Huawei along with Oracle signs MoU
Dell EMC brings Integrated Partner Program
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Kaspersky joins OPC Foundation
DIGISOL unveils 2MP Outdoor Bullet IP Camera
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Budget 2017 pushes for Digital economy
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LG India Donates Rs 1 Crore to CRPF Welfare Fund
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o mark the 20th Anniversary, LG Electronics India has donated Rs 1 crore to CRPF Welfare Fund. The celebrations kick-started with LG's #KarSalaam initiative dedicated to Indian soldiers, was launched prior to Republic day. The campaign invited the whole nation to come forward and send their wishes to the Indian Armed Forces. Through this initiative, LG salutes the soldiers’ spirit of magnanimous contribution and service towards the nation. LG rolled out this campaign through radio, digital, outdoor and mall activities to capture the messages and wishes of the citizens of India for our soldiers. The company also engaged the people through social media platforms and encouraged them to share their wishes on the microsite www. karsalaam.in, where more than 1,93,000 wishes written by citizens.
HPE enhances its server and storage portfolio
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PE has announced server and storage innovations to help SMB strike the right balance of hybrid IT today and as they grow, including solutions that provide a future-proof and risk-free path from entry to private cloud. Resourceconstrained SMBs are increasingly embracing a hybrid mix of onpremise and cloud infrastructure to help provide agility and efficiency as they grow. To support the right mix, HPE has announced enhancements to its leading HPE StoreEasy Storage family, including integrated cloud backup with Microsoft Azure as well as an expansion to the HPE ProLiant Easy Connect hybrid cloud platform and HPE Flex Solutions.
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HELLO INDIA
Bigger push towards a digital India India is one the fastest growing economies in the world, and is all set transform itself into a digital powerhouse by ‘digitally empowering’ the industries ranging from healthcare to housing, energy generation and agriculture. Allocation of 10,000 crores for the Bharat Net Project to provide Wi-Fi hotspots to more than 150,000 Gram Panchayats in the country has the potential of democratizing digital access and the changing the cyber landscape in India. The government has set up a computer emergency response team exclusively for the financial sector. Apart form this, the provision of a payment regulatory board in RBI to monitoring electronic payments is a welcome move in bolstering the digital transactions. This is a natural corollary to the aggressive promotion of online payments after demonetization. Public confidence in online payments will get a boost by this step. This will boost. With the right implementation of these technology changes, India is all set to emerge as a world class digital economy in future. Internet of Things (IoT) market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28 per cent between 2015 and 2020 and the global IoT industry will be worth US$ 300bn by 2020 projecting that India will capture approximately five per cent of this market by this time, worth US$ 15 bn. The Internet of Things (IOT) is permeating the Indian marketplace. According to the estimates, IoT market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28 per cent between 2015 and 2020 and the global IoT industry revenue is set to reach US$ 300bn by 2020. By that time India will account for approximately five per cent of this market, worth US$ 15 bn. When it comes to understanding on the impact of IoT on the businesses, several Indian companies are in the early phases. There is an urgent need to make them aware of the business potential from IoT, which is definitely on the rise. The use of IoT is not limited to ICT Industries. It can find its use in the sector of agriculture. This will lead to higher yields and has the potential of reducing costs. Added to this, public utilities like electricity and water can be better managed by using IoT solutions. Lastly, Silicon Valley is looking for workers with knowledge in machine learning. According to McKinsey, Silicon Valley is in need of 300,000 data scientists by 2018. The recent executive order by President Donald Trump on Immigration banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. has evoked sharp reactions from the tech majors including Google, Facebook, Intel, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple and Twitter. We have to wait and watch how the future unfolds in the US.
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CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com
Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Consulting Editor: Pravin Prashant Deputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna Mullick Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera
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Aruba sees a growing wireless market in India
LG Revolutionizing the UltraWide
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LG's Kar Salam initiative salutes Indian jawans
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360-degree Surveillance - A new paradigm shift
Screen Experience
CYBER SECURITY CONCLAVE 30|
Building India’s Cyber Security Framework
TECHNOMANIA 40|
The changing conversation on energy efficiency: 5 steps to reduce power consumption in your data centre
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Bhubaneswar holds conference on Smart Bhubaneswar
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Budget 2017 pushes for Digital economy
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ISODA successfully concludes two regional meets
REGULARS Round About
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Guest Speak
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Hot Bytes
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On the Ramp
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Voice N Data
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Channel Buzz
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Movers & Shakers
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Corrigendum The name 'Takayuki Inaba – Managing Director – NEC India' has been wrongly published as Manoj Taskar, Country Manager, India & SAARC - Tenable beneath the spokesperson's photograph in the VAR Security section on page 58 in our January VARINDIA edition. We regret the inconvenience.
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ROUND ABOUT
An open letter to President Donald Trump Dear Mr President, I would like to congratulate you on becoming the 45th President of the United States of America. Your bold views and commitment to serve the US citizens and to set a new governance structure for world at large, has instilled new hopes and aspirations among the people of the United States. Your message of “Make America Great Again” resonates with me as well as millions of Americans who supported you. I have more respect and faith for you as well as admiration because you are not a “professional politician” but a highly successful businessman and a person of very original ideas. I myself being a US citizen of Indian roots, feel an empathy with you – if you allow me to say so – because in my life and career I have had to cross barriers and overcome challenges – barriers and challenges thrown by age-old customs and conventions, wrong ideas and narrowness of mind, one’s friends’ and family’s obsession with economic security which is so illusive. You have made Trump Organization possible and you have entered the Oval Office despite a world full of opposition and media clamour, and this proves you are a crusader for your causes and you know how to have faith in yourself. Undeniably, it will seek to redefine the political and social narrations world over. In this short letter, I would like to say a few words about my understanding and aspirations for a completely new friendship between the US and India. The US is a melting pot and helped many people realize their dreams. A group of people are strong promoters of American goods and technology in India, thereby giving a critical push to the American interests in the expanding Indian markets. Significantly, some of them are engaged in marketing IT technology platforms like satellites, sensors, Internet of Things, equipments using artificial intelligence like robotics, high configuration computers, gaming equipment. A lesser known fact is that these equipments are the backbone of the Indian IT industry, which enable India to transmit back the outsourced works from the US. These technology platforms have helped the two countries to come together to reap the benefits of the IT revolution. The Indian IT landscape is in for a radical change, thanks to a slew of measures being taken by the successive governments. This present dispensation has kick-started far-reaching programmes that can catapult India to a powerful and robust economy. India is already the third- largest economy in the world, after the US and China. The size of the Indian economy has registered quantum jumps in the recent times. India’s gross domestic product is over US$2 trillion and, going by the growth forecast by various multinational think tanks, India’s growth in the coming years will be spectacular. Some of India’s best brains are heading some of the big corporations in the US. They are in the forefront in creating wealth and employment to this great country, whom they or their forefathers have adopted years ago and are working tirelessly for its multifaceted development. The people of Indian origin have contributed immensely to the American literature, science and technology. They are recognized both in the US and India as well for their contributions. There are also Nobel Prize winners among them, who set trailblazing examples for scientific community. Many of them are heading large research projects of vital importance to the US. Similarly, some of the American corporations are household names in India. Their presence in India can be dated back to a few centuries. There is hardly any American Fortune 500 company which does not have a strong presence in India. They have been playing important roles in the economic and social development of India. Some of them are recognized as best corporate citizens, contributing marvellously to the social and cultural progress of India. India is on the cusp of a new development trajectory. India is the sixthlargest manufacturing hub in the world and is working hard to move up in the value chain. India has a strong agricultural base. The Indian business community is technology hungry all the time. India has massive plans like building 100 smart cities, a strong Digital India, a vibrant pharmaceutical sector, a strong and forward-looking agribusiness and so on. These are areas that open up opportunities for India and the US to work together. American companies are a natural pick for Indian corporations for joint ventures, technological tie-ups, etc since they have an excellent track record of partnerships. The people of my generation have had their education in the US universities, but some shifts in that preference took place only when the
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visa regime in the US got tightened. That led students to look at Britain and Australia. My feeling is that a relaxed visa regime in the US can take back all those students who were forced to look at other destinations. Also, it can also attract more students from India in the future. Importantly, as you have well recognized in your election campaigns, Indians not only come with two hands to work but also brains that can help the US realize its dream. Let me focus on our shared vision of using information technology to leverage the potentials of both countries. There are some of the potentials that exist in India that the US corporations can tap. In the healthcare sector, India’s objective is to provide universal healthcare to 1.3 billion people in the conceivable future. Faced with resource crunch, India is toying with different concepts to widen the coverage of the healthcare, which should be affordable, accessible and of high quality. Driven by shortage of health professionals like doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff, India is now focussing on telemedicine, using disruptive apps like mobile telephones, biomarkers, sensors, artificial intelligence, etc. This will enable them to treat the people closer to their home using modern virtual devices. There is a goldmine awaiting the US corporations in marketing these gadgets in India. Already, India imports a large quantum of medical devices from the US. Smart cities are another area that holds considerable scope. In the next ten years or so, India will have 100 smart cities coming up across the country. More than 60% of the expenditure to be incurred for these cities is on IT-related aspects for ensuring safety, security and sustainability to these cities. The US corporations can have their role cut out in capturing a sizeable chunk of these emerging demands. The Indo-US cooperation in defence, aerospace and in high-tech areas is well known. Similarly, of late India has embarked on an ambitious project known as “Make in India”. This presupposes India becoming a powerful manufacturing sector. This is a double whammy for the US corporations. First, the US could be a lead supplier of capital goods that are needed for the manufacturing sector. Two, the US can be an effective partner in building capacities in India by entering into joint ventures with Indian companies for the manufacture of these products in India. Finally, let me point out how IT has helped the two countries to achieve potentials. It is not all about outsourcing and body shopping. India is also a favourite place for American corporations to invest in high-end R&D because of the abundant availability of highly skilled researchers and scientists passing out from India’s hallowed institutions. They do the work at a fraction of the cost, what otherwise would have incurred in any other country. Such big-ticket research projects will not lead to loss of employment in the home country. Rather, they will facilitate more investments in the home country since the US corporations can save considerable resources otherwise they would have spent for R&D. The saved resources can be ploughed back to more investments in the home country. I wish you all success for your presidency and sincerely hope that the people of the United States will immensely benefit from your stewardship.
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February 2017
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GUEST SPEAK
Security is the Best Policy United States have taken a five pronged approach to cyber security – identify, protect, detect, respond and recover With the growing publicity of high-profile cyber security incidents, India is becoming increasingly aware of security considerations. The National Cyber Security Policy drafted by CERT-In and the NASSCOM-DSCI Cyber Security Task Force established in 2015 are examples of India’s efforts to combat cyber security threats. While the government’s efforts to combat cyber crime are commendable, they can tremendously improve on their cyber security posture once the National Cyber Security Policy is fully implemented. Cyber security threats have been evolving rapidly and crooks are coordinating attack vectors to maximise user vulnerability. According to 2015 Global Cyber Security Status Report, a whopping 92 per cent believe cyber attacks are one of the top three threats facing organizations today. Yet, an alarming 87 per cent say there is a shortage of skilled cyber security professionals in the country, and only 41 per cent feel prepared to fend off a sophisticated attack. This necessitates the need to prepare for the threats of the future by ensuring that clear but flexible national policies support agile private sector solutions that are best able to respond to global cyber security threats. Nations including the United States have taken a holistic approach to safeguard the interests of their businesses and citizens through five pronged approach to cyber security – identify, protect, detect, respond and recover. To establish a secure environment for India’s Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and related assets, it is imperative to create a solid foundation to thwart any risks that will ensure both public and private entities including small enterprises are well equipped to face the cyber security challenges of a connected world. The exchange and sharing of the appropriate information at the right time, coordinated among relevant actors, is considered the best way to reduce and mitigate risks and respond to cyber incidents. A legal framework, if developed, for appropriate information sharing between the private sector and the government, and among the private sector, while ensuring appropriate safeguards for the confidentiality of sensitive and personal information can bring a boost to the nations cyber security framework. Due to the global nature of cyber threats, cybersecurity should not be addressed in isolation. Coordination and collaboration between governments and private sector entities from around the globe are key elements to achieving an effective and holistic approach to cybersecurity.
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Hemal Patel Senior Vice President India operations Sophos
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January 2017
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HOT BYTES
RS Components opens a new Electronic Centre
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S Components has announced the opening of their innovation
hub, a new “Electronic Centre” in Bangalore. The high service level supplier of electronic components and tools plans to invest close-to $15 million over the next two to five years at the Bangalore centre.
The new 2,000-sq. ft. office in the heart of Bangalore has been set up to support electronic design engineers and manufacturers in the region. The company also plans to set up a warehouse which will enable RS Components to undertake “next-day delivery” to its customers. The Bangalore Centre will focus on specific industry verticals like IoT, medical electronics, aeronautics, automotive and R&D sector.
ManageEngine opens two new Data Centers
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anageEngine has announced the opening of its two new ISO 27001-certified data centers in the EU – one in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and another in Dublin, Ireland. This announcement is a part of its efforts to help IT teams move operations seamlessly to the cloud, while adhering to the data privacy and security standards of the EU. “Our European customers are subject to some of the world’s
strictest data privacy regulations, which apply to both on-premises and cloud applications,” said Rajesh Ganesan, Director of Product Management, ManageEngine. “Our on-premises apps have maintained the highest degree of data privacy and regulatory compliance for years. With our new EU data centers, we have set the same standard for our cloud apps and eliminated the privacy barrier to adopting our cloud-based IT management solutions.”
ELCINA Electronics Manufacturing Cluster launched at Bhiwadi
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L C I N A Electronics Manufacturing Cluster in Bhiwadi is the first Cluster as a cooperative project. The industry gathered
in very large numbers to celebrate the launch of the ELCINA Cluster along
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with RIICO officials and local leadership. “The Bhiwadi Cluster has an important role to play in the Government of India’s ‘Make-in-India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. We hope it would be the first to start functioning amongst 200 clusters planned across the country,” said B. S. Sethia, Director, Elin Electronics Ltd, and Chairman of ELCINA Bhiwadi Cluster SPV.
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Siemens wins Brocade enables Ricoh to reduce Rs. 366-crore complexity of Data Center has deal from ONGC Brocade announced that
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iemens has announced that it has won an order worth approximately Rs.366 crore from Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The order includes supply of material for overhauling of 18 Power Turbines through Zero Hour Overhaul and Time Continued Overhaul. The Zero Hour Overhauling will be the first of its kind in India and involves the overhaul of Power Turbines to zero-hour status. Under the new concept of Zero Hour Overhaul, the PowerTurbine will perform almost as new – capable of a safe run of another 100,000 hours before the next overhaul. This will help in reducing downtime and increase in productivity because of elimination of at least one intermediate overhaul.
Mastercard and CAIT announce “Digital Apnao Vyapar Badhao” Campaign
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astercard and Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) have announced a 90-day “Digital Apnao Vyapar Badhao” campaign to accelerate the adoption of digital payments amongst traders, enabling them to grow their businesses. As part of the campaign, CAIT and Mastercard will organize 500 camps across 30 cities in India over a period of 90 days. The “Digital Apnao Vyapar Badhao” campaign aims to onboard five lakh merchants and traders by bringing together financial institutions and other payments facilitators under one roof.
Ricoh has migrated to an Ethernet fabric network within its Yokohama data center. The deployment of switches supporting Brocade VCS Fabric technology enables Ricoh to greatly reduce network operating costs and complexity within its data center. “Network complexity was becoming a significant constraint on our ability to respond quickly to new business requirements,” said Toshiyuki Miyakoshi, Senior Specialist, Information
Infrastructure Control Department, Business Process Transformation, Corporate Division, Ricoh Company. “Brocade’s Ethernet fabric solution enables us to manage the entire data center network, spanning multiple floors, as if it were a single core switch that is self-configuring. This greatly reduces our operational overhead and makes it very easy for us to scale network capacity to meet future demand.”
L&T Technology to roll out Smart Building Solutions
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&T Technology Services (LTTS) and Dell EMC have announced a collaborative relationship to enable holistic, integrated Smart Building initiatives. The joint offerings are expected to drastically reduce implementation time, save up to 40% of facility energy costs and enable up to 15% of operational savings. L&T Technology Services, which joined Dell’s IoT Solutions Partner Programme in October 2016 as a Preferred Partner,
is an experienced system integrator. The company has worked on several turnkey projects involving sensor integration, protocol implementation, edge analytics, cloud storage, application development and predictive analytics. Dell’s comprehensive solution portfolio, which includes a system of globally vetted partners such as L&T Technology Services, reduces complexity and lowers risk while increasing the speed of deploying IoT initiatives.
Inspira gets Tier-1 Status in Avaya Edge Partner Programme
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nspira has announced it has been awarded Tier-1 status in the highly respected Avaya Edge Partner Programme. Inspira will offer Avaya’s Unified Communication solutions to the key business verticals, including government, banking, financial services and insurance. By achieving Tier-1, the highest level available in the Avaya Edge partner programme, Inspira has demonstrated the demanding competency requirements to design, integrate and support Avaya’s UC and collaboration solutions.
“Inspira is very excited to be an Avaya Tier-1 partner as the company has a solid track record of implementing the best collaboration solutions that specifically addresses customers’ requirements and business concerns. I am confident that this partnership will strongly address the growing technology needs of a rapidly-expanding video collaboration market,” said Manoj Kanodia, CEO, Inspira.
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February 2017
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HOT BYTES
LogMeIn merges with Citrix
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ogMeIn has announced the completion of its previously disclosed merger with Citrix Systems GetGo, Inc. subsidiary, a wholly-owned subsidiary consisting of Citrix’s GoTo family of service offerings. Effected through a Reverse Morris Trust transaction, the merger brings together two of the preeminent players in cloud connectivity to instantly create one of the world’s top 10 public SaaS companies and a market leader with the scale, resources and world-class talent required to accelerate innovation and significantly expand its total addressable market opportunity.
“Between LogMeIn and GoTo, we have two of the best-known, most-trusted and reliable product portfolios in cloud connectivity, and both companies have been remarkable success stories,” said Bill Wagner, President & CEO of LogMeIn. “Today, we start an exciting new chapter together as a clear leader that has the scale, innovation and vision to reset customer’s, employee’s and shareholder’s expectations, while redefining our core markets.”
Savera Digital partners with ASRock
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avera Digital has become premium pan-India distributor for award-winning product manufacturer ASRock Inc. This partnership will bring together Savera's great distribution network to deliver ASRock's AMD range of motherboards. Manoj Kriplani, Country Manager, ASRock Inc., Taiwan, said, "Savera Digital India Pvt. Ltd is a trusted name in the Indian IT distribution system
and is one of the fastestgrowing distributors in India. With this tie-up, we are looking for enhanced focus on value products and the build-up for DIY ecosystem. Our AMD market share continues to improve as channel and customers are looking for quality products and ASRock is known for bringing out the best of the motherboards which can fulfil customer’s requirements."
ESDS wins Award for Innovation in Cloud Technology
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he 7th Annual Aegis Graham Bell Awards was held on
9th February, 2017 in New Delhi where Jury of Aegis Graham Bell Awards, Convergence India, Deloitte, TCOE and COAI awarded ESDS The Aegis Graham Bell Award under Innovation in Cloud
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category for the ESDS’ homegrown product eNlight. “ Though there was a lot of competition this year, we were confident to win the award, as we are the only Indian company to have done commendable job in Cloud innovation and today our Cloud platform is used by 20 Fortune 100 companies of India. eNlight Cloud is no longer an innovation, it has now evolved as an Enterprise Cloud platform which is successfully used by large Indian enterprises,” said Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS Software Solutions .
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Hikvision plans to setup R&D and Research Institute
Hikvision has announced that it plans to establish an R&D Centre in Montreal, Canada and a Research Institute in Silicon Valley, California, USA. “These two major investments underscore Hikvision’s R&D globalization strategy and the commitment to providing innovative, cutting-edge technology products tailored to the needs of our worldwide partners and customers,” Yangzhong Hu, CEO of Hikvision said. Expected to open in 2017, the Montreal Hikvision R&D Centre will focus on engineering development. The Silicon Valley Hikvision Research Institute will focus on broad technology research.
Persistent Systems partners with MuleSoft
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ersistent Systems and MuleSoft have announced a partnership that will help customers speed up their Digital Transformation. Utilizing MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform, Persistent will help organizations rapidly integrate valuable enterprise data locked in silos, to create new revenue channels, improve customer experience, and drive innovation. Persistent Systems’ implementation expertise and industry knowledge will be enhanced with Anypoint Platform. Persistent will help customers build a network of applications, data and devices through API-led connectivity in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. Anypoint Platform will further bolster the Persistent Vega framework.
