Express Computer (Vol.28, No.11) November, 2017

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EXPRESS COMPUTER AN INDIAN EXPRESS GROUP PUBLICATION

VOLUME NO. 28, NO.11, PAGES 16, NOVEMBER, 2017, ` 75

12 | EVENT BFSI Technology Conclave 2017

5 | FEATURE

6 | CASE STUDY

10 | NEWS ANALYSIS

10 | INTERVIEW

The state of Smart Cities in India

Why a national depository for academic records is an idea whose time has come

CtrlS rides high on cloud momentum in India

Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, APEITA

Samsung sharpens enterprise focus Through its innovative offerings, Samsung is establishing itself amongst enterprise customers as a focused partner in their mobility journey

Sukesh Jain, Vice President – Enterprise Business, Samsung India

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

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EXPRESS COMPUTER Vol 28. No. 11. November, 2017 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Editor Srikanth RP* Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Sandhya Michu Mumbai Nivedan Prakash, Abhishek Raval Bangalore Rachna Jha

COVER STORY Nivedan Prakash nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com

Samsung: Rise of a business brand

4 | Samsung sharpens enterprise focus

FEATURE

DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Vinayak Mestry Photo Editor Sandeep Patil

5 | The state of Smart Cities in India

MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West Prabhas Jha - North Kailash Purohit - South Debnarayan Dutta - East

CASE STUDY 6 | Why a national depository for academic records is an idea whose time has come

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OPINION 7 | Making India’s discoms smart with advance tech

NEWS ANALYSIS 10 | CtrlS rides high on cloud momentum in India

M

obility has become crucial for enterprises in order to avoid the risk of becoming obsolete. This is one transformative trend which will help make organizations much more competitive and successful in the market.

Nasscom estimates the global enterprise mobility market to be worth $140 billion a year by 2020.

According to IDC, in India alone, the enterprise mobility market is expected to touch $1.8 billion by 2017.

As a matter of fact, enterprise mobility has gone beyond discussion forums, and has already emerged

Samsung has tried to look at business enterprise needs and work out processes from the device or platform perspective in terms of integration of application through its APIs

as one of the top priorities for most organizations today, delivering results in terms of workforce mobilization and productivity enhancements, business process transformation, customer engagement, and delivering innovation. As per industry estimates, 71% of enterprises regard mobility

Prabhas Jha Mobile : +91 9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com Navneet Negi Mobile No. +91 8800523285 Email: navneet.negi@expressindia.com CHENNAI Kailash Purohit/Amit Kumar Tiwari 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 Kailash Purohit Mobile No. +91 9552537922, Email: kailash.purohit@expressindia.com Amit Kumar Tiwari

as a top priority.

Mobility-related investments have emerged as key fast-growing areas in terms of ICT deployment and investments, driven by the spiralling rise in tablet and smartphone shipments as well as a significant increase in data plan spending by India organizations.

In fact, mobility is driving digitization as well. Be it augmented reality, wearables, or Internet of Things. It is all about devices communicating.

Such wide adoption of enterprise mobility solutions in the country is doing wonders for global players like Samsung, which is benefitting immensely from the overall uptake at the business end. The company has clearly defined a roadmap for the enterprise business and is bringing out the latest in technology to address the burgeoning market requirements. Samsung's Knox, the defense grade security platform, is a classic example - a product that brings in security right from the hardware to the application layer. Its 'leasing program', in which the company gives its enterprise customers the flexibility of keeping the tablet or the mobile device on a per month usage basis and they get a refresh of it every 2 years, has put Samsung ahead in this domain. Samsung has also tried to look at business enterprise needs and work out processes from the device or platform perspective in terms of integration of application through its APIs. The setting up of a dedicated B2B enterprise team has also helped the company to bring more attention to the enterprise business and better handholding of customers.

As mobile devices have become the defacto platform today to share information and access corporate applications, Samsung has a huge opportunity to make rapid progress with its enterprise focus.

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INTERVIEW 10 | SA Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, APEITA

EVENT HITS 2017

8 | Digitalisation can take lead in improving clinical outcomes MICROSOFT INDIA 2017

11 | Express Digital Governance Series focuses on tech for effective governance BFSI TECHNOLOGY CONCLAVE 2017

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EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

4 | COVER STORY the end customer so that he does not need to carry multiple devices.”

Moreover, from the servicing standpoint, Samsung ensures a comprehensive and extended warranty up to 3 years (1 + 2) years warranty that is provided as a package. At some places, the company even provides pick-up and drop facility. “We have tried to look at the business enterprise needs and work out processes from the device or platform perspective in terms of integration of application through our APIs. Based on the feedback received in our journey over the last few years, we have tried to modify our go-to-market by bringing in these changes,” says Jain.

SAMSUNG SHARPENS ENTERPRISE FOCUS Through its innovative offerings, Samsung is establishing itself amongst enterprise customers as a focused partner in their mobility journey

Current penetration in the Indian market For Samsung’s enterprise business, BFSI as well as the micro-finance sectors are the biggest contributors to its growth in the country. Besides, it is focusing on education, government, FMCG, and the services industry like logistics, automotive, car rental, etc. in a big way.

We, at Samsung, have clearly defined a roadmap for the enterprise business.

Innovation continues to be the core of our business model Sukesh Jain Vice President – Enterprise Business, Samsung India

Sukesh Jain, Vice President – Enterprise Business, Samsung India

Nivedan Prakash nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com

‘B

orn in the mobility era’ – this is the way the world addresses the Indian market today. People here in India think of mobile first and this has transformed the domestic market. As of date, 80-85% usage of the Internet is taking place on mobile, which is opposite to that of a market like the US, where the Internet usage is far more prevalent on the PC. The US market is still a very advanced economy in terms of ‘e-tization’ of their services. But as far as the mobility piece is concerned, the end consumer in India is using the mobile as a far effective way to access the Internet.

Moreover, the Indian government’s push to the Digital India has also enhanced the usage of smartphones, as a lot of applications, digital initiatives, and e-services are today available on mobile devices. Another big thrust has been the roll out of Aadhaar.

With its one billion footprint in terms of biometric database available, it has been at the forefront of a lot of reform, both on the government as well as citizen side and speed of service delivery on the corporate side.

While the growth of mobile

phones has swayed the end consumer market in the country, the enterprise segment too has started adopting mobility solutions in a big way to transform their businesses.

Mobility and mobile solutions have now become a new go-tomarket in itself. In fact, from the enterprise perspective, it is seen as a new business model.

This has come as a big change in the last 12 to 18 months in the country, which has given an impetus to mobility at the core of business solutions or business centric services.

The global leader, Samsung, has benefitted immensely from this push or overall uptake both at the consumer as well at the business end. Apparently, the last year and half has been really exciting for Samsung’s enterprise business.

Sukesh Jain, Vice President – Enterprise Business, Samsung India, points out, “We, at Samsung, have clearly defined a roadmap for the enterprise business. Innovation continues to be the core of our business model. We are bringing out the latest in technology from the enterprise perspective and the best-inclass security, which is the biggest concern today. We have made a huge amount of dollars and man-days investment in the R&D piece. A lot of this helps us

to focus on B2B or enterprise side of the business by bringing in these core values.”

Fort Knox The first and the foremost concern for any enterprise today is the ‘security’, which is being addressed through Samsung’s Knox platform. Jain states that from the security perspective, its platform, Knox, is considered to be the defense grade security platform available for any enterprise or government body to use. The biggest advantage that Knox as a platform brings in is the security right from HW layer right upto Application Layer.

Knox Devices have multiple layers of security right from Hardware root of trust, Secure and Trusted Boot, Trustzone based Integrity Management, Security Enhancements from SE Android & Trustzone Based Security Services. This platform is today well recognized all across the world with certifications like FIPS, Common Criteria, etc. In fact, 29 countries have accepted it as best-in-class platform for their deployment.

The Knox platform brings in lots of loaded features to be able to customize & manage the device and secure it with fine granularity For example, taking control of hardware

keys, controlling hard and soft reset , playstore level controls , whitelisting and blacklisting Apps and URLs, Creating Advanced Kiosk Modes, to name a few.

“We have 5 R&D centers and 1 design center and 2 manufacturing units in India and part of that workforce is dedicated to help organizations do this kind of tasks. We help them with advanced APIs to integrate their applications with Knox features. This is the kind of infrastructure we have placed here in India,” says Jain.

Besides, the company comes across a lot of operational challenges on the customer side from the deployment standpoint. “One of the major challenges that enterprises face is ensuring that the right set of applications are preloaded and set in the right frame. We took this feedback and came out with a product which is based on cloud configuration and pushes all the required applications and policies changes to the device from the MDM perspective. The moment a person boots up his device and puts it up on data network the applications and policies get automatically downloaded and these cannot be deleted. Even if the device is reset, the next time it is booted up, same configuration gets

pushed again. This is great for enterprises as they don’t have to unbox the devices, side load all policies and applications and then distribute. In effect, a lot of time and cost savings. We have made sure that this bottleneck from the enterprise perspective is taken care efficiently without much intervention,” explains Jain.

In order to remain ahead of technology, the company has introduced a ‘leasing program’ in which it gives its enterprise customers the flexibility of keeping the tablet or the mobile device on a per month usage basis and they get a refresh of it every 2 years. With this, they do not invest in new devices and continue using the latest in technology.

He further states, “The other feedback was how the device can be customized to the customer requirements even from the hardware perspective.

In this case, we worked with our set of partners in which we have brought in an integrated device where a tablet or mobile would be at the core and along with it, we built a ruggedized environment, with options of an added printer, extra battery, a fingerprint scanner for biometric authentication, smart card reader etc. With this, we can customise the device according to the requirement of

“Government is a key vertical for us. With the government giving a major push to digitization, the various state governments and central agencies are leveraging mobility in a big way.

Government departments are looking for quality offerings as these solutions form an integral part of successful implementation of any project.

Our best-in-class offerings and customization capabilities make us a preferred choice. The success or failure of projects depends upon the end devices on which the applications run.

We are bringing comprehensive solution for the government sector. We have done projects for several govt. departments-,” adds Jain.

Earlier, Samsung used to be considered just as a consumer brand. But the company has come a long way in the enterprise segment as well.

Over the last 18 to 24 months, it has established itself by bringing in solutions like Knox and products like Iris or ruggedized tablets (exclusive for enterprise customers and not available for retail).

In order to address the burgeoning opportunities in the enterprise segment, the company has set up a dedicated B2B enterprise team. For instance, Jain’s team just focuses on selling to enterprise customers and the government.

This is unlike most of the other OEMs that have the same team that services both end customer and enterprise needs. This approach has helped Samsung to bring more attention to the enterprise business and better handholding of the customers.

Additionally, it has invested and created a ‘technical solutions team’ that works closely with the IT department of all the enterprises to ensure their technology needs are addressed “This brings the confidence of the enterprises that Samsung is well equipped from an enterprise solutions perspective. Now, the enterprises are accepting us as a ‘business brand’ too,” says Jain.

