www.insightssuccess.com March 2018
Sankar Ragavan CEO
Digi Peek-a-Boo
The 30 Most
Miguel Valdes Faura: Digital Transforma on Through Connec ng People With Technology
ADMIRED COMPANIES To Watch 2018
MariApps Marine Solutions Offering the Best Solutions Supported by Latest Technology Platforms
www.insightssuccess.com March 2018
Innovation the Catalyst for Every Company
T
echnology is paving the way in today’s digital world, making companies from all sectors to be innovative. Whether it be small businesses or Fortune 500 companies, each and every organization are on the lookout for new and innovative strategies that can keep them ahead of the curve and stand out from the crowd of competition. Irrespective of the shape and size of a company, they are bound to face some struggles and challenges that they must overcome to get to the next level. But speaking about innovation, does innovation come easier at a small or a large enterprise? Large companies often face the problem of accumulating employees from different departments all together for a certain amount of time; this especially comes to haunt them if the organization has various offices scattered across the globe. Large organizations also struggle from time to time at getting C-level buyoff for their innovative suite of new products and services. To the contrary, small companies face the challenge owing to their limited resource in terms of time and money, because of which they fail to invest on their innovative ideas. But small companies boast the advantage of having a close quartered relationship with the management, thereby enabling both the employee and the company to have the same belief and direction. Innovation is the change that unlocks new value and irrespective of the company’s size or monetary backup, innovation exists in a company. It is the spark that ignites fire and makes a company truly worthy of being called Admired.
Taking this thought into consideration, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 30 Most Admired Companies to Watch, 2018” that are bringing forward a new ray of innovation onto the world with their unparalleled and innovative products and solutions. After rigorously going through various companies and their suite of solutions, we have featured MariApps Marine Solutions as the Cover Story. The digital solutions company headquartered in Singapore with offices across India, Germany, and Cyprus, offers state-of-art marine enterprise solutions for ship managers and ship owners. The company is a pioneer in providing digital solutions to the marine industry. PAL covers all functions Crewing, Payroll, PMS, Purchase, Accounts, Catering, Voyage, Dry Dock, QDMS, Insurance in a single, fully integrated solution. “MariApps is been recognized as the 25 best companies to work for in Asia and as the best ERP solutions provider by different media groups” mentions Sankar Ragavan, the CEO of the company. The brilliant team at MariApps delivers products with latest technology, thanks to key research and innovation to present advanced software solutions to market. Through the successive delivery of standard ERP product PAL, advanced features, extraordinary design, and modern UI MariApps have all those what its clients need. Alongside this also make sure to flip through our articles, written by our in-house editorial team; as well as CXO Standpoints of notable industry personalities. Let’s start reading!
Kaustav Roy
CONTENTS Cover Story PPNSS: MAINRE ISA OLUTIO MAR
the Best Offering ported s Sup Solution echnology tT by Lates Platforms
10
34 Digital Peek-a-Boo
EW
I RV
TE IN
Miguel Valdes Faura: Digital Transformation through Connecting People with Technology
54 InPerspective How AI and Machine Learning Transforming Human Lives
20 44 Insider's Viewpoint Decoding Digital Transformation for Utilities
FCTI: Providing ATM Solutions Efficiently
Articles
30
40
50
Editor’s Perspective
Sales Choice
Industry Insight
Educating Employees to Minimize the Risk of Cyber-Attacks
Leading Insights to Become the Most Successful Person This Year
An Insight on the Opportunities in the Big Data Industry
22 ERA Environmental Management Solutions: Where Scientific Expertise Meets Sustainability
24 GridMarkets: Making Rendering Easy
28 Inovea: Empowering IT with Innovative Solutions
32 ITStaff®: Streamlining Organizational Recruitmen
36 Proactive Worldwide: An Upfront Strategic Solution
42 RhinoDox: An Advanced Solution for Securing Documents, Content and Data
46 Seceon: Providing Comprehensive Cyber-Security for the digital era
52 Stratix: Simplifying Enterprise Mobility for 35 Years
58 Uvision: Building Next Generation Solutions
Editor-in-Chief Senior Editor Managing Editor Executive Editors Assistant Editors Visualiser Art & Design Director Associate Designer Co-designer
Pooja M. Bansal Anish Miller Kaustav Roy Jenny Fernandes Sourav Mukherjee Sourav Mukherjee Brian Smith Kedar Kulkarni David King Amol Kamble Tejas Kulkarni Shweta Shinde
Art & Picture Editor Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Alan, Aniket Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Vijay Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategist Alina Sege, Shubham Mahadik, Vaibhav K SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chauhan, Uma Dhenge, Gemson, Irfan Research Analyst Chidiebere Moses Circulation Manager Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com
March, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com
Follow us on :
Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Off. No. 513 & 510, 5th Flr., Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: +91 7410079881/ 82/ 83/ 84/ 85 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.in
www.facebook.com/insightssuccess/
https://twitter.com/insightssuccess
We are also available on : Copyright © 2018 Insights Success, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success. Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.
COVER STORY
H
eadquartered in Singapore with offices in India, Germany, and Cyprus, MariApps Marine Solutions, a Bernhard Schulte company is a digital solutions company offering state-of-art marine enterprise solutions for ship managers and ship owners. MariApps can bring key knowledge and expertise to its clients that can eventually help their organization to excel in today’s competitive and demanding environment. MariApps’ flagship product is PAL, a complete marine ERP suite which is fully web based, cloud supported and mobile compliant. MariApps is a Microsoft Gold Certified Development Partner and has been certified by Deloitte with ISAE 3402 – Type 2 certification for enterprise standard development and operating framework readiness to deliver systems. MariApps offers customized maritime application development, consultancy, data building and application testing and project management. With software development centre in Kochi, India, MariApps employs 200+ staff worldwide. The Steadfast Leader With more than two decades of experience in the IT domain, Sankar Ragavan thrives in the role of the CEO at MariApps. Previously Sankar has served as Corporate Director of IT for BSM and as a Director of Jumeirah International, and for various MNCs across the globe. While working for Bernhard Schulte Ship management as a director─ he could not find one system which could solve the company’s problems. It was not that solutions weren’t available, they were available, but in bits and pieces, and since it was a niche industry, there were only few monopolies. Due to the complexness of Marine Industry, till 2014, 90 % of the market share of ERP in
‘‘
marine industry was held by few large vendors. So, Sankar is on a mission to provide fully integrated marine solutions on web/mobile platforms built on innovative technologies and to stay ahead with continuous R&D. Sankar’s vision is to deliver quality and affordable endto-end marine solutions and turn MariApps into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. “There is a significant opportunity for ERP providers like us to develop applications for the non-IT familiar shipping industry. We continue our journey collaborating with more than 15 top notch companies around the world and aim to reach for more soon,” asserts Sankar. Helping Shipping Industry with Great Products The organization has developed a flagship marine ERP suite PAL which is entirely web based and mobile compliant. Nowadays, MariApps ERP is running in more than 800 ships, and the company is targeting to go beyond 2000 ships in the next two years. MariApps PAL is a completely integrated software and is a one stop solution for all the ship owning and ship management needs. MariApps follows SDLC and Agile methodologies to deliver its projects, and has dedicated PMO to manage projects for various customers. MariApps’ flagship product, PAL ERP is very exhaustive, covering the length and breadth of operations and is a runaway success. With customizable dashboards, high performance design, feature rich modules for owners and managers helps in faster data access and decision making. Additionally, the company has a “MariApps Innovations Hub” a dedicated innovation driven team that works round the clock creating new products and solving complex maritime problems through technology.
We at MariApps aim to be the best at what we do. MariApps is focused on offering the best solutions, supported by latest technology platforms, to its customers at the most competitive pricing
‘‘
We are proud to have built our organization on the strong pillars of integrity, honesty and self-respect
MariApps offers common platform in order to integrate all application needs under a single umbrella and provide the necessary leverage from market offerings. With its initial partner/client BSM the challenge was to integrate the various locations into PAL ERP suite, as BSM has about nine ship management centers, 18000 seafarers and 15000 onshore staff. MariApps implemented all the modules for the customer by rapidly converting data. Meticulous planning and execution with no deviation on dates was made a mandate for smooth installations of data on vessels. It was complimented by flawless replication software that move data between office and vessel. Successive version upgrades and customer requirements were also implemented as per the need. The brilliant team of MariApps delivers products with latest technology, thanks to key research and innovation to present advanced software solutions to market. Through the successive delivery of standard ERP product PAL, advanced features, extraordinary design, and modern UI MariApps have all those what its clients need. The new version of the software PAL 4 garbs in with the most modern UI, improved user controls and standardized icon sets. New PAL 4 brings with it different material design concepts which gives the users the most modern experience of shipping and digital solutions.
‘‘
‘‘
Standing Tall Amongst the Crowd MariApps is a part of Bernhard Schulte Group based in Hamburg, which is eventually one of the largest ship owners on the planet, dating back to as early as 1800s, and the tradition of owning and ship management has given MariApps a much-needed edge while developing cutting edge solutions. Marine Solutions from MariApps works with a lot of industry and technology partners around the world. The organization is an independent software vendor of Microsoft Certified by Class DNV GL and Class NK PAL, which are end to end digital ship owning and ship management solution. Covering all functionalities needed from DryDock to New Building. Being part of Mobile first and cloud first world, which has become the key for today’s business success and adapting to mobile technologies is one striking element to take the business to new heights. MariApps also created history in the segment by being one of the very first companies to introduce mobile apps for the world of shipping. The organization consists a huge pool of expert mobile developers, who can build marine applications that runs on all platforms including Android, iOS, and Windows, empowering customers with the power to take decisions anywhere anytime. As an example: Seafarer app is a one stop information portal to streamline all information and data related to seafarers. Communicate with shore, know vessel and plan updates, review travel
‘‘
‘‘
We develop and encourage an environment of mutual respect within the company and extend it further to our clients. We encourage commitment and personal learning of our workforce
documents, look for pay slips, submit bill and others. The company is also engaged in developing applications for new building services and is now working on solutions for cruise and offshore industries. Additionally, MariApps products come with a guarantee of being leakage-proof and the products are thoroughly checked and tested for any security risks. MariApps also provide continuous version upgrades to all of its clients & data and reports are made available to the customer to view anywhere anytime with 24*7 support service provided globally.
that employees are its main strength and that’s why it invests heavily on them. MariApps allows flexible work hours; employees enjoy friendly HR policies ensuring that they get motivated continuously throughout their career. MariApps’ in-house training program is mentormentee based and ensures that every new joinee gets a mentor and is trained real time on a project. “MariApps is been recognized as the 25 best companies to work for in Asia and as the best ERP solutions provider by different media groups” Working Out to be the Best
MariApps always follow employee first customer first policy! It is a young and passionate company, committed to provide the best solutions in the shipping sector. The brilliant team of MariApps has the right ‘can do attitude’ and it brings in a variety of skilled resources, including business analysts, project managers, marine engineers, nautical officers technology consultants and strong technical leaders that are part of a 200+ team in India, Singapore, Cyprus and Hamburg to develop, implement, and support MariApps’ software. The organization always tries to build teams that are high performing and MariApps does all these by providing a fun, and challenging work place that eventually caters to innovation and work life balance. The company believes
Currently MariApps is working on rapidly growing technology segments like Big data, analytics, IoT, Digitalization, and smart shipping with key resources in MariApps Innovation hub. Additionally, the firm is setting its focus on key markets of Europe and far East and is trying to expand its footprint into new markets including North America, Australia, Africa, and China. The management of the organization is planning to run its software on about 2500 ships in the next couple of years, and MariApps has already launched and is enhancing the products for related market segments like offshore, new building and cruise ships as well.