Huawei along with Oracle signs MoU
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uawei and Oracle have signed a “Power IoT Ecosystem Partnership” MoU recently, which will see continued cooperation around the marketing and sales of the Huawei AMI Solution with Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management (MDM), Oracle Utilities Smart Grid Gateway (SGG) and related Oracle Utilities products. Huawei and Oracle have also planned to continue cooperating around customer requirements, with the parties able to
make use of Huawei’s leading-edge Information and Communication Technology products and solutions, in coordination with Oracle’s strong capability of R&D, implementation and outsourcing services in the utility industry. This collaboration will enable a robust end-to-end AMI solution helping power and grid companies to improve customer experience and operation efficiency, achieve energy saving and emission reduction.
Oracle Marketing Cloud partners with Eyeota
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racle Marketing Cloud is teaming with Eyeota to enable marketers and advertisers to use Eyeota data in the Oracle Data Management Platform to more intelligently target and personalize non-US campaigns to Eyeota’s three billion unique profiles in Europe, APAC, and the Americas. Eyeota data will be integrated into the Oracle Data Management Platform through the Oracle Data Cloud, and Oracle Data Management Platform
users can build audiences directly from Eyeota data or by seamlessly combining it with additional data segments from Oracle’s BlueKai Marketplace. The relationship between Oracle Marketing Cloud and Eyeota addresses this challenge by providing a new natively integrated data set that enables Eyeota data in areas such as socioeconomics, interest, intent and B2B to be activated within the Oracle Data Management Platform.
Dell EMC brings Integrated Partner Program
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ell EMC has launched an integrated Dell EMC Partner Program, built from the ground up while preserving the best of two world-class legacy programs. The program establishes one extraordinary new program that addresses the needs of partners today and into the future. Developed in collaboration with partners globally, the program’s primary tenets are to be simple, predictable and profitable. “Channel partners, system integrators and distributors play a critical role in empowering Dell EMC’s customers on their path towards Digital Transformation. Built on
three core tenets – to be Simple, Predictable and Profitable – the new Dell EMC Partner Program will ensure all partners are adequately equipped to stay relevant in a fast-changing marketplace and achieve profitability, growth and success. We believe the new partner program will further catalyze our go-tomarket strategy and growth of the business as we seek to become the industry’s most trusted advisor to our customers,” says Anil Sethi, VP – Channels, Dell EMC India.
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January 2017
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ON THE RAMP
DIGISOL unveils 2MP Outdoor Bullet IP Camera
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IGISOL has announced the launch of 2MP Outdoor Bullet IP camera with IR LED and IR cut filter. This camera offers the latest compression technology with CMOS sensor and a real-time image processing hardware. With its high-performance H.264 compression, users can stream high-quality video at low-bandwidth and storage-capacity requirements. The Modular Design and aesthetic looks of the camera help
to be recessed easily into suspended ceilings or wall mounted with no need for an additional mounting brackets. DG-SC5303 sports Power over Ethernet, which helps in easy installation by eliminating the need of a dedicated power source for the camera. DG-SC5303 has IR LED’s for better visibility under no light environment.
Microsoft launches Azure Analysis Services
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icrosoft has r e c e n t l y announced public preview of Azure Analysis Services, the latest addition to Microsoft’s cloud platform at the Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) Summit. Azure Analysis Services is an enterprise-grade OLAP (online analytical processing) engine and BI (Business Intelligence) modelling platform, offered
as a fully managed Platformas-a-Service (PaaS). With Azure Analysis Services, a BI professional will be able to explore data and gain insights from it by just connecting to the semantic model and will be able to share it with the business user. Businesses can get on board quickly without managing infrastructure and can also scale resources to match their business needs.
QNAP unveils Thunderbolt 2 NAS TVS-882ST2
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NAP Systems has released the TVS-882ST2 Thunderbolt 2 NAS. Powered by an energy-efficient Intel 6th Generation 14nm Core i5 Quad-core processor with AES-NI hardware encryption and supporting eight 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s SSD/HDD, it also includes high-speed Thunderbolt 2 connectivity, 10GbE 10GBASE-T dual networking ports, USB 3.1 Type-C/Type-A 10Gbps ports, 4K HDMI output and provides a Thunderbolt/NAS/iSCSI SAN triple solution. The TVS-882ST2 empowers intensive applications such as 4K video editing, and provides high-speed data
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access, backup and sharing. The TVS-882ST2 is also suitable for an all-SSD configuration to provide the utmost performance. Running the new 64-bit
QTS 4.3 operating system, the TVS-882ST2 supports the Thunderbolt to Ethernet (T2E) Converter that allows the Thunderbolt port to act as an Ethernet connection. This allows users of devices without Ethernet ports to connect to networks without requiring an extra adapter.
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Commvault launches new Reference Architectures on AWS Cloud
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ommvault has launched new reference architectures for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable customers to simplify data protection and management with a preoptimized, easy-to- deploy, and validated solution. Available through Commvault direct and on AWS Marketplace, the reference architectures provide enterprises with clear guidance on how the Commvault Data Platform can help organizations optimize their use of the AWS Cloud for backup, archive and recovery. Commvault has also announced that existing customers can apply their licences to applications enabled through AWS Marketplace.
SAP launches SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud
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ligning to the Union Budget 2017, SAP has announced the launch of SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud, the next-generation business suite tailored for midsize companies, which will be available at a simple and affordable subscription pricing. With increased impetus for digital, cashless transactions and a unified, transparent taxation regime, companies will need to gear up for rapid growth while balancing business control with the agility to capitalize on emerging opportunities. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition, midsize companies will benefit from innovation, flexibility, and functionality of SAP S/4HANA enterprise management solution and derive the benefit of effortless scalability, ease of implementation and management.
ViewSonic launches Pro8 Series Projectors
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iewSonic Corp has announced its new line of Pro8 Series projectors for installation application. ViewSonic's Pro8510L and Pro8530HDL projectors deliver the flexibility and extensive connectivity options needed for various types of installation designs, making them ideal for usage in larger venues such as houses of worship and larger-thanaverage conference rooms, classrooms, or auditoriums. ViewSonic's Pro 8 Series is the first model to adopt the Flex-In concept, which
is a new design concept that allows for flexible and well-integrated installation with easy adjustment and maintenance. The Flex-In design concept is comprised of three key elements: intuitive form, high flexibility and easy installation. Intuitive form embodies a premium design that is stylish enough to adapt to any usage scenario.
Microsoft showcases to enhance collaboration
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icrosoft has showcased Microsoft Teams, a new chat-based workspace that further enhances the collaboration capabilities in Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based productivity offering with more than 85 million monthly active commercial users. Microsoft Teams brings together people, conversations, content and the tools teams need to collaborate. Microsoft Teams joins the broadest and deepest portfolio of collaboration applications and services
to help solve the diverse needs of people and organizations globally. As we’ve learned from our users, all groups have a diverse set of needs when it comes to working together. Office 365 is designed for the unique work style of every group and includes purpose-built applications, all deeply integrated together. SharePoint provides intranets and content management solutions to more than 200,000 organizations and 190 million people.
Juniper Networks presents Juniper Networks Unite Cloud
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uniper Networks has announced Juniper Networks Unite Cloud, a transformative data center framework that gives enterprises the end-to-end solutions to simplify the creation and management of hybrid, multi-cloud environments. As part of Juniper Networks Unite, a secure, agile enterprise architecture, Unite Cloud is designed to reduce the total cost of ownership while increasing long-term return on investments. In addition to Juniper’s existing comprehensive data center solutions, Unite Cloud also includes an enhanced Junos
Space Network Director management application that leverages advanced automation to analyze and control data centers, the new Juniper Networks QFX5110 switch with 100 Gigabit (GB) capabilities to scale with evolving bandwidth demands, and the new Juniper Networks Contrail JumpStart service offerings that help enterprises rapidly deploy technologies at lower risk to embrace the cloud seamlessly.
GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd. Tel: +91-22-40633222
Toll Free: 1800-220966
Visit us: www.gigabyte.in
Like us on www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEindia
Gujarat: 98642 30150; Mumbai: 99677 18653; Rest of Maharashtra: 99677 18653; Goa: 99677 18653; Chhattisgarh 99677 18653; Madhya Pradesh: 99100 86976; New Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh: 99583 72672; Punjab, Chandigarh and Jammu & Kashmir: 99100 86976; Rajasthan: 98286 63392; Bihar, Jharkhand: 90075 45577; Orissa: 90405 06080; North East: 97076 42785; West Bengal: 97485 02710; Karnataka: 94482 93439; Andhra Pradesh, Telangana: 90405 06080; Tamil Nadu: 74117 74666; Kerala: 98950 99231
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February 2017
19
ON THE RAMP
Samsung unveils Gaming Monitors WD launches Barracuda presents an appliance amsung Electronics 512 GB 64-Layer for Barracuda Backup Solutions S has launched has curved gaming monitor. 3D NAND Chip Barracuda announced a It has a radius of 1,800mm, providing a more comfortable and an immersive gaming experience to gamers. It comes with a host of exciting features like 144 Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, making a perfect delight for gamers in India. Puneet Sethi, Director, CE B2B Business, Samsung India Electronics, said, “Gamers are demanding an advanced display technologies in monitors in order to experience every
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nuance of a game. There is a need for better monitors for enhanced gaming experience in the country. At Samsung, we are committed to offer our customers the very best of features and technology. The launch of this curved gaming monitor is a step in that direction and I am sure that it will be a trendsetter in the gaming zone.”
VMware releases VMware NSX Network Virtualization Platform
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Mware has announced new releases of the VMware NSX network virtualization platform to meet the diverse and evolving needs of both IT and developers. With the release of VMware NSX for vSphere 6.3 and VMware NSX-T 1.1, VMware is advancing support for the most critical IT use-cases – automation, security and application continuity, while offering development organizations an agile software-defined infrastructure to build out
cloud-native application environments. VMware NSX delivers networking and security focussed on the application independent of the underlying infrastructure. VMware NSX for vSphere is the network virtualization platform for vSpherebased deployments. VMware NSX-T is a network virtualization platform for new application frameworks and architectures that have heterogeneous endpoints and technology stacks.
Canon unveils products in the Professional Printing Domain
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anon India has announced the launch its Professional Printing Domain. The imagePROGRAF
PRO SERIES includes the 12-Color imagePROGRAF PRO520 and imagePROGRAF PRO-540, 8-color imagePROGRAF PRO-
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540S and imagePROGRAF PRO-560S. Also launched is the 5-Color imagePROGRAF 671E, offering a right mix of affordability & technolog y to the SME segment. Another large format printer announced at the launch included an all-rounder printer Océ ColorWave 700, designed for a wide range of graphic arts applications like Wall papers, In-shop brandings, Signage, etc.
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estern Digital has announced that it has commenced pilot production of the company’s 512 Gigabit (Gb) three-bits-per-cell (X3) 64-layer 3D NAND (BICS3) chip in Yokkaichi, Japan. The chip is the latest achievement in a nearly three-decade-long legacy of flash memory industry firsts from the storage leader. “The launch of the industry’s first 512Gb 64layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world’s first 64-layer architecture in July 2016,” said Dr Siva Sivaram, Executive VP, Memory Technology, WD.
ACER launches “ACER Spin 3”
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cer Spin 3 is now available across key retail stores at a price of Rs.4,2999. The device boasts 15.6-inch HD with Acer Color Intelligence display. Its backlit ergonomic keyboard with a 1.6 mm keystroke provides comfortable typing experience to users. Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer India, said, “The ultraportable Acer Spin 3 is an ultimate device for anything from spreadsheets to games, video and entertainment. We are confident that the Acer Spin 3 will amaze the users with its blazing battery, multi-mode usage and powerful performance.” Acer Spin 3 comes with the 6th-Generation Intel Core processors 4GB DDR4 RAM, 500GB HDD storage, 9 hours battery backup and cutting-edge audio and video technology with a fast wireless 802.11ac WiFi provides best browsing, entertainment and video calling experience.
platform refresh for its Barracuda Backup product portfolio of data protection solutions. The new systems are designed to protect data for organizations facing increasing demands with limited resources, and offer IT administrators the ability to more efficiently plan for and support future data growth. The new Barracuda Backup appliances provide expanded capacity for physical appliance models,
by as much as 100 percent more capacity on entrylevel systems. It includes performance updates that speed up the backup, restore and replication processes. The capacity upgrades deliver a lower cost per Terabyte ans allows customers to back up and replicate data faster, meet backup windows and get data offsite more efficiently, as well as the ability to restore faster in the event of data loss.
F5 introduces Security Solution for Digital Economy
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5 Networks has introduced security solutions that provide visibility, context, and control to overcome today’s evolving threats. In a digital-driven economy, applications deliver business services for a variety of access points and locations, opening up new risks and attack vectors, particularly as IT teams extend security and encryption capabilities across cloud, data center, and hybrid environments. “Business leaders
across different sectors are increasingly cognizant of how powerful applications and data assets can be in the journey to achieving agility demanded from the shift to the digital economy,” said Mohan Veloo, CTO, Asia-Pacific, F5 Networks. “However, the breakneck pace of innovation and adoption of connected devices, and an insatiable appetite for new technology introduces new problems in the form of increased attack vectors to the broader economy.”
Trend Micro launches Deep Security 10
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rend Micro has announced the upcoming availability of Trend Micro Deep Security 10, powered by XGen Security. XGen Security is a blend of cross-generational threat defense techniques fuelled by market-leading threat intelligence, and powers all Trend Micro security solutions. With this release, Deep Security continues its industry leadership protecting physical, virtual and cloud servers across leading environments such as VMware, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, adding multiple new security techniques that have been
optimized for maximum performance, operational efficiency and response to newly discovered threats. As a part of the XGen Security strategy, Deep Security 10 adds multiple new security techniques, including the prevention of unauthorized software changes with application control. Deep Security 10 supports sandbox integration with Trend Micro Deep Discovery, and will also soon add machine learning to its ever-growing list of advanced threat defense techniques.
www.varindia.com
February 2017
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Lenovo, No. 1 in TBR customer satisfaction index.* Lenovo™ System x® servers come with incredible power, maximum expandability and unmatched reliability. That's right, a server range that assures less hassles and more smiles.
Call 1800 3000 9990 to discover how our servers can help grow your business. Mail to: corpsales@lenovo.com Or visit: Lenovo.com/server
Powered by Intel® Xeon® processor E3 series. Intel Inside®. Powerful Data Center Outside. *TBR Corporate IT Buying Behavior and Customer Satisfaction Study – x86-based Servers, Fourth Quarter 2015. The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo, ThinkServer and System x. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are † Terms and Conditions apply.
trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. ©2016 Lenovo. All rights reserved. August 2016 www.varindia.com 58
A price tag that will get you new customers. Introducing the ThinkServer TS140 for small businesses with big demands. At Lenovo™ we develop technology to meet the ever-growing demands of small businesses. With that in mind, we have launched the ThinkServer® TS140 in India. It is powered to take on tough challenges, yet priced attractively. · Supports enterprise-grade HDDs (Built-in RAID 5) · Whisper-quiet at 26 decibels · Intel® Xeon® E3 series processor · Windows Server® 2012 R2 platform So go on, add this server to your portfolio and keep adding to your customer base.
Call 1800 3000 9990 to discover how our servers can help grow your business. Mail to: corpsales@lenovo.com Or visit: Lenovo.com/server Powered by Intel® Xeon® processor E3 series. Intel Inside®. Powerful Data Center Outside. The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo: Lenovo, the Lenovo logo and ThinkServer. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. ©2016 Lenovo. All rights reserved. †Terms and Conditions apply. The test(s) above are performed on statistical samples.
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August 2016
59
VOICE-N-DATA
BlackBerry announces agreement with Optiemus Infracom
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lackBerry has announced its next major agreement to license BlackBerry software and
services for the production of secure BlackBerry Android handsets in more global markets, including India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. With this latest regional deal, BlackBerry has now achieved full global coverage
for licensees in all markets to manufacture BlackBerrybranded devices, proving the company is delivering on its licensing strategy and accelerating its transition to be a leading security software and services company. The agreement with Optiemus Infracom expands on an existing relationship announced in November 2016, for the distribution and sale of the DTEK50 and DTEK60 by BlackBerry.
Route Mobile partners with Aircel to unveil SMSC-as-a-Service
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oute Mobile has announced that it has launched SMSC-as-aService in partnership with Aircel. The partnership will enable Route Mobile to offer its clients an unparalleled service providing zero-hop, or direct connectivity, to enterprises. Route Mobile’s SMSC will be hosted at Aircel’s Data Centre in Mumbai. Rajdip Gupta, Group CEO & Founder, Route Mobile said, “As the Indian market size moves from 10 billion to 15 billion messages a month, we must not only continue to offer the best technology and service but also drive a value
shift. The launch of Route Mobile’s SMSC-as-a-Service completely disrupts the value proposition to enterprises.” The messages sent by enterprises (commonly known as Application-2Person or A2P messages) are channelled through at least one aggregator or enterprise (service provider). This entity then routes the message through an operator or operator-grade SMSC to its destination, the customer. Routing of messages through multiple connections, or hops, has in the past often led to numerous issues, especially delayed delivery and poor visibility into delivery failure.
Airtel Payments Bank opens One Lakh Savings Accounts in UP
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irtel Payments Bank has said that it has opened over one lakh (100,000) savings accounts in Uttar Pradesh in the first two weeks of its launch. Approximately 60% of these accounts have been opened in rural areas, underlining the massive scope for serving customers, particularly in unbanked and underbanked pockets of the state. Shashi Arora, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments Bank, said, “We are delighted with the response received from the customers in UP and look forward to building
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February 2017
on this momentum and serve even more customers in the days to come. Airtel Payments Bank is fully committed to taking its simple and convenient services deeper into the state and contribute towards financial inclusion and banking for all. We are also building a digital payments ecosystem that will enable customers to make cashless payments for goods and services across millions of merchants across the country and invite merchants across Uttar Pradesh to be a part of this ecosystem.”
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COAI witnesses growth in allIndia mobile user base
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he Indian telecom industry posted another month of growth by adding 8.18 million mobile subscribers in the mobile telephony market in December 2016. According to COAI, the number of mobile phone subscribers grew to a total increase of 809.99 million in December. “Growth of the telecom industry correlates with the overall growth in the country as telecommunication services are the backbone of the economy. Despite the immense financial strain on the industry, the industry has still added the numbers in December 2016. These figures also represent the increasing footprint of the mobile industry and the number of lives touched by it in a positive manner,” said Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, COAI.
AMS-IX and Sify launch CarrierNeutral Internet Exchange
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M S - I X (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) and Sify have announced the launch of AMS-IX India, a carrierneutral, open Internet Exchange in Mumbai, India. AMS-IX India is a collaboration between the India-based ICT service provider Sify and the Europe-based AMS-IX. Customers will be able to connect to the IX via dedicated ports with speeds of (multiple) 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps. AMS-IX India will serve as a neutral and independent peering platform with unrivalled quality offering both private and public peering services at the carrier-grade level to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet Content Providers (ICPs), and Telecom operators.
D-Link launches 4G LTE Dongles and Routers
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-Link has introduced 4G LTE (4th-Generation LongTerm Evolution) Dongles and Routers in India. The newly introduced D-Link 4G range of products includes DWR-222 (4G LTE USB Adapter), DWR-910 (4G LTE USB Router), DWR-932C (4G LTE Mobile Router) and DWR-921 (4 Port 4G LTE Router). “The roll out of 4G services has revolutionized internet and data connectivity in the country. As the second-
largest mobile market in the world, India is in the forefront when it comes to embracing new technology and innovation,” said Anoop Jarial, VP – Product Marketing, D-Link India. “Our aim has always been to empower customers with the latest in technology. Our 4G range of unlocked devices will act as a gateway to high-speed internet and media content,” he added.
Telit to acquire GainSpan
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elit has agreed to acquire Silicon Valley-based GainSpan. GainSpan is a wireless connectivity solution provider that specializes in the design and development of ultra-low power WiFi technology. The company manufactures and commercializes chips and modules for batterypowered devices and related intellectual property (IP) with embedded software, including network stacks and application reference designs. GainSpan has over 90 employees, mostly
R&D and application and support engineers, spread across an R&D center in Bangalore, India and San Jose, California. “As we enter an era of maturity for the IoT, we are starting to witness the appearance of spaces within it such as the Internet of Sensors, the Internet of Cars, and the Internet of Digital,” said Oozi Cats, CEO, Telit. “With some exceptions, the ability to cut the power cord is an essential growth engine for all these branches of the IoT.”