To address Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), company also runs a Corporate Purchase Program, a platform for corporate employees to

purchase Samsung products at a special discount along with various bundles and offers as a privilege.

The other thing that comes to the company’s favor is ‘aftersales service’. Currently, Samsung has 535 customer service vans catering to every nook and corner of India. With this, Samsung has the widest network of over 3000 service points across India. “Our focus and capability to handle services deep into a state also gives the confidence to the state government,” asserts Jain. As part of the enterprise business, Samsung has also invested in setting up a state-of-the-art ‘Enterprise Briefing Center’ at Gurgaon, wherein customers can get a look and feel of all its products, services, and solutions.

In partnership with solution providers Samsung works very closely with a strong partner ecosystem. On one side, it has a set of partners who help it to offer bundled devices to the customers. On the other hand, as a special program, it is working with all the major Software players/ ISVs of the country. Through a program, called SEAP (Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program), the company enrolls all the Software partners where they get privileged access to their wide range of SDKs & APIs and integrate their applications.

“When we rolled out the Samsung Iris tablet, we worked very closely with all the ISVs to ensure that the applications got integrated to the Iris tablet,” points out Jain.

The company has a separate team who only works on this relationship and manages the ISVs and system integrators.

“In this journey with ISVs, we have invested a lot of resources and time and effort from our end in order to ensure that ISVs develop their applications in the best possible manner. We do hold various workshops with ISVs at various cities wherein our R&D team is also involved, who give their inputs and training to ensure that they are up with the latest of what’s happening at our end. We do a lot of joint go-to-market and representation to the end customers. We always strive to create a win-win situation for both,” mentions Jain.

Wearables as part of the portfolio Samsung also offers wearables as part of its enterprise portfolio. This includes products like Gear VR, Gear S3 Watch, and Gear 360 camera which is able to record 360 degree view to be used in Gear virtual reality. As part of use cases, a lot of real estate companies are showing keenness on using Samsung’s Gear VR. There are classic business use cases that are coming up using its accessories.

Wearables are becoming a parallel story for the company.

Recently, Samsung has introduced a very unique solution - Samsung DeX with its Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphone and now with Galaxy Note8. It is a virtual reality platform where using the smartphone and a screen, one can actually do away with a laptop or a computer. With a Microsoft license on the mobile couple with wireless keyboard and mouse, one can use a phone on a DeX as a virtual desktop.

The road ahead Globally, 10% of the Samsung’s business comes from the enterprise and the company is constantly looking to increase this percentage year-on-year. “We would continue to focus on our core values, which are security and flexibility in terms of enterprise adoption. As time goes by, we will focus on ensuring that whatever advancements in technology are happening, are brought to India as they are taking place globally. We want to keep India at par with the rest of the world. We are focusing on ‘Make for India’ meeting the requirements here in the country,” concludes Jain.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

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FEATURE SMART CITIES IN INDIA

The state of Smart Cities in India

BY DECIDING TO focus on building Smart Cities, India has taken up a gigantic challenge of resolving legacy issues related to infrastructure Mohd Ujaley mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

A

bout 377 million Indians comprising 31.14% of the country’s population live in urban areas and this is projected to grow to about 600 million (40%) by 2031 and 850 million (50%) by 2051, says data from Census 2011.

Urbanization is a good thing as it improves the living standard but it also invites challenges, including meeting accelerated demand for basic services, infrastructure, jobs, land and affordable housing.

Although India lags behind in urbanization but whatever it has been able to achieve over the past years has led to increasing problem of housing, overcrowding in small houses, steady growth of slums and unplanned settlements and a huge effect on delivering basic civic services in urban areas.

This challenge can only be addressed with a multi-pronged approach that focuses on different aspects of urban life.

By launching programmes like Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY), Smart City Mission (SCM) and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Urban Transport, the government has shown its interests and zeal to overcome these challenges.

Most of these projects including Smart Cities are couple of years old and they are yet to deliver significant changes on the ground but experts acknowledge that a beginning has been made and it has great potential for future. At least in the Smart City arena, India has a chance to make the mark without trying to play catch-up as except few cities like Barcelona, few cities have truly gone smart.

“This is an ambitious and audacious goal of the government of setting up 100 smart cities, rejuvenation of 500 cities and housing for all.

Critical urban infrastructure is required in order to make the

SURAT

JAIPUR

BHUBANESWAR

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fter topping the Smart City Challenge competition, Bhubaneswar wants to retain its position with a robust implementation plan. It was also the first to constitute a special purpose vehicle (SPV) - Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL). For BSCL, a 16-member board of directors has been set up with representatives from various departments of the state government, one representative of the central government, and five independent directors.

The SPV will have an authorised capital of ` 500 crore (` 5 billion), divided into 50 million shares of ` 100 each. Of this, the state government and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation will have a share of ` 112.50 crore each, while Bhubaneswar Development Authority will contribute a share capital of ` 250 crore (` 2.5 billion). The smart city proposal of the city comprises two components - an area-based proposal for the development of Bhubaneswar Town Centre District (BTCD) and a pan-city proposal for Intelligent City Operations and Management Centre (ICOMC).

The BTCD plans to retrofit and redevelop 985 acres centred on the main railway station in the heart of the city to a vibrant 24x7 destination.

Bhubaneswar seems to be on track and going systematically.

urat is the second largest city of Gujarat. It had bagged the fourth rank under the Smart Cities Mission based on its proposal. Surat has divided the proposal into two parts, according to its mission guideline - pan-city development and area-based development. While pan-city development will cost around ` 795 crore, the area-based retrofitting carries a project cost of ` 1,802 crore, taking the total smart city project cost to ` 2,597 crore. Under the pan-city smart solution, the proposal looks to implement systems and services that cater to ‘transport, mobility and connectivity’.

These include the Surat Integrated Transport-Mobility Administration Centre, automatic fare collection system, S-Connect Card Management System, fibre-to-home WiFi connectivity and the SMAC Centre.

For area-based development, retrofitting smart solutions are to be implemented for 24x7 water supply, smart metering and quality, LED street lights with seasonal timers, use of renewable energy sources, logistic park, incubation centre, skywalks, smart parking, recycle/reuse of waste water, affordable housing under the Smart Cities Mission.

cover 100 cities and its duration will be five years (FY 2015-16 to FY 2019-20). The strategic components of the mission are city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment) and city extension (Greenfield development) plus a Pan-city initiative in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.

◗ In Stage 1, all states conveyed

the names of the city for project.

Those names were eviewed by the apex committee in Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) in August 2015 and a list of 98 cities based on the recommendations of states were shortlisted to participate in Stage 2 of the competition.

◗ In the Stage 2 of the competi-

tion, each of the potential Smart City had to prepare proposals for participation in the “City Challenge”. On the basis of their submission, 20 cities have been

A

KOCHI

PUNE

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ochi the largest urban agglomeration of Kerala. The city has witnessed considerable investment for industrial growth. Its ports operate as an international container transshipment terminal, houses oil refineries, and supports commercial maritime businesses. Kochi has been selected as the fifth city to be included in the scheme in the first stage a year and a half ago, but lot needs to be done. Works are progressing on the water transport system to link the city to Fort Kochi. The KMRL has been selected as the implementing agency for urban transport projects and the Kerala Water Authority for drinking water projects. Some key tenders have been done and there is likely to be visible progress very soon.

JAIPUR

P

une is the second largest city in Maharashtra and the ninth most-populous city in India. The metropolitan area consists of two municipal corporations (including Pune) and three cantonments. Owing to the growing number of industries in the region: the automotive sector being most prominent. The industrial township of Pimpri-Chinchwad, just north of Pune city, houses over 4000 manufacturing units that contributes to the city’s economy. Initially, Pune had planned 52 projects but later, it segregated it into 31 basket projects, small projects which could be done together. Not very fast but Pune is gradually implementing various projects.

SURAT PUNE

BHUBANESWAR

KOCHI

economy efficient. The process of building this urban infrastructure would lead to an explosive growth in the economy as the execution of the vision would entail large scale consumption of cement, metals, plastics, materials and services.

It would also lead to innovations and creation of spin-off technologies that would surely make India a global player in building future cities,” says Jaijit Bhattacharya, Partner Infrastructure and Government Services, KPMG India.

Bad roads, congested streets; no clean drinking water; garbage; unreliable public transportation; nonfunctional street-lights; crime

against women, old people and children; pollution; wrong utility bills; inefficient public grievance centre; and above all, a lack of accountability at the municipal administration are few of the problems with which people of an unplanned, fast growing city, whether in India, or across the globe, can relate.

“By deciding to focus on building Smart Cities, India has taken up this challenge. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought the focus on urban revitalization by means of the Smart Cities Mission. All the Indian cities have a desire to look at smart solutions to address these challenges,” says NSN Murty, Director & Leader,

KEY FACTS ABOUT SMART CITIES PROJECT ◗ The Smart Cities mission will

he Pink City stood on 3rd place in Smart Cities announced by the government. Rajasthan government had initiated the process of formation of separate company to implement the project. A special purpose vehicle (SPV) named Jaipur smart city limit was formed in March last year.

This SPV was made the nodal agency to take up works proposed under the smart city proposal. Jaipur aims to promote a clean and sustainable environment with the help of smart applications and solutions. Some work has already been started in the main city but lot more needs to be done.

selected. These 20 cities will first receive assistance from government.

◗ The mission is operated as a

centrally sponsored scheme (CSS) and the Central Government proposes to give financial support to the extent of ` 48,000 crores over five years i.e. on an average ` 100 crore per city per year. ` 2 crore per potential smart city, has already been released as an advance for preparation of SCP.

◗ The implementation of the Mission at the City level will be done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the purpose in the form of a company under the Companies Act and will be promoted by State/UT and ULB jointly having 50:50 equity shareholding. The prime reason for the creation of the SPV for Smart City Mission is to ensure operational independence and autonomy in decision making and Mission implemen-

tation. The funds provided by the GoI to SPV will be in the form of tied grants and kept in a separate grant fund. The SPV will also access/mobilize funds from other sources such as loans, user charges, taxes, surcharges etc.

◗ Under SCM guidelines, two

types of support have been envisaged: Technical assistance support for preparation of Smart City Proposal by hiring consulting firms or engaging with handholding agencies such as World Bank, ADB, GEF, USTDA, JICA, DFID, AFD, KfW and UN Habitat etc.

◗ Infusion of funds in the SPV

for implementation of projects from GoI and contribution by the sates will meet only a part of the project cost. Balance funds are expected to be mobilized from various sources including borrowings from financial institutions, bilateral and multilateral institutions, both domestic and external.

Smart Cities, PwC India.

“We have to look at smart solutions if we have to improve our cities,” says Milind Torawane, Municipal Commissioner, Surat. Surat is the second largest city in Gujarat. It has bagged the fourth rank under the Smart Cities Mission based on its proposal.

Agreeing with Torawane, Patna Municipal Commissioner Abhishek Singh says, "The development of smart cities will ensure that there is a decent quality of life for all citizens.

This will lead to higher productivity in the cities and consequently higher growth.”

