E-Magazine- June 2015

Quick Heal ties up with Maharashtra Government

GIGABYTE rolls out BRIX ultra compact PC Kit

13th VARINDIA IT Forum – A Success Story Retold VOLUME 10

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EMC joins hands with RTU

Array Networks forays into Defence Sector

22nd (Wednesday), July 2015 Pine Hall, Hotel The Park, Kolkata

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Is Digitization in PSUs still far from reality?

43pg

HP updates its Helion Portfolio

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t HP Discover 2015, the company has announced updates to the HP Helion portfolio that will help enterprises realize the benefits of transitioning to a hybrid infrastructure.

HP introduced HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 and enhancements to HP Helion Managed Cloud Services to manage enterprise workloads in a secure hosted cloud environment.

HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 expands support for multiple hypervisors and multiple clouds to provide enterprises and service providers with maximum flexibility.

Private preview of Microsoft Cloud Services from India DataCenters

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ustomers will be able to participate in the private preview of Microsoft Azure from India datacenters in July 2015, which is a key component of Microsoft Cloud services. This will give them a headstart to run trials of their apps on Microsoft Azure from local infrastructure. With these hyperscale datacenters, Microsoft will offer enterprisegrade cloud services from local datacenters to customers of all sizes and industries, including government departments and banking and financial services.

Microsoft will launch the commercial cloud services from local datacenters by the end of this year.

In addition to Microsoft Azure and Office 365, Microsoft has also announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will also be available from India datacenters in the first half of 2016.

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HELLO INDIA

Leading in a Digital World I

t is considered wise to go with the age of technology. Especially today’s organizations must adapt to the rapidly-changing consumer behaviour towards digitization as it is being increasingly seen as the radical change even greater than the Internet. With the agility on demand and exponential technology advances and ever-increasing competition, every industry faces the threat of commoditization. Hence, each business leader is becoming a digital leader. The reason being, digital leadership entails moving from aligning to the business strategy to fully enable the digital future – reinventing the organization’s traditional business model.

Today, the Government has staged the platform to digitize various kinds of physical records through crowdsourcing. The need for this platform cannot be overemphasized. The fact is that we cannot talk of Digital India and transforming India into a knowledge society if most of the transactions continue to be handled manually. To increase our move towards digital transactions, there is all the more greater ugency to digitize all legacy and physical data which continue to be generated through all physical transactions.

The need to digitize data is also an essential part of all programmes under Digital India, whether it is the Digital Locker or sector-specific applications under eKranti.

A recently held event on Digital India organized by VARINDIA deliberated on how new technologies could work collaboratively and why businesses should be aware of the dangers of the ease with which information can be captured. The intelligentsia gathered at the Conclave concluded that there is expected to be large investments around various applications of digital infrastructure like smart cities, smart healthcare, smart retail and intelligent transportation, where government has to play a significant role in developing and regulating guidelines for the sectors. Digital India could help in connecting the dots of various projects, past and present and upstaging India to a global platform. It will help in moving with the universal trends of digital innovation and create positive impact in the lives of the people – rural and urban, young and old.

To sum up, digital revolution offers a great opportunity to transform. Companies need to develop a comprehensive “digital strategy� that reaches far beyond the marketing department to tackle issues like ubiquitous cross-channel connectivity, social commerce, and the threat of commoditization. Even the technology giants have recognized the need to shift and adapt to business models that encourage digitization. In recent months, Google has launched a social networking site Google+ to take on Facebook, and Microsoft has launched the cloud version of Microsoft Office in Office365 to stave off competition from Google Docs and similar applications.

A commitment to innovation means that even giants need to be agile. They must decide whether they can enhance or transform their existing models or not. With this, we have to move ahead with the hope that a new kind of business model means a new way of doing business.

S. Mohini Ratna Editor, VARINDIA mohini@varindia.com

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Hitachi Data Systems believes in profitable business for Partners Partners contribute majorly to the company’s success and are the driving force for Hitachi Data Systems’ growth. While stating this to VARINDIA, Yogesh Sawant, Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, India, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) mentions about the company’s Channel programmes and incentive schemes to uplift its partners.

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itachi Data Systems believes that partners are the key to their success as most of its business is driven through channel partners in India. “Partners in India will continue to play a key role in our growth strategy. As they deepen their expertise, they benefit more, and so do customers,” said Yogesh Sawant, Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, India, Hitachi Data Systems.

HDS will continue to leverage the partners’ capabilities to reach the customers while supporting partners with new products and professional service offerings so that they, in turn, can become trusted advisers to their customers.

Partners who work with HDS benefit from the worldwide brand identity and messages. The company has clearly defined rules of engagement for the partner network; and by partnering with the company they have access to training, tools and resources that help them to capture new business. Any association with HDS is always long term.

Channel Empowerment The company invests a lot of time in enabling the partners.

It provides certification programmes to build the perfect level of professional capabilities to match market focus and business goals. It conducts periodical trainings for partners and trains them regularly on products and solutions through regular webinars, quarterly pre-sales boot camp on solutions, etc.

“We have highly structured academy-led training courses and certification levels called Hitachi Certified Professional Programme.

These are Instructor-led trainings, Web-based trainings and Virtual Instructor-led trainings for partner sales, pre-sales and post-sales people. The completion of these trainings leads them to certification.

We also understand that rewarding partners for their efforts is very important. Apart from bringing in new technologies, we have specific rebates and margins to support and improve partner’s profitability and also to excite their sales teams,” said Sawant.

HDS has exciting incentive programmes for partners like Back-End Rebates and Co Op funds based on performance; target account incentive, new account bonus to support profitability of the organization, etc.

For the partner pre-sales and sales personnel, the company also has programmes like Close & Win, Hitachi Rewards Programme, and Reference Customer Case Study Incentive, etc.

In addition to these, it has introduced many exciting rewards and incentive programmes for the partners on quarterly and yearly basis.

Government – An important vertical The company is predominately focussing on BFSI, manufacturing, telecom, IT and ITeS sectors, where it helps customers to leverage their data, engage with customers and work more efficiently while spending less.

“In the last four years, we have had a strong focus on the government sector. HDS is directly contributing to government’s initiatives like Digital India, MyGov, etc. 15% of our revenue comes

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Yogesh Sawant Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliance Organization, India, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) from the government sector. We don’t reach out to the government directly, but through our partner and system integrator networks. We are looking at a unique set of partners for the government sector based on their expertise,” added Sawant. n

Message for Partners

The company will continue to focus on their partners, SIs and VARs. Partners have been qualified lead generators for HDS, and they are as knowledgeable as the company’s sales people. It is also adding new partners in the tier-II and tier-III cities to take the solutions to market.

To Sum up....

HDS is truly a 100% channels organization and is transforming itself. It also firmly believes that the partners community is its extended sales, pre-sales and support arm. It has evolved from being a best-in-class storage solutions organization some years ago to a bestin-class Information Infrastructure solutions organization. This year, it showcased the unique social innovation solutions, and the best is yet to come. The company would want its partners to ride the wave with the company and benefit from the unprecedented growth of opportunities the new HDS will address.

HDS is committed to make its partners successful as it believes that in their success lies HDS India’s growth. n

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CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Assistant Editor: Samrita Baruah Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Correspondent: Aparna Mullick Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar Marketing Manager: Shubhendu Nanda CORPORATE OFFICE: VAR House, A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi - 110030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@varindia.com Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala kar Correspondent: L. G. Swami D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru- 560066 Tel: 08049530399 Mobile:08904205750/9916134482 E-mail: shubhendu@varindia.com, swami@varindia.com Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Sr. Correspondent: Mamta S. Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai-410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479 E-mail: anil@varindia.com, mamta@varindia.com Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: Parthiban K A2, R.C.Residency, Cholambedu Road, Thiruvenkada nagar, Ambathur, Chennai - 600 053 Mobile: 098400 55626 E-mail: parthiban@varindia.com Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: L.G. Swami Plot No. 103, Sagacity Apartments, Street No. 10 Himayat Nagar, Hyderabad - 500029 Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08374935692 E-mail: swami@varindia.com Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Kiran Kumar New Korola, Near Alampur, Land Mark Asian International School, Howrah - 711302 Mobile: 08100298033, E-mail: sunil@varindia.com Printed and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of M/s. Kalinga Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. 153, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Are ,Phase-I, New Delhi-110020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, Ignou Road, New Delhi 110030, Editor - S Mohini Ratna.

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Channel Chief

It’s a “People First” Business Model for Dassault Systèmes A Passion for 3D and a business model that gives the first preference to customers is what Dassault looks for in its partners. Sharing more perspective on this, Bertrand Sico, Global Head, VS business, Dassault Systèmes, speaks to VARINDIA on how this has proved successful to the company

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t Dassault Systemes, nothing is done for short term and strategies are made for medium and long term.

Founded in 1981, Dassault makes sure that it has strong relationships with the rest of the world that can sustain over time. Today, Dassault is taking care of 556 value solutions partners all around the world, of which around 25 are in India.

Both Dassault and the partner community have one single goal – to bring technology to the users. And, this technology that the value solutions partners are selling to the users is around the PLM space.

But the good thing is that Dassault has gone above and beyond than providing just pure PLM solutions. "Dassault Systèmes is clearly a company that is being built on 3D. But we realized that we can go above and beyond and can build a real experience around 3D products. It is a very exciting genre because we don’t see any limit," asserts Bertrand Sico, Global Head, VS Business, Dassault Systèmes.

Today, Dassault has specific industry solutions for almost everyone that fit the real need of its customers, irrespective of which industry they are. Dassault has segmented the market into 12 industries and has packaged its solution for each of these segments and depending on what phase of development process they are going through, it has solutions for that.

Opportunities for Partners around 3D However, the 3D market and imaging solutions are totally untapped in India and Dassault sees this as a big opportunity.

In India specifically, the company has a large set of customers and an established channel. Dassault supports, trains, and simplifies its partners to make sure they have the right skills and professionalism to deal with customers. "We have a dedicated team doing nothing but only supporting our channels and making sure they are successful with our customers," says Bertnard.

But it is not too easy and a lot of components are to be kept in mind. "I always tell my team to prefer quality to

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Bertrand Sico Global Head, VS business Dassault Systèmes

Message to Partners “There are new technologies coming up such as cloud, Mobile technology and they are certainly opening new doors and these will be a part of the solutions we sell to our users. Our channel will have to induct these technologies along with us. Secondly, partners in the near future should be able to have social connections with users directly and feed the users with appropriate information and content related to their profile. Partners will have to engage directly with the users, know them by their first and last name, also their skills and know what they are interested in. In today’s time, it is not just sufficient to provide training and support or even technical service around the solution but have to bring advanced services to build the connect with the users.” quantity. The solutions we sell bring a lot of value to our customers and so it is something for which you need skills to deal with. They need to share with us their dream of how they can change the world with 3D. So they must have that passion for 3D and not just sign a business contract with customers. Passion will essentially lead to success. Partners need to believe that we are not selling boxes but selling the technology,” views Bertnard.

Besides passion for 3D, the two other things that partners should possess are a Business Model and a direct relationship with partners of trust and confidence. “It is a two-way process, when I say direct relations they have to tell us what works and what doesn’t and we have to tell them what works and what doesn’t. We can be professional but we need to have open and direct relations. We have to listen to them and have a direct communication so that we stay and remain successful together," asserts Bertnard.

Also, a “People First” business model for both the organization and the Channel plays an important part in designing any channel programme and this is what Dassault relies on.

To sum up…

The investment Dassault is asking from partners is Teamwork. “We are always asking for a dedicated team, and since it is not a part-time job, you cannot be a Dassault Systemes partner half time. If you want to join the family, you are more than welcome but you have to be dedicated and at least make the minimum investment to be successful,” says Bertnard. Summing up on what he actually wants from partners, he says, "So we are just a 3D Experience platform. We are not going to do everything. In fact, we cannot do everything, and we know our partners have the skills to customize solutions as per the usage and specific markets.” n

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ROUND ABOUT

The Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in the Digital Era – June 2015 J

ust recently in Mexico City, talks were held on the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in the digital era. Several tweets about the talks mentioned that three Nobel Laureates from Latin America would attend the talks.

In Mexico City, there is a prominent road named after Gandhi, as well as a statue in his honor, reminding people about his growing importance in far off Latin America.

This conveys two significant points. One, the nuances of Gandhi and his philosophy are being discussed across the world. Two, there are people that still think Gandhian thoughts are relevant to the world. There is a recently released book titled, “Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age,” penned by Mr. Sudhendra Kulkarni, who was the press advisor to the former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

I am yet to read the book, but I should admit that the title of the book is imaginative to tempt to read the contents.

So how do we go about establishing the hypothesis that Gandhian philosophy is still relevant to the digital world? In most of our government offices and other institutions, there is almost always a photograph of Gandhi displayed prominently. It may be there to show reverence to Mahatma, but in most cases the matter ends there. Skeptics may propound that the simplicity in Gandhian thought such as the focus on the village economy, the emphasis on simple technology are anathema to modern thinking, where technological excellence and incremental innovation are the buzzwords.

Frankly speaking, I think of Gandhi every day when I am going through a newspaper or surfing the Internet. Every headline nowadays is either about a turf war, a natural calamity, a financial mess, or something blown up over a trivial item. While I had written last month’s column for this magazine on earthquakes, I thought about Gandhi and sincerely believed that perhaps, we could have avoided catastrophic events had we become more sensitive to our environment. Gandhi was in love with nature and exhorted everyone to lead a life closer to nature.

The essence of Gandhi’s teachings was that the end should justify the means. This would mean one should not do things in an unlawful manner, infringing the rights of others. To the rich, he had advocated that they should act as the trustees of the poor. This does not mean that the rich should distribute their wealth to the poor people. Nor did it mean that being rich is a sin. He wanted the rich to take a lead role in the societal advancement by creating more opportunities for ordinary people to work, earning their livelihood to integrate them to the mainstream of life.

He was against people making undue profit by hoarding, unfair means, and through the

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exploitation of others.

Non-violence was the greatest weapon that he wielded to fight against imperialism and hegemony, while his own contemporaries criticized him for using utopian concepts to fight against the mighty powers. But finally, he was proven right. Let us, for a minute, assume that our war of independence was fought with violent means – what might have been our situation now? India would have possibly inherited a society that lived in insecurity, fear psychosis and hatred towards one another in regards to the fact that India was carved out from loosely 500 kingdoms of various hues and characters. The democratic fervent which we have inherited is largely due to the non-violent means that we have adopted from our freedom struggle.

There is a perception that Gandhi was against modern technology. I believe that such beliefs stem from erroneous inferences.

Gandhi was for technological innovation and discovery. I have a feeling that had he lived now, he would widely take advantage of social media to reach out to people and transform them. He believed that technology has two faces – the good and the bad. While he shunned the bad influence of technology, he promoted the good intent and the welfare aspect of technology.

Now let us approach the issue from another point of view. If Gandhi were against technology progress, technologists would have abhorred him. But the facts are different.

One of the world’s greatest scientists – Albert Einstein – had carried Gandhi in the highest esteem. His famous quote about Gandhi still rings in our ears. On Mahatma’s 70th birthday, Einstein wished him by saying, “Generations to come, it may will be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

Several decades ago, Gandhi propounded his theory. He wanted people to return to nature and engage in practices that did not upset the natural equilibrium. The simplicity he preached and practiced was not a negation of the modern world, but an exhortation to adhere to the environment norms. He shunned all those activities, which upset the natural equilibrium and secular fabric of the country.

I strongly believe that there is a distinct trend to see Gandhian teachings through a new prism. Gandhian thoughts and philosophy have three distinct attributes. One, it exhorts people to go back to nature and draw strength and sustenance from it. Be it food habit, cure from disease, keeping premises clean and healthy, Gandhi had evolved solutions that were sensitive to nature. He advocated fasting and naturopathy to boost up the immune systems in the body. The new generation is beset with many challenges, despite their relatively better financial standing and comfortable living. Simple living and brotherhood based on peace and internal tranquility advocated by Gandhi may be appealing to many in these trying days.

