E-Magazine May 2017

VMware partners with Google

Oracle expands its footprint in India

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eScan launches a channel incentive programme

Xerox India partners with Compuage Infocom

Digitisation and Role of IoT for Next Generation Enterprise Thursday, 25th May 2017, New Delhi

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Oracle Open World 2017

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Ericsson and Microsoft to accelerate IoT globally

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ricsson will strengthen the global Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem with Microsoft by enabling enterprises to speed up the time it takes to launch mobile network-based IoT services. Ericsson IoT Accelerator allows enterprises to deploy their IoT solutions using Azure, which connects them directly to the ecosystem of mobile operators using the connectivity management service delivered by the Ericsson Device Connection Platform (DCP) which is part of the Ericsson IoT Accelerator.

Ericsson IoT Accelerator provides a continuous incremental set of functionality offered as a service to enable agile creation and deployment of solutions for IoT. The connectivity management service of the Ericsson IoT Accelerator allows telecom operators to design, launch and evolve managed IoT connectivity offerings towards enterprises requiring cellular connectivity.

Cisco to acquire SDWAN company Viptela

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isco has announced its intent to acquire Viptela, a privately held software-defined wide area network (SDWAN) company based in San Jose.

Viptela will expand Cisco's SD-WAN portfolio with increased functionality and simplicity delivered through the cloud.

V i p t e l a provides a compelling SDWAN solution that simplifies management, increases agility and reduces costs of interconnecting dispersed enterprise networks. Its network management, orchestration and overlay technologies make it easy to deploy and manage SD-WAN. This cloud-first approach also aligns with Cisco's Digital Network Architecture (DNA) transition to softwaredriven, automated networks that are more flexible, responsive and dynamic.

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HELLO INDIA

Digital Transformation, Disruption ……..leading the way for Cyber War We are living in an era of disruption and data economy. Transforming business by leveraging cutting-edge digital technologies, experience design and analytics, leading organizations are using enabling technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence and robotics to disrupt their thinking and transform operations, analytics, customer experience and more.The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.

The biggest technology companies in the world today are Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.

The tech firms are collecting more data, are able to get more insights on their customers and hence are able to improve their products and services much more than any other players, thereby attracting even more customers and then in turn generating even more data. Digital transformation involves managing data on Cloud, Social Media, Networking, Mobility, Analytics to deliver real-time financial reporting, with inbuilt Algorithms to enable executives to make nimble decisions and quickly guide them to informed responses in unexpected situations and also to anticipate the future. It is a self-feeding loop which only ends once a tech player has gained almost entire market share.

Today, around a billion devices are connected worldwide. That is still less than 1% of the potential total.

Experts believe that the number of connected devices will grow to 50 billion by 2020. As the number of connected devices continues to explode, there is a new question to consider how will the network devices like switches and access points accommodate the increased data traffic and data density?

Secondly, a million-dollar question is as to how IoT could transform business in future. A simple answer could be: IoT represents a new frontier that is full of both opportunities and risks. The connection of devices, machines, and things allows small- and medium-size businesses to dynamically generate and analyze data, increase operational efficiencies, and power greatly improved business models. The risks of IoT currently include lack of standards and the absence of data security from devices and sensors.

Lastly, the recent worldwide attack of WannaCry ransomware has broken all records and its malicious power lies in its ability to replicate itself and spread across once it is inside a system. It targets computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bitcoin crypto currency. The central bank has directed all banks to shut ATMs across the country until they have enough defence in place to deter the infection and spread of the malware. It is world's biggest cyberattack which has sent the countries into a “disaster-recovery mode”. Cyber experts are working around the clock to protect India from the biggest ransomware attack. Advisors are not in favour of paying the ransom as this does not guarantee files will be released.

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CONTENTS Website: www.varindia.com

Publisher: Deepak Kumar Sahu Editor: S Mohini Ratna Executive Editor: Dr. Vijay Anand Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Consulting Editor: Pravin Prashant Deputy Editor: Samrita Baruah Sub - Editor: Aparna Mullick Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Commercial Manager: Amit Kumar Jha Sr. Marketing Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash Circulation Executive: Manish Kumar Marketing Manager: Dipendra Kumar 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: 080-49530399 | Mobile:09886280836 E-mail: kamlakar@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

38pg AWS SUMMIT 2017 42|

The Success Story of Amazon Web Services in India

Oracle Open World 2017 34|

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K. Nanda Kumar Founder, President & CEO Suntec Business Solutions

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Natraj Akella, Vice President – WiFi Services, Tata Teleservices

Oracle Open World 2017

VAR ANALYSIS

VAR SECURITY

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Internet Readiness Index of Indian States

Manzana witnesses extensive growth in Indian market after digitization

COVER STORY

VAR MOBILITY

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WannaCry: Let's Not Cry

Gionee sees potential growth in Indian Market

VAR CORPORATE CIPL: A Journey from Rs 5 Cr to a Rs 327 Cr business

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LG rolls out a video on its 20th Anniversary in India A strong IPR framework will ascertain the growth of future MSMEs

Konica Minolta going aggressive in India market Dell EMC EHC simplifies adoption of hybrid cloud My next journey of entrepreneurship will create a visible business impact Zicom invests in a technology driven future

TECHNOLOGY TREND 21|

The next battle Collaboration

ground

REGULARS Round About

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Hot Bytes

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On the Ramp

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Voice N Data

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Channel Buzz

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Movers & Shakers

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ROUND ABOUT

Nuts and bolts of an Economic Reprieve These days, there are more doomsayers than ever before. The first among the lot are the economists. Happily, there is no certainty about what they say since they believe in the dictum that opinions are not the ones inscribed in stones. These can change, swing from one extreme to another. Of course, one cannot blame them since economics is not like Mathematics, where one plus one is two. In economics, it can be three or even eleven. Does it mean economists have the right to predict anything and everything, no matter they are right or wrong? One should grant them that freedom since they predict only probabilities of something happening. The higher the probability, the greater is the chance of that happening. Admittedly, it can be termed or dubbed as a science of chance.

I like economists because they do not disappoint you unlike in any other subject. In the case of Mathematics, if you are given to solve some problems, there are two certainties: you can do right or wrong. You cannot be partially right and partially wrong. But in the case of economists, there is nothing called hundred per cent right or wrong. One can hedge the answers or responses with various assumptions like, if that happens this will be the case and if that does not happen, that will be the rollout of a situation.

My first prediction is that, against all predictions of an economic turmoil, I forecast the year 2017 will be an unusually productive year for the world economy. I have clear reasons how it will happen. Whatever that is happening in Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, etc will not pull the world economic growth. Nor the current spate of protectionist measures followed by the developed world, be it in terms of putting restrictions on imports, or granting visas will not deter growth. My take is that the defence industry will nudge all other sectors into the backburner.

Defence is the only industry that survives when countries fight amongst themselves, during civil wars or when pangs of nonviolence sweep across. The first two world wars are silent and mordent examples of war-led growth. In the aftermath of these two world wars, science had progressed, hegemonic tendencies erupted entrepreneurship proliferated and medical science leapfrogged. The end of the Second World War led to the acceleration of development of rocket science leading to men landing on the moon.

Riding on the back of a booming defence sector, manufacturing is poised to accelerate. I have used the word accelerate since manufacturing is already on an upswing in the US, going by the macroeconomic variables.

If the US is demonstrating buoyancy, the Euro zone is gradually coming out of the prolonged sluggishness. Looking at the individual countries in the euro zone, economic pickup is encouraging. Available statistics indicate that euro zone is growing a solid 1.6% in 2017. The predictions for 2018 maintain that the tempo of growth will remain the same. That means for the next two years Europe is growing in a healthy manner, which will have a positive impact on the job market. In the coming time, there are high probabilities of India engaging more with Europe than with any other market.

In economic parlance, every assertion has to be substantiated with facts and figures. The foremost reason that will catalyze India’s economic engagement with the EU is the demographic one. A nation having 65% of its population in the productive age group is India’s USP. As against this, Europe is graying fast. It may need more people, talents and care. There is a limit to automation and digitization to replace the human capital.

Also, there is a lurking fear that is gripping these countries that too much dependence on machine may make things complex. Rampant hacking, lack of personalized touch in availing services that are automated, incursions into privacy of individuals, etc are being pointed out as negative spinoffs of digitization.

Does it mean Europe will turn out to be a major destination for Indian professionals? It could be possible in the coming years if one goes by the latest trends.

India’s strength in the services sector is unique. More than 60% of

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our GDP comes from the services sector. A lion’s share of employment is created in the services sector and the sector also contributes smartly to the exports. A German, who happens to have spent a long time in India, pinpointed the uniqueness of India in a casual conversation. He said that Indians are the most entrepreneurial class. He remarked that, unlike in Germany or for that matter any developed country, people in countries like India would never wait for the governmental help, which is hard to come through. Even if it comes through, there will be a lot of conditionality. If one becomes unemployed in a developed country, it is the responsibility of the state to look after the person. He or she will continue to enjoy that facility till properly employed. Also, after retirement, the state looks after every citizen, his medical treatment, children’s education and what have you. In India, it is just the opposite. One has to fend for eking out a living.

The person sells peanuts, vegetables in a cart, cold water during summer, cleans up houses for others, washes cars, cleans and irons dresses and an assortment of activities to make both ends meet. He is proud enough to bow his or her head in front of others, including before the government.

That is the true entrepreneurship and that is why every Indian who is not employed has turned into a service sector entrepreneur in his or her right.

On hindsight, I find a lot of merit in what the German has said.

Those who are being referred to as informal workers or underemployed people are entrepreneurs in their own right. I often think that had luck favoured them or their risk-taking capacities paid off, they would have been icons or legends, celebrated and honoured. Let us celebrate those millions who are faceless, less expecting from the society and fend for themselves by the sheer dint of their work, rather than asking for help and accommodation. Watch out these unsung and unseen people. They only can make India big. They only can usher a new purpose and direction in our destiny. They only can transform India. Friends, this is my last prediction as an economist.

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The era of complicated and unreliable IT is over.

Learn how to break down silos with the new Lenovo Converged HX Series with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform software. The HX Series is powered by Intel Xeon processors. Read the IDC white paper at www.lenovo.com/hyperconverged.

TM

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To know more call us at 1800 3330 9000 or mail us at corpsales@lenovo.com

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HOT BYTES

VMware partners with Google

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Mware has expanded its partnership with Google to accelerate the adoption of Chromebooks. VMware Workspace ONE will enable one-click secure authentication and management of applications – cloud, web and virtual – for organizations deploying Chromebooks. Workspace ONE unifies endpoint management for IT and delivers a unified access experience for end-users to help organizations evolve away from siloed application and device management strategies to better embrace digital transformation.

“VMware has been working with Google

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since 2015 to offer secure Android devices and applications, most recently with advanced support for Android Enterprise,” said Sumit Dhawan, Senior VP & GM, End-User Computing, VMware. “This partnership shows our commitment to giving customers the flexibility to pick the device of their choice and enabling the delivery of any application on any device to end-users.”

Hikvision meets with Cisco on Cybersecurity Collaboration

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ikvision has announced that it held a joint meeting with Cisco on cybersecurity collaboration. The meeting marked the successful completion of the first phase of a collaboration that began in December 2016. Cisco is sharing its professional and sophisticated cybersecurity management experience and technologies with Hikvision, facilitating Hikvision’s globalization

process.

Weiqi Wu, VP at Hikvision, said that Hikvision is committed to the highest possible levels of cybersecurity. “Although the company’s cybersecurity best practices are industryleading, cybersecurity efforts must be ongoing.

Going forward, Hikvision will continue to assess and improve its cybersecurity efforts in the R&D process, and strengthen its research on security technologies."

Dell EMC partners with Atos to address IoT Market

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tos and Dell EMC are joining forces to address the growing Internet of Things (IoT) and Business Analytics markets. This collaboration is based on best-in-class

initially focus on North America and Europe.

Atos and Dell EMC are working together to build an IoT service management framework to allow customers to be

hardware and software from Dell EMC combined with the Atos Codex solutions and capabilities to design, build, run and secure smart data business services, data platforms and Internet of Things. The offering will

always in control and to be assured that all users can continuously create value from their connected devices.

The service management framework will be called Atos Codex IoT Services.

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Happiest Minds acquires Cupola Technology

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appiest Minds Technologies has acquired Cupola Technology with innovative solutions across the IoT lifecycle.

This strategic acquisition is in line with Happiest Minds’ vision to expand upon its IoT business by bringing in complementary frameworks.

“We have found that organizations are rapidly moving from proof of concept to enterprisewide IoT rollouts. This has brought about the need for a dedicated IoT operations center with a solution centric approach. The acquisition of Cupola will add to our IoT center of excellence with a like-minded team that is focussed towards driving customer value,” said Sashi Kumar, CEO & MD of Happiest Minds Technologies.

Corsair joins hands with Abacus Peripherals

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orsair has appointed Abacus Peripherals for distributing a wide range of its products. This strategic partnership will enable Corsair to strengthen its position and cater to customers' expectations effectively. The company will tap on untapped potential customer base and opportunities in the Indian market. Corsair is focussed on reorienting its distribution strategy in India.

M A Mannan, Country Manager, India, Corsair, said, "We, at Corsair, strongly believe that business/channel partners plays a vital role in the overall success. Having said that, we are cent percent channel-driven and work closely with our distributor and dedicated channel/ business partners."

D-Link opens e-Waste Collection Centers pan India

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-Link has continued to extend its support towards governments’ e-Waste management programme.

The company complies with the principles of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and has set up e-Waste collection centers at multiple locations pan India.

The objective of e-Waste rule is to put in place an effective mechanism to regulate the generation, collection, storage, transport, import, export (environmentally sound) recycling, treatment and disposal of e-Waste. In view

of the same, D-Link has set up e-Waste Collection centers to collect end of life product/ components, irreparable products, defective components and other e-Waste generated during the sale and service process. Following this, all the e-Waste collected is disposed and processed through authorized recycler.

Telit expands its presence in India

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elit is expanding its presence in India with a substantial R&D centre in Bangalore.

With the recent acquisition of Silicon Valley-based GainSpan Corporation, a wireless connectivity solution provider specializing in design and development of ultra-low power Wi-Fi technology, Telit gained about 60 software development, application and support engineers in one of India’s top high-tech regions.

The Telit R&D centre will continue working on Wi-Fi technologies for battery-powered

devices along with related intellectual property (IP) in embedded software, including network stacks and application reference designs. Efforts from the Bangalore team have resulted in state-of-the-art developments in Wi-Fi and advanced security protocols, reflected in key patents that have influenced Wi-Fi industry standards. Wi-Fi is a desirable technology for IoT applications and the arrival of ultra-low-power options opens the door to a vast market of batterypowered application areas that have been protracted to date.

Oracle expands its footprint in India

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racle has announced that it will expand its cloud services in India over the next six to nine months with plans for an Oracle data center in India. Over the coming months, Oracle will be reviewing proposals from the government and business partners to provide customers with the capability to build and move workloads to an Indiabased cloud. The services will offer uncompromised security and performance at a significant price advantage over both existing onpremises infrastructure

and competitive cloud offerings.

“Our customers and partners in India have trusted their businesses and mission-critical workloads to the Oracle Cloud for years,” said Thomas Kurian, President of Product Development, Oracle.

“With this expansion, we will be able to further support customer choice adding to capabilities already available through deployments of Oracle Cloud at Customer, as well as other Oracle Cloud data center regions in AsiaPacific.”

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HOT BYTES

L&T Infotech launches its Brand Identity as LTI

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arsen & Toubro Infotech has launched its brand identity

as LTI. It exemplifies the rapid progress made by the company across all dimensions during the last several quarters.

The company launched Mosaic platform with componentized solutions

for digital, analytics, IoT, automation and cloud. It got listed in July 2016 unlocking stakeholder value and it acquired AugmentIQ in November 2016 to deepen its big data and analytics offerings.

Sanjay Jalona, CEO & MD, LTI, said, “One of the fundamental shifts of this century is the blurring lines between digital and physical world.

Our clients want us to enable them to stay competitive in a more dynamic world where bricks and bytes are seamlessly connected."

SonicWall launches Marketing Programs for Channel

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onicWall has announced key milestones since it spun off as an independent cybersecurity company and introduced the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program. Over 10,000 partners have already registered as SonicWall resellers, and the SecureFirst Partner Program is now open to partners in AsiaPacific. SonicWall has also introduced two initiatives designed to help these

partners secure customers in the shifting cyber arms race – SonicWall University to train partners on cybersecurity, and global marketing programs and incentives to help the SonicWall channel deliver their cybersecurity solutions and services for SMBs. “The response from SonicWall’s channel partners to our spin out far exceeded even our own expectations,” said Bill Conner, President and CEO, SonicWall.

Huawei India ties up with Redington

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uawei Enterprise Business Group (BG) India has partnered with Redington India to

distribute and market Huawei enterprise products and services in the country.

Redington will support Huawei in developing resellers to market and promote products and/

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or services products in areas of Server, Storage, Data Center and Cloud Computing to Huawei enterprise customers.

Redington will provide post-sales maintenance services and also be responsible for channel partner development.

Derek Hao, President, Huawei India Enterprise Group, said, “Huawei Enterprise BG can strategically propel the development of a digital and intelligent society, and be an enabler and the best partner of digital transformation for industries.”

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UTStarcom to increase investment in India

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TStarcom India Telecom has announced its plan to increase its investment in India at the event “NextGen Innovation Summit 2017 – and Beyond!”

The company would be making investments in setting up its local manufacturing and R&D, in increasing its equipment portfolio and scaling up its manpower in India.

Tim Ti, CEO, UTStarcom Inc., said, “We have been committed to the Indian communications industry and have been making the required investments in India.

The Company would be increasing its investment in India so as to further consolidate its presence in the Indian telecom infrastructure market.”

Inflow becomes distribution partner of Unify

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nflow has entered into a distribution agreement with Unify.

Inflow Technologies is authorized to distribute and support Unify’s entire portfolio, including OpenScape and the soonto-be-launched-in-India Circuit. The OpenScape portfolio can scale from voice to UC and grow to 100,000 users. The combination of Inflow with OpenScape will provide a winning combination of great selling opportunities for partners.

Inflow’s unique base of resellers will open up numerous markets for Unify, bringing value to bolster Unify’s partner network.

Aggressively focussed on growth markets and selling through awareness, Inflow is committed in providing technical expertise to uphold their reputation as a trusted VAD..

eScan launches a channel incentive programme

eScan has launched a special incentive programme for its channel partners under its channel reach programme in India and to reward the qualified partners with lucrative gifts.

This quarterly promotional activity is valid on purchase of eScan's Internet Security Suite (Version 11) only and will be valid for purchases made between 15th April and 30th June, 2017.

The programme is designed to reward the partner for their continuous efforts and contribution to make eScan one the preferred brands among

consumers. The programme aims to capture a major market share through its partners and promises assured attractive gifts for their contribution starting from as low as Rs.4, 000 in the quarter. eScan partners can register online to participate and qualify for the offer and they will have to purchase eScan products only from an "Authorized Dealers/Distributor" for their respective region.

Xerox India partners with Compuage Infocom

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erox India has appointed Compuage Infocom as its national distributor partner for Xerox range of office products and supplies.

Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director, Technology, Channels and International Distributor Operations, said, “In our endeavour to provide products and solutions to more customers and strengthen our channel

community, we are extremely pleased to announce our partnership with Compuage. Their robust channel support mechanism and a deep nationwide presence will certainly intensify our ability to house multiple touch points in the country.

Both Xerox and Compuage have a global presence and strive to deliver superior value to our respective stakeholders.”

Red Hat expands its footprint in India

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ed Hat has opened two new offices in Bangalore and New Delhi. These offices mark the company’s c o n t i n u e d commitment to enabling customer success with open hybrid cloud solutions in India.

Red Hat is expanding its footprint in India with a goal of supporting interest for open-source solutions and services from customers and partners and further promoting the benefits open-source solutions can offer enterprises in India.

Red Hat’s Bangalore office is a 14,000-sq. ft.

facility at Lavelle Road. It is designed to act as a training and enablement centre for

customers and partners.

Through the facility, which features a cafeteria, and space for networking, meetings, training and certification exams, and an indoor game zone, Red Hat aims to bring its open, collaborative culture to life.

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ON THE RAMP

Vertiv presents Five Capacities of Liebert eXM UPS

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ertiv has introduced five capacities of Liebert eXM uninterruptable power supply (UPS). It is ideal for IT spaces and light industrial applications with medium power requirements looking to achieve lower first costs and ongoing operational savings, greater flexibility and shorter deployment schedules.

