Express Computer (Vol.26, No.6) June, 2015

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DIGITAL LOCKER—THE NEW FRONTIER OF DIGITISATION T

WHILE THERE HAS BEEN SUBSTANTIAL IMPROVEMENT IN THE GOVERNMENT’S ABILITYTO DIGITISE AND STORE RECORDS, THE ABILITYTO MAKE SENSE OF THE DATATHAT IS BEING CREATED CAN TAKE MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS TO DEVELOP

he Indian government has digitised an unimaginably vast amount of data, which is getting vaster ever more rapidly. But despite years of effort, the government owned databases are not, by and large, linked. Any large-scale effort to digitise records and link them tend to run into bureaucratic, technical and ethical roadblocks. As long as the government data exists in silos, which have no linkage, it is not possible to use the data to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into social issues and hold governments to account.

Certain departments have started linking the data they own to Aadhaar, but these are sectoral-initiatives being conducted for detecting the duplicates in voter rolls, ration cards, benefit schemes, etc. We are yet to develop a national strategy for maintaining digital records in a format that facilitates easy and seamless interlinking of the databases. While there has been substantial improvement in the government’s ability to digitise and store records, the ability to make sense of the data that is being created can take months or even years to develop.

Recently, the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) launched the ‘digital locker’ (http://digilocker.gov.in), which allows citizens to keep their documents, from birth certificates to university degrees, in a digital format. The documents can be accessed by using Aadhaar numbers. Currently the project, in its beta stage, is being hosted on National Informatics Centre’s cloud, and only 10 MB of free space is being offered to individual users for storing their documents. But the storage space will be increased to 1GB in subsequent release of the system.

The success of the Digital Locker project will depend not only on the kind of storage space, ease of usage and security for the stored documents that it offers, but also on the way it is linked to databases held by other institutions. The system must be capable of working in tandem with digital repositories of the departments issuing citizen documents, and it should allow any user to share his or her documents with other authorised users and agencies. People can store documents like birth and marriage certificates, tax papers, college degrees, property papers, medical reports, PAN card, passport, tax papers, etc.

There’s much further to go. A secure Digital Locker, which is linked to relevant government departments and other users, can bring efficiency and transparency to the processing of the most important paperwork in anyone’s life—the birth certificate and the college degrees—making it much easier for people to access a range of services. anoop.verma@expressindia.com

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contents

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MAKING INDIA AN ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING HUB

Whether it is IT, electronics or services, India presents a unique opportunity vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The country is already a world leader in IT software and services, and with the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the government hopes to bring rapid growth to the electronics sector

Case Study

feature

ASHOK LEYLAND RIDES THE DIGITAL WAVE WITH TABLEAU

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In face of rising competition in the heavy motor vehicles sector, Ashok Leyland came up with the strategy of implementing digital solutions that will lead to better business outcomes

DOWN BUT NOT OUT Currently the growth of peripherals segment in India is muted, but with new advances in technology in the mobility space, and with the arrival of Internet of Things (IoT), the stage is set for a turnaround in market conditions

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FUTURISTIC OUTLOOK IS MUST FOR A CIO “While it is a fact that the constant evolution in technology is a good thing,maximum benefits can be realised only when the CIOs are fully aware of the direction in which technology is moving.”

CANARA BANK IMPLEMENTS IMAGE BASED CHEQUE CLEARANCE

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With the aim of improving its customer service, by reducing the Turnaround Time (TAT) in clearance of cheques, Canara Bank has deployed an Image Based Cheque Clearance solution

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interviews

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MANAGED ITSERVICES SWAMPED WITH BRISK CHANGE Managed IT Services providers are catching up fast against SMAC driven transformation

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JEAN TURGEON

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Securing the Smart Cities of the Future JAYESH RANJAN

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“Innovate, Incubate, Incorporate in Telangana”

BIG DATATALENT SHORTAGE: HOWTO BRIDGE THE GAP?