Company Name
Management
Brief Located in Grand Forks, ND, Aatrix Software has been developing innovative accounting
Aatrix Software, Inc. aatrix.com
Steve Lunseth CEO
software solutions since 1986. Originally founded to develop Macintosh accounting and payroll applications, Aatrix's Electronic Forms Division has established itself as a leader in payroll tax forms, providing Electronic Payroll Reports and eFiling (Windows and Macintosh) to accounting software.
AINS is a leading global provider of cloud-based, adaptive case management platforms and solutions for government and commercial markets.
AINS, INC. ains.com
Mohinder Goswami CEO
Akumina akumina.com
Ed Rogers CEO
and system integrators to create personalized, contextual and
City Constructors, Inc. cityconstructors.com
Bryson Reaume Founder & President
City Constructors perform both bid and negotiated work for which it has contracted under virtually all variations of contract types – Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP), Lump Sum, Cost Plus, Fee plus General Conditions.
Cost Management Services, LLC cmshris.com
Brian Kelly Founder
Cost Management Services - CMS - has been in the HR Software business for over 20 years. Today it provides recruiting and electronic onboarding software - iRecruit - to customers througout the United States.
CyberShealth Services International cybersheath.com
Eric Noonan CEO
CyberSheath integrates its customer’s compliance and threat mitigation efforts and eliminates redundant security practices that don’t improve and in fact may weaken their security posture.
Denodo Technologies Inc. denodo.com
Angel Vina Founder & CEO
Denodo delivers on-demand real-time data access to many sources as integrated data services with high performance using intelligent real-time query optimization, caching, in-memory and hybrid strategies.
Dufrain Consulting dufrain.co.uk
Mike Gilmartin Founder & CEO
Dufrain helps businesses manage and unlock true value from their data. Over the past five years we’ve successfully delivered data management and BI projects providing valuable analytical expertise to its clients across the UK Finance, Risk and Marketing and Operations sectors.
ERA Environmental Management Solutions era-environmental.com
Sarah Sajedi Co-founder, Senior Toxicologist & Lead Project Analyst, Gary Vegh Co-founder & Director
ERA offers an innovative SaaS platform for the manufacturing industry to track, manage, and report on their air, water, waste environmental impacts, as well as Health & Safety processes, including employee training, incidents, injuries, risk assessment, and compliance task management.
FCTI, Inc. fcti.net
Robel Gugsa CEO & CTO
FCTI, Inc. is a nationwide ATM solutions provider specializing in advanced ATM placements and operations for financial institutions and site owners.
Akumina’s digital workplace software empowers enterprises scalable digital experiences to any audience.
Company Name
Management
Brief
GridMarkets gridmarkets.com
Mark Ross Co-founder Hakim Karim Co-founder
GridMarkets has eliminated competitive barriers - thereby permitting small- and medium-sized companies to enhance their creativity and competitiveness.
Happiest Minds Technologies Pvt Ltd happiestminds.com
Ashok Soota Executive Chairman
Happiest Minds is the first Indian IT firm to be ‘The Mindful IT Company’.
Inovea, Inc. inovea.com
Sashi Kallamadi Founder & CEO
provider based out of McLean, VA, committed to empowering IT
ITStaff itstaff.com
Mark Norris Founder & CEO
ITStaff is one of the leading providers of IT contract staffing and IT contract jobs.
MariApps mariapps.com
Sankar Ragavan CEO
MariApps is a pioneer in providing digital solutions to the marine industry. PAL covers all functions Crewing, Payroll, PMS, Purchase, Accounts, Catering, Voyage, Dry Dock, QDMS, Insurance in a single, fully integrated solution.
Meritis meritis.fr
Sébastien Videment Founder
By bringing together the human and technical talent to imagine and give life to these new models, Meritis works alongside players in the financing and investment banking , to those of industry, services and technology to to make their transformation operational and create added value.
Perkins Coie LLP perkinscoie.com
John Devaney Management Committee Chair
With more than 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices across the United States and Asia, Perkins Coie LLP represents great companies across a wide range of industries and stages of growth—from startups to FORTUNE 500 corporations.
PPT Solutions shipstation.com
Dennis Weikle Founder
PPT Solutions is empowering companies with transformational business solutions that deliver exceptional performance, incredible customer experiences and profitable results.
Proactive Worldwide, Inc. proactiveworldwide.com
Gary Maag CEO & Co-founder
Proactive Worldwide is a global decision support, research and consulting firm that provide evidence-based strategic intelligence.
RhinoDox rhinodox.com
Justin Ullman Founder & CEO
RhinoDox is a cloud-based, modern Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution that automates tasks and simplifies search.
Inovea is a specialized Software Product Engineering Services with its innovative security solutions.
Management
Brief
Marc Ferrie Founder & CEO
RightITnow’s powerful Event Correlation and Management (ECM) platform built for today’s dynamic infrastructures at price levels affordable for small and medium enterprises. In the past, SME organizations had mostly bypassed legacy event and fault management tools because of cost and configuration complexities.
SAP sap.com
Bill McDermott CEO
SAP is the world’s largest business software company – founded in 1972 and headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. It serves some of the most amazing customers – and we always have exciting projects on the go.
SECEON Inc seceon.com
Alexander Henn Co-founder & Managing Director
Seceon is focused on enabling organizations to see cyber threats clearly and quickly, stop threats from inflicting extensive damage through surgical containment and elimination and to predict insider attacks through behavioral threat detection modeling and machine learning.
Shore GmbH shore.com
Cornelis Bosch CEO
Shore helps its clients easily manage their entire day-to-day business online.
Stratix Corp stratixcorp.com
Gina Gallo CEO
Stratix is a mobile services control center for managing the complex mobility ecosystem.
Trunomi trunomi.com
Stuart Lacey Founder & CEO
Company Name RightITnow rightitnow.com
TWINTEL Solutions twintelsolutions.com
William Scogin Co-founder
TWINTEL Solutions has been serving the Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego areas since 2005. TWINTEL provides IT Support such as technical help desk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.
UKFast.Net Ltd ukfast.co.uk
Lawrence Jones CEO
UKFast is one of the UK’s leading managed hosting and colocation providers to some of Britain’s best-loved brands, who come to UKFast for their Linux servers, Public cloud and Magento optimised hosting.
Omar Uddin Founder & CEO
Vmware, Inc vmware.com
Pat Gelsinger CEO
Vmware, Inc enables organizations to flex and to harness new technology quickly, without disrupting operations.
FCTI
C
ommitted in providing advanced turnkey ATM technologies and services, FCTI provides effective solutions for financial institutions and site owners. In an interview with Insights Success, the CEO and CTO of FCTI, Robel Gugsa briefly mentions some of the challenges the company has faced and strategies it has incorporated to ensure its standing in the market. Let’s look at what the pioneering leader has to say about FCTI. Firstly, give us a brief insight of the services/solutions/products offered by FCTI? Robel: FCTI offers turnkey ATM placement and operations for a variety of off-premise locations. Some of our current locations provide the opportunity for traditional ATM branding – including customized ATM screens, receipts, and ATM wraps. What is that one thing that has made FCTI stand out from the crowd? Robel: FCTI offers patented MBA® technology – providing banks, credit unions, and partner locations to present their brand and messages to their cardholders and audience. Our capabilities have provided us with the opportunity to service a variety of locations, the most recent including 7Eleven convenience stores throughout the United States. Our technology, partnerships, and nationwide scope are our biggest differentiators from the competition. How has FCTI approached some of its biggest challenges? How has the journey been like? Robel: Since 1993, FCTI has operated as an independent ATM operations company. However, as ATMs have evolved, FCTI has made efforts to be at the forefront of innovation to facilitate greater security, improved user experience, and added marketing and sales clout for our partners.
20
Providing ATM Solutions Efciently What can be expected from FCTI in the upcoming years? Robel: FCTI looks to continue expanding capabilities at our ATMs to provide additional services as well as advanced marketing opportunities to help grow distribution and foot traffic for our partners.
About the Company FCTI, Inc. is a nationwide ATM solution provider, specializing in advanced ATM placements and operations for nancial institutions and site owners. Its patented MBA technology, network partnerships, and leading software developments offer banks, credit unions, and businesses real marketing, distribution, and revenue-generating opportunities through the ATM channel. Founded in 1993, FCTI strives to provide enhanced support, operational redundancy, and parts/supply access with multiple operational centers throughout the United States. FCTI is a subsidiary of Seven Bank, LTD. (TYO:8410) with over $8B in assets. Together, Seven Bank and FCTI manage over 30,000 ATMs worldwide. FCTI provides custom turnkey ATM programs to best-t business goals by utilizing the right combination of hardware, software, and services. Its solutions are specially designed to provide nancial institutions and site owners with the tools they need to increase distribution, align marketing efforts, and increase brand and product awareness while growing foot trafc and in-store sales.
|March 2018|
Interview With Insights Success
About the Leader Robel Gugsa is the CEO & CTO of FCTI. As the CEO of the organization, he has the overall responsibility for planning, leading and implementing FCTI’s long and short term strategic direction. He also oversees all the company operations, as well as stresses an added emphasis on encouraging customer relationships and technological developments.
“FCTI was Designed to Grow Your Brand and Revenue.