The three-phase Liebert UPS is now available in India, with fixed capacities of 80kVA/kW, 100kVA/

kW, 120kVA/kW, 160kVA/ kW and 200kVA/kW, with an optional builtin isolation transformer.

The Liebert UPS delivers among the highest efficiency levels for midsize data centers, with operating efficiencies as high as 97 per cent in double-conversion mode and as high as 99 per cent using energy-saving Eco Mode. Unity power factor operation delivers more capacity in a smaller footprint, increasing system capacity while minimizing cabling and installation costs.

Seclore unveils “EDRM” DataCentric Security Solution

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eclore has launched a complete agentless Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM) solution. This release gives enterprises the ability to leverage the full power of data-centric security without requiring downloads or agent installs.

“The promise of datacentric security has always been to provide absolute protection for your most valuable digital assets, without hindering users.

With agent-less rights management, we have finally delivered on this promise,” stated Vishal Gupta, CEO, Seclore. “Our latest release is the first to offer full cycle rights management, via a browser, providing a completely frictionless experience.

Our new approach ensures that everyone can now effortlessly engage in secure collaboration, including protectors, recipients and IT.”

Tyco presents iSTAR Ultra Video Solution

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yco Security Products has introduced the iSTAR Ultra Video solution that delivers integrated, small site security scaled for enterprise management and performance. Using C•CURE 9000 Security and Event Management software from Software House or American Dynamics’ victor Unified client, iSTAR Ultra Video brings access control and video recording to the edge, allowing users to remotely control up to eight doors and eight IP video cameras using a single appliance,

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without the need for server software at each site. iSTAR Ultra Video remains operational even when the network is down, capable of making access decisions and recording video until network connectivity is restored. Up to 6 TB of external storage can be added to the device.

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Fujitsu enhances Netgear launches 10GbE Singleits entry-Level Node Network Storage Solution has Storage Range NETGEAR launched the

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ujitsu has doubled the capacity of data that can be protected by its entry-level ETERNUS DX S4 hybrid storage range, introducing performance and capacity upgrades across the line-up. Fujitsu is unchaining the amount of affordable storage capacity for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with an increase to an enormous 4,055 TB of data.

The ETERNUS DX S4 line-up, consisting of ETERNUS DX60 S4, DX100 S4 and DX200 S4 systems, brings new levels of performance and capacities within reach of SMEs for the first time.

Developed specifically for the SME market, the Fujitsu ETERNUS DX S4 lineup provides the peace of mind associated with constant data protection for an always-on business in the digital world.

Verizon unveils SDP service to block cyberattacks

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erizon Enterprise Solutions has launched a SoftwareDefined Perimeter (SDP) service that enables enterprise customers to proactively identify and block cyberattacks by creating a virtual boundary around their network.

Verizon's SDP service, a scalable Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS) solution, provides preauthenticated, contextaware, secure access to enterprise applications. The service works by isolating communications between enterprise applications and end-user devices, enabling rapid identification and prevention of networkbased cyberattacks such as denial of service, connection hijacking, and credential theft.

NETGEAR ReadyNAS 4U 60-bay 10GbE Rackmount Network Storage (RR4360X). With three EDA4000 expansion chassis, the ReadyNAS 4360X offers 1.32 petabytes (PB) of data storage on today's 10 terabyte (TB) enterprise hard disk drives.

The ReadyNAS 4360X is ideally suited for businesses that have ultra-large storage capacity needs and demand high levels of data reliability and security. It is appropriate for applications such as multi-service/

multi-tenant data center operations, virtual machine backup, disaster recovery, backup, archiving and IP surveillance camera video storage.

The ReadyNAS OS 6.7 offers new enterpriselevel capabilities such as synchronization with public cloud storage services, including Amazon S3, Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox.

Tally Solutions unveils “5.5.7 Version” with enhanced VAT Release 5.5.7 is aimed at compliance supporting businesses

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ally Solutions has announced the rollout of Release 5.5.7 from Tally.ERP 9 suite, in the event at Hotel KC Residency, Jammu.

Tally.ERP 9 Release 5.5.7 aims to help the compliance of business VAT and ensure that their transactions are correct and complete through the powerful concept of triangulation. In line with its preceding versions,

with a comprehensive compliance solution for the latest VAT capabilities.

In this regard, Release 5.5.7 includes all the features present in the releases before it. Additionally, users of Release 5 Series also stand to benefit from the performance enhancement features incorporated in central taxation capabilities (Excise, Service Tax and TDS) that is applicable across the country.

Axis Communications launches explosion-protected cameras

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x i s Communications has launched three series of its new innovation of new explosion-protected temperature alarm and thermal network cameras named as XF40-Q2901 Explosion-Protected Temperature Alarm Camera, XF60-Q2901 Explosion-Protected Temperature Alarm Camera, and XP40-Q1942 Explosion-Protected PT Thermal Network Camera in security camera services.

The cameras allow operators to monitor remote, inaccessible, and sensitive areas, with the rapid incident response.

“Industrial plant operators have a difficult task as they need to ensure efficiency and continuity in large-scale, critical industrial processes, while meeting all health, safety and environmental regulations, across multiple locations and, often times, across large areas,” says Anthony Incorvati, Business Development Manager, Critical Infrastructure & Transportation, Axis Communications.

EVENT

A strong IPR framework will ascertain the growth of future MSMEs PHD Chamber of Commerce in association with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has organised a ‘National Conference on Intellectual property as a Strategic tool for Start-ups and Innovators in ICT and Electronics sector’ at PHD House, New Delhi.

L to R: Dr. S. K. Murthy, Patent Counsel, Intel India, Mr. Vivek Seigell, Director, PHD Chamber; Mr. Pravin Anand, Managing Partner, Anand and Anand, Dr. A K Garg, Director and HOD – International Cooperation and Bilateral Trade and IPR Division, Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), Government of India and Mr. Ashok Tiwari, Chairman, Committee On ICT and Electronics, PHD Chamber and Mr. Subhashish Gaur, Deputy Secretary, PHD Chamber during the Inaugural Session

The objective of the conference was to discuss how MSME, Start-ups and Innovators in Electronics and ICT Sector can strategize the use of Intellectual Property Rights as a strategic management tool for growth and longevity of their businesses.

Ashok Tiwari, Chairman, ICT and Electronics Committee, PHD Chamber in his welcome address said that the 21st century can be referred to as the century of technology and knowledge. He added that the new government led by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has seen increasing IP awareness, growth and reforms aimed at strengthening the IP rights regime and mentioned that the Government since its inception has been consistently trying to revamp IP policies in India.

Vivek Seigell, Director, PHD Chamber in his theme address mentioned that Indian Information Technology – Information Technology-Enabled Services (IT-ITES) industry has continued to perform its role as the most consistent growth driver for the National Economy. He added that IP plays a crucial role in innovation intensive industries like ICT and Electronics industry.

Dr. S. K. Murthy, Patent Counsel, Intel India while addressing the Inaugural Session stressed on the need for a very well balanced IP ecosystem in the country. He mentioned that a lot of good things have taken place in the Indian IP ecosystem with the advent of National IPR Policy 2016 launched by the Government of India.

He also suggested that the Government must revise the CRI guidelines as they have not brought clarity to the system. He in particular mentioned that the government should do away with the clause of ‘novelty in hardware’ for software to get patented.

Pravin Anand, Managing Partner, Anand and Anand mentioned that internationally ‘Brexit’ has been an issue which has impacted the Intellectual Property Rights. He added that patent filing in recent times have been dominated by Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and Renewable Energy. He further complimented the Government for bringing the National IPR Policy which has been beneficial especially for start-ups in the form of reduction in patent filing fee, tax rebates as well as provision of facilitators for filing of trademarks and patents.

Dr. A. K. Garg said over the past 3 years, there has been a policy domain in place which is more inclusive where government, industry and citizen are working towards a goal of making India a better place. He mentioned that initially IPR was not considered very important in India as economic growth was centred on finding solutions to common things by getting technology across borders and implementing them for providing basic needs to citizens. Due to ICT sector witnessing exponential growth in India, a plethora of technology oriented startups have emerged. He added that 4 startups are born in India everyday of which 80% are from the ICT sector.

Dr. A K Garg highlighted that the no. of patents filed must not be the only criteria to judge a country’s performance and focus should also be on

L to R: Ms. Palak Bhatia, Advisor, Start-Up India, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, GOI; Ms. Ankita Tyagi, IP Manager, European Business and Technology Centre; Ms. Lakshika Joshi, Head IPR, Nucleus Software; Dr. H Purushotham, Chairman & MD, National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of Science & Technology, GOI; Mr. Vivek Seigell, Director, PHD Chamber; Mr. Anil Kumar, Senior Consultant, LexOrbis Consulting Pvt. Ltd. and Jitendra Sharma, AM Legal IP/IT, MetLife

filing of quality patents.

Plenary Session

The Plenary Session of the Conference was chaired by Dr. H Purushotham, Chairman & Managing Director, National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. Other eminent speakers included Palak Bhatia, Advisor, Start-Up India, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India; Ankita Tyagi, IP Manager, European Business and Technology Centre; Lakshika Joshi, Head IPR, Nucleus Software; Anil Kumar, Senior Consultant, LexOrbis Consulting and Jitendra Sharma, Assistant Manager - Legal IP/IT, MetLife.

Dr. H Purushotham, Chairman & Managing Director, National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India in his presentation gave a SWOT analysis for IPR for startups. He mentioned that NRDC is recognized as a government agency by DIPP, for issuing letter of recommendation to Start-ups.He added that NRDC was a house of technology transfer which licensed over 4900 technologies and provided support for Regulatory Approvals, Marketing, Skill Development, incubation Services among other activities for providing maximum benefit.

Lakshika Joshi, Head IPR, Nucleus Software gave an insight on possible strategies to be adopted for protection of incremental innovations. She explained through graph various stages of innovation and categorised types of innovation as Incremental, Breakthrough and Radical innovation. Ms Joshi added that an organisation’s focus should be to provide customised options to its customers and provide them benefit.

Anil Kumar, Senior Consultant, LexOrbis Consulting Pvt. Ltd. highlighted on Intellectual Property as a tool in Strategic Business Management for startups. He mentioned that startups need to be unique and offer something which no other company is offering in form of Patents, Registered Designs, Trademarks and Copyrights.

Jitendra Sharma, Assistant Manager- Legal IP/IT, MetLife in his address stressed on Copyrights and Trademark issues in the Digital Environment.

He elaborated on types of infringement including cybersquatting and typo squatting, content infringement, Hacking/ Phishing among others.

Ankita Tyagi, IP Manager, European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC) addressed the Technical Session on India-EU IP Facilitation Forum.

Palak Bhatia, Advisor, Start-Up India, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India presented on the Startup Initiative launched by the Govt of India. In her address she mentioned that India is the 3rd largest startup nation in the world with 1400 newborn startups coming to existence every year majorly constituted in Delhi/ NCR and Bengaluru. n

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ON THE RAMP

Acer launches Predator Triton 700

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cer has unveiled the Predator Triton 700 gaming notebook. The notebook’s svelte 18.9mm (.74-inch), 2.6kg (5.7 pound) aluminum chassis houses a 15.6-inch FHD IPS display and best-in-class computing technologies, striking just the right balance of size and performance.

Predator Triton gaming notebook’s understated black chassis features a minimalist design, with straight contours and angular front corners. A large Corning Gorilla Glass plate above the keyboard serves as a window into the notebook’s cooling system, showcasing the AeroBlade 3D Fan and five heat pipes, and also functions as a touchpad.

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Powering the beast within is a standard-voltage 7th-Generation Intel Core processor, latest NVIDIA GeForce 10-Series graphics, two NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 configuration and up to 32GB of DDR4 2400MHz memory.

The Predator Triton 700 was unveiled at the Acer press event held in New York, where the company announced a range of new devices and solutions for gamers, creators, families, students and professionals.

Kaspersky Lab updates its Anti Targeted Attack Platform

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aspersky Lab has renewed its Anti Targeted Attack Platform to detect advanced threats and targeted attacks for enterprises. The solution blends advanced machine learning algorithms, actionable worldwide threat intelligence and adaptivity to customer infrastructure, to help large businesses uncover the most sophisticated and damaging attacks at any stage of their development.

The new Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack Platform also features scalability improvements with Sandbox clustering, and optimized visibility with major GUI updates.

The Platform combines network and endpoint sensors, sandbox technology and intelligent analysis to correlate different indicators of compromise and help businesses discover even the most complex targeted attacks.

DIGISOL launches DGFS1016D-A Switch

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IGISOL Systems has launched its 16 Port Fast Ethernet Desktop unmanaged switch designed to enhance network performance in a compact form factor.

The DG-FS1016D-A comes with 16 x 10/100 Mbps ports, offering solutions for accelerating bandwidth needs of small Ethernet workgroups.

The switch uses store and forward packet-switching technology which offers reliable data transfer. This switch is ideal for network connectivity for the SOHO Environment.

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Zyxel unveils USG2200-VPN Firewall

This Switch also allows for auto-sensing and auto negotiation of highest available speed (10/100Mbps) and duplex mode, providing an automatic and flexible solution for the network.

These intelligent ports detect the network speed and auto-negotiate between 100BASETX and 10BASE-T, as well as between full and halfduplex.

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y x e l Communications has introduced the USG2200-VPN firewall to offer businesses an endto-end solution to centrally build and manage secured communications between multiple sites/offices.

USG2200-VPN can easily connect with a majority of devices in the workplace, ensuring both business mobility and communication security.

Both incoming and outgoing communications are protected by the SHA-2 encryption, which makes business information assets harder to crack.

With the help of Zyxel Cloud CNM SecuManager Software, businesses will be able to centralize and unify the security management of all Zyxel security appliances deployed around the world from one interface.

Matrix enhances its Unified Communications Portfolio

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atrix is launching S A R V A M UCS ENT – the Unified Communication Server for Modern Enterprises. The Unified Communication solution is based on the four pillars of Collaboration, Communication, Messaging and Mobility.

SARVAM UCS ENT offers connectivity up to 2,000 IP users, 1,296 Analog users, 64 GSM users, 248 VOIP channels and 128 Digital Key Phone users from a single chassis.

With IP at core, SARVAM UCS ENT routes all the communication over IP, allowing employees to experience distinct call management features such as Call Transfer, Presence Sharing, Multi-party Audio Conference, Video Calling and more.

Canon India launches a range of Wireless Laser Presenters

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anon has launched a range of wireless Laser Presenters.

The firm launched four models of wireless laser presenters, i n c l u d i n g P R 1 0 0 0 - R , PR500-R, PR100-R and PR10-G. Kazutada Kobayashi, CEO & President, Canon India, said, “Canon India’s legacy of two decades is consistent with our commitment towards innovation and

customer satisfaction.

While delighting our customers, we continue to launch products that can elevate their professional and personal experiences.

Our new range of wireless laser presenters is designed to empower our customers with a greater command over their visual content, enabling them to keep their audiences actively engaged."

Logitech introduces G90 Optical Gaming Mouse

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ogitech has introduced G90 Optical Gaming Mouse.

The gaming mouse comes with 2,500 DPI in-game sensitivity switching, Exclusive high-accuracy Delta Zero sensor technology and a Comfortable shape.

Delta Zero is a family of exclusive sensor technologies. The Optical Tracking sensor available with the mouse improves the light focus on the tracking surface. The mouse

also features an optimized light irradiation angle on the tracking surface and tunable DPI settings (up to 2,500 DPI with 3 DPI (250-2,500 DPI) settings) that can be shifted in real time on-the-fly.

The Logitech G90 features an ergonomic inverted trapezoid design.

It comes with the built-in 13 gm weight balancing.

The Mouse offers ultradurable feet and reinforced cables to ensure the mouse’s longevity.

Western Digital unveils SanDisk iXpand Mini Flash Drive

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estern Digital Corporation has released its mobile memory solution for iPhone and iPad, the SanDisk iXpand Mini Flash Drive. The offering expands the company’s portfolio of mobile storage solutions, which includes the SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive, offering users an additional design option, ideal for those that need to backup files.

The SanDisk iXpand Mini Flash Drive is equipped with a lightning connector and a USB 3.0 connector. The flash drive features a modern and compact design, a high capacity of up to 128 GB,

and fast read speeds of up to 70 MB/s. With the advancements in iPhone and iPad camera and video functionality, people will continue to produce content at astonishing rates, and may need even more space to save all their memories.

The SanDisk iXpand Mini Flash Drive is designed to meet these physical storage needs and enables users to capture, save and share content without limits.

TECHNOLOGY TREND

The next battle ground for Collaboration Collaboration technologies will boost real time business performance and collaborating in the workplace will enable businesses to finish important projects and meet crucial deadlines efficiently Collaboration is said to take place when two individuals or a group of people work together towards achieving a common goal by sharing their ideas and skills. It can happen in traditional as well as in virtual teams, by connecting your endpoints to the cloud.

With advancements in technology and digital platform and by using cloud-based programs, one can share files and communicate. With multiple individuals working on a project, the work can be divided up equally and efficiently between those with the time and the expertise to handle specific tasks. This also significantly reduces the project delivery time. In fact this has become quite commonplace.

Enterprise and SME companies are increasingly realizing the value of collaboration and looking for ways to foster it within their teams, both traditional and virtual. Cloud collaboration technologies allow users to upload, comment and collaborate on documents and even amend the document itself, evolving the document.

Businesses in the last few years have increasingly been switching to use of cloud collaboration.

Leading Vendors in the collaboration industry are - CISCO, Microsoft, Avaya, Mitel and Huawei.

Increasing demand for the Digital Workplace...

Collaboration challenges people to think, articulate and receive clarity about their competencies. It serves as a mirror that gives them a glimpse of their strengths and weaknesses.

Because two heads are better than one, teams work better together and plug each other’s gaps.

The business world is changing while the importance of collaboration platform rises.

Businesses should understand that in order to achieve the business objectives, they should create new ways for employees to do their work.

In today’s digital age, effective collaboration is

increasingly achieved via the digital workplace.

As per Gartner, 79% of surveyed organizations plan to increase their mobile spending by 36%, not surprising considering the mobility results in increased employee output, less inventory and fewer operational expenses.

The Unified Communication (UC&C) & Collaboration market continues to evolve rapidly, with new technologies and products aiming to simplify usage and enrich user experience.

Gartner predicts that the UC market will grow slightly from $41 billion in 2014 to $42.4 billion by 2019.

Cisco – A big giant in the collaboration space...

While UC leaders Cisco and Microsoft still maintain their strong leads in the market, Gartner particularly named Cisco a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for the ninth consecutive year. This year, Gartner placed Cisco highest on “ability to execute” and furthest in “completeness of vision” for its unified communications offerings. According to the report, leaders have a full UC offering, strong market presence, and can demonstrate success in the field.

Cisco has had a busy last year. It continued to evolve its portfolio to better meet customer needs. It • Expanded Cisco Spark from a business messaging app to a full cloud service with meeting, message, and calling • Delivered new and better experiences by integrating on-premises unified communications with Cisco Spark cloud services • Brought video meetings to the next level – not just through its broad range of endpoints and applications. Its acquisition of Acano improved interoperability and scale. Cisco continues to bring web conferencing to the next level.

Cisco in March announced the launch of Spark at Enterprise Connect 2015 in Orlando, USA, which coincided with Cisco Live 2015 in Melbourne. A few months earlier Microsoft had announced its integration of Skype and Lync.

With this there is increasingly an important role that collaboration applications and services are playing in support of the UC&C market. The real challenge is on how to keep all communications secured.

Cisco is positioning Spark both as a collaboration platform and a client. With WebEx getting old from a technology standpoint, Spark provides an opportunity for Cisco to merge its collaborations platforms (HCS, WebEx, and Telepresence) across a single federated environment that offers enterprise security and function in a consumer-like user experience.

Cisco’s main goal was to simplify meetingroom technology and so it introduced the Spark Board, an all-in-one collaboration device that can be a screen-sharing presentation tool, a digital whiteboard and a video conferencing display. It is designed to make it easier to set up and use connected conference rooms, taking the place of a hodgepodge of components that are managed and operated separately. The Board can eliminate projectors, speakerphones, video screens and whiteboards that usually work separately.