TP-Link launches RE305 Range Extender
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P-Link has introduced RE305 Range Extender which connects to your Wi-Fi router wirelessly, strengthening and expanding its signal into areas it can’t reach on its own. It comes with 2.4GHz 300Mbps and 5GHz 867Mbps dual bands. Use the 2.4GHz band to send email and browse the web, and the 5GHz band for gaming and HD streaming, this range Extender supports your dual band router without compressing on one of its best features – Dual Band Functionality. The RE305 works with all Wi-Fi routers. It Brings Wi-Fi dead zone to life with
strong Wi-Fi expansion at combined speed of up to 1.2Gbps and operates over both the 2.4GHz band (300Mbps) and 5GHz band (867Mbps) for more stable wireless experience. Its intelligent signal light helps to find the best location for optimal Wi-Fi coverage by showing the signal strength and also it works with any Wi-Fi router or wireless access point.
www.varindia.com
February 2017
25
CHANNEL BUZZ
TAIT conducts Interactive Session on Corporate Governance The GST Council that recently met in New Delhi has reached a consensus on the rollout of GST across the country from 1st July, 2017. This was announced by Shri Arun Jaitley, Hon’ble Minister of Finance, Government of India. According to the agreement reached between the Centre and the States at the 9th meeting of the GST Council, states will have powers to assess and administer 90 per cent of the tax-payers under Rs.1.5-crore annual turnover, while the remaining would be controlled by the Centre. For tax-payers with more than Rs 1.5-crore turnover, states and the Centre will control and administer them in 50:50 ratio. Work on designing the systems and processes for the GST Network (GSTN) are at an advanced stage. "The recent significant developments in the country's legal/ regulatory business environment mean that SME business owners and managers will be held up to higher standards of scrutiny than ever before. Transparency in operations and corporate governance best practices is not just a necessity but is seen as tools leveraged by enlightened corporate
managements. This makes it all the more necessary for IT business partners to “walk the talk” and adopt a structured approach towards day-to-day compliance issues. In the long term, this would not only boost employee’s morale, but also lay the foundation for sustained innovation and revenue growth, a strong brand image and a healthy bottom line," stated Rushabh Shah, President, TAIT. Accordingly, TAIT organized a “Knowledge Series” Workshop on the theme "Effective Administration of Statutory Compliances". The workshop was conducted by Ramesh Soni, Principal Consultant, RLS Consulting, who emphasized that compliance to statutes is in the best interest of cordial employeremployee relationships, and would, in turn, lead to the sustained growth of the organization.
TAITRA invites Indian ICT companies at COMPUTEX 2017
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aiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) has invited Indian ICT companies to participate at COMPUTEX 2017, slated for May 30 to June 3, 2017 at Taipei, Taiwan. COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2017 positions itself as building Global Technology Ecosystems with new themes on Artificial Intelligence & Robotics; Innovation & Startups; Business Solutions; IoT Applications; and Gaming & Virtual Reality. The conference also unveiled the show’s four featured exhibits including InnoVEX. By using the leverage of COMPUTEX, the exhibit attracted 15,000-plus visitors and 217 exhibitors last year, which includes previous pitch winners of Websummit, Slush, Pioneers Festival and LeWeb. SmarTEX that will stage the latest IoT applications, iStyle, a special showcase for Apple MF i-certified peripherals and Gaming & VR for the ultimate gaming platform to display the coolest high-performance gaming
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products. Thomas Huang, Deputy Director, TAITRA, said, “We chose India and specially Bengaluru to promote COMPUTEX mainly because we value India’s market potential, its global competitive software industry and booming startup communities. COMPUTEX 2016 attracted more than 40,000 international visitors. Indian visitors were the twelfth highest in the number of international visitors; saw a substantial increase of 14% from the previous year.” He further added, “With the extensive campaign this year in India and the growing interest of startups and ICT brands in our event, we are hopeful to see an exponential growth in the number of visitors from India for COMPUTEX 2017.” COMPUTEX 2017 will see leading exhibitors such as Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Supermicro, Nvidia from the USA, ARM from UK, Socionext from Japan, Micronics from Korea, Hisense from China and the list is still increasing.
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ESET launches Channel Meet Series in Baroda and Ahmedabad
ESET, in association with Rachaita Infosoft and Sakri IT Solution, has launched a series of channel partner networking meets across the country. The series was flagged off with a meet at Baroda and Ahmedabad, which
to enhance their technological competence on the ESET’s entire range of security solution which is vital for improving their overall business performance. Ravi Lakshman, CEO, Sakri IT Solution, said, "We have
were attended by over 250 partners across Baroda and Ahmedabad. The Channel Meet and Training Program on ESET consumer and enterprise solution is being organized in conjunction with Sakri's channel engagement roadmap to build strong working relationships with Channel Partners across India. The Channel partner meet, roadshows and training program will be conducted across India to educate channel partners on ESET’s version 10 new product portfolio, enterprise, SMB solution and technology alliance product portfolio. The objective of the channel partner meet is not only to improve know-how of ESET Consumer Products among partners, but also
channel-centric approach and 90% of business comes through Channel Partners. The Regional Partner meet helps us establish strong bond with the regional channel network. At the same time, it makes partners well versed with the current ESET product portfolio, technology and makes them independent so that they themselves can evaluate and compare different brands and select the best suitable for their valued customers." The channel meet was also addressed by RajendraWarriar, Director, RachiataInfosoft who gave some insight on their experience with ESET so far and their offer to the channel partner for Q4 - FY2016 – 2017.
ISODA hosts TechSummit 7 at Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam
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he much-awaited flagship event TechSummit 7 witnessed a grand opening at Hotel Equatorial in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. More than100-plus attendees, mostly S.I.s and VARs, were the participants. The threeday event deliberated on the theme “Xcel, Xcellerate, Xceed”. In view of the fastchanging technology landscape, the TechSummit 7 was helpful for the VAR community. The Summit was designed with a clear focus on Digital Transformation as its theme. ISODA is a perfect platform to help its members identify latest and relevant technologies, networking with technology vendors on how to collaborate with them and leverage each other’s core competencies and take it to the next level. Secondly, vendors could meet the owners of the VARs and discuss on the new and existing business opportunities and bring new alliance opportunities and strengthen their existing ones. In the opening address, Rajiv Mammidana, President, ISODA,
and Vipul Dutta, Chairman, ISODA, spoke about the X factor with the examples of Luis Figo, Mickey Mantel, Christiano Ronaldo and M. S. Dhoni, who are considered as the leaders and have leveraged the X factor. Incidentally, at the ISODA Tech Summit 7 the members also wore No. 7 as a dress
code. ISODA President Rajeev Mamidanna expressed, “Need to Xcel in strategies and alliances has to xcellerate to the next level of skills successfully, has to xceed the expectations of teams as entrepreneurs.” The keynote session on the roadmap ahead was presented by Vipul Shah and K. V. Jagannathan.
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www.varindia.com
February 2017
27
FACE TO FACE
Aruba sees a growing wireless market in India In a chat with VARINDIA, Steve Wood, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company has discussed the growth that Aruba has witnessed post merger with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, growth of global channels and also about technology innovation Latest technologies like mobility, IoT and Cloud are influencing the traditional businesses. HPE Aruba builds smart networks that are insightful and predictable to accelerate the transition. The merger between HPE and Aruba hasput the company in a strategic position where it has gained a double digit growth and is also optimistic of acquiring a major share in the market. The company has strong foothold in countries like Australia and Japan. Moreover, India is the most promising market for Aruba and also the fastest growing in APJ region. Talking about the future roadmap, Steve mentioned that the company will continue to deliver innovative products and encourage Cloud Networking.
How have you witnessed the growth, post merger with HPE? Aruba has witnessed double digit growth in the business, particularly on the wireless side and is still continuing to grow. According to the market predictions, the wireless system is going to grow. We are looking to grow much faster than the predictions of the market. The growth will be onset of new opportunities that we see with the government’s push towards Digital India and we are in a good position to lead in both wireless and wired segment. The SOHO, SMB, midrange, top end large Enterprise market have lot of different layers with different players in that area. Being a part of HPE has opened doors to larger accounts and has also provided us the opportunity to expand our reach.
In which countries you have strong presence? In APJ, we are strong is Australia, Japan where we opened our first international office.
Steve Wood Vice President Asia Pacific Aruba - a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Advantages of Aruba • Aruba OS Network Controller • Airwave Network Management • Clear Pass • Aruba Central Cloud • Rasa Network Analytics • Meridian (Bluetooth location-based services) It’s been 12 years in Japan and we have built a good market position and lot of good partners with deep relationships on the Aruba side. Then when we merged with HPcompany, we are able to integrate them together and build a combined channel and channel program focused on the components that Aruba liked to deliver to help channels perform. In APJ, India is definitely the fastest growing market for us. We also have a strong position in China. We also have our Research and Development centers in both Beijing and Bangalore.
Network is an infrastructure for infrastructure
Prof. SadaGopan, Director, IIIT said, “The PC came as a slave to a master called Mainframe Computers. People discovered new ways of doing it and a company called Adobe comes and Desktop publishing happened. HP would not have sold laser printers if there was no desktop publishing. Everything happens on desktops. A lot of things got changed and that is precisely what the mobile phone is doing. For long we had a nice computing, it was important, but today far more important is data- big data, analytics etc. It is one thing for us to build the network but today our children do not care because they expect the network to run 24/7, efficiently and in a predictably manageable way. Our children are born in the wireless world. The good thing about Aruba is it started in wireless space and is able to manage this world. The ability to run and manage a network is important. Today network is an infrastructure of the infrastructure.”
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How is the global channel doing for Aruba? The global channel is doing very well. I really enjoy working with people from the channels team who can legitimately compete with the biggest competitor in the market for us. With the merger of HPE and Aruba, we have started winning a lot of business. With integration into HPE’s business, we now have access to bigger accounts. As we’ve grown larger we have found opportunities to create new relationships and spend time educating customers about our solutions.
What are the key components in your solutions that can control the spam ware or malware? When we talk about security it is physical security. This is done by not leading you on the network and being contextually aware of where you are, who you are, what device you are using, authentication and allowing the network manager to control the liking. So that sort of security is very hard to get because the perimeter of the network is not the same anymore.
What is the roadmap of the company in terms of technology innovation and products? You will see a lot of innovation coming from HPE Aruba. We have more than double the force in R&D now. The team would be delivering on the existing roadmap. The software will become more platform ready and opento the whole ecosystem of partners to help us. You can also see a continued push for CloudNetworking, managing with Aruba Central product, the network from the Cloud etc will continue on and a lot of investment to stimulate that. n
VAR EXPERIENCE ZONE
LG Revolutionizing the UltraWide Screen Experience How many displays and workstation monitors do you usually toggle between at work? One, or maybe two. For creative professionals it could be more than two big screens. Professionals including designers and photographers need extra screen space which is both distraction-free and easy to navigate around. For them, it’s crucial to have monitors that offer immersive experience of visual display. Traditionally, we are adapted to work on multiple monitor workstations with connectors that drive the displays together. However, it is not only cumbersome to manage multiple displays; it’s throbbing to keep shuffling around with the photographs, spreadsheets, and other web pages. Thanks to the ultra-wide displays with 21.9 aspect ratio, these screens, similar to movie theatre, have no bezels in between windows. Thus they offer you an experience that amounts to one as being infinite. Whether you are a designer, or a photojournalist, these curved displays offer sheer advantage in terms of windows and panes that it could fit on your screen, without having them to play down and shuffle around all the time. On the economics front of it, ultrawide displays will soon turn to be the most viable replacements for multi-screen setups for creative professionals. After all,
these monitors are designed with ease and productivity in mind –the two key things content creators look for. With 16:9 aspect ratio being the current mainstream standard, widescreen monitors are slowly but surely getting omnipresent. Let’s dig deep into the propositions that make these screens fascinating for creativity lovers. Just as a primer, aspect ratio refers to the proportion between the width and the height of a picture.
Ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio is immersive and you will feel like you are part of the action. The expanded view makes it easy to see multiple documents at the same time without moving back and forth all the time between them. The displays are meant for multi taskers and creative pros. The Screen Split feature of these monitors come handy for the pros which divide the screen into four two-by-two
customizable segments. Thus, you can see four different windows at the same time. It helps many a time to get multiple devices function off the same device. LG, which is one of the leading players in the space, has taken a brilliant approach to ease this. You can connect two compatible portable devices --whether it’s a PC, camera, or a phone -- to the monitor, and view both on the same screen at the same time! The LG UltraWide displays allow you to connect up to six compatible devices and move data between them at incredible speeds. The two channels of 10 gigabits per second are up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0. Just like the curved TVs, curved monitors look stunning too. Designed to draw you close to what's on the screen by casing around your peripheral visual details, these monitors offer vibrance, better response times and wide viewing angles. LG, for instance promises you 2.4 times more visual information at one time than Full HD monitors. You can browse through the LG UltraWide range here. It all depends on how you work and what you work on, though, multi-screen replacements are a boon for creative professionals and content creators. n
www.varindia.com
February 2017
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CYBER SECURITY CONCLAVE
VARINDIA organized a full day seminar on Cyber Security Framework; Securing FinTech Companies; Securing Smart Cities 1,000 Cyber Start-ups by 2025; and Strengthe
Kiren Rijiju, MoS for Home Affairs, Govt. of India delivering keynote address at Cyber Security India Conclave 2017 We all know that India is moving towards digital economy and we are going to face lots of challenges. Given the size of India and the nature of its society, lots of challenges stare us in the face. We may not have as robust a system as Israel or America because of the fact that the basic foundation of our country is slightly different and the structure of our nation is also a bit different. Nevertheless, the time is very crucial for us and we cannot lag behind in terms of understanding the challenges and the efforts to deal with the issues on hand. We all know that our Prime Minister’s effort and vision is very clear. We are talking about cashless economy and all related steps being taken by the Government will take us in a particular direction to accept the challenges and move ahead. We cannot achieve this alone in the government. We have to have all the private organizations integrated into our efforts at various levels and from all of the countries like Israel, America, etc. In recent times, whenever our Prime Minister or anybody from the government visits or exchanges some bilateral talks with friendly countries, the foremost understanding is on sharing of intelligence. This has become an integral part of any MoUs which we arrive at. Unless we share information with regard to various threats, security issues then the forging of partnership remains incomplete. The same reciprocal attitude has been seen from our friendly countries. The challenges are there for everybody so it has to be a combined effort. India needs to secure its digital payments system by building its own cyber security framework to provide secure payment to its citizens and it is not an easy task. In the Home Ministry, we keep on updating ourselves, but I could clearly see the challenges which are not going to be easy for all of us. This rapid development of digital technologies and a wide range of services provided for activities in the cyberspace raise the issue of cyber security as a serious concern for the government. Cybercrimes pose a direct threat to the security of critical infrastructure and information technologies. With the advent of advanced information and communication technologies, crime now knows no jurisdiction or national boundaries. The very nature of internet allows for unprecedented collaboration and interaction among particular communities of criminals. As cybercrimes can be created at anytime in the world in an unprecedented way, it becomes extremely difficult to track, prosecute and enforce penalties. Therefore, criminals are increasingly turning to internet to facilitate their activities and maximize their efforts. Using cyber-attacks, terrorists can cause a much wider damage to the country or region than they could by resorting to conventional physical violence. Government is aware of the vulnerability of information technologies. India is shifting gears by entering into the facet of e-Governance. India has already brought sectors like income tax, passport, visa under the realm of e-Governance. Sectors like police and judiciary have also planned to follow. We really need to update our policing system. The travel sector is also heavily relying on this. Most of the Indian banks have gone for full-scale computerization. This has also brought in concepts of e-Governance and e-Banking. The stock markets have also not remained behind. To create havoc in the country, these are lucrative targets to paralyze the economic and financial institutions. India has to cover a long road to make its cyber security effective. It has to cover a long road in cyber security initiatives and we are gaining momentum. Contd. on pg 39
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and focused on topics like: Building India’s Cyber Security s and IoT Devices; Creating One Mn Cyber Security Experts and ening Data Protection and Cyber Security Laws
P.P. Chaudhary, MoS for Electronics & IT, Law & Justice, Govt. of India delivering keynote address at Cyber Security India Conclave 2017 Friends, through a series of path-breaking transformative initiatives, under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country has taken giant strides to fast emerge as a digital economy and inclusive knowledge society. This also necessitates putting in place requisite infrastructure, mechanisms and process in place to fully secure our cyberspace from all possible cyber-attacks and cybercrimes as a pre-requisite and to keep our cyber defence in place. In this backdrop, I congratulate VARINDIA for organizing Cyber Security India Conclave 2017 which is both timely and relevant. Friends, I wish to assure you all that the government is alive to ever-evolving dynamic security scenario since cyberspace has taken several proactive measures to create a digitally trustworthy economy. Under the overarching IT Act, 2000 as amended from time to time, a national cyber security framework is in place which takes on board all the stakeholders and cover perspective of secure cyber ecosystem, assurance and regulatory mechanisms 24X7, security operations, use of indigenous security technologies, workforce availability and development. Global cooperation and gap analysis with several countries, a national cyber security policy is already in place in the public domain. Indian Computer Response Team (CERT-IN) has been operational on a 24x7 basis and all cyber security-related incidents are to be reported to CERT-IN. It works closely with affected entities and stakeholders both within and outside the country and provides initial response within four hours to a reported incident. CERT-IN undertakes activities of accessing the security posters of websites of sensitive organizations, particularly in the government, public financial sectors through both black box security audit and white box security audit. CERT-IN also empanels IT security auditing organizations which provide audit services on a commercial basis. Cyber crisis management plan for countering cyber-attacks on cyber terrorism, periodically prepared by CERT-IN and approved by the national crisis management committee, is widely circulated amongst central ministry departments, states and union territory governments for implementation at various organizational levels. Regular workshops and drills are also organized by CERT-IN for various stakeholder organizations both in the public and private sectors. The government has set up cyber forensics training and investigation labs at CBI academy and in the states of Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir and seven North-Eastern states of Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura for training law-enforcement agencies and judiciary in these states. The CERT-IN cyber forensic lab also provides its services to law- enforcement agencies, state and union territory governments, PSUs, etc in the investigation of cyber security incidents and cybercrimes. Setting up of a national cyber coordination centre under CERT-IN is in progression which would enable to anticipate and prepare to counter cyberattacks and to generate cyber security situational awareness. An expert panel has been set up to recommend the changes required in the existing laws such as IT Act, criminal procedures, Evidence Act and IPC to plug the gaps, if any, in tackling the various forms of cybercrimes. In the wake of historical demonetization drive which took place in the country recently, digital payments have shown exponential growth and hence Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has announced that cyber security is critical for safeguarding the integrity and stability of our financial sector. A computer emergency response team for our financial sector will be established. This entity will work in close coordination with all financial sector regulators and other stakeholders. The government has taken several initiatives and measures to safeguard and secure our cyberspace and digital transactions.
