is something which is on the top of our agenda. Data leakages have been one of the major issues for large conglomerates. How are you managing the process of sharing business critical data in your organization? Overall Information protection and information security are at the core of what we do as part of technology adoption at Vedanta. We are leveraging a lot of cutting edge technology solutions to ensure that the organization’s data is protected. This includes containerized mail delivery using MDM solution, data leakage prevention solution, end point encryption, data protection of end user machines by backups and, security incident and event management (SIEM). How do you ensure that the IT systems in your organization are efficient and secured? We have a defined security policy across the group and our management assurance does periodic assessment with support EXPRESS COMPUTER

Overall Information protection and information security are at core of what we do as part of technology adoption at Vedanta from audits firms. There is elaborate assessment which is not only at technology assessment but also how processes are being adhered aligning to group security policy. An IT assessment is performed using the tools of industry known research firm. This gives us the maturity and efficient level of the IT systems. Users are key like in any other business – to make sure that our IT systems are secured, we understand that pulse from the ground. We do CSAT with business team. The action items are picked up and converted to projects and we are happy to report that we are improving 10 percent (YoY) on that. The approach we are taking is to move to proactive support than reactive by ticket logging by users. What is your IT innovation and investment plan till 2020? Current investments are more focused

on IT ‘Lights-On’ meaning a bigger share of Run in the Run-GrowTransform buckets. The innovation and efficiencies I am driving will start funding for transformation by keeping the costs flat starting this year. Also large transformations being planned are targeted as selffunded, where business efficiencies and benefits are far more than investments required. Currently we are using SAP extensively and also other technology we use is of Microsoft, along with few home grown applications. I am trying to standardize and consolidate them over the next 12-18 months period. We are partners with Babelfish, Schlumberger, and Yokogawa etc. for operational applications used for exploration and operations. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN APOLLO HOSPITALS GROUP

INDIA NEEDS REGULATORY STANDARDS ON PRIVACY AND SECURITY OF HEALTH RECORDS “We need good regulatory guidelines for the adoption and use of eHealth and mHealth solutions. Also, it would be useful to have regulatory standards on privacy and security of health records governing providers, payers and patients,” says Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Chief Information Officer, Apollo Hospitals Group, in a conversation with Ankush Kumar. Arvind is responsible for designing IT strategy and ensuring its effective implementation in the entire group. He has been instrumental in architecting, and building solutions for enterprise wide applications; internet/ intranet based applications with data warehousing and analytics capabilities

What has been the impact of emerging technologies in the Indian Healthcare sector ? Transforming healthcare through Information Technology is undoubtedly gaining momentum in India. The adoption of mHealth, eHealth, IoT embedded medical devices, cloud infrastructure, healthcare specific analytics and CRM are all gaining popularity. Each of these technology solutions have a great promise for improving and enabling the overall healthcare delivery. Clinical quality, patient safety, operational efficiency and higher levels of clinical outcomes are the measures that are greatly benefited by these technologies. Thus confluence of these technologies clearly benefits the maximization of availability of quality healthcare for everyone. How is IT being used in Apollo Hospitals for effective healthcare delivery system? At Apollo Hospitals, we consider technology to be a strategic element of 34

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Regulation around the adoption of health IT,cost of infrastructure and software licenses are some of the issues faced by healthcare institutions for the effective rollout of health ITsolutions” our healthcare delivery model. Our solutions around eICUs , Tele Health , patient health record on the cloud , completely interconnected Hospital Information System and supporting solutions, mhealth enabled disease management initiatives are all giving us

extremely positive results. We are able to ensure and constantly maintain high standards of patient care, clinical quality and all these solutions greatly help in increasing our high standards of clinical outcomes. We have bench marked our healthcare IT adoption to international standards and some of our hospitals have been certified at HiMSS stage 6. According to you, what are the major challenges that Indian healthcare sector is facing ? Are there any roadblocks in rolling out health IT services? Disease burden of NCDs (non communicable diseases), access to healthcare and shortage of high quality resource skills to manage the medical technologies are some of the challenges of healthcare in India. As it relates to healthcare IT, regulation around adoption of health IT, cost of infrastructure and software licenses are some of the issues faced by hospitals and healthcare institutions on the rollout of health IT solutions. JULY, 2016

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Technology has been termed as a great enabler of change in many sectors. How do you think it can help in overcoming these challenges? The combination of disruptive and traditional technologies can greatly help in the management of chronic diseases. Social media can also be effectively used to educate people on these and thereby increase the focus on preventive medicine and also wellness based initiatives. eHealth and mHealth based intervention can greatly help in bridging the gap between the healthcare providers, patients and patient family members. As it relates to access to healthcare tele-medicine based solution both on the web and mobile platforms can be very effective. Tele-health solutions can also be effective in managing tertiary care such as ICUs. Tele radiology and Tele pathology can greatly help in effectively managing and utilizing the resource EXPRESS COMPUTER

effectiveness of radiologists and pathologists. This can maximize the utilization of scarce medical resources and related skill sets. Web based training , access to clinical procedures via video conferencing solutions can help build the clinical expertise across the medical spectrum. This will reduce the risk around shortage of resources. How can technology play a key enabler in improving healthcare scenario in rural India? What are the key issues? Tele-health solutions can greatly enable healthcare access and delivery in the rural sector. Ensuring that the telecommunication links are robust and of good video quality is absolutely essential to ensure a valid clinical consultation process in rural India. While the telecom links are indeed available today, the reliability of the service is a point of concern.

How important do you think is the role of Government in revamping the overall healthcare sector? Are you satisfied with the current policy and regulatory guidelines? The initiatives taken by the government to formulate the National eHealth Authority is a welcome step. It will be greatly beneficial to the complete healthcare eco-system of India if this process could be hastened. We definitely need good regulatory guidelines on the adoption and usage of eHealth and mHealth solutions. Also it would be useful to have regulatory standards on privacy and security of health records governing providers, payers and patients. The initiatives that are underway on all of these by the Ministry of Health and family welfare is indeed commendable. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW KEN CHENG BROCADE

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS THE KEY TO CHANGING BUSINESS TODAY Brocade has made several strategic technology investments recently to pursue emerging market opportunities around 5G, IoT and LTE/Wi-Fi convergence. Ken Cheng, Chief Technology Officer, Brocade discusses these recent developments with Jasmine Desai Brocade mentioned that it will be focusing on emerging markets, M2M, IoT, small cells and mobile data services for the enterprise sector. What will be your value proposition here compared to your competitors? Openness will play a big role here. In big data analytics we want the industry to have a common protocol through which we can exchange information. One of our partners, Intel Security has end-point data. As a result nobody has a complete view of what is happening in the network or everything connected to the network. Data is what is going to make machines more intelligent. Our machine learning algorithm is going to be fed with the data we collect from software, hardware, network infrastructure and information we subscribe from our partners. That will help our machine learning algorithm to continue to improve. We are a pioneer in machine learning on networking. We want machine learning to identify a wellfunctioning network from a network that is under attack. When it comes to IoT, not every IoT is the same. In that scenario what the network should do, does it have the relevant intelligence of what goes where and does it have the flexibility of moving it around on the ply. Here NFV and SDN come into play. It will be more of a system play than just a layer play. 36

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How will the Ruckus Wireless acquisition impact existing customers? Digital transformation is the key to changing business today. For that the network has to change. During past sometime there has been no innovation in the network. We have set out to define this concept called 'New IP'. We have set-up a new company to specifically help customers to make this new transformation. We are in a position to align with where world is going when it comes to hyper-scale data centers, the new enterprise age and the new mobile age. Brocade is really well positioned to become the next generation leader in networking. With the Ruckus acquisition the intent

With the Ruckus Wireless acquisition closing we want to make sure that we do a good job of integration.We have acquired a very high growth asset and we want to maintain that.

