ECIND032015RS20

W W W . E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O MR S 2 0 | PA G E S 3 6 | V O L U M E 0 3 | I S S U E 0 2

SONATA SOFTWARE TOOK SAP “AMBITION EXPRESS” TO SOUTH /06

M A R C H 2 0 1 5

WE HAVE LEVERAGED BIG DATA... /28

Several measures taken by the government in this year’s budget are seen /16

WILL INDIA

HUB?MANUFACTURINGBECOME A

www.cyberoam.com

Turning CIO into thenext-generation catalystCyberoam NGFWs enable enterprise CIOs harness IT & network transformation with insights beyond security,

helping them innovate, monetize and differentiate.

Key business benefits of Cyberoam NGFWs to CIOs:

• Next-generation threat protection

(also secures critical infrastructure / SCADA networks)

• Wirespeed gigabit performance

• Visibility into BYOD and Virtual environments

• Easy compliance

• On-appliance Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Cyberoam Product Line :

Network security appliances(Next-Generation Firewalls/UTMs)

Centralized Management(Hardware & Virtual)

Centralized Reporting

© Copyright 2014 Cyberoam Technologies Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. | For more information contact : marketing@cyberoam.com

Also available through

NICSI / NIC

Advts.indd 3 18-11-2014 16:03:21

Sonata Information Technology Limited1st Floor, APS Trust Building, Bull Temple Road, N. R. Colony, Bangalore - 560 019, IndiaTel: 91-80-6778 2500, Fax: 91-80-26610972, info-sap@sonata-software.comwww.sonata-software.com

CONTACT

“TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS WITH WORLD CLASS SOLUTIONS FROM SAP.APPLICATIONS, MOBILITY, ANALYTICS, CLOUD, DATABASE TECHNOLOGY POWERED BY HANA.BROUGHT TO YOU BY SONATA SOFTWARE THROUGH ITS WIDESPREAD PARTNER NETWORK IN INDIA”

“WHAT DOES THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS MEAN TO YOU”

PUBLISHER: SANJIB MOHAPATRAEDITOR: SANJAY MOHAPATRA

SUB EDITOR: SOUMYA ASSISTANT EDITOR: KARMA NEGI

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: RAVI KUMARDESIGNER: AJAY ARYAVISUALIZER: MANAS RANJANLEAD VISUALIZER: DPR CHOUDHARY

MARKETINGMARKETING MANAGER: SHIVANI SWAROOP SENIOR MANAGER: M RAJ EXECUTIVE- MARKETING: RAJAT KUMARCIRCULATION AND PRINTING: PANCHANAN BHOI

SALES CONTACTSDELHI6/103, KAUSHALYA PARK, HAUZ KHAS NEW DELHI-110016 PHONE: +91-11-41055458 I +91-9958264068E-MAIL: SHIVANI@SMECHANNELS.COM

PRINTED, PUBLISHED AND OWNED BY SANJIB MOHAPATRA PLACE OF PUBLICATION: 6/102-103 , KAUSHALYA PARK, HAUZKHASNEW DELHI-110016, PHONE: 91-11-41657670 / 41055458PRINTED AT KARAN PRINTERS, F-29/2, 1ST FLOOR, OKHLA INDUSTRIAL AREA, PHASE-2, NEW DELHI 110020, INDIA.

SUBSCRIPTION: RS.200 (12 ISSUES).ALL PAYMENTS FAVOURING: ACCENT INFO MEDIA PVT. LTD.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER.

BANGALOREBINDIYA JADHAV#28/1, 3RD FLOOR, SRI LAKSHMI KRUPA, NEAR SHAMANNA PARK, MODEL HOUSE STREET, BASAVANAGUDI, BANGALORE - 560004EMAIL:INFO@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COMPHONE: 91-8861821044

CHENNAITHAGA PANDIAN NO-27, RAJAN STREET, KODAMBAKAM CHENNAI - 24 PHONE: 044-43066990

MUMBAITAHMEED ANSARI2, GROUND FLOOR, PARK PARADISE, KAY-BEES CHS. LTD., OPP. GREEN PARK, OSHIWARA, ANDHERI (WEST), MUMBAI - 400 053.PH. +91 22 26338546 FAX +91 22 26395581MOBILE: +91 9967 232424

KOLKATAS SUBHENDU BC-286, LAXMI APARTMENT, KESTOPUR KOLKATA-700101 PHONE: 9674804389

EDITORIAL OFFICEDELHI6/102-103 , KAUSHALYA PARK , HAUZKHAS , NEW DELHI-110016, PHONE: 91-11-41055458 INFO@ENTERPRISECHANNELS.COM

BANGALORENO.103, 7TH MAIN9TH CROSS, BSK I STAGESRINIVAS NAGAR, BANGALORE – 50PHONE: 91-11-8861821044 INFO@ENTERPRISECHANNELS.COM

S A N J AY M A H A PAT R A

S A N J AY @ E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O M

EDITORIAL

04 MARCH 2015

Blessed with Good Sentiments

India’s finance growth in the current five years is an absolutely necessity in order to keep the country afloat with some respectability. The country should at least provide jobs to a good number of people – skilled and non-skilled. There should be less crime rate in the country making it suitable for people to live with respect.

And this is only possible if there is right policy decision created to make the business environment in the country sustainable and viable. Entrepreneurs – be it Indian or overseas can only invest in

the country if the decision making in the country is firm. The policy is better than other countries. So all the discussions are interwoven with each other and a limited people have to take a stance on clear vision about the future of the country.

Yesterday the 2015 leg of spectrum auction has been completed and the government is expecting more than 1 lakh crore rupees to come to its coffer in two years’ time.

By 2015, India’s infrastructure market is expected to touch $6.6 trillion, which will be nearly 12.5 per cent of the Asia-Pacific, says a report. As per PwC, the APAC Pacific infrastructure market is expected to grow by 7-8 per cent a year over the next decade to over $53.6 trillion by 2025. So if from the pure collateral wealth perspective India will have a huge stake within the APAC region – of course after China. The same report says that the spending is likely to be driven by sectors like housing, telecom, healthcare, education,

transportation, among others.And, if one observes this year’s budget, the finance minister Mr. ArunJaitley’s focus is well directed

but since we are living in the largest democracy with multi-party system, any good decision will have stiff resistance. At the same time, the ministry should also ensure that the benefit of the programmes and plans genuinely trickle down to the users.

The country has to see a balanced growth of both MNCs and home grown companies within the country.

Geoff Lewis, executive director-Global Market Strategist, JPMorgan AMC predicts that there will be a largest inflow of FDI to India this year compared to the previous years. Which is good one way but if the internal events do not go accordingly to what the organizations or companies expect it would not have major impact also. However, India is blessed with good sentiments within and outside the country. Can it pull the juggernaut out, the answer only lies with the pit of time. ë

2015V O L U M E 0 3

I S S U E 0 2

M A R C H 2 0 1 5

W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O M

INNOVATION /33HP CLOUDLINE

SERVERSHP Cloudline, the new

family of compute platforms, enables service providers

running hyperscale IT architectures

to maximize data center efficiency

and increase cloud service agility.

EDITORIAL ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04

CHANNELSTREET ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06

GUEST TALK ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::15, 22, 32

MY OPINION :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 28, 30

INNOVATION::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 33

COVER STORY

FEATURE

GUEST TALK /32

The Biggest Challenge is not the Technology

DAVID STEPHENSONCHIEF DATA OFFICER AND

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATA SCIENCE INNOVATION

MY OPINION /30

THE ABC OF BIG DATA IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTANDPETER LEESCHIEF TECHNOLOGIST, SUSE ASIA PACIFIC – ENTERPRISE CHANNELS

GUEST TALK /22

BEHIND BUILDING OF SMART CITIES

BALAJI MAHALINGAMRESEARCH DIRECTOR OF

IDC.

Several measures taken by the government in this year’s budget are seen /16

Big Data for Every One /24

WILL INDIA

HUB?MANUFACTURINGBECOME A

CONTENTS

05MARCH 2015

Sonata Software took SAP “Ambition Express” to SouthIn a bid to reach out to the customers in the South of India, Sonata Software, an active participant of the “Ambition Express”, a multi-city travelling showcase initiative of SAP, successfully completed the Belgaum chapter of the innovative SAP-SME Connect platform drive. During the course of the drive, Sonata along with their Extended Busi-ness Partners and MVAR’s (Master Value Added Resellers) assisted SME’s and medium & large-sized organizations to adopt world class solutions and inspired them to compete at global standards.

Sonata Software represented by an Extended Business Partner (EBM) - Bigtech Software Pvt. Ltd. reached out to participants elaborating on the imperative need for technological transformation. Speaking on the occasion, ArvindSagarAchary - Head of Sales, Bigtech Software, said “With exposure to a cross section of industries, the plat-form was a great occasion to exhibit Bigtechsoft’s SAP R/3 related engagements, SAP Usage Audits/

Quality Audits and SAP’s ASAP Implementation Methodology.”

Mohan Muthuraj, Associate VP, Technology Infrastructure Group- Sonata Software, said “We are happy at the overwhelming response we received at the Ambition Express. It was a fulfilling experience to note that participants and entre-preneurs’ are keenly looking forward to receiving recommendations of the most suited technology solutions to transform their businesses at Belgaum.”

Sonata is a SAP Gold Certified Partner and has been associated with SAP since 2008. Apart from being a Value Added Reseller in India, Sonata offers a range of services around SAP to its customers globally including SAP certified Application Man-agement Services (including Output based models), SAP ERP implementation, Business Analytics (using Business Objects and Business Objects Data Services), SAP Testing Services, SAP Integration Services as well as SAP e-commerce (hybris).

IBM, JUNIPER TO DELIVER NEXT-GEN HIGH-PERFOR-MANCE PREDICTIVE ANALYTICSIBM and Juniper Networks together plan to provide real-time network behavior insights to help customers dramatically improve mobile experiences, address increasing Internet of Things (IoT) application demands and uncover new opportunities gleaned from Big Data.

IBM and Juniper Networks will work together to enable the design and delivery of next generation of high-performance network analytics to help communications service providers (CSP) and enterprises to be more agile and efficient, reducing time to deployment and cost, while enhanc-ing end user application experiences announced the press release.

BHARTIAIRTEL EXTENDS MANAGED SERVICES BhartiAirtel has signed a two-year extension of its existing multi-vendor, multi-technology managed services deal with Ericsson. Under the terms of the new agreement, Ericsson will manage 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE, Intelligent Network, LAN/WAN and Wi-Fi technologies in 15 circles. This agreement solidifies Ericsson’s partnership with BhartiAirtel, while helping to increase business innovation and customer satisfaction.

Chris Houghton, Head of Region, Ericsson India, says: “We are committed to helping BhartiAirtel enhance customer experience and maximize operational efficiencies. We believe that our expertise in the managed services domain will enable Airtel subscribers to enjoy reliable services and an enhanced digital experi-ence across all generations of mobile technologies.”

AMBITION EXPRESS_ARVINDACHARY- HEAD OF SALES EBM SONATA SOFTWARE

06 MARCH 2015

CHANNEL

STREET

Dell Extends Software-Defined Storage Portfolio with XC SeriesDell has launched its second wave of Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances. These highly scalable integrated solutions help streamline the datacenter and now offer more than 50 percent storage capacity and up to twice the rack density to support customers deploying a wide range of workloads, including virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), private cloud and big data announced the press release.

The release further stated that the new Dell XC Series Version 2.0 appliances offer customers hyper-converged solutions based for the first time on Dell PowerEdge 13th generation server technology combined with Nutanix software and Dell global services and support. The appliances

integrate enterprise-class storage, compute and hypervisor resources into a single solution, and further expand Dell’s broad software-defined storage (SDS) portfolio.

“We’ve seen strong customer interest in our debut Dell XC Series appliances, and our newest offerings substantially raise the bar,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage. “The new web-scale converged appliances add greater configuration flexibility and pack more performance and capacity into our 13th generation servers, making them even more compelling for customers looking to adopt a newer, integrated systems model for delivering IT to their organizations.”

QLIK POSITIONED IN THE GART-NER LEADERS QUADRANTQlik has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quad-rant of the 2015 Business Intelligence and Analytics Platform Magic Quadrant report*.

This designation marks the fifth consecutive year that Qlik has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant based on complete-ness of vision and ability to execute. Gartner Magic Quadrants provide a snapshot of how vendors perform in a market segment with the goal of helping end users make better informed deci-sions about companies they may be looking to partner with, or whose services or products they may want to purchase.

“We’ve always been a disruptive force in the BI industry. There was a time that our data discovery offering was a visionary concept that the established vendors were trying to incorpo-rate; now this shows that data discovery has set the standard for BI leadership,” said Lars Björk, CEO, Qlik. “As the pioneer in this market Qlik will continue to make bold moves in areas of self-service visualization and governance to redefine the market.”

Qlik recently introduced general availability of Qlik Sense, the first device-independent, self-service visualization and discovery product engineered for enterprise-class governance and performance.

HP LAUNCHES NEW OPEN HYPERSCALE SERVERS CLOUDLINETo enable service providers running hyperscale IT architectures to maximize data center efficiency and increase cloud service agility HP has released its Cloudline servers.