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CYBER SECURITY CONCLAVE
Session I: Building India’s Cyber Security Framework
From L to R: Eric Loit, Chief Systems Architect, RAN International; Marc Kahlberg, CEO, Vital Intelligence Group, Israel; Deepak Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA; Deepak Kumar Rath, Editor, Uday India; Rama Vedashree, CEO, DSCI; Hemal Patel, Senior VP-India Operations, Sophos; Atul Gupta, Partner-Cyber Security Services, KPMG; and Dhiraj Gaur, Technical Lead (Govt., Defense and ICS Solutions), Check Point Software Technologies Marc Kahlberg: I managed to stop crime in 2002 in Israel by 70 per cent by implementing physical security concept which we call the secure zone or safe city. The cyber people of the world called it smart city. It is time to change as we are moving forward and we have to be aware. We have to work together to create a stop to the war that is going on in the cyberspace today. If you do not work together, nothing is going to happen. We have to encourage and cooperate between ourselves. We have to work together to create a platform of security. We have created and developed a couple of frameworks for cyber security. In the six Ps of cyber security, the primary concern is the threat, the provision of education and awareness, protection; preventative measures are necessary; predictive measures need to be proactive. There are long-term challenges. The tasks we have to take up to make these challenges a reality. Cyber security is all about intelligence and the best form of defence is a good offence. Rama Vedashree: It is a well-known fact that India is a powerhouse of Information Technology. India’s advantage in cyber security is a well-kept secret because most global corporations which invest in cyber security centres of excellence or security operation centres or network operation centres do not usually advertise that capability and in which location it is. So we are beginning to feel that India during the last three years has become a chosen destination for security operation centres for a number of global corporations. Similarly, all industry members, whether it is HCL, TCS or Infosys, have very mature cyber security practices. We are also seeing companies like KPMG building capabilities in India for cyber security consulting and services to be able to deliver to the global clients. While it is a nascent industry, we are beginning to become a hub for innovation and product development. We are looking at security R&D. A number
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of global corporations like Symantec, FireEye, EMC and RSA have chosen India as an R&D centre. According to our estimate, there are around 150,000 people working in their professional capacity in the overall information security and cyber security domain. Hemal Patel: Cyber security framework consists of two things. One is definitely protecting our own assets in the country and building a leadership to promote cyber security products and services. Cybercriminals will always be ahead. Therefore, there will always be a data breach, cybercrime and data thefts. It is important for organizations or country to make sure how fast we can catch cyber terrorists and how fast we can respond to and how we can slow them down. Focussing on these three principles, if I have to build the cyber security framework to protect our own country’s asset. I don’t think there is a framework in the police force to record those events. One of the definite things government needs to strengthen is the patent office. Second, we need to have a lab to certify our products and we are the only odd country where the government has the lab and it should be privatized. Dhiraj Gaur: Digital initiatives which the Government has taken are touching lives now. We are entering an era where we are talking publicly about available internet, universal acceptance to technology, IT jobs for everyone, e-Kranti situations where we are touching the lives of farmers, e-governance initiatives which are very well can be seen in every state and every state is competing with each other. So having this digitization is very good but at the same time it has a lot of IT components and automation involved in it. In this era of transformation, one important thing which we have seen is that the mobile phones are taking over desktops. We have also seen that social scenarios are beating the search engines.
Messaging apps are challenging the usual way of communication. Everything around us is becoming connected. With the right architecture, the right strategy and having a thought process of staying one step ahead of the security advisory that should be our key approach to build a resilient cyber security framework. Atul Gupta: In the last presentation, it was mentioned that 3.2 million debit card hacks happened in India. So there is a need today for us to have a robust framework. While talking about the good practices, the point goes back to awareness. I bring three elements around it. It is not just awareness. It is also making sure that you have the right skills and that is the bigger challenge today because making sure that skills are available to address cyber security effectively is a huge issue which we are facing as a country. The second area where we need to focus upon is competence and many times it gets interpreted as technology-related risk. I put it differently. It is a risk which has started because of technology but does not stop over there, but the challenge which comes when we start looking at technology which is changing at a fast pace. Deepak Kumar Rath: In India, cybercrimes come under the Indian Penal Code and the IT Act, 2000 which was amended in 2008. Since policing is a matter of state and complaints have to be lodged with the police, it all depends under the law that police register a case. It so happens that for most of the parts they prefer the age-old Indian Penal Code (IPC). Local police are not conversant with the intricacies of the IT Act. But once a case is filed under IPC, the method of investigation must follow certain guidelines that make it extremely difficult to prove most cybercrimes, according to experts.
Session II: Securing FinTech Companies
From L to R: Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA; K.B. Lal, Advisor, Information Security, Oxigen Services; Prem K Gurnani, DGM-SOC, State Bank of India; Arvind Gupta, National Technology Head, Bhartiya Janata Party; Carmit Yadin, CISO and Director of Cyber Division, Vital Intelligence Group; Puneet Kaur kohli, EVP - IT & Group CTO, Bajaj Capital; and Gurpal Singh, Sr. Market Analyst, IDC CCR India Arvind Gupta: In the budget, digital economy was a special section and the Finance Minister has announced CERT for banks. The digital should be the norm and the cash should be the exception. The banks and the network layer need to be secure. We don’t concentrate on use, app and instrument they use. If the consumers would have adhered to cyber hygiene, people would have saved around Rs.3,700 crore. The importance of mobile PIN is to get people digitally literate. So one needs to educate people on financial literacy. During demonetization, the highest number of requests for banks was I do not know my PIN number. In the BHIM app, the app layer is also secure. If you install an app, it requires 20 permissions. BHIM app is a standard app where the user, app, mobile phone, network, and server is planned in a holistic way. In the FinTech companies, all these parameters are very critical. During demonetization, the E-wallet transactions increased in November and December, whereas in January these remained stable. In IMPS transactions, it peaked in December and January, whereas in the case of BHIM/UPI app, the transactions have increased from Rs.90 crore to Rs.1,270 crore and are competing with all the wallets combined. The biggest challenge for FinTech companies is to make digital transactions secure and India is leading the world in FinTech revolution globally. Prem K. Gurnani: I am quoting a news story about millions of cards being blocked and SBI was mentioned in the headlines. We got calls from all over law-enforcement agencies and all regulators but what was the instance. It was a non-SBI company, a particular bank which had outsourced some activity to a particular service provider. SBI has the largest customer base, largest card base and nothing has happened in SBI. What I am trying to highlight is that being a leader has its own challenges. SBI, a couple of years back, has outsourced law monitoring security operations but depending upon the volumes we do not permit setting up logs outside. So, we set up our own security
operations centre (SOC) and this environment is helping the banks. In 2011, RBI came out with the guidelines on information security which mandate banks for governance structure, IS Security, and CISO report to the management. On 2nd June, 2016, RBI came out with cyber security for banks with another list of activities which include: CERT-IN audits, cyber drills, NCIPC pitching, RABBIT, and opting of cyber security professionals. The ecosystem is converging and facilitating security for Buddy. Products need to be rolled out fast, but unless these are tested by the security team and a clearance is given, the products cannot be rolled out. You would see many times that SBI is not the first to roll out a product to hit the market. SBI has a strong security team taking care of products, a strong governance structure, strong awareness about customers and staff programme in place. We manage traffic as well as security and since it is SBI we see attacks every day – be it phishing attacks, DoS attacks and DDoS attacks at a regular frequency. Investigative measures are in place at the network layer, application layer and transaction layer. With transactions going up now, there is a separate set-up for monitoring transactions to alert customers whenever there is any suspicion. K.B. Lal: Oxigen started in 2004 and the initial objective was to perform digital operations like mobile recharge, DTH and bill collection. When we want to assure our customers, we have to look at external threats as well as internal threats. We want to assure the customers and we want to make it easy. Wallet has a six-digit password and has a two factor authentication but the customer does not want it. Cyber security has a two dimension perspetive. Defensive provides comprehensive vulnerability and is somewhat protected from attacks. On the preventive side, train our partners and designers to use secure coding guidelines formalized structure within the government. The focus is also on third-party audit or ISO 27001. This
is all endless as cyber security is a continuous effort and we have to keep on improving. Puneet Kaur Kohli: FinTech industry needs to be digital savvy. We have taken an internal landmark where we will wait to have ISO 27001. It is not about IT security but enterprise level security. How consistent are we in terms of leveraging the certification and then utilizing the adoption and cultural change within the organization and regulated by IRDA and SEBI. One set of rules and regulations is not enough. Carmit Yadin: On cyber security, there are three main factors: 1. It is interesting time for India as it is going digital. How India is going to protect the biometrical database? Every person is going to get digital identity to manage his financial assets and the government needs to provide robust cyber security infrastructure on this asset. No one will change his fingerprint. How the government is going to protect people. If this information is leaked, financial information can be broken. 2. Awareness and education must be in place for the entire nation. Everybody has to understand the risk and needs to know how to avoid risk. 3. India has taken dramatic steps in this financial digital world. It also became very attractive targets to hackers and enemies and everyone wants to put a hand on these critical assets and the way I see and working with different governments in the world now it is right time for India to build a strong robust cyber intelligence methodologies and create cyber intelligence infrastructure. These are very interesting and important and how it looks from outside. India will be a secure nation. Whether India will be a secure nation or will India lead this industry and create standard. All countries around India will learn from India. Arvind Gupta: Our inspiration has been defined by our Prime Minister. We want to do innovations for the next six billion. We are
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CYBER SECURITY CONCLAVE technically an advanced superpower with one million engineers produced every year. The geopolitical situation we are in the world trust leaders. six billion grossly ignored because of the cost. All platforms have cyber security to the world. Gurpal Singh: Four mantras. First, for any organization, security infrastructure can be very expensive. Seocnd, if they don’t have architecture for the product ingrained by design and not as an
afterthought as an interface. When you are writing the first code all the developers should have that piece. Third, what security tools are using to identify and access management two factor authentication, privilege access management, encryption tools. Recently, CERT advised banks and NBFCs to have strong encryption capabilities. Every point your database, every point your mail, every point your product and that ownership lies with lot of Fintech companies. Regular third-
party audits to access your security. Managing internal risk comes from advice and third-party suppliers and contractors. Lastly, FinTech what kind of SLAs they have from the government bodies. The average lag time is 14 days in the production system. Post demonetization, FinTech companies got the scale but also got a lot of vulnerabilities in the ecosystem. So there is a need for establishing a regulatory authority for digital wallets.
Session III: Securing Smart Cities and IoT Devices
From L to R: Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA; Brijesh Singh, Inspector General of Police (Cyber), Maharashtra Police; Purushottam Kaushik, Sr. Advisor- Smart Cities and Infrastructure, McKinsey India; Shree Parthasarathy, National Leader- Cyber Risk Services, Deloitte; Rajnish Gupta, Sales Director, RSA India; Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-DOT; Samir Datt, Founder & CEO, Foundation Futuristic Technologies; Pankaj Kumar Gupta, OSD, Strategy, Business Growth & Operations, (n) Code Solutions (A Division of GNFC); and Ajay Purohit, Sr. Vice President, Fourth Dimension Solutions Brijesh Singh: More than a policy question, it is about technology question when you look at IoT. It does not have enterprise security like protected firewall, IDS/IPS, Flow Analysis, Malware analysis and endpoint protection. I think security for IoT devices is not very developed still and it would need much better solutions. The IoT devices have very aggressive power management and they do not have an operating system and they are liable and susceptible to any kind of attacks. Surely, all this infrastructure is outside as the threat surface area is very, very large. So threat of IoT devices and smart cities is more like a technology challenge than a policy challenge and I hope we will have to find a better solution in the times to come. Pankaj Kumar Gupta: Gandhinagar became the first operational city a month back. It is much more than a regular CCTV as our Wi-Fi system has 15,000 concurrent users having about 2 Mbps and about 30 minutes free Wi-Fi usage. Gandhinagar smart city also has smart sensordriven street lights, environmental sensors and many other components. Technologies can be executed, but the big question is how secure are they. We have conducted 26 tests before we launched this project. The project was executed in about three months and it took four months to fix those gaps through 26 tests. I think we have security which needs to be implemented. IoT sensors are a very good technology. If implemented properly, they
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can definitely deliver results. And I can assure you as a consultant to Gandhinagar smart city, implementation is 100-per cent secure. Vipin Tyagi: What we have missed in smart city is design. The open platform has not been adopted as the focus is on the proprietary platform. Smart city requires an integrated IP-based core network and then you require applications. 30 per cent of the total traffic flow on Internet is BOT or BOT-like. Attacks are large-scale vectors or multi-vectors. How standardization will build security? Tower Monitoring Site (TMS) is a nationwide public infrastructure and it has to be secured. We need to have a standard-based platform where everybody can connect. With respect to blast, law-enforcement agencies need to be fully equipped as they can trace where was the machine, who did it, at what time the command was actuated, at what time did the detonator go and its likely impact. Purushottam Kaushik: In smart cities, everything will become smarter. The challenge is all the pieces of smart city whether the endpoint which is in the streets or closer to your home and whether it is the gateway which is carrying the data network or central piece or command and control or maybe the data layer the exposure point is everywhere whether it is touched or played. The impact can be huge. Presently, we are not smart so we are not exposed. When
everything gets connected, it is not too much of an effort to switch off the lights of the whole city. It does not take too much of an effort to keep playing with the transparent system of the city. That is where the big time impact or exposure can happen. Presently, smart cities are in silos. Somebody is focussing on Wi-Fi transport solutions, integrated traffic management, waste bin deployment or smart parking. All these projects are executed in silos as there is no framework or plan and how it will get integrated with smart city. As a technology leader, we will focus on how do we build silos around smart city. Now perhaps from the consulting point of view unless we look at it holistically, we will not be able to solve it whether we build a framework of security across the layers or on the services perspective as we move forward and how do we manage security on a day-to-day basis. We need to have continuous security layer on every piece at all exposure points. We need to build a services layer perspective. Any of these smart cities put a layer on top of it where we are going to have a third-party practice of analyzing each and every security layer. Certifying and auditing it after every three months will help us to be proactive. Shree Parthasarathy: We have involved from generation to generation, there are a lot of expectations from a fundamental city. As we are tagging a smart city, the expectations of the common citizens are just going to go up. ATM, which is a trusted network so far,
the expectation was I go to my ATM and put my card and I will get money. For two months, ATM was out of order and the machine was not working. Let me take related services from the smart city perspective. So when you have the same expectation and when you look at security, you focus on confidentiality, integrity, availability and privacy of information. Once we get information about citizens, how do we ensure privacy of information. The second is availability and the biggest challenge facing the IoT industry is end sensor and power in the end sensor. IoT manufacturers are facing how to make it economically more viable and second how to maintain the power and third is how do you embed security in every layer. How to embed security to the sensor level all the way to data layer and how do you do that? The availability of sensor is significantly important as there is a reliance on sensor providing critical information and that goes into service layer and services and availability of sensor at that point is very critical. All these cities need to talk to each other in a very secure fashion and also the integrity of the data flow needs to be together. The last area is confidentiality and how it is managed? If you look at a smart city, you have government, you have a service provider, you have a number of organizations like us creating RFP, project plan, business plan, then you have technology providers. What is important is common framework, standards for a set of smart cities need to be consistent. Samir Datt: Let us go ahead 20 years into the future where artificial intelligence is speaking to each other. I think we are living in very revolutionary times where things are changing dramatically. Networks are getting heavily interconnected, standards exist and in the implementation of those standards there is a lot of gap. We talk about IoT, but any chain is as strong as the weakest link. Even if there is one device or one system that does not conform, you can bring the whole network down. What do we need to do? There was a movie – Live Free or Die Hard. In the movie, they hacked everything right from street lights, TV channels, cell phone networks,
parking networks, communication between underground metros, underground-to-air network, electricity grid and even nuclear facility. We need to look at three important things – People, Process and Technology and we need to have smart people. Ajay Purohit: Managing the expectations of the clients – multi-technology, multi-vendor and multi-process the big question is will OEMs follow standards as they have their own proprietary technology and are they interested in interoperability. There is a big question mark on that. The only way to ensure such things going forward is to ensure by bringing in regulations or bringing standard frameworks. Presently, we do not have the capital outlay where you can go for 100- per cent smart city. The project will come in phases. So how will you ensure that when they are coming in phases they are all integrated. The bigger question is even if it is integrated, there is a technology shelf life. By the time you reach phase III, phase I technology is due for overhaul. So there has to be a policy in place on how a technology is evaluated, inducted, procured, implemented and then phased out. Unless and until these frameworks come into place, you will always have these models. A plethora of devices and a plethora of networks are all talking to each other but not making it secure. Rajnish Gupta: Smart City is like an enterprise. You have an endpoint, you have a network there is an application and there is data. Smart city is an enterprise and what we do in an enterprise is to educate our users and administrators to manage the entire security which is the biggest thing. The government and regulators have the responsibility to manage the sensor providers technology and they need to follow standards. Unless we follow the standard, we will get security breach points. The standard could be authorization, encryption, authentication and what can be done and how it can be embedded. Security is becoming a boardroom discussion. If we imbibe the security piece at the conceptual level, it becomes much more easier to roll out. If we roll out and then try to do this, we will never meet that. Sectoral CERT has come right now. We have to set up the governance model and
how to mitigate the risk. How do we see what is happening on the network? How do we see what is happening on endpoint as they are most vulnerable? Most attacks come from endpoint. Look at the vendors who give security as a preference, people who are making devices with more secure infrastructure in the component. Brijesh Singh: Our cyber security project is conceptualized by our Chief Minister and it is a Rs.1,000-crore project. First, technology assisted investigation for police. Second, Maharashtra will have its own CERT which will be state-ofthe-art. Third, bring data analytics platform to be used by law-enforcement agencies. Fourth, a large awareness programme for people at large. Maharashtra has already formed one cyber police station per district. So presently it has 44 cyber police stations. It has the latest state-ofthe-art tools, technologies and training. We are taking manpower from outside. We are taking people from the market at market rates so that we are not constrained by not having proper staff. Though it is experimental, we have had a fair amount of success. We will have CERT in the next six months, followed by Big Data platform and very soon threat intelligence sharing platform. Other states have evinced interest as to how Maharashtra is doing it and if we are able to do it, it will increase the confidence of investors that you have a robust cyber infrastructure in Maharashtra and Mumbai and that would in turn help Maharashtra to be a good destination for investment. Pankaj Kumar Gupta: Please don't buy devices or equipment, but please buy outcomes. Gandhinagar Smart City RFP talks about what I need and what is the outcome. It is based on the Design-Build-Own-and-Transfer model. The security audit is conducted every three months, thereby improving the system and replacing the system. Shree Parthasarathy: As we move into the digital age and as we bring everything digital and everything online, the big question is how we adopt them and implement them across all layers and put right level of governance and risk management plans.
Session IV: Creating One Mn Cyber Security Experts and 1,000 Cyber Start-ups by 2025
From L to R: Amajit Gupta, ICT Expert & Angel Investor; Rohit Srivastwa, Senior Director (Cyber Security & Education), Quick Heal; Shrikant Sinha, CEO, Nasscom Foundation; Debabrata Nayak, Chief Security Officer, Huawei India; Dinesh Pillai, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group; Harold D’Costa, CEO, Intelligent Quotient Security System; and Trishneet Arora, CEO, TAC Security
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CYBER SECURITY CONCLAVE Amajit Gupta: Definition of cyber security in terms of shapes and sizes and where is the money? I think national cyber security is getting more and more profound. It is the early stage industry. Like we do it in India one way, i.e. Jugaad. We find the size and shape to our story as we go along. We see a national vision from NASSCOM and DSCI of one million cyber security experts by 2025, but when we look at the drill you have missed the number by a factor of six times. The nearest number we need to train in this country is 6.5 million every year and that is cyber security awareness. The rest is IT initiated who need to be trained for cyber security are the software and the service providers and that market is 1-1.5 million professionals. What is the state on the supply side? On the supply side, only about 20,000 cyber security professionals of the IT kind churn out every year or may be even lesser. Rohit Srivastwa: We are a start-up in cyber security and was acquired by QuickHeal. We are on the education side called QuickHeal Academy where we are designing the course curriculum for M.Tech in Cyber Security with the help of industry experts. We have signed an MoU with Gujarat Forensic Sciences University and Chitkara University. The focus is on converting the educated into employable in the cyber security space. Debabrata Nayak: For Huawei, it is do or die. There is no budget listed for cyber security. We have 160 cyber security professionals for thorough testing of equipments. Autonomous institutes can bring cyber security courses for B.Tech, M.Tech and Ph.D. This time, budget talks about cyber security. Institutions can bring cyber security courses and then train cyber security professionals. Dinesh Pillai: As an end-user, we do not follow basic hygiene. Technology shift will be there, but there is only one thing which is
constant is people. We have to do a reality check with respect to training on cyber security. Who is going to teach? People who have done CCNS come and say I am a cyber security expert. What is the basic definition of cyber security. I am an expert in information security and not cyber security. Who is going to train? Who is going to accredit as cyber security course labs come at an exorbitant cost. Harold D’Costa: In 2006, diploma in cyber security in Maharashtra top universities was not the right time. Nashik University said yes to me for Diploma in Cyber Security and there were 101 admissions. 93 sat for the exam and 62 cleared. 25 per cent left the country and are serving in other places. Maharashtra Police Academy has launched a 3-day training programme for corporates to tell what the police is doing on cyber security from both the technical and legal side. In Nashik, there are 5,000–6,000 industries and Nashik Police will train corporates on cyber security. As to training the judicial system, where are the people? As far as the government is concerned, there are 5,060 professionals in the government system. In 2012, AICTE sent circulars to all universities to start a mandatory course on cyber security. Many of the teachers who came from hardware were teaching cyber security. The big question was where are the people to teach cyber security? Build cyber security research cell where the government can introduce – and we will give them jobs and we will absorb them. Time has come for more action, more training and then absorb them at the earliest. Trishneet Arora: We are not empanelled even after four years. If we are not empanelled, how will you get 1 million ethical cyber security hackers. In 2011, NASSCOM talked about 77,000 ethical hackers every year. How many you have got till 2016? A number of institutions provide 6-week and 6-month courses but they don’t know
the commands. They are producing donkeys. We will have to get government empanelment. Otherwise, nothing is going to happen. We are fighting with young criminals. So how a 50-yearold man is going to fight with a 15-year-old kid. If I am fighting, I believe a lot of young startups are also fighting. We are testing financial institutions and banks. Dinesh Pillai: To manage 80,000 people, there are 8 people in the info security team and this bank is of national importance. 8 network and administrators moved to the security cell. If an attack happens, they would not be able to manage it. Amajit Gupta: We have to target large IT experts as government cannot comprehend the problems. Supply vendor relationship will destroy your business. Talent is over here, but we don’t have the environment to grow. I would urge upon large corporates to put money where the mouth is. For private risk ventures, cyber security should be a priority. Dinesh Pillai: The industry has enough challenges to address and there is scarcity of people. Many times, somebody has to do accreditation. The accreditation has to be done by government agencies. Rohit Srivastwa: The industry has to teach as real knowledge will come when the industry teaches. Trishneet Arora: We have students for industrial training and I think this is the only way to train resources. Cyber security is a business issue and not a technology issue. It is a business risk and we should give chance to cyber security start-ups so that they can come up. Who will train? An agency which should certify people. They in turn should train the trainers or professors and professors then should train the students.