Collaboration is becoming increasingly important in the modern world as we become more connected around the globe. Cloud computing and faster internet connections have given rise to tools enabling employees to collaborate with colleagues effectively. With the rise of remote workers and by using collaboration tools, more employees are choosing to work from home. According to the survey by VARINDIA, many employees believe that they are more productive when working from home than their office-based counterparts. n

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VOICE-N-DATA

Qualcomm signs 3G/4G patent license with Smartron

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ualcomm has entered into a 3G and 4G patent license agreement with Smartron India. Under the terms of the agreement, Qualcomm has granted Smartron a royalty-bearing patent license to develop, manufacture and sell WCDMA, CDMA2000, and 4G LTE complete devices.

With this agreement, Smartron joins the growing list of key Indian OEMs to have direct access to Qualcomm’s technology.

Qualcomm and Smartron will also collaborate on early technology access and advancements in RF, camera testing and tuning and other

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critical calibrations required for smart devices. This enables Smartron to be in the top of the technology curve, thereby offering cutting-edge experiences to its end users. It also enhances Smartron’s core competency and vision of developing innovative and world-class products across different markets.

BBNL, Department of Posts and BSNL sign MoU

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t r i p a r t i t e Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between BBNL, Department of Posts and BSNL for providing broadband connectivity of BharatNet to post offices in rural areas.

The MoU signed under the chairmanship of minister of communications Manoj Sinha is the first tripartite agreement to provide broadband connectivity to about 1.3 lakh post offices

in rural areas and 25,000 sub-post offices for high speed internet connectivity to the rural masses.

Speaking on the occasion, Manoj Sinha, said, "The first phase of connecting about one lakh gram panchayats is nearing its completion and in the remaining one and a half lakh gram panchayats 100 mbps broadband connectivity will be completed by December, 2018.

Department of Telecom unveils Tarang Sanchar Portal

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epartment of Telecom has launched Tarang Sanchar

for Information sharing on Mobile Towers and EMF Emission Compliances.

Shri Manoj Sinha, Hon’ble Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Communications

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May 2017

ZTE launches its NTT Com acquires VNO-ILD in India T T and ICT Management 5G innovations N Communications Services through Netmagic, (NTT Com) has acquired a an affiliate. to Indian Virtual Network Operator – NTT Com now looks International Long Distance forward to offering a Telecom (VNO-ILD) licence in comprehensive range of India through its affiliate, Partners NTT Communications

and Minister of State for Railways, formally launched the Tarang Sanchar portal in New Delhi.

Shri Manoj Sinha said that the launch of Tarang Sanchar Portal will definitely help in clearing myths and misconceptions of public on mobile towers and emissions from them. He expressed that the portal empowers any common person to know about towers working in a particular locality.

www.varindia.com

TE Corporation has unveiled its 5G Innovations to Indian telecom partners. The Indian telecom operators face challenges to enhance the network quality and offer users’ better experience, develop new business to maintain sustained and healthy development.

Focussing on partners’ concern, ZTE has launched its latest technical solutions, including Pre5G FDD / TDD Massive MIMO base station, 5G Flexhaul and other series of innovative products, as well as VR, smart home, smart parking for live demonstrations, which have shined in the 2017MWC in Barcelona, the world’s most influential annual communications exhibition.

Facebook signs with Airtel

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acebook has made Express Wi-Fi commercial in states of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Gujarat where it has signed with local ISPs and rolled out 700 hotspots.

The company has also signed up with over 500 local entrepreneurs in these states for selling of coupons for spreading Internet connectivity in rural areas.

People can access Express Wi-Fi network by signing up with an Express Wi-Fi retailer and purchasing a daily, weekly or monthly data pack.

The company has also partnered with Bharti Airtel to launch an additional 20,000 hotspots over the next few months to provide affordable and quality broadband connectivity.

Bharti Airtel will provide backhaul and also install wireless access points pan India in rural areas for providing Wi-Fi hotspots.

India Network Services (NTTCINS).

The licence acquisition will allow NTT Com to add Arcstar Universal One International Network Services to its portfolio of existing services in India. Currently, NTT Com provides National Long Distance "NLD" network services through NTTCINS and Colocation, Managed Hosting, Cloud

ICT solutions, including WAN, LAN, Data Centers and associated Value Added Services to support Indian businesses and multinational corporations.

VNL wins BSNL project in NE

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ihaan Network has bagged Rs.1,648crore telecom infrastructure project of state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam for providing connectivity in over 4,000 villages in the remote areas of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

Emerging as the lowest bidder in the tender opened for the first phase of the project by BSNL, VNL will get whole of Arunachal Pradesh which will be around 70-per cent share in the first phase of the NorthEast mobile connectivity.

This project is part of the Rs.5,336.18 crore worth Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan for the North-Eastern Region (NER) comprising 8 states which was approved by the Union Cabinet in September 2014. The project envisages providing mobile coverage in 8,621 unconnected villages and seamless coverage along National Highways in the North-East region through 6,673 towers, and will be funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

Vodafone unveils SuperWifi to boost digital transformation

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n order to help transform Indian enterprises into Ready Businesses, Vodafone Business Services has introduced SuperWifi.

SuperWifi is a fullymanaged WiFi service for enterprises, offering unified, high-speed and reliable wireless network access to employees, guests and customers across their sites and locations with 24 x 7 remote monitoring and management. It provides secure wireless connectivity to improve user experience and ensure greater flexibility and mobility among employees and guests alike.

Vodafone SuperWifi

can be easily deployed by small, medium and large enterprises across offices, educational campuses, retail stores, warehouses, factories, hospitals, etc.

Organizations can enjoy a high-speed Wi-Fi network experience with low upfront Cap-ex investments and unified control of network policy at various locations.

The fully-managed Wi-Fi service offers an online reporting and analytics portal, by which businesses can get Wi-Fi analytics on network performance, usage and applications to help businesses take the right IT and marketing related decisions.

FACE TO FACE

Konica Minolta going aggressive in India market At present, India market is a powerhouse of potential and opportunities as compared to the rest of the economy. It is becoming a power engine of the world economy. It is being triggered by the wave of digitization and the technology-friendly generation next who greet every new technology with enthusiasm. In the last six years, Konica Minolta has witnessed a double-digit growth in India, whereas in other countries it is single digit.

In a chat with VARINDIA, Daisuke Mori, Managing Director, Konica Minolta Business Solutions India, mentions about the importance of India market and the double-digit growth that the company is experiencing.

He also mentions that the company is looking forward to tap the untouched regions and will invest hugely in customer service support and partner network

“Konica Minolta has continued to witness double-digit growth in India for the last six years, whereas the growth of the company from other countries remains at single digit. The country is emerging as a growth engine in the global economy, owing to an unprecedented growth in sectors including IT, Retail, SMBs, government, etc which are creating tremendous opportunities for us. India is also witnessing a rapid shift to digitization, thanks to government efforts coupled with a young tech-savvy population and we are committed to aid this transition with our industry-leading digital printing solutions tailored for a host of industry verticals,” says Daisuke Mori, Managing Director; Konica Minolta Business Solutions India.

Understanding the potential of India market, Konica Minolta is looking forward to penetrate its roots in the untouched regions of the country by forming alliances and promotional activities. The company also enables its partners about the consumer demands and related solutions.

“We are focussing aggressively to expand our penetration in the untapped regions of the country with strategic alliances and promotional initiatives. We are also regularly meeting up with our partners across India to facilitate them in understanding the new emerging requirements of customers as well as to offer the most relevant solutions, as per their business needs,” adds Mori.

Discussing about investment, he reveals, “We will invest significantly to upgrade our customer service support as well as delivery network, particularly in the Optimized Print Services and Document Management System. We will also invest heavily in expanding our partner network as well as for offering them with strategic training and consulting to better help their customers with our next-generation solutions.”

Flourishing Products Konica Minolta is receiving a good response from India and its latest technology solutions have received huge deployments in the last fiscal.

“Almost all of our products are witnessing an encouraging demand in India. In the digital printing segment, we emerged as one of the leading disruptors in the FY 2016-17. Our trendsetting technologies and solutions like the Simitri HDE toner, bizhub PRESS series have witnessed historic deployments in the last fiscal, by printing businesses in India. We also launched printing automation solutions in this period like Accurio Pro which has helped businesses in better organizing their operations and save significantly on their operational expenses,” says Mori.

Strategy

The company is focussed on its expansion in India and determined to serve both hardware and services verticals with its Optimized Print Services and Document Management System.

“We will continue to focus on expanding our footprint in India and will cater to both hardware and services segment with our business models like Optimized Print Services and Document Management System.

Our Optimized Print Services (OPS) offers a blend of consulting, hardware, software implementation and workflow management in order to

lower document spending and enhance information security (prevention of information divulgation),” explains Mori.

Mori also mentions that the company is keen to tap on the SMB segment as it is a growing vertical of the market and it will also help Konica Minolta to strengthen its market share in Multi Functional Printers. “We will also zero in on SMBs which is a promising vertical in the country and will increase our market share of Multi Functional Printers in this segment. We will also aid the green initiatives in India with our eco-friendly printing solutions and business workflows.

To offer maximum efficiency, we analyze the document-intensive workflows in an enterprise to offer the most relevant solutions for optimization of processes.”

Channels Konica Minolta will prolong its practice to provide customer support to the furthest end possible by expanding its channel network. The company will also concentrate on enabling its partner community.

“We will continue with our legacy to offer last-mile customer support in the year 2017 via enhancing our channel base. With the launch of our new solutions including e-bizVAULT, we will strategically focus on new tie-ups with the channel community. We will also focus on training our existing partners to gain better visibility of our new product lineups and catalyze the digital transition in the country.

I invite the IT channel community to review our growth and collaborate with us to bolster this transformation in the printing industry of India,” concludes Mori. n

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CHANNEL BUZZ

GoDaddy concludes “The Big Picture” Partner Meet In India

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oDaddy has concluded its inaugural “Big Picture” Partner Summit held in March in New Delhi. The Summit brought together GoDaddy’s growing base of strategic resellers to drive increased collaboration with GoDaddy to help small businesses easily take advantage of the internet opportunity in India. Held at the

ITC Grand Bharat, the summit was attended by leading GoDaddy resellers from across the country.

GoDaddy’s senior leadership team discussed India’s emerging internet opportunity and the collective need for the ecosystem to work together to get India’s millions of small businesses online, hence the theme of “The Big Picture”. The sessions also covered product launches, Reseller platform

updates & activities around “The Big Picture” theme.

To effectively serve the needs of India’s 51 million SMBs and as they start to make their online journey, GoDaddy has developed a robust partner and reseller ecosystem. Given a bulk of India’s internet growth now emanates from tier-II and tier-III locations, the

GoDaddy’s partners and resellers are well-positioned and equipped to offer the right suite of products needed for small businesses to succeed.

Anurup Singhal, Director – Business Development, GoDaddy India said, “We work with our resellers closely to empower them with the right solutions so that they can help India’s small businesses get online with ease."

TAIT conducts Workshop on GST

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rade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) has recently conducted a workshop discussing in detail with Shailesh P. Sethi, Advocate & Founder, SPS Legal, in the area of Indirect Tax Laws.

Shailesh P. Sethi, Advocate & Founder, SPS Legal, said, "GST is not merely a tax reform, it is

a fundamental business reform which will change the way business activities are conducted in the country by anyone. The dual structure of GST is the compulsion of federal character of our country and therefore a unified GST across the country is not possible. It will also be applied on bundled services. For instance, if one books a Shatabdi train ticket

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May 2017

which includes meal, it is a bundle of supplies. It is a composite supply where the products cannot be sold separately. The one purchasing will not buy just the train meal and not the train ticket. The transportation of passenger is, therefore, the principal supply. Other examples will be dry fruit box, lodging services which come with food and stay package, etc."

Further elaborating on the GST tax regime, he explained that the existing origin based consumption tax such as Central Sales Tax (CST), service tax bill will be a thing of the past with the introduction of GST. Under GST, all transactions involving the inter-state supply of goods and services will be subjected to IGST but with the credit available to the recipient in another state.

Presently, CST is not refundable.

With a much wider availability of credit or input tax credit, GST is expected to mitigate the cascading effect of tax-on-tax to a large extent.

It will help in creating a borderless common national market for goods and services and ensure a smooth movement of goods and services across the country.

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R&M conducts a QPP Training Event

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&M India has conducted a Qualified Partner Program (QPP) training event in Jaipur for its Regional channel partners. R&M India’s technical director Shajan George along with North Regional head Pankaj Bhardwaj conducted the training for channel partners for the first time in Rajasthan.

specialized in structured cabling domain, who gave the participants in-depth information on the technical aspect of the subject, evaluated trends for both Copper and Fiber products, and trained them to design, install and conduct post-implementation testing of passive networking components

Shajan George runs R&M’s QPP program for India and advises on the best practices for installation and design. He also is in charge of maintaining superior technical support standards across the country and advises on new product development in R&M India with the objective of imparting enhanced knowledge on structured cabling to the engineers and technicians of its System Integrators. The training program was conducted by Shajan George,

for Infrastructure Projects.

After the program, participants will be in a position to validate projects where R&M’s structured cabling products are implemented, with 5 years of R&M Freenet product warranty, 25 years of R&M Freenet system warranty and Lifetime R&M Freenet application warranty. Partners who attended the QPP were gifted R&M’s one of the cream product “FM45 CONNECTOR” at the end of the session by the regional distributor.

ITTA-Pondicherry introduces its new members in its installation ceremony

T

he installation ceremony of ITTA-Pondicherry (Information Technology Traders Association-Pondicherry) office bearers (2017-18) took place on 24th April 2017 in the presence of President and the team of CONFED-ITA, the office bearers of ITTA- Pondicherry Zone

the newly elected team that is led

by D. Soundara Pandian as the new president.

The ITTA-Pondicherry newly elected president D. Soundara Pandian briefly explained his manifesto for his tenure through an elaborated PowerPoint presentation to his association.

Associations of Thiruvannamalai, Vellore and Kancheepuram and Puducherry IT distributors.

The previous office bearers and the award winning team of ITTAPondicherry headed by Arun Subbu Rangan and Secretary Prabhakar handed over the responsibilities to

P N Prasad, the past president of CONFED-ITA and ITTAPondicherry delivered valuable tips on how to improvise members business, importance of health insurance policy and migration from non-profitable business to the very profitable one etc.

Movers & Shakers

TP-Link appoints Bijoy Alaylo as GM – SOHO Networking

TP-Link India has appointed Bijoy Alaylo as GM – SOHO Networking to accelerate its growth in India. He will be responsible for leading the Channel team to drive revenue growth; develop a go-to-market business strategy to capitalize on market opportunities, and spearhead initiatives to deliver solutions to customers and partners in India.

With extensive work experience, Bijoy has held several leadership positions. Along with being an innovative fast-paced person, he has a deep understanding of the Indian market with diverse experience across the domains of Networking and e-Commerce. Bijoy has also achieved an excellent track record of setting up successful sales teams and delivering business growth with proven track records.

Aspect Software appoints Manish Bajaj as Country Manager

Xerox appoints Ritesh Gandotra as Director – Global Document Outsourcing

Xerox has appointed Ritesh Gandotra as Director, Global Document Outsourcing at Xerox India. In this role, Ritesh will be responsible for leading the Document Management Services business in India and South Asia that includes Xerox’s portfolio of Next Generation Managed Print Services, Document Supply Chain Management Services, Communication & Marketing Services and Document Transaction and Processing Services.

Ritesh will play a pivotal role in implementing strategies for incubating and augmenting India business in the document management services space across verticals.

Hitachi India names Bharat Kaushal as its MD

Aspect Software has appointed Manish Bajaj as Country Manager – India and Middle East. In his new role, Manish will be responsible for the growth and expansion of the overall business operations at Aspect for India and the Middle East region. He will have a strategic focus on maintaining the growth momentum in the region, strengthening engagement with large system integrator companies and creating newer growth avenues by introducing Aspect’s cloud solutions in the region.

Manish brings in over two decades of leadership experience in sales, business development and partner management.

Hitachi India has appointed Bharat Kaushal as MD of Hitachi India. He will be the first Indian to spearhead Hitachi India’s operations. He succeeds Kojin Nakakita who has been elevated as Chairman of Hitachi India and Hitachi Asia.

The appointment will be effective from 1st June, 2017. Bharat is currently serving as Chairman in India of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). He is the first non-Japanese to be appointed as SMBC India’s CEO and served the role between 2012 and 2015. He will focus on promoting Hitachi’s Social Innovation Business in India. Hitachi’s Social Innovation Business resolves issues faced by society and customers by combining advanced IT with operational technology (OT) and products/systems, allowing us to provide total solutions.

Zen Mobile names Deepesh Gupta as its CEO

ServiceNow appoints Edgar Dias as MD, India

Zen Mobile has appointed Deepesh Gupta as its CEO. In this role, Deepesh will be responsible for spearheading the company’s growth to the next level and take the brand to a leadership position. He will strengthen business priorities and technology innovation, and will be pivotal in establishing Zen as the preferred 4G Smartphone brand of the country.

Deepesh Gupta has been closely involved with the company, since its inception as a co-founder. In his new role, he will bring a sharper focus to enhancing customer experiences, by bringing pocket-friendly yet featurerich devices. Leveraging his expertise in the telecom handset domain, Zen plans to target exponential growth in the coming quarters by bringing pocket-friendly yet feature-rich devices.

ServiceNow has announced the appointment of Edgar Dias to the role of Managing Director, India. In this role, Dias will be responsible for leading the Indian team, servicing the rapidly growing customer base, developing business strategy and accelerating the partner ecosystem.

Dias joins Service Now from Brocade, where he led the Indian and SAARC business. “ServiceNow has experienced rapid growth through providing a System of Action that helps drive enterprise transformation in the way work gets done. As Indian organisations continue to focus on building intelligent automation capabilities, I am looking forward to working with our customers to improve their service levels and deliver game-changing economics. It’s an exciting opportunity to be part of,” said Edgar Dias.

Bharti Enterprises appoints Soumen Ghosh as MD - Financial Services

MAIT appoints Nitin Kunkolienker as the New President

Bharti Enterprises has announced the appointment of Soumen Ghosh as Managing Director – Financial Services. In his new role, Sam will build strategic business value proposition for Bharti’s financial services businesses. He will be responsible for further strengthening the management processes, business expansion and governance of these businesses.

Sam was the Regional CEO of Middle East and India Sub Continent region of Allianz before which he was the CEO of Bajaj Allianz Life and General Insurance and also set up operations for Allianz in South East Asia. Prior to joining Allianz, Sam spent ten years in Australia in various senior roles with Allianz - from CFO to managing subsidiary companies as well as setting up operations in the Pacific Rim.

MAIT has announced the elevation of Nitin Kunkolienker, Director – (Member on Board) at Synegra EMS Ltd. as President during the Executive Council Meeting on 13th April, 2017.

Nitin has been part of the MAIT’s management team in the past and has had a string of successful associations with various industry bodies starting off with Verna Industries Association (VIA). He has also headed diverse industry and social organizations like Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI), Vidya Vikas Mandal (VVM), Goa Management Association (GMA) and now will be succeeding Ms Debjani Ghosh for a President’s role at MAIT. In his new role, Kunkolienker will help MAIT catalyze the growth aspirations of IT hardware sector in India.

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FACE TO FACE

Dell EMC EHC simplifies adoption of hybrid cloud Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud has expanded to include Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure. It offers a turnkey hybrid cloud optimized for deployments across enterprises of all sizes. Throwing more light on this, Anshuman Rai, Director Sales, Converged Platform & Solutions Division (CPSD) - Dell EMC speaks to VARINDIA on availability of Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) on VxRail, the business benefits that customers can drive from it and how it can be an enabler in the modernization of data centers Many organizations are looking for ways to drive more business value, redefine their business models, and build an enhanced customer experience in an increasingly digital world. A hybrid cloud helps organizations innovate rapidly while still delivering enterprise-grade performance, resiliency, and security.

Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud delivers on this by combining the control, reliability and confidence of private cloud with the simplicity, flexibility, and cost efficiency of public clouds to transform delivery of IT services. A one-of-kind hybrid-cloud platform, Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud delivers automated infrastructure services for traditional enterprise applications across private and public clouds with greater speed, scalability, and agility while reducing costs and minimizing risks.

Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) will be available for the first time on Dell EMC VxRail Appliances, the company’s hyperconverged infrastructure offering that has seen substantial market adoption since its launch a year ago. With EHC on VxRail, organizations of all sizes get – • A platform optimized for easy deployments, offering a cost-effective, smaller footprint with the flexibility to scale out as requirements evolve.

• Simplified, automated installations of the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud software stack on VxRail Appliances that reduces deployment time, costs and risk.