is to continue support to our customers and remain open. Ruckus will also continue to support their customers who do not have Brocade in their environment. If a customer does not want to have an entire stack from Brocade but just a slice of it they can pick that out. How do you see hyper-convergence evolving and what will be most important opportunities here for Brocade? Network, compute and storage are tightly fused together. Poster child of hyperconvergence will be neutronics. Even all major storage players are coming up with system like that. It creates efficiency and performance which are tightly integrated. The challenge going to be is that in order to scale one has to replicate the system and connect the system together. Once you go beyond system limitation in performance and scale, how do you connect them together through network? It is a good phenomenon and it is an opportunity for us to work with our partners. We partner with Neutronics, EMC, VMware. How will 5G-PPP be much different than 4G? 5G-PPP is a lot more than faster internet. 5G-PPP has to do with building an infrastructure that is enabling building agile service development. It is an infrastructure which allows programmatic control of infrastructure. JULY, 2016

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It really speaks to virtualization and SDN, which are two areas on which Brocade has always been very focused on. The reason we have not seen lot of innovation in networking is because it was just supposed to be vanilla moving bits in datacenter. Compute on the other side has undergone tremendous innovation. Different verticals have different kind of needs when it comes to networking. No one is paying attention to the interplay happening between them. 5G-PPP will be about creating communication between vertical and the network. There are concepts like network slicing which enables creating a network from characteristic point of view to cater to one vertical. For example, one can very clearly specify which function should not get affected at all and can slice it. Thus, if there is downtime or upgrade where network is likely to get affected, the sliced part will remain unaffected. Speed is not as important as interplay between the network and the vertical is. It will create more collaboration between vertical and communication. What are your priorities for the coming year? With the Ruckus Wireless acquisition closing we want to make sure that we do a good job of integration. We have acquired a very high growth asset and we want to maintain that. We want to grow leveraging on our and their strength. For example, Ruckus is very successful in hospitality. Their dominance in hospitality would help us to bring our switches to the same customer. Brocade has dominance in PSU and we can bring Ruckus into those environments and offer an integrated wireless solution. Secondly, we want to continue to make progress on the mobile front. Down the road there will be convergence of wifi and cellular. Lot of telecom providers are already offering voice over wi-fi. We want to continue to drive that convergence. We want to continue to be a leader in SDN and NFV. Many of our customers are deploying software centric infrastructure and that deployment will accelerate in next few years. We want to EXPRESS COMPUTER

leverage all our assets to grow our datacenter market share. How is Brocade developing a sustainable developer eco-system? We are a big supporter of the open source community. Specifically we contribute to Open Stack, Open Daylight and Open platform for NFV. We also contribute to orchestration of number of open source communities such as Open OSM. Every enhancement we make, we give it back to the community. StackStorm has a big following. They have a community that works among themselves and leverages Stackstorm to build work-flows and they contribute work-flow back to the community. There are now 1900 work-flows and anyone can find a work-flow that will be suitable their organization How does Brocade perceive innovation? Innovation can be solving small

problems, solving new problems or solving solved problems in a different way. For example, many organizations are undergoing software upgrade. However, one needs to shut down system for an upgrade which affects customer transaction. If one could still keep the system running while an upgrade is happening that would be innovation. Network is a living breathing thing because so much depends on it. Another example is of SmartSky. We announced them as one of our customers. They are air to ground LTE service. Mobile networks are not made for air mobility. They can handle ground mobility like driving in a car. Thus, SmartSky provides high speed wi-fi in the flight. These new kind of networks and companies which we are building is focused on building network a a platform for innovation. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW DHIREN SAVLA VFS GLOBAL SERVICES GROUP

SECURITY IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE TO VFS VFS Global is almost in the security business. The internal and external threats are increasing by the day. Due to the sensitivities of our business and partnerships with different client governments, the company is naturally often susceptible to attacks from hackers. VFS Global has operations in 124 countries with over 2100 offices, 9 data centers and 12,000 users. It works with 50 governments. Abhishek Raval speaks with Dhiren Savla, Group SVP & CIO, VFS Global Services Group on the recent business and IT initiatives at VFS Global Technology centric recent global trends in the space of visa processing VFS Global is the largest partner for various governments in the visa processing space. Globally, there are several developments happening in the area of visa processing. Introduction of Electronic Visas (e-Visa) is gaining momentum, wherein visas can be applied for by using mobile and other alternate channels. Another trend is around security. The Governments now want to add biometric information as an additional layer of authentication for the travellers visiting their countries. The Governments are becoming more & more sensitive about the profile of people visiting them.

We already do work for some state governments. We continue to pursue opportunities with various governments in India & abroad. VFS has been working on a variety of technology platforms which is delivered by our internal teams & our partner ecosystem. We have developed various bespoke solutions for our clients and have also done significant work in the Biometrics space. Our approach is to apply various technologies to solve business situations faced by our clients.

What kind of businesses is VFS Global entering into in India? With an objective to provide easy access of government services to the citizens, recently, we have got into the citizen services wherein we become the interface between the citizens and the government. Partners like us have a much larger reach and options of offering alternate channels like mobile, website and other mechanisms of consuming various services. This supports Governments in reachout programmes that adopt a PPP model.

We have also developed the latest generation of fully automatic Visa kiosks as part of a pilot project in Mumbai,India.These kiosks allow customers to submit their applications,biometric data,photos and make payments on their own at the Visa kiosk.

So are you in touch with any of the state governments to enter into partnerships to provide such citizen services? 38

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Please elaborate on the recent announcement from VFS Global on using portable biometric devices for issuing visa to the citizens? The ‘On Demand Mobile Visa’ service brings the visa application procedure to the citizen’s doorstep. It enables applicants to complete the entire visa application procedure, including biometric data enrolment, from their homes, offices or any location of their choice. The service is available at any location throughout India, and is especially useful for larger travel groups like corporate employees, college students or even film production crews. Right now we have introduced this service for visa applicants to the UK and some Schengen client governments subject to a risk assessment of the proposed location, and on any day of choice, including weekends. We have also developed the latest generation of fully automatic visa kiosks as part of a pilot project in Mumbai, India. These kiosks allow customers to submit their applications, biometric data, photos and make payments on their own at the visa kiosk. The kiosks are VFS Global’s response to the increasing demand for automated “self-service” application facilities. Data during capture, transfer and storage is always encrypted and is not readable or accessible by any third party tools. This gives required sense of security to the applicant JULY, 2016

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What are the key developments happening in the travel and tourism Industry? In the travel and tourism industry, the way services are being consumed itself is changing. Secondly, the customer is young, knowledgeable and willing to experiment. Until a few years back, it was more of a knowledge business because we knew about the destinations and products. However now, the knowledge is openly available online. Thus the tourism business is becoming more technology dependent in terms of the options offered by travel and tourism companies to the customers. For me, the travel and tourism business has metamorphosed into a technology business. Companies need to understand and apply the openly available knowledge and structure products around them. Usage of analytics EXPRESS COMPUTER

in identifying trends is important. Wearables can be used for context driven applications for the tourists. We are also doing PoCs with wearables. VFS Global is a kind of a Government arm, and thus security is of paramount importance. Can you share any new initiatives in this space lately? Security is of paramount importance to us. We are almost in the security business as well. The internal and external threats are increasing by the day. Due to the sensitivities of our business and partnerships with different client governments, we are naturally often susceptible to attacks from hackers. So, we have 24/7 security monitoring and the service function to ensure security against internal threats and zero loss of data.