But unlike Karl Marx, who also wanted to change the system through radical means, Gandhi used sustainable means and ethical framework to transform the mindset of the people. In comparison, his persona resembles more of Buddha than Karl Marx, who taught about right wisdom, right conduct and right effort.

Is interest in Gandhism more pronounced outside India than in India? There is some truth in that view. Like Buddhism, which was originated in India, Gandhism also remains mostly popular outside India now. The name of Gandhi transcends the boundaries of nation and states and is remembered for passionate adherence and practice of non-violence and humanism.

It is instructive to see Gandhi through the 21st century prism. It is wrong to presume that he would have disliked everything that is vogue now. He would have been a votary of internet and would have used the social communication platform to the hilt to spread the views on his egalitarian concepts. He would have had a large following in the Facebook and other social networking platforms.

In conclusion, I should say that Gandhi had bequeathed to the modern society many legacies. The most important among them is seven social sins, which he propounded ardently: Politics without principles; wealth without work; commerce without morality; education without character; pleasure without conscience; science without humanity and worship without sacrifice. To this, I would add the eighth sin: existence without social and moral commitment. n

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HOT BYTES

Quick Heal ties up with Maharashtra Government

Q

uick Heal has tied up with the Maharashtra Government as one of the business

partners for a state-ofthe-art Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) to be set up in Pune. The other business partners for the Pune IIIT project are Rolta India Limited and Hubtown Limited.

Kailash Katkar, MD & CEO, Quick Heal, said, “It is an honour to

be associated with an illustrious project such as the IIIT. It is only while setting up Quick Heal – the country’s largest software p r o d u c t company, today – did I realize the power we Indians have when equipped with knowledge and the right direction. I’m grateful to the Government of Maharashtra, who have given us the opportunity to help them create an infrastructure that will provide students from all sectors gain access to quality education.”

Akamai continues Network Expansion in Asia

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k a m a i Technologies has announced the opening of a new Security Operations Center (SOC) in Bangalore, India. In its Q1 2015 “State of the Internet Security Report”, Akamai noted ongoing cyber threats from Asian countries.

Over 22 percent of the recorded DDoS attack source traffic originated from China during Q1 2015, making it the top source country for attack traffic during

the quarter.

“It is clear that many Asian countries continue to be a major source of cyber attacks,” said Sidharth Malik, Managing Director &VicePresident, India, Akamai Technologies. “Locating SOC resources close to the point of attack origin provides Akamai with a significant mitigation advantage. This is a proven strategy that we embrace not only in Asia, but around the world.”

Array Networks forays into Defence Sector

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rray Networks has bagged a defence order worth $250,000 for WAN Optimization and Access Gateways (SSL VPN) solutions. The project involves improving the network performance in remote locations, securing critical operational data and enabling VSAT deployments.

Array Networks has constituted a focussed team and will be working very closely with partners and technical establishments specializing in the defence sector to provide the best technology available. The

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company aims to derive at least 25% of their revenues from this sector in the near future.

Shibu Paul, Regional Sales Director–India, ME and SEA at Array Networks, said, "Our ultimate aim is to deliver fully-integrated, missioncritical applications to the defence sector by providing full access to the applications and services they normally require.

We are working very closely with our partners in this area."

www.varindia.com

NASCOMM forms Cisco to transform Jaipur Cyber Security into a Smart City will Task Force embrace the Jaipur

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ASSCOM and Data Security Council of India have launched NASSCOM Cyber Security Task Force.

It aims to build India as a global hub for providing cybersecurity solutions, developing cybersecurity R&D plan and develop a skilled workforce of cybersecurity experts.

The taskforce members include industry leaders across IT, BPM and Internet, leaders from user organizations like banks and telcos as well as representatives from the government and academia. Rajendra Pawar, Chairman, NIIT, was requested to chair this taskforce. The task force over a 12-week period will identify the key priorities and build the detailed action plan for the sector.

Blue Coat Systems acquired by Bain Capital

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lue Coat has announced the completion of its previously reported acquisition by funds advised by Bain Capital, one of the world’s foremost private investment firms.

Bain Capital has acquired Blue Coat from Thoma Bravo, LLC, in an allcash transaction valued at approximately $2.4 billion.

“Blue Coat has strengthened and expanded our product portfolio.

We have benefited from Thoma Bravo’s insight and support and look forward to continued progress and innovation with the help of Bain Capital as we build the business to become one of the top performing security companies in the world,” said Gregory S. Clark, Chief Executive Officer, Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

benefits of connectivity and digitization to transform itself into a Smart+Connected city.

The Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has chosen Cisco to develop smart city infrastructures that will improve the efficiency and quality of services received by its 3.5 million residents and over 40 million tourists who visit the city every year.

With this launch, Jaipur becomes one of the first state capitals in India to showcase a comprehensive roadmap to become a world-class smart city.

Purushottam Kaushik, Managing Director – Sales, Growth Verticals, Cisco India & SAARC, said, “We are excited to work with JDA to help enable a city as historic as Jaipur become one of the first and most ambitious citywide brownfield smart city projects in India. We look forward to working closely with the Jaipur Development Authority and bring in the best practices and learnings to help develop Jaipur as a world-class smart city.”

20 Million SMEs will be Online by 2017 – Google

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ementing its commitment to help SMEs go digital in India, Google India has announced the launch of a nationwide initiative to help small medium businesses to go digital and get online presence on Google search and Google maps, without having to invest in a website or domain. As part of this new initiative, Google India will get 20 million SMEs online by 2017 by using a simple mobilebased app called, “Google My Business”, that will

help businesses to create and manage their business information across Google products for free in both Hindi and English.

Speaking about the initiative, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia & India, said, “In the next three years, India will have over 500 million Internet users – and these users will need access to all kind of information in their local languages. Indian SMEs have struggled to build and maintain their online presence."

NIELIT signs MoU with TSSC

N

ational Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) and

will promote the ESDM ecosystem and support the “Digital India” and “Make in India” campaigns of the

the Telecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC) signed a MoU to carry out training across India at NIELIT and TSSC centres in the area of Electronic Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM). This association

Government of India.

This MoU would help complement each other’s technical capabilities and industry reach, to achieve a common goal of Skilling India in the Telecom/ IECT Domain.

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HOT BYTES

F-Secure acquires nSense

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-Secure has acquired nSense– a privately-held Danish company providing security consultations, vulnerability assessment services and related products to large enterprises.

The acquisition strengthens F-Secure’s position as a prominent security vendor in Europe, and lays a foundation for the company’s growth as a cybersecurity leader in the region.

The acquisition unites two companies recognized as innovators and trusted advisors in cybersecurity. F-Secure is the only vendor in the

M

world that has won the Best Protection Award from the independent AV-TEST Institute four years in a row. nSense’s skilled personnel and technical expertise in providing defence against digital breaches is held in equally high esteem, and its range of services provides companies with a point of contact to be used before, during and after cyber attacks.

Avaya completes acquisition of Esna Technologies

A

vaya has completed acquisition of Esna Technologies, a provider of real-time collaboration and communications software, to accelerate the adoption of communicationsenabled applications for both enterprises and midmarket companies.

Avaya will enable endusers to easily access multivendor communications capabilities – voice, video, IM/presence, conferencing and messaging – from

within cloud-based business applications using their device of choice.

“It’s time for the convergence of communications and business applications, for enabling communications from the browsers of public or private cloud-based applications, and for the user experience to be one click to engage,” said Gary E. Barnett, SVP & GM, Avaya Engagement Solutions.

Amazon launches Global Selling Programme in India

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mazon has launched its Global Selling Programme in India, opening doors for Indian businesses to export to e-commerce markets of the world.

Amazon is extending two of its pioneering products – Selling on Amazon (SOA) and FulfilmentBy Amazon (FBA) to businesses of all sizes and scale to go Global and showcase their “Made in India” creations and products.

The programme allows exporting products in the Apparel, Home Furnishing (including

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June 2015

MyGov's Rashi along with Plantronics blueprint for launches new scheme e t a i l e r ’ s PMO Mobile App Arscheme has been

Indian handicrafts), Jewellery, Books, Collectibles, Sporting Goods, Handbags, Shoes and Health & Beauty products categories.

Manufacturers and local brands can now seamlessly export their creations and take India to the world.

Amazon will provide local enablement solutions through verified third-party service providers. These initiatives include logistics partners, tax consultants and compliance experts to make the process of global selling smooth and friction-free.

www.varindia.com

yGov, the citizen engagement platform of the Government of India, has announced the blueprint for the PMO Mobile App, highlighting the features that the app will have for citizens to engage with the PMO. More than 9,500 submissions were received from different parts of the country, out of which 20 suggestions were taken and selected as winners.

The campaign will now move to Phase 2, the Wireframe Phase of the Contest. Teams can submit their mock-ups and designs for the app based on the blueprint.

Google has partnered with MyGov in this contest to build the PMO Mobile App. This is a first-of-its-kind contest to crowdsource and build a mobile app for Prime Minister’s Office.

EMC joins hands with RTU

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MC Corporation has announced partnership with Rajasthan Technical University (RTU), Kota to support the faculty and students in enhancing their skills in the areas of Cloud Computing, Information Storage and Data Analytics. EMC, through its Academic Alliance initiative, will offer unique “open” curriculum based-education on technology topics like cloud computing, big data analytics and information storage and management to faculty and students from the institute.

With this association, the company expects to train over 1,000 faculty members, in turn benefiting over 7,000 students who are currently pursuing cloud computing as a core subject in RTU’s B. Tech programme.

introduced by Rashi Peripherals along with its vendor Plantronics.

The scheme comes with a maturity period of three months, from May to July. As a part of the scheme, the retailers would be awarded monetarily in accordance with their pre-set targets achieved.

The scheme would help the Plantronics capitalize market share but also help increase retailers profits. With various

aids-to trade, pitching Bluetooth headsets to a new smartphone buyer would make an additional sale much easier.

An additional added advantage comes as a great boon, with 6 months of additional warranty support from Plantronics on offline purchase. It gives the retailers a chance to lure potential customers to opt for retail outlets.

Web Werks launches new Data Center in Navi Mumbai

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eb Werks India has announced the opening of its allnew Next-Gen CloudReady Data Center in Navi Mumbai. Located in Vashi, this state-of-theart world-class facility is the company’s fifth Data Center after four other strategically located successfully running centers in India and the US. At a conference held in the city, Web Werks also announced its association with Microsoft Azure and vNext.

Commenting on the occasion, Nikhil Rathi,

Director, Web Werks India Private Ltd, said, “We are calling this facility the next-gen data center as we have invested in this cloudready data center with a futuristic vision. This state-of-the-art tier-IV Data Center is designed and built

by IBM based on the latest standards and is ready to meet the demands of future cloud computing and other hosting challenges.”

Soon to become operational, this newest data center is superlatively designed to tackle the complexities of emerging technologies.

neoteric with ALE launch Champions League

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e o t e r i c infomatique, in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), has launched the SMB Champions League for its accredited Independent Resellers (IRs).

Applicable from May 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015, the Partner

Rewards Programme will recognize IRs under two categories – Biggest and Fastest Achievers – for their overall business

performance in driving sales for the AlcatelLucent OpenTouch Suite for SMB, engineered specifically for SMB customers in India.

Top partners in each category will win quarterly rewards.

The ultimate reward will be a fullypaid international travel to an exotic location.

The last date to register is June 30, 2015.

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June 2015

21

ON THE RAMP

Panasonic launches Rugged Tablets and Toughbook

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anasonic has launched its fullyrugged, 5-inch handheld tablet Toughpad FZ-E1/

X1 and its semi-rugged Toughbook CF-54.

The Toughpad FZ-E1, powered by Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld and the Toughpad FZ-X1,

running on Android 4.2.2 OS are enterprise-class devices. These devices are purpose-built to improve

efficiency and productivity for professionals working in the field of defense, public safety, logistics, utilities, manufacturing, retail and field services.

Red Hat announces CloudForms 3.2

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ed Hat has announced Red Hat CloudForms 3.2, the latest version of its award-winning solution for managing private and hybrid clouds.

CloudForms 3.2 delivers innovative management features that enable customers to automate the deployment and management of OpenStack infrastructures, using advanced management instrumentation available

in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 release (based on OpenStack Kilo).

CloudForms 3.2 adds additional OpenStack workload management capabilities including automated discovery; web-based console support; service catalog publishing and user dialog generation for OpenStack Orchestration (Heat) templates and OpenStack Compute (Nova) integration.

Ricoh strengthens its position with new offerings

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icoh has come up with a new series of projectors – TS 100, RX 300 and PJ X 4340 – are a new advancement in the projection category which allows bright and rich visuals, further enabling users to operate the device from multiple networks.

The three new projectors come with high-class features of wireless and network connectivity. TS 100 provides eco mode and illuminates crystalclear imaging, RX 300 (Entry-level Short Throw Projector) is best-inclass product weighing less than 2.8 kgs and PJ

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June 2015

X 4340, PJ X4241N and PJ WX4241N are shortthrow projection systems which prevent shadow formation on the board and allow free movement, essentially turning the projection system into a whiteboard.

Manoj Kumar, Managing Director, Ricoh India, said, “Our aim is to constantly offer new and innovative products for the Indian market and be among the top three most preferred projector vendors in the country.”

www.varindia.com

GIGABYTE rolls out BRIX Emerson ultra compact PC Kit expands Its has Product Portfolio GIGABYTE announced the

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m e r s o n Network Power has announced enhancements across its portfolio, ensuring security capabilities for government, multimedia, broadcast, financial and IT operation centre environments. All of the enhanced solutions address two critical customer concerns: enhanced security and increased remote monitoring and management.

“New security threats emerge every day, and we must remain vigilant in ensuring our systems are delivering the best possible protection for our customers and their networks,” said Jay Wirts, General Manager, Avocent Core Products, Emerson Network Power.

Schneider Electric rolls out Smart-UPS

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chneider Electric has expanded its Smart-UPS On-Line UPS with state-of-the-art, NextGen online UPS – 5kVA model. Delivering the most manageable, reliable, dense, and efficient UPS in its class, the 5kVA UPS units have a power factor of 0.9, with a separate bypass for “Hot Standby” redundancy.

“Disruption or loss of power to critical equipment translates into high costs and potential reputational damage for businesses. Our new line of 5kVA Smart-UPS On-Line model provide simple, convenient, flexible, and reliable power backup, allowing users to feel assured their important equipment and electronics will be protected when they need it most,” said Gurudutt M, Director – Channel & Midmarket Business, Schneider Electric, IT Business.

availability of BRIX, an ultra-compact and versatile DIY PC kit, in India. This unique formfactor has managed to set a new standard for desktop PC miniaturization that makes it perfect as a discreet HTPC (Home Theatre PC) or multimedia hub, an ultra-low power PC for the family, or even an office PC. Sunil Grewal, Director – Sales and MarCom, GIGABYTE Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd, said, “At a time when the HTPC

concept is gaining fast popularity in India, the GIGABYTE BRIX comes as an attractive solution especially because it optimizes power consumption, while offering a lot of processing power and connectivity in a form-factor that is small enough to be placed anywhere – whether on your desk or even within you home entertainment set- up.”

Cyberoam launches new CR10wiNG Wireless Security Appliances

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yberoam has l a u n c h e d CR10wiNG, the “fastest and most affordable UTM appliance” with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities for the SOHO/ROBO markets.

The CR10wiNG wireless appliance supports 802.11 n/b/g standards and up to eight virtual access points.

It delivers UTM security features over WLAN to offer enterprise-level security and meet the requirement of mobility

in this segment. Cyberoam CR10wiNG offers high performance with firewall throughput of 400Mbps and UTM throughput of 60Mbps.