• Subscription-based support with professional services that allows organizations to take advantage of the latest EHC enhancements.

“Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, expanded to include Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure, reduces the entry point for a turnkey hybrid cloud optimized for deployments across enterprises. It extends the value of the VMware SDDC by offering a rich set of workflows such as backup, encryption and database-asa-service plus integrations with applications from industry leading suppliers like Pivotal, Puppet, and Servicenow. It is built and sustained as one hardware and software stack, with full version control to simplify life cycle management. It reduces our customers’ support burden by offering one-call support for the entire hardware-software stack,” says Anshuman Rai, Director Sales, Converged Platform & Solutions Division (CPSD) - Dell EMC.

Demand for HCI on a higher side…

Digital transformation is the need for all organizations to stay relevant in their markets. It needs modernization of data centres with simplicity. Hyper Converged appliances are the fastest way to modernize data centres as they come packed with technologies like software defined, Scale out, cloud and flashand they are packed with many data protection options. Industry experts are projecting that 30% of traditional storage will move to HCI. “Dell EMC has experienced strong customer demand for HCI Appliances, exceeding expectations and positioning Dell EMC to be the industry’s top HCI appliance provider. We have the most comprehensive portfolio of HCI solutions catering to each customer segment and every workload. We are seeing a higher double digit growth in business

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Anshuman Rai Director Sales, Converged Platform & Solutions Division (CPSD) Dell EMC

in India. VxRail, an HCI solution, jointly engineered with VMware, was launched early last year and within a year Dell EMC’s VxRail Appliances demonstrated substantial customer adoption with over 120 nodes being sold in India,” explains Anshuman.

The demand for Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud is across workloads and verticals. Dell EMC has customers ranging from manufacturing to BFSI to IT-ITES and airlines. The key used cases are around VDI, private cloud and even analytics.

And so…

Designed, tested, and integrated by Dell EMC, it is a one-of-kind hybrid cloud platform with automated workflows and application blueprints. The Enterprise Hybrid Cloud is built on Dell EMC converged and hyper-converged infrastructures providing enterprises of all sizes with flexible deployment choices as the foundation for infrastructureas-a-service. Organizations can now deliver IT-as-a-Service to meet their specific business needs with add-on options for data protection, VM encryption, Microsoft workloads, application life cycle automation for continuous delivery, ecosystem extensions, and more. IT can start delivering value to the business two times faster with Enterprise Hybrid Cloud than by building your own IT-as-a-Service platform.

With VMware cloud foundation, Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud solution is the most feature rich and easy to use platform in the market. On top of this its single ownership of the solution makes the customer experience seamless. n

EVENT

LG rolls out a video on its 20th Anniversary in India

On the special occasion of its 20th anniversary in India, LG has rolled out a unique video that showcases brilliantly how dreams come true with LG. The digital video tells the tale of every Indian home and LG’s products being an integral part of the consumers’ journey.

The video is told through an inspiring story of a single mom and her daughter who goes on to become an astronaut. It traces the journey of a girl from the year 1997 to 2017. The mother wants her daughter to become an astronaut after watching the inspirational journey of the famous Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla on LG Golden Eye TV. In fact, the LG TV is one of the things which her mother sells to make money for her daughter’s dream as one of the all precious things to her which are sold. As they move onward, they realize that LG’s presence is always a part of their surroundings. The little girl, with her dedication goes on to become an astronaut, just like her idol. While she undergoes rigorous training, she is always surrounded by LG’s wide range of products for her comfort and care. The video ends with the girl, who is now grown up and an astronaut, gifting a brandnew LG OLED TV to her mother as a gesture for her sacrifices. With this story, LG reiterates how it is part of consumer’s lifestyles and not just a product manufacturing company.

The video is truly an innovative means of celebrating the 20-year-long bond between LG and its consumers. It reminds us in a unique way how dreams have and continue to come alive with LG. The company has always been a companion along the journey of its consumers and this commercial dedicates a strong message in this direction. LG has truly been an integral part of every Indian’s dream.

The video will feature across LG’s website and other digital platforms, including the social media channels.

"LG’s 20-year-long presence in India has been remarkable. Today, our consumers don’t recall us just as a brand, but a trusted partner that has been an integral part of making their lives better. LG has always struck the right chords with its consumers and taken unique steps to make their aspirations a reality. Almost every Indian will be able to associate with the digital video, as per our belief of being part of almost every Indian home. As a company, we base our initiatives on customers’ insights and this video is dedicated to honour consumers’ dreams. LG will continue to develop innovative and breakthrough products that will make the lives of consumers more convenient. Our customers’ trust in us gives us inspiration to deliver our best each time and continue to live the Brand Promise – Life's Good."

Amit Gujral Head Corporate Marketing LG Electronics India

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May 2017

27

VAR CORPORATE

CIPL: A Journey from Rs 5 As truly said, CIPL is a "one stop technology destination" as it meets all the technological requirements of any company with its array of offerings from technology experts. It not only offers end to end solutions but also possesses a team of experts to provide assistance to maintain state-of-the-art technologies. On time execution of projects and delivery of services makes the company stand apart from its competitors. “CIPL is an IT Integrator. We are doing business in compute system, server, storage, security, cloud, datacenter management. We are a one stop technology destination as we provide end to end solutions to the customers, whether it’s computing, printer, UPS, server, storage, datacenter or security and also a team to manage the whole system or equipment. We have complete solution and have everything under one roof. If a customer wants to build its own infrastructure and also wants the maintenance, we have a complete team who can manage the entire infrastructure. We have the best solutions as we have tie ups with OEMs like NetApp, Microsoft, IBM, Lenovo, Fujitsu, Trend Micro, McAfee etc. That is why we say that we are the “One stop technology destination,� explains Vinod Kumar, Managing Director & CEO - CIPL. He adds, “We provide end to end solutions and we have a complete team to manage end to end solutions. Our target verticals are government and PSUs. The biggest differentiator is our commitment of on time execution of the projects and delivery and services. These are the unique features of CIPL. We have a set of presales and project management team to monitor the progress of the project.�

5crore. Last year, we have achieved the mark of Rs 327 crores and now the total number of employees is 712 as on today. The main priority was to make our infrastructure strong so that it becomes easier to take on the big projects. We wanted to grow step by step,� says Vinod.

CIPL has recorded 100% growth every year and took its revenue from Rs 160 crores in 2015 to Rs 327 crores in 2016. Besides revenue accomplishments, it has done some challenging projects like Anti-hijacking command control center for Airport Authority of India which was remarkable milestone for the company.

Moreover, the timely execution and completion of the project marks the efficiency of CIPL team. “Revenue wise we have achieved 100% year on year growth. In 2015, we have made Rs 160 crores and in 2016 we have closed to Rs 327 crores. Apart from the revenue achievements, in past we have done various critical projects.

Last year we have done a project of Airport Authority of India for Anti-hijacking command control center and it is a very prestigious project done by CIPL. We had to connect 14 airports across India and the main command control is at Rashtrapati Bhawan. So in case of any hijacking of aircraft then the Prime Minister and President can monitor the situation from the command centre. The project was really challenging. Our team was very good and completed the project on time. The time duration of the project was six months and we have completed it by that time. It was project of around Rs 20crore. CIPL is also responsible to manage the infrastructure for five years,� mentions Vinod.

The journey‌

CIPL has strengthened its position in the market and due to its niche clients and area of work, the company does not face any challenges. “As such there are no challenges as we have a set of customers. We always have a strategy to add 50-60 new customers every year. This year we have are looking forward to add corporate customers,� says Vinod.

Discussing about GST he adds, “GST will help CIPL. We are planning to become a GSP (Goods and Service Provider) which

CIPL started its journey with a strong ideology of fair, honest and ethical business practices and with manpower of only 12 people.The turnover of the first year was Rs 5crore. But in these 10 years, it has not only added on to the manpower, which now counts to 712 but also witnesses an escalating turnover of Rs 327crore. “The journey is quite impressive, we started this company with only 12 people and we achieved the revenue turnover of Rs

Challenges & Opportunities‌

Revenue Breakup of 2016

is under GST. We have already filed an application to become a GSP. It is because of GST implementation we are getting a lot of datacenter projects from government, PSUs and corporate, people are looking for high end technologies and that is like an opportunity for us.�

Growth Verticals ‌

For CIPL, defence and DRDO labs are the major growth areas as these departments of the government are adopting latest, cutting edge technologies that are adopted by the enterprises. “Last year the growth came from defence and DRDO labs (Defence Research and Development Organization). These are the departments which are looking for enterprise kind of solutions that is why we are planning to tap on these clients this year also. Other government departments still look for simple compute but the PSUs and the DRDO labs

PRESTIGIOUS PROJECTS

Today, CIPL is a front runner in quality as well as

quantity. Few of its prestigious projects are -

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Vinod Kumar Managing Director & CEO - CIPL

May 2017

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• Airport Authority of India - Anti-hijacking command control centre at Rashtrapati Bhawan, ATC tower (T-3 Delhi airport) & 14 airports across India. • Network Interface Card- Immigration visa foreigner registration and tracking mission mode project - Supply & implementation of unlimited license grant of oracle technology. • Directorate of Information Technology Air Force Head Quarters - Supply, installation & implementation of storage in 5 datacentres across India.

Cr to a Rs 327 Cr business are buying enterprise level solutions,� states Vinod.

In its journey of 10 years the company has always focused on government verticals and has an expertise in this segment. Vinod also mentions that CIPL enjoys working in the government vertical and now looking forward to tap on enterprises which will help it expanding its expertise. “For the last 10 years we have always focused on government business and never on SMEs. We know how government business works and enjoy working with them. This year we are focused to add few corporate,� he reveals.

Sharing the revenue breakup, he also unveils the target CIPL is focusing to achieve. “In 2016, the total revenue was Rs 327 crores and out of this 90% is from government and PSUs and only 10% is from enterprise. This year we have planned to make this 10% to 25%. This year the revenue that we are planning to achieve is Rs 500 crores,� says Vinod.

Turnover over the years

is adopting cloud solutions and there are many tenders that coming up in this area.

The Government is always more challenging business than Enterprises and SMEs. We have

set our goals to tap on Enterprise segment but if we see the 10 years of journey, government is more challenging,� concludes Vinod.

Roadmap ahead‌

CIPL is eyeing the cloud business this year and also aiming to become a CSP (Cloud Service Provider) and GSP. These will help the company to take it to the next level. “We are focusing on cloud business and also looking forward to CSP and GSP. Both the areas will help CIPL as now days government

CIPL’s Contribution to the Society CIPL has opened a CIPL Foundation, a trust to contribute to the society. • During the time of demonetization CIPL felt that people are standing in the long queues without food and water so they came up with an idea to help people and started sending teams to different areas to distribute tea, snacks etc. It also arranged chairs for the elderly people. The campaign continued for 15 days. • CIPL also celebrated Banker’s Day to motivate the bankers during demonetization. The company covered over 100 branches and thanked the bankers by offering a Rose and chocolate. • In April it distributed books, uniforms, school bags etc to 500 children of Oriental Public School in Noida. These children belong to the nearby slums. • The trust was founded keeping in view of those who come from rural areas, good at studies and they wanted to pursue civil services but they do not have money to carry on the studies. So CIPL we will select 10 such students and will fund them this year. • In the interior parts of India where there are no medical facilities, CIPL wants to facilitate them with free medicines and doctors for their basic health issues.

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May 2017

29

FACE TO FACE

Zicom invests in a technology driven future Zicom has come a long way ever since it pioneered Zicom 1.0 back in 1994. From electronic security to introducing SaaS and innovating its services business, Zicom has had taken the surveillance market by storm. Pramoud Rao, Managing Director – Zicom Electronic Security Systems in a chat with VARINDIA shares the brand’s growth strategies and its roadmap for the India market -

How would you like to describe Zicom 3.0?

In 1994 Zicom 1.0 pioneered the concept of electronic security in India. In 2013 Zicom 2.0 pioneered the concept of SaaS business leveraging IOT. In 2017 Zicom 3.0 is all set to change the dynamics and landscape of the product and services business. The current market offers us huge potential to bring the best of innovations both in products, services and customer delivery.

How is Zicom better than its competition?

When Zicom introduced SaaS, it changed the way the industry was dealing with hardware. SaaS made the hardware to offer more value convenience and comfort with business intelligence. For instance, CCTV systems historically recorded crime. Under SaaS, CCTVs were used to prevent crime. Further CCTVs were used for using business intelligence like customer footfall, heat mapping etc.

Zicom is focusing on creating products & services on the IOT platform under the SaaS model. BFSI, Educational institutes, housing complexes, smart cities will be our focused area. With technology evolving every day we are updating and upgrading our go to market strategy to remain relevant and continue with our leadership. With India having more than 4 million app developers, we are getting ready for the opportunities that are immense and potential for pivotal role in the development of the global IOT business ecosystems, both of a market and innovation thought.

What is your strategy to regain market share and to become a dominant player in the product business?

With 23 years of experience behind us spanning across products, services, central monitoring stations, SaaS etc we understand nuances of this business across product and service portfolio including customers mind from a usability purpose. We will engineer all our strategies to help our channel partners to make more profit and create a long enduring relationship.

What is your channel strategy to encourage channel partner and SIs to sell Zicom products?

Our strategy will be multidimensional, right from offering the right product at the right price bundled with our services, both localized at our central monitoring station and on ground service spanning across 1100+ cities to support our channel partners. We improve our all round operational efficiency to create a nourishing experience with the channel partners.

As security keeps getting commoditized more and more, channel partners with an ever increasing operation cost will need to find ways and means to generate profits to keep their businesses alive. Going after the cheapest products or trying to win orders on price is a strategy that will fail. Our focus is to enable integration of solutions through products and services. Hence our plans for the near future are Skilling up the Partners, Ensuring Partner profitability through a solution engagement model and differentiated products and to help the channel partners build a healthy business model for growing their

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enterprises.

What are the top 3 priorities of Zicom product business going forward?

Our top 3 priorities are • Accessibility - To make our products accessible across the country • Acceptability - Work hard towards making Zicom the most accepted brand in the product business • Affordability - To manufacture most of our product in India and make our products affordable

What is your vision for 2017?

The way we see the channel ecosystem evolving, we see an imminent need for the partners to understand that future is technology driven and not price driven. Zicom will do its bit on educating the channel and also giving them opportunity to build a services business on top of the hardware business for them to be able to differentiate themselves.

We will help the channel partners build a healthy business model for growing their enterprises. This will involve various ways of educating and engaging with the partners and we will be rolling out these in the early part of 2017. n

FACE TO FACE

My next journey of entrepreneurship will create a visible business impact

Given the paradigm shift that the global business landscape is undergoing, Dr Alok Bharadwaj who has served for Canon for 16 years in different capacities is now keen on exploring his entrepreneurial skills and leverage the opportunities that is coming his way to create something impactful. An excerpt and people. This is the new frontier of Digital transformation and a big topic of discussion.

Confronting these dynamics to build a brighter future is what will bring in new growth trajectory.

The work is in progress and I am hopeful that our next generation will experience great times.

How was your long journey in Canon?

My tenure in Canon has been for 16 years and it indeed was a journey of thousand miles that started with a tiny step in Delhi and culminated with a giant leap across Bay of Bengal in Singapore. I worked as a soldier, as an architect, a builder, internal leader, partnerships evangelist, a friend of media and as an industry spokesperson.

It was quite fulfilling, gratifying and rewarding. I can say, it was a golden journey of my life and is etched on my persona and character. It has altered my approach in leadership, organisation cultures, leading transformations and connecting with people.

What kind of growth in the industry you see in Digital transformation?

digital transformations. The first one is on 'customer experience' as companies look at new architecture of competitive edge. With not just companies but industries colliding with industries and a new competitive world emerging, customer experience is the new battle to win.

The second one is 'efficiencies' as organisations look at automating by deploying technologies of AI, IOT & AR/VR. Almost all processes within organisations need to be reformatted using digital transformation. The third one and perhaps, in a revolutionary way, organisational silos need to be assassinated. A new organisational framework needs to evolve to create new synergies of teams

When you look at the global business landscape, two things stand out clearly. Firstly the centre of gravity will soon be India, particularly for eco-political reasons. Secondly all companies are anxious to increase revenues, lower costs and delight customers. They cannot deploy archaic operating models and expect new generation results in re-configuring competitive edge.

This will need massive transformations across industries and organisations, big or small. This opportunity got me inspired to play in this domain of transformations to help leaders enhance organisational performance. I am solidifying best suited propositions that can help create visible impact. This is how my next journey of entrepreneurship will commence. n

1110

The global forces are inspiring new narrative of progress as growth is shifting across industry planes amidst accelerating disruptions. We are currently living in a 'cognitive' era. The biggest lever of transformation is the 'digital transformation'. I see 3 levels of impact of

What plans do you have to start your entrepreneurship journey?

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2 GB RAM

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Intel, Intel Atom, the Intel logo and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

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31

VAR ANALYSIS

Internet Readiness Index of Indian States

Delhi ranks No 1, thanks to its e-infrastructure and e-participation but should focus on IT environment and Government E-services

D

elhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra are the Top 5 states in Internet Readiness Index of Indian states published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Nielsen.

In the large states category, the Top 4 states in Internet Readiness Index of Indian states include - Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra. In small states and union territory category, the Top 3 states in Internet Readiness of Indian states include - Delhi, Chandigarh and Puducherry. In the North Eastern states category, the Top 3 Internet Readiness of Indian North Eastern states category, the Top 3 includes - Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur.

The Internet Readiness Index of Indian states is quiet low for North Eastern states. The government both state and central government need to focus on infrastructure development in a big way.

Internet Readiness Index is a composite benchmark of four parameters - e-infrastructure index, e-participation index, IT environment index and Government e-services index. In this model, Nielsen has taken equal weightage in this model. Along with the indexation, a primary survey was conducted to assess the

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ICT policies of the states.

E-infrastructure comprises of tools, facilities and resources that are required by the public for Internet readiness. The parameters measured in this category include - Teledensity, mobile subscribers per person, share of praise payers in ISPs, mobile subscribers with Internet access, percentage of households using computer/laptop with Internet connection, number of post offices under Project Arrow, Wi-Fi in universities and public Wi-Fi hotspots.

E-participation captures the Internet readiness of the state population in terms of their present digital engagement. The parameters measured in this category include - Facebook users, number of e-transactions in utility bill payments, number of e-transactions in B2C services, number of e-transactions in statutory and non-statutory services, ARPU of mobile services and ratio of number of adults completed primary or higher level of education to total population.

IT Environment captures the extent of IT/ ITES industry in each state so as to ascertain how well each state has managed to harness the growth potential from one of the most dynamic

industries of the country. The parameters measured in this category include - Number of IT companies per 1,000 population, ratio of IT workers to total workers, number of digital start-ups and number of digital start-up incubators.

Government E-Services focuses on capturing the e-services offered by the states and its adoption by the local population. The parameters measured in this category include - Percentage of kiosks installed under rural wireline broadband scheme, expenditure incurred on operational common service centres per person, no of e-services rolled out for citizen participation, number of CSCs, number of Jan Dhan account opened, number of Aadhaar card issued and E-books.

The qualitative analysis will definitely help state policy makers to device future roadmaps for the Internet infrastructure in their respective states so as to raise their scores in various indices considered for mapping the states by resisting their ICT policies to ensure that these states are in sync with the top states. The increase in Internet Readiness Index will also help states to get start-up community in their states which would be good for employment perspective.