“
|March 2018|
Robel boasts an extensive experience in transaction payment processing, ATM manufacturing, and building partnerships with major nancial institutions. Prior to FCTI, he Cofounded and served as the CTO of Select-A-Branch Network (SAB). He was instrumental in developing SAB’s intellectual property and patent. Later, SAB was acquired by FCTI. Robel holds a MIS degree from the Steven Institute of Technology and a BS from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
21
ERA Environmental Management Solutions: Where Scientific Expertise Meets Sustainability
F
or more than twenty years, ERA Environmental Management Solutions has been blazing the trail for Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) software. It set the pace for the industry as one of the world’s first firms to develop air emissions management software. The company’s first projects tackled air emissions reporting for the cabinetry industry. The surge in demand for environmental reporting automation led to an expansion into dozens of other sectors. Today, ERA’s environmental management designs are powered by an extensive set of features that cover every element of a business’s EHS footprint. Standing Tall in a Crowded Market There are many things that set ERA apart, but one of its core strengths is its team. All ERA solutions are designed from the ground up by expert environmental scientists and EHS specialists who have hands-on experience in the manufacturing industry. ERA only offers EHS software solutions that are truly grounded in the complex chemical regulatory science that drives compliance with federal and state requirements. In short, chemical expertise and science is the driving force behind its software. The other factor that puts ERA ahead of the competition is that there is nothing generic about the company’s software. Its SaaS solution is configured by an in-house team to each client’s specific processes and chemical inventory. ERA’s analysts work with the client’s EHS managers to map out their entire manufacturing process. Every material, piece of equipment and control technology, and
22
everything that comes out of the software is meticulously tracked by ERA’s platform to give crystal clear Key Performance Indicators about their operations. Too often, EHS software providers sell clients an empty database that cannot hit the ground running. On the other hand, ERA ensures that its clients’ platforms are fully functional and tailored to their exact specifications during the in-house implementation process. Strong Leadership ERA Environmental Management Solutions was Cofounded by Gary Vegh and Sarah Sajedi. They started the company as a small consulting firm but turned to software development upon recognizing the need for automation in environmental compliance reporting. Today, Sarah is the acting CEO and Director of R&D, while Gary is the Senior Toxicologist and Lead Project Analyst. Sarah is an award-winning entrepreneur, with recognitions from RBC as a National Woman of Influence, a recipient of the Sara Kirke Award for High Technology, and is featured in high school chemistry textbooks. Tackling Complex Scientific Challenges ERA is known for tackling the most complex scientific challenges in the industry, and that is basis on which its software has grown. The company follows two principles when asked to define a solution. First, that every challenge is an opportunity to learn about a new client that will ultimately lead to better software, and second, that improving the environmental footprint of entire industries requires collaboration.
|March 2018|
Our concept is built on environmental excellence and rigorous scientific analysis. Our team of qualified experts provide guidance and support every step of the way, delivering comprehensive service to fulfill your unique needs. Sarah Sajedi
ERA works closely with its clients and federal regulators to tackle challenges collaboratively. It believes that clients are its best educators and welcomes every new request or challenge they present. According to ERA, it is always developing something! Recently, it rolled out a new dynamic Business Process Mapping form is are completely customizable and incredibly robust. It allows ERA to model any EHS business process, completely automate data collection, and create real-time reports through one simple form. It can be customized so each client controls the exact look and feel of the software, and creates their own bespoke processes. ERA presents this as the ultimate solution to every company’s desire for complete control, backed by the proven business logic and calculation engine of ERAs’ software. Unique Business Model, Shared Future ERA’s business model is significantly different from that of its competitors. The company prides itself on an incredible implementation winning streak at a time when the vast majority of enterprise software packages by others fail at this crucial stage.
Co-founder, Senior Toxicologist & Lead Project Analyst
Another key difference is that ERA ensures the software is fully functional by back-filling as many years of data as possible. The company’s relationship with a client does not end at payment, which is somewhat of a rarity in the industry. Instead, ERA runs reports and even provides free training for life to ensure each client who uses their software gets the maximum benefits. Recently ERA has outgrown its old headquarters and moved recently into a larger building. In terms of software, one can expect continuing innovation in its sustainability tools. ERA is developing new capabilities that will not only help companies track and report their existing sustainability projects but actually apply business intelligence to identify where their processes can be made more efficient through automated recommendations. One of the primary challenges with sustainability is knowing where to start, and ERA will be able to identify where companies can start saving the most money immediately.
Its implementation is never outsourced, and development does not start until ERA has fully understood the client’s processes and needs. The procedure is performed by its own team of environmental scientists who have worked in close and constant collaboration with the client’s environmental team. |March 2018|
23
GridMarkets: Making Rendering Easy
H
igh performance computing workloads typically are very complex and costly to run. Teams of highly-skilled staff, access to expensive onpremises and cloud resources, complex ongoing operational procedures, maintenance, and support are usually required.
He has lived and worked in New York City, Paris, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne and, now, Silicon Valley.
Large companies can afford the associated costs but such demanding requirements represent a competitive barrier that severely limits opportunities for smaller firms. This is where GridMarkets makes it mark.
Hakim’s experience includes Goldman Sachs, Accenture, and Thomson-Reuters, where he served as Regional Strategic Business Development Director and tripled revenues to US$30 million in three years. Hakim has had global postings in New York City, London, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.
GridMarkets has eliminated this competitive barrier, thereby permitting small and medium-sized companies to enhance their creativity and competitiveness.
He was named as one of 50 people “who will help shape Malaysia’s digital economy.” In 2014, Hakim was selected to become an Endeavor Entrepreneur. Tackling Complex Situations
The company’s process is modeled after the simple procedure we use to print a document – a dialog box appears within the application to ascertain the parameters of the print request. Meanwhile, we are oblivious to the complexity of the translation of that process into the action of printing.
As GridMarkets evolved and grew, the challenges that it faced also evolved and grew in complexity.
The Two Pillars of GridMarkets Mark Ross and Hakim Karim are the Cofounders of GridMarkets. Their professional experience prior to founding the organization lies with global Fortune 500 financial services companies.
Hakim Karim Co-founder
Mark’s roles have included that of Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect at companies like the American International Group, SunLife Financial Services, Credit Suisse and Thomson-Reuters. He has developed and delivered technology strategies and tactics for American, European and Asian businesses involved in equities and fixed income trading, life and nonlife insurance, and mutual funds. In 2009, Mark was awarded the prestigious IDC Enterprise Innovation Award.
24
The very first challenge that the organization faced was to build and stabilize its platform. Clients were trusting GridMarkets with their animation and special effects projects that typically have very tight deadlines, security concerns and budget constraints. Without honoring their trust, it had no chance of surviving even its first year.
For this reason, the company had spent two years testing its creation with “friendlies”, building confidence along the way. Even after that, GridMarkets was initially released to a limited subset of the market, and for a narrow range of services. Then came the challenge of growing the team. GridMarkets was very small, and needed to add vital skills like creative animation, cloud DevOps and other engineering specialties to its roster. This had to be achieved while ensuring that new staff shared the passion and mindset of the core team.
|March 2018|
By orchestrating parcels of the workload across many high performance machines, we are able to turn workloads around in hours that would otherwise take days or even weeks.
Mark Ross
Here the journey was somewhat serendipitous in that it had the good fortune of attracting people who were just the right fit at just the right time. One of these accidental meetings resulted in the hiring of their key architect and developer. Then came the challenge of finding customers and revenue. GridMarkets took on a number of high-profile seed investors, including executives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the global hedge fund, TPG. The company’s philosophy was: focus on delivering a reliable, responsive and fairly-priced service that meets the needs of customers… and the revenues will follow. For this stage of growth, the company focused the overwhelming majority of its resources on engineering and customer support, and close to nothing on marketing, business development and sales. In the end, the gamble paid off because happy customers would refer other customers. Today, over 50% of new business the company enjoys comes from referrals by satisfied customers. Handling the Greatest Project Two years ago, the CEO of an Israeli company phoned GridMarkets in desperation. He was scheduled to give a major presentation in 12 days to the mayor of a major global city. This involved a realistic fly-through of simulated city disaster scenarios. Critical to these scenarios was a high-resolution digitized version of the entire city.
Co-founder
It has since been challenged by increasingly larger and more complex projects, some with even tighter completion windows. These include demanding projects for the BBC, Super Bowl commercials produced by Fox Studios, and music videos for DeadMau5. GridMarkets is confident that it can handle any project and this confidence originated from its “Greatest Project.” Future Roadmap GridMarkets is at the beginning of the product and service innovation journey. There are many opportunities to further enhance its platform - to make it faster, to make it easier to use and to make it more affordable. The organization has an eminently-qualified and passionate team, a proven business model and a technical platform that has successfully processed millions of digital computations. Since the platform has been designed to be workloadagnostic, it can adapt easily to serve other verticals in the $US30B a year high performance computing market, of which less than 5% of global workloads have moved to the cloud.
The CEO’s team had estimated the process would take at least six weeks but a friend pointed him to GridMarkets. To process the Israeli company’s workload in less than 12 days, GridMarkets needed to spread it over a sufficient number of machines, across multiple servers in multiple global data centers. It did so successfully. |March 2018|
25
Inovea: Empowering IT with Innovative Solutions
s a cybersecurity organization on the bleeding edge of online threat protection, Inovea Inc., offers unparalleled security consulting, testing and auditing services. Its mission is to help businesses secure their data, reduce risk, and navigate compliance standards.
A
Engineering, Penetration Testing, Compliance Consulting, Identity Management, Threat Intelligence, and Monitoring. It has integrated security capabilities across the technology stack of infrastructure, applications and services to create a comprehensive network of defense.
With its staff of world-class cybersecurity professionals, Inovea is passionate about providing solutions that are efficient as well as robust. “When we say that our customers are our partners, we really do mean it,” says Sashi Kallamadi, the Founder and CEO of Inovea.
Mr. Kallamadi is on the constant lookout for underserved niche markets, and develops innovative business solutions to address their needs. He is also an angel investor in several technology startups, and a recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award, conferred by the President of the United States, for his service to Education.
The company takes the success of its customers very seriously. It devotes a great amount of time and resources to understand what success means to each of its customers. Inovea makes it a mission to align itself to the customers’ vision on creating innovative solutions. This approach has gained widespread appreciation from its clients, who consistently name Inovea as their trusted security advisor. An Expert in Information Security Sashi Kallamadi has many years of experience in the Information Security space. It was based on that experience that he founded Inovea in 2003 with the goal of offering clients end-to-end cybersecurity services. Mr. Kallamadi has grown the company’s business from the ground-up into the multi-million-dollar business it is today by executing a series of business development initiatives that include numerous U.S. Federal Projects. The company’s range of services includes Advanced Threat Protection, Incident Response, Security
28
Overcoming the Changing Landscape Being committed and focused on the success of its customers is in the DNA of Inovea. However, consistently exceeding their expectations over a decade of operations was by no means easy. The biggest challenge was - and continues to be - the ever-changing technological landscape and the constantly evolving needs of the businesses that Inovea serves. Speaking about the company’s work ethic, Mr. Kallamadi says, “We have consistently worked hard to stay ahead of the curve.” He adds, “It has been our consistent aim to always be up-to-date with the latest technologies and the new possibilities they offer us and our customers.” Inovea has been a trusted partner for many businesses which have undergone transformations to incorporate new technology within their operations.
|March 2018|
At Inovea, we solve complex security problems using our innovative Security solutions.