We have put variety of security tools for data - be it at rest, in transit and when data is created. A lot of preventive work is also done with security vendors and security advisory companies to validate what we do. We follow a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Four-Eyeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; principle, there is a maker and checker always. We also run continuous security awareness programmes in the company. We work with most of the big fours Deloitte, KPMG, E&Y and PwC and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t limit ourselves with the knowledge of one partner. Every year, the company renews the ISO 27001 audit and certification. Last year we implemented a GRC platform, which monitors GRC processes of the group, globally in 2000 offices. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW DR. KAILASH NADH ZERODHA

“OUR OPEN API RETAIL TRADING PLATFORM IS A HUGE DIFFERENTIATOR” Zerodha’s open API retail trading platform enables the retail investor to trade from the application of his choice, thereby not forcing him to buy/sell only using Zerodha’s platform. Dr. Kailash Nadh, Head of Technology, Zerodha speaks to Abhishek Raval

Kite trading platform runs on an open API. How does it help? “Kite Connect”, our HTTP trading API, is a part of our “Kite” trading platform. It lets technically savvy users fully personalise their investing and trading experience without having to depend on the trading frontends that we ourselves offer. The APIs liberate the data belonging to users into their own hands, which would otherwise be locked inside our software. Moreover, the APIs let startups build investment platforms over our infrastructure, a kind of a “broking as a platform” setup, which opens up a whole lot of possibilities. To illustrate, a client of ours can use the APIs to place trades using their favorite programming language, a command line terminal, or even a spreadsheet, without ever looking at any of the trading software we ourselves offer. In addition, they can retrieve structured portfolio data in realtime and run analysis using their favorite tools. In the US, a user can pick a trading platform of their choice and trade with a broker of their choice. In India, however, users are locked into trading platforms offered by their respective brokerages. We hope our approach will bring tech savvy investors, who would’ve otherwise stayed out, into capital markets. 40

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How does the “broking as a platform” setup work? Innovation in the investmentTech space in India has seen abysmal growth due to the high barrier to entry faced by small players. To illustrate, a startup that wants to offer an investment platform has to obtain broking licenses by going through lengthy processes, setup highly specialised IT infrastructure (everything from leased lines to a data centre housing order management systems), hire specialists to run the infrastructure, setup a compliance team to address various regulatory requirements, and jump through numerous other hoops. This is a highly taxing, capital-intensive process that could take many months to

get going. As a brokerage, over the years, we have completed the whole exercise, and invested significant amounts of manpower, R&D, and capital in setting up a successful and sophisticated broking apparatus. At Zerodha, “What next?” is the fundamental question that drives us every day. While we have come up with some highly innovative products, we have accepted the fact that we cannot be a onestop-shop. To grow the capital markets, which will in turn help us grow our business, we need exponentially more innovation to happen. That’s how the “broking as a platform” idea was born, where we abstract our entire infrastructure, not just the technology, but everything from physical account opening to support, into a set of APIs, and offer to people with innovative investmentTech ideas. This essentially means anyone can use us as a platform and be their own market-ready investment company or brokerage overnight. This has the added bonus of the possibility of 1.25+ lakh clients of ours signing onto a new platform with just a single click, which otherwise, for a new player in the industry, is an impossible task. We are excited by the possibilities this presents, and we already have a startup that will be debuting their very-unique investment platform leveraging our infrastructure, shortly. JULY, 2016

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What kind of transactions can be done on the Kite platform ? We offer connectivity to all major stock and commodity exchanges in India. So, it’s possible to trade equities, derivatives, currencies, commodities, bonds, mutual funds etc. We have a nice cross-section of the Indian trading and investing community in our clientbase, from college students to seasoned traders. Traditionally, the experienced traders have preferred desktop based trading platforms, however, today, the majority of our trading volumes come from Kite, showing a shift in trading behaviour. How differently do you manage your retail trading app vis-a-vis other retail brokerage houses? With Kite, we threw out all the conventions and rules of thumb dictating how a trading frontend should look. We incorporated modern software design and UX principles and created a lightweight, minimalistic, and highly user-friendly platform for retail traders, perhaps unlike any of its counterparts. We’ve actually gone beyond the fundamentals of a trading platform and brought in user-centric enhancements such as the availability of the frontend in a number of regional Indian languages. In addition, we involve our client community directly in the development of almost all our trading applications by releasing versions as early as alpha to closed test groups who’ve expressed interest, and rapidly incorporate their feedback into the development cycle. What truly sets us apart though is our R&D, where we’re constantly thinking beyond traditional approaches, for instance, the aforementioned open API. Correspondingly how was the experience in launching your homegrown retail trading app – Kite? The first version of Kite was released to a closed group of users last year. We studied their interactions with the platform and incorporated their feedback into our main development branches. We then increased the size of our group to EXPRESS COMPUTER

“Broking as a platform” abstracts our entire infrastructure,not just the technology,but everything from physical account opening to support,into a set of APIs,and offers value to people with innovative investment technology ideas.This essentially means anyone can use us as a platform and be their own market-ready investment company or brokerage overnight the point where it was available to all our clients. Thus, the launch itself was a part of natural growth rather than an isolated affair. This also had the advantage of avoiding any drastic surprises. Today, eight months later, we have almost a lakh users who use Kite. Every month, Kite processes between 4-5 million orders, and as an app, serves more than a 100 million requests. Client default is a major risk for brokerage houses. How do you mitigate this risk using technology ? Stock markets are unpredictable and volatile. Often times, clients can lose more money than they have in their trading accounts, especially with leveraged trades. As a brokerage, it is our responsibility to identify such scenarios in the best interests of our clients and the business itself.

Of our 1.25 lakh clients, at any given moment, many tens of thousands hold positions of varying degrees of risk. We have a dedicated risk team that constantly monitors these positions. However, with scale, manual monitoring, understandably, becomes challenging. We are building an automated monitoring mechanism that’ll drastically reduce the need for continuous manual monitoring. We’re exploring possible applications of machine learning for building dynamic risk models that not only look at active positions, but take into consideration, trading habits and patterns. The Blockchain technology is catching a lot of attention in the west and in India. Your views of the applicability of this technology in the brokerage space? Blockchain is an extremely interesting technological innovation that will inevitably be adopted by a wide range of industries, not just finance. It’s implications are far-reaching, and, in a sense, necessary. In the brokerage space, an immediate thought is the application of blockchains in making transactions between institutions seamless, like, bond trades that often happen over-thecounter. With blockchains, such transactions that usually involve many hands and manual paper entries, can become central, instant, and secure. Depositories and clearing houses could apply similar methods to settlements. In principle, all forms of transactions could possibly be backed by blockchains. If you think about it, the DEMAT system itself could be a blockchain implementation! Recently, an American company won the approval to issue their shares to the public over the internet using blockchains, indicating the acceptance of the concept by American authorities. It would be a great leap forward when the Indian financial regulators start looking at the technology. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

FEATURE

STATE BANK OF INDIA

HOW STATE BANK OF INDIA IS APPLYING ANALYTICS EC’s Abhishek Raval speaks to Kajal Ghose, CGM (ESS), SBI on how analytics is helping the bank improve its competitiveness

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BI has 300 mn customers and thus it’s not easy to do the one-toone interactions as was possible a few years back. Then, the bank staff had a personal rapport with the customer because of in-branch interactions. But over a period of time many alternate channels have come in, which have been disruptor of sorts. Now, 71% of the bank’s customers access the bank through those alternate channels. Hence the in-person conversations have reduced. So, to identify with the customer’s line of thought, their next choices, what sort of customers they are, the bank need to set up analytics. Thus the first step is to build a data repository. SBI has set up a data warehouse in 2009. It’s one of the biggest data

warehouses in the world with 170 TB of data, which comes in through Core Banking Solution (CBS) and 37 other systems – RTGS, NEFT, ECS, AML, cash management product etc. On the basis of the data, which customers hold what value to the bank is assessed; How much deposits they have with the bank; the amount of advances, the number of loans taken. The banks also overlays group data – from SBI Life, Demat, SBI mutual fund etc. Having put that data, customers are categorised using the transfer price mechanism and basis that the customers are ranked as platinum, gold customer etc. “Then a tool is used as a model to see the next best product to sell to the customers. The bank knows for e.g. that XYZ customer has a card, a house, marital status etc. Thus he might need a JULY, 2016

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JULY, 2016

FEATURE

ANALYTICS

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mutual fund, a home loan etc.,” says Kajal Ghose, CGM (ESS), SBI.

Role of analytics in Non Performing Assets (NPA) management Analytics can do studies on NPAs. It can in fact be predicted, which of the loans are going to turn NPAs in say the next 6 months. We have done it. On the basis of the symptoms, from the accounts, which went bad already, NPAs that will turn bad and the ones that can be recovered – geographically, demographically can be identified. NPAs has been a problem. “In fact we have reduced our NPAs for the last few quarters,” informs Ghose.