He gave the example of Patna Municipal Corporation that has started using some element of smart technology to make the city smarter.

The question is, can the technology alone do it or do we have technological as well human resource capability both in government and private sector to make cities smart?

The sad answer is no and a lot needs to be done. The core infrastructure elements in a smart city would include adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, robust information technology, connectivity and digitalization, good governance, especially egovernance and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly and health and education.

Additionally, some smart solutions will be applied to infrastructure and services in area-based development in order to make them better. The

strategic components of the Smart City Mission are city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment) and city extension (Greenfield development) plus a Pan-city initiative in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.

They all need high level of expertise. Building capacity for 100 smart cities is not an easy task and most ambitious projects are delayed owing to lack of quality manpower, both at the centre and state levels.

Bhattacharya is of the view that this is really a challenging area given the fact that capacity can’t be built in a week or month or year. If you need engineers, those can only be built over a period of time but this is only possible with improvement of existing resources and aggressively focusing on capacity creation.

The other key challenge is financing smart cities. The government has assessed a percapita investment cost (PCIC) of ` 43,386 for a 20-year period.

Using an average figure of 1 million people in each of the 100 smart cities, the total estimate of investment requirements for the smart city comes to ` 7 lakh crore over 20 years (with an annual escalation of 10 per cent from 2009-20 to 2014-15). This translates into an annual requirement of ` 35,000 crore.

One is yet to see how these projects will be financed as the majority of project needs would move through complete private investment or through PPPs, said a note from Smart Cities Council India.

Also, most Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) are not financially self-sustainable and tariff levels fixed by the ULBs for providing services often do not match the cost. Even if

Our Prime Minister has brought the focus on urban revitalization by means of the Smart Cities Mission. All the Indian cities have a desire to look at smart solutions to address these challenges NSN Murty

The Smart Cities initiative would lead to innovations and creation of spin-off technologies that would surely make India a global player in building future cities Jaijit Bhattacharya

Director & Leader, Smart Cities, PwC India.

Partner - Infrastructure & Government Services, KPMG India

additional investments are recovered in a phased manner, inadequate cost recovery will lead to continued financial losses. Most ULBs have limited technical capacity to ensure timely and cost-effective implementation and subsequent operations and maintenance owing to limited recruitment over a number of years along with inability of the ULBs to attract best of talent at market competitive compensation rates.

In addition, there are challenges, on the part of clearance, governance and environment but these are administrative one’s which can be addressed with efficient leadership but capacity building and finance are something on which stakeholders will have to be innovative. Smart Cities are beyond technological intervention. It is a human project and technology can only

help in it but as projected, it can’t be an end itself.

Smart City Progress The government of India aims to build Smart Cities in phased manner. The plan is to do it in two ways – by making towns as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernizing existing small and mid-sized cities. Of the list of 100 towns and cities, 20 cities has already been chosen for the smart city project. These 20 cities will be the first to receive funds, thus kick starting the process of developing them into Smart Cities. The next two years will see the inclusion of 40 and 38 cities, respectively. Of the 100 cities and towns that will graduate into Smart Cities after five years – 24 are capital cities, another 24 are business and industrial centres, 18 are culture and tourism influenced areas, 5 are port cities and 3 are education and health care hubs.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

6 |CASE STUDY

Why a national depository for academic records is an idea whose time has come THE NATIONAL ACADEMIC DEPOSITORY (NAD) will be used to hold academic awards i.e. mark sheets, convocation certificates, transfer certificates, in a dematerialized form to enable electronic and authentic verification by institutions, employers and other verification agencies

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he Finance Minister had announced in his budget speech for 2016-17 about the setting up of an Academic Depository on the pattern of a Securities Depository. The Government of India under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) / University Grants Commission (UGC) subsequently nominated CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) to operate the National Academic Depository (NAD) which would be used to hold academic awards i.e. mark sheets, convocation certificates, transfer certificates, issued by the academic institutions making it mandatory for them to participate in the dematerialization of student academic records and enable electronic and authentic verification of the same by institutions, employers and other verification agencies.

NAD would be available online 24×7 access to the stakeholders. The experience of

CDSL running a securities depository for nearly 20 years was considered relevant while deciding to award the academic depository project. The President of India formally inaugurated the project on July 9, 2017 in a grand function at New Delhi.

The NAD project is planned to cover around 1500 institutions which constitute 40,000 colleges. In addition, all central and state board results (10th and 12th standard) and their constituent schools/colleges will come under the NAD project. “We have as on date signed up over 150 academic institutions and Boards who are in various stages of uploading / updating awards in the electronic form in the NAD system. We have a cumulative count of nearly three lakh awards in the system, which can be verified by the institutions / companies who are registered with us,” says Joydeep Dutta, Executive Director and Group CTO, CDSL.

The important thing about this project is that the certificate / award data that is available on the platform is digitally signed and pre-verified, with the verifiers having to go no further than download / peruse the record and treat the same as verified, after the student has given his consent and the verification fees have been paid through the payment gateway.

The type of verifiers can be employers, background checkers, academic institutions, banks, visa consulates, evaluation bodies, etc. The verification can be initiated by both domestic and foreign verifiers after they are registered in the NAD system.

The fees collected are usually higher for foreign verifiers and decided by the respective academic institutions.

Some of the various types of awards that can be lodged in the system are as follows. ◗ Degree Certificates ◗ Diploma Certificates ◗ Mark sheets

◗ ◗ ◗ ◗

The NAD project is planned to cover around 1500 institutions which constitute 40,000 colleges. In addition, all central and state board results (10th and 12th standard) and their constituent schools/colleges will come under the NAD project Joydeep Dutta Executive Director & Group CTO, CDSL

Provisional Certificates Skill Certificates Transcripts Need for NAD

This initiative has been a long felt need and brings together institutions at disparate levels of IT maturity to participate in the national digital academic depository ecosystem. Academic institutions need not invest in high end IT infrastructure and software and have their systems available 24×7 and internet facing. Therefore, cyber security compliance is less of a worry to the academic institution.

The entire verification request process, namely request by verification agency, consent by student, payment for verification services and showing the final image to the verifier can be achieved in minutes which could take up to a month if the verifier is in another location and more if in another country. Moreover, the

student is able to view all his academic records on one platform.

Other stakeholders The new projects, business development and operations were primarily involved in the NAD project. There were multiple discussions with the ministry and UGC during the concept and planning phase.

A technical committee with independent experts was also set up by the ministry to discuss technical challenges and issues.

The new projects and IT team were instrumental in conceptualizing the business functionality and technical specifications of the project.

Inputs and learnings from operations were useful in replicating some of the practices from the securities depository business.

Awareness sessions in conjunction with the MHRD/UGC officials have been conducted in different cities across the length and breadth of the country, where the dean and registrars of the institutions and other officials have been invited to introduce the concept of NAD and explain how the entire process of award lodging, verification and other services will work. The legal department was involved in preparing and validating the SLA and NDA documents between CVL and the institutions, and separately between CVL and the ministry.

This was to ensure that all stakeholder responsibilities and expectations were documented. The business development team contacted the institutions and front-ended the relationship before the IT team started engaging with them for technical discussions.

Key benefits ◗ Convenience and efficiency: 24×7 uptime and near real-time academic record verification irrespective of stakeholder location resulting in convenience to the student and verifiers. ◗ Security: Digitally signed institution authenticated awards available online. Near total elimination of fake and forged awards. There is no risk of loss of physical awards since the same is available online and no need to have attested copies.

◗ Cost savings: Storage of physical records can be reduced or nearly eliminated since the same is online. No need for institutions to have IT infrastructure with historical data by offloading it to the depository database. Freeing up of administrative staff of manually serving students for issuing, attesting or verifying academic awards.

NAD is expected to achieve the following benefits: ◗ Central platform for academic institutions to issue and manage digital academic awards ◗ Enhance efficiency in providing services to NAD stakeholders ◗ For students – secure, convenient to receive, store their academic awards and share with authorized users for verification ◗ For verifiers – easily, quickly, securely verify academic awards online, post student consent ◗ Strong deterrence to fake and forged awards – mitigates reputational risk ◗ Eliminate undesirable practices such as corruption, manipulation of records, etc. and brings in transparency ◗ Eliminate corruption of touts and agents currently facilitating services ◗ Reduce administrative work of universities due to automation of manual work ◗ Reduce staff headcount for some of the work which will get automated resulting in cost savings ◗ Reduce the need to store physical records once uploaded in NAD system ◗ NAD will provide print services at competitive rates eliminating the need to appoint print vendor ◗ In future some institutions may stop printing physical awards altogether to further save cost ◗ Robust process of student identification and certificate mapping ◗ Payment gateway integration for verification fee collection ◗ Provide unified platform for grievance lodging and the redressal mechanism ◗ Help in education policy formulation with accurate MIS/analytics.

As told to Abhishek Raval

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

|7

OPINION Raman Bhushan, Partner, Data & Analytics, PwC India

Making India’s discoms smart with advance tech time analytics can be used to alert customers and the Discom on abnormal usage spikes due to natural or unnatural circumstances.

Utilities could look at a winwin for the customers and themselves by charging a fee for the VAS services like power on demand for commercial consumers. The consumer would be empowered to rationalize expenses on electricity by planning usage and eliminate the need for utilities to purchase expensive power during peak hours.

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ig Data & Advanced Analytics has been delivering significant value and creating competitive advantage for organisations across industries. Although data analytics is not new to the Discoms industry, which has long used spreadsheets to analyse information, organisations are increasingly looking to harness the benefits of Big Data and Advanced Analytics across the value chain.

The Discoms sector in India has witnessed poor financial and operational health primarily due to subsidised pricing, electricity theft,

inefficient billing and collection and below average quality of network infrastructure. In the recent past, the Government of India has launched several schemes such as IPDS, DDUGJY and UDAY to assist distribution utilities in improving operational and financial efficiency and to undertake network expansion and modernisation. All of these initiatives entail expansion of data sources from consumers, assets and third party data, coupled with the adoption of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and other asset sensors. With this

data foundation in place, utilities can look at applying analytics for strategic planning, optimising operations, managing assets, reducing operational costs and improving the customer experience.

Our global experience shows that optimal use of analytics within a smart grid program can help utilities: ◗ Improve customer relationships and enhance the revenue stream through more regular and targeted demand response programs, which boosts customer loyalty and minimizes wasted spend. Real

◗ Reduce power procurement cost. Power procurement costs comprise 75% to 80% of the costs of a distribution utility and thus there is a potential for huge savings via improvement in forecasting accuracy and developing optimised portfolios. A Demand Forecasting and

Power portfolio analytics solution would help provide on a real-time basis for every perdefined interval the forecasted energy demand, projected availability from multiple sources (own sources, central sources, captive power plants), prevailing grid frequency and frequency trend analysis for undertaking power purchase decisions. As electricity markets deregulate further, this solution will enable Discoms to optimise the power procurement costs and drive long term financial viability. ◗ Achieve greater network reliability and resilience, with real-time and GIS, automated updates about grid/equipment status and operations through IoT analytics. Faults and outages can be isolated and addressed more quickly and effectively. Further, data on

All of these initiatives entail expansion of data sources from consumers, assets and third party data, coupled with the adoption of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and other asset sensors. With this data foundation in place, utilities can look at applying analytics for strategic planning, optimising operations, managing assets, reducing operational costs and improving the customer experience

performance of equipment, equipment lifecycle stage, and sub-component level failure history can be used to suggest prioritisation of preventive maintenance activities.