State Internet Readiness Index Large States Rank

State

Internet Readiness Index

E-Infrastructure

E-Participation

IT Environment

Government E-Services

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Karnataka Tamil Nadu Kerala Maharashtra Punjab Gujarat Haryana Telangana Himachal Pradesh Andhra Pradesh West Bengal Jammu & Kashmir Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Odisha Assam Chhattisgarh Madhya Pradesh Uttarakhand Jharkhand Bihar

0.92 0.88 0.88 0.88 0.85 0.73 0.70 0.70 0.68 0.68 0.54 0.42 0.42 0.29 0.25 0.19 0.18 0.15 0.14 0.08 0.00

0.64 0.85 0.90 0.83 0.91 0.82 0.48 0.52 0.68 0.33 0.38 0.48 0.48 0.17 0.27 0.16 0.14 0.14 0.16 0.00 0.00

0.77 0.73 0.95 0.76 0.75 0.77 0.51 0.85 0.69 0.66 0.34 0.58 0.42 0.35 0.30 0.34 0.32 0.58 0.49 0.22 0.21

1.00 0.70 0.60 0.72 0.55 0.61 0.45 0.62 0.56 0.55 0.53 0.38 0.40 0.58 0.25 0.19 0.20 0.18 0.18 0.02 0.00

0.44 0.41 0.62 0.73 0.67 0.75 0.32 0.52 0.88 0.69 0.29 0.25 0.48 0.39 0.55 0.33 0.50 0.43 0.45 0.42 0.28

1.00 0.92 0.53 0.64 0.66 0.28 0.43 0.35

0.61 0.58 0.78 0.82 0.54 0.52 0.49 0.32

0.41 0.09 0.13 0.37 0.07 0.16 1.00 0.00

0.36 0.38 0.34 0.69 0.00 0.35 0.41

0.53 0.46 0.44 0.47 0.42 0.44 0.46

0.22 0.28 0.14 0.21 0.16 0.22 0.08

Small States and Union Terittories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Delhi Chandigarh Puducherry Lakshwadeep Daman & Diu Andaman & Nicobar Islands Dadra & Nagar Haveli Goa

1.00 0.77 0.73 0.61 0.44 0.41 0.40 0.24

1.00 0.91 0.87 0.81 0.61 0.41 0.59 0.64

North Eastern States 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Nagaland Manipur Tripura Mizoram Meghalaya Arunachal Pradesh Sikkim

0.58 0.49 0.48 0.47 0.45 0.45 0.42

0.81 0.83 0.82 0.82 0.79 0.80 0.83

Source: IAMAI and Nielsen

Pravin Prashant pravin@varindia.com

Ericsson joins hands with Microsoft to accelerate IoT

Ericsson will strengthen the global Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem with Microsoft by enabling enterprises to speed up the time it takes to launch mobile network-based IoT services.

Ericsson IoT Accelerator allows enterprises to deploy their IoT solutions using Azure, which connects them directly to the ecosystem of mobile operators using the connectivity management service delivered by the Ericsson Device Connection Platform (DCP) which is part of the Ericsson IoT Accelerator. Ericsson IoT Accelerator provides a continuous incremental set of functionality offered as a service to enable agile creation and deployment of solutions for IoT. The connectivity management service of the Ericsson IoT Accelerator allows telecom operators to design, launch and evolve managed IoT connectivity offerings towards enterprises requiring cellular connectivity. It also provides enterprises with full control and automation capabilities to handle the connectivity for their IoT devices. By cooperating with the continuously growing number of other telecom operators connected to Ericsson DCP, telecom operators can address the needs of global enterprises without making one-off investments alone. The platform gives the enterprise a unified service experience for their entire device fleet.

Niklas Heuveldop, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Technology and Emerging Business, Ericsson, said, “The latest Ericsson Mobility Report reveals that the Internet of Things will surpass mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices in 2018. Today, enterprises are facing a major challenge of complexity in IoT deployment. By combining industry-leading innovation and ecosystems, our collaboration with Microsoft removes complexity and brings the possibilities of the IoT closer for enterprises everywhere.” Sam George, Microsoft Director of Azure IoT, Microsoft, said, "Working together with Ericsson helps us delight our customers and partners by enabling more choices to control their cellular connected IoT devices.”

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May 2017

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ORACLE OPEN WORLD 2017

Oracle Open World 2017 To complement the future of India’s new digital economy and to address across the segments, which can work together to transform India digitally, Oracle announced the ERP Cloud that will enable Indian firms to administer and leverage the significant GST process changes -

Safra A Catz, CEO- ORACLE “Oracle open world in India is a global conference organised in New Delhi. It, in a way complements honourable PM Narendra Modi ‘vision and the spirit of transforming this country and bring massive opportunity for over billion people. We are truly an integrated AmericanIndian company, and that gives me great joy. We have been in India for decades since 1987.

When I joined Oracle 18 years ago, we had 40k people in our entire company and now we have nearly 40k here in India alone. Oracle has 90k centres and many-many offices; we have 2 offices just in Maharashtra state, both in Mumbai and Pune. Our entire financial services operation is based out of Mumbai. It is an honour to be the partner for this digital transformation in India.”

Safra further spoke on how Oracle is a clear leader in the cloud and its cloud journey started 20 years ago after acquiring Peoplesoft. “We have created ERP cloud for India and are launching cloud for India compliant for GST immediately. It clearly shows to you our commitment to India, developed just like the honourable PM want to make in India.”

Sparking Digital Transformation within an Organization...

Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud in India will help enterprises (SME, local and multinational firms) operating in India prepare for the country’s transformational tax reforms. Oracle ERP Cloud delivers built-in features to facilitate compliance with new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regulations, provides native support for GST Network integration and reporting, and support for local requirements including withholding, payment processing, and statutory reporting.

To help customers successfully manage this transformation, trained and certified Oracle ERP Cloud consultants from Oracle partners, including Clover Infotech, Deloitte, Filix Consulting, KPIT, KPMG, and PWC are currently engaged with customers.

Oracle ERP Cloud is a complete, modern, and proven financial platform delivered seamlessly through the Oracle Cloud. A modern user interface driven by the latest design innovations deliver embedded analytics, contextual social collaboration and a device-independent mobile experience that makes Oracle ERP Cloud familiar and easy to use.

“Across India, a cultural and technological revolution is taking place. Together with

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government and local enterprise, Oracle is helping build India’s new digital economy.

Discover how digital transformation can provide exciting opportunities for your organization,” said Shailender Kumar, Managing Director, Oracle India.

“We are in an era of disruption and simplification. Leading organizations are using enabling technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence and robotics to disrupt their thinking and transform operations, analytics, customer experience and more. Government agencies and commercial enterprises that are able to harness the possibilities of these technologies will be better positioned to shape the future of their organizations,” said Rakesh Barik, Partner & consulting technology leader, Deloitte India.

He further spoke on how digital transformation has the power to turbocharge the enterprise and learn about the dexterity.

“Vision executives will need to thrive amid ongoing technology-fuelled disruption.

Secondly, successfully evolving is the difference between failing or flourishing in digital age,” Rakesh said.

Speaking on disrupting digital business, Ray Wang, Principal Analyst and Founder,

Rakesh Barik Partner & Consulting Technology Leader Deloitte India

Constellation Research stated that 55% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000. This impact of digital disruption is real. However, it’s not the technologies that drive this change. It’s a shift in how new business models are created. “Discover which technology trends have had the biggest

“Our customers and partners in India have trusted their businesses and mission-critical workloads to the Oracle Cloud for years,” said Thomas Kurian, president of product development, Oracle. “With this expansion we will be able to further support customer choice adding to capabilities already available through deployments of Oracle Cloud at Customer, as well as other Oracle Cloud data center regions in Asia Pacific.”

Oracle enables Customers to Drive Business Transformation

Thomas Kurian President of product development Oracle impact on digital transformation, Challenge on how to overcome obstacles to embracing new technology as the change-agent within your own organization,” Ray said.

Oracle announces datacenter plans for India Oracle aims to provide customers the capability to build and move workloads to an India-based cloud. With this announcement of its cloud services in India over the next six to nine months, Oracle will be reviewing proposals from government and business partners to provide customers with the capability to build and move workloads to an India-based cloud. The services will offer uncompromised security and performance at a significant price advantage over both existing on-premises infrastructure and competitive cloud offerings. Oracle’s expanded infrastructure footprint is a result of tremendous customer demand.

Oracle also expanded Oracle Cloud Platform’s integration offerings with the availability of Oracle API Platform Cloud Service. Bringing together leading API-first design and governance capabilities from recently acquired Apiary and API management from Oracle, the new cloud service delivers end-to-end capabilities for designing, prototyping, documenting, testing, and managing the proliferation of critical APIs. Through a completely new and simplified API management experience, users can easily support changing business demands while having clear visibility into who is using APIs for better control, security, and monetization of digital assets.

Part of the Oracle Cloud Platform, Oracle API Platform Cloud Service is designed to eliminate the complexities associated with transforming on-premises API solutions into the cloud, so companies can thrive in the digital economy. Users can grant external developers and partners access to data locked behind firewalls, inside applications, and within data stores, enabling them to power a larger community to innovate and develop new monetization strategies. It also empowers developers to manage different interfaces for a variety of audiences using advanced, but easy-to-use, API management capabilities. n

Shailender Kumar Managing Director Oracle India

The transition to the GST mandate is another radical change that will fast-track India's journey towards digitalisation.

India has always been a critical market for Oracle. After being here for over 30 years, we now have nearly 700 partners in the country and the largest workforce outside the US. With one of the biggest transformations in history, the entire world is watching India closely as this digital revolution is expected to bring the country to the forefront of the global economy

Ray Wang Principal Analyst and Founder Constellation Research

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May 2017

35

ORACLE OPEN WORLD 2017 Mrutanjay Mahapatra, DMD & CIO- SBI In a Fireside chat session with Mrutanjay Mahapatra, he talked about how as one of the oldest financial institutions SBI is transforming itself digitally “I congratulate Safra, for announcing this grand programme in India. Speaking about the digital, today digital is no more choice it is inevitable; irrespective of your size, irrespective of where you are, you must go digital. We only expect that world will be judging India by what SBI does. So in this, we are digitising our front office, back office, customer experience and a host of other things. Thanks to partners like you and when I speak to seniors in oracle, I always say that it is not important what the world does, it is important what we can do together to show to the world that what India can do. So, in that spirit we know we are bringing the spirit of entrepreneurship. We have this impression that being a govt organisation, we may advance slowly but we will move surely and we will move well, so this is our move towards digitisation.

Secondly, SBI as the country’s largest bank was required to implement government policies.

Let me tell you we have prepared a list of data analytics and that can developed to reach out government coarse currency in a matter of hours. We have the capability to work in an agile fashion and also we can tell how many people in red colour shirt have deposited more than 10k in a branch, that is the power of analytics and also. Also we did a lot of forecasting during demonetization drive because it was massive movement of cash that was happening. We did forecast, analytics and we did design development.”

Replying on how technology has helped SBI to be the No.1 digital bank by moving from 100s of years of history to being at the forefront of the digital economy, he said, “it is simply madness behind the method, every method must have some madness or some kind of a mission behind whatever you do. I call it a STEP approach. S is security and TEP is transformation practice. Every year you are likely to see a transformed SBI. So what is our transformation preparedness? Every time, when I meet my senior colleague members or when I meet with partners like you, because there are so many things going on, we are sometimes lost in the crowd of when we talk about, how to give digital experience to consumers and so on. What is happening today is B2B transformation and G2C transformation, where a huge amount of intermediation is required; human practice is required on the part of the banks. So you need to be ready for the transformation. We are bringing a large number of changes in our processes, people and the technology together and also of course at the end productivity. Your IT must bring us adequate return of investment, and also we should know how to measure it because if we don’t measure it we will lose it.

Speaking on connecting to customers, well I always tell that we have to run the speed at the same pace. The ecosystem is changing at the same time that you are changing, so it is a 2 dimensional thing to begin with, and becomes multidimensional in no time. We really do lots of collaboration - one is customer collaboration, where we have the groups of customers who work in my source or in my crowd/cloud of ideas.

They tell me what they like and what they don’t like. If something is not working probably 5 years back, SBI would have remained stuck to that.

But today I am willing to retire a sunset product in 3 months time and also at the same time we are also going and collaborating with the fintech companies, with the start-ups. We are employing our entrepreneur skills by telling that mobile should be first.

Secondly, we have 117 thousand employees after we did one of the largest mergers in banking history in the world and all these people I always see like my customers, who are in the age of 18 to 108 and who want completely digital delivery to completely assistant delivery. I have employees in all shapes and sizes. There are employees among them, someone who is digital savvy or someone who believes that computer is something which he doesn’t want to know. So here what is required is that, how we take people along at the time of crisis to tell them what is in need from them, how they are making a difference and that the orchestration requires your ability."

Munish Mittal, Group Head-IT & CIO- HDFC Bank

“HDFC Bank is now the country’s second largest private sector lender. Banking is a technology business and CIO brings technology skills. We are in the business of making money by moving money. Banks are the only merchants who want their products back. If we lend money, we want it back. Our core business is banking and technology as a platform offers it to the customers in a more sophisticated, more accurate and faster manner, to give a better experience to our customers. This experience which they will carry and continue to consume is not just products. We will continue to focus on IT strategy. We will take the best of the breed and try to improve them, customise them, and may be enhance them to suit our process. We take a lot of pride in our back-end process. That’s how we have the least NPAs. All my core banking is on Oracle. The entire hardware infrastructure runs on Oracle Engineered Systems. For core banking, for core lending, for loan origination system, it’s all Oracle. Our strategy is to always work with two strategic partners. Our IT team also continues to experience innovations happening in the world which could be useful for us to scale our systems, provide more stability faster and better experience to customers so that we can work with other partners.

The second part is the innovation in the bank itself. Look at our 10-second product, the 10second loan. Do you think anybody in the world yet has a 10-second loan? Digital is all about scale and that’s where we bring technology together with product innovation. 10-second loan is one thousand per cent analytics. You click, and the loan is in your account. We focus heavily on Big Data and analytics tool. Today, they are using it to drive revenue, get valuable insights on customers.

HDFC Bank has made significant investments in technology re-engineering, system design and architecture and smart storage capacity.

Lastly, there is ample of opportunities that are coming from analytics. If 40% to 50% business is not coming from analytics, then you are out of the business."

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Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister, Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis is very clear that he wants to create Maharashtra as the biggest hub as far as IT exports in the country is concerned. The MOU signed between Oracle and Govt. of Maharashtra is aim towards delivering transparent services to the citizens of Maharashtra and about collaborating and delivering on smart cities.

“I still remember that I was at San Francisco, participating in Oracle Open World when we forged a partnership with Oracle and since then I have seen that Oracle has been contributing immensely into the IT revolution and technology revolution of India and Maharashtra. I am happy that you have chosen me for this award which is nothing but technology transformation.

Let me tell you it is not my credit, but the credit goes to my principal secretary, Mr Gautam and his team who have been working relentlessly to make Maharashtra a ‘Maha IT Rashtra’. India is passing through a demographic dividend and by 2020 it will be the youngest nation in the world. The population in India is its biggest resource and if this population is converted into human resource, India can beat the world. Many people have understood the statistics of demography but there are very few who have understood the potential of demography.

It is rightly understood that the immense potential of this demography is none other than our PM Narendra Modi and he understands the demographic dividend for a country. We weren’t part of the third industrial revolution but I am sure India has a potential to technologically lead the fourth Industrial revolution and that is what is understood by our Honourable PM. I am sure that technology is a key. With proper technology if we move forward, I am sure what we couldn’t do it in 100 years, we will do it in the next 10 years and India will lead the way.

Because Maharashtra is the power house of India, it is the state which immensely contributes into all sectors of the country. This has in turn contributed to create Maharashtra as an IT leader and by trying to create a process, so that technology is leveraged in the process of development.

The ‘Aaple Sarkar’ website is a one stop shop for 370 services, which we are offering online for the first time demographically. This means that no citizen has to go to a government office and they can simply access those 370 services from our portal and the application for delivery. Everything is digital and we have an interface where people can track the offices and the officials they are seeking. This in a way leads to transparency and efficiency. We also have created a MahaNet, in which we will be taking fibre to all 29k gram panchayats of Maharashtra. I am happy to tell you that we have already completed 14k gram panchayats and perhaps Maharastra will be the first state to connect every single village, every single

“What is a government? It is an agency to deliver, we are there to serve people because what the government does in India is to deliver services to the people and with the IT revolution in the backdrop and with the use of proper technology we can make this delivery system credible, accessible, accountable, transparent and I think that is what we are trying to do in Maharashtra. Safra is a friend of India but let me remind you, though she is a friend of India but she remains the most valuable friend of Maharashtra. I hope that the data centres will be announced soon in Maharashtra.”

Gram Panchayat with fibre and it is not just taking internet, it is not just taking digitisation but the 21st century will see roads connecting villages. When the digital roads will reach villages, these villages will grow, they will prosper, they will add great values. With that our schools, clinics, Gram Panchayats, everything would be digitised and the last person of the society will be connected to the process of development.

We need to convert our population into human resource. Speed & scale is the key. By 2020 we have to put Govt processes on auto pilot mode for max efficiency & transparency.

Secondly, the Mumbai Wi-Fi project perhaps is the biggest project of public WiFi and we are happy to tell you that we have created this project in less than 6 months.

My team worked so hard and used all the 360 degree technology approach through which we could create i. We have also created our digital village at Arisal. Arisal as you might be

aware is also called the capital of malnutrition but with an ICT-based smart project, we are trying to change this. We are looking into integrating ICT into healthcare, education, energy and other areas.

Now we are planning an enterprise architecture, which will bring synergy to all the efforts of our government. We have often seen that when citizens are required to interact with the government, in 90% cases the citizens have to take a service from X department of government for the Y department of government. A certificate has to be taken from this department of government to be submitted to that department of government; 90% of transactions are like this. So, what we have decided, with this enterprises architecture we will create a platform where no govt office will ever ask a citizen to take a certificate or take a service which will require them to go to other govt offices. It will be the synergy which will be created, the platform which will be created which will share all the data and that will eliminate lots of processes.

Big data analytics is the key because while planning your resources, you need a perfect data which actually use your way to optimally use your resources and that is what we are really trying to achieve. I am happy that in this journey, Oracle has been our valued partner and I am really happy that Safra has come here, because every time she comes here or she meets our PM she makes wonderful announcements for India. In a lighter note, I wish if she could come every 3 months to India so that this journey would be expedited.

I am also amazed as before the GST is rolled out, Cisco is already ready with the products for GST. That is a focus and that is a leadership. Let me tell you, the GST will be the biggest platform in the world for a unified tax system. And those who understand this, those who are first in market like Oracle will create wonders and will create a position for itself which nobody else will be able to take.

We are waiting for more announcements for setting up of data centres in India.”

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COVER STORY

Corporates need to take cyber security seriously and plan business continuity and incident response strategy for any vulnerability both individually as well as collectively As per global reports, WannaCry Ransomware cyber attack has affected India and 150 odd countries and has infiltrated 57,000 computers. Maharashtra Cyber Helpline has received 282 calls on the first day, Andhra Pradesh has reported 14 and even Kerala Police has reported many complaints.

Many organisations and networks in over 150 countries were crippled by the recent WannaCry ransomware outbreak.

This massive ransomware attack became infamous by shutting down a number of hospitals in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) system and thus preventing patients from receiving critical care.

Globally healthcare, manufacturing, governments, financial institutions and large national enterprises have been affected by WannaCry cyber attack.

In China, WannaCry Ransomware has affected over 30,000 companies which includes hospitals, train stations, universities, government offices, post offices and gas stations. The worst hit is the powerful statecontrolled oil company CNPC which was forced to disconnect servers of more than 20,000 service stations and temporarily stop accepting online payments.

Quick Heal has detected over 48,000 attempts of WannaCry ransomware attack in India of which 60 per cent is targeted towards enterprises and 40 per cent is targeted towards individual customers.

According to Quick Heal, Kolkata tops the list of cities with maximum detections followed by Delhi, Bhubaneshwar, Pune, and Mumbai.

Fortinet’s tracking analysis shows that there has been an average of more than 4,000 ransomware attacks every day since January 1, 2016.

India’s cyber security agency CERT– In has issued a red alert in connection with the latest ransomware attack and has warned users not to pay the ransom.

India is among the top 3 worst hit countries, because of high Windows XP

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penetration and pirated windows OS usage.

What is WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Attack?

Ransomware WannaCry cyber attack is based on EternalBlue, an application developed

by US National Security Agency (NSA) to attack computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The WannaCry vulnerability affects most desktop and server of Microsoft Windows.

Systems which did not apply a patch update for this vulnerability were affected as it uses wormlike behaviour to affect vulnerable systems on the network. The impact on victims was primarily disruption of service resulting in loss of productivity and loss in revenue.

The Ransomware is a malware program which gets into any computer system through e-mail and when any user opens the attachment, the virus infects the system. When the ransomware gets activated, it starts encrypting any data files present in the system on random basis which makes them inaccessible to the user. Ransomware

program demand an amount of ransom which needs to be paid to the hackers who in return might provide the decryption key to unlock the encrypted files.

The victim’s data remains encrypted and inaccessible unless the infection is removed.

Victims are being told that after 7 days, their files will be lost forever if the ransom is not paid.

The WannaCry malware is attributed to Lazarus hacking group, responsible for a series of devastating attacks against government organizations, media and financial institutions.