Session V: Strengthening Data Protection and Cyber Security Laws From L to R: Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA; Rajat Chand, Managing Director, CSDC India; Samir S. Kanthale, Joint Director, Judicial Officer’s Training Institute, Nagpur; Anil Dhawas, Civil Judge Senior Division & Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Daryapur, Dist. Amravati, Maharashtra; Deepak Maheshwari, Director - Government Affairs, India & ASEAN, Symantec; Harmeet Kalra, Head – Alliance, F5 Networks; Amit Malhotra, VP Sales-India & MEA, Seclore Technologies; Harold D’Costa, CEO, Intelligent Quotient Security System; Keerti Nileish Mahajan, Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth University; and Anyesh Roy, Deputy Commissioner of Police (cyber cell), Delhi Police
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Anil Dhawas: As a policy matter, the Government of India has announced digitalization of so many things, including digital payment, digital transaction, etc. Day in and day out, we come across digital evidence. Whatever we do electronically, we have to keeps digital footprints. Therefore, in fact, it is easy to catch the person who did digital transaction including commercial transaction or any crime. As far as privacy is concerned, I believe the privacy of the people is at risk. Some measures have already been taken by the government by enacting the Information Technology Act. Some measures have been taken by framing rules under the IT Act. My basic question is: Are these rules sufficient and enough to protect the citizens from vulnerability of cyber incidents? If a cyber incident occurs, the victim has to move from pillar to post. We have no specialized police in the requisite number; nor do we have specialized courts and judges trained in this field of knowledge. There is no uniformity in the courts with regard to the proof of digital evidence. There is an issue of jurisdiction, etc. For all such reasons amongst others, we need a uniform operating procedure to be followed by the courts. In the government sector, every department has its own manual. For instance, in Maharashtra, for police department, there are police manuals for courts and there are civil and criminal manuals, but there is no manual in respect of the use of digital matters. Recently, the Income- Tax Department has launched its own manual for investigation in respect of digital evidence. So whenever any income tax official has to do anything he has to follow the guidelines of the said manual. But there is no manual in other departments. The necessary manual needs to be brought into force regarding digital evidence in order to bring uniformity. There is no provision in the manual of any state police. Hence, such manuals are needed for proper guidance for the police department. There are rules framed in the year 2011 under the Information Technology Act in respect of the protection of privacy of citizens. The rules are not properly implemented. Surprisingly, what if those rules are violated? There is no punishment provided for the breach of the rules. How there would be deterrence in the minds of people unless there is provisions for imprisonment. If any victim sustains any loss due to cyber incident, what penalty is provided under the IT Act? Surprisingly, it is up to Rs.25,000. This is not a penalty, but it is a compensation by the person who supplies or shares the private information by committing the breach of rules. If the victims has sustained more loss, then such an amount of
compensation is very meagre. Moreover, in order to get that amount of Rs.25,000, the victim has to approach to the adjudication officer. Anyway, where is this office? The adjudication officer sits in the state capital. For example, in the state of Maharashtra, the office of the adjudication officer is at Mumbai, for West Bengal, the adjudication officer is at Kolkata. Do you expect the victim to go to the state capital for seeking the meagre amount of compensation? Why can’t you provide such powers of adjudication to the court at district places. Therefore, we need to revisit this provision and we need to amend the law. Proving electronic record is a difficult task. Recently in the year 2014, the Supreme Court laid down a law that every electronic record must be accompanied with a certificate as contemplated under Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act. Therefore, it becomes mandatory to have such certificate whenever any electronic record is to be proved. I feel that this judgment has made the prosecution very difficult to prove electronic record. It has also brought difficulties in proving electronic evidence in civil cases. Nowadays, in every case such question of electronic record comes. Unless there is a certificate, no electronic
record including CD, DVD or computer printout can be admissible as evidence. In many cases, there was no such certificate. The fate of such cases is going to be culminated in acquittal, particularly criminal cases in which the question of electronic evidence is there. The certificate is now mandatory. But is it practicable to furnish such certificate all the time? I wish to give an example. If you go to a petrol pump and fill up the petrol, you pay the money by your card. The moment card is swapped, one will get a bill generated electronically. If something happens with regard to quality of petrol and if you are required to file a case, then you need to have a certificate duly issued by the petrol vendor. Do you expect a petrol pump man who fills up petrol would be issuing a certificate to every customer? Is it possible for him? Will he fill the petrol or issue the certificate? But the law says you must have a certificate. This is something illogical and absurd. Hence, we need to relook at the Information Technology Act and the relevant provisions of the Indian Evidence Act. For every minor printout, why a certificate should be made compulsory which is not practical? Hence,
we need to change the law. An amendment in the Evidence Act has become necessary. After the Supreme Court’s judgment in the year 2014, the Government should have done something. The Government could have amended the provisions of Section 65-B or could have provided some provisions into the said section by enacting an amendment or by promulgating an ordinance. But the Government did not do anything. It is so because there is no will to do so. Mere passing stringent laws will not be sufficient. We need to educate the people from being protected from cyber incidents. Digital literacy is the need of the hour. We need to educate the people as to how to be secured in the cyberspace. What precautions should be taken, etc. I feel the Government should form a committee consisting of technical and legal experts to amend the law of electronic record and cyber security. Anyesh Roy: Very few police officials have manuals or standard operating procedures or standing instructions for collection of electronic evidence. We have recently framed a standing order for collection of electronic evidence that covers desktop, laptop and mobile phone and other basics on sources of digital evidence. Most of the organizations don’t have it. Even if they have it, it does not percolate to the investigating officer as they are very reckless in collecting electronic evidence and at the trial stage it may lead to acquittal and serious implications. The third issue is 65-B certificate. Even the courts are not updated about the provisions and the lower courts are not insisting on 65-B certificate at the initial stage. When cognizance is taken and charges are being framed but when it comes to the trial, the defence lawyer will rake up this issue, particularly after the judgement of Supreme Court in this regard. So these are the issues which need to be addressed and loopholes need to be plugged and only then the effective law enforcement will happen vis-a-vis cyber offences. Pavan Duggal: India doesn’t have a cyber security law in force. If you want to look at the Indian Information Technology law as cyber security law you would be disappointed. You can’t blame the lawmaker as the law was framed in 2000 and cyber security was nowhere on the horizon. We amended it in 2008 and cyber security had arrived but it was still not important and we have not amended the law. Bu the law in the present-day scenario is a sitting duck. As a nation, we are not prepared should a cyber-attack takes place in India. It would be a
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A view of stalls at Cyber Security India Conclave 2017 few hours before we surrender that’s the current level of preparedness. In this scenario, you need to have adequate first and foremost legal frameworks and we need to know what is happening across the world. There is laxity in our approach, whereas China during the last 18 months has come up with two important legislations – one on national security and the other on cyber security. The law is not only applicable to not just entire China, entire Internet but outside space. The new concept of cyber sovereignty and what is India’s position on cyber sovereignty? India doesn’t have a stated position on cyber security. It is time we go beyond the paradigm of the IT Act. The IT Act is good when we began; it was a small legislation. When we amended it in the year 2008, we transformed small legislation to biggest omnipotent mother legislation with data and information in the electronic form. But we now incorporating communications device and computer resources, this law has become one of the three most significant pieces of information – the ther two being Indian Constitution and Indian Penal Code. India needs an independent Cyber Security Law independent of the IT Act. As a nation, we are unprepared tomorrow if our critical information infrastructure is attacked. We cannot afford to fight against the entire gamut of warfare agent critical infrastructure. Cyber terrorists are structuring their activities in such a manner that their activities cannot be brought under Section 6- F of the Information technology Act. As a nation, I am quite clear that India cannot fight cyber terrorism with one single provision. We need to have extensive legal provision for judiciary and law-enforcement agencies. It is time to revisit the law. It is time we need to do lot of capacity building. It is time when to come up with capacity deterrence and or states IT Act. We need to have cybercrime courts as cybercrime is happening all across the world. Cyber is centre to a variety of things. In 2017, my guesstimate is that 3 out of 5 cases require electronic evidence. It is time we revisit the rules for mobile evidence and who is going to give the certificate. According to a report, the global cost of cybercrime is going to exceed $2 trillion. According to Forbes, 80 per cent of cybercrime is done by organized crime. Keerti Nileish Mahajan: It is teacher’s responsibility for creating new leaders. We
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have to cover all aspects in 1-year, 2-year or 3-year programme. We have to arrange skill development for students for short-term courses. In Bharti Vidyapeeth, we have Legal Aid Centre, where we are getting lots of cases. We give legal advice to students for such kinds of cases and we are giving compulsory cyber security to all students. Around one lakh students in Bharti Vidyapeeth and students need to get compulsory cyber security certificates for getting degrees. Samir S. Kanthale: There are two things – awareness and capacity building. Maharashtra is the only state which has assigned training of public prosecutors. A question often arises if it is so technical, how do we deal with it. When we studied LL.B., this law was never in existence. It is not an easy task to try somebody who is an expert in IT before a court which has knowledge of the said subject. The Cyber Security Policy of 2011 has specifically dedicated state-ofthe-art facility for cybercrime investigation and dedicated state-of-the-art training facility for law- enforcement agencies and judiciaries. Unfortunately, it is yet to see the light of the day. As an incharge of the training institute, I am requesting cyber security experts to come and enlighten our prosecutors on the subject. When these cases are tried before the Supreme Court, we have just 65, but we don’t have separate rules for investigation and acceptability of evidence. We need to have standard investigation procedures recognized by law. The second thing is awareness. Even as a common man, we are hardly bothered about personal information pilfered or being misused. As a case-study, we studied the privacy policy of bank and we found that the privacy policy is indeed in a way to favour the banks, although prior permission is required to share the data with third party. I doubt whether this policy has been challenged at an appropriate authority. Another issue, I would like to highlight is the availability of free or paid app on the App store. This is totally unregulated area and I believe there needs to be some authority to regulate, certify subscriptions of apps. Deepak Maheswari: The IT Act is at the central level. Otherwise, we would have a central legislation as well as a state legislation. Notwithstanding that, we do have National Cyber Security Policy, 2013 much before that IT Policy in 2012, but many states had the IT Policy right from 1997. Our policies have to be at least consistent
and to be globally harmonized and even in the country it needs to be harmonized. On the encryption part, on 7th August, 1999 we had 40-bit encryption, but what is the situation today? We have different types of provisions within different regulations. In online trading there are three different provisions and it is incompatible with one another. We do need to have a consistent policy and legislative framework within the country. The third thing is evidence with respect to cyber crime. Now, if we want to sensitise and prioritise at the legislative level, this is very important. When we start looking at all these cases with respect to electronic evidence for cybercrime, then I hope legislations will uphold much higher authority in the realm of rules. In terms of institution capacity, we need to take definite steps. The cases are piling up at the Cyber Appellate Tribunal as there is severe shortage of judges. Symantec, along with NASSCOM, is doing capacity building for five curriculums for the National Skill Development which was unveiled last month and has rolled out in different colleges. For critical information provisions, we have three protected systems in India like the Communication System acquired by the Delhi Police during the Commonwealth Games. The second is Ministry of Shipping and third is Aadhaar CID Act. Apart from these, we do not have protected systems. Unless and until these are protected, the law does not allow higher level of penal provisions. We need to increase our critical information infrastructure, be it the Income Tax database, Voter ID database, RTGS switch, NEFT switch, international gateway of operators and others. Recently, the US has identified 16 sectors which include waterways and dams. Harmeet Kalra: Given the three pillars that we define problem are people, process and technology. We believe people and process are much bigger problems. Our opinion is that tangibility from technology is far more doable. Pointing out the combat, the firewall market is $200 million and application security market is $6 million. If we pick up any attack on cyber infra only novices attack the actual user. Experts attack application and users are missing the application part on the top of this gigantic wave of digital. As we move towards digital, it is more important to start respecting the fact that it is the applications which the infrastructure is serving. And the focus on application security is right from the building stage of the applications.
Delhi NCR is the cybercrime hub for India. During the last 16 months, I have arrested 600 boys and girls in the Delhi NCR region, who were involved in cybercrimes. In one instance, through SQL Injection in database, the person was able to recharge Rs.25 lakh. Cybercriminals are just graduates and through data tempering tool they can bypass the payment gateway. Recently, a computer graduate from Skyline through social trade created a big empire of Rs.3,700 crore, which was cracked. The company had 6.5 lakh users and had around 9 lakh user IDs. The graduate Abhinav Mittal has been arrested and jailed, but the social media campaign is still going on. We only focus on preventive measures and detective measures but we do not focus on investigation. Investigation requires shared resources both on technical and legal front. Police is not up to the mark. We are training them and we have also hired the best of consultants. Anybody can spoof your mail ID and mobile number. In cyber black market you can buy anything – be it insurance fraud, debit card cloning and credit card cloning. Each and every crime is a cybercrime nowadays. Laws are not stringent in terms of cybercrime. For some, it is 7 years; otherwise, it is a non-
Amit Malhotra: If you look at the history of leaks, the majority of the leaks happen by trusted source. There is lot of focus on inbound protection. Missing on the 90 per cent data which is outside of the data center. Private banks and government banks are deploying the best of cyber technology. All of us on the vendor side and also on the enforcement would agree that banks and telecom sector addresses there cyber security requirement. The challenges are coming with respect to information movement. The big boss
bailable offence. The whole fraud supply chain is working in Delhi. 1. Each and everyone has to be aware. 2. 90 per cent of cases have used social engineering tricks. 3. Massive campaigning against awareness each and every user.
4. Capacity building for police, prosecution and judiciary. 5. Curriculum in university should have best of real experiences of police department and legal fraternity. Cyber forensic is an important aspect of cybercrime.
tells somebody to e-mail top 100 customers. The e-mail comes on the mobile phone and it is not protected. Today, credit cards and banks will have the best of security, but the statement has to be printed and you have to go to the third party and there is an information flowing through a secured firewall. Data center to an outside world and do not know where it is going. And so what we believe in Seclor and that is the stuff we are looking at is instead of data of looking at data centered security we have to look at data- centric security. The data
which is moving out in any form – be it a file, a pen drive, through network and peer to peer if you can provide security to that piece of data and security travels with that that potential is the best form. Other which is more critical is maintaining logs and audit trails. Harold D’ Costa: Data Protection law has to be encrypted and domain registration has to be governed by Indian authorities. n Pravin Prashant pravin@varindia.com
Kiren Rijiju Keynote Address Continued Recognizing the strategic dimensions of cyberspace, the Government created the post of a National Cyber Security Coordinator in 2014. The Cabinet Committee on Security, in its meeting held on 5th October, 2016, approved the creation and administration of research and development fund for cyber security. A high-powered committee has also been created under the chairmanship of the National Security Advisor for setting priority for research and human resource development. To protect the government cyber infrastructure, information security guidelines and cyber security policies have been also issued by the Government. Government agencies and approved agencies are carrying out cyber audit of the government infrastructure. India must develop both offensive and defensive cyber security capabilities that must be robust enough to detect and nullify any cyber warfare against India. Cyber terrorism, attacks and espionage against India is as important as it should be. Today, protecting key economic assets like securing financial backbone and stock exchanges, payment infrastructure and financial switches are the need of the hour. This includes architecting security for new-age banking to make them cyber secure. With the growth of enterprise mobility, mobile applications and cloud enablement that are driving businesses, techno legal issues have become more prominent. Social networking platforms have further complicated the scenario. There is a need for having public-private partnership in cyber security for protecting the critical online data in creating awareness among public. There is also a need for establishing India as a global hub of development of cyber security products and promoting indigenization in research and development. For that, a conducive atmosphere has to be created. Developing the human capital remains a priority and the existing gap between the required and available resources has to be made good by the private sector. Higher educational institutions catering specially towards cyber security should be developed, but in the meantime better placement and recruitment practices should be promoted to shore up the manpower. One of the most urgent needs is to establish an inclusive mechanism to regulate cyberspace. The best way to ensure cyber security is to form an appropriate legal regime for the various types of cyber threats, i.e. cybercrime, cyber terrorism and cyber warfare. The global cyber security market is expected to reach approximately $190 billion by 2025 from the present $85 billion and will be driven primarily by increasing digitization wave and smartphone penetration. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.2 per cent from 2015-25. According to Nasscom and DSCI, the Indian IT industry has charted out Vision 2025 to grow the cyber security products and services industry to $35 billion, create one million cyber security jobs and 1,000 cyber security start-ups by 2025. These are the efforts which will take India into a mode where India will not only be a strong nation but will be a safe nation. We are bound to embark on this journey and the responsibility also lies with state governments. We have been asking the state governments to give a thrust to security.
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The changing conversation on energy efficiency: 5 steps to reduce power consumption in your data centre E
conomic commentators increasingly express a new mantra: that while developing markets used to follow mature economies, today they are compelled to leapfrog them. To me, this statement has relevance and strong implications in the area of data centre management across Asia and the Pacific, particularly around energy consumption and efficiency. The reasoning was twofold: lower your energy consumption expenses and assist the welfare of the planet. Going back six or seven years, the tech industry witnessed a wave of energy-efficient technology hardware products that were more eco-friendly, aiming to reduce ongoing operating costs for IT infrastructure. The reasoning was twofold: lower your energy consumption expenses and assist the welfare of the planet. This ‘greener’ technology hardware was a considerable talking point at this time. But the focus on green IT has since shifted somewhat to a newer data centre focus on software-defined-storage advances and hyperconvergence. Happily, with their approach to sharing resources and smart energy-aware software management, both of these initiatives help lower data centre energy consumption for organisations. This is, of course, good news. A renewed focus on energy efficiency concerns in Asia
In the second half of 2016, I noticed a definitive shift: the positive rhetoric around energy efficiency has increased. The early focus on new data centre technology with little discussion around ‘green IT’ has been replaced with a louder dialogue and renewed focus back towards energy efficiency. CIOs in India, for example, are now telling me that increasing power expenditure is their absolute biggest issue. The reason is that, across Asian economies, power costs and associated real estate costs are out of control.CIOs in India, for example, are now telling me that increasing power expenditure is their absolute biggest issue. Power and cooling costs have risen, and demand is driving the price rise.It’s estimated by the World Energy Council that demand for electricity will double between 2015 and 2060, affecting the rising cost of energy. As the council points out, this is happening because technology-enabled urban lifestyles demand more electricity. In Asia’s developing markets, we see the growth of the middle class, rising incomes, and more electricityenabled appliances and machines contributing to this demand. It’s estimated by the World Energy Council that demand for electricity will double between 2015 and 2060, affecting the rising cost of energy. Renewables will play their part in transforming the resources sector and many industries are planning for this now. A recent McKinsey report notes that by 2050, electricity will account for a quarter of all energy demand, compared with 18% today. More than three quarters (77%) of the additional power will be generated from wind and solar, 13% from natural gas, and the rest from everything else. But where does that leave us today?
It’s not just energy costs which weigh on the minds of CIOs. The associated real estate costs for data centre space are also skyrocketing across Jakarta, Bangalore, Delhi and elsewhere in the region. Did you know Delhi is now more expensive than Sydney’s central business district dollar for dollar, square for square? It’s also more expensive than Paris! Any bid to lower some of these power costs and achieve greater energy efficiency is, I believe, the major impetus for IT leaders to move toward a software-defined-storage and hyperconvergence strategy. And that is where the conversation has now shifted.