CR10wiNG, based on Cyberoam’s patented Layer 8 technology, allows administrators to apply User identitybased security policies to gain visibility over user activity and also manage Guest Internet access in the network.

Huawei introduces its Agile IoT Solution

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uawei has launched its Agile Network 3.0 Architecture at the Huawei Network Congress 2015 (HNC2015).

Huawei has introduced its Agile Internet of Things (IoT) solution which enables

possibilities and realize the digitization of production, manufacturing and logistics.

“Huawei believes that standardizing ICT infrastructure will foster the development of IoT applications,”

enterprises to build an agile IoT infrastructure to capture infinite business

said William Xu, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Huawei.

www.varindia.com

June 2015

23

ON THE RAMP

ViewSonic brings projector lineup for SMBs

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iewSonic has introduced the whole new LightStream Series – multimedia projectors offering exceptional audio and visual features to meet the needs of small- to medium-sized business and consumers from presentation. ViewSonic brings the exclusive SonicExpert technology and built-in ViewSonic SonicMode sound system to deliver higher volume and the absolute best-inclass sound for premium

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audio experience.

“Our new generation of LightStream projectors demonstrates ViewSonic’s continued dedication to lead the visual display industry with innovative and feature-rich digital projectors that range from affordable entry-level to advanced projection solutions,” said Max Hsu, PM Director, ViewSonic Asia-Pacific.

AMD Announces 6th-Generation A-Series Processor

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MD has announced its 6th-Generation A-Series Processor, a highperformance Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) in a System-on-Chip (SoC) design. Previously codenamed “Carrizo”, the 6th-Generation AMD A-Series Processor takes advantage of extensive AMD processor and graphics IP enabling exceptional computing experiences not possible before.

“The notebook remains the ideal, versatile, connected hub in people’s lives – the one device that does it all and does it well, and today’s consumer shouldn’t have to pay a premium to enjoy highquality streaming video, superior online gaming, and powerful content management as mainstays of today’s computing experience,” said Matt Skynner, Corporate VP & GM, AMD.

TP-LINK introduces AC750 Wireless Dual Band Router

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P-LINK has announced their latest sleek and stylish AC750 in a series of advanced 802.11ac wireless products in India – the Archer C20 AC750 Wireless Dual Band Router. The Router provides up to 750Mbps wireless connection with other wireless clients. The incredible speed makes it ideal for handling multiple data streams at the same time.

The performance of this 802.11ac wireless router will give the unexpected networking experience at speed much faster than 802.11n.

Featuring the latest generation Wi-Fi standard

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June 2015

iYogi launches IoT Platform on Microsoft Azure

– IEEE802.11AC, offering total data transfer speeds achieving up to 750mbps, with 433mbps over the crystal clearer 5GHz channel, and 300Mbps over the 2.4GHz Channel, the router offers the flexibility of two dedicated networks and ensures amazing wireless performance. Simple tasks such as sending e-mails or web browsing can be handled by the 2.4GHz band while bandwidth intensive tasks like online gaming or HD video streaming can be processed by the 5GHz band – all at the same time.

www.varindia.com

Yogi has launched the Digital Service Cloud Open IoT Platform, the first enterprise-grade IoT platform from India.

Built on Microsoft Azure, the platform is proven to scale to millions of devices. Innovators can use the platform to deploy, monitor and automatically manage their products across millions of endusers, easily integrate their products with the growing IoT ecosystem, and use its advanced analytics capabilities to build and fast track their global growth strategies.

Uday Challu, CEO, iYogi, said, “Recognizing the potential economic and social impact of IoT, the global technology industry is witnessing a burst of innovation.A platform that brings this innovation ecosystem together is essential to propel the industry further.”

Riverbed unveils SteelCentral AppInternals 10

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i v e r b e d Technology has launched Riverbed SteelCentral AppInternals 10, a breakthrough APM solution that helps IT teams take control of application performance in their evolving hybrid IT environments. It has been re-designed from the ground up. It can be set up in minutes and its modern, web-based, interactive dashboard can be accessed on computers, tablets, and smartphones – no special skills are required to set up and operate.

SteelCentral AppInternals 10 monitors applications on and off the cloud to provide end-toend performance visibility and powerful analytics that help IT improve application performance, user experience, and business impact.

Socomec Launches new UPS Solutions

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ocomec has extended its product portfolio with three new UPS solutions – MODULYS GP, ITYS PRO and ITYS E – for the Indian market. The new product ranges will add in to existing wide range of products and targets data center, IT, service sector, infrastructure, healthcare, light industrial applications.

Sushil Virmani, MD, Socomec Innovative Power Solutions, said, “As we know today world where the pace of business constantly accelerates, the customers are looking for dynamic infrastructure that aligns business and

IT asset to support overall business goals. They would need scalable, flexible, cost-effective, lesser footprint, efficient and reliable solutions.

The equipment installers require solutions that are easy to order and operate with minimal effort and time. As our specialists are in constant touch with the customers to sense their demand evolution, we are able to bring the solutions with the effort of our R&D team that meets our customer’s requirements."

Kingston releases USB Type-C Flash Drive

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ingston has announced the release of DataTraveler microDuo 3C USB Flash drive.

DataTraveler microDuo 3C has a dual interface that works with both standard USB Type-A (3.1, 3.0, 2.0) and USB Type-C ports.

USB Type-C is an up and coming reversible connector standard that allows for slimmer and sleeker devices in the future. It enables a single port to function as a point for data transfer, video

output, charging and even power external devices.

“DataTraveler microDuo 3C has a dual interface that accommodates both USB Type-A and USB Type-C ports to give users easy access to the latest USB interface,” said Nathan Su, Flash Memory Sales Director, APAC Region, Kingston. “Our drive provides more storage, features fast data transfer speeds and helps make the new technology more accessible to consumers.”

Enjay Launches EPABX with CRM in Mumbai

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njay IT Solutions Ltd. has launched Enjay Synapse Mini, an IPPBX with built in CRM. This is the first of its kind Solution in the market. It’s a small box which can support upto 4 telephone lines and upto 100 IP extensions.

It can also support upto 20 CRM users, with 8/10 concurrent users.

Limesh Parekh, CEO says “We have been providing Telephony and CRM solutions to our customers since last

5 years. Two things have we observed. One the CRM/CTI market has matured in recent times, secondly, we also found that SMEs are getting more and more interested in going for these kind of solutions. We have given this solution to more than 150 customers across India and in wide range of industries. We observed that there is requirement and demand for a low cost solution. Thus happened Enjay Synapse Mini – EPABX with CRM.”

FACE TO FACE

Global Infonet holds on to India with high hopes 2

014 has been a good year for the Global Group, the parent company of Global Infonet. Having grown 25% YoY, the Group has had a turnover of $1.15 billion last year.

It has also made major investments worldwide. The most significant, however, has been its acquisition of a German brand I-onik that has a lineup of smartphone and tablet products.

However, what is of more interest is that the growth that Global is projecting this year is expected to come from Indian and Latin American markets. And, this is evident very much when we talk of India – from 27 branches in 2013, Global has added 7 more branches taking it to 34; added 10 new brands to its list of principals and, most importantly, has grown its revenue from Rs.1,100 crore to Rs.1,230 crore. The youngest of all the top 10 distributors in India, India contributed 21% to the overall revenue of the Group in 2014, which is expected to go up to 27% this year.

“We as Global Group have reached a takeoff point at a global level, to achieve 25% growth year to year for the coming years.

We expect maximum share of such a growth to come from India and Latin America. We are consolidating and reinforcing our Indian investments to participate successfully in such a Growth,” reiterates V. M. Chadrasekar, Group Chairman, Global Group.

“India is a market where scalability is a bit challenge, but we want to grow and don’t want to compromise on the health of the company. Our inherent strength being the Global Group with which we are associated, we are pretty much sure that we are fit for growth,” says Parvez Ahmed, Group Executive Director, Global Distribution.

India – A Big Bet for Global As far as the Indian market is concerned, it is going to be a big bet for Global Infonet.

To start with, Global is looking at a 360degree distribution approach for both IT and mobility, which will include Consumer Electronics, e-Retail, Corporate Sales, modern trade, Telecom, etc. Having emerged as a leading player in distribution, the company is now looking at consolidating these areas by focussing more on the business, adding more products to their product line and adding value to every stage of the supply chain right from the supplier to the consumer. “Partners will start looking at us more as a VAD in this business. Not only this, we are also going to value add for manufacturers in terms of pricing management, order management, organized trade and so on,” asserts Prashant

Left to Right- Vibu Venkat - Director, Global Infonet Distribution; Parvez Ahmed, Group Executive Director, Global Distribution & Prashant Prakash - CEO, Global Infonet

India contributed 21% to the overall revenue of the Group in 2014, which is expected to go up to 27% this year Prakash, CEO, Global Infonet Distribution.

Cloud Computing is going to be another area which will involve long-term investments on Global’s part. “Cloud computing channel is one which is emerging right now. Brands like Microsoft, SAP and Lexmark with whom we are partnered no longer talk about physical distribution. We will continue to enhance cloud computing competency within the Group,” says Prashant.

Secondly, to ease business operations, Global has formed different business units (BUs) which are headed by different Sales & Product Managers. For instance, Retail, System Integration, Enterprise, Networking, Component, Software & Security, Memory, Printing are some of the segments that have been categorized as different BUs. Thirdly, Global Infonet has a micro distribution reach, which is a well-defined cluster-based approach for both IT and Telecom. “This means that we act like an National Distributor and a Regional Distributor both to our customers. We usually see that from a vendor the products pass on to an ND who stocks them for 45 days; from them these reach the Regional Distributor who stocks them for another 45 days and

then a retailer who stocks them for another 45 days. By cutting down one channel, you tend to cut down on the inventory part by 45-40 days. We started this approach in the mobility space and are now executing it in IT as well,” Prashant explains.

The company has added another feather to its cap by moving into mobility distribution two years back. “Presently, our Mobility Distribution segment is doing a business of Rs.25 – Rs.30 crore, but we are looking at a double-digit growth this year.

We are also keen on getting established as a key distribution player, just like we had in traditional distribution,” says Vibhu Venkat, Director, Global Infonet Distribution.

Going Forward…

Global Infonet looks for a sustainable growth, which also happens to align clearly with its company’s policies. A process-driven company rather than one that hankers after sales numbers, Global Infonet characterizes itself as a company that executes things for brands and partners.

The distributor is also willing to participate in the Make-in-India campaign and is already on the lookout for strategic acquisitions for local manufacturing capabilities. This will also support its I-onik products worldwide. While it is a matter of time before I-onik brand is finally launched in India, the Group is very optimistic of establishing this brand globally. It is also considering the idea of making acquisitions in the technology sector, including e-commerce, to achieve its growth targets. n samrita@varindia.com

www.varindia.com

June 2015

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VOICE-N-DATA

D-Link launches Wi-FiDIR890L Router in India

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-Link (India) has announced DIR-890L, a new highperformance 11AC UltraFast Wi-Fi Router. DIR890L part of ULTRA Performance Series of 11AC Wi-Fi Routers is built with the speed, coverage and processing power needed to support the most bandwidthdemanding applications and devices.

D-Link DIR-890L, AC3200 router is equipped with a wide

array of advanced features, including Wireless 11AC Beamforming to enhance signal strength and throughput, Smart Connect to automatically assign clients to the wireless band providing the best bandwidth and an advanced QoS engine with a drag-and-drop UI to provide an easy way to prioritize applications and devices.

Oppo to setup handset manufacturing unit in India

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PPO has announced its plans to setup its own brand handsets manufacturing unit in India by August focussing on the domestic market.

According to Sky Li, Vice-President, OPPO, “India is the top priority in our expansion plans in South Asia this year. We have received tremendous support and appreciation from the customers and it is now time to reciprocate the feeling.

The smartphone boom in India indicates the time is just right to focus on expansion plans and

increasing volume in India to a comparable level with the China market in the next five years. 2015 will be a year of expansion for us. We are already among the ‘top three’ players in Indonesia, with more than 11 percent market share. Similarly we have 13 percent in Vietnam and almost 11 percent in Malaysia. Globally, we plan to sell more that 15 million units this year.”

OPPO entered the Indian market in January 2014 and is aiming for rapid growth and expansion across target markets in India.

Ericsson and KT sign MoU over IoT Collaboration

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ricsson has signed a MoU with the South Korean operator KT for collaboration in the IoT (Internet of Things) area. KT and Ericsson identified LTE-MTC (Machine Type Communications) network and IoT service based on the network as the collaboration items, considering battery life, coverage and complexity of devices. KT and Ericsson are targeting at 1H, 2016 for verification of LTE-MTC technology and relevant IoT services.

Arun Bansal, Sr VicePresident & Head of

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June 2015

Business Unit Radio, Ericsson, said, “Cellular networks already provide the coverage and performance that is needed to support IoT services, so we look forward to collaborating with KT to enhance both networks and devices to even more efficiently address IoT opportunities in Korea. We are also working closely with KT on 5G technology, which will include an evolution of today’s LTE and innovations driven by new IoT use cases.”

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Celkon contributes to ‘Make in India’

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n a bid to contribute to a major initiative towards the country, Celkon has declared that it is all set to launch its stateof-the–art manufacturing facility, which will come up in Hyderabad over the next week. The inauguration of the unit is expected to be done by Minister for IT KT Rama Rao (KTR).

Speaking on the unit set up, the Chairman and MD, Celkon Mobiles, Y. Guru stated, “We are very pleased to be one of the first companies to unveil our plans in setting up the manufacturing unit, this unit will greatly boost our ability to meet the demand for our game changing products as well as contribute to the overall ‘Make in India’ revolution promoted by the government of India.”

Airtel rolls out 4G in Haryana

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harti Airtel has launched its 4G services on dongles, WiFi CPEs, Mi-Fi and WiFi dongles in Karnal and Yamunanagar in Haryana.

Customers can now experience the all-new “electrifying” internet browsing experience with the Airtel’s 4G home WiFi solutions.

Manu Sood, Hub CEO – Upper North, Bharti Airtel (India), said, “We are delighted to launch 4G services in Karnal and Yamunanagar in Haryana. The muchawaited launch of Airtel 4G services fulfils a huge market requirement and will give customers in respective cities a choice to upgrade to cuttingedge 4G technology – the most advanced broadband experience available across the globe today. Over the last few months, Airtel has made significant investments in building a robust 4G network here.”

Vodafone strengthens footprint in Maharashtra and Goa

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odafone has invested over INR1,050 crore on ramping up its network and distribution and retail presence in Maharashtra and Goa circle over the past 12 months (April 2014–March 2015).

The company has been focussing on closer engagement and enhancing customer experience in an endeavour to be future ready.

Vodafone has expanded its network footprint by adding over 3,000 new 3G and 2G sites across Maharashtra in the last financial year. During this period, Vodafone has increased its exclusive

retail footprint by rolling out 17 Vodafone Stores and 200 Vodafone Mini Stores.

Vodafone has further strengthened its position across relevant industry parameters – network coverage, subscriber base, retail footprint and revenue market share.

Zebra Technologies sees an opportunity Wireless LAN Space

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ebra Technologies Corporation has reaffirmed its commitment to ramp up momentum for its Wireless LAN solutions for its partners and customers in India.

At the company’s recent Global Partner Summit – where the company has also announced a new channel partner programme– Zebra shared how its WLAN portfolio will continue to serve as one of the company’s key solution offerings for the country that is brimming

with opportunities from the rapid adoption and deployment of Internetof-Things (IoT).

Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director, Zebra Technologies India, said, “Businesses in India will continue to look to IoT solutions to address a variety of challenges.

Zebra aims to provide them exceptional wireless network solutions that will serve as the glue that brings together the power of IoT-enabled devices for seamless operations.”