Predicting asset failures before they occur helps in enhanced asset productivity and provides a better customer experience. ◗ Generate value (revenue) from core assets like customer data. Utilities have rich consumer data at their disposal. Data insights from the consumer load capacity, consumption, etc. can help act as a proxy for the type of assets being used by the consumer. Electronics players can use this data for targeted customer programs.

Data around electricity consumption history and bill payment history would be a good and reliable supplement to the banks and other lending institutes in understanding the paying capacity and credit worthiness of an entity and identification of prospects. ◗ Enhance environmental performance and compliance, by enabling more effective tracking of power supply and demand, and incorporation of renewable energy sources into the grid. ◗ Protect revenues and reduce commercial losses by deploying Theft and Tamper

Detection Analytics Solutions.

The solution would read data from the meters, related read events and integrate with geospatial data to analyse the work orders with tamper events to derive insights around the tamper and theft incidents.

For Indian Discoms looking to realize the true value of advanced analytics, they should consider the following points: ◗ Design analytical objectives in line with business processes that can help improve efficiency and achieve business objectives ◗ Deploy analytics infrastructure that allows them to generate useful insights quickly, with modular architecture to ensure lower cost, flexibility and scalability for future use cases. ◗ Partner with analytics experts in conjunction with inhouse capability and capacity building to jump start the journey and drive business outcomes. ◗ Leverage the leading practices of other industries such as Telecommunications and Retail that face similar challenges in designing architectures to support lowlatency analytics.

The author is Partner, Raman Bhushan, Partner, Data & Analytics, PwC India Advanced Analytics & Data Sciences, PwC India

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

8 | EVENT HITS 2017

Digitalisation can take lead in improving clinical outcomes THE 2ND EDITION of the Hospital Information Technology Senate (HITS) in Hyderabad saw the presence of 100+ Hospital IT professionals.

HITS was organised along with the Healthcare Senate, which discussed the issues, opportunities and the solutions to the challenges facing the healthcare sector in India. HITS, this year emerged as a democratic platform, wherein many panel discussions and workshops gave an opportunity for the audience to raise issues of critical importance. A number of suggestions were discussed and shared with Industry associations like CHIME, HIMSS and Hospital Tech Association

Annie Mathew, President, (HIMSS APAC India Chapter), Niranjan K Ramakrishnan, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Chief Information Officer, Apollo Hospitals

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Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals

Annie Mathew, President, (HIMSS APAC India Chapter), Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Chief Information Officer, Apollo Hospitals, Niranjan K Ramakrishnan, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Global

Girish Koppar, Senior Manager- IT, Lilavati Hospital & Research Center; Mahesh Shinde, Director IT & Telecom, Hinduja Hospital; Ravishankar Sankeshwar, CIO, KLE Hospital; Atul Umak, DGM- IT, Hiranandani Hospital; Niranjan K Ramakrishnan, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

he conference kicked off with the keynote from Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals. He introduced the organisation CHIME to the audience. The objective is to bring together the best minds in the hospital Information Technology space. There are healthcare professionals in the Industry who are not operating for the love of it but just happen to be doing their current jobs due to various reasons. So, it’s important that the professionals who love their jobs and have the passion for it and are talented come together. CHIME is a platform for them.

The emergence of digital in healthcare happened post the financial crises. In that period, companies either dwindled or shrunk. Efficiency became important and digital came up as an answer.

Moreover, the digital technologies also provide profitability.

Healthcare has to be accessible at a reasonable cost. Digital makes it possible.

There are various online courses also, which are now becoming available, for healthcare professionals in every stream of the different kind of treatments like Ayurveda, Yunani, homeopathy etc.

The concept of connected healthcare and health empowerment are empowering patients to access services in a simplified form, whenever they want and at an affordable cost using digital technologies. Using data analytics, public health records (PHR) can be created to derive knowledge, which can then result in efficient diagnosis and treatment.

Digital also allows efficient working of the internal processes in the hospital. The work processes can be better streamlined using IT and associated digital technologies.

Panel discussions: The Healthcare Information technology Senate had three panel discussions including one Unconference. The first panel was on: ‘The roadmap to digization: Step by step best practices on the path to digitization’. The following CIO members from CHIME,

participated: Girish Kulkarni Chairperson, CHIME India; Veneeth Purushothaman, CIO, Fortis Hospitals; K V Kumar, CIO, Narayana Hospitals, Board Member CHIME India; Inder Davalur - Group CIO, KIMS Hospitals, Hyderabad; Annie Mathew, President, HIMSS APAC India Chapter).

Following points were discussed in the panel: ◗ Importance of defining with employees on what is transformation and what is routine ◗ Role of digital in delivering affordable healthcare ◗ Healthcare providers need to adjust to the regulatory regime change ◗ IT guiding principles vRoI from IT is important not only from a returns standpoint but also how does it enables compliance, simplifying backend

◗ Standards for selecting the best HIS solution The Hospital Tech association launched their app at the conference. The app is a knowledge base for hospital IT related topics.

The HIMSS association did a workshop on ‘EMRAM as an EMR adoption model’. HIMSS acts as a missing link between the healthcare and IT. It’s a global not for profit association. It focusses on healthcare related education due to the lack of skilled resources.

EMRAM is an EMR adoption model that prescribes the benchmarks of various hospital related processes. It helps the hospitals to gauge where do they stand in terms of the various processes compared to their peers. EMRAM certification requires the hospitals to pass 8 different levels.

A range of topics were presented by Hospital CIOs: ◗ ROI from digital healthcare: K V Kumar, CIO, Narayana Hospitals, Board Member, CHiME

processes, ensuring clinical outcomes The second panel was in the form of an Unconference.

The members from the hospital Tech association discussed the challenges and suggestions put forth by the audience. Niranjan K Ramakrishnan, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital; Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Hospital and Girish V Koppar, Senior Manager-IT, Lilavati Hospital & Research Center moderated the discussion.

Following are the takeaways: ◗ There are inconsistencies in the issues discussed at Industry forums and on the ground situation ◗ In a recent survey done by Hospital tech association, 85% respondents said, IT adoption is a key problem in hospitals ◗ One of the members from the audience suggested that NABH should come up with guidelines for standards in healthcare ◗ Can Aadhaar be used for patient registration for identification ◗ Group purchase of software solutions

India ◗ Digitization of Manual MRD Records: Ravishankar Sankeshwar, CIO, KLE Hospital ◗ Digital Healthcare & Medical Records: Dr P V Battalwar, Additional Medical Superintendent, Lilavati Hospital & Research Center The CXOs participating in the power discussion hosted

by Sify shared the challenges they face in terms of IT. Subsequently, various angles were shared by the panelists and Sify on how the cloud technology can solve the painpoints.

Some are mentioned below: ◗ One of the CXOs spoke about the issues on the data front. Preserving, optimising and retrieval of data is a challenge. ◗ IT can play a role in reducing the time of the patients and internal users of IT systems at the hospitals.

For e.g. the HIS at times hasnt been successful in reducing the painpoints of the doctors. ◗ Disparate IT systems do not talk to each other and are not

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

|9

EVENT

compatible, so there should be a common platform that allows different technologies to work seamlessly. ◗ Hospitals should prioritise in terms of what they want to achieve and accordingly how IT can play a role. At times, the perception is that IT has a magic wand.

The case for cloud computing Anindya Sen, Transformation – Evangelist, Sales & Marketing, Sify Technologies, spoke extensively on how cloud can solve various challenges faced not only by the IT function but also the functions in the hospitals. He started with a specific example of the cloud implementation for the radiology department at Cancer Treatment Services International (CTSI). In each of the twelve CTSI hospitals, which were hitherto running on separate IT systems, were now completely moved on cloud. The data was now directly fed to the radiology departments of these twelve hospitals. It helped radiologists to serve the patients by doing targeted radiation.

One of the panelists asked about how cloud can reduce cost for the organisations.

Cloud can significantly slash costs for companies who want to serve multiple locations using the cloud technology. However if the cloud has to be used for a single location, the cost advantage might not fructify however the benefits of cloud beyond cost parameters only were discussed for such scenarios.

A specific discussion happened in terms of healthcare industry where inspite of adopting Cloud, the IT team still has a task at hand in managing end points, their networking , etc. Network-asa-service is a relevant example in this case was discussed to take the pain away from internal network management. Sify has provided Network as a service to many companies using the cloud model. All of these companies have a wide geographical presence.

The panelists were of the consensus that different components of IT like networks, applications, different patient systems etc on cloud hosted by a single CSP, who partners with

different domain experts and partners can unleash the potential that cloud has to offer. Sify explained a case study of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL).

Sify has hosted the IT infrastructure, end-to-end on cloud, coupled with Sify partnering with the right domain experts and also others for all the various components of the IT infrastructure be it network, security, antivirus etc. The customer pays sify on per bill generated for customer. There was wide consensus on business outcome based

KEY TAKEAWAYS ◗ There are inconsistencies in

the issues discussed at Industry forums and on the ground situation

◗ In a recent survey done by

Hospital tech association, 85% respondents said, IT adoption is a key problem in hospitals

◗ Group purchase of software solutions

◗ Standards for selecting the best HIS solution

◗ RoI from IT is important not

only from a returns standpoint but also how does it enable compliance, simplifying backend processes, ensuring clinical outcomes

engagement such that the CIO is able to concentrate on the innovation. Various models like per bed, per patient were discussed.

The trust factor is important. There is hesitance in the minds of the CIOs if the data can remain secure with the CSP. There is also a lot of potential waiting to be tapped in the on-premise cloud space.

On premise cloud fits well to companies who have to provide IT resources heavily to inside their organisation. IT and FMCG companies are a nice fit. Sify provides their infrastructure and services to these companies. This model was suggested by panel members specifically for concentrated IT landscapes.

With global issues like Global warming, floods are becoming more frequent and thus the availability of systems can get affected. One of the panelists spoke about how during the Chennai

floods, because the systems were hosted in one place in Chennai, the hospitals in other cities were also affected however in one of the similar instances of floods, this was avoided because now the systems were working on cloud. This brings in the case for DR as a service. Cloud can also be helpful in bringing in innovation in IT processes.

The potential of telemedicine Telemedicine has not been able to take off in India and the reasons to which were discussed. Various suggestions on how telemedicine can be made more reasonable for the medical community and patients alike.

One of the reasons, as a panelist claimed, that was not allowing telemedicine to take off is there is no certainty on who will bear the cost. It works for the government, who pays for it entirely however for private hospitals, there is no business model.

Notwithstanding, telemedicine can be useful for patient scheduling, touchpoints, delivering care and administration process.