Some of the operations linked to Lazarus hacking group include: Sony Pictures in 2014 and Central Bank of Bangladesh cyber heist in 2016.

Industry Reaction Seeing the magnitude of WannaCry Ransomware cyber attack, the industry from all cross sections has responded about its magnitude and the precautionary steps to be taken so that its effect can be minimised.

Speaking on the impact of WannaCry Ransomware cyber attack, Tarun Wig, Co-

Ten Step Recommendations on WannaCry Ransomware 1. Infected devices need to be isolated immediately by removing them from the network. If the network is infected, all the connected devices need to be disconnected.

2. One should store back up data offline and even backup systems should be scanned so that they are free of malware.

3. In case of any malware, please report to CERT-IN for any assistance or help.

4. If your windows devices have not been infected by the ransomware, please patch now for future infection.

5. Organizations should follow a standard operating procedure by doing a regular routine for patching operating systems, software, and firmware on all devices. Larger organizations can opt for a centralized patch management system.

6. One needs to deploy intrusion prevention system, filtering technologies and others which needs to be updated regularly. Corporates need to scan all e-mails to detect threats 7. One needs to have routine back up data on regular intervals.

8. Corporates need to have business continuity and incident response strategy and needs to conduct regular vulnerability assessments to make their system secure proof.

9. One needs to document detection controls and response procedures for ransomware as this ransomware is here to stay.

10. Corporate needs to partner with a diverse array of industry & government bodies for sharing of intelligence and best practices to make the system secure proof.

Source: VARINDIA

“The need for urgent collective action to keep people safe online”: Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft Early Friday morning the world experienced the year’s latest cyberattack.

Starting first in the United Kingdom and Spain, the malicious “WannaCrypt” software quickly spread globally, blocking customers from their data unless they paid a ransom using Bitcoin. The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States. That theft was publicly reported earlier this year. A month prior, on March 14, Microsoft had released a security update to patch this vulnerability and protect our customers.

While this protected newer Windows systems and computers that had enabled Windows Update to apply this latest update, many computers remained unpatched globally. As a result, hospitals, businesses, governments, and computers at homes were affected.

All of this provides the broadest example yet of so-called “ransomware,” which is only one type of cyberattack. Unfortunately, consumers and business leaders have become familiar with terms like “zero day” and “phishing” that are part of the broad array of tools used to attack individuals and infrastructure. We take every single cyberattack on a Windows system seriously, and we’ve been working around the clock since Friday to help all our customers who have been affected by this incident. This included a decision to take additional steps to assist users with older systems that are no longer supported. Clearly, responding to this attack and helping those affected needs to be our most immediate priority.

At the same time, it’s already apparent that there will be broader and important lessons from the “WannaCrypt” attack we’ll need to consider to avoid these types of attacks in the future.

I see three areas where this event provides an opportunity for Microsoft and the industry to improve.

As a technology company, we at Microsoft have the first responsibility to address these issues. We increasingly are among the first responders to attacks on the internet. We have more than 3,500 security engineers at the company, and we’re working comprehensively to address cybersecurity threats. This includes new security functionality across our entire software platform, including constant updates

to our Advanced Threat Protection service to detect and disrupt new cyberattacks. In this instance, this included the development and release of the patch in March, a prompt update on Friday to Windows Defender to detect the WannaCrypt attack, and work by our customer support personnel to help customers afflicted by the attack.

But as this attack demonstrates, there is no cause for celebration. We’ll assess this attack, ask what lessons we can learn, and apply these to strengthen our capabilities. Working through our Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Digital Crimes Unit, we’ll also share what we learn with law enforcement agencies, governments, and other customers around the world.

Second, this attack demonstrates the degree to which cybersecurity has become a shared responsibility between tech companies and customers. The fact that so many computers remained vulnerable two months after the release of a patch illustrates this aspect. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, there is simply no way for customers to protect themselves against threats unless they update their systems. Otherwise they’re literally fighting the problems of the present with tools from the past. This attack is a powerful reminder that information technology basics like keeping computers current and patched are a high responsibility for everyone, and it’s something every top executive should support.

At the same time, we have a clear understanding of the complexity and diversity of today’s IT infrastructure, and how updates can be a formidable practical challenge for many customers. Today, we use robust testing and analytics to enable rapid updates into IT infrastructure, and we are dedicated to developing further steps to help ensure security updates are applied immediately to all IT environments.

Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public

Brad Smith is Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer.

Smith plays a key role in representing the company externally and in leading the company’s work on a number of critical issues including privacy, security, accessibility, environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, among others.

founder, Innefu Labs said, “Ransomware attacks had taken place earlier also but this is a well-coordinated attack at a massive scale and the impact is huge.” ”Enterprises constantly struggle to stay on top of regular patching cycles as this can impact day-to-day operations in some cases. IBM has a global incident response and intelligence services (IRIS) team to work with affected clients and those using IBM’s BigFix security patching or QRadar Network protection technologies have been better protected from this attack,” said Kartik Shahani, Integrated Security Leader, IBM ISA.

“IBM’s Managed Security Services team has raised the AlertCon to level 3, which brings a higher level of focus and resources for our clients. We are also leveraging Watson for cyber security to analyze the data and derive insights to prevent future incidents. Companies will need to have an incident response plan in place to quickly recover and also ensure that employees, suppliers and others who work with them receives regular security training,” added Shahani.

Kiran Bhagwanani, Chief Executive Officer, Dimension Data India said, “Organizations will keep facing such attacks till we don’t embed security into everything we plan and implement.

The overall approach to security needs a fresh

perspective. Key breeder of such issues is the requirement in the organization where boundary less infrastructure is created to facilitate seamless flow of data required within different entities across the organization. End user itself has become a perimeter and all assaults are directed towards penetrating the weakest end user.”

Commenting on WannaCry, Sunil Sharma, Vice President – Sales, Sophos, India & SAARC said, “We believe this is the first example of a commercial malware attack using ransomware techniques that took advantage of an exploit allegedly leaked from the US National Security Agency (NSA) and uses a variant of the ShadowBrokers APT EternalBlue exploit. We

domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.

The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.

This is one reason we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention” to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them. And it’s why we’ve pledged our support for defending every customer everywhere in the face of cyberattacks, regardless of their nationality. This weekend, whether it’s in London, New York, Moscow, Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Beijing, we’re putting this principle into action and working with customers around the world.

We should take from this recent attack a renewed determination for more urgent collective action. We need the tech sector, customers, and governments to work together to protect against cybersecurity attacks. More action is needed, and it’s needed now. In this sense, the WannaCrypt attack is a wake-up call for all of us. We recognize our responsibility to help answer this call, and Microsoft is committed to doing its part.

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COVER STORY

"Ransomware attacks had taken place earlier also but this is a wellcoordinated attack at a massive scale and the impact is huge" Tarun Wig Co-founder Innefu Labs

"Enterprises constantly struggle to stay on top of regular patching cycles as this can impact day-to-day operations in some cases" Kartik Shahani Integrated Security Leader IBM ISA

"Organizations will keep facing such attacks till we don’t embed security into everything we plan and implement"

encourage all customers to deploy the Microsoft patch that mitigates the underlying vulnerability in the Windows operating system. It is imperative that businesses everywhere update their operating systems, their security software and educate their users against phishing attacks. This is a best practice to reduce the risk from any attack.”

“Sophos advises that all users of Sophos Home ensure their Windows operating system has been updated with the latest Microsoft updates and that their security software is also up to date. We also invite and encourage all home users to try our new Sophos Home Premium beta which is also free,” added Sharma.

Speaking on Ransomware cyber attack, Sanjay Katkar, MD & CTO, Quick Heal Technologies said, “India is getting hit hard by such attacks as India has a large number of Windows users who do not have proper security patches applied and rely on inadequate internet security. Our observation is that the attack is not focused towards any particular industry but it is

widely spread across industries especially those organisations which are online and connected.

In the last few days, we have received distressed calls from customers belonging to verticals like education, banking, financial, manufacturing, health care and even from few services sectors.”

Mukul Shrivastava, Partner, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, EY India said, “Incidents of such nature and magnitude serve as warning signals for both public and private sector enterprises to have a proactive approach and invest in technologies as well as skilled staff to mitigate and remediate cyber incidents.”

Budiman Tsjin, Senior Technical Consultant, RSA Asia said, “The ransomware ‘WannaCry’ managed to stop cars, factories and hospitals across the world over the weekend.”

L.C. Singh, Founder, Vice Chairman and CEO, Nihilent Technologies, “Standard best practices of deploying latest operating systems, application patches and anti-virus go a long way in reducing these attacks. Organizations

must have information security policies that reduce exposure to malware, and will need to develop, deploy, monitor, and test security tools throughout their network. The aim is to detect any hint of anomaly using machine learning on past data, to be able to avoid compromises and, in the event they do get infected, ensure a faster recovery.”

Altaf Halde, MD, Kaspersky Lab said, “The analysis of the February sample and comparison to WannaCry samples used in recent attacks shows that the code which points at the Lazarus group was removed from the WannaCry malware used in the attacks started last Friday. This can be an attempt to cover traces conducted by orchestrators of the WannaCry campaign.”

Although this similarity alone doesn't allow proof of a strong connection between the WannaCry ransomware and the Lazarus Group, it can potentially lead to new ones which would shed light on the WannaCry origin which to the moment remains a mystery added Halde.

"The ransomware ‘WannaCry’ managed to stop cars, factories and hospitals across the world over the weekend" Budiman Tsjin Senior Technical Consultant, RSA Asia

"Organizations must have information security policies that reduce exposure to malware, and will need to develop, deploy, monitor, and test security tools throughout their network" L.C. Singh Founder, Vice Chairman and CEO, Nihilent Technologies

"The analysis of the February sample and comparison to WannaCry samples used in recent attacks shows that the code which points at the Lazarus group was removed from the WannaCry malware..."

Altaf Halde Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab

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Kiran Bhagwanani Chief Executive Officer Dimension Data India

"We believe this is the first example of a commercial malware attack using ransomware techniques that took advantage of an exploit allegedly leaked from the US National Security Agency" Sunil Sharma VP – Sales, Sophos, India & SAARC

"India is getting hit hard by such attacks as India has a large number of Windows users who do not have proper security patches applied and rely on inadequate internet security" Sanjay Katkar MD & CTO, Quick Heal Technologies

"Incidents of such nature and magnitude serve as warning signals for both public and private sector enterprises to have a proactive approach..."

Mukul Shrivastava Partner, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, EY India

“Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs has been monitoring and analyzing threat telemetry gathered from over two million sensors around the world. WannaCry and its variants is a highly virulent ransomware strain which is capable of self-replicating. This ransomware is being referred to by a number of names, including WCry, WannaCry, WanaCrypt0r, WannaCrypt and Wana Decrypt0r. It spreads through an alleged NSA exploit called ETERNALBLUE that was leaked online in April 2017 by a hacker group known as The Shadow Brokers. ETERNALBLUE exploits vulnerability in the Microsoft Server Message Block 1.0 (SMBv1) protocol,” said David Maciejak, Director, Security Research, Fortinet.

"WannaCry has infiltrated thousands of organisations around the world, including many key institutions. This ransomware is especially notable for its multi-language ransom demands that support more than two-dozen languages,” added Maciejak.

“Fortinet addresses organizations’ cyber

security challenges with an intelligent Security Fabric that spans the entire network, linking different security sensors and tools together to collect, coordinate, and respond to malicious behavior whenever it occurs,” said Maciejak. “Only by harnessing all their cyber defence resources in a coordinated way can firms effectively fight massive cyberattacks like WannaCry.” Speaking on WannaCry Ransomware, Mark Hughes, CEO, British Telecom Security has recommended four basic steps to stay secure.

First, check you have the patch applied and running correctly across your global IT estate.

Second, work closely with your AV vendors and Microsoft to ensure you have the latest virus protection available. Third, discover whether you have been infected, limit the spread as far as possible then neutralise to avoid the malware detonating.

Fourth, isolate and roll-back, contain the affected machines, clean them, then restore the data.

Ankush Johar, Director, HumanFirewall. io said, ”The first line of protection is Backup, Backup, Backup! Then Update with the MS17010 patch and disable SMBv1 on your Windows machines. Even if the Ransomware affects you, the backup will protect your digital assets, and please keep the digital assets away from the internet altogether."

Speaking on the future plan, Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft said, "We should take from this recent attack a renewed determination for more urgent collective action. We need the tech sector, customers, and governments to work together to protect against cybersecurity attacks. More action is needed, and it’s needed now. In this sense, the WannaCrypt attack is a wake-up call for all of us. We recognize our responsibility to help answer this call, and Microsoft is committed to doing its part." n

"WannaCry has infiltrated thousands of organisations around the world, including many key institutions. This ransomware is especially notable for its multi-language ransom demands..."

David Maciejak Director, Security Research, Fortinet

"Discover whether you have been infected, limit the spread as far as possible then neutralise to avoid the malware detonating. Isolate and rollback, contain the affected machines, clean them, then restore the data" Mark Hughes CEO, British Telecom Security

"The first line of protection is Backup, Backup, Backup! Then Update with the MS17-010 patch and disable SMBv1 on your Windows machines. Even if the Ransomware affects you, the backup will protect your digital assets..."

Ankush Johar Director, HumanFirewall.io

Pravin Prashant pravin@varindia.com

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AWS SUMMIT 2017

The Success Story of Amazon Web Services in India A

t the recently held Amazon Partners Summit (APS), Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO - Amazon.com spoke about how AWS is helpful for the growth of start-up companies and that AWS (Amazon Web Services) has now a robust, fully featured technology Infrastructure platform. He further validated to say that 90% of the start-ups in the country are running in the AWS platform and shared about some of the best success stories of AWS that came come from the collaboration of people in that room.

The attendees attending the APS were in thousands.

The AWS Partner Network (APN) program helps partners build successful AWS-based businesses, by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market (GTM) support. AWS Consulting Partners such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Accenture, PwC, Blazeclan, Minjar, Frontier, Intelligrape, Progressive, and Team Computers are helping enterprises migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications on AWS, and are providing a full range of monitoring, automation and management services for customers’ AWS environments.

AWS Technology Partners in India include SAP, Microsoft, Adobe, Druva, Freshdesk, Manthan, Indusface, Newgen, RAMCO, Seclore, Mediology, Mithi Software, Vinculum, and many others who are providing software solutions that are either hosted on, or integrated with AWS. The AWS is the marketplace where customers can easily find, trial, deploy, and buy software solutions from the AWS Cloud.

Enterprises and SMBs in India like working with/buying from the local partners they know, and the local AWS partner ecosystem provides a great on ramp to the cloud and deliver the confidence they need to migrate more workloads.

AWS’s highly reliable and resilient cloud platform gives freedom to ISVs to build and deploy their products around AWS eco-system with increased efficiency, instant service delivery, accelerated growth, enhanced scalability, high availability and reduced CAPEX. Some examples below – Vinculum is an Advanced Technology Partner of AWS and leveraging the platform capabilities they have built integrations to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart etc, 3PLs like Blue Dart, Ecom Express, Delhivery, Front end platforms, Cross border platforms which facilitate brands and retailers to sell orders in 65 plus countries from India itself along with end to end visibility, tracking and deliveries. Their flagship product Vin eRetail has helped many hundreds of brands and retailers in India to go online and succeed globally.

Mediology Software is India’s leading products company working with media and publishing companies since 2010. In 2012 they launched Readwhere.com, which in a short span of time became India’s leading digital reading platform. They have to their credit, India’s first company to be a finalist in the AWS Start-up challenge, and recently won the Innovation award across the North India Partner Ecosystem. The deep domain expertise in AWS and Media has resulted in their platform being embraced by 2000+ publishers, from over 350 cities in India Shantanu Mathur, Country Head - Knowlarity is the largest cloud communications provider in emerging markets. Over 15000 businesses across 65+ countries trust Knowlarity's suite of hosted products that

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Dr. Werner Vogels CTO Amazon.com

"In India, the number of AWS Professional Level certifications grew 1036% year-over-year in 2016, and the number of AWS Associate Level certifications grew 323% year-over-year in 2016” make business telephony reliable and intelligent. Knowlarity is backed

by Sequoia Capital and Mayfield. One of the early adopters of all KRADLE (Kinesis, Redshift, Aurora, Dynamo DB, Lambda, EMR) services of AWS and leveraging the AWS platform has helped accelerate their growth and efficiently scale operations to serve customers all over the globe Tarun Malaviya, CEO - Mithi Software Technologies distinguishes itself as a provider of Email, Collaboration and Archiving solutions.

The company started by building collaboration solutions on an Open Source Platform around the year 2005, to create affordable collaboration software. About two years ago the company made the choice of moving to the Cloud platform to breakout from this limitation. Moving to AWS has enabled Mithi to bring newer and better offerings to its customers and to innovate faster. The company has recently launched 3 more solutions on AWS including Vaultastic – a cloud based email archiving and backup solution that can be used to archive mails from any mailing system and ClearStream – offering Anti Spam, Anti Virus and Ransomware protection for mail servers as well as a basic disaster recovery to ensure email service continuity in case the primary email server is inaccessible. Lastly, the flexibility, reduced capital costs, improved security, dependability and faster upgrades, that the AWS cloud offering brings is much welcome by Mithi and their customers.

Manthan, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner has been rapidly innovating using AWS native technologies and services, including Redshift for increased value delivery to clients by providing high performance at lower costs. By rapidly innovating on AWS, Manthan has a compelling suite of BI analytics products optimized to Big Data technologies on AWS. With Manthan’s portfolio of cloud based Big

Tery Wise Vice president - global alliances’ eco system and channels Amazon web services

Data and Analytics solutions on AWS, including Customer Analytics, Retail Analytics and Supplier collaboration, Manthan aims to bring affordable, ultra-scalable and responsive cloud based analytics closer to businesses. The AWS team engaged with the Manthan team to help transform their solutions and strengthen their cloud strategy on AWS. Atul Batra, CTO - Manthan spoke about the goal of Manthan’s to become the biggest analytics provider on the cloud. “Thanks to the partnership of AWS we are well honoured,” he said.

Tery Wise, Vice president - Global Alliances’ eco system and channels, Amazon web services spoke about how the enterprises work for customers. “The AWS platform has been made to work great in areas of specialization with technologies like big data analytics, mobility, IoT, artificial intelligence. We are friendly and work with customers to take the discussion forward,” he said.

The AWS Model is doing really great. There are great opportunities for companies to create enthusiasm and use this technology to innovate.

“AWS came to India in 2012 and it was the first to sign up to start a cloud journey. The broad investment that amazon.com has done is of $ 5billion. We are going a long way but with a passion. It was another great story or partner transition and delivering to your web service and solutions on the cloud with AWS and specifying driving innovation.

With the business growing tremendously year on year, we have grown on a very big scale,” concluded Tery Wise. n

Channels to drive cloud adoption in India...

“The number of enterprises utilizing AWS services since the time it first set up shop in the country has gone up substantially, especially after the launch of their local datacenter in Mumbai in June 2016. AWS has been aggressive on building its global partner program for the past couple of years. Our USP of success is to listen to customers, build partner ecosystem and enable skillsets on cloud,” says Bikram S Bedi, Director & Head of India - Amazon Internet Services.

“We witnessed an 80% increase in the number of partners who joined APN in India from June 2015 to June 2016. The reseller revenues have seen triple digit growth in India as we foresee huge traction across the market with massive opportunities for the channels,” he added. “The focus is to continue to work closely with ‘born in the cloud’ partners. We would dive much deeper with consulting partners, large global system integrators like Accenture, PwC, HCL, Wipro, TCS and also regional systems integrator partners like Progressive, Team Computers, Orient technologies, to name a few.

With businesses embarking on a cloud transformation journey, IT teams have started facing issues related to business requirement and to deliver new functionalities in applications faster.

To address this partner segment, AWS signed Redington as its first India distributor last year.

The distributor for cloud is the new model in the marketplace and we are not scared to walk down the dark alleys. We believe to be successful and distribution has to be conquered in a meaningful way and we are figuring out the distribution piece to enable our channel ecosystem. That’s the first initiative to go deeper in alliance with partners, like working on analytics with Progressive or working with other partners on archiving and storage as services. We will invest on partners, build skillsets and forge deeper relationships with them,” he said.

(Bikram leads the team in India that helps businesses of all sizes to learn about AWS and implement the cloud computing platform, enabling them to save money, accelerate their time to market, and focus on their core business. Bikram has over 20 years of experience, including managing various businesses in senior leadership roles across ASEAN, Asia Pacific and India geographies for various IT and Telecom-companies. Prior to joining Amazon Web Services, Bikram was the VP of the middleware business at Oracle India.)