*astTECS launches Advance Telecom Solution *astTECS has launched *astTECS IP PBX solution for the Real Estate industry. *astTECS integrated telephony solution offers a suite of innovative, tailored and enhanced voice services applications that support activities in office and on the field, to ensure exceptional customer service and maximum sales conversion. *astTECS – IP PBX is built on open standards and is flexible to adopt and integrate with clients existing

infrastructure. *astTECS IP PBX supports smartphones as extensions within Wi-Fi range and helps customer’s reach the sales person for instant services, routes calls to the sales person automatically, who attended the call previously and allows time-based call routing.

The IP PBX can handle outbound and in-bound calls, with features like auto dialling, ACD, voice blasting, reports and more.

FACE TO FACE

NEC Aspires to build a Safer Smart City for All Given the huge opportunities that are opening up in the country with regards to the Smart City project, NEC sees itself as an able contender to this growth story. Koichiro Koide, MD - NEC India shares with VARINDIA the various prospects and the hurdles that it is going through to emerge successful in this pursuit -

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EC believes that it will be able to evolve as a leading global company only if it leverages the power of innovation.

To realize a society friendly to humans and the environment, NEC has charted out a midterm strategic expansion plan for 2015 that clearly states its commitment to “Solutions for Society,” and its reinvention as a “social value innovator”.

For NEC India, FY 2014-15was a very successful year as it was able to achieve an overall profitable growth across its various business units. It has witnessed good growth in segments like Telecom, Public Safety, Hospitality, Retail, IT Platform Solutions and Display Solutions across all major verticals. “NEC would like to offer a variety of solutions including advanced Security & Surveillance, Smart Energy, Smart Water, Smart Transportation, Cyber Security etc., which are relevant in this domain. In the current year, we will continue to achieve growth in all these domains,” says Koichiro Koide, MD - NEC India.

NEC & Smart City This fiscal year i.e. 2015-16, NEC intends to participate in Smart Cities / Safer Cities special projects in collaboration with the Government of India. “We are in conversation with state and central government for a few projects which have been in the pipeline. In addition to that, we are also looking at bringing our global expertise and unique solutions in the areas of Smart Energy, Smart Water, Smart Transportation, Disaster Management and Communication Technologies as innovation which can value add to smart city projects in India,” adds Koichiro.

When most of the IT vendors are betting big on smart city projects, NEC wants to make these smart cities safer and is eager to consolidate on the opportunities that lie in the 100 smart cities mission by the Government of India. In its view, it is crucial that a city should not only attract people, but should also retain them for a long time, be an efficient work place, be easy to commute and be elastic

Koichiro Koide MD - NEC India

for expansion for its citizens. For the same, NEC will work closely with the central and state governments to understand the need of utilizing technology for tackling governance challenges and making a smart city – safe.

However, the biggest challenge is basic infrastructure development and winning the trust of investors. “As many companies are looking to participate, the government should ensure that these investors feel secured and provide easy way of doing business.

Other than that, connectivity is another big issue and there is an urgent need to expand the

KEY Achievements of NEC in 2014

TELECOM – NEC received huge businesses from Telecom operators to help them in 3G and 4G network rollouts. It is now focusing on “Small Cells” technology that will help telecom operators to build heterogeneous networks that not only enables them to handle coverage gaps, but also enables them in expanding their network capacity to meet the rising data demands of consumers.

PUBLIC SAFETY – NEC introduced few cutting edge technologies like Facial Recognition, which promises to revolutionize Security & Surveillance system. It also collaborated with the Surat City police to deploy these solutions.

NEC also entered the Transportation segment successfully by winning an Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) project in a large city.

HOSPITALITY - NEC India successfully deployed world’s No.1 Face Recognition Solution at several leading Hotels such as Lemon Tree Premier (Aerocity) for advanced security and VIP customer identification.

networks,” observes Koichiro.

Also, when it comes to competition, NEC realized that in the Indian market (especially Govt. Tenders), some customers are laying too much emphasis on the cost, because of which, they end up selecting vendors who have no capability to deliver effectively on the projects as they come at a lower cost. “The competition in the market is immense but NEC prefers not to participate in projects where the selection is purely on the basis Lowest Cost (L1 method). We want to participate and value add in those projects where technical expertise, unique value proposition and relevant global experience are given due weightage in the evaluation criteria,” asserts Koichiro.

Looking Ahead....

Given the expected growth rate of the Indian Economy, NEC is confident that the market will continue to be attractive for all Technology companies. Within the next few years, large number of the 100 Smart Cities planned by the Government will reach a certain level of development. This will encourage more and more cities to go for up gradation in ICT and Urban Infrastructure to get branded as Smart Cities, which will create huge opportunities for companies like NEC. Also, the overall economic growth will create several opportunities across all verticals and areas such as Smart Water, Smart Transportation, Smart Energy, Disaster Management solutions, Big Data Analytics.

NEC is investing in all these areas to ensure it is ready with the right solutions when the customers demand for them. n samrita@varindia.com

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CHANNEL BUZZ

Dell recognizes Channel Partner Ecosystem for contribution to Commercial Segment

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ell has hosted the “Dell India Partner Summit”, the largest channel partner and ecosystem event for Dell India till date. The summit was a gathering of 100 top performing preferred and strategic Channel Partners and Distributors of Dell in Prague from 14th – 17th May, 2015. The theme of the summit was “Partnerships” and aimed at further engaging closely with them to understand their challenges and seek feedback, sharing ideas, and discussing strategies and programs to improve sales.

Anil Sethi, Director & General Manager, Channels, Dell India, said, “The partnerships we have built with our Channel Partners have played a critical role in Dell India’s success in the commercial business over the last one year across all aspects of the datacenter.

The Partner Summit – 2015 was an opportunity to further strengthen these partnerships, strategically align ourselves with our channel partners and maximize effectiveness through this route-to-market. The platform raised important discussions surrounding improving customer satisfaction and ensuring smoother transactions. We are looking forward to another

year of great partnerships and phenomenal success through the Channel Route.”

Dell felicitated top-performing channel partners and distributors with awards in terms of revenue, commitment and contributions to the Dell Commercial Business.

Among the 16 key awards presented included the Dell Excellence Award presented to IRIS Computers Ltd for Exemplary Contribution to the IT industry in India.

The four-day summit consisted of engaging and relevant sessions from Dell leaders, including Alok Ohrie, President &Managing Director, Dell India, and Anil Sethi, Director & General Manager, Channels, Dell India. Sessions specific to enterprise hardware and software were given by Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions Group, Dell India, and Murli Mohan, Director & General Manager, Dell Software, respectively to better highlight the innovations taking place by Dell in the space.

There was also a session by technology industry Leader Milan Sheth from Ernst & Young who presented on —“Unlocking Your Organization’s Value”.

Adobe successfully concludes Executive Forum

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dobe has recently concluded its Executive Forum in Mumbai, arming delegates attending from some of the nations’ leading corporations, with useful insights into developing and driving a comprehensive enterprise mobility strategy. The Forum provided an opportunity for business leaders to discuss and deliberate on future technology strategies for their respective organizations.

The Adobe Executive Forum was conceived for businesses to gauge the state of enterprise mobility maturity of their organizations as well as to discover how other companies have gained digital advantage in the mobile enterprise. It was an exclusive convergence of business leaders – CIOs, CMOs, CDOs, Digital Strategists and Heads of Mobility – who came together from a range of industries to exchange ideas and views on the emerging trends in enterprise mobility, how India is performing vis-à-vis the rest of the world and address the issue of how business functions could capitalize on the opportunities ahead to drive business benefits. The sessions at the Forum discussed how the transformation caused by the widespread adoption and penetration of mobile devices,

is forcing organizations to go beyond the question of whether they need mobility, to instead asking how they should be leveraging mobile to improve the business.

Speakers at the event included industry thought leaders and visionaries like Scott Castle, Director, Creative Cloud, Adobe, who shared Adobe’s vision for the mobile enterprise; Michael Stoddart, Director, Digital Media, who shared useful insights into bringing mobility to life; Umang Bedi, Managing Director – South Asia, Adobe; and Shiv Putcha, Associate Director, IDC, who discussed research-based emerging trends in the space, how businesses can ride the mobility wave for business benefits and also unveiled the findings of the IDC APeJ Enterprise Mobility Survey, April 2015.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Elecom Grand Bass Range Earphones 3570 and 3580

Both the Elecom 3570 and 3580 earphones come with Grand Bass system. The GrandBass system deployment realizes juteion of force and high-resolution sound.

3570 is equipped with large-diameter 13.6mm driver unit of original development and 3580 is equipped with large-diameter 15.4mm. The new earphones use a tangle-resistant flat cable and provide a wide range of color choices. The cable is a snazzy two-tone, with a different colour on each side. Both the models are an in-ear type that fits the user's ears to provide high sound insulation and reduce sound leakage. They can be used without being affected by the surrounding noises. It has rounded-design type.

There is a high-quality sound type that has a large-diameter driver and a dual chamber structure for increasing the sound quality. In addition, each type includes two models: a model for AV devices, which can be used with a music player that has a diameter of 3.5mm, a 3-conductor mini-plug jack, and a model for smartphones, which can be used with a smartphone that has a diameter of 3.5mm and a 4-conductor mini-plug jack. The model for smartphones has a microphone to enjoy telephone conversations. These headphone comes with Cord keeper which is convenient for storing of cable at the time of adjustment and carrying around of the cable head at the time of use is attached. These headphones also have remote control which is compatible to many smartphones.

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FACE TO FACE

Tableau leveraging Data Analytics opportunity in India T

he Indian market has shown keen interest in data analytics of late and companies here have realized the importance of empowering their employees with real-time data analysis to stay ahead of the competition. Despite the Indian market being in the early stages of adoption of analytics, with surplus talent, established infrastructure and a mature ecosystem, India is on its way to become a global hub for analytics.

Tableau has been present in the Indian market for more than two years and it is taking the same approach to its go-tomarket strategy that it has used around the world. From the beginning, Tableau has been designed to help people stay engaged in their analytics flow, with a drag and drop interface and features designed for adhoc analysis. “We see some organizations start with small deployments, which grow throughout teams and businesses.

And we see many large enterprises rolling out Tableau to entire departments or companies. We achieve this by enabling easy access to software and helping customers solve their own problems. Many of the biggest names in business in India like Marico, Ashok Leyland, Eveready, Blueocean Technologies, etc use Tableau.

We believe that India is the ‘Global Analytical Backbone of the World’ and hence we are working towards addressing this opportunity in a very committed manner,” says Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager India, Tableau Software.

To leverage this further, Tableau will be expanding its partner ecosystem and ensure their success through sound channel strategies. Currently, the company is in talks with many tier-I companies; its engagement with them would be deep and enable them to drill down to delivery at the customer level. Apart from this, Tableau is also tying up with other technology companies and OEMs to bring Tableau to more organizations in India.

All-New Tableau 9.0...

Tableau 9.0 allows people to answer questions at interactive speed, getting answers without interrupting the train of thought. The features like automatic data prep, a new Analytics Pane, and Smart Maps make Tableau 9.0 more responsive and faster than ever. In addition, Tableau has redesigned from the ground up Tableau

Tableau Software has recently announced general availability of Tableau 9.0, a major release of its fast visual analytics software.

VARINDIA caught up with Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager India, Tableau Software, to know more about the new features of the software and how it would get positioned in the Indian market Server and Tableau Online, to deliver performance and a new experience that makes it easy for large teams to share and collaborate with data. “Data is an integral part of every industry these days and it is imperative for companies to better leverage the insights their data has to offer. Tableau from that perspective is not industry/ vertical specific and can help any company from any vertical make sense of their data.

While we don’t go to market by verticals, Tableau is used in pretty much all the segments of the industry,” asserts Deepak.

One of Tableau’s greatest strengths is, however, its community. The company offers free trainings to its customers in areas like visualization, analytics and usage of Tableau. Many of these are available on its website, on-demand. Users can access free live trainings held weekly. These are in addition to the free webinars and field events to educate the customers and partners. n

Additional Features of Tableau 9.0 • Auto Data Prep: Tableau 9.0 makes cleaning up messy data easier.

The Tableau Data Interpreter will automatically clean up spreadsheets.

Together with the Automatic Data Modelling that was released in 8.2, these new features help people to spend more time on data analysis rather than data preparation. Tableau users will be able to save huge amount of efforts on prepping data and unnecessary ETL projects, since the users can help themselves with automatic data prep in the true spirit of self-service analytics.

• Analytics in the Flow: Tableau 9.0 is designed to help people stay focussed on answering questions without interrupting the flow. People can type calculations right into the canvas and see the data update instantly. A new Analytics Pane makes it easy to drag reference lines, totals, trends, forecasts and other analytical objects right into the analysis. New Level-of-Detail Expressions make new questions answerable, by anyone. This enables users to answer questions which previously were extremely difficult to address. Tableau puts a new approach of frictionless analytics at the analyst’s desk.

• Smart Maps: In Tableau 9.0, maps are more responsive and faster.

They also allow for geographic search and the ability to lasso irregular shapes. This enables users to see their respective geographies in greater detail.

• New Tableau Server: Tableau has refreshed the look and feel of Tableau Server and Tableau Online.

Administrators can manage security with a new visual permission interface and automate the administration of their server with the new REST API. This really enables true enterprise deployments for the biggest of customers and enables it to be done extremely easily.o • Faster Performance: Tableau 9.0 workbooks are faster via a number of technologies that include parallel queries, Query Fusion, vectorization and smarter query caches. This ensures seamless experience for endusers enabling analytics to happen without any interruptions or more like frictionless. www.varindia.com

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Event special

13th VARIND A Success S

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IA IT Forum â&#x20AC;&#x201C; tory Retold

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(From Left to Right) – Mr. Deepak K. Sahu, Chief Editor & Publisher – VARINDIA; Mr. P. Balaji, Director, Regulatory & External Affairs, Vodafone India; Mr. Srikant Balchandar, Group CFO, Bharti Airtel; Dr Arvind Gupta, Head IT Cell – BJP; Ms S Mohini Ratna, Editor – VARINDIA; Dr C. Muralikrishnakumar, Sr Advisor – CIT & I, Niti Aayog and Mr. Rajan S. Mathews, DG, COAI

Leading in a Digital World: Digital India- Impacting Indian Economy Overview Digital India Conclave /IT Forum 2015, 22nd May, in New Delhi, India, brought together more than 400 CIO/CTOs and senior IT executives to understand and prepare for Leading in a Digital world. In the day- long event that witnessed analyst presentations, keynotes, sponsor presentations, peer-to-peer interactions and five different tracks of panel discussions, it became clear that digitisation that is going to impact the nation in the long run by creating new opportunities, capabilities, business models and leadership paradigms will shape the emerging digital industrial economy. Out of the nine pillars of digital India, deliberations on five important

pillars have been discussed which are of much importance.Organisations therefore need to develop end-to-end digital engagement strategies and comprehensive digital operating models that address suppliers and employees just as much as customers.

With topics ranging from Digitization to Mobile Governance, Skill development to the growth in Local Manufacturing, the Digital India Conclave served as a meeting ground for the who’s who of the ICT industry.

The event was supported by Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India and partnered by EMC, Cisco, VMware, Qualcomm, NIXI, TCIL, WEBEL, STPI and

Digitization is considered to be driving economies around the Globe and has direct impact on GDP of countries because of it having greater magnitude and reach. India has emerged as one of the major players in the IT sector and has now become an IT hub for various multinationals across the Globe.

However, to make the Digital India programme a success Broadband connectivity is essential for creating not just a cutting edge broadband network, but also a powerful ecosystem on which a range of rich digital services could be enabled. Digital India is nothing but the digital revolution, which is about - Transforming of the country into a digital empowered society and a knowledge economy; Governance and service on demand; Infrastructure as a utility to every Indian and last but not the least for Digitally empowering the citizen.