Incorporating Credit bureau data for customer history External data is also incorporated. Data from Credit Bureaus like CIBIL, Equifax, Experian, High Mark credit information. This data is also used for customer retention. The leads relating to various other aspects is sent to the business units to inform them about where the current SBI customers are spending money. For e.g. There are many customers who send money to other banks on a monthly basis for home loans. The narration feed can help do data mining and communicate to the business units that X number of people have a home loan from X bank but their main account is with SBI; Y amount of customers are sending money to a particular bank for auto loans; a certain amount of customers are paying their taxes through a different bank, so a lot of leads can get generated, to discuss the strategies on how the the same customers can do the same transactions via SBI, the bank with which they have the main account. Data can also be dug out on the customers who are likely to close the account with the bank on the basis of the number of customers who have left the SBI in the last few years. With that as a base, the solution will identify the major symptoms in the accounts that led to the customer exits. Factors like the number of transactions coming down; taking loans from other banks etc. This data can be run over the current data to identify customers having the 44

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SBI has set up a data warehouse in 2009.It’s one of the biggest data warehouses in the world with 170 TB of data, which comes in through Core Banking Solution (CBS) and 37 other systems aforementioned trend and give a heads up to the business units.

Analytics team: A Small start The analytics team to start with, consisted of ten people internally from varied backgrounds: with Economics, statistics, Mathematics etc. “We have recruited 16 more experts from the market. SBI has hired domain experts from IIMs: two professors are guiding us to do models, one from Bengaluru and one from Kolkata. We plan to get more resources. Hitherto, for 4 months, the bank partnered with a consultant for analytics policy, roadmap, the type of use cases, the models which we should be using,” says Ghose.

How social media helps We have joined social media and also run analytics on it. “SBI now is the bank with the second largest amount of users on Facebook. We expect to be number one by

November, 2015. Our rate of growth is more than other private and public banks. The bank has overtaken all the others. SBI has the largest amount of Youtube subscribers vis-avis other banks. The views are growing up. We are number two in the number of people following us on Twitter, informs Ghose. The bank has also joined Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+. More importantly, the country’s largest bank is also the most responsive banks on the social media platforms. Social engagement activities include various competitions: feel good fridays, thursday trivia, motivational monday among some of them. The bank runs campaigns like having quizzes on facebook based on videos on Youtube.

SBI’s App strategy Apps have a tremendous potential. It enables banks to be glued with the customer. “The App downloads allows to track the customer location, in case the customer agrees to the bank’s request on GPS enablement, says Ghose. The bank can show advertisements, promote topups based on the customer profile. SBI has ‘SBI freedom’ and ‘SBI Anywhere’ as apps. The bank recently launched ‘The Buddy’ as a wallet app, which lets the customers to encash their credit or debit card through the app. The points can be redeemed thereafter over the app itself.

Role of analytics in Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) The analytics is operated via operational CRM and analytical CRM. The operational CRM will get all the data and pass it on to the back end. The rest of the work is done by the analytical CRM. “As of now, SBI doesn’t have a full fledged CRM but we have a large part of what we should be having. SBI has a customer-one view – with complaint and lead management,” says Ghose. As per the analytics reports sourced internally, under the PMJDY, micro insurance and tiny recurring deposit schemes are popular. These are deposits of Rs. 50, Rs. 100 etc a month. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

BUSINESS AVENUES

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JULY, 2016

NEWS ANALYSIS

Tackling Insurance Fraud

INSURANCE

INDUSTRY FORMS CUG TO PROACTIVELY FIGHT FRAUDS E Experian has partnered with Life Insurance Council to provide a platform to the Life Insurance Industry to share customer related data not only from the Life Insurance companies but also the banking industry and the Aadhaar platform BY ABHISHEK RAVAL 46

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xperian Credit Bureau, India, launched the Hunter Fraud Management Services for the Life Insurance industry in India in March 2016. With this, Life Insurance companies in India will be a part of Experian National Hunter Closed User Group (CUG). This framework which went live on 3 March, 2016, is expected to help life insurers in the CUG cut losses on account of fraudulent claims according to Life Insurance Council, an industry association. The framework will run analytics and provide data discrepancies to help life insurers identify fraudulent claims. Industry experts say, the insurance industry is annually hit by fake claims to the tune of 20-22%. The latest amendment in Section 45

of the Insurance laws Amendment Ordinance means that, no life insurer can repudiate a claim from a policyholder three years after the issuance. This means that a policy cannot be canceled on the grounds of miss-statement of facts—even fraudulent claims are protected. This is one of the reasons to have triggered the life Insurance Industry to huddle and form such a group to fight fraud. Moreover there are 400 organised fraud management centers in India. On top of that, no data is available on such activities in the unorganised center. “There is no provision in the Indian penal code to punish the fraudsters committing Insurance frauds and thus no action can be taken against them,” JULY, 2016

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says V. Manickam, Secretary, Life Insurance Council. However the country’s largest life Insurer LIC hasn’t joined the consortium yet. “LIC is studying this proposition and it will take some more time for them to join, “said V. Manickam. Experian India already has a database of 47 banks currently on Hunter – their fraud detection platform. According to Experian, the banking industry recorded savings of INR 4,002 crore in FY16 due to applications screened using National Hunter.

Hunter Fraud Management for identifying data discrepancies for Insurance CUG As per the latest data, 17 life insurance EXPRESS COMPUTER

companies in India have now signed on and are a part of the Experian CUG. Six out of these seventeen life insurance companies have already gone live or are in the process of going live with the Hunter fraud management services in April 2016. The companies include ICICI Prudential, HDFC Life, Kotak life insurance, Edelweiss Tokio, IndiaFirst Life, Aegon Life Insurance, Birla Sun Life, Reliance Life, Future Generali Life, Max Life, Exide Life, PNB Metlife, Aviva Life, IDBI Federal Life, Tata AIA, Canara HSBC OBC Life, Star Union Dai-Ichi Life Experian will hold enquiry data of the Life Insurance companies in the consortium in an encrypted format. “That’s our business. We do this in

multiple countries. Experian currently holds data of 47 Indian banks in National Hunter,” says Mohan Jayaraman, MD, Experian Credit Bureau, India. Basically, Experian ensures – whatever data is shared by the Insurance companies through their technology platform can be accessed on Experian’s site. “We don’t provide any applications to companies to host the data. What we are doing is taking the application data from the Life Insurance company, running it against a database, identifying discrepancies, if any,” In the case of a discrepancy being found, the respective Life Insurance company takes the corrective action accordingly. There is no estimate available of the customer count of the seventeen JULY, 2016

NEWS ANALYSIS

Tackling Insurance Fraud

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We don’t provide any applications to companies to host the data.What we are doing is taking the application data from the Life Insurance company,running it against a database and identifying discrepancies. Mohan Jayaraman Mohan Jayaraman,MD,Experian Credit Bureau,India.

As per the latest data, 17 life insurance companies in India have now signed on and are a part of the Experian CUG.Six out of these seventeen life insurance companies have already gone live or are in the process of going live 48

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Insurance companies who have already joined the Experian Hunter Closed User Group; however as a reference point, “the size of the repository that we run for the Indian banking sector is 400 + Mn records. The fraudulent data is separated from it. In the fraud repository space for the Life Insurance sector Experian is now getting companies go live. As more and more applications are added on the Hunter platform from the Insurance companies, it will be a virtuous cycle, the good data and the bad data will be separated.

about the Insurance proposal being approved or declined has to be registered in Hunter too. As far as KYC data is concerned, the data will automatically start flowing as the fifteen companies will start using the Hunter solution. “The good thing with Hunter is that it almost has the ability to modularly add referral database. What we do is we try to put the data that is the most useful to the customer at that point in time. Currently, we believe that the most important thing will actually be the existing banking data,”

How the discrepancies will be identified

Reference data from banks, Aadhaar

It’s a fairly simple process. Most companies already have the system to process an insurance application form. “What we will do is set up a small program, which will interface between the insurance company’s system and Hunter,” Then, depending on the type of Insurance buying platform, which can be an online purchase or a physical form – it will pick up these proposals and push them into Hunter for e.g. a proposal after being keyed in by the branch person or the intermediary or the customers if they are doing it online, it will all go into the policy system of the Insurance company. They will have a bridge from there, basically a communication link that will call Hunter and send this piece of information to Hunter. Hunter will process and send the information back with information about discrepancies. For e.g. out of the 100 applications, 5-6 seems may have a discrepancy. Subsequently, the underwriting team will know which are these cases and will set up an automatic queue. The areas with discrepancies will be highlighted. “We have found that 70% of the cases can be resolved at the underwriting level itself,” There may be few cases which can be resolved after deeper investigation. For those cases, more information is asked from the local branches. In this process there is a continuous communication handshake between the Insurance Company’s local system and Hunter. Whatever changes –