JULIE CULLIVAN,

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Big Data can be a big business if the enterprises are able to find the right kind of talent to deploy and manage the technology

Keeping an Eye on Cyber Security

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CLOUD IS FAST BECOMING AREALITY IN INDIA

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Cloud ERP offers faster time to value, improved scope for innovation and scalability; it is increasingly being seen as a potential replacement for ageing core ERP systems

The shift to cloud is not restricted to businesses alone; the government has also recognised the immense capabilities of the cloud and recently launched the ‘MeghRaj’

event 50

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MICROSOFTAZURE CONFERENCE 2015 UPWITH DIGITISATION

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THE BENEFITS OF ERP IN THE CLOUD

in the news 56

DATAIS AN ASSET AND OPPORTUNITY

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» Madhya Pradesh govt launches digital locker facility » Bangalore police to use Whatsapp for improving the beat system » Dr. Rajeev Papneja receives “Bharat Gaurav” Pride of India Award

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COVER STORY

MAKING INDIA AN ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING HUB

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Whether it is IT, electronics or services, India presents a unique opportunity vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The country is already a world leader in IT software and services, and with the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the government hopes to bring rapid growth to the electronics sector

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

JUNE, 2015

www.expresscomputeronline.com www.expresscomputeronline.com

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ndians bought 53 million smartphones in 2014, out of this 21.6 million smartphones were sold in the fourth quarter of the year (Source: Market pollster GfK)— this makes the country the world’s thirdlargest smartphone market in terms of the number of devices sold. While millions of smartphones are being “sold in India”, hardly any are being “made in India”. The government is running a strident “make in India” campaign, but there is no sign of people planning to invest for making smartphones in India.

There are many policy related bottlenecks that the government needs to address for making India a global manufacturing hub.

The Task Force Report (Source: Department of Electronics & Information Technology) projects that the demand for electronics products will increase to $400 billion by the year 2020

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and this will lead to a situation where the electronics import bill exceeds the oil import bill. The projected production in 2020 will reach $104 billion, leading to a demand and production gap of $296 billion. This shortfall seems large enough for making companies in IT and ESDM sectors to look at India as the next destination for catering to the domestic Indian demand and as an exports hub.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary, DeitY, says, “The demand for electronics goods is very high today. We are one of the few countries in the world where the demand for electronics products is steadily rising. The government is taking a number of steps to encourage electronics manufacturing. 100% FDI is permitted under automatic route in Semiconductor Fabrication Plants.

Government will also provide assistance for setting up of world-class infrastructure for the semiconductor

fabs and its ecosystem units. We have identified many electronics manufacturing hubs, where the companies will be eligible for incentives, including subsidy for setting-up such facilities. Electronics manufacturing has significant strategic implications. In defence, 49% FDI has been allowed by the government, but the thing is that about 60% of all defence goods is electronics.”

“The Make in India program represents an attitudinal shift in how India relates to investors: not as a permit-issuing authority, but as a true business partner. Our youth will be a part of this drive and we shall ensure their fruitful participation,” says, Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, MD, National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT).

The growth of hardware and electronics manufacturing in India is not

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In defence 49% FDI has been allowed by the government,but about 60% of all defence goods is electronics Dr.Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary,DeitY

The Make in India program represents an attitudinal shift in how India relates to investors: not as a permit-issuing authority,but as a true business partner Dr.Ashwini Kumar Sharma, MD,National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) 10

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only related to government polices for the sector, it is also linked to the availability of trained professionals who can be employed by the companies. The ease of doing business is also a cause for concern. Prior to the present government coming to power, the World Bank published a report, which ranks India 142 out of 189 countries in the category of ease of doing business. But Jaijit Bhattacharya, Partner, Infrastructure & Government Services, KPMG in India, is of the view that with the proactive steps that the government is taking the few bottlenecks that are there will be removed.

Jaijit says, “India has the depth of skills and the ability to scale and therefore a natural destination for global manufacturing. Electronics companies will also be keen to setup base in India given the large Indian domestic market and the need to de-risk their manufacturing by spreading to more than one location. Given that the labour costs are going northwards in China, India is indeed an attractive alternative destination for both foreign and domestic investors.� “Clearly, much needs to be done before the trickle of manufacturing can become a significantly large flow. Land

R S Sharma, Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, spoke to Express Computer, on the initiatives that are being taken to promote electronics industry in India With Make in India programme, the government of India is looking at making India a global manufacturing hub for electronics products, on the lines of China. Do you think this is possible in the current set-up?

The trends clearly indicate that this is already happening. We have more than 30 plus new investments in electronics manufacturing happening in the country. More than half of these are multinational companies. These companies have chosen India after evaluating options of the competing nations. Please remember that being a zero duty product, companies can chose to manufacture anywhere and sell in rest of the world without any tariff barriers. Therefore each of these investments represent a decision in favour of India.