Dr Arvind Gupta Head IT Cell – BJP “One of the key programmes of the Modi government is the Digital India program. Fundamentally we should know what Digital India is all about. In one line if I have to describe it, it is the changing the DNA of what the govt. thinks and how we undertake the activities and secondly, using Digital as an empowerment tool to invert the power pyramid. This means that anybody at the bottom of the pyramid can compete with anybody at the top, as long as you are digitally empowered. The quest for information or the need to get information in time is same in India as in any other parts of the globe, but we fail them by not providing them information and access.”

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Max Security.

The morning session was graced by Dr Arvind Gupta, Head IT Cell – BJP as the Chief Guest along with other dignified guests, the names that included Dr. C Muralikrishnakumar, Sr. Advisor-CIT & I- Niti Aayog; Mr. Savitur Prasad, Principal Integrated Financial Advisor-Indian Army, Mr. S P Kochhar, CEO, TSSC; Mr. Srikant Balchandar, Group CFO - Bharti Airtel and Mr. Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI and Mr. P Balaji, Director, Regulatory & External Affairs – Vodafone India.

Dr. C Muralikrishnakumar Sr. Advisor-CIT & I- Niti Aayog “We are in the mid-way of the 12th Five Year plan and if you remember the thrust of the Plan was to achieve faster, inclusive growth for the country. As part of that, last year we have embarked on major initiatives to achieve the dream we have dreamt couple of years back.

The most important element of this is the Digital India program which as it stands today has more than 1, 20,000 crores committed, which is more than $ 20 billion and with a lot more other initiatives in the pipeline, this number is going to grow.”

1st Panel Discussion – “Achieving Digital India by 2020: Opportunities and Challenges”

The Nine Pillars of Digital India say broadband highway, universal access, public Internet access, e-Governance, e-Kranti, information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for jobs and early harvest program needs to be achieved by 2020 or before and so one has to look at the challenges and see how it needs to be overcome by making proper strategy and monitoring it at regular intervals. These Nine Pillars of Digital India was discussed at the 1st Plenary Session for the day which was entitled – ‘Achieving Digital India by 2020: Opportunities and Challenges.’

The session was moderated by Dr Arvind Gupta, Head IT Cell – BJP and was joined in by panelists Mr. S P Kochhar, CEO, TSSC; Mr. Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI and Mr. Srikant Balchandar, Group CFO - Bharti Airtel.

Mr. Kochhar remarked that just like a house cannot be complete by simply building the pillars, the Digital India initiative cannot alone be delivered with just the nine pillars deemed necessary but it has to be in a manner that it suits the person receiving the services. Mr. Rajan said that Digitization will have to be seen as a complete transformation of the whole approach of how we do business, rather than just digitally converting manual processes. Mr. Srikant suggested that Digital India 2014-19 is the much needed tonic for the country as it can redefine it in very many ways and we will have to really make it happen.

2nd Panel Discussion – “Creating a Digital Highway for All”

The 2nd Panel Discussion was based on the opportunity of ‘Creating a Digital Highway for All’ and was moderated by Mr. Pravin Prashant, Co-founder – TeleAnalysis. The key speakers in this panel were Shri Vinit Goenka, Member, Taskforce, Ministry of IT, Shipping, Highways, Govt of India; Mr. Sridhar Krish, COO, Tikona; Mr. Vishal Saxena, VP-Sales (India Digitization & Smart Cities), Cisco; Mr. Dmitry Shukov, CEO - MTS India and Mr. R. K Bahuguna, CMR-RailTel Corporation of India.

Mr. Dmitry said that MTS always supports any idea regarding Digitization and it sees a great opportunity in the data services market in India. Mr. Bahuguna pointed out that wi-fi is still not a financially viable business in the country as clear funds are still not allocated yet, but once this is provided free of cost to the people, the access to broadband will be available. Mr. Sridhar said that with the vision of Digital India before us and with just 4-5 years in hand, the fundamental aspect now is to quickly get into it and implement whatever mission we have in front of us.

But for that we need to ensure if we are laying the right goals Based on his observations, Mr. Vishal said that when we are building this kind of infrastructure, the end objective must be very clear – which is to enable services beyond that infrastructure. The idea is not just to create optical fiber or build electronic network but the idea of how to provide services on top of it. Mr. Vinit summed up the discussion by emphasizing on the fact that in addition to lack of infrastructure, low last-mile connectivity, challenges of digital literacy, there is a still higher challenge of delivering the services or content in the local languages. He also informed that the objective with which the Task Force has been built is been looked into and the gap that exists in the Shipping and the Roadways infrastructure is being tried to be bridged.

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3rd Panel Discussion – Digital/ Mobile Governance: Where are We Heading?

India will achieve GDP growth of 8 -8.5 percent in FY 2015-16. The Trinity -Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile will help in implementing direct transfer benefits. Even issuance of Payment Bank License will help in strengthening digital economy. All this is a good sign for the Indian economy. It was to discuss these developments that the next discussion was initiated, which was on Digital/Mobile Governance. Mr. Ashish Sanyal, Independent e-Governance & ICT4D Consultant, Former Director, DeITY moderated the session by inviting speakers Dr. Shefali S Dash, Deputy Director General, NIC; Mr. Krishnan Dharmarajan, Executive Director, Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion; Mr. Girish Trivedi, Co-Founder - Monk Consulting and Mr. Upender Jit Singh, MD – WEBEL. Mr. Sanyal mused that though the term Digital India has been coined recently, the digitization drive has swept the country almost 5-6 years back when govt. organizations have been engaged in digitizing their assets and documents for a smoother mode of working. Mr. Upender mentioned about a project called ‘Matir Katha’ that has been undertaken with the Dept. of Agriculture, Govt. of West Bengal, which is a tabbased appliance where farmers can put up details about their farm and guide the distributors in terms of relevant information. He also detailed at length on what the West Bengal govt. has been doing on the mobile governance platform. Mr. Girish pointed out that a culture change has to happen for any kind of innovation to get accelerated. The integration, adoption of different technologies will necessitate and determine the pace of change in a society like ours. Mr. Krishnan discussed that mobile being a great platform, it should not be only about adding hundred different gizmos to it but it should be used in a way which is beneficial for the destitute of the country and making the optimal use of a mobile by making them access the services. Dr. Shefali stressed on the popularity of business apps in the business world and the couple of initiatives the govt. has taken wherein NIC has been involved.

4th Panel Discussion – “Digital Manufacturing: Are we Moving in the Right Direction?”

The 4th Panel discussion of the day was on Local Manufacturing which was moderated by Mr. Gyana Swain, Editor – TeleAnalysis and the panelists included Mr. Sanjay Vidyarthi, MD – iQoR; Mr. Hari Om Rai, CMD, Lava International; Mr. Dinesh Prasad, Head, Devices, Qualcomm-India & South Asia; Mr. Kapil Wadhwa, Founder & Managing Director - Champion Computers and Mr. R K Pathak, Director, TCOE. While the Government is making right noises for Make in India and the industry is also reciprocating in similar fashion, the discussion gave an insight on the sectors which are leading and the ones which are lagging still in this race.

Mr. Dinesh pointed out India is a mobile first economy and that Qualcomm strongly feels that there is a whole ecosystem of talent that can get this going. He further said that the Make in India project should not be carried away with just the manufacturing side of the angle but look into broader perspectives of things and larger areas like designing of products, passive components etc. Mr. Hari said that whether it is to be called a hype, but Make In India is the need of the hour. India having a huge population needs to tackle with a big problem of unemployment and an initiative like Make in India will have the solution to it. Mr. Sanjay asserted that the big disconnect in India as far as manufacturing is concerned is the complete lack of the building blocks which are necessary to do mass scale manufacturing – there is no ecosystem in terms of the presence of SME sector who will support this initiative of building India. Mr. R K Pathak gave his support in favour of design-led manufacturing by stressing the need for building R&D capabilities, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and developing manufacturing standards in India. India has no contributions to the global standards and it has to come out in the open to be a part of it. Mr. Kapil said that the current duty barrier has created a gap; so one needs to first contemplate on becoming strong within the country and then going strong globally.

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5th Panel Discussion – “Skill Development: Where are the Gaps and How are we Addressing?”

The last discussion of the day was on Skill Development and was moderated by Mr. Pravin Prashant, Co-founder – TeleAnalysis and was attended by speakers Mr. Amit Rawat, Sr. Program Manager-EMC Academic Alliance – South Asia- EMC; Mr. Atul Bhatnagar, COO – NSDC; Col Pramod Swarup Gupta, Deputy Director – TSSC. The discussion summed up that in order to achieve the dream of a Digital India, we need people with different skill sets. Both the government and the industry needs to see the gap areas and then train people with required skill sets so that things can move at a fast pace.

Mr. Atul explained that on education front, around 75% of the graduates are not employable because they don’t have specific employable skills. NSDC steps in to bridge this skill gap and give the right direction and by 2022 aims to train skills of 150 million people across 20 growth sectors. Col Pramod said that if we are to skill the huge manpower of India that has a population of 1.2 billion people, India would be a global hub. The problem in India is that between the education and the skill system, there is a vast gap. We do educate people and give them a degree but at the end of the day they are not actually job employable. Mr. Amit pointed out skill development is not something new we are talking about now. We need to first understand who our audience are when we talk about skill development – primarily it could be the students there in schools, colleges or it could be those who are already out in the market but are not skilled enough or it could also be those who are employed but need further skill development.

Mr. Shankar Aggarwal, IAS Secretary- Labour & Employment – Govt. of India “Today India is being recognized for its expertise, knowledge and IT professionals all over the world.

We are passing through an exciting phase today. We have a new government in power that is passionate, focussed and wants to do a lot of good things for every citizen of this country. The idea is to bring peace and prosperity to the country across all sections of the society. To do that, the first and the foremost is to bring in an environment of good governance. And that is why the Honorable PM says that we have to go in for minimum govt. and maximum governance.”

Mr. B J Srinath DG-ICERT, Govt. of India

Mr. Ashish Khetan Vice Chairman-Delhi Dialogue Commission, Government of Delhi “Technology played a very important role during the election campaigns of Aam Admi Party (AAP). It was an equalizer that helped to deliver our message to the public unlike before when you have to take help of pamphlets, banners to reach out to the people, which was also very costly. The coming of Social Media has also spelt a big boon to political parties like us because of the many benefits that it offers. It is because of technology that you become socially, politically and also morally accountable to your people and if you remember one of our manifestoes speak about bringing in accountable governance, transparency with the help of technology.”

Mr. Savitur Prasad Principal Integrated Financial Advisor-Indian Army “We as a citizen of this country are basking in the glory of digitization and trying to put it to our advantage. But the question is whether we are the owners of this digitization or simply users. It is good that we are adopting the Digital India initiative, but we should not forget that we still do not have the roots from where digitization will branch out to the rest of the society – our manufacturing infrastructure, without which we cannot call this initiative a success. None of the servers, laptops, desktops sold here are built in India. A simple change in the policy is what is required at this point.”

“Technology has been shaping the way we have been existing and it has had a deep influence or impact on our lives. It is because of Information Technology that we Indians could prove our worth and show them we are no less. But there are also certain challenges that Technology gives rise to that leaves us pondering of whether Technology is a boon or a bane to us. It becomes so hard at times that we are not able to decide whether we humans are leading technology or technology is leading us.”

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Evening Session: "Technology Enablement for Digital India"

[(From Left to Right) – Ms S Mohini Ratna, Editor – VARINDIA; Mr. Deepak K. Sahu, Chief Editor & Publisher – VARINDIA; Shri Ashish Khetan, Vice-Chairman, Delhi Dialogue Commission, Government of Delhi; Shri B. J. Srinath, DG, ICERT, Government of India and Shri Navin Verma, IAS, Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India] Following the success of the morning session and several power packed discussions later, the evening session with the ceremonial lamp lighting attended by the Chief Guests of the evening Shri Shankar Aggarwal, IAS, Secretary- Labour & Employment – Govt. of India ,Shri Navin Verma, IAS, Addl. Secretary-Cabinet Sect., Government of India; Shri N Ramarao, IAS (Retd.), Addl. Chief secretary, Govt. of Maharastra;; Shri Savitur Prasad, Principal Integrated Financial Advisor, Indian Army, Government of India; Mr. B J Srinath, DGICERT, Govt. of India; Mr. Ashish Khetan, Vice Chairman-Delhi Dialogue Commission, Government of Delhi. The Forum was attended by around 200 guests that included CIOs & CTOs from Telecom and large enterprises. The topic of the evening session was ‘Technology Enablement for Digital India’.

However, it was the unveiling of the 4th edition of the Brand Book that apparently was the most exciting and the awaited phase of the event. A Book that features the Top ICT Brands of the country has gained prominence in the industry of being the most sought-after Coffee-table Book.

Like every other year, the awards for Most Trusted Companies

and Brand of Excellence have been given away to 10 corporates based on the votes casted on the company’s website. The 5 companies felicitated under the category of Most Trusted Companies are EMC Corporation, HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd., VMware Software India Pvt. Ltd., SAP India Pvt. Ltd. and Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd. The Brand of Excellence awards have been given to 5 companies that include Dell India Pvt. Ltd, Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd., D-link India Ltd., Canon India Pvt. Ltd and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. The awards are based on the votes casted on the VARINDIA website where 3500 respondents voted for their favorite companies.

The Lucky Draw contest by VARINDIA was another part of the event that generated a big interest from the audience, with 6 lucky winners walking away with 3 iPads and 3 iPhones respectively.

The 13th edition of IT Forum concluded on a very interesting note, driving home the message that with a large digitally enabled middle class, India as a young country is bound to see more growth and change, thus spelling opportunity for everyone.

Eminent Guests

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Winners of 13th IT Forum

Dell receiving the award as the Brand of Excellence

Tally Solutions receiving award as the Brand of Excellence

HP India gets the Award as the Most Trusted Company

AWARDS Most Trusted Companies EMC Corporation, D-Link winning the award as the Brand of Excellence

HP India Sales Pvt. Ltd., VMware Software India Pvt. Ltd.,

VMware receiving the award as the Most Trusted Company

SAP India Pvt. Ltd. Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd.

Brand of Excellence Dell India Pvt. Ltd Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. D-link India Ltd. Canon India Pvt. Ltd EMC receiving the award as the Most Trusted Company

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

Check Point Software receiving the award as the Brand of Excellence

Unveiling of the 4th Edition of the Brand Book

The unveiling of the 4th edition of the VARINDIA Brand Book was done in the presence of Shri Shankar Aggarwal, IAS, Secretary- Labour & Employment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Govt. of India; Shri N Ramarao, IAS (Retd.), Additional Chief Secretary, Govt. of Maharastra; Mr. Savitur Prasad, Principal Integrated Financial Advisor, Indian Army and other revered guests.

The Brand Book on ICT Industry is published annually covering a roundup of the happenings, focusing on the branding and positioning of the products and services of the Indian IT Industry. It primarily targets to reach out to the end customers in the segments of Government/PSU, technology driven organizations, IT& ITeS, Biotech/Pharmaceutical and Banking/BFSI sectors. The content produced is based on feedback taken from the CEO/CMOs of leading global brands and Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest brands on how to meet business & IT challenges and hence creating a roadmap for positioning the brand together. This alone makes the Book a big success. www.varindia.com

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INDIAN MARKET SCAPE

India’s Software, Services and ITeS Exports Market



From ‘Destination India’ to ‘Brand India’, Indian software export industry developed strong brand equity in the global market. Today it employs millions of individuals and  professionals thereby contributing significantly in India’s job market and GDP.  

At present India’s software exports account for about 6 per cent of India’s GDP which is a whopping number. India’s software market witnessed a steep rise in the last decade because of the growth displayed by companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS, HCL and Tech Mahindra, among others.