“The business success of today’s service providers is directly correlated with their ability to cost-effectively acquire and operate their IT infrastructure to meet customer

demand,” said, Vikram K, Director, Servers, HP India. “Built on open-design principles with extreme scalability, HP Cloudline servers help service providers reduce infrastructure cost and accelerate service delivery to improve business performance.”

The new HP Cloudline server family is a result of the HP-Foxconn

joint venture. HP Cloudline combines the compute and service leadership of HP with the high-volume benefits of an original design manufacturer (ODM) sourcing model while delivering the global scale, support, services and management that service provid-ers require announced the press release.

Purpose built for cloud-scale deployments, HP Cloudline servers meet the technical requirements, economics and functional perfor-mance needs of the growing service provider market. HP Cloudline facilitates demand-driven deploy-ment, accelerated service delivery and cost-effective operation.

LOYLTYREWARDZ GROWS OVER 22 TIMESLoyltyRewardz, a provider of end-to-end customer loyalty programs is awarding loyalty points for more than half a million transactions every 90 minutes. Its business has grown more than 22 times over the past five years, with increasing customer adoption of its Microsoft-powered proprietary solution, LIDSys (Loyalty & Intelligence Development System). The solution is built on Microsoft SQL Server and is helping the company process more than 280 mil-lion customer loyalty accounts and processing transactions amounting to over INR 5,000 crore every month for 18 leading banks in India. The solution requires minimal implemen-tation time and is capable of reducing risks while enhancing efficiency, due to its proven and established stability and scalability.

BijaeiJayaraj – Founder & CEO of LoyltyRewardz said: “Microsoft supported us throughout the development of LIDSys®, which is a world-class loyalty and customer relationship management platform. We have successfully rolled out several mobile native apps, apart from a real-time point-of-sale system. This has empowered the end customers to leverage the loyalty benefits offered by their banks across practically all devices and merchant outlets. As a result, our client banks are seeing increased customer satisfaction and our Merchant Partners are able to acquire and retain customers.”

LARS BJÖRK, CEO, QLIK

CHANNEL STREET

08 MARCH 2015

HONEYWELL HONORS TOP APAC CHANNEL PARTNERSHoneywell Process Solutions (HPS) honored its top regional distributors at the annual Asia-Pacific (APAC) Channel Partner of the Year awards ceremony that was held during the 2015 Honeywell APAC Channel Partners Conference in Bali recently.

The APAC conference hosted Honeywell channel partners from 16 countries across the region, including Australia, China, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Honeywell acknowledged 12 channel partners for excellence, innovation and service among more than 190 companies supplying and integrating Honeywell solutions in Asia-Pacific.

“Our channel partners are our true partners in helping Honeywell customers in the APAC region achieve their operational and business objectives,” said Lance Fuhr, Channel Excellence leader, HPS. “These automation professionals have proven domain expertise in the process industries, as well as in-depth knowledge of their local markets. We count on their ability to deliver exceptional service, support and training solutions.”

The top honor, the APAC 2015 Channel Partner of the Year Award, was given to Jinan Huahui S&T Co LTD, headquartered in Jinan, China.

Nucleus Software Exports has collaborated with Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions. The collaboration means Nucleus Software can offer banks and finance companies significant speed and cost benefits through a wider choice of technology platforms on which to run its market leading software.

Nucleus Software’s products power the lending and transaction banking operations of more than 150 companies across 50 countries. In a highly competitive market banks and financial institu-tions face continuous pressure to improve their IT infrastructure and operations while driving down costs; this collaboration between Nucleus Software and Red Hat will provide scalable, proven and cost-effective solutions to help them achieve that.

AvnishDatt, Head of Global Strategy at Nucleus Software, said: “Banking and financial institutions worldwide face increasing com-petition and compliance along with changing customer demands. Nucleus Software’s solutions help them launch innovative finance products, deliver greater customer value, comply with regulations and respond to market change. Our collaboration with Red Hat allows us to provide our customers across the globe with the potential for even greater business value through a faster, more cost effective technology platform.”

Jagjit Singh Arora, Director of Regional Sales at Red Hat India, added: “India has a large Java developer community and we are grateful for the increased opportunities within the banking and financing sectors.”

Nucleus Red Hat Collaborate

ARROW BRINGS IBM GLOBAL TRAINING TO INDIA

Amstar Technologies (Amstar) joined Arrow’s global training alli-ance to offer official IBM Systems and Software training courses in India. As an authorized IBM Global Training Provider, Arrow offers a global learning ecosystem that makes IBM Training available around the world, delivered in a consistent manner and based on

local requirements. “Based on the combination of

our own local capabilities and the extensive network of Arrow global training alliance members, Arrow is solidly positioned to provide com-prehensive training solutions and help improve IBM products readi-ness in the market place,” said Julie Desombre Martin, global education

business practice director, Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business. “We look forward to our cooperation with Amstar to rollout our IBM Global Training program to serve the Indian market.”

“We are delighted that Arrow has selected Amstar as their Training Sales and Delivery Partner for India. Amstar is committed to

offering a high quality, next genera-tion portfolio of IBM Training solu-tions that will help individuals and corporations to better deploy and use IBM solutions and technolo-gies,” said Joseph Solomon, head of business development for Amstar.

Arrow and the members of Arrow’s global training alliance now cover 73 countries.

BROCADE EMC EXTEND OEM AGREEMENTBrocade has expanded its long standing OEM relationship with EMC by adding Brocade VCS Ethernet fabric solutions to EMC’s Connectrix family of network switches, creating the industry’s first network switch designed for IP storage.

Available now, the Connectrix VDX-6740B IP storage switch establishes a resilient, agile and easily-deployed foundation for EMC storage, cloud, deduplication and backup and recovery systems.

“Legacy IP network designs were never intended for today’s New IP applications, such as cloud, mobile, social and big data,” said Edgar Dias, Regional Director – India, Brocade. “Through our extended partnership with EMC, customers can now realize the improved performance, resiliency and agility of a dedicated IP storage network for the growing mission critical nature of their IP storage-based applications.”

EMC customers will deploy the new switch to separate IP storage traffic from other data traffic, a more reliable and efficient approach compared to legacy deployments where storage traffic and all other network traffic share the same network infrastructure.

“EMC Connectrix is the industry leader for delivering highly available, high performance and easily managed SANs and the introduction of the Connectrix VDX-6740B will enable the EMC Storage platforms to support customer mission critical data and applications more effectively,” said Rajesh Janey, President, India & SAARC, EMC Corporation.

CHANNEL STREET

09MARCH 2015

INFOPARK, KOCHI INKS PACT WITH CASPIAN FOR PHASE II DEVELOPMENT

Kochi will get world-class infrastruc-ture for IT and ITES companies with Caspian Techparks India Private Limited signing an agreement with the state-run Infopark for its Phase II project. A 90-year lease agreement in this regard was signed between Hrishikesh Nair, CEO, Infopark and Thomas Chacko, MD, Caspian Tech Parks on Thursday here.

Under the agreement, Kochi-based Caspian Techparks, a logistics and infrastructure development company, will construct a total of 4.5 lakh square feet, in phased manner for housing both IT and ITES companies on the 2.62 acres of land leased by the company in Phase II.

“The first phase of the project will have 1.2 lakh sqft of workspace and this will be ready by March 2016. The new building has been designed on international standards with world class inbuilt facilities,” said Chacko.

Infopark’s ambitious Rs 2,500-crore Phase II project has received solid backing from several IT giants and infrastructure developers including Cognizant, Brigade Group, UST Global, Claysys Technologies and Padiyath Innovation. The Phase ll infrastructure is nearing completion now, with common internal roads, 220 KV gas insulated sub-station, storm water drains, cable trenches, data connectivity as well as water treatment and supply.

BhartiAirtel Joins APNBhartiAirtel has joined the AWS Partner Network (APN) and will deliver private network solutions for enterprise customers across the globe using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This will help Airtel’s enterprise customers across the globe leverage the power of AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s data centers – thus helping them reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and experience a more consistent network connectivity.

“Today, we are seeing more and more organiza-tions embrace the benefits of hybrid network architectures and on-premise environments across the globe. In line with this market adop-tion, we are excited to strengthen Airtel’s cloud services portfolio by adding AWS to our growing list of cloud services providers. We are confident that this will help our global customers truly leverage the benefits of cloud, and further Airtel’s long-term commitment towards delivering the best technological capabilities for its customers,”

said Ajay Chitkara, CEO (Global Business), BhartiAirtel.

“By utilizing AWS Direct Connect, AWS Inc. customers are able to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience, helping Indian businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand their organizations,” said Bikram Singh Bedi, Head, Amazon Web Services India.

AWS Direct Connect will allow Airtel enter-prise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. Using industry standard 802.1q VLANs – this dedicated connection can be partitioned into multiple virtual interfaces, allowing customers to use the same connection to access public resources such as objects stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) using public IP address space, and private resources, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) using private IP space.

INFOR DELIVERS IMPLEMENTATION ACCELERA-TOR FOR EQUIPMENT RENTAL Infor has released Implementation Accelerator for Equipment Rental to provide equipment rental organizations with tools to quickly implement an integrated, enterprise rental solution designed in conjunction and with significant input from best-in-class rental companies.

Implementation Accelerators are a set of preconfigured industry solutions based on business processes. Built on the latest version of the Infor application suites, the Implementation Accelerators deliver core industry application processes, helping to reduce implementation times, costs and risks, in cloud or on-premise for customers in specific micro-vertical industries. An Implementation Accelerator can be the final step - or just the first step - in a process to foster continuous improvement.

Through the Infor Implementation Accelerator for Equipment Rental, implementations can be less costly and risky, provide reduced stress for employees, and deliver a faster time to benefit.

SAIC TO STRENGTHEN CA’S US MARKET WITH FOCUS ON PUBLIC SECTOR

CA Technologies and Science Applications International (SAIC) have signed an agreement to develop service offerings that will help customers simplify and solve their most challenging information technology (IT) problems.

Under the agreement, CA will provide SAIC with all of the enhanced technology, marketing

and sales benefits attributed to a CA Premier level partner. SAICs IT Managed Services offerings and services will, in turn, extend CA’s presence within the U.S. market with a focus on the Public Sector. Together, CA Technologies and SAIC will deliver innovative management solutions and IT services to speed product and

service delivery announced the press release.

SAIC will use CA Unified Infrastructure Management (CA UIM), a powerful platform that IT organizations and service providers around the world use to manage and optimize their most critical sys-tems and services, to deliver SAIC IT Service Management. With CA

UIM, SAIC customers can create a holistic view of critical systems and services by consolidating multiple IT monitoring tools into a unified, easy-to-manage platform.

“Our world is being reshaped. At CA, we are rewriting the landscape with our partners to create innova-tive uses of our technology,” said Alyssa Fitzpatrick, SVP, CA.

CHANNEL STREET

10 MARCH 2015

HP Expands Reseller Agree-ment with SAPSAP will resell HP Fortify application security software as part of its quality assurance solutions portfolio. SAP is now offering the solution under the name SAP Fortify software by HP to help customers quickly identify and address software vulnerabilities.

As an expansion to a longstanding reseller relationship, SAP Fortify by HP helps address this need by enabling SAP customers to identify, triage and fix vulnerabilities in production applications, while also helping reduce risk by enabling security to be built in during software development announced

the press release. “An organization can suffer sig-

nificant financial loss, business inter-ruption and brand damage should it detect a vulnerability too late,” said JyotiPrakash, Country Director, India and SAARC countries, HP Enterprise Security Products (ESP). “With SAP Fortify by HP, SAP customers can now enhance the

management of their software security risk by enabling proactive security testing throughout the entire software development lifecycle.”

DELL UPGRADES ITS PRECISION

MOBILE WORKSTATION

Dell India has released new features for the

upgrade to the Dell Precision M3800. Having

listened carefully to customers over the years

about their feedback on using the Precision, Dell

has delivered by incorporating new features into

its flagship mobile workstation - adding a 4K

Ultra HD touch display option and introducing

Thunderbolt 2 technology, among other updates

designed for Performance seekers in India.

WIPRO NEXTHINK TO OFFER END-USER

COMPUTE SERVICES

Wipro has partnered with end-user analytics

firm Nexthink, to provide enhanced computing

technology solutions and services to enterprise

users. With this new partnership, Wipro is turning

big data inwards with a revolutionary real-time

analytics technology to forever change the

enterprise IT services market — turning the IT

department from a cost center into a true partner

for the business announced the press release.

CTE BECOMES TABLEAU’S ALLIANCE

PARTNER

An enterprise IT services provider specializing

in Data Warehousing and Analytics Cambridge

Technology Enterprises has become an Alliance

Partner with Tableau Software, a provider in

rapid-fire, easy-to-use business analytics soft-

ware. As an Alliance Partner, CTE will integrate

Tableau’s software into its Cloud and Big Data

offerings. This includes fast visual analytic

capabilities to better analyze massive amounts of

data, which in turn enables CTE’s customers to

enhance business performance.

BLUESTONE LEVERAGES QLIK SENSE

Bluestone, India-based online jewelry retailers, is

using Qlik Sense to transform its organization by

providing business users with the ability to create

visualizations and data analysis.