What are the key government policies that make India an attractive FDI destination in the area of IT and electronics?

Government allows 100% FDI on automatic route for electronics manufacturing, including telecom products

manufacturing. In defence, 49% FDI has been permitted and higher FDI is possible on a case-to-case basis.

Considering the fact that significant part of defence products are electronics products, this relaxation in FDI regime for defence products has made India an attractive destination for manufacturing of defence electronics products. Moreover, it also enables companies to meet their defence offset obligations. Apart from liberalisation in FDI, there are several other policy initiatives which promote electronics manufacturing ecosystem in the country.

What is your view of the opportunities and challenges being faced by IT and electronics companies that are looking to invest in India?

The main challenges faced by electronics manufacturing companies are related to the lack of supply chain for electronics manufacturing, low margins in electronics manufacturing, and the entry barriers of huge scale created by incumbent companies in the sector.

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acquisition and ease of setting up of business are just two of the key issues.

Contract enforcement and infrastructure availability are other major deterrents. The central government and the state governments are taking earnest steps for improving the ease of doing business in India.

These are complex issues with multiple stakeholders, and it will take some time before we see the impact of these initiatives on the ground,” adds Jaijit.

Electronics Industry for Jobs Currently the manufacturing sector is contributing over 15% to the national

Apart from these, there are inherent disadvantages like cost of finance, infrastructure issues and transaction costs, which handicap electronics manufacturing in the country.

What is your advice for companies considering India as a potential investment destination?

Electronics is the next sunrise sector for India. It is a $ 400 billion opportunity. India is on the road to become the next big destination for electronics manufacturing. The next decade or so should see huge opportunities in this sector. We are already seeing several companies which were not in these sector moving towards this sector.

What is your view of the infrastructure within the country when we compare ourselves to China?

We need to improve our infrastructure. Government is laying huge emphasis for development of infrastructure and we will see improvement each year. In next few years, we should have reasonably good infrastructure for manufacturing. Our roads, airports, ports and railways would be strengthened under new initiatives of the Government.

Meanwhile, the Electronics Manufacturing Clusters would provide islands of good infrastructure for electronics manufacturing.

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We can’t expect significant growth in electronics manufacturing in the country,as we still don’t have the proper policies in place Piyush Somani, MD & CEO,ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd.

Given that the labour costs are going northwards in China,India is indeed an attractive alternative destination for both foreign and domestic investors Jaijit Bhattacharya, Partner,Infrastructure & Government Services,KPMG India.

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An electronics manufacturing industry of $400 billion can provide direct jobs to 28 million people in India

The member organisations of MAIThave currently invested over $2 billion on ICT manufacturing facilities across India Amar Babu, President,MAIT,& Managing Director, Lenovo India Pvt.Ltd.

India has the great opportunity of leveraging its strength in semiskilled and skilled labor force,along with automation expertise,which IT can bring about Balaji Mahalingam, Research Director,IDC India 12

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GDP. With the Make in India initiative the government is aiming to increase the contribution of the manufacturing sector to 25% by 2022. India is already a leading electronics consumer, and it is possible that the country may transform into a manufacturing hub.

“The Make in India programme is a good initiative from the government.

With huge success in IT, ITeS space, our IT Industry has created a great reputation for India, now it is time for us to leverage the success model and replicate it in the manufacturing space.

There is a technology driven paradigm happening in the manufacturing space and so, India should position for both volume and value manufacturing. India has the great opportunity of leveraging its strength in semi-skilled and skilled labor force, along with automation expertise, which IT can bring about, and together these can create significant value,” says Balaji Mahalingam, Research Director, IDC India.

When the electronics goods are being produced in India, it will lead to the creation of millions of manufacturing jobs. Dr. Ajay Kumar of DeitY says, “Our estimates show that an electronics manufacturing industry of $400 billion can provide direct jobs to 28 million people in India. Unless we revive manufacturing in the country, the so called demographic dividend, of young Indians, will never be realised.” When the electronics goods will be produced in India, many new manufacturing jobs will come into being. An infrastructure of ancillary industries will also get created, leading to the generation of even more jobs. Many decades ago, Japan started its growth path by making goods for USA. Today China is a leading electronics manufacturer in the world; India can also grow in the same way.