Over the years, there have been several cycles of change. That change did not wear Inovea out; rather, it energized the company to think more creatively and offer solutions that helped its customers in their journeys. Proactive Enterprise Cybersecurity There has been an ongoing disruption of traditional processes and methodologies, coupled with the reshaping of product development rules due to the unification between devices and technology. Enterprises need security solutions that are innovative and span the entire product lifestyle. This is where Inovea excels. It has proven itself to be a versatile and effective strategic partner for enterprises with its innovative cybersecurity solutions. With a proven track record of over one and a half decades in cybersecurity, Inovea has helped enterprises transform their development lifecycles and gain an edge over their competition.
Sashi Kallamadi Founder & CEO
legal services relating to technology, something which very few companies are able to provide. In the future, Inovea aims to expand its repertoire to include techno-legal services to technical as well as nontechnical businesses. It also aims to serve the startup ecosystem and looks forward to helping up and coming entrepreneurs who are in need of trusted techno-legal advisors. Speaking of Inovea’s future, Mr. Kallamadi adds, “While we continue to delight our customers in the information technology and security space, Inovea will explore new frontiers in the medium term by venturing into legal process outsourcing. We will leverage our expertise, existing infrastructure, processes and years of experience in technology to offer legal services to our customers in cyber laws.”
Every solution provided by the company is developed by a team of professional experts using trademarked methodologies. Staying Ahead of the Curve The founder and the promoters of Inovea possess vast experience in IT, cybersecurity and also in areas like cyber law, privacy law, intellectual property law and technology law. Its expertise in both the technology and legal domains puts Inovea in an ideal position to provide
|March 2018|
29
D
uring 480 B.C., in The Battle of Thermopylae, merely three hundred Spartans held off a huge Persian army. However, in reality Spartans were not alone in the battle, alongside them fought Athenians, Thebes and other Greek forces. Until the last day Greeks had a force of around seven to eight thousand soldiers at the battle ground. The key differentiator in the battle was that, Spartans were already professional soldiers, whereas the Greeks were not professional soldiers and they fought in the army while called upon. Cut to modern days, the world is now completely dependent on internet, and it posses a massive threat from a modern-day nuisance which is called Cyber Attacks. The worst part is, sadly the users are not Spartan warriors, instead most of them are working professionals or casual users. These professionals are not at all security geeks, most of them don’t understand what cyber security is, and for that we can’t blame them either as their jobs aren't focused on information and cybersecurity. So, in order to be safe in the bad world of cyber attacks and breaches, one just can not develop a single cyber security program and claim that his staff is well-trained to tackle the security breaches. In real world, not everyone is a Spartan warrior, so one needs to educate his employees and start awareness programs that will eventually help to educate users to be safe from security breaches.
30
|March 2018|
Editor’s Perspective Already confused? Don’t be, we are here with few steps that can eventually help to ensure safety in the risky cyber world. An organization might interact with several vendors, which can involve various purposes. So, the first step towards safety is to determine which members would be of highest-impact to the organization in case of a breach. Additionally, it is also important to consider what type of data the vendor is handling, which can be anything from cardholder data to protected health information. One always need to reinforce messages through policy, internal videos, in staff meetings and other sources that works in the environment. In order to create an awareness program, one must understand that awareness is a process and it always takes time. Lastly one must Set the expectation that the elements of the awareness program will be updated, and repeated on a regular basis. Another blunder most of the internet users commit is using same password for multiple services. Same passwords always tend to leave the entire digital life at a stake and vulnerable to breaches. As if one hacker has got the hold of a single password, then he can access all the accounts of the user. Nowadays hand-held devices like cell phones and tablets have become a necessity and many of the employees use them for official purpose. However, the user should always be extra careful while installing new apps in the phone or tablet as this is one of the most-easy ways in which malicious apps can gain access to the personal information of a user. An app can always ask for a big list of permission in order to function, but it's important to be aware of what types of information the app is accessing for better safety. Always be aware of phishing scams. When it comes to phishing scams, cyber criminals design a website or email-id to steal sensitive data. Most of the time the attacker installs malicious software onto the user's pc. The worst part is, one can barely differentiate these websites or email from the genuine ones. However, phishing scams are quite easy to spot, but for that one must know what to look out for. Companies must also tell their employees to avoid logging into any of their important accounts from public computers or public networks. A public pc or a network is open to all the users, which eventually leaves many security holes in them. However, sometimes people might not have the access to a private pc or a network, so in that case the user must delete the browser history once done and only log into a network after making sure that it is completely safe. Applying necessary software updates are very critical nowadays. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. releases bug fixes, security patches in their recent updates. These fixes mostly help users to be secured in the risky world of web. Above all these key points, one must remember that one must train his employees such a manner that it eventually increases the staff's ability to make much more secured decisions that to consciously. Employers must remember that they are not making any cyber security experts, for that role the company already has specialized geeks. They only need employees who are good and has the enough presence of mind so that they can help to protect the organization. So, here are few points from us that can eventually help you to minimize risks of cyber-attacks which can wreak havoc in your organization.
|March 2018|
31
®
ITStaf f :
Streamlining Organizational Recruitment
F
erom small enterprises to gigantic global IT companies, every organization is plagued by the same question: “How do we find and attract the top talent we need to meet our business goals?” Organizations want an answer to that hard-hitting question which will connect them with committed individuals with the ability to streamline their operations. The war for talent is very much alive and becoming more acute with the emergence of new business drivers like Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT). One company that fully understands these challenges, and has dedicated itself to bridging the gap between organizational HR needs and effective recruitment is ITStaff®. ITStaff® offers Executive and Professional search services, and contract staffing services in Information Technology and Engineering. The company has clients in a wide spectrum of industries, including healthcare, technology, retail, insurance and finance. Providing Professionals Who Perform Since its inception in 2009, ITStaff® has helped streamline the operations of numerous organizations by bringing together its clients and skillful professionals from around the world. The company is committed to pairing the individual best suited to perform a role with each opening its clients offer. ITStaff® is known for the high quality of its services. Its focuses on outstanding performance that builds solid client relationships and a stellar brand image. Countless Project Managers, Data Scientists and Data Analysts, Electrical Engineers, PCB Design Engineers, Firmware and Embedded Engineers, Business and Systems
32
Analysts, Architects, Modelers, Software Developers and Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers, and many passionate leaders and managers have made invaluable contributions to the organizations at which ITStaff® placed them. Matching an individual to a position requires an understanding of the nuances of that position. The recruiters at ITStaff® develop significant insights into industrial trends and only work on a handful of requisitions at any given time. They reveal, “We don’t cut corners just to meet VMS metrics on speed to submit and other metrics that would put our vetting process at risk.” By holding true to its process, ITStaff® has been rewarded with the respect of every client with whom they have worked. Empowering Associates The company has impressed clients across multiple verticals. One of its clients from the technology sector had multiple websites across several countries, each operating in its own language and according to regional requirements, and with various platforms to support. This client needed to integrate all of these websites into a common portal while maintaining the different regional and national aspects of the various websites. ITStaff® also worked with the company’s CIO over ECommerce and his managers by providing a team of Java developers and Scrum Masters to pull off the project. This was a high-visibility project and it was a multi-year undertaking.
|March 2018|
Our mission is to make the lives of our clients’ easier by finding the best available talent to fill open positions at their organizations. Mark Norris
Founder & CEO Both clients cited ITStaff’s involvement on the project as a key contributing factor to the success off their respective projects. ITStaff® understands managers have busy schedules and realizes they cannot afford to have their time wasted by unqualified candidates. Thus, it works directly with them to most productively utilize their time to achieve business objectives. Services with a Guarantee ITStaff® offers a two-month money-back guarantee for its Contact Staffing Solutions. It proudly reveals that not a single client has ever come back with a complaint. It takes time to look at every professional’s overall background and experience, and the technologies in which they have experience. The company gladly makes this investment of time into the process, and the resulting knowledge and interest is further converted into opportunities for the future. ITStaff® asserts, “We would rather be known as the best company to do business with rather than the biggest company to do business with.” An Honest Leader Leading from the Front Mark Norris, Founder and CEO of ITStaff® has worked in the staffing industry for the better part his career.
Mark has made ITStaff® an industry dominator by providing outstanding tools and marketing efforts to help the company’s sales and recruiting staff to succeed. He asserts, “We don’t over-sell and we do our best to overdeliver and to always, always operate with integrity.” In Cashing the Opportunities Spurred by IoT and Cloud Based Platforms Every other organization is looking to adapt futuristic technologies like Cloud and IoT to become more competitive in its field. This has increased the demand for Data Scientists, Data Architects and Database Administrators with cloud-based administrative experience. In addition to this, as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand, the need for Firmware and Embedded Engineers and individuals with circuit design experience has also increased. ITStaff® has anticipated this opportunity and created partnerships with various organizations with the need for skilled IT professionals. ITStaff® will continue leveraging such opportunities and help numerous organizations around the world with its qualitative and credible Executive and Professional Search Services, and Contract Staffing Services.