Based in Bangalore, Bluestone began

generating more and more data as a result the

organization needed an agile and easy-to-deploy

analytics solution that allowed it to leverage

data from multiple sources and help employees

respond to customers’ needs more quickly and

effectively. After reviewing several data visualiza-

tion platforms from other companies, the jewelry

brand chose Qlik Sense for its ease of use and

smart visualization features announced the press

release.

“Smart cities represent a great revenue oppor-tunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan,

engage and position their offerings now.” BETTINA TRATZ-RYAN, RESEARCH VICE

PRESIDENT AT GARTNER.

IN PUBLIC

SVC BANK IMPLEMENTED NETAPP SOLUTIONSSVC Bank has chosen NetApp India as the preferred storage partner to build and manage the bank’s IT infrastructure. The bank deployed NetApp V3220 Open Storage Controllers to enable continuous data availability and integrated storage support for its virtualization initiatives.

“It has been quite a journey so far, and NetApp has been supportive of our IT activities. We have received phenomenal support during our DR-DC shift and during our controller upgrade. It has been a pleasure working with NetApp, without their support, there might have been many sleepless nights,” said RavikiranMankikar, chief general manager, IT Head, SVC Bank.

With NetApp, SVC Bank has been able to protect critical data and create a reliable disaster recovery (DR) solution at reduced cost and complexity. One of the significant benefits NetApp provides is improved storage utilization due to deduplication and thin provisioning. Using NetAp-pdeduplication, SVC Bank has successfully removed multiple copies of files so that the same data is not copied in multiple locations when it is copied to the DR site.

SECONDS3

WIPRO LAUNCHES CISCO EXPERIENCE CENTERWipro has launched its Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure experience center in its Electronic City campus. The advent of Software Defined Network (SDN) promises to deliver automation, agility and programmability. Together with Cisco’s industry leading SDN solutions and Wipro’s deep expertise in network integration, this center will demonstrate next generation architecture that will enable custom-ers to migrate towards a scalable, agile and programmable network announced the press release.

AnujBhalla, VP and Global Business Head (Products, System Integration and Maintenance Services), Wipro Ltd., said, “We are a strategic partner for Cisco globally, and this Application Centric Infrastruc-ture experience center will only strengthen our capabilities and our commitment to work proactively on emerging trends and technologies in the industry. The ACI certification will also play an instrumental role in our Internet of Things solution framework and help to create compelling propositions for the India market.”

JYOTI PRAKASH, COUNTRY DIRECTOR, INDIA AND SAARC COUNTRIES, HP

CHANNEL STREET

11MARCH 2015

Infor Enterprise Asset Management version 11.1 ReleasedInfor has released Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) version 11.1 designed to help improve asset management during the entire lifespan of business-critical assets and equipment.

The new iteration provides a wide range of capabilities to help quickly and economically manage assets via a cloud, on-premise or hybrid deployment. Infor EAM 11.1 can also enable greater accessibility for users to connect to the enterprise via mobile devices and tablets, adding an enhanced level of visibility and connectivity announced the press release.

Infor has made substantial investments in product development to make Infor EAM cloud-

ready and mobile-friendly, providing a wide range of deployment options to help fit the needs of many organizations. Infor EAM 11.1 also features an improved user interface that can help boost accessibility and can help support greater ease in compliance reporting and monitoring. These upgrades can help address various chal-lenges associated with accessibility, regulation adherence and equipment configuration for asset management users.

“Infor Enterprise Asset Management has been an integral part of many different business applications since its development,” said Scott Bannon, President of the User Advisory Board.

MPHASIS NEXT LABS LAUNCHEDMphasis has launched Mphasis Next Labs, to research and innovate on emergent and future paradigms. The business and technology innovation driven by Mphasis Next Labs will be around company’s focus areas and aims to emphasize on disruptive world class innovations, thought leadership and industry relevant solutions.

Dr. Jai Ganesh, who recently joined Mphasis as Vice President & Head of Mphasis Next Labs, will lead the initiative to focus on disruptive and transformational innovations. The areas in focus to include SMAC (Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud), IoT and Automation through applied research, IP Creation, thought leadership and new product, service, platform and solution development. Mphasis Next Labs will closely work with Academia, Research Labs, Start-ups and New Technology Partners across the globe.

WIPRO TO INVEST USD 5 MILLION IN DRIVESTREAM INC.

Wipro and Drivestream have signed an agreement to enter into a strategic partnership to build an integrated Cloud Solutions stack for customers.

As part of this arrangement, Wipro is investing USD 5 million in Drivestream Inc., an Oracle cloud applications systems integrator. This is part of Wipro’s strategic drive to

actively participate in the external innovation eco-system, for which the company has set up Wipro Ventures, a USD 100 Million fund focused on investing in disruptive start-ups announced the press release.

Software-as-a-service represents an unprecedented opportunity for business value creation. This invest-

ment will further extend Wipro’s leadership in the Oracle application services space particularly in cloud applications, which is poised to see high growth with its disruptive value proposition.

This partnership gives Wipro and Drivestream’s customers the ability to benefit from Drivestream’s market leading Oracle cloud

HCM and Oracle cloud ERP solutions and Wipro’s end-to-end Oracle services. Wipro’s global customer base in the enterprise market coupled with Drivestream’s established credentials in successful cloud implementations will offer unparalleled value to the customers.

NEC PROVIDES FACE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO SURAT CITY POLICENEC India and NEC Corporation, together with Innovative Telecom &SoftwaresPvt. Ltd., announced the deployment of NEC’s face recognition technology for Surat City Police (Gujarat). NEC’s NeoFace Watch for Live CCTV surveillance and NeoFace Reveal for forensic criminal investigation will be deployed for Surat City Police, an important step forward in Surat’s safe city initiative.

Speaking on the announcement as a major advancement, ShriRakeshAsthana, Indian Police Service, Police Commissioner of Surat City, said, “We have found NEC’s face recognition solution to be the most appropriate solution with respect to face detection and investigation, and it will help Surat Police resolve crime cases in a very speedy manner.”

AVAYA’S OPEN SDN TO HELP GOVT. ACHIEVE ITS VISION OF DIGITAL INDIAAvaya has released a new, SDN architecture which it says can help the Indian government deliver on its digital inclusion vision, and allow the country’s enterprises to create the agile networks required by today’s dynamic applications.

The Avaya SDN Fx architecture is one of the first to deliver the “smart foundation” required to connect anything, anywhere announced the press release.

The new architecture shaves off weeks in provisioning time. The Avaya SDN Fx architecture, built on the Avaya Fabric Networking technology, features new products and capabilities for a complete solution that delivers on the promise of SDN, without the hidden complexity.

“CIOs are unnecessarily over-burdened by archaic networks and frustrated by the disparity between the promised results of new technologies and the reality that most vendors deliver. There’s a better way: Avaya Fabric Connect already relieves 75 per-cent of the top network issues identified by IT departments, and we’re building on that with SDN Fx. This is the foundation that accelerates deployment of smart cities and mobile environ-ments everywhere, and improves performance of customer and team engagement solution that the industry has been demanding. Avaya is proud to have made it for India and can deliver it today,” Priyadarshi Mohapatra, MD, Avaya India and SAARC.

CHANNEL STREET

12 MARCH 2015

WEB CLIPS

CYBERARK NAMED A LEADER IN THE

IDC MARKETSCAPE PAM MARKET

CyberArk was named a leader in the IDC

MarketScape: Worldwide Privileged Access

Management 2014 Vendor Assessment.

The IDC MarketScape assesses vendors offer-

ing products in the privileged access manage-

ment (PAM) market and notes that, “CyberArk

is the PAM pure-play “big gorilla” with the most

revenue and largest customer base.”

MOU SIGNED TO BOOST LOCAL

MANUFACTURING

SME Chapter of MAIT signed anMoU with Busan

IT Industry Promotion Agency (BIIPA) last week

in Bengaluru.

MOU aims to bring together Indian and Korean

SMEs to promote local manufacturing by regular

exchange of information on technology know-

how, software development, talent exchange with

a strong focus on Industrial development in both

the countries.

JUNIPER SHOWCASES NEW LINEUP OF

NETWORKING PRODUCTS

At the 2015 Innovation Showcase Juniper

Networks unveiled new products that deliver on

the company’s vision and strategy for transform-

ing networks so customers can capitalize on new

growth opportunities brought on by the connected

world.

“Juniper’s strategy and vision continues to

resonate with our customers and partners who

view network innovation as fundamental to their

business in an increasingly connected world,”said

Rami Rahim, chief executive officer, Juniper

Networks.

HUAWEI, INTEL TO DELIVER PUBLIC

CLOUD SOLUTIONS FOR CARRIERS

Huawei has entered into a strategic collaboration

with Intel to deliver public cloud solutions for

global telecoms carriers.

By combining Intel’s technology leadership

with Huawei’s expertise in global information

and communications technology solutions, the

companies’ aim to provide carriers with greater

access to high-quality, innovative technologies

and solutions as they deliver carrier grade cloud

services to enterprises and individual end-users

announced the press release.

Telecoms carriers have incomparable

advantages in integrating broadband resources

with/into data centers.

D-Link ‘Pinnacle 2015’ for SIs

NUMBER GAMEMOVEMENTS

Mphasis has appointed DR. JAI GANESH as Vice President & Head of Mpha-sis Next Labs. He joins from Cognizant Technology Solutions where he was the

Director, SMAC Solutions.

Ex-TCS Employee ABID ALI NEEMUCHWALA Named Wipro’s Group President, COO

Polycom has appointed SHIRISH JOSHI as APAC Channel Sales Director.

Mahindra Comviva appoints STEVE SUMMERS as Market Unit Head for the Europe region. Steve will be based out of London office.

45%

of total connected things in use will be Smart homes and smart commercial buildings in 2015

VMWARE LAUNCHES VIRTUAL SAN 6VMware has launched a new generation of enterprise storage solu-tions Virtual SAN 6 designed to enable mass adoption of software-defined storage.

VMware Virtual SAN 6 will introduce significant scalability and performance enhancements to the company’s award-winning hypervisor-converged storage solution, and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will offer new levels of storage integration to make third-party arrays natively aware of virtual machines announced the press release.

“Customers have told us they need a simple, cost-effective and cloud-aware approach to stor-age,” said Raghu Raghuram, EVP & GM, SDDC, VMware.

With an objective to address the growing demand

for networking equipment’s in mid & large enterprise

segment, D-Link has rolled out a multi-city roadshow -

‘Pinnacle 2015’.

Targeted specifically towards system integrators,

‘Pinnacle 2015’ will display D-Link’s one-stop networking

solution that are designed to meet the dynamic network-

ing needs of an enterprise.

Pinnacle 2015 is a series of roadshow slated to reach

out to system integrators present across the length and

breadth of the country. The inaugural event was recently

concluded in Delhi, wherein over 150 system integrators

were present & witnessed D-Link technological excel-

lence in Switching, Wireless, IP Surveillance, Storage,

Software and Structured Cabling for Mid & Large

enterprise announced the press release.

So while D-Link continues to serve the traditional

Wired & Wireless connectivity market, it is also extend-

ing its presence in IP Surveillance domain with one stop

solution that comprises of IP Cameras, NVR, Storage

and Intelligent Video Management System. Further

D-Link also showcased its recent introduction of 11AC

range of products along with enterprise grade wireless

controllers.

“With Pinnacle 2015 we intend to interact & engage

with System Integrators present PAN India & reinstate

D-Link’s networking strength in large enterprise

domain,” said Sanjay Soni, VP (Enterprise & Alliance

business), D-Link (India) Ltd.

RAGHU RAGHURAM

CHANNEL STREET

13MARCH 2015

FORTINET ENHANCES FOR-TIPARTNER PRO-GRAM FOR APACFortinet said it has enhanced its FortiPartner Program for the EMEA and APAC regions. The new program, including new certification and re-aligned partner levels, is designed to help partners build expertise on the full range of Fortinet’s network security products, extend service offerings and expand into new areas of the security market.

JitendraGhughal, National Channel Manager (India & SAARC), Fortinet, commented, “Trends for mobility, agile infrastructures and cloud set alongside the evolution in advanced cyberthreats, means organizations increasingly demand high-performance, integrated security solutions and experienced partner support. Our new program will sup-port our resellers to increase expertise and leverage our end-to-end network security solutions to better align their services with the needs of these customers, and ultimately boost value.”

The new FortiPartner Program includes the following key elements:

The Network Security Expert Certification (NSE) Program:

The new eight level certifica-tion program has been developed to equip partners with in-depth expertise across Fortinet’s full scope of integrated solutions and includes a wide-range of self-paced, instructor-led and practical courses for all technical professionals.

Eaton Hosts Technology Day in Bengaluru for Data Center SegmentPower management company Eaton hosted a Technology Day in Bengaluru for the data center segment. The Technology Day showcased Eaton’s industry leading offerings that help in designing flexible and holistic data centers, increasing efficiency without sacrificing uptime and ensur-ing faster time-to-market.

The Technology Day in Bengaluru is part of a global Eaton initiative that leverages these events to reach out to customers, influencers and end-users to enable effective market interactions across major regions and key industry segments.