Experian India already has a database of 47 banks currently on Hunter – their fraud detection platform. With life insurance companies coming under their purview too, both banks and insurance companies will be able to easily share data to prevent fraud. With more than 50 per cent of the retail banking applications passing through Hunter on a monthly basis, It works as a closed user group of organisations, with the common intent of preventing fraud nationally. It screens and highlights potentially fraudulent applications, enabling organisations to identify fraudsters before they become customers. Experian is running the fraud solution for the banking Industry for the last three years. “We have the fraudulent customers’ details there. More importantly, 77% of the fraud is identity fraud,” So what is relevant in India, is not negative information, it’s actually positive information and Experian has positive information. For example, in case of a fraudulent application in the name of the genuine customer who has an insurance policy – it can be detected no matter if the application is coming from an Insurance company or the bank. Experian is certified to access the Aadhaar database. National Census Data will also be available. The company doesn’t need to own that data as long as they can refer to it. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

OPINION ABHISHANT PANT PAYMENTS PROFESSIONAL

HOWAFINTECH PROFESSIONAL WENTWITHOUTUSING CASH FOR 50 DAYS As a believer in digitization of cash, am I just propagating the theory or do I really understand the consumer side of story? With this started the quest to understand ‘Cashlessness’ first hand.

As per the USAID Report ‘Barriers to a Digital Economy’, an overwhelming 97 % of retail transactions in India are in cash. Digitizing payments and moving to a less-cash society will bring immense benefits to the economy. 50

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re you sure you want to do this? Richa, my wife asked as I shared my idea to undertake an experiment in which I will stop using cash and instead use only digital forms of payment. Colleagues said going cashless in India is difficult and that I wouldn’t be able to manage more than a week. All this and the fundamental question “As a believer in digitization of cash, am I just propagating the theory or do I really understand the consumer side of story?” With this started the quest to understand “Cashlessness” first hand. In this process many a times the challenges looked insurmountable – but then what is the point of a journey if it doesn’t challenge you. The first phase of the journey started in Singapore where I travelled without carrying Singapore Dollars and lived without physical manifestation of money for 5 days i.e. paid for every transaction using card (and it was not easy as every time I boarded a cab or entered a restaurant I had to ask if they accept card) and then as I completed the phase, a friend posed the same question “Singapore is a city nation. Do you think you can live without cash for a month in India?” Thus on 13th March 2016 started “Living without cash” journey in Mumbai. The adventure involved:

Digitization of all cash transactions ■

Taking all forms of transport from auto (Jugnoo, OLA, ONGO), taxi (UBER/OLA/Taxi for Sure), Mumbai local (Unreserved Ticket), NMMT Bus, Hirkani (Bus from Pune to Mumbai) and Kaali Peeli (regular black and yellow cabs)

■ Identifying a barber (within regular cost) ■ A long walk when my mobile got switched-off (Once had to walk for 8 KM on way back from my office at BKC) ■ Giving up on “Tapri Ki chai”(masala tea from a local tea stall) ■ Convincing the entire family of my maid that I will pay her salary- just that it will go into her bank account rather than in cash. ■ Pre-payments to my laundry man, vegetable and newspaper vendor to prove that I mean business. ■ Long conversations with neighborhood Kirana stores on benefits and challenges of cashlessness Overall the journey was made possible by the App-onomy (AppEconomy) created by nimble start-ups (PayTM, Jugnoo, Ola, Uber, Big basket, Little, Foodpanda, Taskbob, Ziffi, Natures basket, UTS) who provided great support and took care of all retail financial transactions.

Key Learnings Below mentioned are the key learnings in brief from 40 days of cashless journey 1. Transit (Mass + Personal) will be the anchor driver of cashless (atleast in Top 10 cities): Auto+ cab (Radio+ UBER/OLA + Black and yellow) +Bus + train (Local + Metro+ Monorail). Because of Its low ticket size but high frequency and high impact. The one who wins this will win consumer mindshare and wallet. Singapore (My MRT Card), Hongkong (Octopus) and London (Oyster) are clear example of how a transit solution can help in catalyzing the creation of cashless ecosystem. In cities like Mumbai wherein daily commuters take multiple means to JULY, 2016

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reach workplace, transit is one solution that impacts them the most. Personal transit (App driven) is leading a part of the financial inclusion journey with direct ban k account credits to the drivers’ account. These account credits also help in creating a transaction history which helps the bank in assessing the “Ability to Pay” and could in the future help in them receiving loans, if required. 2. Services: Used a total of 18 services, ranging from grocery to maid’s salary EXPRESS COMPUTER

which could be converted to digital with a little bit of effort. With hyperlocal start-ups supporting, getting grocery or veggies delivered at home was not a big challenge. 3. Solution for Bharat (One without data and smart phone): India crossed 1 Bn mobile phones but almost 80 % are not smart phones Clearly, feature phone driven low cost solutions like USSD or STK or thin SIM in open loop network is required to get Bharat evolve and reap the benefits of “mobile first” financial

inclusion revolution. 4. Regional Languages: My maid is a Maharashtrian. My grocery shop owner is a Gujarati. My newspaper vendor is from UP. They all need a solution in their regional language. And absence of it acts as one big hindrance on way to adoption. 5. Handholding: Both Bharat and less tech-savvy India need hand-holding at every step to graduate from beginner to domain expert. My maid had never visited an ATM machine in her life, so I JULY, 2016

OPINION ABHISHANT PANT PAYMENTS PROFESSIONAL

had to accompany her to teach her to operate the machine.

of the tax revenue and productive usage this money generated can be submitted. If even 25% ($550 B) of this is brought into the tax net it has a potential (purely on account of blended tax income of $ 7580 B) to bring millions above the poverty line. Large scale government. schemes like NREGA, NRHM can be funded for over next 10 years by just 1 year of tax revenue emanating from this initiative. Getting rid of black economy will be one of the true manifestations of Swatch Bharat Abhiyan.

6. Sustainable growth of wallets: The current mobile wallet providers flush with VC funds have helped a larger number of Indians adopt a new way of transacting i.e. using data powered smart phones to pay for bills, recharge etc. They have also forced banks to innovate and come up with own wallet solutions with consumer experience and convenience as a center of everything they do. Therefore, it will be interesting to observe how many of them (independent wallet companies) survive when the day to reap benefits of this transition will come.

1. Contribution to GDP and Job Growth: The latest Moody’s Analytics Report estimates that increased usage of electronic payment methods have added $ 6.08 Bn to India’s GDP between 2011-2015, adding 3.36 lakh jobs in the same period.

7. Retail Kirana Merchants: is a tough category to crack. They have multiple questions to solve before embarking on this journey.

2. Cost of Cash: With 76.5 B (2012-13 RBI data) pieces of currency in circulation, the operational cost of managing currency operations (to RBI and banks) is $ 3.5 B. Think of the need to re-issue currency due to wear and tear. However, even bigger is the loss on account of dead cash lying in wallets rather than in an income generating instruments. There is an additional cost in terms of time and effort submitted to withdraw cash. It further places the disproportionate burden on poor due to lack of places to keep and save it securely for future.

Will it increase footfall? Will it increase more consumption from same consumer? What is the tax implication and will the above benefits are good enough to overlook tax cost? 8. Street Vendors: None of the current digital cash options are cost effective (Cost of Transaction + Cost of Instrument) enough to work with this segment. 9. Going 95 % Cashless is possible for anyone: Except for point no 8 all other retail consumer transactions can be done by non-cash medium. So what will happen if all the above retail transactions move from cash to cash-less. As per the USAID Report “Barriers to a Digital Economy”, an overwhelming 97 % of retail transactions in India are in cash. Digitizing payments and moving to a less-cash society will bring the following benefits to the economy

Impact on Underground/Black Economy Estimates of the size of black economy range from 30% to 75% of GDP. Just think 52

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Overall the journey was made possible by the App-onomy (App-Economy) created by nimble start-ups (PayTM, Jugnoo,Ola,Uber,Big basket, Little,Foodpanda,Taskbob, Ziffi,Natures basket,UTS) who provided great support and took care of all retail financial transactions.