Mark’s heavy investments in essential areas has allowed the company to maintain its credibility in the marketplace. His honest and resourceful insights have empowered small, family-owned and -operated businesses and large, global outsourcing giants. |March 2018|
33
Miguel Valdes Faura: Digital transformation through connecting people with technology
O
ne of the biggest trends to emerge in recent years is digital business transformation: the integration and application of digital technologies to generate fundamental changes at all levels of business operations. Business leadership is always challenged by transformation. Today we face a multi-level challenge: leading employees through strategic and operational change brought with emerging technologies, while also keeping a laser focus on customers’ wants and needs. Miguel Valdes Faura, open source evangelist I believe in people. And I believe in empowering people with the right technology to allow them to do remarkable things. Developers build applications that run billion-dollar businesses, and that’s amazing. So we’ve built something for them. – Miguel Valdes Faura As Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Bonitasoft, Miguel Valdes Faura leads the company mission defined from the start: to unleash the full potential of development teams to create business applications with seamless, engaging and personalized user experiences to power digital transformation worldwide. Miguel has overseen development of the Bonita application platform since its creation in 2001 when he was a researcher at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. He subsequently transferred the Bonita project to the Bull Group where he led R&D, pre-sales and support for the BPM (business process management) division of Bull Information Systems, a major European systems provider. In 2009 he left Bull with Charles Souillard and Rodrigue Le Gall to found Bonitasoft to commercialize the open Bonita platform, and subsequently raise a total amount to date of $33M in venture funding. As the world’s fastest-growing BPM-based application platform provider, today Bonitasoft has thousands of
34
customers and an open source community of more than 130,000 members. Integrating people, automation, and technology streams through digital transformation Digital technology platforms have been around for as long as digital technologies have been applied to real-world situations. However, what’s new is the comprehensive nature of digital business platforms, also known as digital transformation platforms. Applications that improve customer experience and engagement are driving the demand for today’s digital platforms. But that’s only one side of the story – the customer-facing side. On the flip side is employee experience, enabling employees to work smarter with reduced workloads. There too is the developer experience, allowing developers to be able to build, test, deploy, and change enterprise applications quickly. Further, integrated platforms can ease the convergence of multiple major business technology streams, including big data, data analytics, AI, machine learning, cloud, mobility, security, social media, cognitive computing, and digital disruption and transformation. Digital business platforms can serve as the cornerstone of digital business transformation efforts, while providing openness and extensibility to development teams. They should be architected in a way that they are configurable, so only the capabilities needed are deployed and used. When digital platform technologies take a no-code approach, they offer no possibility for creative developers to write code or extend them in new ways to build highly personalized applications for users, or to change applications quickly to meet changing business needs. Miguel emphasizes that digital transformation can’t be truly
|March 2018|
Digital Peek-a-Boo
successful without empowering the developers who build the applications that run the world. Engaging customer experience, a key differentiator Successful digital business transformation will increasingly rely on organizations’ ability to deliver great user experiences. For too long, the concept of “user experience” has been conflated with “user interface”—which represents only a fraction of the complete user experience. The user experience as a whole includes a well-designed, easy-to-use user interface backed by agile, simple, and efficient processing of all the underlying business processes. In any business application, each user action kicks off a business process. The process, or business logic, behind the application affects how the user interacts with the application, but so do processes undertaken by employees and automated systems (e.g., databases, email, CRMs, and so on). A truly great user experience, whether for customers or employees, extends from the user interface all the way through the last step of the process. By converging the technologies crucial for digital business transformation into a single, cohesive entity, digital business platforms make it easier for organizations to create great user experiences that stand out as differentiators in the market. For success in the digital transformation era Technology managers involved in digital business transformation will need to adopt the following priorities: Ÿ Focus on excellence in digital user experiences for both customers and employees. Ÿ
Offer exceptional management for existing services and offerings through the application of next-generation BPM technologies (such as predictive artificial intelligence). |March 2018|
Miguel Valdes Faura CEO & Co-founder Bonitasoft
Ÿ
Allocate more financial and development resources toward security, including consideration of how blockchain technologies might play a role.
“I have always made it a goal to bridge the gap between business needs and IT solutions. And we have kept the human element a top priority. For our customers, their developers, their business and customer users, we remain true to these core values with growth and change,” says Miguel.
35
Proactive Worldwide: An Upfront Strategic Solution
P
roactive Worldwide was founded as a specialist enterprise committed to serving clients through its expertise in primary research and strategic intelligence services. By providing Intelligence-based solutions, PWW helps customers from a wide range of industries to identify and propel more robust business growth through Intelligence-Based Strategic Planning, Competitive Intelligence, Market Intelligence, and customer insights.
Since its inception in 1995, Proactive Worldwide has evolved from a two-person operation into one of the world’s leading Strategic Intelligence firms, with delivery teams spread across North America, Europe, and Asia. An Oxygen Provider for Corporate Environments The company believes that strategic planning provides “oxygen” for corporate executives, allowing them to think more clearly. Honed through years of experience, PWW’s cultural and operational approach has developed evidence-based solutions to address market, customer, and competitive challenges. The team uses strategic simulation, competitive response modeling, and scenario planning to achieve its goals. The PWW emphasis on team effort, improved strategic intelligence, and state-ofthe-art research methods, has had a significant impact on executive solutions. Client collaboration is key to success in working with PWW. The firm also helps associated clients with data collection, organization, and categorization. This strategized information is disseminated efficiently through customized intelligence web portals. These web portals are a highly effective and important way to sort and share critical intelligence with those who will benefit
36
most. And they can make optimal business decisions in near-real time. Proactive CEO Gary Maag Proactive’s Executive Team Head and CEO, Gary Maag, is a prominent leader in the competitiveintelligence consulting landscape. He has honed his innovative approach to competitive-intelligence gathering over the past twenty-five years. Maag is a prominent educator and regular speaker at industry workshops and conferences throughout North America and Europe. Along the way, he has been honored for his achievements: he has received the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) Catalyst Award as well as Northern Illinois University’s Distinguished Marketing Alumnus Award for his productive strategy-planning excellence. Teamwork: The PWW Mantra for Success Proactive Worldwide credits the creative and adaptable mindset of its executive leaders for PWW’s success in overcoming challenges. These capable professionals provide vision and dedicated commitment. Because they have the utmost respect for their associates’ talents, they have empowered these people to be innovative and to do their best. The executive leaders have been extremely fortunate in both attracting and retaining such employees. The company requires that every employee brings a unique vital-skill-set that increases PWW’s expertise and adds to their knowledge base. Consequently, the firm is able to grow and prosper in the best possible way.
|March 2018|
For over 20 years, our multi-lingual professionals have assisted clients with competitive research studies and custom benchmarking services related to market and competitive positioning and, market entry and defense strategies
Gary Maag CEO
Proactive Worldwide was in the forefront in developing the concept of support services that link an evidencebased market with competitor intelligence. The company is also dedicated to maintaining its position in co-related services. Teamwork is vital to this endeavor. What Will the Future Bring? Proactive Worldwide is proud of its past accomplishments, but the team predicts that some of its best work still lies ahead. For example, the healthcare industry is particularly volatile. The PWW team is currently working on developing cutting-edge technology innovations in the healthcare industry that will have an impact on a number of concerns, including insurance coverage, mergers, manufacturing capabilities, and especially, patient compliance, a key component for any future healthcare business striving to be successful. One such PWW new product entry, “MedForecast™,” is a subscription-based model that tracks new drugtreatment solutions as they go through the regulatory approval process. Research and Development More than most strategic intelligence professionals, PWW’s executive leaders engage with software partners in significant R&D to drive new innovations. Proactive’s advanced rapid-fire-response service “Ask an Analyst” is one typical endeavor. “Ask an Analyst” was developed to help organizations quickly authenticate their market position on any number of strategic, competitive,
|March 2018|
marketing, and custom benchmarking metrics. This tool provides insight and direction toward sustainable profitability and growth. Proactive’s highly strategic War Gaming strategy, developed by President David Kalinowski, stated that “War games are particularly relevant in a fluctuating global marketplace, and when done right, can expose more predictively reliable pathways to help businesses tactically strengthen their position among their competition.” Prospects for the Future In the future, PWW will continue to solidify its position in high-growth markets, including healthcare and pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, financial services, and technology, to name a few. The firm’s commitment to education in the field of Competitive Intelligence remains strong. The executive team’s future travel schedules to promote continuing industry education are impressive. Their workshops and speaking engagements already draw large attendance. A portent for the future: even now one of the most popular workshop topics involves demonstrating ROI and the importance of evidence-based intelligence for decisions concerning business development in emerging markets. The PWW team believes the road ahead promises to be a shining pathway toward continuing growth and prosperity for the innovative company.
37
WEB AND MOBILE EXPERTS
Custom Web Development A professionally created website and a remarkable design go a long way in creating that impression about your business and thus help in converting a visitor into a customer.
CUSTOM WEB DEVELOPMENT
Mobile Application Development Develop powerful, highly usable apps that solve business problems, attract users, and reinforce your brand.
UI/ UX Our role is to oer the expertise and determination to deliver each site to the utmost standards.
User Engagement MOBILE APPLICATION
We do it by using artiďŹ cial intelligence to provide true end to end personalization and continue to engage shoppers across unlimited segments to deliver experiences that convert.
UI / UX
USER ENGAGEMENT
Email id: contact@ascratech.com | Contact No.: +91-9769162289 | www.ascratech.com
Leading Insights to Become the Most Successful Person This Year
E
xperiencing a seamless growth is not a miracle, but an appeal in actionable process. Success is a universal concept and not solitude for a certain people, class or origin. So, with this idea, success is actually open for everybody, living anywhere at any time. If you want your provisions to be most preferred over another, you need to put more preference in providing non-horizontal line of solutions in the industry. Provide, people with what they have never heard of, and they will seek for you even in the most hidden places. When you gain such attention, and after a long strive, happiness, and long lasting joy will fills your heart then this is what success is all about. To stand out unique and be more successful than you have always been, exploit the action plans mentioned below. You may not be able to implement each and every-one, but attempting them with a discipline can help you to improve in unparalleled manner. Self-Control and Discipline You are mature enough, but the future is wiser than you. So, if you want to reach the desired future in a more effective way then learn to organize yourself, and arrange line of action with a time consciousness. Always remember that, time gone will not come back. One must optimize his daily activities to be more organized. The hard works will surely payback with a huge success and a worthwhile ROI. Listen to the Inner Voice A wise man will not fell into the trouble that a smart person would come out of. Learn the people around you. The society is not your home, but your extra person in multitude. If you can control how these multitudes
40
interact with your inner person and never be distracted by them, you will succeed in almost everything that has to do with people. Remember, you will not always be successful in everything, but you can be mentally successful, when your first step was taken with high degree of optimism. So always be positive and do not allow the bad happening of the now, to distract the possibilities of the future. Be the Leader of Your Today Although you failed once, it also means you tried, and you have the chances to be successful. If you never tried a new thing, you will never know how far you could have gone in life. In all, just learn from your failures and always try to climb up. Never regret anything, just learn from your mistakes and become a better version of you. When you meet new challenges in 2018, always face it with confidence because you might be just a step behind the green pasture at the other end. Let your actions be leader-oriented, with clear goals and budded with pure passion and allow yourself to fly high. Learn in Bits, Grow in Bulk Do not try to learn everything once, you will always make a lot mistakes. As long as you live and interact with people in 2018, always find something new to add to your knowledge store. Learn from the digital platforms, the crowd, but in all; learn to optimize what you have assimilated. Observe each and every action taken by you and have an ability to understand the right one. It will help you to stay ahead of the masses. If you know what every other person knows, and add your own extra knowledge, your actions will stand as reference point for the generations. So continue learning to continue earning.
|March 2018|
Sales Choice
|March 2018|
41
RhinoDox:
An Advanced Solution for Securing Documents, Content and Data
T
searching through document titles, document content and document metadata, the chances of losing a document are impossible. And if that’s not enough, the platform uses semantic search to enrich the content even further.