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Sumir Batia Vice President, Data Centre Group Asia Pacific at Lenovo So where to from here? Running a data centre is a balancing act. These are spaces which can certainly require considerable power to run, and that won’t change anytime soon. Gartner estimates that from 2016, data centre power costs will increase by 10% every year, a consequence of increases in the cost per kilowatt-hour (kwh) and underlying demand, especially for high-power density servers. 5 steps to achieve better energy efficiency in your data centre
So how can you maximise your data centre energy efficiency and get a handle on rising costs? You need a power consumption reduction strategy. Here are five steps you can take: 1. Eliminate unnecessary workloads, consolidate virtual machines, and replace old inefficient servers with new ones. 2. If you can, reduce the unnecessary space in your data centre requiring cooling, or use a modular design for new spaces so you only power what you need organically. 3. Lower cooling requirements by using air economisers, isolation structures to funnel out excess heat, and smarter air con strategies which use less power. 4. Eliminate outdated power delivery systems which can negatively impact your power use. 5. Use data centre infrastructure management software to monitor and manage energy consumption of all IT equipment. n
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Inaugural ceremony( From L-R) Mr. Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor – WIPRO LIMITED, Shri Deepak Ku. Sahu, Chief editor, VARINDIA, Mr. Nihar Chakraborty, Sr. V.P.& COO-East & SAARC- Sify Technologies, Mr. R.N Palai, ITS,Spl. secy. to Govt., IT department,GoO, Mr. Vipin Tyagi, E.D. – C Dot, Government of India, Mr Nilanjan Mukherjee, Senior Vice President, Fourth Dimension Solutions, Mr. Soubhagya Routray, President-ITAO , Mr. Gopal Krishna Nayak, Director-IIIT(Bhubaneswar), Mr. Suvrendu Mitra, IMS Div.East India - Canon India, Mr. Ashok Mohapatra, Organising Committee- VARINDIA Cricket
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Bhubaneswar holds conference on Smart Bhubaneswar
ost demonetisation and on the backdrop of the crisis faced by the country, the 9th Odisha Information Technology Fair – 2017 (OITF) holds much more importance to understand the actual groundwork going on the smart city front. The Department of IT, Odisha, STPI, UCCI and C-Dot supported the conference. The conference chose “Digital Transformation” as its theme and the focus of the meet was to popularize digital transaction, Digital India and to understand the investment opportunities in Odisha as Bhubaneswar has been declared as the first Smart City in India. Around 250 delegates including top executives from across verticals comprising of government, academics, corporate world, IT services companies and VARs attended the event. Organized by VARINDIA (India’s Frontline IT Magazine), the event was held at Hotel Mayfair, Bhubaneswar on 24th January, 2017, which served as a unique platform to discuss under one roof the vital issues concerning the IT landscape in the state. The delegates exchanged their views on the next-generation technology which is going to disrupt the industry with the introduction of IoT devices in the Smart City projects for the future. C-Dot spoke on how Indian products are most suitable with their state-of-the-art digital innovations for transforming India to come up with Smart Cities. Shri Priyadarshi Mishra, MLA, Bhubaneswar, who graced the occasion as a Special Guest, marked the beginning of the event by lighting the ceremonial lamp. He was joined by other distinguished guests – Shri R. N. Palai, ITS, Special Secretary to the Government, IT Department, GoO; Shri Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-Dot, Government of India; Dr Gopal Krishna Nayak, Director, IIIT, Bhubaneswar; Shri Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor, WIPRO Limited; Shri Nihar
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Dr Gopal Krishna Nayak, Director, IIIT, Bhubaneswar “Deglobalization is happening, across the world. Firstly, the countries which were promoting free trading now are slowly becoming insular. It is stated with Britain and Now President Trump’s announcement on the barrier on imports and outsourcing is a dangerous thing for the Indian IT industry and hope globalization will not stop. Secondly, with the rise of robots, in the manufacturing industry, it is expected to replace the skilled workers. With the rise of robots, many jobs are at stake. Lastly, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, blue and white collar jobs are also going to vanish and some newer form of jobs will get introduced. This year, it has started with a gloomy note like demonetization unlike other years. What we see VARINDIA is changing this time for better, and brings a great platform like this with the industry and the stakeholders for business networking.” Shri R. N. Palai, ITS, Special Secretary to the Government, IT Department, GoO “We have a friendly ICT policy for promoting this sector. IT exports from Odisha increased to Rs.3, 000 crore during 2015-16 and are increasing at the rate of 15% per year. The Government of Odisha welcomes IT companies to invest in the state. With a stable Government in Odisha and the appointment of Dr Sam Pitroda as the Technology Advisor, we are expecting a positive growth of IT in Odisha. Going forward, initiatives made by VARINDIA for organizing Cricket tournament is really commendable and rejuvenates the minds of the young generation working in the SME and corporate sectors in Odisha, in the present demonetization saga.” Chakraborty, Sr Vice-President.& COO – East & SAARC, Sify Technologies; Shri Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager – India & SAARC, Seagate Technology; Shri Nilanjan Mukherjee, Sr VicePresident, Fourth Dimension Solutions; Shri Suvrendu Mitra, IMS Div. East India, Canon India; Shri Soubhagya Routray, President, ITAO; and Shri Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA. Shri Deepak Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA,
while addressing the guests, remarked at the fabulous digital story that India is seeing. He spoke on how VARINDIA continues with this spirit to provide a real-time update on the industry – be it Digital India, Start-up India, Stand Up India, Make in India, and now one of the important subjects which is Digital Payment (the recent matter be it demonetization), and the most important – Securing India. “The assets are being created either by you or the state, but they
Shri Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-Dot, Government of India “C-DOT is ready to give any manufacturer in Odisha to manufacturing technology products to get manufactured, since technology will work shoulder to shoulder with any partner and will come forward. Networking has to be on priority. Without right networking, nothing will work including any sensors and for this we would require integrated core-based IP network to get success of the smart city objective in the country. C-DOT has built the entire model which has four objectives for the smart city, that include Physical (energy, water, transport, connectivity and waste), Social (Education, health, building homes, city – inclusive development, entertainment and economy. We can give this model to the manufacturers which is end-to-end well fit for the smart city. Just build it and deploy it. We have also developed a solution like WhatsApp, in the name of SAMVAD. With this, your information will not go to US. This is being deployed in the security and sensitivity agencies for doing their normal communications. The Government has planned for 25,000 connectivity through Wi-Fi for creating the hotspot, through our GPON networks.” Shri Priyadarshi Mishra MLA, Bhubaneswar, North “The Govt. of Odisha is committed to development of IT- ITeS and electronic manufacturing units in the state. We have made the enabling provisions in the form of policy, guidelines to promote the sector as a whole. The IT export from Noida has also increased to around 3000 crores in the year 2015 – 16 and it is increasing at the pace of nearly 18%. This indicates that the sector is growing and the government is consistently trying to get the new footprints of the IT companies to the state. Bhubaneswar has achieved yet another milestone in its journey towards becoming a Smart City. Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar has bagged a prestigious second runnersup position at the Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress organized in Spain. The ranking was based on the proposals submitted on various developmental projects in the cities. Bhubaneswar was competing in the innovative global south category.”
Shri Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager – India & SAARC, Seagate Technology “Seagate is the company that will hold all your data generated by you all and we are the brand behind the brand. Seagate holds the data of the world and pioneer in the storage industry by offering you storage and live streaming experience both. Talking about future data generation, in the coming two years there will be very challenging in terms of Data generation, and in the coming four years the data generation will be on the higher side, which had generated worldwide in the past 35 years. Our association with Skyarch worldwide to store all heritage places promises to bring exciting opportunity in the storage space. Storage is a growth area and will transform to the range from petabyte to hexabyte.” are under threat by cybercriminals. Businesses have to yet wake up to the grave risks posed by social media. Unless companies come to realize that their security perimeters must grow beyond the corporate firewall to encompass social media networks, then the global cost of cybercrime will continue to reach US$2.1 trillion by 2019,” he said. Shri R. N. Palai, ITS, Special Secretary to the Government, IT Department, GoO, spoke on the Government’s commitment for the growth of IT, ITeS and electronics manufacturing in Odisha. He also spoke on the electronics manufacturing cluster, about manufacturing which is to start in Odisha in Info valley – II. Dr Gopal Krishna Nayak, Director, IIIT, Bhubaneswar, addressed the audience on the
Nihar Chakraborty Sr Vice-President & COO – East & SAARC, Sify Technologies “Today we are talking about digital transformation. And yes there is a lot of transformation happening, be it in digital space, smart city, ICT or IoT. Talking of sectors, whether it is healthcare, Financial services, manufacturing, a lot of digital transformation is happening. And we have to keep pace with these advancements. But what will happen to the large magnitude of data that this transformation will give rise to? These have to be stored in a datacenter. As a technology services company, we offer the entire range of unified services to the customers (end to end) through our state-of-the-art data centers. Uniqueness about Sify is seamless cloud infrastructure. It is always advised to have one service provider to get various seamless services.”
importance of economy. Shri Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-Dot, Government of India, spoke on the presence of good education in Odisha and about the manufacturing cluster. He further spoke about reliable communication which is a must. Shri Priyadarshi Mishra, MLA, Bhubaneswar, North, spoke on his regular interaction with the IT companies in Bhubaneswar, where most of the IT corporates are present in his area. In the corporate presentations section, Shri Nihar Chakraborty, Sr Vice-President & COO –East & SAARC, Sify Technologies, spoke about digital transformation and connectivity. Shri Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager – India & SAARC, Seagate Technology, spoke on how to save data which are going to generate from many
sources – be it individual, SME or enterprise. Shri Suvrendu Mitra, IMS Div. East India, Canon India, shared his experience about the importance of digitization and documentation which Canon expertise’s as an enabler with various range of scanner products. The event recognized the technology enablers in Odisha. The winners are Nigama Computech, Tristar Software and Solutions, Tatwa Technologies, E Square Systems & Technologies, Printlink Computer and Communication, Info Care Solutions and CSM Technologies, which won the awards, respectively in the segments of Best VAR – Odisha, Best Software Services – Odisha, Best Technology Services, Best System Integrator, Best Distributor, Best Reseller –Odisha and Best IT Consulting Services – Odisha, respectively.
Solution Display Kiosks
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EVENT Suvrendu Mitra IMS Div. East India, Canon India “Canon is associated with imaging – image capture, delivery & print and display. We can make data secure at various levels, which is growing at the rate of 15% annually. Documents are the lifeline of any business. There are certain documents that are issued externally like medical reports, mark sheets, invoices etc. while there are also internal documents like audit reports, minutes of a meeting etc. But it is becoming important to digitally back-up these documents. After incidents of loss of data have been reported, most of the organizations including PSUs, corporates have started digitally backing up and storing the information and data available. The good news is that they have come to understand the importance of storing these data. Likewise, scanning is another component that is most important in the Smart City sector.”
“Smart City: Smart Bhubaneswar”
[Mr. Deepak Kumar sahu, Chief editor- VARINDIA moderating the Panel Discussion( From L to R): Panel members Mr. Nilanjan Mukherjee, Sr. Vice President- Fourth Dimension Solutions , Mr. Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor – WIPRO LIMITED, Mr. Nihar Chakraborty, Sr. V.P.& COO-East & SAARC- Sify Technologies , Mr. Vipin Tyagi, E.D. – C Dot, Government of India, Mr. Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager- India & SAARC- Seagate Technology, Mr. Ayashkant Mohanty, M.D.- Tatwa Technologies ] The panelists at the discourse discussed on the unique nature of the Indian cities, that one has to understand the dynamics of the city before designing smart city architecture for the city. Shri Nihar Chakraborty, Sr Vice-President & COO – East & SAARC, Sify Technologies spoke on how IT services companies have to fine-tune their requirements with respect to the city before coming with the architecture once the uniqueness of Bhubaneswar is finalized. “Bhubaneswar has all the ingredients to become the best smart city. The very fact that 5 top companies have made their investments here speaks volume of the talent pool that is here. While improving infrastructure is one side of making a city smarter, but empowering the people living here is another aspect that should be looked at in order for a city to emerge smarter.” Shri Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-Dot, Government of India spoke on how Smart City should have an integrated approach and it cannot be a piecemeal approach. “Better cyber connectivity and local creativity & resources are a better way of looking at this issue. Also local manufacturing should also spring up in order to meet up rise in local consumption.” Shri Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor, WIPRO Limited spoke on how the automobile sector is moving towards transformation and about the 4th industry revolution that is about to come to India. “India is going through a lot of transformation in terms of connected services that is coming to India, which means that India is now going to produce smart devices from a smart plan and which eventually will give you smart services.” Shri Nilanjan Mukherjee, Sr Vice-President, Fourth Dimension Solutions spoke about how the city needs to use its existing ICT infrastructure if it wants to leapfrog and wants to save time as all technologies have its life cycle. “The Smart city as a concept has to live to everyone’s expectations to make a city liveable and is a mean to make the city sustainable. A Smart city does not just mean IoT or connecting sensors but it is much beyond that.” Shri Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager – India & SAARC, Seagate Technology spoke about how citizens need to be smart and awareness needs to be created to use smart technology. “Smart cities are made smarter by smart citizens. We might keep talking about datacenters and infrastructure, but the only way to make it smart is through its citizens who need to be made smarter first.” Shri Ayashkant Mohanty, Managing Director, Tatwa Technologies spoke about how Bhubaneswar can become the best smart city in the country and how to tap new innovations back into Bhubaneswar Smart City. “With little effort, no doubt Bhubaneswar can be converted into a smarter city as it is well positioned to do that. But the only thing lagging in us is that we do not market our city well.” Key take away: The panel agreed that the people have to be smart to make the city smarter and discussed on the role of corporates/ institutions in Bhubaneswar to come up with their vision and contribute their ideas to make Bhubaneswar a smart and liveable City. 1. The Best VAR, Odisha - NigamaComptech 2. The Best Software Distributor, Odisha-Tristar Software and Solutions Pvt. Ltd 3. Best System Integrator - E Square Systems & Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 4. Best Distributor - Printlink Computer and Communication Pvt. Ltd 5. Best Technology Services - Tatwa Technologies Ltd. 6. Best Reseller, Odisha - Info care Solutions Pvt. Ltd. 7. Best Software services, Odisha - CSM Technologies
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Customer Insights Sanjib Patra Founder & CEO – Credence Redefined Services “This digitization and smart city concepts have come up in a big way. We are into background verification process which happens through mobile applications; our main thing is data & data security and how to maintain data security. Digitization plays a very important role for us and we are ready to be a part of this digital transformation.”
Dhirendra Khandelwal CEO – Esquare Systems & Technologies “There has been a lot of disruption happening due to cloud coming in and technology moving ahead. This realization is soon dawning on all of us that we will have to be a part of this digital transformation. We being an IT services company would surely benefit from this as we will be a catalyst to this transformation.”
Ayaskanta Mohanty MD - Tatwa Technologies “Thanks to VARINDIA as they have been doing this for a couple of years and they have created a platform for all the SMEs and channel partners to know more about what is happening all around. The focus has lately been on smart cities but yes, digital transformation is important for any organization and has become a part of life.”
Nimay C Sahu Deputy General Manager, NALCO “Digital transformation is proving to be a very crucial progress for a lot many organizations and they can benefit from that. NALCO is working in many directions to make this transformation happen. And I think this is going to play a very important contribution in the development of a smart city and Digital India.”
Nilanjan Mukherjee Senior VP Sales & Marketing – Fourth Dimension Solutions “Digital Transformation is a key to growth. The PM’s mission critical Digital India project gives a big momentum to SMEs like us to grow forward. We are completely aligned to Digital India. The entire process of digitization is getting in and we are ready to participate in it tools like decision support system, which helps the decision makers to have a smart governance. So digital transformation is taking the industry to leapfrog to the next level. Digital India is a perspective to make the lives of citizens smarter by giving a resilient society.”
Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor – Digital, Manufacturing & Technology SBU, Wipro “I focus on IoT, IIoT, Smart Services, Digital Transformation for Manufacturing clients. It is really a proud moment for Bhubaneswar for having being enlisted as a Smart City. Being from Wipro, we are working on a lot of initiatives in the Smart City initiative. Of course Bhubaneswar is also our focus area and Wipro is already doing a lot of work in this regard. I am sure with a lot of government initiatives in Digital India and 100 smart cities; the future ahead looks very bright. 4-5 IT companies have already set up base in Bhubaneswar after being named in the 100 smart cities, which also includes Wipro.”
Shri Vipin Tyagi Executive Director, C-Dot, Government of India
Sameer Bhatia, Country Manager – India & SAARC, Seagate Technology “As far as the topic of Smart City is concerned, it is a great initiative by the government of India. Bhubaneswar has grown tremendously in the last 3-4 years and it is ahead of many other cities in India. If you do not change with time, you will be left behind and so it becomes important to move with the tide and become a part of this digital transformation. Technology is one aspect which can transform people’s lives tremendously and in future too it is going to play an important role in the transformation of the smart cities and for making people smart. In smart cities, surveillance is one key area that every city, government and individual has to take care of for a safer society and safer people.”
“It is a great experience to be in Bhubaneswar. We need to have the involvement of the technologists in brainstorming about what should be the smart city, of how it can help youngsters, budding technologists & large corporates and most importantly what it means to the public. Digital transformation today has caught the fancy of all Indians. In a democracy like India, collective consciousness drives the national agenda. The transformation we are looking at today will go through multiple changes.”
Lucky Draw
Mr. P Acharya, Addl. D.G. Police- Govt. of Odisha, Mr. Sameer Bhatia - Seagate and Mr. Nihar Chakraborty - Sify Technologiesparticipated in the lucky dip
Audience at OITF 2017
During the Q & A session
During the Panel Discussion session
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EVENT
VARINDIA Organizes its Annual Cricketing Event
There is no doubt that good sports also make the city smart. Sports recognize the place, state and the organization they work for and it helps in brand building and brand recall. It also brings out the hidden talent of every hard working employee who spends maximum hours sitting in 4 x 4 cubicles and 24x7. To realise this objective, VARINDIA organized its annual cricketing events - the 7th VARINDIA IT Cup 2017 and VARINDIA ICT CUP 2017 in two different cricket grounds for the IT and ICT companies, Biju Pattnaik
Stadium, Utkal University and KIIT Stadium respectively. Altogether 26 IT and telecom companies participated in both the tournaments and it was supported by STPI (GOI) and OCAC (GOO). The Tournament drew an overwhelming response from the IT majors in Odisha. The objective of the tournament was to bring all the corporate together on a single platform, where they get to know each other and experience the real spirit of the game. VARINDIA ICT CUP 2017 which is in its
Runners-up trophy for the 1st VARINDIA ICT cup – AIRTEL(Bhubaneswar)
Runners-up trophy for the 7th VARINDIA IT cup – INFOSYS- Bhubaneswar 46
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first edition was played among six corporates in the KIIT Stadium, Bhubaneswar. Airtel came out as the runners-up team and the winner of the Champion Trophy was Infosys. Shri Rajanikanta Swain from Tatwa Technologies emerged as The Man of the Series for the IT Cup. VARINDIA IT Cup 2017 which is in its 7th edition was held at the Biju Pattnaik Stadium (Utkal University) and was played among 20 IT corporates. The runners-up team was Infosys and the winner of the Champion Trophy was awarded to TATWA Technologies.