“Today, India’s competence in IT, more significantly in computer software and information technology enabled services  recognized globally. India today is the global leader in the outsourcing industry with half of the world’s back office being located here,” outlines a study conducted by ECS.  While the US remains the cornerstone of  India’s software export story, of late Indian  companies have realized the potential of  moving to markets such as Europe, Middle     East and Africa, etc. Despite challenges   in the software exports market, Indian IT     companies continue to outsmart global  counterparts. They have gone up the value      chain in terms of improving their software delivery and addressing clients’ needs in the wake of emerging trends such as cloud  computing, social media, big data, Software    defined everything, analytics and Internet of    Things (IoT), among others.   In this interesting shift, there has been     

India has  claimed supremacy in the emerged as one of the most vibrant and delivery market globally exciting sectors in India’s economy. With a software service because of which it is now known as the ‘Back small beginning in early 80s, it has now grown  Office of the World’.

Software development into a broad based comprehensive industry.  and information technology enabled services  India’s software exports have a significant (ITeS) including business process outsourcing contribution to India’s economy as it employs of individuals thereby playing a key (BPO)/ knowledge process outsourcing  millions    services (KPO) industry in India overtime role in India’s growth.

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          has yielded the industry with new confidence.   Measures announced by both countries have       seen the exchange of talent thereby boosting

the prospects of growth of IT services. Since the US is still the biggest base for Indian IT,  the improved relations have animated the market. Experts believe that the future looks exciting and positive as the IT-BPM industry  has begun to evolve dramatically in terms of     scale and complexity.       The industry has begun to prioritize       domain based on potential size, market     readiness and the growing significance of  policy evolution. Some of the players have   begun to serve customers with specifically  tailored models for each specialized domain in the IT-Business Process Management (BPM)       sector.

From Destination India to Brand India       Indian IT-enabled services and software downfall and rise of giants in  the Indian and systems. The shift in power centers and    services market is no longer the same. It has  evolving technology added new dimensions software market. While the citadel of Infosys   achieved many milestones over the years.    the slowdown, the market. Despite – once known as bellwether of Indian IT – to the First it went ahead from mere body-shopping. faced challenges of its own, especially when growth in the IT exports market remained Secondly, it attracted a whole lot of global Notwithstanding, many all the founding members moved out of the upbeat and constant.   software giants to set up delivery centres in revoked their IT hiring company, TCS strongly registered its global of the IT companies  India.

India’s talent was in huge demand and footprint and became the new face of Indian   recession. This trend was   plans during the is still in demand.

To compete with Infosys,     fleeting as the recent consumer confidence IT. However, the market is still confused on     global market has once again brought Wipro, TCS, HCL, Mindtree, Tech Mahindra who will lead India’s IT in the future since in the   and others, global players in the same domain cheers in the services market.

TCS has had a rough ride with its profits      “A gradual revival in consumer confidence, chose India as their destination. Global coming down in last two quarters. But this   is much needed for the market like India. leading to a return of discretionary spending players including Accenture, Capgemini and   The basis on which Indian export story stood and increased demand from the U.S. and IBM, etc heavily invested in India on R&D product development.

Europe, is expected exportsandoffshore on was the labor arbitrage.  But eventually     to see Indian  IT    Today, the Indian software export this advantage waned. Companies in the grow 13-15 per cent in 2014-15 to reach $97global market faced problems, especially the 99 billion,” reveals NASSCOM in its recent industry has come much ahead. It has moved beyond ‘destination India’ to ‘brand India’. financial sector which accounted for more report.

Indian software services are considered to be Figures released by National Association than 40 percent of Indian IT revenues was in  soup. Other challenge that contributed to the of Software & Service companies (Nasscom) the best in the world.

In short, India has established its brand crises of Indian companies was their inability underline that the overall Indian software and equity in the global IT market. Indian IT BPO industry add revenues of $13-14 billion to graduate to the next level.   Business models, on which TCS and to existing industry revenues of $118 billion. software and services firms are capable of others, worked for years,  further says that  The industry body domestic offering unmatched software product/ Infosys, including packages; a  wide spectrum of IT services such  period will grow at 9-12 per  are today challenged by new players either revenues for the  as system management and maintenance, billion during this from the sub-continent or outside. It is a cent and reach Rs. 1250-1280    mobile applications, Cloud Computing, Next  has successfully journeyed year. The industry positive move. The  challenge has forced the    generation user interfaces, GPU computing, traditional IT exporters to relook at their ways from hardware to enterprise software to  consultancy services, system integration, of doing business. This was the reason when  digital solutions in the recent years.  chip design, E-Governance, E-Commerce, IT In the whole process, the revival in IndiaVishal Sikka, the new face of Infosys, allowed enabled services covering banking/financial/ US relations after the visits of Narendra Modi    Infosys’ employees to use Facebook also     and  gifted iPhone6 to many of them. Perhaps, the and Barack Obama into each other’s countries insurance sector. Their IT enabled services also Indian IT exporters have realized the need to practice what they preach. Thus, traditional software kings are now learning from startups and mid-size companies to graduate to the next level. Several new players have cropped up in the market in last few years. Many of these companies are offshoots of existing players. One such example is Happiest Minds, which is an offshoot of Mindtree. Similarly, former top executives from these IT majors gave birth to new players. Most of them tried to play their cards with new business models.

And customers in the US, UK, Europe and other places liked it.

Market scenario All said and done, Indian IT firms and IT professionals have won world-wide recognition in terms of their technical competence, domain knowledge, experience and expertise for offering quality IT services, and their exposure to working on various platforms

              

           

                 www.varindia.com

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                 include CAD/CAM Multimedia, animation Indian workforce is able to accommodate in work, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) any work culture. It is visible from thousands assignments, Call centre related assignments, of engineering people working on the client sites in different countries. as well as Knowledge Process Outsourcing    Since it is a knowledge driven industry, it (KPO) / Legal process Outsourcing (LPO),      medical lab, diagnostic and dental services, requires a team of highly skilled individuals to      make it a success. India’s focus on producing medical transcription services, e-publishing    skilled individuals through its worldclass data conversion or digitization, type-setting, copy editing, content and design, graphics institutions including the IITs has paid off.

Even today it has a huge focus on producing etc. skilled engineering talent. Government of Strengths of Indian IT services The software industry is not only growing India has played a key role in driving the exponentially, it is moving up the value chain. talent through its focus on increasing the IITs It is evolving, from the initial staffing to and seats at the graduate level. If the current software development - where it is currently    base of engineering and management colleges the world’s major supplier of engineers - to in India is to be believed, India have 16 Indian   Institute of Technologies (IITs), 13 IIMs, 30 integration and IT business consulting.  National Institute of Technology, 12 Indian It has a several crowns to wear. It provides  today one of the largest pool of technically Institute of Technology. In total there are qualified high class IT manpower. It can 5672 Engineering Institutes in India in 27 boast of enormous skilled human resource States and Union Territories. Approximately, compared to developed countries leading to 1.5 million Engineering Graduates pass out    lower manpower cost nearly one tenth of every year in India  India a The credit goes to the vast educational those in developed nations, thus giving  advantage. It offers a and institutional infrastructure for producing comparative wide range  of services from support / data processing to the skilled professionals. Today, the Indian sophisticated software systems etc. In addition, IT Services and ITES sector employs over 3 it has rich experience of working with large million knowledge professionals. According to global companies and enjoys high credibility. an estimate, the industry indirectly employees It has expertise on a wide variety of platforms. 9 million people, which is huge number. The

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biggest proof lies in the presence of almost all major IT players in the world which have set up subsidiaries or collaborations in India.

Domestic software services market Domestic market accounts really small for software services. If the industry numbers are to believed, during the year 2013-14 India’s domestic computer software and services market was accounted Rs. 114779 crore (US$ 19 billion) registering a growth of 21.86 percent (8.32 percent in US$ terms) over the year 2012-13 when the domestic software / services industry was estimated at Rs. 104700 crore (US$ 19.39 billion).

Export of Software and services including ITeS / BPO. Indian IT is primarily dependant on software and services exports which is 81.55 percent of the total production of software and services. Only 18.45 percent is consumed by the domestic market. According to a study, export of computer software and services (including ITES / BPO) witnessed a growth of 25.31 percent (12.01 percent in dollar terms) during the year 2013-14 over the year 201213. The study further outlines that “in value terms, export of this sector during 2013-14 is estimated to be Rs. 507500 crore (US$ 84009 million) up from Rs. 405000 crore (US$ 75000 million) estimated in the year 2012-13.

India’s share in the global market During the year 2013-2014, the global software market was accounted for US$ 407 billion. India’s share in the world market during the year 2013-14 was estimated to be 15.64 percent. It is a considerable number, yet it calls for further penetration. However, the preference of India as a preferred IT destination for outsourcing and ITES / BPO is apparent from the total number of countries to which India is exporting its software and services. On an average India has been exporting software / services to more than 151 countries. It is a whopping number. Name any IT software company you can think of, it has presence in India. It not only brings vast talent pool but the expertise and experience of handling the operations for almost all kind of enterprises in the world. n

SPECIAL FEATURE - PSU DIGITIZATION

Is Digitization in PSUs still far from reality?

PSUs contribute a major chunk to the Indian economy and have been playing a pivotal role in its growth ever since the days of Independence. However, their slow growth pace as compared to their private-sector counterparts has been a matter of concern for years now, leading to even closure of some units. A switch to a digitization strategy can help the company head past to development and forgo many of its older policies

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here is a lot of talk going on about digitization today after the recent thrust put on the “Digital India” initiative by our Hon’ble Prime Minister. While this may pass on as just another initiative started by the government if proper impetus is not given, this can also be seen as a big opportunity for India to come at par with China or even surpass our neighbor.

It is also true that Make-in-India or Digital India initiatives are not something which can be implemented overnight or can be realized within a year. It will take another 4–5 years for them to at least come up and another 10 years to be a full-fledged project.

In a nutshell, Digital India is an initiative of the Modi Government to integrate the government departments and the people of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to citizens electronically by reducing paperwork. The initiative also includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks.

While the creation of digital infrastructure forms the core part of Digital India, other key components include digital literacy and delivery of digital services.

Digitization helps to run every part of a business – be it reaching to customers,

B.V.L. Narayana Director (Passenger Systems) CRIS

stakeholders or competitors; running a plant; generating revenue and delivering services.

Going forward, the Digital Industrial Economy will be built on I-SMAC (I-SMAC is Internet of Things, Social Media, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud). Iot is driving a new era of innovation with sensors and supports

Savitur Prasad Principal Integrated Financial Adviser, Indian Army “Faith and confidence is a big thing; if these get collapsed, it will impact the reliability of so many people.

We as a citizen of this country are basking in the glory of digitization and trying to put it to our advantage. It is good that we are adopting the Digital India initiative, but we should not forget that we still do not have the roots from where digitization will branch out to the rest of the society – our manufacturing infrastructure, without which we cannot call this initiative a success. In the present environment, if we look at the number of initiatives coming from ministries and PSUs, it is really huge. But we are going to miss a great opportunity and lose out on a big aspect, if we happen to miss the Make-in-India initiative. It is time we follow the Chinese model. PSUs on their part should take the initiative in terms of coming forward by putting forcefully their viewpoint.”

digitalization and digital business which will be further driven by smart wearables and enhanced mobile devices that connect people to business opportunities more effectively.

IoT platforms will make it easier for businesses to build and deploy IoT solutions that can be used for digital business which includes data integration and data quality capabilities, having critical importance by combining physical and virtual world.

PSUs and Digitization – Challenges and Opportunities While on the one hand we talk about building a digitally privileged nation, it is a fact that most PSU organizations are not yet prepared for a “digitally-charged future”.

Data about customers, competitors, suppliers and employees are exploding beyond one’s imagination, but these data have not been put to effective use so as to analyze and utilize it for increasing revenue and profitability of the organization. It is getting increasingly difficult to keep and maintain these data in a digital format and retrieve them, when required. In fact, more than 60 per cent of CEOs, unlike their counterparts in private corporate, are yet to form an integrated physical and digital strategy.

Manish Kumar Garg Senior DGM (Planning & Management Services) – BHEL

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Best Practices in PSUs

Rajeev Chawla General Manager (IS), Indian Oil Corporation Limited But if seen the other way round, Indian PSUs are already faced with many challenges which make it next to impossible to implement any new changes, be it in IT, service and business delivery or financial management. In spite of playing a pivotal role in shaping up the health of the economy in many ways, they are the most ignored lot. Some of the factors which work as a deterrent are: Heavy losses, Influence of political factors, Work delays, Pricing policy, Use of Manpower Resources, Inefficient Management and so on.

Scaling up is a major issue for them for lack of finance and proper policies. Says Rajeev Chawla, General Manager (IS), Indian Oil Corporation Limited, “We are users of the NIC portal and we started two years back with tenders up to Rs.5 lakh, but now it has gone down to Rs.2 lakh. Most of our people preferred to go the e-procurement way rather than going the physical way, but my observation is that they are not able to scale up. In government and PSUs, procurement has become a dirty word. The market is growing, changes have become rapid, but our processes still remain slow. We are also lacking on the social media platform. If a customer has a grievance, he has to log on to our portal.”

The potential of the Cloud has also not been realized so far and hence its roll-out has not been possible in many of the organizations.

Agrees Sunil Kumar, Group General Manager, Internet Ticketing, IRCTC, “PSUs and government bodies find it very difficult to float tenders. We have to remove obstacles in using the Cloud. If we move to the cloud, we can reduce one-and-a-half to two years of project life, but there are policy issues that are delaying the process.”

Nevertheless, IRCTC is publicly handling a number of transactions on its web site. Last year, it had 18.4 crore transactions worth more than Rs.20, 000 crore. It has innovated its payment systems through a double verification process. It has partnered with CRIS to change its platform.

Mr. Manish Kumar Garg - Senior DGM (Planning & Management Services) – BHEL points out that special impetus needs to be given to the IT sector, especially the software sector if we need to make the Make in India initiative a successful one. “There are circulars from the govt. asking companies to buy 30% minimum component of Indian made IT items. But none of the companies

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are following them. We are using imported software in spite of best of the brains engaged in making softwares.”

However, there are a few that have been assertive in moving on to a completely digital environment. Dr B.V.L. Narayan, Director – Passenger Systems, CRIS asserted that his organization tries to be as indigenous as possible and has developed its software for most of the Railway functions, and because of it being in-house developed, CRIS has the responsibility of even maintaining it and keep it going. “Security is a big issue because there is a whole amount of money that flows in all the transactions and so we constantly monitor it for threats. We have already implemented our disaster recovery system so that in the event of any unfortunate happening, we are up and coming as soon a s possible. We are trying to push up for higher quality standards for the softwares we have developed and have switched to a lot many open source platform so that the cost comes down.

While ensuring the security of digital documents is the initial hiccup for anyone moving to digitization, easy retrieval, less space consumption and convenience are, however, its biggest assets. Digitization also offers increased safety and security in case of any disaster, because digitized documents are easy to be stored in some disaster recovery site compared to physical documents. Though digitization is still a concept for many of the PSUs in India rather than becoming a reality, there are a few to whom digitization has added many benefits rather than being a challenge – • E-procurement – The eProcurement System of India enables the Tenderers to download the Tender Schedule free of cost and then submit the bids online hassle free. Its adoption has reduced the procurement cycle time and has made the bidding process more transparent.

• Automation of operations – While many PSUs still continue to be manual, there are a few quick takers that have embraced automation. Automation has reduced human intervention and also errors. The implementation of ERP in many of the organizations is a fine example of this.

Rupesh Kumar Shah Deputy General Manager (IT) HUDCO Mr. Rupesh Kumar Shah, Deputy General Manager (IT) - HUDCO also says that his company is in the process of complete digitization besides having a very good intranet portal and website. “We have also done e-procurement from an Ahmedabadbased company,” he adds.

The future ahead…

That Digital is the future is a reality that cannot be contradicted by any “school of thought” and with success stories around digitization getting surfaced, the realization has dawned upon everyone that going digital is the best way forward. Companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS have struck major digital deals and these numbers are quite large. When MNCs can chart out growth digital strategies, it is natural that even Indian PSUs and companies can come up with the same. The big gap created has to be filled if organizations want to increase their revenue and profitability with a higher growth rate.