One organization that’s taking ECM to the next level and fixing these common pain points is, RhinoDox. RhinoDox is a cloud-based, Intelligent content solution that automates tasks and simplifies search, making it easier than ever for employees to do their jobs.
Semantics allows users to search for similar words and phrases to the ones being typed in the search bar – think of it as synonym library. By pulling in synonyms from public information sources, ontologies of industryspecific terminology and employee enrichment, users are guaranteed to find what they’re looking for. For example, if an employee saved a document, ‘Project Rhinoceros’, but their co-worker was searching for the document by typing in, ‘Operation Rhino’, the semantic library would acknowledge that the two phrases could mean the same thing and would pull up results for any documents including both ‘Operation Rhino’ and ‘Project Rhinoceros’.
raditional Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions have existed on the market for quite some time. The goal of these solutions has always been to help users manage the documents and data that exist across an entire organization by eliminating paper and digitizing things. Traditional ECM solutions have decreased costs, but they haven’t been able to take full advantage of all the content that exists across an entire organization. Documents are still getting misplaced and lost, and processes are still coming to a halt because someone’s out of the office, or approval timelines are taking too long.
A Powerful Tool RhinoDox is more than an ECM tool - the organization is offering a brand-new approach to search, semantics and workflow technology, all in one platform. The platform stores all of your organizations’ documents in one place, and interprets the data in those documents with its Machine Learning capabilities. And, through use of its API framework, the RhinoDox platform even has the ability to integrate with your current technology investments. The search engine technology, powered by the RhinoDox platform, ensures that users never lose, or even struggle to locate documents and content. By
42
While semantics is a very important piece of it, the platform wouldn’t be complete without its robust workflow tool that orchestrates data and content seamlessly through an organization. Users can simply drag-and-drop to create customizable workflows that ensure tasks get completed every time. Once a workflow is kicked off, the platform will assign a task to responsible parties, and ensure that it gets completed in a timely manner by sending reminders until it gets done. Employees no longer have to send email reminders, or corner each other in person to get a task completed. And all the data, documents and content from these workflows are automatically stored and searchable within the RhinoDox platform.
|March 2018|
Our product features a powerful workflow tool as well as top-notch customer success, but what really makes us stand out is our search engine technology. Justin Ullman
Founder & CEO
Intelligent Content Analytics The RhinoDox platform and its advancements and innovations in the technology space have led the platform to be labeled as an ‘Intelligent Content Analytics Hub’. What that means is, businesses have a vast quantity of content saved in the form of video, audio, documents, etc. Inside all of that content is a variety of different risks, revenues and valuable information. Traditionally, a person would have to read/watch/listen to that content in order to make sense of it. The RhinoDox platform analyzes your data, documents and content with Machine Learning, enabling you to work smarter.
Ullman also comments, “I believe we are at a moment in time where we’re only limited by our imaginations when it comes to technology, and challenges are going to come at us every single day.” Ullman’s main goal is to enhance the innovation and technology at his company, so that clients can work more productively and efficiently, ultimately improving their business performance 100%. But people are the ones that make that happen. That’s why RhinoDox takes the time to invest personally and professionally in all its employees, and challenges them to go beyond what they think is possible. That’s where true progress comes from.
A Passionate Technologist
The Future as We Know It
Justin Ullman is the Founder & CEO of RhinoDox. With over twenty years of experience in the Technology and Content Management industry, he’s learned a lot about what it takes to run a successful company.
RhinoDox is one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Chicago. In addition to its award-winning platform, built for documents, content and data, RhinoDox has built an empowering work environment that creates opportunities and spurs growth at an unprecedented pace. In the future, we can expect RhinoDox to update and enhance their product and grow its employees personally and professionally, all while having a little fun along the way.
Along his journey, Ullman realized that the largest impact he could have on outcomes revolved around people. He says, “Employees want to show up to work and perform at their highest skill set, creating the most impact. I’ve found that when we focus on an individual’s ‘Natural Genius’ and can tap into what they are great at and love doing, we see the needle move further than anything else.”
|March 2018|
43
M
assive technology changes, never seen or experienced before are revolutionizing the businesses with advent of the new wave of digital innovation. From cloud computing to mobility, to big data analytics, IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, these technologies have completely transformed the business landscape irrespective of the industry— banking, retail, telecom or utility alike. The pace of this technological advancement is growing exponentially, establishing new business models and creating tectonic shifts in market dynamics. The technology-savvy and digitally connected customers of today are further forcing businesses to take cognizance of their preferences, expectations and consumption trends. Unless business aligns their approach and processes with this customercentric approach, survival may be thwarted in the competitive landscape. Today, the energy and utility industry grapples with its unique set of challenges comprising aging infrastructure, workforce retention and recruitment, widening demand-supply deficit, evolving regulatory mandates,
44
stricter environmental compliances, need to increase grid resilience, and economic and social ramifications. Ultimately, utilities face the risk of disintermediation of their relationship with the customer, allowing new entrants to capture the value, while they are left holding the costs. For utilities to meet these challenges while delivering quality service and sustaining their financial viability, it is paramount to reexamine their approach technology and digitalization. While the traditional energy and utility industry had been a relatively slow adopter of technology compared to other sectors, nonetheless, it has picked up pace in last couple of years. The energy and utility companies today are beginning to comprehend the value of digital innovation and its impact on improving their operational efficiencies, boosting service levels, reducing costs and most importantly on increasing customer satisfaction. This has led them to explore the opportunities extended by adopting latest technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data, predictive analytics, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and others. The industry is now quick to leverage latest
innovations to modernize processes, gain efficiencies and gain customer confidence. By adopting a “mobile-first” strategy, the utilities can enable real-time connectivity with customers and their workforce alike – from anywhere, anytime and using any device. This has empowered customers who can easily manage or monitor their real-time and historic usage, and make better choices based on data-backed insights. They can conveniently plan and manage their bills and payments with increased ease and flexibility. The utilities can use mobile technology to become proactive in sending alerts, notifications and personalized communication to the customers. It can also boost the workforce productivity and efficiency by equipping them with on-the-go updates using mobile devices. Driving customer engagement can help utility increase customers’ adoption for energy efficiency and water conservation programs. This in turn is a win-win for both – the customers who save on resources as well as on bills, and even the utility which is able to manage peak loads and optimizing resources; thereby also meeting the state mandates.
|March 2018|
Insider’s Viewpoint
However, this digital shift poses another set of complexities for utility industry – huge quantum of customer data, lack of in-house technical expertise, implementation risks, integration complexities and ongoing support concerns. Thus, for utilities, the adoption of technology and solutions necessitates a strategic outlook rather than tactical detours focused on quick fixes. The industry must carefully assess and evaluate the “build vs. buy” adage to be able to deploy technology or solutions which are a best-fit for their business requirements and are also cost-effective and efficient. They must look for solutions that can easily integrate with existing legacy systems, require minimal deployment cost and can deliver faster returns on investment. Since, customers today are prime drivers of change; another important consideration for the utility industry must be customer adoption rate. The customers are doubtlessly more technology savvy today, but adoption rate depends upon how user-friendly a platform is, and does it offer self-service capabilities. Similarly, how quickly and easily the utility workforce can familiarize with the solution and can use it address customer concerns. Carefully weighing these considerations can help the industry truly leverage the emerging technologies and thrive on the wave of digitalization. |March 2018|
The acceleration of digital transformation in the utility industry has predictably driven an upsurge in the number of service providers offering technologies to address these needs, each with their unique value proposition, but generally focused on only a small sub-set of the overall challenge. Thus, the utility companies must be cautious while identifying their digital transformation partners’ basis not just the technical competencies but also ensures both are aligned in terms of long-term architectural compliance and are driven by a shared goal to build the utility’s primacy with its customers. As more and more utilities adapt and adopt emerging technologies, CIOs have an important role to play as they must carefully balance long-term and short-term deployment decisions. With the evolving utility-customer relationship, they must probe areas where digital can help them strengthen relationship with customers, while improving operations, bridging organizational siloes, and developing topline opportunities. Indeed, digital transformation opens arrays of opportunities for utilities, but, success will require a significant investment in new talent and capabilities, and careful prioritization.
45
Seceon:
Providing Comprehensive Cyber-Security for the digital era
S
eceon is focused on enabling organizations to see cyber threats clearly and quickly, stop threats from inflicting extensive damage through surgical containment and elimination and to predict imminent inside attacks through behavioral threat detection modeling and machine learning. The innovative Open Threat Management (OTM) Platform of the company empowers MSSP and enterprises to Detect and Eliminate all Known and unknown threats in real-time. Platform consumes raw data (Packets, Logs, Flows and Identities etc.) and extracts features from data to provide
Adaptive Visibility of all the assets (Applications, Services, Users and Hosts) Ÿ Proactive Threat Detections (Driven by Dynamic Threat Models, Machine Learning and AI with Actionable Intelligence) Ÿ Automated Containment and Elimination of threats in Real-Time Ÿ Continuous Compliance and Reporting Ÿ
The platform uses patent-pending predictive analytics, machine learning, and dynamic threat models with behavioral analytics to automatically generate threat alerts in real-time, giving IT teams the ability to both detect and respond to the threats before critical data is exfiltrated and damage is done. Seceon’s OTM Platform closes the threat loop by seeing and stopping the threats in a proactive manner. It is the industry’s first and only fully automated, real-time threat detection and remediation system to detect, analyze and eliminate cyber-threats in minutes. When an Industry Expert Became a Leader Chandra Pandey, is the Founder and CEO of Seceon. He is an expert in data center architecture and highly scalable network solutions and a proven business leader with more than 20 years of experience in developing and marketing innovative technology solutions. Before founding Seceon, Chandra served as a General Manager and Vice President of
46
Platform Solutions at BTI Systems. He also led a global team through the creation, development and launch of an Intelligent Secure Cloud Connect platform to more than 20 Web 2.0-focused customer deployments in less than 18 months. Chandra has also held senior leadership roles at Juniper Networks, Internet Photonics (Ciena), Lucent and 3Com (HP). While working for Juniper, Chandra led the worldwide Solutions Architecture and Engineering teams, and was responsible for delivering integrated solutions for Juniper’s enterprise, service provider, managed service organization and major OEM partners, driving billions of dollars in revenue for the organization. Delivering Excellence through Solutions Seceon is 100 percent channel driven, and is most challenged by partners whose processes and approvals require longer cycles to reach customer engagement. Over time, the organization has learned how to better identify partners that are equally vested in the goals Seceon is trying to accomplish. In that vein, Seceon is constantly taking feedback from its partners and using it to improve its own processes, sharpen communications, simplify onboarding and generally better the entire partner experience from introduction to implementation. The organization is always working against the clock, but it also thinks that if it continues to invest its energy wisely, it can certainly sped up the entire cycle, so the organization can quickly address the real issues at hand, which is protecting customer data. As a self-funded, bootstrap startup outside the Silicon Valley and VC universe, another big challenge is to generate visibility for Seceon’s unique approach while also establishing credibility within the market. Once customers have access to the product the response is immediate and positive because its solution is fast, easy to deploy & manage, and is effective at accurately detecting & stopping threats in minutes with minimal human intervention or performance impact. |March 2018|
We are empowering enterprises and MSSPs to proactively detect and stop know and unknown cyber threats in real-time.