There was also a broad consensus that telemedicine can be tremendously beneficial for secondary care i.e once the patient has visited the doctor personally and his case is well understood by the doctor, the patient need not visit him the next time. The treatment can happen using telemedicine unless it is absolutely necessary. So the school of the thought in the healthcare industry about the necessity to give the touch and feel for the patient is reducing and is a myth. With IoT technologies, the medical devices are also getting connected and this can be a contributing factor for the emergence of telemedicine in India.

Conclusion On the whole it was a good participative discussion where the various points of view from the Business side, IT side also from the service provider angle were discussed. Obstacles as well as advantages for adopting an agile cloud based model were deliberated upon and a need for business outcome based model to help IT and business alike was unanimously agreed upon.

Anindya Sen, Transformation Evangelist- AVP, Sify Technologies

Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Global

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

10 | NEWS ANALYSIS

CtrlS rides high on cloud momentum in India $559 million in 2017

In India, traditional data center outsourcing is forecast to reach $559 million in 2017

$677 million in 2017

Cloud infrastructure as a service spending will total $677 million this year.

THE customer base of Ctrls has grown from 1,000 in 2012 to 3,500 in 2016, with a CAGR growth of 47% over the last five years Srikanth R P srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

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ushed by an aggressive government, India Inc is in the midst of a huge digital transformational wave. Almost every company in every sector is using digital technologies to improve competitiveness. This is accelerating demand for data center specialist players such as CtrlS, which is increasingly

seeing a huge rise in demand from almost every segment.

Says Sridhar P, Founder & CEO, CtrlS, “Across India, we are seeing huge demand from every sector – be it the banking sector, the insurance sector or the manufacturing sector.

Fintech, in particular, has been a huge area of growth. Today, everyone believes in the cloud story.”

With the rise in digitization especially in the BFSI sector, banking and insurance firms

are using the cloud more aggressively for rolling out new products. CtrlS has been a huge beneficiary of the rising interest in cloud related deployments, with its customer base growing from 1,000 in 2012 to 3,500 by 2016, and the company growing at a CAGR of 47% over the last five years.

In a market which is intensely competitive, CtrlS has invested in creating its own IP. This has helped the firm create its own niche. For example, CtrlS has created a product called ‘Bank in a Box’, which has received good response from the market. “We currently serve approximately ten banks through the banking

community cloud. This product has been extremely well received,” says Sridhar.

Other products which have received good traction in the market include offerings such as Cloud4C (The world’s 1st Tier4 cloud designed by CtrlS’ R&D team), Community Cloud (For Banks, Government, SAP) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). CtrlS has also forged important partnerships with global leaders such as SAP. For example, SAP has signed a partnership with CtrlS to enhance the availability of SAP HANA Enterprise cloud services in the Asia Pacific region. The partnership with CtrlS gives SAP the capability

to broaden its cloud offerings across the region. What’s noteworthy is that CtrlS is one of the select few partners delivering cloud infrastructure for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

With the focus on enterprise security growing, CtrlS has found demand for its managed security services accelerating.

“We are managing approximately 100,000 events per second and 10,000 devices in our security practice,” states Sridhar.

Sridhar believes that the market is still huge and unexplored as there are still many SMBs who want to deploy the best IT infrastructure but do not want

Across India, we are seeing huge demand from every sector – be it the banking sector, the insurance sector or the manufacturing sector. Fintech, in particular, has been a huge area of growth.

Today, everyone believes in the cloud story Sridhar P Founder & CEO, CtrlS

to spend the same amount of money in capital expenditure.

This data is corroborated by research from independent analyst firms such as Gartner, which state that cloud IaaS will exceed traditional data center outsourcing spend in India during 2017. In India, traditional data center outsourcing is forecast to reach $559 million in 2017, while cloud infrastructure as a service spending will total $677 million this year. Gartner has also predicted that by 2021, cloud compute and storage as a service will be nearly three times that of traditional data center outsourcing in terms of spending in India.

INTERVIEW

“We aim to create IoT hubs in major towns of Andhra Pradesh” AP ELECTRONICS AND IT Agency (APEITA) promotes electronics and IT industry in Andhra Pradesh. The agency is entrusted with designing blueprints for establishing IT hubs at selected locations with plans to promote the state among the top IT and electronics manufacturing companies globally. SA Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, APEITA, in a conversation with Ankush Kumar, shares key insights on why the state is focusing on startups for its development. Edited Excerpts: Andhra has been the first state to have a draft policy on Internet of Things (IoT).

What are the policy objectives and some of the innovative projects initiated by the government so far?

Through our IoT policy, we propose to create or promote at least 10 IoT hubs in major towns in the state, either by the government or through private efforts. The IoT hubs shall have world-class physical and social infrastructure.

Wherever we have manual intervention, we are trying to replace it with IoT. The PDS was the first project and similarly the medicine dispersal has been completely automated. A patient can now see the medicines that he has been given along with details of the exact dosage. The third important project was the monitoring of soil moisture, vibrations, earth density and pests. This was done to detect dangerous patterns in land conditions and create an online update mechanism for farmers. We are also capturing satellite images to give the projections to the farmers and guide them to plant the kind of crops that are suitable according to the conditions. We have geo-tagged the water bodies in the state to monitor it over a period of time. This helps in minimizing the risks of pilferage and encroachment.

The state has a big emphasis on startups. How is the state government helping the startups in finding a foothold in the initial years ?

For startups, we have a scheme called Suo Moto proposals. If a company has a product which is working and it has got an application to the Government of AP then the government takes it to the respective department for trial.

Any startup/ MSME / enthusiastic first generation technocrat / entrepreneur from Andhra Pradesh, with an annual turnover between `50 lakhs and `25 crores, in electronics and IT sectors can apply with a Suo Moto proposal under this category. The companies outside Andhra Pradesh can also apply under this scheme and will be evaluated by the evaluation committee. If their product / solution is selected and they do not have a presence in AP, they can open a development center in Andhra Pradesh. Assistance under this scheme will be provided only on opening of such development.

Can you give us an example of any startup project which is innovative?

The water level monitoring system is developed by a company called Vassar Labs.

They were initially given 10 km stretch to work on and display

their potential. And when they were successful, they were given the project across the length of the river. So there are approximately 2000 to 3000 sensors working. The solution provides near real-time visibility into the respective waterbody, so that a water balance sheet can be prepared.

IoT is a key technology which is leveraged to get real-time visibility and accountability into last mile processes. All the major water assets are planned to be equipped with IoT water sensors to transmit information regarding level and flow of water in real-time. All this information will be consolidated in a cloud database to provide real-time dashboards and decision support systems to help authorities in taking better decisions.

How are these startups transforming the healthcare sector of the state. Could you substantiate your view point with few examples?

There is a startup in Vizag called Medic that has developed an application where they integrate the local doctors, the pharmacies and ambulances together. This application is really helpful in getting immediate medical care. In emergency cases, one can go to this application and check for the nearby doctor to get first

patient’s waiting time is minimized.

aid. The app can facilitate online appointments for doctors, diagnostic and medical shop services and can also be accessed in Telugu language.

It can also give hospital information online like number of beds available, insurance providers that have partnered with the hospital, emergency services, 24/7 ambulance services availability, blood bank information etc, apart from basic hospital information such as doctor’s appointment.

There is another application called Health Saathi, which provides personalized preventive healthcare assessment to parents for their children depending on the age.

The app also provides homebased services such as genetic tests, child care and elder care for residents of Vizag. It helps in getting the exact time slot for the appointment so that the

Tell us about your startup policy 2014-2020. What kind of infrastructure has been planned so far for the startups?

As per our startup policy, we have retained professional incubators instead of the government dealing with the startups directly. Incubation centers at Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Tirupati have been established which offer plug-and-play facility to encourage fledgling entrepreneurs. We have built our own space for incubators including the building of a complete infrastructure. We also pay `12,500 per startup for their expenses every month. The job of the incubator is to choose the best startup and incubate them without letting them to spend anything from their own pocket. So for the first six months, we do not take any money from the startup. If they start to grow, then the next six months, we take a marginal fee. We have about 17 startups in Tirupati that are predominantly focusing on hardware and software. There are about 13 startups in Vizag which are mainly into software and healthcare. And in Kakinada, we have two companies. We mainly see

students coming forward for creating startups in incubators.

How is the plan in the fintech space shaping up?

Our focus on fintech has really given us good response.

We aim for a self-sustainable global fintech ecosystem that focuses on converging finance and technology to create large avenues of growth through industry-enablers, world-class infrastructure, entrepreneurship and innovation.

The state government has also come up with a separate cyber security policy. What are the key aspects of the policy and the long run perspective?

Our cyber security policy is built on three levels - citizen level, organization level, and government level. The vision of the Andhra Pradesh Cyber Security Policy is to create a robust cyber ecosystem, wherein the citizens transact online securely and take steps to protect their identity, privacy and finances online. The businesses conduct their operations without any disruption or damage and the government ensures that its data and ICT systems are secure.

With the increase in digital connectivity and

demonetization, cyber security becomes a crucial element for India. A global research lab on cyber security is coming up with involvement of experts in Vizag.

We are planning to set up this cyber security lab in Tirupati, which will be equipped with the latest gadgets to carry out investigations and advanced research facilities. In the long run, this facility will be used to test the products.

The state has also introduced the AP Fibernet project. How do you think the project can be helpful to the startups?

We are also guiding the startups as to how they can monetize the AP Fibernet infrastructure effectively. A Fibernet can give them internet, cable, setup box, telephone cable and IP TV. For instance, one can start offering home security services. Small hotels can now use the Fibernet to use multiple services. As a backbone and infrastructure, the value added services on the Fibernet is going to be the biggest business for startups. Like rural BPO, they can put a VoiP PBX and can start the service without investing on an expensive infrastructure. If you have a cloud based exchange mechanism, it is easy to take 30 connections to start your own BPO.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

|11

EVENT

Express Digital Governance Series focuses on tech for effective governance THE EXPRESS DIGITAL GOVERNANCE SERIES, organized by Express Computer and Microsoft India focused on India’s two crucial states – Punjab and Haryana and highlighted how technology can help them in overhauling the existing infrastructure Mohd Ujaley mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

W

ith the focus on ‘Technologies for Effective Governance’, the Chandigarh edition of ‘Express Digital Governance Series’, was organized by Express Computer in partnership with technology giant, Microsoft India. Thought leaders, visionaries, policy makers and IT leaders from the state came together to discuss and debate the great potential that India’s two crucial states – Punjab and Haryana offered and how modern day digital transformation can help in improving the existing infrastructure for them.

The conference began with the keynote address from Dr Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi, Additional Chief Secretary – Home, Government of Punjab.

He spoke in detail about the impact of emerging technologies on life of people and how in 5 to 8 years, things will completely change. In his speech, Dr Kalsi highlighted how emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence could have a major impact on governance. He was of the view that governments have to re-imagine their role in the light of automation of services, which will happen because of proliferation of emerging technologies.