“Bengaluru is an important market for Eaton. This is the second Eaton Technology Day in

the last six months in Bengaluru and this time we have hosted it exclusively for the data center segment, which is a focused segment for Eaton,” said NitinChalke, MD, Eaton India. “We have been partnering with several leading players in this segment by providing solutions that help them build an agile and scalable infrastructure; drive real business benefits by ensuring optimum efficiency and low cost throughout the complete lifecycle of the data center.”

Eaton products are manufactured to meet the highest standards of efficiency, reliability and safety.

POLYCOM AND MICROSOFT EXPAND VIDEO COL-LABORATION EXPERIENCES FOR SMBSPolycom and Microsoft have expanded relationship through which Polycom plans to deliver a new series of video collaboration solutions purpose-built for Skype for Business called Poly-comRoundTable. The first device in this new offering is the Polycom® RoundTable® 100, an afford-able and easy-to-use video solution for huddle rooms that will allow small to midsized businesses (SMB) and teams with Skype for Business and Microsoft Lync 2013 to enjoy rich collaboration experiences, including voice, video and content collaboration, simply by logging into their Skype for Business account. The RoundTable 100 will take just minutes to set up and start using, and it will not require corporate domains or on-premises infrastructure, making it easy to use without assistance from IT.

TCS’ BIG DATA SOLUTIONS CERTIFIED ON CLOUDERA ENTERPRISETata Consultancy Services in

partnership with Cloudera, has announced the certification of Big Data Solutions on Cloudera Enterprise through the Cloudera Certified Technology Program (CCTP).

This follows the recent TCS and Cloudera partnership to deliver “Best of Breed” Big Data Solutions announced the press release.

TCS’ Big Data Solutions certified on Cloudera Enterprise are TCS PeriVista, TCS Sensor Data Analytics IoT Framework, and TCS ActiveArchive.

“TCS is focused on improving the Corporate Digital Equity of our customers by leveraging a combina-tion of digital technologies to impact Digital Data Equity, Brand Equity and People Equity through

Digital Reimagination,” said TCS’ Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Global Head of Digital Enterprise. “Our Big Data intellectual property is central to most of our Digital Reimagination engagements, and certification of our Big Data Solutions on Clou-dera’s enterprise data hub platform will speed up customer adoption. We are excited in strengthening our solutions portfolio with Cloudera, a

leader in Hadoop Distribution.” “The expanding portfolio of

TCS solutions and capabilities on Cloudera helps accelerate time to value for customers and, most importantly, helps them effectively navigate and harness the forces of Digital disruption,” said Tim Stevens, vice president, Business and Corporate Development, Cloudera.

HID GLOBAL RELEASES RUGGED IRONTAG 206 TRANSPONDERSHID Global’s Identification Technologies division has launched its IronTag206 RFID transponders that deliver the highest flame resistance rating available in a UHF tag. The transponder has a UL 94 V0 rating, which signifies that IronTag 206 units immediately self-extinguish when an ignition source is removed, and will not drip particles that might cause flames to spread. Originally designed for tracking aircraft parts during assembly and maintenance, all IronTag transponders tolerate harsh conditions and are engineered for optimal performance when mounted on metal surfaces.

CHANNEL STREET

14 MARCH 2015

‘Things’do more than SensingSome of the early sensing ‘Things’ were home security systems that worked in a ‘tight’ closed loop system. Security companies made their fortunes on this for years, not only charging for upfront equipment but on ongoing monthly subscription.

HOME

n W O R D S : MR. KURUV ILLA MATHEW, V I C E P R E S I D E N T – T E C H N O L O G Y

A N D I N N O VAT I O N , N E S S S O F T W A R E E N G I N E E R I N G S E R V I C E S ( S E S )

The ‘Things’ were around us in our homes for a very long time. We have been experiencing it for all these years as disconnected ‘Things’. Popular examples are the thermo-stat controlled HVAC, the garage opener, home security system, the pool door alarm, electronic door locks, DVRs, sprinkler systems, child/pet monitoring system to name a few. These are ‘Things’ that have integrated into our lives to a great extent. The challenge, however, is that each of these ‘Things’ having their own method of control. They don’t talk to each other nor provide an easy way for you to centrally manage.

Some of the early sensing ‘Things’ were home security systems that worked in a ‘tight’ closed loop system. Security companies made their fortunes on this for years, not only charging for upfront equipment but on ongoing monthly subscription.One of the most frus-trating ‘Thing’ is a garage opener which requires a radio-frequency (RF) remote that limits capability of controlled access to homes but is changing fast with more secure methods of control

Today, we are in the midst of a digital transformation. We need these disconnected ‘Things’ to be connected in a simple fashion. The digital evolution is moving at a rapid pace. Currently, in the market, there are a number of commercially available products that is enabling the open connect model with solutions like Insteon, Wink, Google Nest, BelkinWeMo, Control 4, Leviton and the likes, that are leveraging the ‘Internet of Things’that is atan affordable cost, with a higher degree of flexibility and control. The security systems have become more sophisticated and can be expanded not only sensing but also providing a wider spectrum of services. Somepopular options are monitoring a home and integrating with emergency response, viewing a live feed of your home - while you are out;optimize the use of sprinkler systems based on local weather;ability to monitor your home by accessing events that have occurred while you are away brings peace of mind to you as a home owner.

The use of integratedarray of light, humidity and temperature

sensors help to detect changes and starting up the HVAC as needed. This goes a long way in building more energy efficient homes. Depending on the type of home, square footage, environment conditions – one can set up an effective energy use schedule that would dramatically lower the cost of energy.

So, it is not only about just sensing but takes actions without human intervention. The ability of two devices at home to talk to one another and make decisions based on an established scenario plan. The scenario plan could be on what energy saving strategy to apply and not mindless strategies, such as, 3 PM turn up the cooling get it to 72 degrees. For example, temperature, motion, light sensors could talk to each other to see if the HVAC should be started and the tem-perature be brought down if there is someone at home or should it go into an energy save mode, where is maintains it at an optimal level. The system learns the time and energy expended to cool or hear based on the square footage. We see now the Google Nest is adapting to the cus-

tomer lifestyle but a key contributor in bringing about changes in the energy sector.

A number of actuators are now available and can either be manually controlled or the decision can be made by the smart control. These actuators are connected to sprinklers, HVAC, lighting, cameras, light bulbs and other home appliances – coffee maker or toaster oven! For instance, the smart sprinkler systems could check the local weather forecast, the ambient temperature, the relative humidity and soil sensor to measure the mois-ture level could help in determining how long it should be watered.

There are a number Do It Yourself (DIY) kits that can be purchased from local stores as well as online. These kits have simple instructions and could be setup in a matter of hours. The interesting part is that it is expandable, you just go and buy a smart light bulb, plug it in and then you can control it from anywhere in the world. The integration with existing appliances with these kits will only improve with more adoption and will drive down the cost. ë

GUEST TALK

15MARCH 2015

COVER STORY

16 MARCH 2015

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India movement was augmented with the budget taking several steps improve business conditions in the country. Industry feels the announcements are a step in the right direction

to boost growth of the technology sector and also further drive investments.

MAKE IN INDIA PUSH“The exemption of all special additional duty (SAD) on inputs/components used in the manufacture of personal comput-ers is a significant step towards integrating India into the global supply chain enhancing the technology capabilities in hardware,” said Ravi Swaminathan – Managing Director, AMD

India & Corporate Vice President, AMD South Asia. “Further, the thrust on NOFN will provide a tremendous opportunity to bring Digital-India’s vision to the fore.”

Industry body MAIT sees the budget as a mixed bag. “The removal of customs duty on components and concessional structure of 2% without CENVAT credit are positive steps to encourage tablet manufacturing in India. However, it disappoints as no initiatives have been taken to increase PC manufacturing and promote exports. In this budget, we might have missed an opportunity to drive ‘Make in India’ in computers. We could have improved capacity utilization of existing facility if we had the right enabling structure for local PC manufacturing,” said Amar Babu, Managing Director, Lenovo India and President, MAIT.

The thrust given to infrastructure development will have a positive rub off for the manufacturing sector and will stimulate growth, says BimalTanna, Partner and Leader, Industrial Prod-ucts, PwC India. “While some of the steps taken by the FM will

certainly help in attracting investors and ease doing business in India, we would have wanted more from the FM given the spotlight on ‘Make in India’ like reduction in the MAT rate for the manufacturing sector,” he said.

IMPACT OF GSTThe much awaited GST announcement for April 2016 has rejuvenated the industry as manufacturing sector will become more competitive and support the ‘Make in India’ initiative, it will be interesting to see how it will be rolled out in the coming months.

“Complementing factor was the focus on skill development, National Skill Mission will be a great initiative to develop youth employability thus contributing to the growth of our

country. With focus on growth and job creation, it is sure to drive India’s global competitiveness,” said Keshav Bansal, Director, Intex Technologies.

“Technology is going to be a critical enabler whether it is for making GST operational, direct benefit transfers and cashless transactions, e-Biz portal or enabling booking of unreserved railway ticket through mobile phones for the masses,”Sanjay Rohatgi, Vice President, India, Symantec, added.

“It is encouraging to see that the Union Budget 2015 had a special focus on PM‘s ambitious Digital India initiative. The JAM trinity of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile& GST can prove to be game changing reforms taking forward the financial inclu-sion programme and smoother, seamless transfer of subsidies to the intended beneficiaries, feels Aloke Ghosh, CFO & CS, Blue Star Infotech. “The budget looks at not only creating new jobs, but also incentivising self-employment and entrepreneur-ship. It will introduce more competition, innovation and bringing global expertise and technology giving a boost to the

Several measures taken by the government in this year’s budget are seen as positive moves towards improving ease of doing business and manufacturing viability in the country. That said, there is room for improvement.

n W O R D S : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A < S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K . C O M

WILL INDIA BECOME A MANUFACTURING HUB?

COVER STORY

17MARCH 2015

KESHAV BANSAL,DIRECTOR, INTEX TECHNOLOGIES.

“National Skill Mission will be a great initiative

to develop youth employability thus contributing to the

growth of our country.”

SANJAY ROHATGI,VICE PRESIDENT, INDIA,

SYMANTEC

“Technology is going to be a critical enabler

whether it is for making GST operational, direct

benefit transfers and cashless transactions.”

ALOKE GHOSH,CFO & CS, BLUE STAR

INFOTECH..

“The budget looks at not only creating new jobs, but also incentivising self-employment and

entrepreneurship.”

‘Make in India’ programme,” he said.“We are very encouraged by the commitment

to implement GST by April 2016 and focus on development of infrastructure, an Amazon India spokesperson said. “We believe both are key to ease of doing business by enabling and streamlin-ing the movement of goods and services.”

GETTING THE BUILDING BLOCKS RIGHTThe budget put forth this year by Finance Minister ArunJaitley addresses the much needed security and infrastructure needs of the country. The focus on security is particularly commend-able, with Rs1,000 crore being added to the Nirbhaya fund. This shows that the government is taking security and surveillance seriously. The country is at a crucial juncture in terms of security and thisannouncement will boost trust and well-being among citizens.

To further boost the ‘smart cities’ campaign, the government has also announced funds for infrastructure development. Rs 25, 000 crore is being allocated for the rural infrastructure development and Rs 1,200 crore for DMIC project – this will definitely steer India towards becoming a ‘smarter’ country.

Further, speedy implementation of 7.5 lac Kms in 2.5 lakh villages through NOFN will enable

more rural communities to benefit and improve effective governance. “Telecom fraternity is com-mitted to and now the onus is on us to connect the last mile for the benefit of the society,” said Arvind Bali, Director & CEO, Videocon Telecom.

“For the surveillance industry, this will provide a significant market and potential, since to main-tain the infrastructure, security and surveillance will be fundamental. As with the smart cities, about 1-15% of the total cost for the infrastruc-ture will go in security systems,” said Sudhindra-Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications India & SAARC. “The budget has been very good and we appreciate and applaud the center’s effort to make this country a safer place to live.”

From the perspective of Emerson Network Power, the plan for investment in infrastructure and enhanced rate of GDP growth at 8% for the next two years will augur well, spurring business momentum, said Sunil Khanna- President and M.D., Emerson Network Power India. “We are particularly excited with the emphasis laid on the renewable and solar energy space as this will bolster investment in the power generation space and will drive overall growth for the economy since energy is key to 24x7 functioning of businesses.”

“The other good news is the decision to reduce corporate tax over next four years,” said LC Singh,

Vice Chairman & CEO, Nihilent. “These are crucial moves to improve ease of doing business and we welcome them. The threshold for transfer pricing has been increased to Rs.20 crore. If this is coupled with simpler and clearer overall transfer pricing, investment will receive a boost and increase investor confidence. If the definitions of royalty are aligned with international practices, the country’s software sector will be at par with the global norms and standards.”

Rodney Noonoo, CFO, Xerox India said, “The Budget on paper looks to be an outstanding ‘business plan’ with a roadmap for the next five years with right balance between social and economic objectives with focus on critical areas. Now it is really upto how well it is executed on the ground.”