Standing Out From the Crowd Seceon offers a highly scalable analytic platform for solving challenges common to modern day cybersecurity-visibility and speed of threat detection and elimination-while minimizing costs, reducing staff bandwidth constraints and reducing performance impact. No competitors currently address these challenges in quite the way Seceon does and its 12 pending patents ensure its differentiation and longevity. Seceon is different than its competitors for the following reasons: It can detect traditional, as well as zero-day threats leveraging advanced data collection and analysis, machine learning, patent-pending predictive and behavioral analytics. Ÿ Its architecture can process billions of inputs and generate correlated outputs of all related threat behavior in seconds, improving threat detection while minimizing false positives, and reducing the number of threat activities to be analyzed. Ÿ It is fully automated, utilizing dynamic rule sets, meaning it will never need new rules to be added, to be tuned or monitored – analysis and reporting via text or email is conducted automatically. Ÿ It stops the threat. Dynamically writes rules to firewalls and switches to stop connectivity of compromised devices. Disables compromised or malicious insider’s credentials, as well as isolates the device with exfiltrated data. Ÿ
Future Roadmap Through its customer research, Seceon has identified an unmet need in the marketplace to help protect small to medium sized businesses, which because of their limited |March 2018|
Chandra Pandey Founder & CEO
resources, tend to be the most vulnerable to even the least sophisticated of attacks. Often, these smaller enterprises turn to managed security service providers (MSSPs) for expertise and protection. Yet, those same MSSPs are constrained themselves to provide affordable services that give customers what they need at a reasonable price but allow for a profitable revenue stream. Until now, the technology has not been available to allow MSSPs to provide affordable and comprehensive threat detection and elimination across all forms of customer traffic for a wide range of organizations. Seceon’s awardwinning OTM platform is that much-needed technology. Updated to support MSSP requirements, Seceon OTM gives MSSPs a path to market that provides enterprises with a robust level of protection and provides value-added services, through which they can build a profitable business around. This opens up a vastly underserved market of the Fortune 5000 and beyond, allowing these customers access to the industry’s best threat detection and remediation services at a price point they can afford. Seceon will continue to provide the ability for a company of any size or technical talent, to have access to its technology to better protect critical data from loss or damage. The company will continue to innovate and expand its solution, investing in an approach that involves a combination of AI, Machine Learning and Dynamic Threat Models, to stay one step ahead of the challenges in the security industry’s future.
47
An Insight on the Opportunities
BIG DATA INDUSTRY
I
n this era of changing technologies, the Big Data domain has evolved in a very short period of time. It plays the most pivotal role across all industries. The ability of Big Data to mine critical data has radically altered the dynamics of the way businesses function, drive sales, and attract customers. It has become an essential component of business strategy nowadays. A business tastes success by uncovering insights locked inside data. The overlaying trends will examine the evolving ways enterprises can realize better business value with Big Data and how improving business intelligence can help transform organizational processes and the customer experience. There is a demand for better data management from most of the business executives for compliance and increased confidence to steer the business. It will help them in more rapid adoption of Big Data and innovative and transformative data analytic technologies.
analytics which will become a major area of investment and will grow swiftly. It is necessary for the enterprises and the government agencies to upgrade their security systems to next-generation software which can address ultra-modern security threats.
Insight-driven Organizations In this present year, businesses will move beyond just data handling to leveraging the insights that Big Data uncovers. As understanding, managing, and manipulating Big Data has now become fairly ubiquitous, most of the companies have the ability to deal with it. Mining data will be the center of attraction and it will help effectively to meet organizational requirements and for precise targeting of products and services. An insight-driven approach will facilitate an evolved customer experience, competitiveness, advanced security and operational efficiency.
Bridging the talent gap If the demand expands further, the talent gap in data analytics will soar. It is expected that organizations and academic institutions will collaborate closely to generate skills and talent to meet the demand for data engineers. The functions of all corporate employees will be expected to understand, appreciate and work with analytics since it emerges as one of the key instruments in every organization. The academic institutions are also looking forward to put together degree programs in data science.
Cyber security Applications Today, everyone is dependent on the digital technology and our dependence has reached an unprecedented level. Cyberattacks have also become much more prevalent. An increased occurrence of ransomware has been registered across the globe and cyber criminals are now targeting personal data and devices. Concerning the prime industry, cyber security can only be possible through big data
50
Analytics across the enterprise It can be said that the analytics will not remain isolated to a few departments like marketing and risk management. On the other hand it will infuse the entire enterprise. To understand the dynamics of business operations, data analytics will be utilized and will also reveal ways and means to increase efficiency. Hence to derive overall business strategy, insights from multiple departments will be integrated and redundant processes will be eliminated. It will also help the departments to increase efficiency, growth, and productivity.
IoT and People There will be a transition from Internet of Things (IoT) to Internet of People (IoP). Interactions, predictive analytics around human behavior, and other subjective areas will grow and start to filter all industry verticals. For example, hospitals will increasingly deploy machine learning techniques to predict the likelihood of the relapse of a disease. This will enable them to work out a patient’s readmission precisely at the time of the initial discharge. |March 2018|
Industry Insight
Business-science collaboration Businesses will have to learn and deploy traditional, scientific techniques of pattern-matching and artificial intelligence for analytics use cases. For example, techniques to analyze gene sequences in DNA are being used in text-matching algorithms to process bulk emails. It is expected to see very close collaboration between data scientists and the scientific community. For example, image processing is widely used in ‘tagging’ in social media, while voice recognition is used in apps. Technology There will be brisk moving in the organizations from on-premise platforms to cloud and hybrid environments. Around 44 percent of applications used by Fortune 500 organizations are already on the cloud, and more than 50 percent of IT applications will move to the cloud by the end of the year. There will be a rise in demand for analytics tools that are simple, flexible, and capable of handling a variety of data sources. Hadoop enables to store an extremely large volume of data at a significantly lower price point and hence it will continue to become increasingly popular. The share of unstructured data in the data warehouse will continue to increase, which will further cause for Hadoop. Hadoop, now, is past the business relevance and scalability assessment phase and its adoption is expected to accelerate strongly. We are advancing towards a completely new era in the domain of analytics. Big data is disruptive and it has paved the way for pioneering ideas and innovative techniques across industry verticals. It is now driving the stream of disruption and expanding the scope of opportunities for previously untouched market segments. Organizations need to leverage Big Data analytics to its full capacity so as to thrive in this competitive world.
|March 2018|
51
Stratix:
Simplifying Enterprise Mobility for 35 Years
T
he phrase ‘enterprise mobility’ has seen increasingly widespread use in recent years and the concept itself has had a huge impact on businesses across the globe. A shift in work habits and changing business needs have led many organizations to restructure and integrate mobile technology into their business strategies. In addition to helping boost revenue, improve productivity, cut costs and stay ahead of the competition, enterprise mobility makes it easier for employees to collaborate and work more efficiently. This is achieved through online access to corporate information and functions on the go, a key efficiency factor for organizations with a large, distributed workforce. Though the concept is relatively new, it has expanded the horizons of every possible vertical with its futuristic approach. Regional and global businesses want a single enterprise mobility services provider who can deliver the complete portfolio of managed services to achieve their business transformation goals. Stratix Corp delivers that. Stratix is a pure-play managed mobile service provider which has empowered hundreds of global field workforces since its inception in 1983. Enterprise Mobility for Diverse Requirements Stratix provides Managed Mobile Services focused exclusively on enterprise and the inherent challenges of delivering and supporting enterprise mobile solutions. The main challenge has been the increasingly diverse mix of devices, peripherals, use-cases and applications. However, Stratix-devised services programs help enterprise customers to plan, deploy, support and manage their mobile devices on a unified platform. Every solution and service offered by Stratix is based on a proven methodology of over thirty-five years. SouthWest Airlines approached Stratix to resolve a problem in scaling a trial mobile deployment of Electronic Flight
52
Bags (EFB) with pilots. The goal of the project was to equip all pilots with a mobile tablet and software that would replace paper printouts of the information needed for a flight. As SWA began to deploy the solution with the first set of pilots, they quickly realized that they lacked the resources needed to move beyond the initial trial to full-scale deployment with over 7,000 pilots. Stratix was brought in to help plan, deploy, support and manage mobility for the project. After successfully implementing the project with the pilots, Stratix was selected to manage the deployment of mobility for other lines of SWA’s operations, starting with the deployment of tablets for the airline’s 14,000 flight attendants. The company created a custom web portal for each flight attendant to order their tablet and to select the day they wished to receive shipment at their home. This complicated and unwieldy project was flawlessly executed by Stratix, powered by the never-ending passion of its employees and management team to ensure customer success. Two Decades of Brilliance Gina Gallo is the CEO of Stratix. She has over 25 years of leadership experience in the enterprise mobility marketplace. Prior to joining Stratix, Gina was Senior Vice President of Sales at Motorola Solutions and has also held key leadership positions at GRiD Systems and Xerox Corporation. She joined Stratix in September 2004 as Senior Vice President of Sales, was appointed to President in 2007 and assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer in 2011. Under Gina’s leadership, the company achieved three hundred percent growth and became one of the largest and most well-respected Managed Mobile Services companies in Fortune 1000’s list of businesses in North America.
|March 2018|
For 35 years, Stratix has led the mobile industry with the solutions our customers need to simplify the complexity of enterprise mobility.