Dr Kalsi warned that with proliferation of technology, the vector for cyber-attacks will also increase. Hence, companies in both the government and enterprise sector should adequately invest in the capacity building of cyber experts in the country.

“This is one area that has become a differentiator and going forward, the criticality will further increase, as people’s reliance on technology goes up. The exposure of personal data will also increase,” he said.

On the shortage of security professionals in government departments, he was of the view that it is time for the government to scale-up its resources to meet the challenges emanating from the digital drive of the government.

This could only be addressed if security professionals becomes the part of the government or government gives training to its existing staff.

The chief guest of the programme, Captain Abhimanyu Singh, Minister for Finance, Government of Haryana concurred the possibilities and challenges raised by Dr Kalsi. During his address, Captain Abhimanyu not only focused on emerging technologies but he also emphasized on the reality at the ground level. He agreed with Dr Kalsi that the future is going to be changed by technology intervention.

Hence, the governments need to think about the modern way of engaging with citizens. In fact, he quoted Aristotle to emphasize his point that governance is changing and technology is going to change it much faster.

Making reference to the government’s Aadhaar programme, he said that more

than billion people have the Aadhaar number and it offers tremendous opportunity to the government to efficiently roll out welfare schemes. He said that the best part of UIDAI is that it has enrolled more than billion people with the speed which has never been done before.

Captain Abhimanyu also highlighted the challenges of connecting the last mile. He said emerging technologies are useless if we are not able to create basic infrastructure to connect people. Sharing the example from his own constituency, which is 100% rural, he said that it is almost impossible for him to hire a MBBS doctor for the area. Even if he is able to get one, within a few weeks, people manage to get a transfer as nobody wants to serve in rural areas. He said with the help of tele-medicine, the challenge of shortage of doctors could be addressed, but even for that, connectivity is needed. He appreciated that government’s national optical fibre network (NOFN) programme but said a lot more needs to be done.

In addition to connectivity challenges, he also reckoned the challenge raised by Dr Kalsi around cyber security. He was of the view that with growing cases of cybercrime, it has become mandatory for government as well as private companies to make cyber security an integral part of their discourse. He said that as the difference between the cyber and physical world is diminishing, government organizations needed to be more vigil about the data and information they have.

He also pointed out that there is huge diversity in India and praised some of the tech companies to incorporate Indian languages but he urged more companies to offer solutions in Indian languages.

“India is a country of different languages. A high level of awareness related to technology and cyber security needs to be created. Therefore, solutions should be available in the language that people can understand,” he said.

Giving his thank you note address to the keynote speaker and the chief guest, Sanjeev Gupta, Country General Manager – Public Sector, Microsoft India said that he was impressed with the way both the speakers have thoroughly spoken about emerging technologies, cyber security and challenges in technology. He said, “Both of you have lowered our burden with your impressive speeches.” Gupta also informed the speakers about how Microsoft India is helping different states in their endeavour for digital transformation. He shared few examples from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh – both the states are using Microsoft’s platform for various egovernance related projects.

During his presentation, Gupta talked about some of the work that Microsoft can do in Haryana and Punjab. He asked the delegates from both the states that they can rely on Microsoft India for their digital journey. “We know that that the government recognizes the

[L-R] Sanjeev Gupta, Country General Manager – Public Sector, Microsoft India; Mohd Ujaley, Principal Correspondent, Express Computer; Dr Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi, Additional Chief Secretary – Home, Government of Punjab; Captain Abhimanyu Singh, Minister for Finance, Government of Haryana

[L-R] Captain Abhimanyu Singh, Minister for Finance, Government of Haryana; Dr Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi, Additional Chief Secretary – Home, Government of Punjab; Sanjeev Gupta, Country General Manager – Public Sector, Microsoft India

Dr Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi, Additional Chief Secretary – Home, Government of Punjab

need of adequate technology and cyber security for ensuring better and secure governance and we are ready to support you,” he said.

Taking the discussion forward on security, the conference also had a fireside chat with EC’s Mohd Ujaley and Manish Tiwari, Chief Information Security Officer, Microsoft India. During the discussion, Tiwari spoke about the state of cyber-security in

Captain Abhimanyu Singh, Minister for Finance, Government of Haryana

India, the issue of privacy and how Microsoft is helping both the government and the private sector to meet growing challenges. He gave a brief overview of growing cases of cyber vulnerabilities across the globe and emphasized that government organizations needed to be ready to thwart any cyber attacks. He informed that Microsoft invests huge amount in the cyber security vertical to ensure that the best

cyber security solutions are made available to businesses and government.

Tiwari emphasized that cloud is one of the most secure platforms and there is growing adoption of cloud in the public sector. He was of the view that gradually not only the young age companies, but large organizations with legacy based systems would also move to cloud, as it offers them better security and cost

Manish Tiwari, Chief Information Security Officer, Microsoft India

savings. He said that currently most of the cyber breach cases are being reported from outside India but with the Indian economy growing and people’s parity power increasing, India will also become a target for cyber hackers. Hence, he was of the view that a robust cybersecurity framework must be set in place.

On the recent judgement of privacy, he said that Microsoft

fully believes in privacy and whatever it does, privacy of customers or users are given paramount importance.

A major attraction at the event was the showcase of Microsoft Surface devices. The Microsoft team was on the spot to give a first-hand experience of the Surface Device to delegates. The team informed the functionalities, features and security aspect of the Surface laptops.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

12 | EVENT BFSI TECHNOLOGY CONCLAVE 2017

Digitalisation key to rapidly acquire business at reasonable cost THE 3RD EDITION of BFSI Technology Conclave and Digital Innovation Awards 2017 successfully got over in Pune, with the presence of 100+ senior and mid level IT executives from the BFSI Industry. Some prominent names from the partner ecosystem participated too. Senior speakers from HDFC Bank, SBI, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and IDRBT addressed the audience on various issues and opportunities in the BFSI Industry.

Keynote Address

Panel Discussion | Best practices from digitization : Lessons from the masters

T Dr A S Ramasastri, Director, IDRBT

D

r A S Ramasastri highlighted how various domains of IT can feed into the development of the BFSI ecosystem.

Banks do various banking related activities like serving banking products and services; IT companies deliver IT solutions and products to the BFSI industry. In this backdrop, the Fintech companies play an important role in coming up with innovative solutions in certain niche areas. Thus, they are filling the gap of delivering new products and services while the banks and IT

companies are busy in their mainstream business. It is therefore necessary for the Government to back the Fintech companies with supportive policies.

In the wake of a series of cyber attacks this year, it's imperative that various stakeholders in the BFSI space come together to form a much bigger ecosystem and put a collective fight against organised cyber crime. The same applies to the emergence of Blockchain.

Collaboration is the key to the development and adoption of Blockchain. Currently, there is no serious adoption and action by BFSI organisations.

Our experience with hackathons

he panelists discussed the digital initiatives taken in their organisations and the various areas selected to be moved to digital. Cyber security and budgets for digitisation were also some of the points discussed.

Kale spoke about digitisation initiatives in Cosmos Bank, including both internal processes with the customer. The bank started off with digitising the internal banking operations followed by tablet banking to serve the customers. Kale felt the need of the time is to provide doorstep banking.

Aditya Birla Financial Services has used APIs to integrate multiple systems to smoothen customer service.

Naik informed about running analytics on data put together from various systems. In fact, the company has set up a

separate digital team, which has been allocated a separate budget and given a P&L target. They have as of yet build an exclusive stack of products and services on a digital platform. Customer engagement is another area, where digital can be used, for example, HDFC Securities integrates data in the earnings report of the companies and interprets various terms like PE and EPS to provide a forward guidance for the investors.

This is done minutes within the earnings report is out. It helps them to take a number of buy/sell/hold calls.

Doshi ?from ?Fullerton India Credit Company gave an NBFC view of the potential and application of digital. He said the wallet banks should create a synergy with the NBFCs. Since wallets cannot lend

(L - R) Butchi Babu Burra, IT Advisor, Bank of India ; Yash Doshi, Assistant Vice President - Digital Initiatives, Fullerton India Credit Company; Sammeer Saurabbh, CTO, HDFC Securities; Ashwin Khorana, CTO, Janalakshmi Financial Services (Moderator); Vitthal Naik, Head- Information Technology, Aditya Birla Financial Services; Milind Kale, Chairman, Cosmos Bank

due to regulatory restrictions, they can keep the accounts and the NBFCs can lend the same money.

"Bank of India (BoI) is planning to use RPA and AI. The bank is also better placed to have a holistic security posture because it has a captive SOC.

L

ohar explained the reason behind conducting hackathons; the innovations that came out of such exercise; certain guidelines and how hackathons should be conducted.

The DCB Bank Innovation Carnival began in July 2017. It is conducted across 7 cities and these are not virtual hackathons but on the field. The idea behind a hackathon is to bring solutions within hours and not months for example, at the DCB Innovation Carnival, a Fintech company came up with a P2P solution running over Blockchain.

Another startup from Junagadh coined a solution that runs as a combination of Aadhaar and SMS. The bank also organised a hackathon only for its employees. A team came up with a solution for SME lending. The Gurugram hackathon saw a huge turnout. 30 teams consisting of 110 people participated.

A hackathon runs fundamentally on 4 pillars - people, process, technology and execution. The technology part involves a platform

that handles the hackathon end-toend- from registration to solution implementation having APIs. A hackathon is divided into 3 stages - pre-hackathon stage, hackathon and post hackathon stage. The pre-hackathon is a 7-10 day period. The institutions should ally with journalists to promote the hackathon on their platforms. The jury has to be shortlisted and registrations have to be segregated.

The hackathon stage includes location arrangement, coding, use case awareness and constant engagement among participants and award ceremony. The post hackathon stage invloves the formation of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and constant engagement with the Fintech company post the hackathon.

Any given hackathon should have the following particulars in place: ◗ Have APIs ◗ Involve management and business teams ◗ Identify skillsets of people registering ◗ Outcomes - atleast have a working prototype ◗ Tie-ups and promotions ◗ Facilities - Internet and food ◗ Award and leisure period

At HDFC Securities, the budget allocation for security has increased. “The budget allocation was 5% earlier, which has been increased to about 15-20%,” said Saurabbh, pointing out that this is because of the increase in transactions on the mobile devices.

Blockchain: Learn from real use cases in banking, insurance and financial services

S

Prasanna Lohar, Head of Technology (Digital Banking), DCB Bank

Traditionally, perimeter security has been focussed upon a lot by the BFSI institutions. However, endpoint security is equally important," said Doshi, adding that adequate attention should be given on systems where transactions are happening.

udin from SBI explained the rationale behind 'BankChain', the consortium of 27 banks working on Blockchain related solutions. The plan is to do 8 pilots out of which 2 will go in production. Asset registry and Smart contracts look doable. A Blockathon will be organised to have a beta production ready for which data will be taken from various banks.

Kotak Mahindra Bank is exploring Blockchain for KYC to be used for twelve Kotak group companies. The bank has done a PoC in the area of Import Letter of Credit (LC) trade. The regulatory framework for this consortium can discuss ways on how can it be done.