Anil Valluri, President, NetApp India & SAARC pointed out some more steps taken by the government in the new Budget that’ll boost the infrastructure. “Creation of Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank, with a corpus of Rs. 20,000 crore, and credit guarantee corpus of Rs. 3,000 crore is a positive step to encourage young, educated, skilled workers who aspire to become first generation entrepreneurs or expand their activi-ties. With robust growth in the Digital India initiative announced last year, it is heartening

COVER STORY

18 MARCH 2015

ARVIND BALI,DIRECTOR & CEO, VIDEOCON

TELECOM.

“Telecom fraternity is committed to and now

the onus is on us to connect the last mile for the benefit of the society.”

LC SINGH,VICE CHAIRMAN & CEO,

NIHILENT.

“These are crucial moves to improve ease of

doing business and we welcome them.”

AMAR BABU,MANAGING DIRECTOR,

LENOVO INDIA AND PRESIDENT, MAIT.

“In this budget, we might have missed an opportunity to drive

‘Make in India’ in computers.”

Overall, the budget is a ‘feel good’ budget. It has a pragmatic and good balance of social programs, industry (large and SME) friendly programs and tax reforms, without going overboard to be populist or ‘politics driven’. In terms of the IT industry specifically there is a nod for the needs of the IT industry in terms of making a statement that the needs of the IT industry will be addressed in terms of ease of doing business, capital access etc. However, without reviewing the details of exactly how this is to be done, we will need to adopt a wait and watch approach to see how effective it will be.Reducing the tax on R&D and innovation investments to 10% is a very positive move, both from the point of view of facilitating technology transfer as well as incentivizing companies to invest more in driving innovation. Along the same lines, the nod to the ‘start-up ecosystem’ in the country is a major positive. This is the first time such language has made its way into the budget and a good reflection of the fact that job growth has to be broad based by facilitating the SME segment and even the start-up culture in the country.The increase in infrastructure investments across the board is another positive measure. Here however, the devil, as always is not in thebudget pronouncements but the actual implementation of those announcements, which is where the challenges have always been. The fact that there wasn’t a strong acknowledgment of that fact and plans to ensure implementation oversight of these massive programs remains a concern. As an example the NOFNP program has been dragging on for many years now, and other than reaffirming the desire to accelerate implementation, the fact that a hard (new) deadline was not established and committed to is a concern.On education and skills development again, there are some strong announcements like creating a skills development fund, an innovation platform, and basic education availability within 5 kms of every village. BUT, where are the teachers going to come from? So I would have expected a stronger technology driven approach to expand rural education, which is missing from the budget announcement. The traditional classroom based approach to expanding education access will be a major challenge and instead a strong technology / remote education process would be more effective.All in all, this is a pragmatic and growth oriented budget which incorporates the ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ philosophy while also specifically addressing some burning rural and social issues.

PARTHAIYENGA,COUNTRY MANAGER (RESEARCH) - INDIA,

GARTNER.

to see that the Government wants to further expand it and increase the network connectivity to more rural areas. A progressive and invest-ment focused budget overall from which we hope to see tremendous growth for the Indian

economy.”“The current Union Budget strives to drive the

growth of the Indian Economy especially in the Social Infrastructure domain. We are all geared up to work towards transforming India into a

self-reliant country by actively getting involved in fields such as Water, Urban Transportation, IT, Healthcare etc. and contribute to the overall welfare of the Indian society,” said Ichiro Iino, Managing Director, Hitachi India Pvt. Ltd. ë

COVER STORY

19MARCH 2015

An Inclusive Budget Focused on Growth

PThe Finance Minister has presented a broad-based Budget focused on accelerating India’s inclusive growth. The Budget reiterates the major programs and

initiatives that have been previously announced – Jan Dhan Yojana, Skill India, Swach Bharat, Make in India and Digital India.

The Budget retains the focus on financial inclusion, education, health and agriculture. It has increased focused on infrastructure develop-ment, housing and manufacturing in India. Overall, Budget 2015 is wide in its scope and takes into account the interests of diverse sections of society – middle class, farmers, youth, aged and the disabled. It endorses a vision of India where there is a house for every family with24 hour power, potable water, and all accessible by road, and where at least one member of the family is employed. And all by 2023, when India celebrates its 75th year of Independence. The FM also talked about building a better social security system for its citizens to provide financial security.

The budget talked about financial discipline, a monetary policy framework with RBI that will keep inflation at less than 6%, but look at possible double digit growth. The FM is looking at reduc-ing the fiscal deficit to 3% but in three years’ time to release additional investments.

The focus on infrastructure and housing investments is good, as it will kick-start the economy and have a ripple effect across all Industries. The FM understands the need to kick start infrastructure projects through increased investments, the need to revitalize PPP with the GOI taking additional risk.

The focus on technology as a backbone for government processes and systems is the right approach example GSTN, JAM was stressed.

FOCUSING ON STARTUPS AND MSMESThe Government has recognized the need to sup-port startups, and incubators and has acknowl-edged that a culture of innovation needs to be fostered. Budgetary allocations for incubators, a mechanism for supporting self-employment and

talent utilization will allow startups and MSMEs to access the funds and talent, creating new avenues for growth and employment.

BOOST TO DIGITAL INDIA, MAKE IN INDIA AND SKILL INDIASpeedy implementation of the national fiber optic network will enable more rural communities to benefit from the ecosystem of services that can make governance more effective. The trinity of Jan Dhan – Aadhar – Mobile that the Finance Minister referred to, is indeed positive in a mobile-first, cloud-first India.

The Government has also shown its commit-ment to skill development to equip the nation’s youth to take advantage of economic opportuni-ties. The formation of the National Skill Mission that will consolidate efforts and outcomes and budgetary allocations to financially support youth in their skilling efforts will enable the country to benefit from its demographic dividend.

The focus on job creation through the Make in India program, and providing gainful employ-ment to India’s youth is commendable and a future oriented outlook.

The Finance Minister has focused on the ease of doing business in India. We look forward to policy moves in the coming year that rationalize and streamline approvals for setting up business that can help investments and boost economic development. I am positive about the reaffirma-tion of the Government’s commitment towards PPP as a key drive of infrastructure creation. This would provide more opportunities for innovation-led companies to partner in India’s growth.

A SIMPLER TAX ENVIRONMENTThe Finance Minister has provided a firm timeline for the implementation of GST, and this will help companies effectively plan for the next year. Deferring GAAR by two years, and the fact that the Government is looking to implement its provisions prospectively from 2017, is also a welcome move. It is an indication of the GOI

thinking to make tax less adversarial.The reduction in corporate tax, albeit over

the next four years has certainly welcome. More because it also comes with the reduction of exemptions. Exemptions create confusion. I welcome the simpler framework the Government is proposing.

There was a mention of removing SAD on components to remove the duty inversion. This can help local manufacturing of electronic goods as part of the Make for India initiative

The reduction in tax on royalties for technical services will help greater technology adoption in industry and that is welcome.

WHAT WAS MISSING?We must hold the Government accountable for delivering on their budget promises. Many of the announcements made in previous budget, which were geared to minimize/resolve transfer pricing litigation are yet to be implemented. It is nice to make a mention of the measures for dispute resolution in the speech, but the key is implementation.

We will also need to see if some of the other Tax related concerns of the IT and ITES sector have been addressed. These include resolving ambiguities in taxation of software products and services. In that context, the service tax rate going up is a concern, because of the impact it could have of driving people to use pirated software. Especially, because of the dual tax on software – the net tax rate for software is above 20%.

BHASKAR PRAMANIK,CHAIRMAN, MICROSOFT

INDIA

“The union Budget will be a boost to

Digital India, Make in India and Skill India

initiatives but there are some shortfalls too.”

COVER STORY

20 MARCH 2015

Startups are rejoicing over the new budget with reduced corporate tax and a new startup fund

PThe Finance Minister has presented a broad-based Budget focused on accelerating India’s inclusive growth. The Budget reiterates the major programs and

initiatives that have been previously announced – Jan Dhan Yojana, Skill India, Swach Bharat, Make in India and Digital India.

The financial allocation of Rs 1000 cr under the SETU - Self Employment & Talent Utilization program in the Union budget is expected to boost the start-up ecosystem in India. The addi-tional focus towards the strengthening of the IT infrastructure, the backbone of the Indian start up industry will accelerate the industry growth.

Technology startups, especially in the health-care space are excited over the government’s increased focus on both healthcare and startups.

“As a young company at the intersection of health and technology we’re very pleased with the government’s focus on both these sectors and look forward to working with various stakeholders to improve healthcare access for a Digital India,” Shashank ND, Founder & CEO at healthcare startup Practo, said.

The increase in tax exemption limit for health insurance will have significant impact on the

penetration of health insurance in the country, believes Amit Bansal, CEO of healthcare startup HealpingDoc.com. “This would help corporates to offer a wider range of health packages, and would go further to reduce out-of-pocket health spending,” he said.

Startups also feel that the new fund allocation will help them expand in smaller cities and towns. “The budget allocation for startups should be used to promote startups in Tier 2 cities and beyond. This can lead to significant generation of quality employment at par with city counterparts for youngsters in these regions. Areas to be focused should be technology, commerce and education/training,” said Sanjoe Jose, CEO at HR software startup Talview.com.

While an overall sense of optimism appears to be there among the startup community in the country, there is also some skepticism over the execution strategy of the government.

“If we are look at this allocation in details there is lack of clarity how these funds will be allocated, what is the duration for this will be available , what is the procedure to get the funds and what kind of startups are eligible and what is the slab of funding ,” DiwakarChittora, CEO at Intellipaat.com said.

Chittora said there needs to be clarity on how these budgets get utilized, who can utilize them, who is the right authority to take decision and what is the definition of startup?

Showing a similar skepticism, AshutoshModi, Executive Director, EntrancePrime.com said, “Execution and enforcement plan for influx of larger funds in schemes like MNREGA will be interesting to read. As expected, increase in service tax to make way for GST will be hard of Indian pockets. We were expecting a reduction in ROI for Education loans, however, some of it is taken care of with PradhanmatriVidyaLaxmi Scheme.”

However, the biggest benefit received by the startups in the budget is the reduction in corporate tax. “FM announcement of reducing corporate tax from 30% to 25% in the next 4 years will increase the expenditure power on marketing and technology of Smartprix.com,” said Abhi-navChoudhary, Co-Founder, Smartprix.com. “An online comparison shopping website and creation of more jobs in the technology sector is expected in the upcoming years. Reduction in the rate of income tax on royalty and fees for technical services from 25% to 10% is a welcome move,” he said. ë

SHASHANK ND,Founder & CEO, Practo

DIWAKAR CHITTORA,CEO, Intellipaat.com

AMIT BANSAL,CEO, HealpingDoc.com

SANJOE JOSE,CEO, Talview.com

ASHUTOSH MODI,Executive Director, EntrancePrime.com

ABHINAVCHOUDHARY,Co-Founder, Smartprix.com.

Game Changer for Indian Startups?BUDGET 2015

COVER STORY

21MARCH 2015

Building of Smart CitiesIDC identifies three key attributes which must be included for a solution to be considered smart. These attributes are 1. To gather and aggregate data (example- traffic pattern, water consumption, power grid and usage monitoring etc.) 2 To discover and analyze information 3. Mechanisms must be in place to respond to analyzed information.

BEHIND

Smart cities has become a hot discussion topic,with the recent announcement of 7,060 crores budget by the government. With our cities facing a myriad of infrastructure issues and the fact that by 2031, approximately40% of Indian population is expected to live in urban environment accord-ing to some study estimates, it is critical that the smart cities are able toimproving the quality of life of its residents andprovide sustained economic growth as the urbaniza-tion of India continues.

A Smart City is defined as a finite entity with its own governing authority that is morelocal than the national level and that uses a spe-cific set of technologies to achieve the explicit goals of improving the lives of citizens and sustainable urban development. What exactly is a smart city solution?, IDC identi-fies three key attributes which must be included for a solution to be considered smart. These attributes

are 1. To gatherand aggregate data (example- traffic pattern, water consumption, power grid and usage monitoring etc.) 2 To discover and analyze information 3. Mechanisms must be in place to respond to analyzed information. As India embarks on this journey towards implementing the smart city vision , a few critical choice points must be considered.

For instance, smart city solutions will require many participants coming together to deliver a solu-tion. Let us take the example of traf-fic management. At the hardware solution level, vendors who can deliver cameras , SIs that can install and integrate them with a central backbone to form interface layer. Creating a backbone structure for the camera feeds, storage solutions of the footage, video walls and s/w solutions to zoom in to specific spots etc. to form the management layer. Domain/Soultion specific experts who can utilize the footage

for traffic pattern analysis and pos-sible improvements, utilizing the camera feeds for incidence response or for investigation purpose by law enforcement agencies etc. will form the aggregation layer. Each of these layers will have expert vendors (either at Technology or manage-ment or domain) who should be able to showcase their solutions and how to customize it for Indian environment.

Another important choice point is around the governance model where the projects could be either a top-down standard architec-ture , based on a set of selected technology infrastructure projects coordinated by central government or a governance model more oriented towards selection projects by local government services.