Today, the company is directly managing over 2 million mobile devices for some of the world’s largest global brands in retail, manufacturing, transportation, and field service. The Key Differentiators Stratix is focused exclusively on mobile solutions and has been over its entire thirty five-years history as a company. It offers incredible depth of best-practices and expertise to help its customers plan and then support mobile users across their enterprise. A key differentiator is that the company delivers their complete portfolio of services leveraging its own resources and facilities. Unlike most other service providers, who outsource part of their support programs to third party or off-shore providers. The company constantly monitors its feedback score and its consistent performance of an average NPS score over 80 is more than double the industry average of 34. Stratix manages over two million mobile devices daily. It has systems and scale to deploy tens of thousands of mobile devices monthly, while supporting each end-user with high quality and flawless execution. The company’s itrac360 software portal gives customers complete visibility across all their mobile assets, managed services and SLAs. This ensures customers have better control and understanding when running their own mobile environments. From Inception to the Future When the company was founded in 1983, enterprise customers struggled with supply chain technology solutions centered on barcodes and barcode scanning. For the first 10 |March 2018|
Gina Gallo CEO
years, Stratix offered consulting services to help enterprise customers better deploy mobility around their warehouses and supply-chain solutions. As mobile technology standards evolved, more mobile vendors and network-attached devices entered the marketplace and Stratix quickly became the largest national integrator of rugged technology commonly used in backoffice, line-of-business applications. It also added consumer-grade technologies from Apple, Samsung and others as these devices made their way into the enterprise. As enterprises sought to deploy and support mobile solutions across all lines of businesses and to all employees within the enterprise, the complexity of doing so increased exponentially. Consequently, Stratix evolved its solutions to provide the necessary managed services that augment enterprise teams’ ability to plan, deploy, support and manage mobility. Now, the company is aiming to continue building on its progress with more revolutionary services. The working relationships it has forged with large Fortune 500 companies give Stratix a unique perspective to gauge the future and asses what is needed to ensure continued business transformative solutions. Stratix aims to continue to evolve their managed services portfolio and lead the industry based on enterprise adoption of emerging technology trends and needs.
53
About the Author: Mr. Rajiv Saran Sharma, CEO, Virgosys Software Private Limited. Virgosys was started with the sole view to cater to elite customers who are looking for bespoke solutions and have the vision to use custom built stuff. We also believed as our customers grew we would follow the path with them, their requirements ever growing. Started in 1994 as a true startup, Virgosys Software Pvt Ltd has grown from strength to strength and serves clients worldwide. We offer a mix of products and services, we have a few premium products viz Schookee – a premier ERP for educational institutions, ELMS a learning management framework which can help impart any companies training requirements. Both products are flexible to scale any enterprise requirement and functional requirements. Our core focus is to deliver solutions in Web and mobile space in various verticals. Rajiv with almost 24 years of experience, is always looking for opportunities to contribute to the welfare of the society through his skills and capabilities.in goal of this forum is to have at least 150 of its members attain CMM Level 5 by the year 2007.
54
|March 2018|
InPerspective
How
AI and Machine
Learning Transforming Human Lives
I
nnovation and technology has exploded over the past couple of years and India has seen the boom of startups especially coming up leaps and bounds in Bangalore, India. It has 35% of the startup share in India. Well I am specifically going to be talking about Artificial Intelligence or AI as it’s popularly known. AI and machine learning are already driving innovation and transformation. They are embedded in how we sift through large volumes of data and content and how we enhance, organize, connect, and deliver content and information. They are the engines underlying many of the products and services. AI can be defined as “the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior”. Huge amounts of research is going in to imitate the human behavior and
|March 2018|
use that information for various purposes from Marketing Campaigns and understand your purchasing/decision making patterns. This would be disruptive in terms of new products which can then be focused on a specific group of people and convinced more easily to buy them. Some of the advantages of AI: Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ
Error reduction Difficult exploration Daily Application Digital Assistants No breaks Increased Efficiency Reduced costs of training and operation
55
Some examples of AI ٠Virtual Personal Assistants ٠Siri ٠Tesla Most of them are well known and used by most of us in daily lives. How much they have impacted its up to us to decide. Sophia deserves a special mention, she is the first humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotics, Alphabet Inc and SingularityNET which powers her brains. Sophia uses artificial intelligence, visual data processing and facial recognition. Sophia also imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and to make simple conversations on predefined topics. This shows how AI has progressed to create a robot that can behave like a human, have a conversation and show facial reactions. Saudi Arabia has granted her citizenship. How AI will improve our lives in future: ΠImproved Geriatric care: With the shortage of medics and paramedics elder patient care has been a pain point for most countries and governments. In near future home robots would help in patient care and help in monitoring their vital signs and informing the hospital so proactive measures can be taken allowing them lead a good life.
Automated Transport: Well all of us are aware of the driverless cars testing going on and soon that big stress would be taken off our shoulders allow us to utilize that travel time in a more productive way.
Ž
Cyborg: Humans will be able to selectively add on computers and add capabilities to one self to perform beyond limits and enhance our capabilities.
Dangerous Jobs: Advanced robots will be able to replace humans in dangerous jobs and hazardous jobs like bomb defusing etc.
Friends: People who are lonely and find it hard to make friends may end up having robots as friends with whom they can share their feelings.
and patient monitoring and care, among others. Healthcare remains the top area of investment in AI as measured by venture capital deal flow. AI will play a big role in the way Medical records are used in the future. It will collect, store normalize and tracing its lineage, revolutionizing the existing healthcare systems. Another aspect is it will help in designing specific treatment plans for patients based on the available data. Assisting in repetitive jobs, cognitive assistants are being built to assist doctors in decision making processes. Precision medicine -With AI there is going to be a huge impact on genetics and genomics. Genomics would help at finding patterns and looking for mutations so gene specific medications can be given for treatment various diseases and would be more effective. Cons of AI: With the growth of AI, that could also boost the Cyber crimes and the rates of cyber crimes would go up. Also people stand to loose jobs to AI, in UK its estimated 1 out 3 stands to loose a job to AI. In India a leading IT company deployed AI and some 900 jobs were lost in the process. That shows that the workforce must constantly keep upgrading themselves to be employable. In conclusion every coin has a flip side and its up to us to regulate the negatives and absorb the positives for a much better life style where can focus on the family and continue to enjoy the benefits of IT doing the mundane jobs even ordering food when you need it.
AI and Healthcare: AI programs have been developed and applied to practices such as diagnosis processes, treatment protocol development, drug development, personalized medicine
56
|March 2018|
Building Next Generation Solutions
H
eadquartered in Reston, VA, UVision is a technology solutions company dedicated to the creation of smart, scalable and secure solutions to create a better, smarter and safer world. UVision provides advisory services, development capabilities and managed services to drive results for businesses building custom web, mobile, IoT as well as data-driven technology products. UVision’s clients range from startups to small businesses to large enterprises. The company helps their clients to define, create and grow next generation technology and solutions. It builds innovative solutions to help organizations transform, innovate and grow in addition to new ways to make sense of data, enhance productivity, improve the bottom line, mitigate risks and be more resilient. UVision also helps its clients to engage their customers across the digital ecosystem including interactive applications, web, mobile, desktop, search, video, media, sensors & Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. The company has developed and integrated solutions for organizations in mission-critical sectors such as defense, homeland security, government as well as solutions for high-tech startups and enterprises including intranet, secure mobile communications, SaaS, e-commerce, mcommerce, e-learning, asset management, risk management, gap analysis assessments and business intelligence. It has developed solutions in legal, e-discovery, regulated industries, financial, supply chain, manufacturing, transportation, health care, education, marketing, kiosk, hospitality, travel, real estate, nonprofit and entertainment.
58
A Massively Experienced Leader Omar Uddin is the Founder and CEO of UVision. He is a technology executive, inventor, advisor, technologist, and entrepreneur with a successful track record of building innovative solutions from idea to implementation. He has more than 20 years of experience spanning public and private sectors in the technology industry including advising startups, businesses, government contractors as well as corporations such as Microsoft and Google. Differentiating Itself from its Competitors Unlike other similar firms, UVision provides on-going advisory services, early stage and enterprise assessments in addition to providing custom outsourced development services and also provides solutions for cloud and ondevice edge computing through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning & machine intelligence. The company stated that one of the best projects they did was in 2014, when it was able to help develop TechMatch, an intuitive innovation platform aiming to foster and promote innovation across a number of different industries from cybersecurity, healthcare, cleantech, venture capital & startup competitions. TechMatch platform enables technology matching, searching, reviewing, business investment screening, social networking & connection. Derived from national security defense scouting efforts, TechMatch is a solution for corporate procurement, sourcing and M&A targeting of companies with relevant data. UVision was able to help turn around the platform leading to cutting costs by 90% while also paving the way for more growth. UVision was able to accomplish this by rebuilding the platform on the cloud as well as by augmenting internal team capabilities with distributed hybrid shoring teams
|March 2018|
For over 14 years, we’ve been working with our clients to solve problems and grow their vision. Our globally-distributed team leverages diverse skill-sets and capabilities and has worked with brands from startups to enterprises in D.C., the U.S. and abroad.
working in an agile process to adapt to changing client program goals. Uvision is focused on delivering intelligent, interactive and innovative solutions & services to help its clients achieve their vision, drive better decisions & deliver value to their consumers. The organization helps high-tech companies and growing organizations to de-risk their business, avoid mistakes and accelerate a path to success through tailored assessments and advisory guidance. UVision is bolstered by a distributed team which has collectively developed over 100 solutions with design and engineering teams specializing in data-driven technology solutions & product development. The organization provides a tiered offering of capabilities starting with advisory services, assessments, consulting services and dedicated cross functional agile teams. A distributed team lets the company tap into deep expertise in specific areas. The organization also provides a variety of solutions through its own solutions and products as well as through partnerships allowing its clients to leverage & integrate the best of breed technologies and solutions for their organization. UVision also provides a solution to help clients with risk, regulation and compliance solutions, as well as threat and cybersecurity solutions.
Omar Uddin Founder & CEO
development plans for new platforms and also turn around difficult business situations including derailed projects. UVision has a track record helping clients avoid failure, reputation risk & help reduce financial losses and increase profits. UVision has been able to help clients transform, innovate and grow by cutting costs through tailored risk assessments, and gap analysis and then enabling transformation through re-engineering yielding more ROI and business value. UVision is continuing to leverage and develop new solutions to help its clients SMEs and startups. The organization is also developing data-driven technologies as well as business intelligence and risk intelligence solutions to assess and prioritize risk and change management. It is developing new innovations in artificial intelligence and immersive realities which are important technology trends in the world today that will become even better in the future as these new technology platforms mature and become adopted around the world and throughout many industries. www.uvision.co
When the Tough Gets Going UVision helps organizations develop technology
|March 2018|
59