We have also seen e-commerce and digital companies moving very fast in the last 5–6 years’ period and the revenues they are talking about are humongous. And, this is all because of their switch to “digitization”. n

• Centralization of all applications – A centralized IT system and applications is the new order in many of the organizations, where a single department oversees all aspects of technology deployment and management • Deployment of Video Conferencing across the organization • Adoption of Cloud - The Public Sector has increasingly started adopting cloud computing. The value proposition that these would offer would be in terms of reduction in ICT spending, agility, better ROI, smoother processes and flexibility in terms of expansion.

Sunil Kumar Group General Manager, Internet Ticketing IRCTC

SPECIAL FEATURE - PSU DIGITIZATION

EmPowering India R

EIL is a three decade-old Mini Ratna Public Sector Enterprise, headquartered at Jaipur, Rajasthan. It is a joint venture between the Government of India and the Government of Rajasthan, through their respective institutions. REIL as a synergy player in its own sector, positions its brand as an organization which quickly responds to the customers need and adopt technologies, methods and processes, which are contemporary and necessary to maintain and increase the presence in the market, enhance customers’ satisfaction and deliver value-for-money to them.

As part of its technology initiatives, the company has equipped its manufacturing infrastructure with contemporary technologies where it has recently installed 12MW Fully Automatic Line for Solar Module Manufacturing and state-of-the-art Assembly Line of electronics instruments.

A. K. Jain Managing Director, REIL (Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments Limited)

roadMap Ahead

REIL plans to offer products and solutions which empower and impact the sectors of rural development, women empowerment, energy, and rural welfare. The range includes equipment, software and service requirements for the business sectors such as Dairy IT business (for complete hierarchy – Cattle to Consumer (C2C), banking and financial solutions, e-governance applications (to track and monitor large-sized projects), application on handheld computers, education and training, for the complete system development life cycle of its products.

It also plans to offer Cloud-based solutions for its applications in Dairy and other Cooperative institutions, establishment of Data Center for icloud application, Digitization of photographs, documents, etc, Android-based Tablet and PDA

Product In-sight • Under the National Dairy Plan, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission and other agencies, its product portfolio comprises 50 variants of Electronics products and 33 variants of Solar products. The systems has benefited 40 million milk producers and 1.5 lakh villages and more than 2 lakh SPV solutions deployed in the remotest parts of the country.

• Largest off-grid (10MW) solution provider in the country, for deploying the SPV power plants at more than 9,400 locations across the state of Rajasthan.

• GPRS-based DPU-MCU, for wireless data transfer, to meet the requirements of instant secured and accurate data transfer during milk collection from various milk societies to central locations.

• State Level Agency (SLA) for Election Department, Rajasthan for online Electoral Rolls Management System (ERMS), facilitating independent data management of voters by the respective officers at the district level, and helping improved monitoring by the Election Department.

applications, technology upgradation to handle and expedite its ITbased applications.

There are also plans to offer Renewable Energy solutions for the above as well as applications such as off-grid solutions for low-cost housing segments, strategic alliance with PSUs for large- sized projects and business through consortium partners, expanding business with Railways and Telecom Segments, Solar Park & Ultra Megawatt Power Plants, SPV System under CSR of PSUs and Private Sector, Village Electrifications, and Export of PV Systems, etc.

The company has maintained the product price at the same level for more than three decades. REIL is still the only major manufacturer of the product not only nationally but also globally.

Enhancing value chain Being dedicated to take Electronics, Energy and Information Technology to rural areas, REIL’s focus is to address needs through rugged, efficient, reliable and economic products, in line with the world’s best, while maintaining continuous interaction with them to assess their emerging requirements so as to be ready when the needs arise.

REIL believes that technology holds the key to energy security, access to information and economic freedom, which are necessary for empowering REIL rural brethren.

Milestone • Innovative solution to check for Food Adulteration – the first-ever solution in India.

• Sustainable energy solution for Northern Railways – the first-ever Solar Power Generating systems on platforms.

• Successfully commissioned 1 MW Solar Power plant at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra Railway Station for Northern Railway.

• Deployment of CCTV systems at about 143 locations covering examination centres of board of secondary education across all 33 districts in Rajasthan. www.varindia.com

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Leading India to Digitization B

eing a knowledge firm in the telecommunication sector, C-DOT’s role is to ensure that the most advanced technologies are available in the country and above all get manufactured in the country. It wants to bring some basic capabilities to the country and participate in the knowledge creation for India, in an Indian way. In a great

A Manufacturing ‘Hub’ in the making The country is linked with the global trend. The one single trend which is picking up globally is that the amount of data consumption is increasing. And this increase is extraordinary; videos are shared all across, social media is coming along, people are able to utilize services

intellectual and a multi-dimensional society, the need of the hour is to bring the deep intellect to the fore front by increasing the participation of people from every quarters of this society. This simply means that the Indian content can be created, and consumed, distributed, respected, made available and used. It is just that the network for the people needs to be increased, more specifically for them who are totally away from the digital highway.

The rural population is not able to benefit from the available technology because of various limiting factors including illiteracy. C-DOT is working to provide access to these people to all such content without any language barrier.

It has the product called Gyansetu that tries to bridge this gap by providing advanced yet simplified applications that can interact with the rural population, in a way comfortable to them. The possible services are e-governance, e-market, e-Services, Railway Status Inquiry, e-education etc. and is available in all Indian local languages involving less or no intermediary support. This is indeed total empowerment.

in real time and the entire nation is becoming a better connected society.

The telecommunications network is now becoming data oriented. Secondly, the access layer, aggregation layer and the core layer of the telecom network are all becoming bigger and bigger.

Consequently, the trend that is seen is that the voice is becoming almost a commodity and the value added services in all applications is becoming the major trend. The other trend which is coming along is that the data is consumed more by the youth. And the youth is impulsive, impatient, interacting, and also wanting things in 'now and my way'. Looking at these trends in technology, C-DOT wishes to look forward in order to create the network.

India has 7 manufacturers; about 5 are from the private sector. They are ready to manufacture all the technology and are interfacing the ecology for further distribution. This is the next level challenge for C-DOT; of how to leverage to get the best out of the Indian technology industry, of reaching out to the service providers in the private sector. This cannot happen if the nation is waiting for foreigners to come and manufacture technology and then get

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them deployed. The mind set has to be changed. Technology must be agnostic to the fact whether it is built in India or built abroad.

Enhancing value-system C-DOT has a lot of intellectual and technical capabilities. All hardware and software is designed in India. World

class standards are being followed.

C-DOT has thus covered the large part of the ecology, starting from the design of hardware, software to integration and testing. C-DOT also has some success in domain networking, where about 2, 50,000 Panchayats will have the C-DOT technology. It has developed technologies in optical communications, Next Generation Networks, Wireless broadband, Software Applications, and Network Management, thus providing a complete bouquet of technologies to the telecom eco-system.

The Strategy going forward…

C-DOT sees a good amount of interaction at this point of time in the govt sector. Also, the w-fi system that C-DOT has designed to make smart and wi-fi enabled cities is also finding good acceptability. As far as technology is concerned, it is the lesser issue. The bigger issue will be the cost, which is a very important factor in any developing economy. Even more important for the country now is to engage beyond the manufacturers, including small companies and systems integrators. n

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

D-Link DWR-111 3G WiFi Wireless 150N Router

D-Link’s DWR-111 Wireless N150 allows you to connect your 3G mobile connection with speeds of up to 150 Mbps, giving you the speed you need for fast, responsive Internet access. Simply insert a compatible 3G USB adapter to share your mobile Internet connection through a secure wireless network or by using the 10/100 Fast Ethernet port. Surf the web with ease and stream music and video over the Internet to your PCs and mobile devices. The DWR111 utilizes dual-active firewalls (SPI and NAT) to prevent potential attacks across the Internet. WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption keeps your wireless network secure and your traffic safe, allowing you to securely share your 3G connection without worrying about unauthorized users accessing your network. The DWR-111 Wireless N150 Wi-Fi Router can be installed quickly and easily almost anywhere; you just need to simply plug it in to create an instant hotspot. This router is great for situations where an impromptu wireless network must be set up, or wherever conventional network access is unavailable. The DWR-111 can even be installed on buses, trains, or boats, allowing passengers to check e-mail or chat online while commuting or traveling.

Movers & Shakers

NetApp ropes in George Kurian as CEO

Lenovo ropes in Rohit Sandal as India HR Head

NetApp has roped in George Kurian as Chief Executive Officer and Mike Nevens has been elevated by the company as Chairman of Board with immediate effect. While Kurian has been appointed to the Board of Directors, Mike Nevens has been elected as Chairman of the board.

Additionally, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Georgens has stepped down from his position.

George Kurian netapp 150x150 NetApp ropes in George Kurian as CEO and elevates Mike Nevens as ChairmanKurian joined NetApp in 2011 and has served the company as Executive Vice President, Product Operations. He was responsible for overseeing the strategy and development of NetApp’s Product and Solutions portfolio since September 2013.

Lenovo has roped in Rohit Sandal as the company’s India HR Head. Subhankar Roy Chowdhury, the erstwhile India HR Head, will take on a larger mandate as the Global Head HR Strategy, M&A and Analytics.

Based out of Bangalore, Rohit will be leading Lenovo's HR strategy and operations in India. He brings with him over 17 years of diverse HR experience. Prior to Lenovo, Rohit was the HR Director at Dell, where he managed HR for Bangalore, Gurgaon and Noida sites. He also held the Compensation & Benefit leadership role for Dell in India supporting their sharp ramp-up and growth. Prior to Dell, Rohit worked with Mercer Consulting. He comes with a proven track record in leading employee engagement, employee relations and HR Transformation Projects across various business lines.

Sanjay Sharma becomes Regional VP and Head for South West Asia, Redknee

Himanshu Kapania elected as Chairman, COAI

Redknee Solutions is pleased to announce appointment of Sanjay Sharma as the Regional Vice-President and Head for the South West Asia region. Sharma will be responsible for sales, solutions, consulting, marketing and executing Redknee’s professional managed services business, throughout the region.

Based in India, he will work closely with Redknee’s sales and marketing teams to drive strategic client development and growth across South West Asia. With over two decades of experience in the telecom and IT industry, Sharma has held a number of executive roles within global organizations, including Amdocs, IBM Global Services, Huawei and Samsung. Prior to his appointment at Redknee, Sharma was heading Amdocs business for the South West Asia region, and before Amdocs he was heading the carrier software and core network business unit of Huawei Telecommunications for the region.

COAI, in its Annual General Body Meeting has announced the election of its new leadership for the term 2015-16.

Himanshu Kapania, Managing Director, Idea Cellular Ltd. has been elected as the Chairman and Gopal Vittal, Joint Managing Director and CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel Limited, has been elected as the Vice-Chairman. COAI also designated its Executive Council for the new term at the meeting.

Himanshu Kapania has been the Managing Director of Idea Cellular since April 2011. He has rich experience of over two decades.

He spearheaded Idea Cellular Ltd. to be one of top 3 telecom players and also serves on the board of Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt. Ltd. (ABMCPL), the strategic advisory unit of the US$ 40 billion Aditya Birla Group. He is an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology (Mesra), and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

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FACE TO FACE

Acer aims at 10% growth from its “Back to School” Campaign S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, shares with VARINDIA the elements that will make “Back to School” campaign a big success and the growth Acer is expecting from it

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ndia as a market offers diverse opportunities for vendors. They particularly look forward to festivals and other cultural celebrations to come out with special schemes and offers. “Back to School” campaign also happens to be one of those big “seasons” when sales tend to spike up. It has been a tradition for the last many years when the industry rallies around to see what special offers can be brought out for the customers that can influence their buying decision and work in favour of that particular brand, depending on the value proposition they have to offer.

In line with this tradition that the industry has been following for a couple of years now, Acer has introduced its own value proposition in the form of a “Back to School” campaign.

“This is a propelling scheme we are offering to the student community. We have brought in essentially three elements for them to make avail of in order to make this opportunity even more interesting for them. They are – • One-year accidental damage protection plus extended warranty of two years’ worth minimum Rs.6,000/• Interest-free loans through Bajaj Finance worth a minimum amount of Rs.2,000/-, at no extra processing fee • Buyback offer In India, there are a lot of legacy systems which people do look forward to upgrading.

With the buyback offer, a customer will be able to avail a buyback option on their used notebooks. Interestingly, we are not restricting it only to the Acer brand, but extending it to all other brands,” explains S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India.

To make this campaign even more impactful, Acer has associated with Vedantu, an online tutorial platform. As part of the association, upon signing up on Acer’s website, students can avail of Vendantu’s offerings ranging from monthly tuitions, IIT foundation course to preparing for exams such as NTSE and PSA. Vedantu will provide free live online tuition classes worth Rs.500 to anybody who registers on Acer India Limited’s website.

The “Back to School” campaign also promises to provide an opportunity to the consumers who buy Acer notebooks and the all-new Acer One 2-in-1 device a chance of a lifetime to meet their favourite superstar Hrithik Roshan, Acer’s Brand Ambassador.

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"Acer is expecting a 10% growth from this year’s 'Back to School' campaign and hence we are going ahead with our investments across all the platforms" Consumers can participate in a computeraided random selection process for this and as the campaign draws to an end, the process will determine the winners who will be selected to meet Hrithik. “This will also give an emotive touch to the campaign,” says Rajendran.

A 360o approach…

To popularize this campaign and to get the message across, Acer has introduced a 360o marketing campaign by investing in print, TV campaign, BTL (Below the line) activities as in in-store promotions, in-store messaging and point-of sale, merchandising, and so on. Since it is targeted at the student community, EDMs have been shot to a large database of schools. “Earlier, school buying used to be polarized where schools would discuss with 2-3 vendors, negotiate and ask the student community to pick and choose any brands that have been empanelled. But the business model has changed now. Based on feedback from the student community, schools are now propelled to touch base with several other brands in the market,” observes Rajendran.

Also, with students becoming more informative today, digital media like blogs and other social media are being used as a tool to post relevant information on the campaign

directed at this community.

To ensure an effective last-mile delivery, Acer is investing heavily in training its ISPs so that while interacting with the end-customer they would be able to attractively explain the things to them. Acer is, however, not only restricted to the metro towns, but are also using a lot of vernacular media to further its reach to C, D, E class cities. “We have enabled our Master Resellers (MRs), to cater to smaller towns and partners. We are making sure to train them properly. Beyond that, we have the clusters which are a contiguous set of towns which add up to a sizeable addressable market size, and which gets addressed through MRs, but come under the jurisdiction of an individual Acer associate. Besides that, we invest in paper inserts, billboards and localized promotional activities,” says Rajendran.

To sum up…

Acer is expecting a 10% growth from this year’s “Back to School” campaign and hence is going ahead with its investments across all the platforms. While the year is marked with several ups and downs in terms of sales numbers, Acer has been riding the wave of success for some time and is further trying to amplify it with this new campaign. n samrita@varindia.com

PICK OF THE MONTH

Matrix COSEC Access Control Solution M

atrix COSEC is an enterprise-grade people mobility management solution for organizations covering Time-Attendance, Access Control, Visitor Management, Employee Self Service Portal, Roster Management, Contract Workers Management and Cafeteria Management. Matrix COSEC is an all-integrated solution including hardware devices and a suite of software application modules. Matrix COSEC is a comprehensive and flexible access control solution designed to meet access control needs of any organization irrespective of its size, locations, layouts, and timings. Matrix COSEC allows controlling access on all three simultaneous dimensions – user, zone and time by answering the three fundamental questions about who, where and when. In addition, value-added features such as anti-pass back, 2-person rule, first-in user, blocked users, door auto relock, guard tour, man-trap and smart card identification ensure foolproof security of physical assets and safety of manpower.