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AWS SUMMIT 2017

“Based on AWS platform, we are offering high reliable email system for customers” Tarun Malaviya, Founder & CEO MITHI Software Technologies worked with the CDAC, where he was a part of scientific data visualisation. An engineering graduate from PICT, he created his company; the first product that we created was the LEAP MAIL, it was an Indian language word processor which went on to become a best seller.

Mithi Software (an organisation with about 40 people) is providing collaboration solutions to help build smart businesses. Its products include SkyConnect (When everyone in your team depends on the email to keep things moving, an Always-on Email service is essential for running an efficient enterprise) – cloud based email collaboration solution, and its latest offering Vaultastic (Vaultastic helps your business with all eDiscovery, Compliance and Business Continuity needs) – a cloud email archiving solution, help in delivering on its mission of making technology more accessible, useful and affordable.

Technology Orchestration:

“For a long time we have been an enterprise software company. Mithi Software has added various features like in-chat and video conferencing as a part of a solution.

We are deploying our software in customer’s data centers. Our products are actually an alternative to products like Microsoft Exchange, Google Suite or Lotus Notes and those are really the big competition that we fight with in the market. Our software is built on the open source platform, and we started with the impression that if we can create a lower cost alternative in an open market for the customers then we will be able to gain a larger adoption.

We had a very good success rate and very large companies are using our services like Aditya Birla, DRDO, Kotak, Mahindra, DMRC and so on. In simpler terms, it is an alternative to what Microsoft Exchange and IBM’s Lotus Notes have. So it’s a high performance, high security but much lower cost infrastructure. We also have smaller customers like NCL Manufacturers or small software companies like BPOs etc.

One of the problems with the enterprise software was that we had to do the deployment of software in the customer environment. Typically what happened was that the larger companies had a much better environment and also a much more capable IT team. Whereas, the smaller companies usually didn’t have the IT team strength or

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“E-mail system is a very serious business; it should be running all the time. If an email stops working you know what kind of losses a business will face. An email is actually a very complex system but also what is happening is that if you look at an email today it becoming more and more important. Though it is a very old system it is becoming very important” the infrastructure. Hence, the experience of users varies in the two situations. That was the no.1 problem.

The second problem was that the deployments were pretty long. Because it’s a physical environment, the deployment took very long when we brought upgrades of the software. The customers would say that they are not ready and they would like to look at the upgrades a little later. This makes the whole process a little slow.

We have customers from 5 users to 50,000 users and we can still give a uniform experience. Obviously the 50,000 user organisation can buy much more hardware than a 5 person organisation can. But both the customers get a similar experience. They are also going to get the same level of security, the same level of performance and same amount of scalability. We are using the same platform and the platform itself is a very well developed and a pretty matured platform.

LEAP Mail vs Gmail solution...

If you look at our pricing solutions, we are priced at about 50% or 40% lesser than what bigger solutions are priced. That is the first thing; second thing is that we give a lot of flexibility in our system. There is not any standard package that we are offering; for 25 person organisation, our starting plan is at Rs.799 for a single user for a year. That works out to less than Rs 2 per day per user. So if you look at even today a person is gaining 1% productivity in a year and you take his salary to be Rs 10k, you are actually saving on returning many times the value.

Business alignment with AWS...

While doing this email system we realised that email is becoming a very important system of record. AWS has brought very high reliability in terms of storage. One of the things what we can offer is an archival solution, so all your emails are archived. Let’s say for example if you are a bank and you are required by law to keep the information of all the transactions for seven years, so you must maintain a record. One of the problems is that your data might get lost because of the failure of the system or it can be intentionally deleted.

We have created an automated system solution where an email is getting automatically recorded and once it goes it into the archival, you cannot delete it. You can retrieve it and you can see it in the search.

Mithi Software’s customer base...

We have about 300 enterprise customers across verticals including the BPOs, IT companies, Manufacturing companies, Banks such as Kotak Bank. We have South Indian Bank, Karnataka Bank, Cosmos Bank, Mahanagar Bank etc. In fact we are also running the ‘108’ emergency service while running our email system. You can imagine if a bank and critical emergency systems are running on our email system, it has to be working all the time. This is the reason why we have to continuously innovate to ensure that it is safe, running and the data is not compromised and that the system is always delivering on time. This is what actually is driving us to do all the innovation. n

“AWS has a very established lead as far as the platform is concerned” Prateek Garg, Managing Director- Progressive Infotech on how his company’s journey has been while exiting from the traditional business that it has been doing and migrating to AWS cloud business industry will have to keep a data center and they may not be able to go to the cloud, unless the regulatory environment starts changing this. This will happen soon as we see the maturity of the cloud, then people will start trusting the cloud more and banking will also start using cloud more. There is a bank in Australia which has moved completely on AWS.

Can you tell about the transformation in your organisation?

In 2010-11, we were looking at what to do next. At that stage the first thing I was visualising is that the PC and the mobile will converge. Then I didn’t know, but I felt that the mobile will eventually become the PC and most people will be able to do most of their stuff on the mobile. That time we also saw that the cloud was maturing in the US and a lot of cloud start-up businesses which was running 24X7 were running out of cloud which clearly gave us the sense that the future of the data center in the cloud is not going to be the way it was going then. We were setting update for the customers.

We are a 1200 people organisation in India and have set up a subsidiary in US last year. We are growing about 40% YoY. We have a positive cash flow positive month on month; we have more debts on the books so we are cash rich, we are ready to see if there is an acquisition opportunity where we can acquire a company.

What about your existing customer base that you have been dealing with?

We went and spoke to all customers and we exited from our traditional business very smoothly. We told our client that you can either go to some other partner. We gave everybody six months to 1 year to transit out.

Apart from your Exclusive partnership with AWS, How are you aligned with AWS compared to others service providers?

We also work with Microsoft and Google, but our lead partnership is with AWS. The key advantage with AWS is that they have a very established lead as far as the platform is concerned. They are far superior in terms of innovation and the number of services that they offer. Microsoft is coming closer to it. Generally speaking AWS still remains the head of everybody. The third thing is that, the number of uses cases worldwide that are available on AWS, nobody is close yet. So, in most cases you are able to put a solution together for a client on AWS. Other two advantages that they bring to the table is that, AWS is a new age company and their focus is completely on client success. So it is easy to work with them; they are transparent,

What about the security concern, since cyber security is a big problem across the globe.

“AWS is a new age company and their focus is completely on client success. It is easy to work with them; they are transparent and are trustworthy. If 24/7 companies like Netflix go for AWS, then it has to be good for the enterprises as well. We became the first partner of AWS when they came to India and decided to exit from our traditional business.” they are trustworthy. Since they completely focus on client success they work with you hand in hand.

What are the business opportunities you see in India?

Business is growing rapidly for us. We are currently seeing success in 4 verticals, manufacturing, retail, healthcare and media and entertainment but the 5th vertical which we have started working in now is the financial services vertical.

Besides the banking core application, there are a lot of other allied applications and that’s where banks are beginning to use the cloud. As a best practice every bank, they keep their data in different-different data centers.

Bank is a regulated industry; any regulated

There is a very simple answer to this; you are more secured today in a public cloud than you are in your own data center. The reason being that the security infrastructure and the investment that the public cloud vendors put in. No corporate can even think of it. Like in AWS cloud the security is multi-tier security and it is highly secured, nobody can hack it because they have 24x7 software running and they are constantly monitoring all the threats.

There is absolutely no way anybody could replicate it. There is only two hyper scale enterprise grade cloud in the world which is AWS and Microsoft.

What is your message to the VAR community in the country?

Three lessons which I learnt in these 30 years is that, one is focus is very important so focus on what you do. Secondly, you have to differentiate, you can’t say look I can do everything. You got to differentiate. Third, today we live in the world of disruptions and the rate of innovation is very high. So the third is to constantly experiment in a way that you have to keep trying things. These are the three things that I focus clearly on and articulate clearly. Last is Innovate constantly.

What are the expectations from digital India?

I certainly see from next year we will start benefitting from it. Because digital India is bringing some of very innovative projects, government projects, large projects. We are also excited about the government business but we will have to partner with the larger SIs who are doing that piece of business to work on the cloud. We are investing in building IOT skills and command centres. We are partnering with an American company and very soon we will have command control solution that we are integrating it and putting the whole thing together. So, there are a few opportunities that we are counting. n

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AWS SUMMIT 2017

“We have an incredible growth story, thanks to AWS” Shantanu Mathur, Country head, Knowlarity talks about how his business has transformed by working with AWS -

Can you talk about your engagement with AWS? We work very closely to AWS; we go out and get new partners and customers along with them.

We market ourselves to their customers and also host lots of events together.

Very recently we sponsored an event in Mumbai which was actually funded by AWS as part of a partner investment programme. AWS has a fantastic marketing team, they keep us engaged, making us and the enterprises, work together and do a lot of goals, discussions and goal marketing and GTM activities. We are the technology partners for Amazon web services.

And I think the reason AWS was very excited was the amount of products we use; we use all the products, anything which is there in offer like Redshift (Redshift is a fully managed, petabytescale data warehouse service in the cloud), server management tools, Q/A stuff, voice automation software, new tech stuff etc. With this we have completely changed as a tech company, from having servers etc to have a completely new thing like Quick View and all the different tools to manage our entire business.

How have you shaped your business post tie up with Amazon?

It is more of technology stacks that change drastically, from a business model perspective what Amazon showed us little bit was the success of a channel partner program, and we taking some pages out of the book and moving a lot of GTM in India. From a direct model to a channel partner program, AWS is one of our strategic partners which is taking us out there. There are a couple of other partners like this which we are now setting up. But I think the big change which happen with us is, addressing bunch of our large partners which is what they are bringing on the table for us.

What are the opportunities you see with AWS? We don’t particularly sell AWS products, either we are resellers of AWS, or we are their consumers. As a technological partner, our technology is similar/sync very well with the other things which happen with AWS. We deal in a lot of different things and because of that (by using AWS very closely), we are able to optimize the data transfer between our customers and our partners. It is a win-win case for AWS and Knowlarity. We created a very synergistic and mutually beneficial relationship and the trust has built up.

AWS is a technical services provider; we made a very comprehensive decision when we went with AWS. They have incredible products like, Lambda (Lambda is an instance where you

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can get computing running calculations and doing searches for you) has brought so much of our server requirements down, it is incredible how much Lambda and some of the other tools have priced to kill the competition. So for me as a start-up and an established player there is nothing better than using something like that. We use Lambda to do things which are not mission critical at this point of time but there are more calculations, reporting and other stuffs which needs to be done. Lambda basically has saved us a lot of service space.

How is your India business altogether?

The business has been fantastic and bigger than it has ever been, growing faster than it ever has and more ambitious than it ever has been.

We are right now targeting to grow 10 times in revenue in next three years. We have very aggressive growth goals and we are extremely focused into growing our channel partners. We work with top companies across the countries be it traditional, be it new age. We cater to over 5 to 6 million calls a day which we service; we have over 10 thousand customers and have a fully blown team presenting across the country. We have a network of around 500 partners out of which we have classified some very niche 50 or 60 top channel partners.

So it is an incredible story that happened in India. Enterprise software is going to be the sweet spot thing now. That is where the growth is and that is where all the business has now become comfortable with, thanks to AWS and other people. As the mid-market is willing to pay for technology, we have now 10,000+ customers and a great transformation in the mid-market space.

We are the first step into digitisation. Our systems digitise all types of calls and that will appear on the panel (that you got these number of calls, at this time, and now you need to call back or revert through the message, it will all appear on the panel). B2B and B2C is what we digitise.

What has been your learning from your partnership with AWS? I tried to learn from AWS a lot. What made them a global giant is the fact that they are very organised and very structured. That is what we are trying to imbibe from them. We built a lot of product on top of cloud computing, analytical products, customized natural language processing reports, keyword sensingand so on.

We have basically figured out what works for each vertical, and put them to use in a very easy to use and understandable package for everyone, which also makes selling very easy. We have 4 times more sales productivity in the last 1 year, or the simple reason that we have made the team intelligent about how to sell. n

“All the new technology analytics we are launching we are going beyond cloud telephoning and going into communication and automation.

So like AWS started with a service but now they have built so many tools on top of it. Make a solution and they help you with all your computing problem”

“Technology is becoming a big enabler of our decision making” Atul Batra, CTO- Manthan Group and Manoj Agarwal, Group CIO, Future Group speak to VARINDIA on how they are investing heavily into Data Analytics and how AWS is helping them in this regard -

Can you talk about how you use the customer data into analytics to make your business stronger?

We analyze customer on a one to one relationship; we don’t segment them into boxes. We have transaction data of our customers, through our various loyalty schemes. All these customers come to various formats of future groups. Whether it is Big Bazaar, Ezone, Central, or any other shopping malls, all the customer interactions or buying behaviour are captured into Manthan customer’s data, which is like how they are shopping across various formats, what is the total spend, when do they visit, what is the engagement mode, what they are buying and not buying, at what promotions, what the price range is and what events they are engaging, and what events they are not engaging at a customer level and so on.

How do you do that?

Through Manthan platform, they are standard analytical platform which is the Manthan retail suite. We just need to push the data into the Manthan data suite and it allows using the data into a meaningful way. It is a switch on analytics. So, there is data and we are the custodian of the data, Amazon is a platform on which it is hosted. So we push the data on the Amazon platform and we interact with it through our Manthan application and analyze the customer data.

How is Manthan helping the Future Group with its application?

So Manthan is a partner of AWS advance technology Partner; we have products that are offered on the cloud that Future group is using. We are running on AWS, Future Group is using those products. So like Manoj Agarwal, Group CIO - Future Group said, they use marketing analytic to understand customer behaviour and predict their behaviour and basically drive marketing strategy. Second is about personalisation and targeting. So, they are using lot of intelligence to drive all of their campaign promotions, marketing messages in a real time manner with a lot of advance analytics and algorithm. Manthan has two applications that are actually powered on top of AWS infrastructure.

How you integrate all the Data from unstructured to structured data to bring the business value?

Basically the application setup is that it can ingest all kinds of data - transaction data, loyalty system data, CRM data, call centre data, unstructured data which can sense people’s visit pattern on the website, social data and the footfall inside the store, so all of these data comes into the Manthan application which is running on AWS and then we can basically analyze the data. You as a shopper would have a very unique profile, so we can target you as a segment based on all the data and analytics running in the Manthan application.

How you target and analyse the customer from the crowd sourcing?

Hypothetically let me explain, how you can get tracked. One is your phone which is being tracked all the time. So you logon to Google, you’re tracked. All the apps which you are using or when your Bluetooth is on, GPS is on or when you search anything, you and your phone can easily be tracked. Your coordinates, your longitude, latitude everything is tracked.

It is a location based tracking and it knows when you are passing by, for example - if you want blue colour shirt of Peter England, the tracker in your phone might sell this data to Peter England. It is not like Peter England is sitting and doing this tracking. It is the algorithm sense systems that are doing it.

“From a technology perspective, it is making these algorithms more intelligent and much more automated. As more data is being collected by businesses, these are all enriching in analyzing attributes about you and they are using these attributes to do very intelligent offer recommendation. That’s what deep learning and machine learning is already been doing that for a number of years now. If you put out a campaign as a business promotion, if it didn’t achieve the target, you will first analyze why it did not achieve. That’s a very tough question and this is where deep learning and analytics is coming to sort out those questions.”

How technology helps in growing your business?

Technology is an enabler of decision making, and it facilitates in decision making. Decision making is becoming more and more complex and when you are in a hyper growth environment, so many variables are changing. What decisions you take or in what framework you took the decision, they are also changing. So, the system is guiding you on decision making. If the customer is behaving from last 50 years the same way it is very easy you don’t need analytics to serve the customers. But if the customer is changing every day, like last time he wanted pink, this time he wants black, such complex customer behaviour makes it very difficult to come on a consensus. We need intelligence system to drive these decisions making whic/h only helps in making it better.

How does the technology eco-system work?

It is the team work. It’s the partnership of future group, Manthan and AWS. Future group is constantly pushing the envelope in terms of business use cases, impact, analytics or making an impact on business, profitability, margins or all of that. So Manthan takes those use cases and pass it on to AWS, in terms of what new innovation we need. We work with AWS as a partner in terms of leveraging what is latest coming out of it as a partnership.

Lastly, can you share about the customer base?

Manthan has over 250 customers globally. I would say Future Group is an extremely important customer in terms of innovation. They are really pushing the envelope in terms of data and analytics, official intelligence or in terms of cloud at a very-very large scale. n

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FACE TO FACE

"XELERATE caters to 8 of the top 10 banks in India" K. Nanda Kumar, Founder, President & CEO, Suntec Business Solutions Suntec Business Solutions has an impressive customer base globally and work with world’s leading telcos and financial institutions like HSBC, ING, Mashreq, Cable One and others.

SunTec’s technology-agnostic product suite XELERATE empowers clients to create real-time personalised offerings to improve profitability and customer experience while optimising customer lifetime value. In an exclusive interview with Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA, K. Nanda Kumar talks about XELERATE market, customers and future plans for the product.

Excerpts of the interview:

Majority of XELERATE customers are banks or telecom service providers. What additional features do you provide to your customers?

Our customers are mainly spread between banking and telecom domain with a slight bias towards banking. In today’s competitive environment, creating customer value is key not only to growth of the companies but also their survival. More importantly so, for financial services firms, adopting the right revenue management solution would mean greater customer-centricity by creating innovative products and pricing strategies, capturing new revenue streams and optimizing digital channels – all the while proactively managing risk, maximizing operational agility and instituting margin controls.

The customers of the ‘everything now generation’ demand quick and efficient services – real- time and personalised. Delays in launching such services or offers will lead to revenue loss and almost immediate customer churn. Users will migrate to the communications service provider (CSP) providing the broadest, bestpriced and the most reliable range of services.

SunTec’s marque technology agnostic product suite enables CSPs to respond faster to the end-user consumption patterns while making more accurate service pricing decisions to deliver an enhanced connected digital lifestyle.

Few of the intrinsic features that differentiates Xelerate from its counterparts include End to End offer management, real time analytics, risk mitigation through optimized business processes, Deal Value management and Risk mitigation through optimized business processes.

Who are your customers of XELERATE products in India as well as globally? Specify reasons why these customers use XELERATE solutions?

Xelerate caters to 8 of the top 10 banks in India and the product is used by around 40 clients spread across 60 countries with around

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K. Nanda Kumar Founder, President & CEO Suntec Business Solutions 300 million end customers. The reason why customers choose Xelerate over competition is: Enhanced customer life-time value with end-to-end experience; orchestration; Reduced time to market with easily configurable rules and business process flows for offer simulation, creation and approvals; reduced revenue leakage risk with commitment and deal performance tracking; informed decision-making with realtime revenue management dashboards for key success metrics; and increased profitability with improved visibility of the deal through SOA architecture for easy collaboration with downstream and upstream banks.

XELERATE serves more than 300 million end users in 60 countries across the globe.

Reason for XELERATE success?

Customer centric innovation is key to the success of any product offering and that’s exactly what we have attempted to address through Xelerate.

If you look at the case of CSPs, limited flexibility of existing legacy systems makes it difficult to seamlessly integrate with partner systems across OTT and VAS players to meet the increasing demand for new digital services.

This causes revenue loss as well as increased customer churn putting communication service providers at a competitive disadvantage.

SunTec's Xelerate Digital Services is capable of seamlessly integrating with their existing system alongside other systems like CRM and ERP, reducing implementation costs and facilitating faster time-to- market.

Xelerate's powerful transaction processing engine can handle huge volumes of data with little or no investment in additional hardware.

Its real-time data analytics feature helps CSPs

build a 360-degree view, providing real-time information to customers and partners. This will also help CSPs provide personalised, context-based offers to customers, enhancing their connected digital lifestyle.

How have you integrated all the features in a single product, be it customer relation, analytics, customer loyalty, security and authentication as well as payments? What are the additional features you are planning to integrate in the next version of the product?

Our product development is an involved process where inputs are constantly fed in from multiple sources – our own trackers in the market, analyst communities, from our clients as well as our understanding of where the industry is headed. We follow an agile method of development where releases are tested extensively before reaching the market. All components of our product are homegrown and therefore integration within the product is easy and in-built. For integration with other products we have ready-made APIs which can be directly implemented. Our next version of the product will have a much enhanced analytics engine powering the reports and insights

How does XELERATE help in reducing time to market and also plugging revenue leakage. Please explain?