3. Leakage in Govt. Subsidy and Welfare Schemes: As per Economic Survey released in Feb 2016, govt. provides approx. Rs. 3.7 lakh cr in subsidy via various programs like fertilizer, food, kerosene, diesel etc. And the survey further builds that a large percentage of this does not go to. Just think of savings (due to reduced leakage, lower administration cost and efficiency of service delivery) if all of this goes directly to the Aadhaar linked bank account. A 2010 report, “The benefits of e-payments to Indian society” by McKnisey predicted Rs 97,000 cr savings due to electronic payments infrastructure. JULY, 2016

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4. Cost of Liquidity Management: Corporates spend large amount in managing cash in their value chain (Consumer-Retailer-Distributor), if a large portion this goes digital it has obvious liquidity management benefits to all participants of this value chain. Think of the above benefits and the force of 20 new banks, mobile wallet players, Fintech players and PMJDY! This is clearly a once in a lifetime opportunity to get a billion people under the financial inclusion umbrella sustainably and profitably. The government is already moving to positively impact the electronic payments acceptance both at consumer and merchant level as cited in recent white papers on the subject. However, not everything associated with a cashless environment is perfect. For example,

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1. Oyster card system glitch in London at start of the year 2016. As per BBC, it resulted in 100,000 free rides and GBP 250K revenue loss in just a few hours. 2. EBT System failure in US 2013 3. Belgium card payment network crash in 2013. These issues pose a serious question

The latest Moody’s Analytics Report estimates that increased usage of electronic payment methods have added $ 6.08 Bn to India’s GDP between 2011-2015,adding 3.36 lakh jobs in the same period.

and therefore, while we head towards a less-cash and eventually towards a cashless society, the belief is that the system will evolve in such a manner that it will have a robust business continuity and consumer grievance redressal plans to ensure that the benefits outweigh the outage. Finally, the biggest guarantee of a cash less society is the confidence in an alternative that will be always acceptable, anywhere you go. So now that you are done with the cashless experiment, what’s Next? My wife asked. Cashless leads to greater benefits to the excluded then the included, So when you go cashless you impact life’s in more ways than you can imagine. The journey continues… I replied. – Abhishant Pant is a Payments Professional based in Mumbai and above findings are based on his personal experience of going cashless starting 13th March JULY, 2016

FEATURE

BLOCKCHAIN

ver since Craig Wright proclaimed that he is the founder of Bitcoin, there has been renewed interest in the digital currency. Over the last eight years, Bitcoin has been at the centre of both rags-to-riches stories and controversies. Its surge, which led to copycat digital currencies sprouting, has more than moderated—the price of a Bitcoin went down from $1,242 to under $200 in just two years. Security agencies were quick to call the cryptocurrency an exchange medium for terrorists, drug dealers and hawala traders. While Bitcoin may not be as fascinating as it once was, the technology behind it— blockchain—is generating increasing interest, with governments and financial institutions looking to revolutionise data upkeep and finance with it. Blockchain is a digital ledger which keeps record of each and every transaction and is shared among a distributed network of computers, more like a shared spreadsheet. So, a block of data has digital records which all participants can see, but can only be altered by a majority. Blockchain dispenses, exchanges and transfers 54

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Blockchain,given its transparent data repositories, can help cut leakages in public procurement; a Punjab may no more have to face a situation where grains go missing.It can aid the disbursal of subsidy by plugging leakages.It can help the tax department expand tax net.

Bitcoins, much like a central regulator. The system is not only transparent— any change made is visible to all the parties—but also secure as everyone has

a personal key. In cutting out the middleman, blockchain allows for faster and cost-effective transmission of data. It is popular with payment gateways, stock markets and government records. A Santander InnoVentures report says it is set to save $20 billion in costs for financial institutions. Morgan Stanley says the technology can help reduce costs by as much as 50% of those involved in running with traditional channels.

Blockchain and banking Blockchain can initiate faster transmission and eliminate the need of a clearing house. A digital ledger, it preserves patents, contracts and trademarks, ensuring trust amongst banking participants and reducing the potential for litigation. Each transaction can be reviewed by all the participants over a period of time, eliminating the need of auditors. Over half a decade, a dozen banks around the world have been experimenting with blockchain. The Federal Reserve has been working with IBM to simplify digital payments, the European Banking Authority has been working on transactions banking, and JULY, 2016

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THE BLOCKCHAIN BLOCKBUSTER Nasdaq plans to launch a trading platform on blockchain. It is finding its way into the insurance industry, where firms are able to match needs of customers and provide niche products. Some have been using blockchain for inclusion of unbanked and providing loans via P2P platforms and crowd-sourcing.

Beyond banking While blockchain is a digital storage platform, it can also act as a digital matchmaker, given once all records enter the system, it can present an array of services available, like health records or ride or accommodation-sharing services. In fact, it promises a boost for the sharing economy. While companies are trying to incorporate blockchain for shareholder voting, governments have been experimenting with the technology for more secure online voting. It is being used by Honduras, Isle of Man and Ghana for digitising land records, registering firms and clamping down on corruption. The UK is expected to use the technology for tracking taxpayers as each transaction can be tracked. EXPRESS COMPUTER

India: Still in chains While RBI acknowledged the technology last year in a paper, and cryptocurrencies are slowly gaining ground, the adoption of blockchain by India is slow. To be sure, some start-ups and companies like Visa have expressed willingness to work with blockchain, but for adoption to be impactful, the government has to join the party. With various state and central departments having demonstrated nifty uptake of tech, blockchain will be a valueadd for Digital India. Take, for example, the DigiLocker service the government has started. While it was expected to digitise records, it has not been received well, with just 11 government concerns using it, half of which have not carried out even a single transaction. However, given blockchain can function as a unique ledger for individuals, it can overcome the need for digital signatures, which is integral to authenticating DigiLocker documents. Moreover, by cutting out intermediaries—the DigiLocker, in a sense, is one—it makes processes like KYC verification much faster; the user doesn’t have to submit DigiLocker (Aadhaar-linked) details every single time

Bitcoin is revolutionary, but it is the technology behind that is generating curiosity. Ever since Craig Wright proclaimed that he is the founder of Bitcoin, there has been renewed interest in the digital currency, says Ishaan Gera, Principal Correspondent, Financial Express

she opens a bank account or shifts from one telecom service provider to another. Blockchain, given its transparent data repositories, can help cut leakages in public procurement; a Punjab may no more have to face a situation where grains go missing. It can aid the disbursal of subsidy by plugging leakages. It can help the tax department expand tax net. The PM has been talking about a cashless society—blockchain, combined with Unified Payments Interface, can make this possible, while ensuring that each transaction gets recorded. The only problem is that the technology is still new and players will have to assimilate it with other technologies to make it worthwhile for the government and private sector. There is also a gap in how one chain interacts with the other—transactions can be monitored/recorded, but to link people’s income and their income-tax records would prove to be challenging. As it evolves and is clubbed with more userbased apps, blockchain can provide solutions to such issues. ishaan.gera@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW STEPHEN DANE CISCO

SECURITY IS ABOUT INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGIES Cisco believes that the time has come to shift toward a more architectural approach as most of the enterprises are spending a lot of energy on figuring out ways to correlate all threat information promptly to deal with threats before losing the information. In an interview with EC's Mohd Ujaley, Stephen Dane, Managing Director of Cisco’s Global Security Sales organization (GSSO) for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China says, “Security is not just about breeding technologies, it is about actually integrating them together effectively.”