Key Features • For Enterprises, SME and SOHO s 10 to 1 Million Users s 1 to 65,000 Entry Points • s s

Multiple Credentials Biometric: Palm Vein, Fingerprint RFID Card: Smart and Proximity

• s s

Centralized Monitoring and Control Live Status of all Devices Real Time Data Transfer to Server

• s s s

Limited Access in Secured Areas 2-Person Rule, First-In User Access Zone and Access Level Occupancy Control

• s s s

Higher Security Guard Tour Blocked Users Route based Access Control

• s

Easy Integration for Multiple Applications With Video Surveillance

s s

With Door Alarm With Fire Alarm

• s s s

Applications In Bank, Government Office Jewelry Shop, Warehouse Server Room, R&D Lab

• s s s

Instant Notifications on Exception Door Held Open Door Forced Open Access Rule Violation

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Staying ahead of Threats is the need of the Hour FireEye sees the Digital India drive as an opportunity. While emphasizing on this opportunity, the company's CTO Bryce Boland also points out that a high level of cyber risks are getting reported from India. With these attacks constantly getting innovated, organizations should adopt new ways to counter them

that these hackers have – they prioritize their targets, most likely work in shifts in a collaborative environment, build malware from a coherent development plan, and make inroads over a period of time so as to go undetected.

The cyber attackers are constantly innovating and upping their game.

As cybersecurity goes mainstream, organizations should consider data breaches in a new light – not a source of fear and shame but a business reality. They should anticipate and confront security incidents with confidence.

Owing to the dynamic nature of threats, requirement of skilled personnel to manage security and economic benefits, organizations are increasingly relying on third parties to manage their defense.

With it, FireEye brings the industry's best technology, security expertise, and threat intelligence to protect organizations from advanced targeted attacks.

F

ireEye applies a unique blend of technology, intelligence, and expertise to protect organizations from being compromised and also to detect, prevent, analyze and respond to the threats of today and tomorrow.

FireEye Adaptive Defense is a new approach to cybersecurity that unifies all these three aspects into a nimble framework that can provide a level of protection that people want, delivered the way they want it.

Indian market and opportunities In the absence of data breach notification laws and the mandate to publicly disclose attacks, Indian businesses often don’t know how vulnerable they are. Unlike other countries where breaches are required by law to be reported, and hence make it to the newspapers, Indian organizations end up dealing with the fallout from a breach in isolation. There is also a myth among CIOs/CISOs in India that they have nothing of value to attackers. The reality, however, is that India is reporting significantly high levels of cyber risk. At the same time, our geopolitical situation also makes us a strategic target for nationstate threat actors.

“As the government promotes ambitious new programmes such as Digital India – where citizen records are going completely online, public services are going to be delivered over the web, and the mobile phone becomes the primary financial inclusion tool – the risks to these national assets will increase manifold. This clearly

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Bryce Boland Chief Technology Officer for Asia-Pacific FireEye indicates the large scope of expansion within the Indian market,” stated Bryce Boland, Chief Technology Officer for AsiaPacific, FireEye. “What makes us even more attractive is our large digital population (over 900 million mobile users and over 150 million internet users, to date, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and the fact that Indian businesses are savvy enough to leapfrog to the digital era with ease. And this comfort with digital means that every Indian CIO knows the importance of security now,” he added.

Changing customer behaviour…

Today, firms don’t have a malware problem; they have an adversary problem.

Organizations often face threats from human adversaries with a specific mission, often lying in waiting for many years.

A recent FireEye report on the group APT 30 and their decade-long cyber espionage operation reveals the extent of sophistication and discreet functionality

Expansion plans Since its initial public offering in the third quarter of 2013, FireEye has executed on a strategy to expand its advanced security platform and increase the installed base of customers. In 2014, the company brought together the industry's best technology, security expertise, and threat intelligence to protect organizations from advanced targeted attacks. “We responded to nearly every high-profile breach in the U.S., and we established strategic relationships with Global 2,000 customers and partners around the world. The market for our advanced security solutions continues to expand, and halfway through 2015 we are well positioned to extend our leadership and market share gains with innovative new solutions such as FireEye-as-a-Service and the FireEye Endpoint Threat Prevention Platform.

“Today, Indian organizations are very vulnerable to advanced attacks, and we have a lot of work to do to shift the mindset that traditional defenses fit the bill and help organizations enhance their security posture,” he commented. n aparna@varindia.com

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FACE TO FACE

“We are focusing really strong on Quantum StorNext Solutions” With its recent thrust on its StorNext offering, Quantum has a strong focus on India’s media & entertainment sector. Recounting the dynamic changes that are taking place in this industry both at the business and technical level, Sanjay Hasija, Country Manager- India, Quantum shares with VARINDIA what the company has in store for this industry 2014 has been an exciting year for Quantum. The company has grown 74 % globally but its Indian story is even much bigger, where it has grown 200%. The decade-long Indian operation story is getting stronger now and has been effectively covering the market. Today Quantum has around 100 customers using its products in the country.

Quantum’s StorNext Storage Solution StorNext is Quantum’s scale out storage solution that can provide both the highest-performance and lowest-cost storage in a single managed environment. StorNext as a solution started with the Geospatial space initially but gradually Quantum started developing it to encompass other areas like Oil & Gas, Life Sciences and Genomics etc. Now with StorNext 5, which is its latest release, it has got even stronger by extending to areas like City Surveillance, Municipality, Media & Entertainment, cyber Security & Forensics. Media & Entertainment has anyways been Quantum’s forte all the time.

"We are trying to make this solution even more cost effective and performance oriented for the media industry since with the coming of 4K and 8K video resolutions, the need for high performance video is on the rise. This is also increasingly true for corporate video also" “Whether you talk about Media & Entertainment or any of the areas that constantly gets receiving a lot of data packets, there is a need to capture and analyze this content and find out from where these packets are coming. These data also need to be retained for a long time.

And given these packets are very large, you will have to keep them in an active mode if you have to analyze it. So if you have a 10 GB network, you will get ten times more data everyday. This is an area we are focusing really strongly and our StorNext fits perfectly into it. We are trying to make this solution even more cost effective and performance oriented for the media industry since with the coming of 4K and 8K video resolutions, the need for high performance video is on the rise. This is also increasingly true for corporate video also,” explains Sanjay Hasija, Country Manager- India, Quantum.

StorNext not only allows for performance but also keeps the data in a tiered storage from primary to secondary to the tapes for the long term. “If you want to retain it 20, 30 or 50 years, we have solutions for that. We also have Objects storage which can go on for 100 years,” reiterates Sanjay. StorNext also keeps the entire track of the flow, keeping it initially on the primary and as time passes, get it transferred to the secondary storage or to the tape archive. It also allows the integration with any kind of good storage SAN solution.

StorNExt products start from as low as 12 TB and scale up to petabytes and zettabytes. “The largest installation we have in India

Key Features of StorNext 5 • • •

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High Performance Integration of virtualization of storage Tiering of Data from Primary to Secondary to Tape

June 2015

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Sanjay Hasija Country Manager- India Quantum is of 3 petabytes. If a customer needs to scale up on storage space, he can invest either on the primary or secondary or tape storage,” says Sanjay.

Quantum works with all the large system integrators for deploying the product at the client’s site. It has specialized SIs for all the different areas. For instance, for surveillance it has separate SIs, for Media & Entertainment there are different SIs, and so on. “We are trying to cross train them and make them specialists to work in different areas.

In fact, the role of an SI is larger since they have to integrate all the special tools provided to them on our platform,” he says.

Looking ahead…

The accessibility in the market for Quantum’s products has been pretty high now. Owing to this, there have been lots of investments in terms of manpower and technical support in the Indian market.

Quantum is not into primary storage, but it is planning to get into it. “We are into high performance purpose-built data storage – image, voice and video and we are a leader into that,” says Sanjay.

And this specialization on the part of Quantum is in line with the changing trend. The need to get access to location data and use it for surveillance purpose is driving many Corporates to rely on high quality video and getting them streamed from an offsite location. And Quantum calls this remonitization as this is what going to define realtime video tomorrow. n samrita@varindia.com

VAR MOBILITY

OPPO Mirror 3

The OPPO Mirror 3 has a 8 MP SONY IMX179 Backside Illuminated (BSI) sensor, with a sensor size of 1/3.2 inches and a pixel size of 1.4µm, as well as a large F/2.0 aperture, 5P lens and Blue Light Filter (BLF), 3264 x 2448 pixels primary camera with LED flash and a secondary 5 MP, 720p@30fps camera for videocalls. The OPPO Mirror 3 far outperforms its rivals in terms of the sheer quality of the front camera with its 5MP capability, the golden shooting angle design, and unique Beautify function. OPPO has overhauled its unique Pure Image Engine. It utilizes new PI 2.0+ technology, and provides an intuitive and pick-up and play format for users to turn their photos from idea to reality. It comes with 4.7-inch screen with a compact body that measures only 137.6 × 68.8 × 8.95mm and weighs as little as 126g. Specially crafted for the Mirror 3, is an ergonomic arc at the back, allowing the mobile phone to fit naturally into the palm of the user's hand.

Mirror 3 is running on Android OS, v4.4 (KitKat) with ColorOS and features like Quad-core 1.2 GHz CortexA53, Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 processor and is powered by a 2000 mAh Li-Po Battery. In terms of storage it has 8 GB, 1 GB RAM and an expandable storage via microSD of up to 128 GB. With the 5V-2A charger and OPPO's signature expertise in the field of electrical charging, the OPPO Mirror 3 can be charged to full power within just 90 minutes. This is 60% faster than the standard rate of charging, meaning you can forget about waiting hours for a simple charge.

iBall Cobalt mSLR4 iBall Cobalt mSLR4 is surely re-defining the smart phone and is definitely going to be a new trend to come in future with many smartphones which will double up with a strong camera with detachable lenses! Keeping the users ‘surprised’ with its spellbound features and experience, the bundled lenses include a zoom lens with 8x zoom, a fisheye lens with a 175-180 degree viewing angle, a macro lens with 10x magnification and minimum object distance of 10-15mm, and a wide-angle lens with a 130-degree viewing angle. With Octa Core processor power on board, there is absolutely no stopping from capturing the stunning images with mSLR Cobalt4. It comes with a 5-inch IPS qHD display on Android 4.4 KitKat OS. The phone supports 15 regional languages and is also backed by an octa-core processor, aided by 1GB of RAM. The mSLR Cobalt 4 smartphone is powered by a 2,000mAh battery. It houses an 8MP rear camera on board with a dual-LED flash and autofocus; while there is also a 3.2MP front-facing shooter with a soft LED flash for selfies. The built-in 8GB of internal memory is further expandable with up to 32GB via a microSD card. Connectivity options include dual-SIM with dual standby, 3G, Wi-Fi, USB on the go, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and HotKnot. So whether it’s sharing a song via a simple touch or unlocking the apps via gesture, mSLR Cobalt4 has it all. Keeping your memories safe and intact, mSLR Cobalt4 also comes with free pouch for lenses and cleaning cloth for the lenses.

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VAR MOBILITY

Videocon Mobiles launches Z45 Nova+

V

ideocon Mobile Phones Division has launched the featurerich smartphone Z45 Nova+. Powered by robust 1.2 GHz QuadCore processor and Android KitKat 4.4, Z45 Nova+ offers smooth multitasking and powerful performance, providing the best-in-class Android experience to users.

The device is powerpacked with1, 800mAh battery that ensures longer usage and keeps the entertainment going on for longer durations.

Making user experience a delight for consumers, the smartphone features a 5MPBSI auto-focus rear camera to capture clear photos and HD videos.

While the stunning 4.5-inch FWVGA IPS Capacitive screen

D

ony India has unveiled Xperia M4 Aqua, a smartphone highlighting Sony’s leadership in camera, design, battery and

performance to an accessible price point. This unique device is waterproof and protects against water as well as fine dust particles.

Xperia M4 Aqua

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azen, a smartphone brand of Coolpad, has launched two groundbreaking smartphones on Snapdeal today. he Dazen X7 packs a 5.2" FHD display, 13MP f/1.8 rear camera and 8MP front shooter. The phone runs on true Octa-core 1.7 GHz, with 2GB RAM, and 16GB storage, and is powered by a 2,700mAh battery.On the other hand, Dazen 1 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor coupled with 2GB of RAM along with 8GB of built-in storage.

It sports an 8-megapixel rear camera with a f/2.2 lens and LED flash. It also features a 5-megapixel FF front camera. It is backed by a 2,500mAh battery.

T

offers the best display experience, the 2MP front camera makes the device appropriate for clicking brilliant selfies.

Ensuring app and device safety, Videocon Mobiles offers a 90 days free subscription of V-Secure antivirus app.

New Sony Xperia M4 boasts of performance and design

S

Coolpad enter Indian market with two LTE Smartphones

represents Sony’s renewed mid-range focus with no compromises. Offering the most popular standout features made famous by Sony’s Xperia Z Series; camera capability, twoday battery life and waterproofing – Xperia M4 Aqua brings a proposition and price, products in this section of the market simply cannot match.

Xperia M4 Aqua’s

impressive 13MP rear camera is powered by Sony’s Exmor RS mobile sensor with a large F2.0 aperture, and ISO 3200 sensitivity.

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Spice unveils Stellar 518

S

pice Mobiles has expanded its product portfolio with the launch of Spice Stellar 518. This new smartphone is 3G-enabled and runs on the latest Android 4.4 KitKat OS, with its powerful 1.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor.

This stylish phone has a speedy performance with seamless running of apps, games, data and media.

To facilitate an enhanced availability of the device to customers, Spice has tied up with the leading TV Shopping platform, Home Shop Network 18 for the launch.

Amandeep Singh, CEO, Spice Mobiles, said, “We are pleased to launch the Stellar 518 on Home Shop Network 18, thereby offering our customers a superior product and retail experience at the same time. This product combines high utility functions and offers the perfect combination of great aesthetics and

performance. We are convinced that with Home Shop Network 18’s excellent reach and our superior product, this exclusive tie-up will enchant our customers.”

Spice Stellar 518 has a super-stylish body with an enchanting 12.7cm IPS display. It has an expandable storage capacity of 32GB to store music, movies, photos and videos. The 8 MP Auto Focus rear camera clicks super sharp images, while the 1.3 MP front camera will appeal to selfie lovers.

The device is equipped with a 4,000 mAh Lipolymer battery.

PHICOMM Micromax launches Canvas Knight 2 o build on to forays into India the leadership T position in the Indian market with smartphone market, Micromax has launched Passion 660 its flagship product

P

HICOMM has entered India with the launch of its flagship LTE Android smartphone – PHICOMM Passion 660. It has a 5.0-inch IPS LCD display with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution (FHD) and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with 4G LTE. PHICOMM Passion 660 features a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and a 5-megapixel frontfacing camera. With PHICOMM’s own EXPECT 5.0 UI, Global 4G Roaming support and its unique pedometer, PHICOMM Passion 660 offers consumers a dream like technologically advanced device aimed to enhance their mobile experience.

Canvas Knight 2, the first in the range of 4G smartphones and showcased its upcoming 4G range. The company has been consistently revolutionizing the 3G market since 2012 with the launch of some compelling affordable smartphones and aims to help the Indian consumers unlock the true potential of 4G with this new launch.

Commenting on the launch, Vineet Taneja, CEO, Micromax Informatics, said, “India is at the cusp of digital revolution and we expect 4G technology to push internet usage to an unprecedented level. Consumer demand is constantly shifting towards devices offering multi-tasking capabilities,

24x7 data connectivity with increased video consumption and realtime mobility solutions.

Smartphones always lead any such technology shift, much before fullscale network rollouts are done by operators. In our estimate, 4G handsets already account for 15% of total smartphone shipments, up from 4% two quarters back. Our popular series of Canvas Fire, Unite, Nitro will gradually move to 4G offerings.

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56 pages including cover