Also, while looking at imple-menting these projects across 100 cities, a long term overall roadmap needs to be defined and based on the roadmap, individual participant

cities(in conjunction with central planning team) can select the different projects which are critical for them. For example, a city which is currently experiencing lot of water and waste management issues might choose to focus on smart water and smart waste management projects while another city might choose to prioritize on intelligent transport systems or on smart connected health care systems. Also, project evaluation needs to be based on long term economic viability and sustainability. It is important for a country like India to ensure that solutions which are touching the common citizen, are affordable by all sections of the society . Otherwise, these initiatives might get perceived as “elitist” and not connected with the reality of the common man.

The government departments (like power, water supply etc.) which are in charge of driving these programs , must also be

n W O R D S : BALAJ I MAHAL INGAM, R E S E A R C H

D I R E C T O R O F I D C .

n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

GUEST TALK

22 MARCH 2015

trained to move away from the traditional tender based short term cost optimization focus and instead focus on outcome based long term partnership projects with private participants . Projects should be evaluated against a set of criteria which includes demonstrable ROI and long term viability . Even in the selection of cities, there might be a bias towards cities with huge current/future projected popula-tions (commonly known as Tier I cities) due to economies of scale and potential shorter ROI cycle. However, with new enabling technologies of the third platform like the Internet of things and Cloud computing, the tier II and tier III cities can be developed to form cities that leverage solutionsthus driving better ROI and viability.

Clarity of the funding models and speed in the funding process

is of critical importance for timely execution of the projects and to build confidence among all stakeholders. There is a perception among stakeholders that the pace of funding of government projects often lags the publicity and hype created. Hence, a well thought out “buy or build” strategy and a fast track project management process is of critical importance. Otherwise, many of these projects might end up being in conceptual paper stage or proof of concept pilots.

Also, while adopting best practices from smart city implemen-tations abroad, attention should be focused on India specific unique priorities and social challenges.Projects need to be steered by gov-ernmental framework for “inclusive growth” using technology . For example, while we see hundreds of mobile apps being developed

by Indian developer community, we are yet to see an app which can help a highway user to alert the authorities of any accident and provide him/her directions for the nearby hospital. With the explosion of mobile phone usage and growth of low end affordable smartphones, such an app will be helpful to save a lot of lives on the highways of India, where as per WHO statistics more people die in India of road accidents than anywhere else in the world. Governmental framework to encourage and fund such applica-tions is a critical enabler which is missing today.

While “smart cities” as a high level project will attract a lot of attention from all stakeholders, their eco-nomic viability needs to be clearly established. There are concerns that some of the smart city projects aborad like the Songdo Smart City

in South Korea which has been receiving high praise for its state of the art infrastructure and smart technologies, the project hasn’t yet been a commercial success as a significant part of the commercial space in the city is still unoccupied.

In closing,the smart city vision of the government to enable economic growth, generate employment and also improve the quality of life for urban citizens shows great vision. To translate this vision to reality, a well thought out execution plan needs to be in place and emphasis should be on ‘inclusive development” so that all sections of the society can benefit from this. India has proven talent and track record in IT Services and if this can be combined with a clear direction and execution frame-work support from the government, Indian urban landscape will witness positive transformation. ë

Free Demo -1800 200 2444 www.rdp.in

RDP Workstations Pvt. Ltd. # 8-2-248/B/32, Sri Lakshmi Arcade, Journalist Colony,Banjara Hills, Road No-3, Hyderabad-34, TS, India . P: 040-6457 1110

A True ZERO Client

in Full screen

Experience Waiting is

Introducing

AL-400

Rich Multimedia Support (HD Video & Audio) Configurable Desktop Experience

Broad USB Peripherals SupportSecure User Isolation & Powerful Management Tools

GUEST TALK

23MARCH 2015

Big Data is a big deal, to borrow a phrase from the research at Harvard University. There is data every day, everywhere, in every sector - be it from phones,

sensor-equipped buildings, televisions, credit cards, trains; cars; medical tech; agriculture yields, logistics..... and more. Organizations that adopt a Big Data strategy, finding ways to link and analyse data and uncover the patterns and insights stand to benefit massively, enhance profitability and contribute to development of communities they are actively present in.

Indian companies are gradually coming into sync with their global counterparts in tapping the true potential of big data. Desktop analytic tools are no longer sufficient as the volume, velocity and variety of data are growing exponentially. Advanced analytics are key to providing companies with the ability to conduct analysis and simulations of all business transactions, while presenting a model which is concise, relevant and accurate

As per a recent survey carried out by Jasper-

soft, with respondents who are in the software developing, internet, computer, financial and government business, it is seen that the confusion towards big data is reduced and the commitment towards making good use of it is on the rise. 56% of the respondents have big data project plans, the amount of companies that funded a big data strategy has doubled since their last survey in 2012, but still 20% of the organizations do not see any business justification for moving ahead with big data. The most popular data source is Customer Relationship Management data, which is used to improve customer and experience analytics.

SrikanthKarnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft Corporation, India, says, “Organizations of all sizes are experiencing data deluge with large volumes & variety of data being created, stored and managed within their ecosystems. Data is increasingly becoming the new competitive advantage and companies that make best use of data and analytics investments stand to capture more value compared to companies that do not. Further, the convergence

of cloud, mobility & social are adding greater responsibility for CIOs & IT departments to manage and secure corporate data. As a result, there is an increasing demand for secure tools & technologies that can derive insights from any form of data and are intuitive and simple to use. These trends will continue to drive the adoption of analytics & big data solutions in India and the biggest consumers of these solutions are going to be sectors like BFSI, Retail, Manufacturing, Travel & Logistics, Pharmaceutical sectors etc. to name a few.”

As per AshishPachory, Chief Information Officer, Tata Teleservices Limited, businesses, whether small or large, are churning huge amounts of data at an unprecedented rate from a multitude of sources - posts to social media sites, application downloads, digital pictures and video uploads, mobile GPS signals etc. The ability to collate relevant data from these sources and convert it into actionable business insights with the aim of improving efficiency and customer experience is at the heart of big data.

A recent academic research found that

BIG DATA

Big Data for Every OneThe success of business outcome today does not only depend upon the organizational capability but also depends on the utilization of data collated from the external and internal sources said about your organization. This is where all the organizations in India should have plans for.

n B Y : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A < S A N J AY @ E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K . C O M

FEATURE

24 MARCH 2015

companies that have incorporated data and analytics into their operations show productivity rates 5 to 6 percent higher than those of their peers. The reason is simple: the more information a brand has on their consumer, the better it is able to predict their buying behaviour and customise its offerings, fostering customer trust and leading to an increased chance of sale.

As per another research, across industries, regions and companies large and small, the exponential growth in data and ability to access to critical information is creating very real business challenges. More than half of business and IT executives report that they feel overwhelmed by the amount of data their company manages. Many report they are often delayed in making important decisions as a result of too much information. Surprisingly, 62 percent of C-level respondents – whose time is considered the most valuable in most organizations – report being frequently interrupted by irrelevant incoming data.

Across all industries, including government, healthcare, media, energy, among others, data

is becoming central to business operations. The flood of data entering the enterprise fundamen-tally changes the way their businesses operate.

Rajiv Gupta, Partner & Director and Head Technology Practice BCG says, “Big Data is a tremendous opportunity – call centres have been a major export for years; increasingly insights are becoming an export too. Big Data & Analytics is THE fastest growing topic in the IT landscape. All major players, including Consulting firms, IT Companies, industry players in Retail, Telecom & BFSI are setting up Big Data & advanced Analytics capabilities, leading to explosive growth in revenues & headcount. This is a great period to be a Data Scientist, with high industry demand/growth and acute shortage of skilled talent. The topic is poised for high growth in the foreseeable future.”

“Indian industry is increasingly moving towards super-specialization of skill-sets. On the one hand, we have deep technical experts who have the ability to process massive quantities of data relatively quickly, using specialized tools and hardware. On the other, we have decision

scientists who specialize in advanced algorithms & techniques to extract actionable & domain rel-evant insights, with a direct commercial impact. Increasingly, we see both skills working together to deliver value to our clients,” he added.

At Microsoft, along with its valued channel partners, the company provide the complete end to end data platform approach – with SQL Server 2014, Power BI, Analytical Platform System and Excel- to help businesses of all size get maximum return on their data. Our data platform solutions are built to provide in-memory performance for all types of data at scale, are capable of handling both structured & unstructured data and provide seamless experience on premise as well as in the cloud environment. Unlocking maximum value to customers is at the heart of all of Microsoft products & solutions and with our data platform portfolio we continue to deliver highest value to our customers at low costs.”

BCG helpsits clients improve their profitability in the short term through doing advanced analyt-ics and building with them the platforms and processes for them to do it. For the longer term

FEATURE

25MARCH 2015

RAJIV GUPTAPARTNER & DIRECTOR AND HEAD

TECHNOLOGY PRACTICE BCG

“All major players, including Consulting firms,

IT companies, Industry players in Retail, Telecom & BFSI are setting up Big

Data & advanced analytics capabilities, leading

to explosive growth in revenues & headcount.”

SRIKANTHKARNAKOTA DIRECTOR – SERVER AND

CLOUD BUSINESS, MICROSOFT CORPORATION, INDIA

“Data is increasingly becoming the new

competitive advantage and companies that

make best use of data and analytics investments stand

to capture more value compared to companies

that do not.”

BCG helps them develop their big data strategy (e.g., where to play? which use cases to focus on?) and the technical, organizational, governance and information management roadmap to deliver it.

AbhishekBansal, Senior Manager, Specialty Analytics, BCG, said, “In India we’re still looking for the correct partners for Big Data. The lack of major cloud providers (which we use heavily in other geographical markets) is one major road-block at this point. We are vendor agnostic and never receive any compensation from any vendor. But there’s a tool we use internally which we find

is quite disruptive to the way we work – Alteryx. It “democratizes” analytics, allowing more people in the organization to use a broader range of tools with a very short learning time.”

Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) has been making use of big data solutions for quite some time now. There is a strong emphasis on end-to-end customer experience management. Ashish adds, “Big Data enables us to reach the bottom of the pyramid and define systems to measure stage-wise experience parameters for a given customer and correlate them for personalized delivery.

We also have elegant predictive tools and robust data warehousing in place. While these solutions enable us to leverage structured data, we are also looking at available options for effective mining of unstructured data. Using the Hadoop framework we have leveraged Big Data for more effective Vigilance Tracking and Monitoring.”

“Big data also plays a crucial role in addressing legal and regulatory requirements which are mandated for longer retention periods. Given the growing volume of data and the time sensitivity attached to such requirements, organisations usually look to procure additional storage and servers incurring high expenditure. As an alternative, we deployed big data solutions which were very cost effective and also provided timely information,” he added.

Just as Big Data lays out many promises, it lays out many questions and challenges when it comes to privacy. Decisions about how to address privacy in big data systems will impact almost everyone as organizations will make more data open and available inside organizations and pub-licly. So there has to be very careful consideration of tools to deal with the private and personal data.

Rajiv said, “We have worked on this issue with the World Economic Forum and we run a large global consumer survey on the issue. The overwhelming message of the survey is that almost everyone has strong concerns about privacy. Our two messages to companies on this are firstly that you need to enforce your own privacy policy – there must be consequences for violating the policy; and secondly not to rely on the policy. Nobody read privacy policies and saying “well it’s allowed in the privacy policy” will count for nothing in the minds of customers who are surprised by what you do. One must avoid the surprises in the first place.”

IoT will drive much of the big data growth this year. Analysis of IoT data will be a huge topic, and will allow for major innovations in areas such as energy, manufacturing and health care.

According to IDC the big data market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9B in 2015. This will lead to a further surge in demand for data scientists – the unicorn-like combination of programmer, statistician and manager. Companies whose strategy relies on hiring these people will fail – it won’t be possible to find them. Instead they need to focus on the “how” not the “who” and build small, co-located teams which combine these skills in separate people.

Strong cloud providers in region should provide the necessary infrastructure at scale, however these are still 1yr away.

From the market realization perspective, the

A joint study by NASSCOM and CRISIL Global Research & Analytics estimates that the Indian big data industry will grow from USD 200 million in 2012 to USD 1 billion in 2015, at a CAGR in excess of 83 percent. A recent IDC Data Survey also found that around 36 percent of the information from India would be valuable only if it were to be analysed. With the opportunity clearly defined, it is critical for businesses to encourage talent that is able to effectively plan and manage the mining of big data elements and utilise the insights derived from these analytics.

FEATURE

26 MARCH 2015

ABHISHEKBANSALSENIOR MANAGER, SPECIALTY

ANALYTICS, BCG.

“The lack of major cloud providers (which we use heavily in other

geographical markets) is one major roadblock at

this point. We are vendor agnostic and never receive any compensation from

any vendor.”

ASHISHPACHORYCHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, TATA

TELESERVICES LIMITED.

“Whether small or large, are churning huge amounts of data at an

unprecedented rate from a multitude of sources -

posts to social media sites, application downloads,

digital pictures and video uploads, mobile GPS

signals etc.”

market has already seen the outcome of Big Data strategy. Banking sector has identified ~60% attri-tion rate using advanced analytic tools in Bank-ing. The retail industry has seen $70M margin increase from promotional effectiveness based on advanced analytics in Retail. Similarly, the industry has seen $45M benefit from Big Data Transformation (establishing real-time enterprise information management) in Consumer Goods. telecom sector has seen $30M benefit from new business creation opportunities by leveraging geo-data.