There is lot of heterogeneity in an organization especially when it comes to adopting security solutions. How can this complexity be addressed? To address this challenge, Cisco is focusing on a combination of two approaches. Firstly, the best to breed approach which is that every technology that we make available to customers is excellent, the best in the market and in an integrated architectural approach. In the past, customers have defended themselves by buying lot of technology solutions from many different vendors and that hasn’t served them particularly well. It has created lots of complexity and therefore cost of operating those different vendors is high and has a relatively low effectiveness. So, best of breed has not really served the customer very well and as we look forward and think about what is going to happen in the next five years we see the digital transformation of organizations really further complicating the existing security landscape. With more devices coming online, the number today is 15 billion devices. We have been saying for a while that by 2020 there could be 50 billion devices and by 2030 we are now saying that there could be 500 billion devices. The Internet of Things has already contributed close to 3.1 billion devices. Does that mean role of pure play security companies will be impacted as companies like yours and Microsoft are offering 56

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Our expectation is that the government will look at cyber security as a particular area to legislate on.I believe this will have a big impact particularly at the board level. products and solutions embedded with security? I do not think I would say that. What I would say is that we have an opportunity to help customers reduce the number of vendors by creating a platform placed approach. This helps them to reduce the hardware within that infrastructure and the interfaces that their operations guys and analysts use by ensuring that we are actually reducing that footprint. An example is in the past, a customer would buy a Firewall, an IPS and a Sandbox. Those are three separate hard boxes, three separate interfaces, three people that would need to be trained, maybe six people, maybe more than that and today we are able to offer that in one platform. So we turn that sort of one, two, three on its head and we say nowadays next

generation Firewall has next generation IPS and advanced malware protection software that sits on that box and that is one single interface to manage. Purely play security companies have dedicated solutions and dedicated focus on security, so how do you compare yourself and your solutions with them? Cisco has been making acquisitions in the security space for the last three years, specifically in the area of threat centric security. The biggest acquisition we made was of Sourcefire in 2013 which was a company that focused very much on next generation IPS and advanced malware software. What we have done is integrate that capability into the Cisco security portfolio which consisted of Firewall, Secure Access Knack and Content Security fundamentally. With the addition of some other acquisitions, what we have now is the ability to protect customers before, during and after an attack. We have technologies across three areas in terms of Firewalling and Identity Services Engine which is our Knack service and for Secure Access, we have e-mail and web security capabilities. We have obviously Sourcefire, next generation IPS and then we have technologies like advanced malware protection which has the ability to detect the file as it goes into an organization. We have a broad portfolio that is in itself focused on threat effectiveness and JULY, 2016

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we have some unique differentiators around the ability to continually assess files. We think that this is an opportunity for the industry to consolidate and for us to do things differently. So it is not just about breeding technologies, it is about actually integrating them together effectively. It is about ensuring that at Cisco, we are able to take advantage of this security concept everywhere. So putting these controls, the ability to control and see everywhere in the network, so within the switching environment, within the routing environment, within the branch, on the endpoint, in the cloud, to have security everywhere and the ability to see and control is fundamental to protecting an organisation particularly as they go along the digital transformation.

In the past customers have defended themselves by buying lot of technology solutions from many different vendors and that hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t served them particularlywell. It has created lots of complexity and therefore cost of operating those different vendors is high and has a relatively low effectiveness.As we look forward and think about what is going to happen in the next five years,we see the digital transformation of organisations really further complicating the existing security landscape EXPRESS COMPUTER

How has been India's performance and what are the key verticals that are driving the demand for security solutions? From an India perspective, in the last two years, we have seen quite a drastic change in the way Indian customers are thinking about security. Everybody realizes that they are under attack. Nobody feels 100% secure anymore and they are all in the phase of now looking at how they can prevent an attack, once they are attacked and how they can remediate. There is huge potential and demand coming from any company that has sensitive information. For example, software companies have got customer information and they host applications, so they are sensitive about that. From a manufacturing perspective it is IP, it is R&D, it is their code IP. In the public sector, a lot of the digitization projects at the state and at the center have security built in for smart cities projects. E-commerce is another place where lots of new companies are coming up and so security is important for them. I think it is across and not any specific vertical. Maybe some verticals are little more advanced in terms of adopting technologies. The IT sector, for instance has been a little more advanced because they are global and they have been doing business with global customers for many years. From a legislation point of view, how crucial is it to have necessary regulation around cyber security? It is very crucial and our expectation is that the government will look at that as a particular area to legislate on. I believe this will have a big impact particularly at the board level around how important security is seen through them because in the US that is certainly happening. We have not actually necessarily stopped many of the massive breaches but the disclosure element really forces the business holistically and from the top to consider security as an accountability. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

FEATURE

TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

INDIAN EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY STARTUP SEEKS TO DEMOCRATIZE LEARNING WITH UNIQUE MARKETPLACE MODEL Vedantu, an Indian education technology startup, is looking to deliver a unique personalized training model that allows students to have a personal teacher who would teach them according to their need, pace and level BY SRIKANTH RP

lassroom teaching has always typically been a ‘one size fits all’ approach, which is not effective for all students, as each student has a different capability to learn and understand. However, if technology can enable personalized or customized training, then the ability to understand increases dramatically. Vedantu, an Indian education technology startup, is looking to do just that, with a unique model, that allows students to have a personal teacher who would teach them according to their need, pace and level. Using Vedantu’s platform, students can learn from the convenience of their homes, select a teacher of their choice, rate the sessions and change the teacher if need be. Similarly, teachers have complete

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flexibility to teach according to their convenience, create their own packages and set the cost of each session. The idea for the startup was born out of the experience of the founders, when they were students. The founders were sure about the need for a transformational change in the education sector in India, and hence they took the plunge and started their first venture in education, Lakshya. Initially, the team started by teaching children from a small place called Barnala in rural Punjab and launched their first venture in education, Lakshya, a highly successful test-prep institution. At Lakshya, the team expanded to four locations and created an organization of over 200 like-minded people catering to over 5000 students

annually. However, the founders realized that their impact remained limited to a geographical region due to the brick-andmortar setup. To overcome the geographical limits and offer more ‘choice’ to teachers and students without the prevailing institutional constraints, there was a need for a different approach. Vamsi Krishna, Co-Founder & CEO Vedantu states Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder, Vedantu Innovations, “Our experiences led us to rethink our approach and we found the solution to these challenges in technology. That’s when Vedantu was launched to create a world of learning that’s democratized and personalized. With our deep understanding of teaching-learning process, we were able to create a platform that’s optimized for learning JULY, 2016

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and teaching live and online on a one-one basis.” For the tuition segment, Vedantu primarily focuses on grades 6th to 12th in both, CBSE & ICSE curriculum. Students also have an option to enrol for competitive exam courses such as NTSE, PSA, IIT JEE Main etc. Additionally, Vedantu offers a unique feature called ‘InstaLearn’ and is used by students for on demand doubt clearing.

The market opportunity According to industry reports, there are over 250 million kids in k12 segment in India out of which 80 million are studying in private schools and likely go for some or the other kind of supplementary tuitions. India’s tutoring market is slated to grow to $16 bn by 2017. “In a traditional brick-and-mortar setup, a teacher is not able to tailor teaching to an individual student’s requirements. Students often have to travel long distance, resulting in waste of productive time and resources. Affordability of a personal tutor is often a challenge too. Offline personal tutoring is also not scalable due to time and distance constraints. Our model addresses key challenges faced by students and teachers by offering convenience, personalization, democratization and creates value,” states Vamsi Krishna. On Vedantu’s platform, a teacher can teach multiple students on a one-one EXPRESS COMPUTER

basis, as per their need, pace and requirements. For example, a teacher based in Chandigarh can teach a student in Shillong or Guwahati at a mutually convenient time, completely overcoming barriers of time and place. Vedantu has built the technology for this platform from scratch, and believes that the technology can scale without compromising the experience for students as well as teachers.

Platform built for Indian conditions Understanding the fact that a major percentage of the demand could come from rural or Tier 2 or Tier 3 cities or towns, the technology has been built in such a way that a session can happen seamlessly on even low and fluctuating bandwidths to suit the Indian conditions. “If the speed is 1 Mbps, all three elements [Whiteboard, Audio, Video] work, but if the speed falls below that [say 512 Kbps] then the platform can be switched only to the Whiteboard & Audio mode. If the speed drops below 100 kbps then, click–to–call feature on the platform can be used to initiate a two way all connecting the teacher and the student on their mobile phones while they continue to use the whiteboard functionality via Internet. What’s more, an hour-long recording can be stored in a few KBs for future reference,” explains Vamsi Krishna.