(L - R) Rajendra Mhalsekar, Head - Corporate Banking Technology, Yes Bank; Sudin Baraokar, Head- Innovation, SBI; Tushar Trivedi, Senior Executive VP, Kotak Mahindra Bank; Rohas Nagpal, Blockchain Evangelist (Moderator)

Yes Bank was looking for customers who are willing to use Blockchain but in a process or function that does not have a heavy regulatory overhang. Bajaj Electricals came forward to use

Blockchain with Yes Bank for handling their entire supply chain financing.

Blockchain can play a critical role in providing solutions in combination with other technologies. Sudin

said, "The annuity IT will combine with emerging IT like Blockchain, Cognitive, AI to provide solutions in a number of areas. SBI did explore the use cases in the hackathons conducted."

Specific to Blockchain, it can play a useful role in fulfilling the themes of financial inclusion, P2P lending and crowd funding.

Rajendra Mhalsekar from Yes Bank stated, "Blockchain will be the backbone of digital transformation = Blockchain + IoT + AI + API Banking and certain other technologies."

Tushar Trivedi remarked, "Blockchain can be used for storing common customer data which can be used by all banks. Multiple banks can

come together and share the cost of the infrastructure to maintain that Blockchain."

Crypto Currency was also discussed in a limited way.

Rajendra mentioned that RBI is looking closely at Crypto Currencies. “My opinion is RBI may not allow banks to offer their own crypto currency,” he added Sudin said, “Crypto currency is a huge threat, since this is a P2P arrangement. However, it will expand and due to themes like crowdfunding, financial inclusion and P2P, it has a huge potential to play itself out. The regulator can allow a restricted sandbox to test crypto currencies. The BankChain partners can also use them internally.”

Power discussion with Ctrls Datacenter

C

trls discussed their offering in the space of shared security hosted on their captive Security Operations Center operating with a team size of 60 plus.

Currently, there are many Micro Finance Institutions, payment banks hosted on the community cloud of Ctrls data centers. The DC has implemented close to 40 controls on their community cloud with a bunch of tools.

The same controls were recommended by S Rangachari committee formed by the RBI. The subscribers of the datacenter

can buy on an opex model.

Ctrls is working with 2 to 3 best-in-breed OEMs for each tool to adhere to the 40 controls.

Overall, there are 3 servers deployed. One at the client location for log collection. The second server deployed at the Ctrls location is the processor and the third server is also placed at the Ctrls location.

There are rules set for creation of intelligent alerts.

There are MNC banks operating in India who use the Ctrls infrastructure. The company is also building a large DC for NIC in Bhopal.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

|13

EVENT Power discussion with mGage India

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n the era of smartphones and apps, the value of SMS as a communication platform, still holds immense promise. Mobile communications specialist, mGage, revealed this interesting fact and several interesting insights during an interactive power discussion with leading CIOs and industry leaders.

Industry leaders spoke on the challenges of getting ROI from their communication campaigns. Additionally, with the rise of multiple delivery channels, marketers have a challenge in communicating and integrating insights over various delivery channels.

Panelists spoke about the necessity of understanding the customer’s journey in its entirety. This is vital in a fragmented world, where

data typically exists in silos over different communication mediums.

Hence, integrating data intelligently from different systems will be the key to hyper-personalization.

Industry leaders spoke on the void for dynamic segmentation of customer data through data analytics for driving personalized content that

is contextual to the relationship with the brand. mGage highlighted how its solutions and vast library of APIs could be used to easily integrate

messaging into existing systems and applications. mGage’s leaders spoke about how automation can play a vital role in ensuring ROI with actionable insights and configurable re-targeting.

For example, while apps are hugely popular, they can also get uninstalled quickly – most of them within an hour of being installed. mGage’s COO, Deepak Goel, explained why business automation workflows using noninstalled apps will be key for enhancing customer experience. The increasing role of chatbots

in improving customer experience was discussed. Leaders from mGage, spoke on the significance of chatbots in eliminating information clutter on any self-care interface.

The challenge of compliance and audit trails were also discussed in detail, where enterprise customers highlighted the need for having a comprehensive mechanism for getting insights into message delivery. Leaders from mGage also spoke about the increasing role of marketing automation

Redefining Business through Mobile

Leon Swithin Serrao, Director – Products & Solutions, mGage India

I where analytics can be used to hyper personalize services, and build a stronger relationship with the consumers.

Some of the prominent customers of mGage include Facebook, Flipkart, Myntra, Google and hike.

In the government sector too, the clientele includes NIC and PMO. mGage has handled 50 mn requests monthly for the PM's ‘Mann ki Baat’ programme. In one of the instances, about 500 mn requests were handled within a 12-hour window.

Keynote: Hyperpersonalization – using AI and analytics to redefine customer experience

Nitin Chugh, Country Manager, Digital Banking, HDFC Bank

N

itin Chugh gave examples of how Google Maps, Amazon, Netflix personalize customer experience. HDFC Bank has personalized the ATM experience in banks by reducing the amount of clicks. According to him,

hyperpersonalization is all about making the customer experience customized even if the product remains the same and also deliver an omni-channel experience. This can also be further extended based on how the customer interacts with the bank at different time zones during any given day.

Talking about hyperpersonalization,

Chugh said that the attention span is crashing and the window available to serve the customer is thus correspondingly going down. Hence, hyperpersonalization in such a scenario helps in getting higher adoption rates for various products and services. IT infrastructure is also adequately available to successfully serve different customer scenarios. As far as hyperpersonalization at HDFC Bank is concerned, the customer is at the center in anything the bank does. Even if employees are empowered with certain IT tools, it is with the ultimate aim of how will it enable employees to serve

Datacenter simplified for BFSI Shrirang Deshpande, Country Head – Data Center Business (India), Verti

V

ertiv has build a broad framework for building data centers. The company has build a smart solution which is hyper converged system, not engineered in a conventional way of buying different IT infrastructure from different vendors and then putting it all together. The company has build a hyper converged infrastructure all in one stack, as one single solution, from the ground up and not integrating from various vendors. The solutions are build for rack level, room level, and site level.

They have all the necessary certifications from the concerned authorities. The solutions are designed in such a way that they have to be just configured and not re-engineered. Vertiv believes in delivering the infrastructure quickly and effectively with all the testing done on-site. The

data centers offered are modular in true sense and capex efficient, and are scalable. They are manufactured in India and globally available.

The company's Smart Cabinet has in-built power cooling and DC capabilities. Otherwise, the end-user company would have to build a separate room with the required cooling facilities.

The Smart Row solution has a patented design and containment solution.

There are thermal management modules, which essentially have cooling systems that operate as the processing requirement.

Besides, Vertiv has a NOC to monitor the branch, edge, and regional offices.

better. Under hyperpersonalization, the bank has expense tracker, unified real-time analytics and campaign management, website customization, Digital Command Center, and launched Eva chatbot.

Chugh spoke about the 5 stages (Accenture way) of approaching hyperpersonalization, which HDFC Bank has adopted. A data lake is highly important to be hyper personal to customers. The bank will also have to find a way to power the data with the right analytical tools. A wholesome omni-channel experience has to be given, where every channel is aware about the customer journey on

every other channel and can act in perfect symphony. Chugh concluded by saying that hyperpersonalization is here, if not in BFSI, it is existent in other business verticals. For example, car buyers can hyper personalize the car of their choice with auto companies already offering those choices to the customers.

Hyperpersonalization has to be truly delivered and it should just not be talked about as a theme. BFSI as a community should not be seen a totally unaware of the customers profile.

There are emerging technologies which help banks in understanding customer profiles and serve them accordingly.

T

he discussion revolved around 5 major areas i.e. how critical is it for organizations to deliver transactional email in timely manner, do they measure the performance of

their transactional emails, the challenges that these companies are looking to overcome with their transactional email delivery, does the email delivery engine help them save cost over a period of time, and

Improving customer experience using virtual reality

Samrat Das, CIO, PNB MetLife

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as spoke about conVRse, a first-ofits-kind Virtual Reality (VR) based customer service platform, that the insurance firm has launched to enable customers get their queries answered using visual elements. The goal is provide a differentiated, an immersive, and a

personalized experience to the customer through the VR headset available in 15 PNB MetLife branches across 10 cities.

He said, “When customers put on the VR headset they find themselves in a 3D simulated virtual room, face-to-face with an avatar 'Khushi', the company’s life insurance expert. The customers simply need to walk into select PNB MetLife branches, wear the VR headset and get all their servicing requirements fulfilled by Khushi. The platform will display policy related information and uniquely engage the customers through visual elements like animations.

“Using VR, the insurance firm can go beyond

answering traditional queries. For example, when the customer is querying Khushi on when the next premium is due, Khushi might also recommend that given the current premium being paid by the customer is on a quarterly basis, it might be more appropriate to pay on an annual basis because perhaps it might turn out to be less costly and also there are lesser hassles of paying it on a quarterly basis. The entire policy is visible wearing the VR headset. Another example is that of a customer who wants to just change his address. The customer can actually talk to Khushi as it is an audio, visual experience, and the change in address can be done quickly.

Keynote: SBI- IT transformation journey

Shiv Kumar Bhasin, CTO, State Bank of India

B

hasin gave an interesting presentation on the IT and cloud strategy of SBI, IT architecture for digital banking, the approach towards havong end-to-end digital banking platforms and the innovation center being

constructed by SBI. The bank is currently building a common platform for all needs of customers with respect to apps. This is essential as the bank is launching multiple apps for customers.

Another digital initiative is targeted at the branches. The aim is to digitize all the branch processes under the

Power discussion with Netcore Solutions are they looking at outsourcing transactional emails to a third party. The participants also touched upon the topic of security and data leak and how it can be addressed by Netcore.

The participants discussed various issues with respect to executing email marketing campaigns and how Netcore Solutions can help solve them. Sabir Shaikh, Business Head, Falconide, Netcore Solutions gave an overview about Falconide and also resolved the queries from the participants.

Email tracking is highly imperative. Not just sending an email, but it's also important to note,

n his presentation, Serrao mentioned that customer expectations are changing with the time and with this, the mode of communication is also undergoing a change. Today, there is a lot of emphasis on personal touch, technologyenabled self service, and creating omni-channel experience. He further highlighted that in the current scenarion, there are 4 transformation ideas that would change the way banks and insurance companies deal with their customers.

The first is ‘business automation’ wherein the expectations shift to being available 24x7, mobile, personal, and real-time. The idea here is to automate customer transactions using mobile SMS. The second is ‘customer empowerment (C2B)’.

With the shrinking lifespan of communication, customers are moving to C2B business and taking a cue from this development, the idea is to create C2B engagements using mobile. The third is ‘hyperpersonalization’, where the message overload and low response rates are driving towards content and channel personalization along with dynamic segmentation (data analytics will segment the users).

The last is 'marketing automation'. With fragmented data and focus on key customer insight, the idea is to continually start nurturing the customers and create automated journey based re-targeting and predictive targeting.

how many emails sent have been opened, if yes, then what action has been taken by the customer.