Xelerate facilitates reduced time to market with easily configurable rules and business process flows for offer simulation, creation and approvals. The product catalog allows storing the business product which is separated from the technical product. Therefore editing and creating variations become extremely easy and can be done by the business instead of reaching out to IT. Similarly, offers can also be created very easily and once created, the onboarding and fulfillment happens within our system in an automated manner. No need to hard code anything. We have reduced product launch time to a matter of hours for corporations who were taking at least 3 months to launch.

How big is the market for XELERATE products in India and globally and who are your competitors?

The market for Xelerate products is quite attractive in India and globally. This is proven by the fact that we have continued to show healthy YoY revenue growth. Also, we continue to innovate our product constantly and therefore always remain at the cutting edge of technology. Recent innovations in the IoT market specifically within utilities and smart cities have opened up new doors for us as well.

Some of the main competitors for SunTec are: Elitecore, Zafin Labs, Oracle Financial services, Fiserv, Openet and Redknee, etc. n

FACE TO FACE

"The Indian Wi-Fi market is projected to grow 7 times faster than the global market": Natraj Akella, Vice President – WiFi Services, Tata Teleservices What's total no of Wi-Fi hotspots installed by Tata Teleservices till date and What's your plan?

Natraj Akella is the business head and Vice President of Wi-Fi services at Tata Teleservices. He works on business and operating models around convergence and aggregation of mobile data and Wi-Fi services. In the past, he has successfully lead several strategic initiatives and industry firsts including launch of 4G services, carrier Wi-Fi and telco cloud services platform.

In an exclusive

interview with Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA, Akela talks about Tata Teleservices plan, city wide public WiFi and business model. Excerpts of the interview:

We see a huge opportunity and a focus area for Wi-Fi. Today’s over 500 million mobile subscribers are using Internet and it is likely to touch around 1.3 billion actual human users in the next three years and that would be over 90% of our country’s total population at that point.

Keeping that in perspective, the situation of WiFi hotspots in India is not equally encouraging as we represent one sixth of the world population whereas our share in Wi-Fi hotspots is less than 1/1,000. As an operator, Tata Teleservices public Wi-Fi access is a crucial step towards digitization.

Over the last couple of years, we have consistently showcased experience and excellence in the Wi-Fi hotspot segment. We service and support one of India’s busiest airports; provide Wi-Fi service covering the inner and outer circles of one of the most significant business and leisure centers in the city - Connaught Place, we have a partnership with the Bombay Stock Exchange to offer free Wi-Fi service and other associations with educational institutions, hospitality chains etc. With the innovation of deploying Wi-Fi in such huge areas, the company aims to enable businesses and customers alike who increasingly need connectivity with higher speeds across multiple devices.

The key that would differentiate winners from the others would be the kind of sustained experience that we can provide for our users.

Hence, our aim in the coming year would be to proactively constantly upgrade the end user experience day in and day out on one hand while expanding our footprint in target segments

How will Wi-Fi compliment 3G and 4G services? What's the current size of Wi-Fi hotspots and what's the projection?

We feel the two technologies are complimentary. While 4G emphasizes range and mobility over rate - and costs more, Wi-Fi on the other hand emphasizes speed over short distances. Therefore, having both is a good thing.

Earlier it was largely believed that 4G would make Wi-Fi obsolete. However, its importance has only increased due to an explosion of higher-consumption devices and the need to stay connected.

More importantly, using cellular and Wi-Fi together in a mobile device has now become a customer expectation. Not only should they work together, but they should be enabled to work together seamlessly at the switch of a button.

With most of mobile traffic either originating or terminating indoors today, Wi-Fi is considered as a robust access technology for mobile data offload. Given the low internet penetration,

affordability of smartphones, high spectrum charges and issues around fiber rollout; Wi-Fi will continue to play a pivotal role in powering the aspirations of millions of natives in the Digital India.

Globally, Wi-Fi hotspot numbers are set to grow from 1.3 to 5.8 million in the next four years, the Indian Wi-Fi market on the other hand is projected to grow 7 times faster than the global market. This clearly proves the phenomenal growth the sector is set to witness. Setting aside the economic aspect, operators slowly beginning to realise and seize the opportunities that public Wi-Fi as a technology offers them, especially with the aim to improve the customer experience. Most operators consider Wi-Fi hotspots as very important and even crucial in terms of the customer experience and in terms of reducing the load on the mobile broadband networks and providing value-added services.

Which states are planning for a city wide public Wi-Fi? We are seeing an explosive demand for City Wi-Fi. There is a smart city initiative in almost every state with some being faster than others in working with the industry in putting together a business model along with support infrastructure to facilitate fast and efficient rollout.

With bandwidth prices trading at Rs 10-15 per GB. Do you see operators making money from city wide public Wi-Fi services through free model?

This is an area we are working upon with the various agencies. We firmly believe that there is a enough and more opportunity for Wi-Fi in a country like India. What is required is a consistent and robust network framework delivering a superlative customer experience.

This is bedrock for any form of monetization.

We support multiple charging models for subscriptions. These plans can be bought online. In addition to these, Tata Teleservices customers can use Wi-Fi from their own data package and/or buy packs through our app Tata Docomo Wi-Fi Wizard. Basis partner and customer feedback, we are evaluating a few over the top monetization models like advertisements, content partnerships, and location-based services. The whole data story in our view is still in a nascent stage in our country.

The number of customers and consumption can only go northward. We are always exploring new opportunities and continuously investing in improving our network and services especially in the public Wi-Fi domain. At Tata Teleservices our belief is that monetization will follow automatically if we are able to give a superlative customer experience and expand our Wi-Fi footprint. This is currently our focus. n

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VAR MOBILITY

Gionee sees potential growth in Indian Market In a talk with VARINDIA, Alok Shrivastava, Head, Business Intelligence and Planning, Gionee India, talks about the company’s plan to expand their retail presence in the country with establishing 500 brand stores by March 2018.

G

ionee Mobiles, a China-based mobile company, continues to be one of the largest selling phones in India amongst its other Chinese counterparts and making its presence felt in the Indian market. Alok Shrivastava discussed his current plans and campaigns to attract prospective customers and is also planning to set up an end-to-end manufacturing unit in Faridabad with an investment of Rs.500 crore. He says, “We continue to sell much higher in volume and value terms compared to our online competitors. To us, online is another sales channel and we believe we should be a part of it without any pricing disparities. Online availability is often convenient and we believe we must ensure every convenience to our customers – we want to make smiles.”

Currently, the company has its 42,000 retail outlets across 2,200 cities pan India and the products are also present in 12,000 special shop-in-shops. On the customers and sales, Alok Shrivastava says, “We feel that an exclusive store helps the customer get an understanding of what Gionee has to offer at a different price and need points. We believe that this will add to our loyal customer base and boost our sales numbers, going forward.”

Indian market diaspora and audience

As India is a price-sensitive market and more than half of the population of the country comprises of “masses”, every company has to come up with innovative ideas to entice its customers. Gionee as a brand has always carried a youth-centric approach, and for a better customer connect its special focus is to come up with the best model design and modify according to the needs of the users. According to Shrivastava, some of the salient features that people are looking forward to, are good battery life, good front camera, strong build and amazing graphics and the growing competition in the market is creating too much choices for customers to choose from.

Recently, the company has came on board with its #Selfiestan nationwide campaign featuring Alia Bhatt as a brand Ambassador to launch the first flagship product of the year – A1, Gionee to reach out to every last customer in the country. With the same objective, the smartphone giant has also signed up with celebrities like Diljit Dosanjh, Dulquer Salmaan and Shruti Hasan as their regional Brand Ambassadors.

Alongside this, the brand has also announced its association with the Bengaluru franchise of the IPL, “Royal Challengers Bangalore” who are already principal sponsor of the “Kolkata Knight Riders”, thus becoming the first brand ever to sponsor front jerseys of two IPL teams in the same edition.

Competiton and strategy

As an organization, Shrivastava says, they do not believe in following trends. To be different and disruptive from others, the company considers it to be their core strategy. According to him, in the last few years, when brands were replicating the western markets and propagating the online sales model, it continued expanding their

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on-ground retailer base, soon becoming one of the top offline retail smartphone brands in India. “Today, over 99% of our revenue comes from the offline retail model. We treat smartphones as an extension of a user’s taste, personality, and daily requirements. Therefore, with changing times, the features and looks also need to change constantly.

This is why our phones are intuitive, future ready, stylish and durable.

We are proud to be credited with bringing in the world’s slimmest phone, the biggest battery phone, the best Android camera and much more to India,” says Srivastava.

Shrivastava added, “We have recently clocked 1.25 crore customers in India and we will look at expanding our retail presence in the country with establishing 500 brand stores by March 2018 from 100 at present. We are also looking at opening 650 exclusive service centres, out of which 35 will be Premium Exclusive Service Centres by the end of 2017 from 550 currently. Our brand’s focus will be to ensure that every customer gets a 360-degree experience with our product, retail and customer service.”

Contribution in Make in India

Gionee is planning to set up an end-to-end manufacturing unit in Faridabad, Northern India. It will also be investing Rs.500 crore on this plant which will have a capacity of 30 million units spread across 50 acres and should be operational in about two years which will tap into the demand in India as well as act as an export hub to serve markets like Africa and South East Asia. n

VAR MOBILITY

Sansui unveils Horizon 2 Smartphone

S

ansui has unveiled Horizon 2 – the next-generation 4G VoLTE-enabled smartphone, which comes loaded with the Android 7.0, IR Blaster for controlling appliances & electronics, USB OTG support for pendrives and other USB-powered accessories.

Following the huge success of Horizon 1, Sansui has unveiled the Horizon 2 exclusively on Flipkart at an introductory price of Rs.4,999/-.

Powered with 2GB of RAM, 16GB ROM and 1.25 GHz Quad-Core (64Bit) Processor, Horizon 2 comes with MiraVision D i s p l a y , which offers a range of visual enhancements for images and videos, while preserving power. In addition to this, Horizon 2 comes with 5-inch high-definition screen for ultimate clarity. The smartphone

comes with 5-megapixel front camera and 8-megapixel rear camera with Dual Tone LED flash.

Abhishek Malpani, COO – Mobiles, Sansui, said, “The nextgeneration Horizon 2 smartphone

will give the customers a tremendous experience of technology and functionality. Sansui has been committed to develop innovative smartphones to woo the Indian customers.

LG launches G6

LG Electronics India has launched its much awaited flagship smartphone, the LG G6 with bold new display format complimented by a cinematic viewing experience art Rs 55,000.

Amit Gujral, head, Corporate Marketing, LG Electronics India said, “LG G6 is a perfect example of our focus on innovation and continued investment in delivering truly compelling smartphone experience to our consumers.

The LG G6 is a perfect blend of all that consumers’ d e s i r e minimalistic d e s i g n , ergonomic excellence and superb durability.

We are confident that this product is the best in its league.”

LG G6 flaunts a 5.7-inch QHD+ (2,880 x 1,440 resolution) Full Vision display, and for the first time ever in a smartphone, an 18:9 screen aspect

ratio. Compared to conventional 16:9 aspect ratio displays, the 18:9 format offers more viewing space and a more immersive experience when streaming videos and playing games.

The LG G6 will feature Dolby Vision technology which

supports HDR 10, both of which are standards for High Dynamic Range (HDR). HDR content from Netflix and Amazon can now be watched on the G6 in stunning HDR quality.

Nokia 3310 (2017) The new Nokia 3310 (2017) is more like a homage to the original than a straight-up remake. It looks vaguely like the original. There is now a colour display and a directional pad for navigation. The buttons are pretty sturdy, and yet are easier to press. The custom designed user interface brings a fresh look to a classic, whilst the 2.4” polarized and curved screen window makes for better readability in sunlight. The resolution of the screen is 240×320 pixels.

The phone has the Nokia Series 30+ operating system and there is no support for Java applications. There are however, a few applications available that have been developed for the platform. The Opera browser comes pre-installed, with bookmarks that include Facebook and Messenger. The phone does not support WhatsApp. The UI is crafted for the phone, with shoutouts to the interface of the original.

The 3310 has a really long battery life so you can talk all day, or leave the phone on standby for up to a month. When needed, a Micro-USB port makes charging simple.

There is an expandable micro-SD storage slot that sits flush over one of the two SIM card slots. It is easy to slide the memory card into the SIM card slot instead of the memory card slot. The on board storage is a little disappointing, with just 16 MB available. Investing in an additional memory card is absolutely essential to use this phone. The external storage can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card.

As far as the cameras are concerned, the Nokia 3310 (2017) packs a 2-megapixel primary camera on the rear. The Nokia 3310 (2017) is a dual SIM (GSM and GSM) mobile that accepts Micro-SIM and Micro-SIM. Connectivity options include Bluetooth and FM. There are no buttons around the sides. The Micro-USB port is at the top of the device and the 3.5 mm jack is at the bottom. The phone is made in India.

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Manzana witnesses extensive growth in Indian market after digitization I

ndia has recently seen a vigorous growth in electronic surveillance and security products market. The Indian market holds a lot of potential for such products, especially after the recent shift from analog to digital technology.

And With this technological advancement, people have also started investing in highly advanced security systems and services. Hence, the digital-based security products are gradually erupting and have started to overtake the Indian market.

As the Indian market of security products is blooming, Manzana technologies has seen an immense growth. It has been delivering a fine range of high-quality computer peripherals, audio systems and security & surveillance systems. In a chat with VARINDIA, Sandeep Seksaria, Director, Manzana, talks about the current and changing market trends in surveillance and security products in the Indian market, and discussed how Manzana is rising in the Indian market through facing different challenges and seizing different opportunities with the increasing competition in the market of security products.

Indian market and current trends

Speaking on to the current trends in the Indian market and how the demand for surveillance products is emerging after the transformation of product technologies from analog to digital, he said, “The past few years have seen a continuous commoditization of the traditional video surveillance offerings, especially the hardware elements such as IP cameras and recorder appliances. Some other trends witnessed in the security and surveillance industry are continued improvements in image quality, builtin intelligence, shifting from Analog to IP- based surveillance systems and cost-efficient products.

High-definition network cameras and IP-based surveillance systems are the current trends in the market with wide deployment almost in every sector of the society. They have the ability to allow remote and continuous monitoring of the surveillance space.”

When discussing about the current smart city initiative and its role in boosting the surveillance market, he said, “Smart city revolution has led to the immense growth of the surveillance market in the recent times as many aspects of life are now captured and stored in the digital form. Cities across the world are increasingly

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Competition and strategy

With the dynamic growth in the market, the number of companies has also increased which fuels the competition in the market.

And to curb the competition a good strategy is also required. While talking on the rising competition and strategy, he said, “In this fastgrowing category of technology, the Indian market becomes mature very fast or I will say it becomes overly mature. Considering the market movement, scope, aspirations and need of the customer, we endeavour to give the latest technology in the simplest way possible and also at competitive prices. Presently, our main focus is to provide regular advancements in technology to our customers, R&D and regular adoption of customer feedback to make it more user-friendly.”

Sandeep Seksaria Director Manzana Technologies adopting security solutions in various sectors such as infrastructure, transportation, utilities and citizen services in order to achieve better living standards, increased efficiency and higher environmental protection based on the technologies.” According to him, the shift from analog to digital is very tremendous in India. It is now less dependent on humans for security, especially with respect to advancements, education level, technology awareness, and internet speed, all has increased extensively. As all the analog supportive systems demand a costly technical assistance and high maintenance compared to the digital systems which are more user friendly and highly affordable. He said, “Digital opened more avenues for users to control and manage their premises. They are connected and controlled through all popular devices like Laptop, Tablet and even Mobile. Even it allows self-installation for customers at small premises.”

Opportunities and challenges

With this growth, various opportunities and challenges have also emerged. According to him, exploration of surveillance market has just begun in India. And this sector holds great potential in the next 10 years. He believes channel with organized structure and profound with technical expertise will surely promise good market in the future. It will become bread and butter for System Integrators who are suffering from decrease in the sale of assembled systems.

“Though there is a growing need for surveillance, few factors that are affecting the growth are privacy fear, lack of technical awareness, systems vulnerable to hackers, strong regulations to strengthen cybersecurity and demand for higher bandwidth,” says Sandeep.

Future and growth

Government, transportation, commercial offices, banking & financial verticals accounted for highest share in terms of market revenues last year in India. Retail, residential and industrial verticals will also be the key growth verticals this year. With the increasing terror threats, realtime monitoring and rising crime rate, the need for intelligent security systems has significantly increased. According to 6Wresearch, India’s video surveillance market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 13% from 2016 to 2022. India is already registering progressive growth and the future of the surveillance market in India is promising and bright. n

VAR SECURITY

CP Plus deploys its best IP security cameras at Sonar Sansar CP PLUS has partnered with Sonar Sansar, East India’s biggest consumer jewellery exhibition. The four day exhibition (held from the 21st to 24th of April), was hosted in the City of Joy at the famous Netaji Indoor Stadium. The exhibition was under the exclusive surveillance of CP PLUS cameras.

“Sonar Sansar is a popular exhibition of the east. And we are happy to have been associated with it. The visitor turnout was phenomenal; surveillance couldn’t have possibly been given a pass. The implementation team did face a few challenges at the onset owing to the expanse of the exhibition ground, but things fell into place eventually, and our team was able to pull off a great show,” mentioned Yogesh B. Dutta, COO, CP PLUS. Hosted at the Netaji Indoor Stadium, the exhibition was spread across a vast expanse with numerous exhibitors. Gauging the scale of the event, footfalls were expected to be high. Further, the items on exhibit were highly valuable.

Considering the sensitivity of the event, CP PLUS deployed some of its best solutions, including high resolution IP cameras, NVRs and video monitoring solution. IP solutions are an ideal choice when detailed clarity is required (it offers a compression of H.264). Installation is easier since the cabling requirements are significantly lesser as compared to analog

solutions, which was best suited considering the expanse of the location.

CP PLUS engineers also assisted the exhibition management through the four days of the exhibition so that security was maintained without any hiccups.

CP Plus guards Punjab prisons with its industry grade solutions Background

Punjab has been a sensitive state considering it shares its borders with Pakistan. The state police always needs to be on its toes to watch out for any kind of threat infiltration. Especially prisons have been the most sensitive departments of Punjab Police. Punjab Prisons comprise of some 40 jails, including a high security prison, 9 central jails and 25 district jails that are scattered across the vast state. As some of the oldest jails, Punjab Prisons have housed some well-known fugitives, and have always needed to be on high alert.

Mission

Following the much hyped jail break in the Nabha Modern Jail, the Punjab Prison officials were confronted with the loopholes of their existing functional but largely inadequate surveillance system; the existing analog system was vulnerable with a wire-intensive infrastructure and low resolution cameras that were barely any good.

Realizing the risks involved, and the perils that could come upon the management thereafter with the existing system, the ADGP (Prisons) decided to upgrade and equip the jails with industrial grade surveillance system. The expectation from the upgrade was simple – tamper-proof, high quality imagery.

Solution

After analyzing the location and system requirements, and with consequent discussions with the security officials of the prisons, the CP PLUS Solutions Team decided to deploy IP solutions that were best suited to meet the prison management’s needs. IP solutions make for an ideal choice when locations are expansive and tampering is a concern.

Since they work over the internet, as opposed to the coaxial cables in

the case of analog solutions, the cabling requirement is largely reduced, eventually making them much less vulnerable to tampering. Installation and maintenance also becomes hassle-free. IP cameras also offer superior image clarity as compared to analog cameras.

A combination of CP PLUS 2 MP cameras with vari-focal lenses, WDR, alarms, and raid-enabled 32 CH NVRs were deployed across the prisons.

Following days of careful screening, key locations were identified where cameras would be installed for maximum coverage and clear visibility. Care was taken to ensure the cabling was designed to avoid tempering.

Challenges

Implementing the new system was not a cake walk; the system integrators faced constant resistance from the prison inmates. They were the least cooperative, relentlessly opposing the choice of locations where the cameras were to be installed. However, with subsequent intervening of the higher prison officials, the engineers were able to complete installation.

Impact

The prison officials found the new system’s image clarity to be impressive. They were now able to view and monitor areas in and around the prisons’ premises in much greater detail, and that meant more control and order, therefore making the new system a worthy investment.

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TOP 25 BRANDS IN INDIAN ICT INDUSTRY 2017 Digitisation and Role of IoT for Next Generation Enterprise Thursday, 25th May 2017, New Delhi

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