Democratizing learning Today, in just over a year since the launch, over 66,500 hours of live online teachinglearning sessions have been completed on the platform. The startup has more than 30,000 registered students, students from more than 250 cities and towns in India and more than 200 qualified teachers on the platform. More than 300 sessions are conducted every day. From the new academic year (201617), Vedantu is expanding its offerings to include new boards [IB, IGCSE], more grades [ 4th & 5th], new subjects and languages. Keeping in mind the explosive growth of smartphones, Vedantu is aggressively working towards bringing the experience to mobile devices with teacher and student facing apps soon so that students in the remotest part of the country can have access to quality teachers and benefit from personalized teachinglearning. The firm is also in the process of developing an algorithm to assess quality of the live online sessions mathematically. The algorithm will help in monitoring session quality across thousands of sessions which would otherwise be impossible to track manually. It will not only help monitor session quality but also help teachers in improving their teaching style with useful feedback. srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

EVENT FORCEPOINT

DEFENDING THE CYBER FRONTIERS OF STATE ADMINISTRATION Express Cyber Security Series, Lucknow offered glimpses of the great potential that Uttar Pradesh offers and how enterprises can be made more secure BY MOHD UJALEY

Senior government officials and delegates attending the Express Cyber Security Series in Lucknow

ith the focus on cyber security, the first edition of Express Cyber Security Series, Lucknow was organized by Express Computer magazine in partnership with computer security software giant, Forcepoint India. Thought leaders, visionaries, policy makers and IT leaders from the state came together to discuss and debate the great potential that Uttar Pradesh offers and how they could be secured. While delivering his keynote address on the topic of “Leveraging technology to combat cyber crimes in the state,” Ranjan Dwivedi (IPS), Ex-Director General, UP Police highlighted some of the recent data breach cases and urged the state administration for sustained focus on cyber security. He said that the difference between the cyber and physical world had diminished, and hence government

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Surendra Singh, Country Director, Forcepoint India felicitating R K Tiwari, Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Uttar Pradesh

organizations needed to be more vigil about the data and information they have. “Looking at most of the cyber security cases, it is quite clear that breaches happen because of internal and external sources. That is why it is important for government departments to have a robust security framework that address both these challenges,” Dwivedi said. During his half an hour address, he also pointed out that most of the security solutions in the country are available only in English language. He said, with such a huge diversity of languages in India, it is imperative that security solution providers incorporate Indian languages in their security products. He gave an example of technology giants like Microsoft and Google, who have have in the recent past have renewed their focus on local languages. “India is a country of different languages. A high level of

awareness related to cyber security needs to be created therefore solution should be available in the language that people could understand,” said Dwivedi. On the shortage of security professional in government departments, he said, “It is time for the government to scale-up it resources to meet the challenge emanating from digital drive. This could only be addressed if security professionals becomes the part of the government or government gives training to its existing staff.” He urged to have 'made in India' indigenous security products in the security layer of government projects. Agreeing with the views of Dwivedi, the chief guest, R K Tiwari, Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Government of Uttar Pradesh said: “Government of Uttar Pradesh recognizes the need of adequate cyber security for ensuring security and safety of not only the JULY, 2016

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Data breaches happen due to internal or external sources.That is whygovernment departments need to have a robust security framework that addresses both these challenges Ranjan Dwivedi

We are using ITto make the administration quick, responsive, transparent, hassle-free and accessible,while reducing the inefficiencies and costs

Ex-Director General, UPPolice

R KTiwari

vital infrastructure but also critical data and information.” He informed that the state is very serious about cyber security and he regularly had meetings with members of NIC, SeMT on this topic. “Due to robustness of the IT infrastructure which embed security at different stages, we have fortunately been able to avert cases of cyber security in the state,” he said. Uttar Pradesh is amongst the few states in the country that has seen growth in electronic citizen services delivery. Various e-governance projects by the different departments in the state have been leveraging the advances in ICT to the benefit of common person especially the rural poor. “We are using IT to make the administration quick, responsive, transparent, hassle-free and accessible, while reducing the inefficiencies and costs,” said Tiwari. On the growing adoption of EXPRESS COMPUTER

Principal Secretary,Information Technology,Government of Uttar Pradesh

smartphone in the workplace, he was of the view that use of modern technology in day to day life is the reality. But as an organisation or an individual, one has to ensure safety, security of the data and information that are being generated in digital world. He said, “Through the creation of right kind of policy & regulations, better infrastructure and conducive environment, Uttar Pradesh is now making pioneering efforts to ensure cyber security for its tech-infrastructure.” A major attraction at the event was the “Expert Power Presentation on Cyber Security” by Forcepoint India team which was presented by Sanjeev Chauhan, Sr Sales Engineer and Harshil Doshi, Strategic Security Solutions Consulting. Both of them informed about different stages of a government project and how all the stages could be safeguarded. They were of the view that concept of security is

Securityhas become a 24x7 phenomena. Government organisations must step up.Theyshould have a strategyto defend,detect, decide,and defeat anysecuritythreat Sanjeev Chauhan Sr Sales Engineer, Forcepoint India

changing, they are no longer only about firewall or perimeter security. They said that security has become a 24x7 phenomena. “Government organizations must step-up,” said Sanjeev Chauhan, adding that Forcepoint 4D Security offers the strategy to defend, detect, decide and defeat any security threat. He explained that the Forcepoint solution provided a unified cloud-centric platform to defend against attacks, detect suspicious activity sooner, and give the context needed to decide what actions to take to defeat the attack and stop data theft. On the focus of Forcepoint’s platform, Harshil Doshi said that the focus was on insider threat protection, cloud data protection and network security. Government organizations can leverage these capabilities to safeguard themselves. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

INTERVIEW

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ANAND SUBRAMANIAN OLA

UNDERSTANDING LOCAL MARKET KEY TO WINNING CAB AGGREGATION GAME Ola has a few firsts on its name: be it the first in India to launch a mobile app to book a cab; booking autorickshaws on an app; operator model or an aggregation model. All these are market segments that Ola wants to create, having a grip over how transportation in India operates. On the same line, Ola recently launched ‘Ola Operator’, Abhishek Raval did a quick chat with Anand Subramanian, Sr. Director – Marketing Communications, Ola on a range of topics. The marketplace model in the cab aggregation space is large and awash with funds, coming into this business.Apart from having a smart technology platform, what’s required to win the game? Technology is just one element. The larger element is understanding of the local market. Ola is a homegrown and a local brand. We have pioneered various models - be it the operator model, aggregation model etc. We were the first aggregator to set shop in the country. Also the first to get a mobile app to book a cab and the first to book autorickshaws on a mobile app. All these were unthinkable. This is the crux. To play the game in consonance with how the local travel ecosystem is. This is the key differentiator. So, how can technology play the role in this background - to support the knowledge of the local conditions? In India, for example, the autorickshaw driver in Chennai can see his app in Tamil and a driver in Maharashtra in Marathi. We have customised languages basis the regional requirements. This comes from the understanding that literacy levels are low. The technology that we have built like GPS, navigation, mapping are all very intuitive. Someone who is not savvy, will not struggle with the phone. It is made so simple that the driver will find it 62

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enabled on a technology platform and each of these partnerships help us better understand the customer needs and business. Over time, we will be happy to work with these companies to figure out what the next customer need could be.

extremely easy to use. There are other innovations that we are working on in the Ola Innovation labs. Vehicle efficiency is a determinant of the earnings that Ola gets.Any plans of using technology to improve vehicle efficiency ? Ola doesn’t own any vehicles. It’s run by operators. We have partnerships with large car manufacturers. One of the recent being Nissan with whom we are working a lot on future vehicle platforms and the likes. Ola has recently launched the leasing subsidiary for Ola for drivers who may not want to take financing to buy a car can come to the Ola’s leasing subsidiary, take a car on lease, pay a monthly rental and give the car back or buy the car after three years for a nominal depreciated value. All this has been

Are you planning Siri like applications for the drivers ? The drivers are looking for a more touch feel experience even currently. All that he has to do is switch on the app, log in, it’s more or less touch free. The driver has to start the trip and stop the trip. However there is enough scope for innovation. Both for drivers and operators. What’s in the works at the Ola Innovation Labs ? There are ideas and innovations we are working on. At Ola, we have the Innovation Labs, with a team of 20-25 experts. We have implemented Autoconnect Wi-fi. Anytime, the customer board an Ola-prime or Ola Lux, the Wi-fi automatically connects without the need for log-in. We plan to take it to other modes of travel including Autos registered on the Ola platform. The second is improving experience on low network areas, which is good for customers and drivers. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

JULY, 2016

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