Champion Trophy of 1stVARINDIA ICT Cup INFOSYS- Bhubaneswar
Champion Trophy of 7th VARINDIA IT Cup TATWA TECHNOLOGIES
Winner of Man of the Series - 7th VAR INDIA IT Cup 2017- Mr.Rajanikanta Swain, Tatwa Technologies
Indian Smartphone Market shows 5.2-per cent growth in 2016 According to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, India registered 109.1 million units of smartphone shipments with a marginal 5.2-per cent annual growth in CY2016. In CY Q42016, smartphone shipments clocked 25.8 million units, registering similar volumes as that of CY Q42015, but is declining sharply by 20.3 per cent over the previous quarter. This is mainly due to a seasonal decline after an all-time high festival quarter and demonetization in the month of November, which led to relatively lower consumer sales in November and December. “This is relatively lower than expected smartphone shipments for India owing to sluggish first half and demonetisation at the end of the year,� says Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC. “Feature phone to smartphone migration has slowed down as prices of smartphones are still quite high for a feature phone user. Also, ease of use, long battery life and durability of feature phones continue to be relevant for large numbers of users of this category,� adds Karthik. China's Transsion Group which entered the Indian market in CY Q22016 with their “itel� brand climbed to the second spot in the overall mobile phone market with aggressive shipments of feature phones in CY Q42016. Transsion is also expected to launch a few more brands in the later half the year within the same price bands
where homegrown vendors are competing. Feature phones remain the dominant category in the total mobile phone market, with annual shipments of 136.1million units. The category declined by only 9.4-per cent in CY2016 as compared to 16.2 per cent in CY2015. Online sales in the smartphone market remained at 31.2 per cent in CY Q42016 with Xiaomi and Lenovo accounting for more than half of the channel’s volume. Interestingly, in the marginally growing smartphone market, online smartphone shipments volume grew over 10 per cent annually in CY2016. Samsung continued to lead the smartphone market by a large margin with 25.1-per cent share despite a 13.1-per cent sequential decline in CY Q42016. However, Samsung’s annual shipments grew 3.2 per cent in 2016 driven majorly by the J-series. The J2 continues to be a key contributor for Samsung, accounting for almost half of vendor’s total shipments in CY Q42016. Xiaomi climbed up to the second place with 10.7-per cent share in CY Q42016 against 3.3-per cent share in the same period last year. Year-on-year shipments grew threefold, while sequential growth was 15.3 per cent in CY Q42016. Xiaomi also expanded its retail presence with the launch of an exclusive model for offline channels in CY Q42016. Lenovo (including Motorola) slipped to third place as shipments declined 17.4 per cent
sequentially in CY Q42016 and 14.5 per cent over CY Q42015. Motorola’s E3 Power and Lenovo’s K5 series accounted for almost half Lenovo’s shipments in CY Q42016. OPPO made it to the top 5 list in CY Q42016 with 8.6-per cent share. OPPO has been growing at a steady rate all through 2016 with the year ending at a healthy 29.9-per cent sequential growth in CY Q42016. With a strong retail presence and aggressive marketing, Vivo is yet another China-based vendor, making its debut in the Top 5. Vivo dethroned Reliance Jio from fifth place by clocking in a healthy 50.8-per cent sequential growth in CY Q42016 with 7.6-per cent vendor share. “The feature phone segment is likely to contribute the majority of mobile phone shipments in 2017. The migration to smartphones is expected to further slow down due to the introduction of low-cost 4G feature phones and its continued relevance to its sizeable target consumer. However, replacement demand would drive most of the smartphone shipments in 2017,� says Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India. “Online has become an integral channel and it is imperative that even offline-only vendors explore the possibilities to be competitive in this space while managing price parity,� adds Singh.
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UNION BUDGET SPECIAL
Budget 2017 pushes for Digital economy The budget for the year 2017 is out and it has evoked mixed reactions from the industry. The budget this year was significant for it was the first time that both the Rail budget and General budget had been presented together The Budget Speech of the Hon’ble Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley was eagerly awaited by everyone. The theme of the Budget - Transform, Energize and Clean India augured well with the industry. Notwithstanding the diverse reactions that came out post budget, one thing that was evident was the fact that the budget 2017 has been framed keeping a holistic growth in mind. Many has hailed this budget as not to be a populist one, but a budget which caters sensibly to the poor, youth, farmers, villages and infrastructure to propel India further every year. The Budget this year was unprecedented in one more way. The practice of tabling a separate railway budget has been scrapped from this year and the railway estimates had been a part of the Union budget.
IT in Budget 2017 a) Fund Allocation for Bharat Net Project Though there has not been much about IT and Telecom sector in this year’s budget, the allocation of funds in a few key projects will boost the industry to keep going. For instance, the Rs 10,000 cr allocation for the Bharat Net Project is believed to strengthen internet and Wi-Fi infrastructure in gram panchayats further boosting internet adoption in rural areas. “The focus on both physical and digital infrastructure build out continues and there are clear milestones stated in the budget. For instance 150,000 Gram Panchayats will have Broadband connectivity by end of 2017-18 and these will be used to provide tele-medicine & education is indeed laudable,” states Anil Valluri, President,
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Dr. Gulshan Rai, National Cybersecurity Coordinator, National Security Council, Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India “We are at the cusp of a cybersecurity paradigm shift and it is imperative that for the overall national security we join hands to share, evaluate and acquire threat intelligence and develop a robust operational framework to use this with security technologies. We will need immense focus to encourage technological innovations in cyber security to secure national critical infrastructure from cyber criminals.” Rajesh Gopinathan CFO and VP - TCS “The strong emphasis laid on technology in almost all the development areas in the budget reaffirms that technology has been at the forefront of India’s recent economic growth and digital transformation. It has been recognized as an important enabler across initiatives ranging from agriculture to skill development to manufacturing and infrastructural development. Andy Stevenson Head of India, Turkey and Middle East - Fujitsu “While the move towards an internal ‘borderless’ nation will obviously benefit the nation, as has been discussed in various forums – an emphasis on infrastructure in terms of electrification, digital services, roads etc. will further build on the foundation to India being a world class economy.”
Jay Chen CEO, Huawei India “The success of the BHIM app and announcements related to its promotion, Aadhar based swipe machines, and tax exemption to those who use Aadhar based POS machines, will all help accelerate acceptance of digital payments. Furthermore, initiatives like ‘Digital Village’ and ‘DigiGaun’ will significantly extend the benefits of digitization to rural India and contribute to a Better Connected India.”
NetApp India & SAARC. Neel Ratan, Leader- Government and Public Sector, PwC India is of the opinion that the Government seems committed to the cause of bridging the digital divide and taking digital to the masses. “Allocation of 10,000 crore fund for Bharat Net will further spread the tentacles of optical fiber, which is the backbone of Digital India programme. Aadhaar based smart cards for monitoring the health of senior citizens is a great way to leverage the citizen identity database while marrying technology with health.” b) Boosting the Digital Payment system Bipin Preet Singh, Founder & CEO, MobiKwik views that the focus on digital payments will lead to revolutionary transformation in Indians' payment habits. “Digital payments will be the new normal in 2017 and we are very excited about this. As we become more digital, India will see new taxpayers and better transparency in incomes.” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO Paytm says, "It is a digital economy budget. Tax benefits, incentives to use digital payments and extending loans based on a digital footprint will create a larger merchant ecosystem for digital payments. Overall, it is a great budget that will encourage people to move to the formal economy and derive benefits." Additionally, upgrading digital infrastructure to support cashless transactions in rural and semi urban areas will encourage more merchants and consumers to transact on non-cash and online platforms. As a next step, the government must consider promoting startups in the digital payments and digital security areas. The exemption of service charges for railway tickets booked via IRCTC will further act as a catalyst to encourage digital economy. This will push people to adopt digital economy and go cashless. Furthermore, citizens will become more responsible in terms of paying taxes and incomes will be transparent. c) Setting up of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) However, the more people will go digital, more are the chances of cyber attacks. Securing digital transactions is the only way to sustain India's habit of cashless payments. So to keep a check on the cyber attacks government has decided to setup CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). The team will monitor cyber hacks and ensure security of data. “While this sets the right impetus for rural India to come online, the government has further taken the steps necessary to ensure optimum level of cybersecurity. The synergy created by these announcements, along with the efforts of cyber security solutions is going to further inspire new users to come online, aiding India’s transition to a digital economy,'' says Amit Nath, Head of Asia Pacific - Corporate Business at F-Secure. Sivarama Krishnan, Leader- Cybersecurity, PwC India says that CERT for financial sector will help manage cyber security. “The thrust on Digital India and digital payments both require a focus on cyber security. The financial CERT and the attention towards cyber security in financial budget are in right direction. The implementation
Vinay Sinha, Head of Sales – India, Director – Commercial Business, AMD Asia Pacific-Japan (APJ) Mega Region) - AMD “India is witnessing a digital revolution and the Government’s move to create an ecosystem for electronic manufacturing will provide the required impetus to make this region, a global hub for technology innovation. The establishment of 100 International Skill centres across the country will help increase the employability of the youth and support corporations in need of good talent especially in a context where there is growing foreign investment in India.” Snehashish Bhattacharjee Global CEO & Co-founder - Denave “The SOPs towards getting closer to a cashless economy (Digitization SOPs, BHIM app and Aadhaar Pay drive, removal of service charges on e-ticket booking etc.) will help continue the aggressive approach against the black money economy and thereby provide the country with more compliant tax paying citizens, thereby get closer to the 3% fiscal deficit goal by FY’19.”
Sunil Khanna President & MD - India, Vertiv “The provision to support NABARD in digitizing 63,000 primary agrooperatives is a healthy move in order to penetrate rural sectors to achieve its goal of a Digital India. Considering the power deficit situation in the country, the proposal to feed 7000 railway stations with solar energy will help in reducing dependence on conventional energy sources.”
Rostow Ravanan CEO and MD - Mindtree “The new budget has also made provisions to raise India’s innovation quotient, through the setting up of an innovation fund to encourage and fuel innovation amongst youth. The budget’s focus on making education more accessible to educationally backward blocks, along with the steps taken to ramp up the Skill India Mission will also help in maximizing the potential and capabilities of youth in the country.” Sanjay Rohatgi Senior Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Japan, Symantec “The union budget for 2017-18 endeavors to transform, energize and clean (TEC) Indian economy amidst an environment of growing aspirations of the people and global headwinds and post-demonetization environment. Enhanced investment in digital infrastructure; promotion of digital economy and cashless transactions; and, use of data analytics for improving tax compliance are welcome steps but proactive and prudent investments in cybersecurity are must for the desired outcomes.”
of the initiative will help secure Digital India.” Rajesh Maurya, Regional Director, India & SAARC, Fortinet is of the opinion that a strong public-private partnership with a security provider is essential for the government to safeguard the emerging Digital India. “The partner can provide up-to-date information and threat intelligence to the IT staff, as well as define an escalation path when an incident is detected. Government agencies should also proactively partner cyber security organizations and solution providers to share threat information, so that collectively, the industry can have a more comprehensive view of the Indian cyber landscape to protect the new initiatives planned in this budget.” d) A Big push to Domestic Manufacturing & Digital India To give a push to the Made in India project, the
government has allocated Rs.745 cr by enhancing policies like Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (MSIPS) and Electronic Development Fund (EDF). This will further boost the domestic mobile handset manufacturing. Akshay Dhoot, Head, Technology and Innovation, Videocon states, “Make in India gets a boost with announcements like incentivizing local electronic manufacturing up to Rs.745 crore by enhancing special policies like MSIPS and EDF. This move would definitely give more sops to domestic mobile handset makers. India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world and it would further get boost from newly formed trade infra export scheme.” Besides aiming to boost a digital economy, Jaideep Ghosh, Partner, KPMG too feels the same. He further says that MSIPs benefits for domestic manufacturing of mobile devices & components will strengthen ‘Make in India’ and
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UNION BUDGET SPECIAL add to employment. “Broadband penetration has a direct impact on economic growth, employment, innovation & prosperity. Strong push on transport connectivity, and healthcare and education through digital media, are likely to have significant long term impact on the telecom ecosystem.” “In recent years, the Indian Government has made consistent efforts and undertaken initiatives to foster the growth and development of the Indian IT sector, which has enabled the sector to lead the economic and the digital transformation of the country,” says Harsh Marwah, Country Manager - Verizon Enterprise Solutions. The overall approach of the Budget has been to spend more in rural areas that will help the farm sector. Emphasis has been given to areas like infrastructure development, skill development, encouraging manufacturing and on Digital India. Debjani Ghosh, Managing Director of South Asia, Intel and President, MAIT views, “It's good to see continued and strong commitment towards increasing technology adoption and usage across critical sectors like education, agriculture, financial inclusion and rural and infrastructure development. That's how we can successfully drive the digitization of India.” She however points out that the budget has fallen short of creating avenues to increase the manufacturing of the technology solutions in India beyond smartphones. “As MAIT has been recommending, there is a real opportunity to grow the PC manufacturing ecosystem in India leading to increased job creation and impact. By not extending the support for local manufacturing to these segments, we are missing an opportunity for creating a robust electronics manufacturing ecosystem,” she says. “All this echoes our own focus. However, we would have liked to see some initiatives for the promotion of the indigenous telecom equipment manufacturing industry, and a boost to the Design in India and Make in India programmes,” says Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman and Founder - VNL & Shyam Telecom.
Telecom in Budget 2017
Though the budget speech has not proposed much for the telecom sector, some of the key announcements made will be a benefit for the industry. The BHIM app has already been adopted by 125 lakh people and government’s plans to introduce two new schemes to promote its use will make the concept of a cashless society and digital currency, a reality. Peter Chang, Region Head – South Asia & Country Manager - ASUS India feels that the budget gave the smartphone industry a lot to look
Sunil Jose Managing Director, Teradata India
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Kunal Bahl Co-founder & CEO - Snapdeal “We welcome the emphasis on skill development and technical education this will enable India to successfully harness the demographic dividend. The attention to affordable housing, greater employment in rural areas are the right interventions to build a more equitable society”.
Takayuki Inaba Managing Director - NEC India “As we foresee India’s digital payment system growing, the government’s plan to allocate funds and benefits for UPI based payments and other digital payments is a boost to the digital economy of the country. To demonstrate the significance of Information Technology among Government’s priorities, initiatives on cyber-security will also contribute towards boosting the digital economy.” Ashraf ElArman Managing Director - Xerox India “The budget continues to focus on both physical and digital infrastructure, but was limited to new developments in the digital payments segment rather than the government’s earlier aim to establish a comprehensive digital depository. Additionally, the Government eMaketplace initiative was also given a miss – something that was established to bring greater transparency & efficiency in public procurement last year.” Rahul Agarwal MD & CEO - Lenovo India “Thrust on growth initiatives provide an impetus for companies like Lenovo. However, we would expect more proactive measures from the government on ease of doing business as the cost of compliance in India is higher as compared to other countries, because of which large scale manufacturing is not yet shifting to India.”
Jatin Dalal Chief Financial Officer, Wipro Limited “The thrust on digital economy, deployment of analytics in tax administration and initiatives on cyber-security demonstrate the significance of Information Technology among Government’s priorities. Corporate India welcomes the initiatives to expand the tax base and eliminate evasion. While the targeted proposals on corporate taxation are welcome, progressive steps towards achieving competitive tax rates could have attracted global investors.” Satyen Vyas CEO - Symphony SUMMIT “The potential increase in online transactions and the decentralization of the IT industry from cities to rural areas will provide impetus for the rapid growth of the IT support segment. Cloud based Saas services will be in greater demand to aid the transition to a less cash economy, creating more jobs and opportunities for innovation in the saturated IT market.”
Bipin Preet Singh Founder & CEO, MobiKwik
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Anil Valluri President, NetApp India & SAARC
Akshay Dhoot Head, Technology and Innovation, Videocon
Amit Nath, Head of Asia Pacific - Corporate Business at F-Secure
Harsh Marwah Country Manager - Verizon Enterprise Solutions
Rajiv Srivastava MD, HP India
Rajiv Mehrotra Chairman and Founder VNL & Shyam Telecom
Debjani Ghosh MD of South Asia, Intel and President, MAIT
Vijay Shekhar Sharma Founder & CEO - Paytm
forward to in the coming year. “The Government’s thrust on digitization through its push on Aadhaar-enabled payments will provide impetus to the demand of mobile phones in the country. This coupled with all the other initiatives will enable us to bring more people under the digital umbrella.” Rajan S Mathews, Director General – COAI also feels that the budget has made pro-people announcements in order to promote nation-wide telecom connectivity. “Rural connectivity has been given the necessary thrust and it will be beneficial move for the telecom industry as well. Industry will pitch in with all its strength and fill necessary gaps. From the overall business perspective, the industry will find itself in better position to carry forward some of its ambitious network rollout plans.” Vishal Malhotra, Tax Telecom Leader, EY India contends that extension of the period for claiming MAT credit to 15 years from 10 year presently as well as extension of period for availing lower withholding rate of 5 percent on External Commercial Borrowings and Masala Bonds, is expected to benefit the industry. The relaxation in transfer pricing compliance on specified domestic transactions should also assist in lowering the compliance burden of the telecom players other than those who continue to claim profit linked incentives.”
Relaxation in Taxation
The Union Budget 2017-18 also remained extremely positive for the common man, farmers, small and medium businesses and is believed to drive significant growth in the Indian economy. Most importantly, the budget promoted the startup ecosystem with tax benefits. Reduction in the corporate tax for Medium and Small Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) to 25% will also go a long way in attracting more investment in the country, invest in job creation, increase capital expenditure and explore their digital journey. “The Government’s commitment to make taxation rate reasonable, tax administration fair and expand the tax base is the step taken in the right direction. The tax relief given by the Government for the middle class tax payers will definitely boost the purchasing power, thereby aiding the overall growth of the economy,” says Rajiv Srivastava, MD, HP India. The Finance Minister made several references to using data mining to improve the efficiency of the various tax departments specifically with regards to transforming India from a cash driven to a digital economy using new measures such as Aadhaar Pay. “This is a step in the right direction which will have a relevant impact in widening the tax base and make India fiscally stronger and have a positive impact on national growth and development,” opines Sunil Jose, Managing Director, Teradata India. “The best thing FM Jaitley has done is he has not tinkered too much, especially with indirect taxes and has gone with the flow which has made the markets buoyant. Overall, the economy is going in the right direction with a fiscal deficit of 3.2%. In terms of investment, the removal of FIPB and making the procedure simpler will attract foreign investments and facilitate ease of business. From a GST adoption standpoint, it is music to the ears to hear that the GST council has finalized most of the recommendations made to it and the states and centre are aligned. Also, not changing the indirect tax rates at this juncture is a clear indication that GST is all set for 1st July,” states Satya Pramod – C.F.O (Chief financial officer), Tally Solution Pvt Ltd. Going forward, the industry hopes to see additional scope on additional IT reforms including undertaking measures for the reduction in the service tax for enterprises. This is exactly what India needs to do if it is to attract investment, stimulate innovation, and ultimately stake its claim on a share of the global digital economy. n Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com
Jaideep Ghosh Partner, KPMG
Neel Ratan Leader- Government and Public Sector, PwC India
Rajan S Mathews Director General – COAI
Peter Chang Region Head – South Asia & Country Manager - ASUS India
Satya Pramod C.F.O (Chief financial officer), Tally Solution Pvt Ltd.
Rajesh Maurya Regional Director, India & SAARC, Fortinet
Vishal Malhotra Tax Telecom Leader, EY India
Sivarama Krishnan Leader- Cybersecurity, PwC India
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ISODA CORNER
ISODA successfully concludes two regional meets Infotech Software Dealers Association (ISODA) Regional Meets are well designed with innovative content to bring in the much needed interest and knowledge through varied experiences. This diversity and variety will ensure maximum pull for existing and new members.
Regional Meet of Eastern Chapter
The regional meet of Eastern Chapter was hosted by Manasi Saha, Regional Secretary-East, ISODA and Proprietor, Macaws InfoTech on Jan 21, 2017 in Kolkata. The event began with an introduction to the new members and progressed into an exciting knowledge sharing session. In the meet a session has been conducted by Sandeep Sengupta, an ethical hacker, who gave some valuable insights on the subject. The meet also has a review session by Sudhir Kothari, CEO of Embee Software Pvt. Ltd on the collection and status of the current payments. A Tarot reading session by Anil Bhimsaria was also held where he offered tarot reading sessions for all the participants. The new partner Biswajit Sutradhar was welcomed by the members in the meet. Also, all the partners extended their heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family of Late Pradip Jhawar. The next meet will happen in Guahati after the Tech Summit 7.
Regional meet of Western Chapter
Vimesh Avlani hosted the regional meet for the Western Chapter of ISODA on Feb 3rd, 2017 in Mumbai. The event began with formal introductions of all the members and concluded with a cocktail dinner. The event started with a brief talk on MC Meetings and other regional meets. The talk was followed by an interactive Q&A session with active participation from all the members. A brief session by Rajeev Mamidanna was held, where he shared many details about the preparations happening for the Tech Summit 7. The guest lecture by Anil Thomas on “Why do Businesses get stuck?” was the best of the evening. The audience participated with great enthusiasm as they were able to connect very well with the details mentioned in the talk Limesh Parekh was chosen as Additional Regional Secretary to West. Other regions will soon be recruiting as well. They will be supporting the regional secretaries in all activities.
Opinions and Perspectives
The Poaching Pact
Best Practices
Amarnath Shetty CEO,LDS Infotech : “We at LDS do not believe in poaching. It’s like what you sow, you reap. Fortunately, we never had to face such a situation till date. But, there were instances where our competitors hired those associates who we had fired, which was in a way good for us. Though we never had to face such situations, we do hear about distributors trying to poach fellow distributors. ISODA is such a wonderful and closely knit community that we do not have to face such unpleasant situations. If at all, any of our associates tries to approach our fellow ISODA members they give us a heads up. So this is definitely a good sign. If all of us continue to be in the same spirits, I feel an anti poaching pact is definitely possible in near future.”