One of the customers had requested Netcore to organise emails in the system of their choice, e.g. the customer requested to send the email related info to be send back to the CRM. Usually, the mail related information gets transported to different systems, but when it gets routed to a selected system, it unifies the view of what all communication was sent to the customer and what action did he take.

Netcore has also put strict security controls in place. A layered security approach is adopted. The

infrastructure security team monitors the email campaigns and regular audits are also conducted.

A major private bank spoke about how Netcore had helped them send about 7-8 miilion bank statements before the 3rd of every month, which hitherto was sent only by the 10th or after every month. Netcore had also helped the bank to reduce costs by 30-40 percent.

Netcore is also working with Aurionpro to devise a middleware to extend the offerings beyond email. The company showed openness to integrate their systems with other vendors whenever required.

‘Rupantar’ initiative. It also at the core digitises the branch processes associated with CBS. The initiative will lead to reducing queues at branches and thus less number of clicks at the branch level. The employees are also being trained for this, for which a separate platform in the form of a multi-lingual bot has been formed, which is called ‘Rupantar Genie’.

The bank is also moving towards an approach of having end-to-end banking platforms that are completely digital. This is done using micro services, API layer. It should not be a monolithic platform but scalable and services oriented. KYC, compliance, account system, pricing – all can be done taking

these technologies approach. To achieve this objective, the bank is building an innovation center. The Fintech companies will be colocated onsite to collaborate with the bank to work on-premise.

SBI is also tapping its employees towards making them 'intrapreneurs' and funding them to create solutions. The theme is to build the bank as a technology platform that is producing technology powered products and services. The IT strategy is targeted not only to enhance customer experience but also to transform the workplace. The bank had the fastest Office 365 implementations in 90 days.

Approximately 240,000 mail boxes have been moved to

cloud. The teams are using collaborative technologies like Kaizala app, Skype, etc.

Which is used more compared to face-to-face meetings.

Some of the other initiatives include devising a threat perception dashboard, working on a customer communications platform, and an alternate biometric system for differently abled employees. A state-of-theart command center is also operational that will monitor the CBS and all the customer channels. It will also monitor the state of each of the ATMs of the bank. Furthermore, the bank is moving the branch servers on the cloud. With this, they can be accessed on a BYOD model and across omni-channels.

Transactional email – critical for customer experience

Sabir Shaikh, Business Head – Falconide, Netcore Solutions

S

haikh highlighted that in this age of digital transformation, there is a need for better customer experience. As customers are getting

smarter and demanding, they want communication to be relevant, immediate, real-time, and personalized. In such a scenario, email has emerged as a prominent channel for communication, as there is a larger content space, no intrusion, no constraints in sending, has reliable storage tool, is most economic, can be sent and seen real-time, appears as notification and don't disappear if notification closes.

He further stated that while emailing brought opportunity, there are challenges associated with it like filteration, irrelevant

content, delayed delivery, spam landing, and difficulty in tracking among others.

All these issues lead to poor customer experience.

This is where transactional email service is seen as a boon and has a big scope. Transactional / triggered emails have 8x open rate as compared to traditional promotional emails and generate 6x more revenue in comparison to batch and blast. Besides, transactional emails have high deliverability and scalability and provide an opportunity to engage users with more information and cross-selling.

EXPRESS COMPUTER | NOVEMBER, 2017

14 | EVENT How IoT can be used for improving efficiency in the insurance sector

Hiren Shah, Head – Technology, Reliance General Insurance

I

oT will play an important role in the insurance sector, as it will help in predicting risk and also prepare for risk mitigation. In the next few years, insurance policies underwriting will change, courtsey

IoT devices. The premium pricing will be determined by the data available via health bands.

Reliance General Insurance has built specific devices for preventing marine risk, wherein cargo vehicles are tracked. This not only helps in fraud prevention but also result in better claims handling using realtime analytics. This way the data collected by the IoT devices can be used in multiple ways. However, the humongous amount of data from IoT devices can also lead to certain mishaps like hacking, malfunctions, negligence, and privacy breach.

Conclusively, IoT can be used immensely in the underwriting space which can lead to the benefits like extracting region and driver specific data and deciding premiums. IoT will not just help to cover the risk but also prevent the risk.

BFSI trends & challenges leading to innovative power solutions from Delta Power

Deepak Thakur, Head – MCIS, Delta Power Solutions

T

he company broadly works in three areas i.e. Smart Green Life, Energy Management, and Power Electronics. The data traffic is increasing by eleven times, with smart phone traffic increasing by

leaps and bounds. The cyber security technologies are also adding more pressure. Even if a bank has the bestof-the-breed solutions, but if the UPS is not reliable, then the entire operations will come to a standstill.

BFSI companies are facing the challenge of upgrading the power system along with upgrading the IT infrastructure. According to the available statistics, 29% of power outage is due to UPS failure while 24% is due to human error. The Delta Power provides solutions with automation capabilities.

The average cost of downtime has increased leading to stress on the different stakeholders like CTO, IT infrastructure as well facilities team. They are also under pressure to fit as much UPS infrastructure as they can in the available real estate space.

Your highway to a data driven enterprise

Aswin James Christy, India Presales Lead, Talend

T

alend discussed the challenges faced by organizations in the data management and also issues faced while working with Hadoop. The company offers a unified platform to collect data from various sources and then organize it and thereafter, provide a UI that is simple and and easy to use and provide machine learning and AI on it.

The company provides 1000 plus connectors to collect data from various sources. GE uses Talend to manage data from sensors on their devices. Lenovo has changed their IT landscape which resulted in changing of platforms. Talend was able to provide an encapsulated layer through which Lenovo was able to resuse their previous systems that resulted in 11% revenue gain and a reduced time to shift from one platform to another.

Panel Discussion: How Co-operative Banks Artificial Intelligence in the financial are preparing for the digital era services industry

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he panel discussed the extent to which digitization theme has entered the co-operative banking space, how outsourcing has impacted these banks and the level of cyber security preparedeness.

Kunal Karkhanis from Saraswat Bank said that the co-operative banks have the challenge of legacy systems but APIs allow them to use the lastest systems, which in turn, allow them to cater to the dynamic demands of the tech savvy generation.

P K Mohapatra from Abhyudaya Bank further stated that digitization will play a crucial role in making India a US$ 6.5 trillion economy. Post demonetization, NPCI has initiated to make RRBs and co-operative banks to drvie digitization.

Suresh Rathod from CtrlS Datacenter pointed out that cooperative banks can play a huge role in the government's theme of

Rohit Ambosta, CIO, Angel Broking

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(L - R) Suresh Rathod, Senior Vice President – Sales, CtrlS Datacenter; Joydeep Dutta, Executive Director and Group CTO, CDSL ( Moderator); Kunal Karkhanis, Head - Digital Banking, Saraswat Bank; P K Mohapatra, Head- IT, Abhyudaya Bank

financial inclusion especially after the data costs are beginning to come

down due to the intense competition in the telecom sector.

he ARQ initiative of Angel Broking has been designed inhouse with the help of a captive data scientists team. There is a dedicated team on Machine Learning too. The ARQ engine provides customized data to investors on where to invest. The investors are supposed to enter their relevant details and ARQ suggests the right investment strategy. It helps to build an appropriate portfolio in both mutual funds and equities. ARQ has even outperformed the Nifty midcap in the recent past.

ARQ has AI solutions like a recommendation engine, fraud detection solution that picks up patterns, KYC systems integrated with Aadhaar which also helps in making bank validation online and lastly, a ticket management system to resolve issues.

Potential of digitisation in the Insurance Industry Fintech Journey Tapan Kumar Singhel, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance

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inghel started off by talking about his humble beginning as an IT head and how it helped him in understanding the power of technology.

The total insurance penetration in the country is extremely low. It is hardly 1% of the GDP. Hence, the challenge is if the business is not enough, the cost continues to remain high with an additional burden of insurance being a low

margin business. Thus the combined ratio remains low. Here, IT can play a critical role. Tablets should be used more rather than having a brick and mortar office presence. "We have used tablets for customer acquisition,” he added.

The major challenge is the process of claims resolution. The process of taking claims is cumbersome. The customer details are not checked during underwriting but checking/verification is done while processing claims. Bajaj Allianz is using Blockchain for travel delays and in case of accidents.

Banking challenges – the road ahead Suresh Rathod, Senior Vice President -Sales, CtrlS Datacenter

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In his presentation, Rathod gave a snapshot of technology development in the banking sector that spans from MICR, encoders, computerization, online banking, mobile banking to blockchain and the way technology has had impact on the cost of banking transaction. He further touched upon the banking sector challenges including coping with technology changes,

Winners of BFSI Digital Innovation Awards 2017

Abhishant Pant, Founder, Cashless Journey

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echnology has evolved rapidly between 2008-14. The market witnessed the rise of social and mobile device. However, the financial industry was facing image issues. The recession resulted in people having less trust in these institutions. Even the IT investments were very low.

However, a challenger was brewing up in the background in the form of Fintech. It provided a great UI/UX and enriched the offerings on top of what was already available. The Fintech

space in Europe created an 'Apartment ecosystem'.

Thre first example is Solaris Bank, which received a digital only bank license. The bank identified 43 areas to provide banking services and

products. They further found out that there were 27 Fintech in each of these areas and started working with them.

One more bank, which had just one branch serving 600 people, was purchased by an Indian couple. Now 8 years down the line, the 1 branch institution has a bottomline of US$ 15.6 million! They do partnerships and profit is distributed among all the partners. In Sweden, the top 5 banks launched a common app.

Hence, there are no Fintech or payments players in Sweden because most of the customers belong to one of these banks.

Defining enterprise cloud regulatory pressure and security breaches.

Giving a brief on the solutions and road ahead for banking CIOs, he mentioned that CtrlS has forayed into customized cloud for communities like regulatory complied Bank in a Box, SAP certified Hana Enterprise Cloud, Insurance in a Box, Meity & Deity approved Government community cloud. Besides, the company provides GRC solution, managed security services, and disaster recovery on demand to its clients.

Venkatesh Iyer, Director, Nutanix Technologies

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eploying this infrastructure stack takes days or weeks. Companies typically have dedicated teams of specialized IT professionals focused on each part of this infrastructure stack. As the infrastructure footprint goes, the sheer complexity of coordinating between these teams goes up.

This complexity extends into managing the infrastructure stack as

well. Admins need to look at element managers from each of the different vendors in the stack, including storage, networking, servers and virtualization. All this complexity means that IT

teams spend a lot of their time standing up the infrastructure stack and dealing with day to day management and firefighting rather than focusing on things that actually drive business

value.

The problem is that traditional infrastructure was not designed for cloud environments. The enterprise datacenter needs to be re-platformed to meet the needs of the enterprise cloud.

Nutanix solved this infrastructure challenge.

The company pioneered the concept of hyperconverged infrastructure.

Hyperconvergence natively converges compute and storage into x86 servers with attached flash and hard disk drives that are deployed as a cluster.

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