Today organizations in all verticals starting from small to very large need Big Data & analyt-ics reason being there is a clear need to listening to the market. Unless you listen and work accord-ing to the market requirement, you cannot bring out the right strategy or right product.

Abhishek says, “We’ ve worked on big data and advanced analytics with companies that sell everything from tractors to handbags and offer services from loans to electricity, as well as governments and not for profits.”

The media industry has probably been the most disrupted so far. Imagine you own a newspaper and want to get a local restaurant to advertise in it. It’s not just Google you have to fear - you now have to compete with a mobile telco who can push an opt-in message to people who work near the restaurant and have just left their office at lunchtime. Although retailers have been doing big data and advanced analytics for years, but there is still plenty of scope for them to extract more value – in understanding promotional effectiveness for example. Finally, insurance is an industry which could be highly disrupted as new data-sources allow completely new routes to assessing risk. The extent of the disruption is still to be seen though – incumbents will surely try to steer regulation, making the very valid point that if insurance is about pooling of risk, then the whole benefit is undermined if risk can be assessed too precisely.

Streaming data is a hot topic in the world of Big Data, and there are many tools and services available to collect, process and analyse the data. The challenge within India is that many firms need to build up in-house systems to support the low latency, high speed systems need to capture the data. Cloud providers offer very good services for streaming data (such as AWS DynamoDB), but again the current lack of in-region services mean high latency which might be a roadblock to large scale implementations at this point.

Frameworks and Best Practices are needed to offer options for working with different types of data; any more detailed regulations or

architectures start to become too specific to an individual technology or industry. One suggested best practice is that data should to be partitioned to isolate any PII (personally identifiable information) with very strict controls at least in compliance with any local regulations. Non-PII can then be loaded onto various “commodity” analytics platforms (such as shared DB service or in the cloud) reducing the impact of any potential data leakage.

Cloud services allow for a lower entry point into the big data space, avoiding the large capex needed to purchase private, large scale systems. The challenge in India is that the global market leaders (AWS, Microsoft) have yet to launch production services inside of India, and one major pain point of Big Data is the shipping of this data so trying to move such data out of country is cumbersome and slow. For offshoring scenarios, the data is normally kept within region (eg. US or Europe), and India-based Analysts can work using remote control technologies.

At a high level, we agree with Amara’s Law “we tend to overestimate the impact of a technology

in the short term and underestimate the effect in the long term”. But we find the reason for the short-term failure to meet expectations is often the same in our experience – a tendency to invest in IT systems early rather than taking a test and learn approach. The waterfall approach to analytics development is still alive and well – the agile revolution has yet to hit analytics. One of our clients explained recently that it had taken him two years to get sign-off to buy his company’s first data warehouse – but this had an unexpected benefit – by the time he commissioned it he knew exactly what he wanted because of the test and learn he’d needed to do before the data warehouse was available.

FINALLY…The industry expects to see a spiralling trend in the deployment and adoption of big data analytics, especially in customer experience management.At the same time it is important to have robust policies in place to not only serve enterprises with analytics but also to ensure them of the security and post deployment services. ë

FEATURE

27MARCH 2015

ing legal and regulatory requirements which are mandated for longer retention periods. Given the growing volume of data and the time sensitivity attached to such requirements, organisations usually look to procure additional storage and servers incurring high expenditure. As an alternative, we deployed big data solutions which were very cost effective and also provided timely information.

Other business functions that benefit from these tools include marketing campaigns, customer service and network management. We expect to see a spiraling trend in the deployment and adoption of big data analytics, especially in customer experience management.

Who are the top vendors/partners you are associated with in this?TTSL has a strong and growing base of enterprise customers. Amongst these we see a healthy adoption of Big Data and other trends. It is TTSL’s mission to simplify and enrich people’s lives. With Big Data, as with Mobility and Cloud, a strong communication backbone is a key

Which are the solutions being offered by you in this sector? Big Data enables us to reach the bottom of the pyramid and define systems to measure stage-wise experience parameters for a given customer and correlate them for personalized delivery. We also have elegant predictive tools and robust

data warehousing in place. While these solutions enable us to leverage structured data, we are also looking at available options for effective mining of unstructured data. Using the Hadoop framework we have leveraged Big Data for more effective Vigilance Tracking and Monitoring.Big data also plays a crucial role in address-

TATA TELESERVICES LIMITED (TTSL) HAS BEEN MAKING USE OF BIG DATA

SOLUTIONS FOR QUITE SOME TIME NOW. THERE IS A STRONG EMPHASIS

ON END-TO-END CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT.ASHISH PACHORY,

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, TATA TELESERVICES LIMITED, SPOKE TO

ENTERPRISE CHANNEL. EXCERPTS…

We have leveraged Big Data for more Effective Vigilance Tracking

ASHISH PACHORY CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, TATA TELESERVICES LIMITED.

MY OPINION

28 MARCH 2015

success factor. To that extent we are already an enabler of Big Data for our customers. Further we see lot of potential for adding greater value to other companies through Big Data solutions as a one-stop service provider. There is a growing emphasis within the Tata group companies as well to adopt Big Data as a lever to enhance the customers’ experience across the value chain and TTSL is an active player in this initiative. We expect that TTSL’s participation and contribu-tion in this sphere will grow over time as we establish ourselves as thought leaders in this domain.

2014 was a big year for big data; what does 2015 hold for big data and analytics? The big data market in India is expected to grow at nearly 38 per cent annually, reaching $153.1 million in 2014; according to a study conducted by International Data Corp. Yet another study by EMC suggests that 91 per cent of Indian businesses are already aware of the potential benefits of big data. These insights are promising, and it’s only a matter of time before the adoption rate of big data also increases exponentially as enterprises strive to gain a competitive edge. The need of the hour is to encourage talent that is able to make sense of the data; while driving aware-ness amongst stakeholders to effectively utilize the insights derived from these analytics.

At TTSL, technology is at the heart of our operations. We draw insights and preferences on all aspects of our cu stomers’ behaviour against many different criteria ranging from usage patterns to customer feedback. We can then translate this into a personalised experi-ence – not only in the specialised data and voice packages – but also in providing individualised customer support.

This strategy makes perfect business sense as customers tend to patronise and relate better to a brand whose products and services can be personalised. We also see a strong future in utilisation of big data analytics for network management. Owing to the growing volumes of data that we receive from customers, there is higher potential for leveraging this into meaningful business insights to further enhance the customers’ experience.

Share some examples where big data and analytics have been used for the advantage of the enterprises (in the region). Big data can be considered a transformer of businesses today. It would be pertinent for businesses to pick-up on how they tap the

sheer potential of big data analysis and use it to maximize efficiency across business verticals. Apart from being a cost effective model, usage of big data also provides strong insights that can add tremendous value to the organisational ecosystem.

If enterprises, large, small, medium are to sensibly use data to improve the products and services they deliver to their customers, they can appeal to millennial consumers who are open to paying over 20% more for a bespoke experience or product offering. Also, in an age when close to 186.7 million people (in India) are actively online, it has never been easier for SMEs to maximise the opportunities presented by the effective analysis of activity/feedback generated on online networking portals.

Which verticals have been the early adopters of big data and analytics? Which are the potential ones on the radar? There has been uptake across business verticals – from ecommerce platforms, FMCG, retail to

telecom companies and even the government. Globally, perhaps the most widely quoted example is U.S. President Barrack Obama’s 2012 election campaign where the use of big data analytics by his team was considered to be a key factor in his eventual win. U.S. retailer Target has used predictive tools that can now accurately alert them when a customer is expecting a baby. Entertainment services such as Netflix have used big data tools to intelligently curate content for their subscribers.

Is it possible to build successful IoT solution with big data tools? Yes, Definitely. Big Data Analytics defines the way solutions are built today. With analytics, we are able to understand what is needed and how it is to be executed to reach the target audience/purpose. It is a window for us to understand how every machine is interacting with the other and how dependent or independent are the functions by different layers of Internet of Things.

Big Data poses several data protection questions; what’s the way out? As of now, due to Big Data not being as structur-ally permeated into the workings of organisation, there are certain elements that we as an industry have to work on. Security is one of them. There have to be more and more strong set ups to ensure that there are multi-level authentications in place. Not only organisations at large but their employees and other stakeholders are protected under that. The way out is to evolve, make use of third party services for security, educating users about the technology and also being cognizant of several cautions that any advancement brings in with it.

That realization — that implementation of big data analytics and related technologies hasn’t matched expectations — is a common thread across a recent spate of research reports. The fact is that there is already an increasing sense

of urgency around Big Data and as businesses establish faster and stronger connection with their customers, the case for Big Data becomes stronger. Its barriers are same as with any new transformational concept – ownership, RoI, skill sets, capabilities etc. But these are mere tempo-rary hiccups and will go away as the technology matures to gain stakeholder confidence.

Big Data enables you to dive deeper into more varied and voluminous records to yield actionable insights which could not be accessed earlier. As it is emerging concurrently with a host of complementary trends- cloud computing, social media, enterprise mobility etc. we may see a very new kind of convergence - which brings all of these trends together, to create THE enterprise information architecture of the future - quite different from today’s landscape of disjoint applications and databases somehow connected together.

Big data is here to stay and grow. It is going to be a key driver in enabling not just enterprise growth, but its very sustenance. ë

“GLOBALLY, PERHAPS THE MOST WIDELY QUOTED EXAMPLE IS U.S. PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA’S 2012 ELECTION CAMPAIGN WHERE THE USE OF BIG DATA ANALYTICS BY HIS TEAM WAS CONSIDERED TO BE A KEY FACTOR IN HIS EVENTUAL WIN.”

MY OPINION

29MARCH 2015

SUSE Enterprise Storage is a robust, scalable, enterprise-ready big data capacity solution based on the Ceph open source project. The product was announced in November 2013 & was released in February 2015.

SUSE also provides the underpinning Operating System used by high-end Big Data analytics solutions, as well as management tools to deploy configure & maintain scale-out solutions such as Hadoop.

Using SUSE OpenStack Cloud you can ensure the security of your data without sacrific-ing the benefits of the cloud by deploying your Big Data solution safely behind your firewall on a private cloud. Based on the OpenStack and Crowbar projects, SUSE OpenStack Cloud delivers an easy to install and manage private cloud platform for all of your scale out compute needs. SUSE OpenStack Cloud provides you the security, self-service provisioning, and massive scalability you need to efficiently run and maximize the performance of your Big Data solutions.

Who are the top vendors/partners you are associated with in this? As above, SUSE Enterprise Storage is based on the open-source Ceph project, of which SUSE is a significant contributor.

Teradata was the original Big Data analyt-ics company & continues to offer a range of solutions including Hadoop-based ones. Every Teradata products runs SUSE Linux Enterprise. http://youtu.be/mF7-QSdciMw

IBM’s Watson natural-thinking analytics system is based on the SUSE Linux Enterprise OS.

SUSE, HP, and Hortonworks collaborate to provide a reference architecture for Hadoop on SUSE and HP : http://hortonworks.com/partner/suse/

SAP HANA, SAP’s in-memory database system used for lightning-fast analytics and business intelligence, is developed on SUSE Linux.

https://www.suse.com/partners/big-data/partners/

What’s the importance of individual privacy in harnessing the power of big data? Decisions about how to address privacy in big data systems will impact almost everyone as we push to make more data open and available inside organizations and publicly. Governments around the world including India are pushing themselves and private companies to make data transparent and accessible. Some of this

What kinds of opportunities are present in this field as of now and in the coming years?The area of critical interest right now is keeping a handle on the explosion of data being generated & retained. This has been increasing exponen-tially over the years & will continue to grow in

the near future. Having a low-cost, extensible, robust solution to store this data using the econo-mies of scale offered by commodity components will be vital.

Which are the solutions being offered by you in this sector?

SUSE HAS SEEN SOME NEW OPPORTUNITIES COMING THROUGH FROM THE

REAL ESTATE AND PHARMA SECTOR TO HELP WITH THEIR BIG DATA NEEDS

ALTHOUGH THE COMPANY CANNOT REVEAL THE NAMES RIGHT NOW AS THE

SOLUTIONS ARE BEING DEPLOYED.

The ABC of Big Data is Important to Understand

PETER LEESCHIEF TECHNOLOGIST, SUSE ASIA PACIFIC – ENTERPRISE CHANNELS

MY OPINION

30 MARCH 2015

will be personal data. We will need new tools and technologies for analysis, for anonymizing data, for running queries over encrypted data, for auditing and tracking information, and for managing and sharing our own personal data in the future. Because issues of data privacy will be relevant across so many aspects of our life, including banking, insurance, medical, public health, government, etc. We at SUSE believe it is important to collectively address major chal-lenges managing data privacy in a big data world.

What’s your opinionaround regulation of big data analytics –? When adopting a new and potentially disruptive technology such as Big Data analytics, just as with any new venture, all the risks need to be identified and managed. That includes securing asset values and addressing the other legal and regulatory risks. Data privacy law is one area of law that any business is going to have to take very seriously indeed in relation to the use of Big Data.