Nandini Sharma, CEO, Comnet Resources: “We measure our success with property built over years or laurels received during life journey, but at Comnet, our achievement is because of people who were a part of our journey. The talent enhancement process grooms people and encourages them to take up more responsible roles and assignments in the company. At Comnet Resources, we have an extensive training program which encompasses classroom sessions, on the job training and field visits (where necessary). We get tremendous support from our OEMs for technical trainings as well. We also move our associates across various job functions within the organization after trainings, to check fitment. Sometimes we also let our associates choose their roles.”
Rajesh Gupta. CEO, Kiosk Technologies: “ Poaching is a very unethical practice. We spend considerable time and effort on training and grooming employees and the whole effort seems to be worthless when a competitor tries to poach an employee. In these times of cut throat competition, protecting our work force and safeguarding the interests of our clientele is turning out to be a major challenge. It makes sense if an employee leaves an organisation for better prospects, but companies targeting employees from their competitors which is definitely not acceptable.”
Paul Vijayakumar, CEO, DoBuy Technologies: “At DoBuy Technologies, we conduct talent enhancement programs in different regions on alternate Saturdays. These programs include technology trainings, personality development, selling skills, negotiation, customer interaction and many more varied programs that prepare them for the many challenges associated with the business. Our programs are at a very corporate level so that our associates can offer better services to our corporate clients. Occasionally, we invite external OEMs and arrange relevant sessions. Learning resources and complete training material is offered for future reference.”
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Taiwan External counci
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(TAITRA)
Founded in 1970 to help promote fo trade, the Taiwan External Trade Develop Council (TAITRA) is the foremost non-prot, s governmental trade promotion organizatio Taiwan. Jointly sponsored by the governm industry associations, and several comme organizations, TAITRA assists Taiwan busin and manufacturers with reinforcing international competitiveness and in coping the challenges they face in foreign markets. TA boasts a well-coordinated trade promotion information network of 2017 over 1,200 www.varindia.com February 53 internat marketing specialists stationed throughou Taipei headquarters and over 50 ove
VAR MOBILITY
LG's Kar Salam initiative salutes Indian jawans
To mark the 20th Anniversary, LG Electronics India has donated Rs 1 crore to CRPF Welfare Fund. Nation’s consumer durable major, LG Electronics initiative to thank the Indian Forces, with A consumer connect campaign to wish the Soldiers by Indian Citizensby contributing to the Indian Defence Welfare Fund ( CRPF),with the launch of the #KarSalaam initiative is a commitment to LG’s corporate philosophy of ‘Life’s Good’ and a gesture of their support and solidarity to our nation’s soldiers for playing a great role in assuring that we lead a fearless and good life in this country. The 20th Anniversary celebrations kickstarted with LG's #KarSalaam initiative dedicated to Indian soldiers, was launched prior to Republic day. The campaign invited the whole nation to come forward and send their wishes to
Amit Gujral, head - Corporate Marketing, LG Electronics India said, “We would like to thank people for their overwhelming response. This truly shows the spirit of India towards our armed forces. Taking this forward, we would be claiming a Guiness record for maximum wishes collected offline.”
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the Indian Armed Forces. Through this initiative, LG salutes the soldiers’ spirit of magnanimous contribution and service towards the nation. About this campaign all Indians were invited to post their wishes for soldiers on www. karsalaam.in . LG will be contributing a certain amount on every LG product purchased till 26th January towards the ‘CRPF Welfare Fund’, which is dedicated to the welfare of soldiers. Where, LG also seeks participation from the families of the soldiers to send their heart-warming messages to their near and dear ones who brave all odds to protect our country. Through this initiave, LG is saluting the soldiers’ spirit of selfless contribution and service towards the country. LG is committed to walk the extra mile, providing a good life to the citizens of India. Accordingly, the company will extend their support and solidarity to our soldiers who play a great role in ensuring that we lead a fearless and good life in this country. LG rolled out this campaign through radio, digital, outdoor and mall activities to capture the messages and wishes of the citizens of India for
our soldiers. The company also engaged the people through social media platforms and encouraged them to share their wishes on the microsite www. karsalaam.in, where more than 40,092 on-line wishes and 1,93,000 offline wishes written by citizens of the country were collected from all across the country. Taking this campaign forward, LG India’s MD Kim Ki Wan handed over a cheque of Rs 1 Crore to the home minister Rajnath Singh for ‘CRPF welfare fund’, which is dedicated to the soldiers. Rajnath Singh, minister, home affairs, government of India said, “We welcome LG Electronics’s gesture of showing solidarity to Indian Armed Forces; this is a very special gesture by a corporate. Today the entire nation is proud of its armed forces and response to this initiative in form of collecting good wishes for soldiers is an indication for the same. I would like to thank the people of India for extending their support to the armed forces." Kim Ki Wan, managing director, LG Electronics India said, “LG salutes the spirit of Indian soldiers who courageously give up their lives to protect the country. Therefore, we took this initiative to bring together the citizens of India to express their gratitude to our soldiers. With an aim to connect with the hearts of the entire nation and to pour out messages for these brave hearts, LG goes beyond boundaries to reach out to every citizen and invite them to express their gratitude for our soldiers who selflessly volunteer to serve our nation all day and night.”
LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd. was established in India in 1997. It is one of the most formidable brands in consumer electronics, home appliances, IT hardware & mobile communication space. We are a truly make in India brand, we have six global design networks in the World and India is one of them, Gujral added.
Amit Gujral, head - Corporate Marketing, LG Electronics India said,We salute the spirit of our soldiers who valiantly give up their life to protect the country but hardly find an opportunity to reach out to them. Therefore, we took this initiative to bring together the citizens of India to express their gratitude to our soldiers “We would like to thank people for their overwhelming response. This truly shows the spirit of India towards our armed forces. Taking this forward, we would be claiming a Guiness record for maximum wishes collected offline.”
Company and Production over view of LG India
LG has earned a premiere brand positioning and is acknowledged for the Industry
India’s Most Attractive Brand 2016 Published by Trust Research Advisory
The overwhelming response from the people for campaign "Karsalaam" is truly shows the spirit of India towards our armed forces. Taking this forward, we would be claiming a Guiness record for maximum wishes collected offline • • • • •
Attempt a Guinness World Record Record : Longest Line of Notes with Wishes Existing World Record : 24,675 notes LG #KarSalaam wishes : 193,000 Event location : LG India Noida factory www.varindia.com
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VAR MOBILITY
Honor unveils Honor 6X Smartphone in India
H
onor has launched Honor 6X smartphone. It is targeted at the young consumers who want value-based features like dual lens camera, sturdy performance and
extended battery life. The smartphone has been priced at Rs.12,999 (3GB). Featuring a generous 5.5-inch full HD (1920*1080p) display, the ergonomically-designed Honor 6X boasts a full metal slim body (8.2mm thick) with 2.5D glass on the front and curved panel on the back. The smartphone is
localized for Indian users with EMUI availability in 14 local languages and comes with the SOS button which will act as an emergency alarm. Additonally, the smartphone will be
manufactured in the Chennai manufacturing unit starting February 2017. “Honor 6X has been designed for consumers who would not compromise on performance, Honor 6X is a device engineered with uncompromising excellence,” said Peter Zhai, President, Huawei India Consumer Business Group.
Lava unveils Lava 4G Connect M1
L
ava has launched 4G-enabled smart feature phone in India – Lava 4G Connect M1. Available at Rs.3,333/-. It combines the experience
of a smartphone and the durability, affordability and battery backup of a feature phone. Powered by 1.2 GHz Quad-Core processor with 512MB RAM, Lava 4G Connect M1 would enable users to have a seamless 4G
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experience. Gaurav Nigam, Head – Product, Lava International, said, “At Lava, we strive to think ahead of the curve with reference to product innovation and the launch of Lava 4G Connect M1 is a step forward in this direction. The launch of this smart feature phone, we believe, will create possibilities for users as they will now be able to consume digital content and even do digital transactions. Furthermore, a sizeable segment of feature phone users in India who use their phone to only make calls will now be able to access the internet; to their advantage; and that too at an affordable price.” Lava 4G Connect M1 will be available across retail stores and multi-brand outlets across India in a few weeks’ time.
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ZTE launches Blade A2 Plus
Z
TE has launched its Blade A2 Plus in an exclusive partnership with Flipkart. The Blade A2 Plus sports a 13-megapixel main camera. Its 8-megapixel front camera makes it a great choice for selfies. The device runs on the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system out- ofthe-box and is fuelled by a 5,000mAh capacity battery inside. The ZTE Blade A2 Plus features a 5.5-inch Full HD (1080 x 1920 pixels resolution) LCD capacitive touchscreen display. The device is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6750T processor clocked at a speed of 1.5GHz. It comes equipped with 4GB RAM and Mali T860 GPU for the graphics. With VoLTE integrated, Blade A2 Plus will support higher-quality calls and will connect calls much faster than a traditional GSM or CDMA call. It has a built-in 32GB internal memory storage, which can be expanded via dedicated microSD card slot. The device is available at Rs.11,999/-. “With a young, techsavvy audience, about 69 million consumers purchased their products online and it is expected to cross 100 million by 2017. Our Blade-series smartphone – ZTE Blade A2 Plus – comes with 4G LTE, VoLTE support and a host of other features at an effective price. Through this phone, we take the first step to reach millions of Indians who are going digital. By eliminating multiple external factors, we want to bring the best phones that the industry has to offer and at an effective price,” said Sachin Batra, CMO, ZTE India Terminal. “Our partnership with Flipkart is in line with our growth strategy for this market and we hope to leverage Flipkart’s strength and widen the reach for our products.”
Intex launches Cloud Style 4G Smartphone
I
ntex Technologies has announced the launch of Intex Cloud Style 4G. The smartphone is exclusively available on Snapdeal.com at a competitive price of Rs.5,799/-. The Cloud Style 4G enhances its focus on visual quality by offering unique HD viewing experience. It comes with a big and bright screen size of 5-inch HD, IPS technology display of 720x1280 resolution across a wide viewing angle. The device is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor that ensures seamless multitasking along with a 1GB RAM, 8GB ROM and 32GB expandable memory. The phone runs on Android Marshmallow 6.0 OS and weighs just 140 gms. Nidhi Markanday, Director & Business Head, Intex Technologies, said, “With the launch of Cloud Style 4G, we have introduced two unique features for the pervasive users – the built-in GamePlay functionality and
our in-house VAS feature called LFTY, giving users a whole new experience of using a smartphone. We are happy to launch this 4Genabled smartphone on Snapdeal for our users and are confident of expanding our online reach.” Cloud Style 4G has a stunning 8MP AF rear and 5MP FF which enables users to take sharper pictures. The device is powered by a 2,500mAh Li–ion battery which allows users to talk up to 10 hours with a standby time of 400 hours. The smartphone is exclusively available on Snapdeal in champagne gold and grey colours.
ASUS launches Zenfone 3S Max in India
A
SUS has expanded their Zenfone 3 series with Zenfone 3S Max. Peter Chang, Region Head – South Asia & Country Manager, ASUS India, said, “The all-new Zenfone 3S Max has a powerful battery, along with tasteful aesthetics and superb camera, making it well-suited for the needs of today’s users.” Zenfone 3S Max has an extremely long-lasting 5,000mAh battery, allowing extended use of the smartphone without the need to charge it frequently. It features a 5.2-inch highdefinition display. Zenfone 3S Max features an amazing 13MP PixelMaster 3.0 primary camera that sports Phase Detection Autofocus, with an ƒ/2.0 aperture and dual LED real-tone flash for capturing
perfect photographs even in low-light conditions. The camera can shoot videos in Full-HD resolution. On the front, the smartphone features an 8MP camera. Powered by a 1.5GHz Octa-core 64-bit processor, high-capacity 3GB RAM and 32GB internal memory, expandable up to 2TB. Zenfone 3S Max is priced at Rs.14,999/- and will be available across all retail outlets and e-commerce portals in two sophisticated colours – Black and Gold.
Movers & Shakers
MobiKwik appoints Vineet K. Singh as Chief Business Officer
TK Kurien of Wipro retires from his position
MobiKwik has announced the appointment of Vineet K. Singh as the Chief Business Officer. Vineet is a renowned industry veteran who will own the mandate of leading business at the company and supervising national operations. Prior to joining MobiKwik, Vineet K. Singh was the Co-Founder, CEO & MD of Buildzar.com. He has more than 16 years of experience in the consumer internet industry. Prior to Buildzar, he was EVP & Business Head of multiple business in Info Edge, including Naukri.com, 99acres.com, JeevanSaathi.com and NaukriGulf.com. He worked closely with promoters of Info Edge while having built businesses from ground up to topline of Rs.500 crore+ and a market cap of over $2 billion.
Wipro has announced that TK Kurien, Executive Vice-Chairman & Member of the Board, will retire on January 31, 2017 after completing a distinguished career with the company. Wipro announced the elevation of TK Kurien as Executive Vice-Chairman and the appointment of Abidali Z Neemuchwala as the CEO and Executive Director a year ago. “It has been my privilege and honour to work closely with TK, an exceptional leader gifted with a sharp intellect and an uncanny ability to sense technology trends well ahead of time. His abiding interest in history and deep understanding of finance gives him a rare perspective beyond the technology landscape. I wish him the very best,” said Abidali Z Neemuchwala, CEO & Executive Director, Wipro.
Airtel assigns Raj Pudipeddi as Director – Consumer Business
Mphasis appoints Nitin Rakesh as CEO
Bharti Airtel has announced the appointment of Raj Pudipeddi as Director – Consumer Business & Chief Marketing Officer for its India operations w.e.f. February 6, 2017. Raj will be a part of the Airtel Management Board and report to Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India), Bharti Airtel. In his new role, Raj will be responsible for driving market share, strengthening the Airtel brand and driving customer centric innovations within the teams. Raj has over 22 years of work experience with Procter & Gamble across various functions and geographies.
Tech Mahindra Head CP Gurnani joins Scale Ventures as Chairman (Advisory)
Mphasis Limited has announced the appointment of Nitin Rakesh as its Chief Executive Officer and Additional Director on the Board with effect from 29 January 2017. Nitin Rakesh takes over the role from Ganesh Ayyar, whose tenure expires on 28 January 2017. Nitin Rakesh, until recently was the Chief Executive Officer and President of Syntel. Rakesh has a proven track record of delivering profitable growth at industry leading operating margins. Prior to being the CEO, Rakesh held multiple roles at Syntel such as President, Americas, where he headed Business Development and North American operations.
Acer India welcomes their new Associate Director, Consumer Sales
Delhi-based Scale Ventures has announced that CP Gurnani- CEO & MD of Tech Mahindra and present Chairman of NASSCOM has joined Scale Ventures as their Chairman (Advisory). Gurnani is one of the most respected CEO of our country, he brings in more than 3 decades of vast experience on table for Scale Ventures. Gurnani, a chemical engineer from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela has over 35 years of experience in the industry. He has previously worked at Hewlett Packard Limited, Perot Systems (India) Limited and HCL Corporation Ltd, and led the merger of Tech Mahindra with Satyam.
Acer India has announced the appointment of Chandana Gupta as the Associate Director for Consumer Sales. Chandana will lead a talented and experienced team to drive deeper engagement with the partners and help grow the consumer business to even greater heights. Chandana comes with a rich work experience of 23 years in the IT industry. Her experience span covers Regional sales to National sales in both consumer and commercial (enterprise and SMB) for T1 & T2 Channels. Her last assignment was with Lenovo India as Head - Consumer Distribution Sales, where she was heading T1 and T2 distribution channel for Lenovo PC products in India.
C-Zentrix names Anju Chaudhary as VicePresident – Sales, Cloud
WinMagic ropes in Simon Hunt as Executive VicePresident & CTO
C-Zentrix has announced the appointment of Anju Chaudhary as the Vice-President – Sales for its cloud business. Before joining C- Zentrix, she was managing the online sales and customer delivery unit for MeraJob India. Anju has 10 years of diverse work experience in sales and marketing in IT, financial and e-commerce sectors. She has been associated with global firms like SBI Card (joint venture between GE Capital and SBI), Standard Chartered Bank and Dell computers. Her interest lies in sales, research and digital marketing. In her new role, she will be responsible for heading the sales for C-Zentrix cloud business by expanding market coverage and driving customer satisfaction.
WinMagic has appointed Simon Hunt as its Executive VP & CTO. Simon joins WinMagic from Intel Security/McAfee. Prior to Intel Security/McAfee, he was the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of SafeBoot, brokering the $350-million acquisition by McAfee in 2007. As Executive VP & CTO, Simon will oversee engineering, product management, next-generation technology and evangelism. Simon has 20 years of experience in roles spanning engineering, product and business management within security technology and joins WinMagic as it enters into its 20th year in security, offering software full disk encryption when it was founded in 1997.
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360-degree Surveillance - A new paradigm shift Abhishek Kumar, Regional Director, South Asia – Oncam tells VARINDIA of how video surveillance has been on the top of the charts now and what has been Oncam’s competitive strategy to sustain its business in the Indian surveillance space India remains one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and faces a lot of challenges as a result of this growth. The rate at which India is expanding puts extra emphasis on the need for safe roads, ports and airports, and railways to support this growth, and meet various Safe City initiatives that are now commonplace in the country. As a result of this growth, video surveillance has become a critical element of building a comprehensive security posture. Similar to much of the rest of the world, there’s been a significant shift to IP video surveillance from traditional analog systems for many years now – especially as the technology becomes more readily available and more costefficient. India is no different, as manufacturers are better able to navigate the channel through strategic partnerships to provide end users with their technology. IP is more common in new construction and projects, since many end users spend a lot of money on their analog systems and look for ways to create a hybrid option with new investments on video cameras. So the shift is happening, but might be slower in some aspects.
Oncam & the India Market Oncam is relatively new to the Indian market but is already seeing considerable traction in the adoption of its pioneering 360-degree technology. The software is developed in the US and the UK and is still leading the market in terms of customer experience. Oncam is in a unique position to provide much more than video surveillance with its 360-degree cameras. “Our brand has taken the position of being more in line with adopting cuttingedge technology through analytics software, technology partners such as drones manufacturers, and using video in the classroom within the education sector. At the end of the day, we want to be a brand that provides innovative technology solutions that extent far beyond simply being a camera manufacturer. In essence, we want to be a partner to customers
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Abhishek Kumar Regional Director, South Asia Oncam in providing solutions to real-world problems with our extensive strategic partnerships and technology innovations,” says Abhishek Kumar, Regional Director, South Asia. 360-degree surveillance technology is just the beginning for the channel to explore, as the video data gathered from these cameras can provide a lot more for customers looking to streamline their business operations, see a significant ROI and find ways to use video for more than simply security purposes. The channel can be critical to bridging the gap between manufacturers and end users to create a technology solution that
meets their needs and delivers even more bank for their buck, so to speak. In terms of market vertical, oil & Gas, Safe City solutions, Retail and the transportation continue to be critical to its business for Oncam, but it is also seeing significant growth in the education market, since panoramic surveillance lends itself well to covering campuses with minimal investment. Budgetary constraints are always a concern when exploring ways to deliver Safe City or critical infrastructure solutions, for example. Customers are looking for ways to maximize their investments, which is where more “open” solutions come into play, as well as appealing to a number of departments when investing in surveillance equipment. Panoramic cameras can also deliver significant cost savings, as a single 360-degree camera can replace between four and five traditional pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, saving not only on hardware costs, but on the licenses needed to operate those cameras.
Looking ahead… Growth is a significant factor in India, and as population expands, so too does the need for cities to provide more comprehensive security solutions and safety initiatives to protect citizens. One of the main areas that will see significant growth is in the transportation sector. Transit applications are an ideal fit for easily adaptable, scalable and reliable 360-degree camera systems to provide maximum situational awareness for a city’s infrastructure, preferred transportation medium and regulatory requirements. This also applies to airports and seaports, which require more stringent video surveillance solutions to protect critical assets and people. “We also expect to see a dramatic increase in how loss or shrink, is managed by retail stores. The retail sector in India is emerging as one of the largest sectors in the economy and is the world’s fifth-largest global destination in the retail space with a total market size estimated to be around US$ 600 billion,” concludes Abhishek. n Samrita Baruah samrita@varindia.com
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February 2017
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RNI - NO 72399/1999
Reg. No: DL-SW-1/4030/15-17
Printing Date 18 & 19
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February 2017
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Date of Posting 20 & 21 every month