Technologies like SUSE OpenStack cloud can ensure the security of your data without sacrific-ing the benefits of the cloud by deploying your Big Data solution safely behind your firewall on a private cloud.

2014 was a big year for big data; what does 2015 hold for big data and analytics? 2015 will see continued growth and develop-ment of the storage ecosystem: there are dozens of storage vendors around the moment, although many of the small proprietary vendors are most likely looking for consolidation to occur to match their startup exit strategy.

Software-defined storage solutions like SUSE Enterprise Storage will become more important, as the economics of big data capacity push customers to look for solutions that can be satis-fied at a much lower price point than traditional storage vendors.

According to IDC the big data market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9B in 2015. So, what all developments does this bring with it? How can these be managed for the best benefits? Much of the $$ growth will come from capacity growth. Customers will look for value, in order to manage their growing data storage needs. Adopting open source technologies such as SUSE Enterprise Storage, which allow the economies of scale of commodity hardware, will be necessary. Over time we will see that just as

proprietary UNIX systems moved to commodity hardware running Linux, proprietary storage systems will give way to commodity hardware and open source that are just as capable but at a fraction of the cost.

Companies are attempting to create software solutions presently, but while analytics might be handling the problem on the surface, this model is not going to last with the vast amounts of data soon to be heading our way. So, what’s the solution? Scalable storage based on software-defined storage systems and commodity hardware, such as that offered with SUSE Enterprise Storage will be the way forward.

Share some examples where big data and analytics have been used for the advantage of the enterprises. We see many successful examples of enterprises in India using big data and analytics for gaining

competitive advantage over their peers, whether it is in healthcare, education, retail, industrial, auto sector.

The application is especially widespread in the current scenario in the burgeoning E-commerce space in India, where completion is stiff. More and more e-commerce companies are invest-ing in big data and data analytics to improve customer engagement. Big Data Analytics is being used by digital commerce companies in India to deliver real time analyses of customer buying behavior.

We at SUSE have seen some new opportunities coming through from the real estate and pharma sector to help with their big data needs….we can’t name any reference right now as the solutions are being deployed.

Which verticals have been the early adopters of big data and analytics? Which are the potential ones on the radar?

Analytics: retail, finance, geophysics, design/manufacturing are all big adoptersBig data capacity: geophysics, design/manufac-turing (simulation), media, telecom are adopters and/or potentials

Is it possible to build successful IoT solution with big data tools? Big Data capacity demands are driven in part by the vast quantity of IoT incoming sensor data. Having a scalable, robust solution is very important: this is where software-defined storage solutions have an advantage. As mentioned in my answer 1, this explosion of data is creating new business models based on customer gener-ated data, there is an evident connect.

Big Data poses several data protection questions; what’s the way out? Traditional DP technologies do not work for big data environments as they weren’t designed to handle such large workloads. Only technologies that have been built ground up for big data

environments are suitable. The DP technologies must integrate with architecture like Hadoop and NoSQL databases like MongoDB.

That realization — that implementation of big data analytics and related technologies hasn’t matched expectations — is a common thread across a recent spate of research reports. What’s your say on that? It’s the standard IT industry hype curve. The challenge with analytics is that you still need people smart enough to ask the right ques-tions. By simply having Hadoop connected to a datastore is not enough - the skills to extract useful information from all of that data are still currently quite rare. Many of the possible candi-dates for this kind of work will likely come from maths, physics and biology backgrounds, rather than traditional computer-science ones. ë

“BASED ON THE OPENSTACK AND CROWBAR PROJECTS, SUSE OPENSTACK CLOUD DELIVERS AN EASY TO INSTALL AND MANAGE PRIVATE CLOUD PLATFORM FOR ALL OF YOUR SCALE OUT COMPUTE NEEDS. “

MY OPINION

31MARCH 2015

Challenge is not the Technology Big data analytics solutions have been progressing for several years, including implementations of R in Hadoop, Apache Mahout, and in-database analytics for major analytics vendors within their MPPs.

THE BIGGEST

n W O R D S : DAV ID STEPHENSON , C H I E F D ATA O F F I C E R A N D M A N A G I N G

D I R E C T O R , D ATA S C I E N C E I N N O VAT I O N

Can you give a basic outline of the relationship between structured and unstructured data, and how that may create challenges for companies across the Middle East? Structured data is data with nicely pre-defined fields, such as name, address, size, etc. It’s the type of data that typical data systems have worked with over the past decades. Unstructured data, such as free-text or video streams, does not come in a specific format. Being less restricted, it has the potential to include a great amount of useful information that we may not expect to receive. However, the lack of structure makes it that much more difficult to process and more chal-lenging to draw insights from.

Can you identify some of the greatest technical challenges facing organisations which are looking to adopt a big data strategy? I believe the biggest challenge is not the technology itself so much as linking technology to the business case. Many people get excited about products and vendors, but

far fewer people seem to see the real strengths and weaknesses of placing the products within their organizations or know how to decide between a small-data solu-tion and a big-data solution.

What are the current big data analytics technical solutions available to companies to overcome these challenges? Big data analytics solutions have been progressing for several years, including implementations of R in Hadoop, Apache Mahout, and in-database analytics for major ana-lytics vendors within their MPPs. These provide solutions within certain contexts, but the underly-ing challenge remains to develop a business-appropriate analytics framework and not try to replace brainpower with horsepower.

What upcoming analytical innovations do you feel will be able to solve the current big data limitations on the market? I believe cloud computing is helping in terms of lowering the entrance barrier to big data analytics. If nothing else, it allows

companies to experiment with the possibilities without the large initial investment of time and money that would otherwise be required.

Beyond delivering customer insights, in which areas of business can big data improve operational efficiencies and strategies? It varies per industry, but marketing and product improvements are two big ones (beyond customer insights). A good thought exercise to show this is to identify some-thing you’d like to observe in detail, be it a customer journey, the impact of a product change, an individual’s response to a marketing effort, a series of video footage, web logs, etc., in order to gain some business insight. Now imagine being able to simultaneously analyze that insight for every single customer journey, response, video or event.

How new technology is affecting worldwide big data strategy and influencing modern business models, in respect to the Middle East and within the wider

market in general. The ecosystem around Apache products such as Hadoop and Spark continues to mature, with open source and proprietary ana-lytics solutions further developed to run as MapReduce jobs and companies such as Cloudera and Hortonworks producing tools that increase usability of Big Data solu-tions in an enterprise setting.

What are the most important recent developments in big data and analytics that you believe will have the biggest impact on the industry? I would say that the biggest potential is from solutions with the lowest threshold of implementa-tion. In that sense, it’s interesting to see the product developments with the larger providers of cloud solu-tions, such as the recently expanded product offerings of Amazon and the acquisition of Revolu-tion Analytics by Microsoft. The low threshold of cloud solutions means that Big Data developments in this area have perhaps the greatest potential for impacting the market. ë

GUEST TALK

32 MARCH 2015

HID GlobalIronTag206 RFID transponders deliver the highest flame resistance rating available in a UHF tag.

The transponder has a UL 94 V0 rating, which signifies that IronTag 206 units immediately self-extinguish when an ignition source is removed, and will not drip particles that might cause flames to spread.

Originally designed for tracking aircraft parts during assembly and maintenance, all IronTag transponders tolerate harsh conditions and are engineered for optimal performance when mounted on metal surfaces. The new IronTag 206 withstands temperature extremes, from -40° F (-40° C) up to 428° F (220° C). IronTags are available in versions optimized for E.U. standards (869 MHz) or U.S. standards (915 MHz), with options for large user memory ranging from 2176-bit up to a spacious 8192-bit.

The rugged IronTag 206 transponders deliver exceptional size-to-performance ratios announced the press release. The tags are only 1.3 × 1.2 × 0.23 in (34 × 31 × 6 mm) in size and they deliver a read ranges up to 8.2 ft (2.5 m) on metal. All IronTag units are waterproof and resistant to shock, vibration and chemical exposure. The tags can be affixed with screws, clamps or high-temperature stickers.

HP Cloudline, the new family of compute platforms, enables service providers running hyperscale IT architectures to maximize data center efficiency and increase cloud service agility.

With HP Cloudline, HP is further extending its open infrastructure vision from cloud and network switches to include servers. Open solutions accelerate innovation and provide service providers with

the flexibility required for rapid growth.

The new HP Cloudline server family is a result of the HP-Foxconn joint venture. HP Cloudline combines the compute and service leadership of HP with the high-volume benefits of an original design manufacturer (ODM) sourcing model while delivering the global scale, support, services and management that service providers require.

HP Cloudline mini-mizes risk with custom design capability, a global supply chain, a service provider service portfolio and a trusted brand that is associated with quality high standards and global reach.

HP Cloudline systems are built on an open design philosophy using open components to increase adaptability and facilitate IT integration. HP Cloudline supports open

management tools, such as OpenStack technology, and leverages common industry interfaces, such as IPMI, in hardware and firmware. As a result, HP Cloudline easily integrates into a multi-vendor environment.

The new product line complements and strengthens the industry-leading HP ProLiant server portfolio, including HP Moonshot.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Optimized for workloads including cloud (OpenStack and other open cloud plat-forms), web servers, content delivery, hosting and big data (Hadoop framework). n Also optimized for HP Helion. n Developers can rapidly build and deploy cloud-native applications with a highly-scalable infrastructure that provides industry-standard programmabilityn Ensures data persistency and durabilityn Offers built-in application resiliency.

HP Cloudline Servers

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT EDITOR@ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

KEY CAPABILITIESn Deliver uncompromised performance in the form of a lightweight, high-temperature on-metal UHF tag with up to 16 times more user memory than most UHF tags n Deliver exceptional size-to-performance ratios. n The tags are only 1.3 × 1.2 × 0.23 in (34 × 31 × 6 mm) in size n Read ranges up to 8.2 ft (2.5 m) on metal. n All IronTag units are waterproof and resistant to shock, vibration and chemical exposure.n The tags can be affixed with screws, clamps or high-tempera-ture stickers.

HID GLOBAL RUGGED IRONTAG 206 TRANSPONDERS

INNOVATIONS

33MARCH 2015

Fujitsu M10 Servers with Oracle Solaris 11.2 Accelerate Fujitsu M10 servers running Oracle Solaris 11.2, a fully-integrated enterprise OpenStack distribution, are an ideal match for today’s IT require-ments. The combination of the mission-critical strength of Oracle Solaris and its integration of OpenStack open-source cloud software enables IT leaders to build efficient, compliant, secure, open and affordable clouds and allows cloud and legacy applications to co-exist on a single system, to easily transition datacenter infrastructures to on-premise/hybrid cloud models.

Fujitsu M10 servers are flexible and scalable systems that deliver high performance and mission-critical reliability for enterprise-class workloads. These high performance servers are based on Fujitsu SPARC64 X+/X processors, run Oracle Solaris and offer dynamic scaling in a pay-as-you-grow model supporting up to 1,024 cores and 32 TB of memory in a single system image – among the industry’s largest capacity available on the market today, delivering extreme in-memory compute performance.

Oracle Solaris 11.2 complements the Fujitsu M10 server’s capabilities by offering complete built-in virtualization, application-driven, software-defined networking (SDN), and a full OpenStack distribution. This powerful combination creates a highly efficient, compliant, secure, open and affordable foundation for private cloud computing for a broad range of industries including financial services, communications, healthcare, media and entertainment, retail and the public sector.

D-Link DWC-2000 Wireless ControllerD-Link DWC-2000 Wireless Controller is a centralized Wireless 11AC LAN manager, designed specifically for education, hospitality, and medium-to-large enterprises. With the ability tomanage up to 64 (upgradable to 256) wireless access points and up to a maximum of 1,024wireless access points in a controller cluster, the DWC-2000 is a cost-effective mobility solution.

Features such as auto-managed AP discoveryand single-point management allow users to achieve enterprise class networking withoutthe burden of executing massive and complex configura-tions. The guest account generationfunction manages guest users’ bandwidth and accessibility to network resources. With a robustand comprehensive security detection system, the DWC-2000 manages associated APs byblocking potential attacks from unauthorized users and appliances, which is particularly crucialin wireless environments.

Overall D-Link DWC-2000 is a Reliable, Secure Wireless Controller with self-healing and self-optimizing technology.

KEY CAPABILITIESn Maximum Access Points per Unit: •64/ 2561 (default/ upgrade)Maximum Access Points per Cluster: •256/ 10241 (default/ upgrade)Ports: 4 10/100/1000 RJ-45 and 4 100/1000 SFP Combo portsSNMP: v1, v2c, v3VLAN Group: Up to 255 entriesSecurity: Dynamic WEP

KEY CAPABILITIESn Offer a powerful solution to transition datacenters to the cloud, while main-taining critical SLAs around performance and mission-critical capabilities.n Flexible and scalable systems that deliver high performance and mission-critical reliability for enterprise-class workloadsn Set a new world record (as of December 2, 2014) on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark, achieving 153,050 SAP SD benchmark users(1) with 20 percent fewer CPUs than in the previous world record result

INNOVATIONS

34 MARCH 2015

RNI NO: DEL ENG/2013/49006 Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4169/13-15 Date of Publication: 18 of Every MonthDate of Posting: 20 & 21 of Every Month