Providing the right kind of skills to the nation’s youth so that they can serve as the human resource for the growing electronics industry, is high on the

government’s agenda.“Taking the dream of ‘Make in India’ forward, DeitY has setup the Program Management Unit (PMU) for the skill development initiative in the Electronics sector undertaken in the form of its two schemes:‘Scheme for financial assistance to select States for skill development in ESDM’ and ‘Skill development in ESDM for Digital India’.

These Skill Development schemes are to be implemented jointly by all the States, UT Governments, Industry and Skills Providers,” says Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, of NIELIT. Amar Babu, President, MAIT, & Managing Director, Lenovo India, informs that the member organisations of MAIT have currently invested over $2 billion on ICT manufacturing facilities across India. The current market size of these sectors is close to $13 billion.

“While we are looking at growing this figure and attracting more investments into the sector, it is important that the ‘Make in India’ initiative becomes a key enabler for the success of existing investments,” says Amar Babu. MAIT has strongly recommended that a Task Force consisting of government and functionaries from domestic ICT hardware companies should be created for drawing a roadmap to achieve full capacity utilisation in existing manufacturing facilities and build a robust ecosystem.

Scope for Rapid Growth The devices industry, primarily the smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc., is a major driver of the electronics industry.

The expansion of the smartphone and tablet market has also led to a massive rise in the data traffic—this in turn has led to the development of high-speed communication networks in the developed countries. As India is home to a large youth population and a burgeoning middle class, it is natural for the electronics sector to see rapid JUNE, 2015

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growth. In the Indian ESDM market, the devices segment forms a large chunk, with an estimated market share of 79% in 2012.

The government is also one of the largest creators of demand in India’s electronics sector. The overall IT spending of the government was close to Rs. 262 billion in FY13. The government IT spending is estimated to be growing at 11% year-on-year. Out of this expenditure, close to 48% goes to the IT hardware segment. Other than directly spending on IT and hardware, the government is also giving a boost to the electronics sector through several policy initiatives such as larger government spending on laptops and tablets for schools; rollout of the National Knowledge Network; rollout of various eGovernance initiatives including the UIDAI scheme; initiatives for promoting broadband connectivity in the villages.

Amar Babu of MAIT is of the view that the Government’s initiatives on ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Cities’, are not only proving to be a means for tackling issues that are related to ‘Ease of Doing Business’, they have also made India an attractive FDI destination. “Initiatives like the ‘National Manufacturing Policy’ and ‘National Policy for Electronics’ will lead to boost in electronics manufacturing in the country,” says Amar Babu.

“One of the pillars of the Digital India Programme is electronics manufacturing,” says Dr. Ajay Kumar of DeitY. “The focus is on promoting electronics manufacturing in the country so that by 2020 we are completely self-sufficient in electronics.

The initiatives that we are taking put India high on the list of potential places to invest.”

Incentives for Electronics Industry Dr. Ajay Kumar informs about the scheme for Electronic Manufacturing Clusters under which government pays 50% of the cost of development of infrastructure and the common facilities in greenfield clusters and 75% of the cost in brownfield clusters. “Currently around 30 Electronic Manufacturing EXPRESS COMPUTER

clusters have been notified and the government is targeting for 200 Electronic Manufacturing clusters by 2020,” says Dr. Ajay Kumar. “In order to give preference to the domestically manufactured goods, we are ensuring that the extent of government procurement will not be less than 30%.

Around 30 electronic products have already been notified under this scheme,” he adds.

Many industry players feel that a lot more can be done to promote the electronics sector in the country.

Although the government has now started providing incentives to the IT and electronics industry, at an absolute level, China still offers several cost advantages as compared to India. Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS Software Solution, says, “We can’t expect significant growth in electronics manufacturing in the country, as we still don’t have the proper policies in place.”

He says that in China manufacturers enjoy the advantage of interest free loans and a simple tax structure, which India is yet to match.

Balaji Mahalingam of IDC points out

the problems that are cropping up due to the procedural complexity and infrastructure challenges. He also mentions the problems that are being faced by companies due to taxation related issues. “There have been concerns on the unpredictability of taxation, due to issues like retro-active taxation in few cases. The government is taking many new initiatives to improve the overall investment climate.”

However, he is also of the view that India is an attractive destination for foreign companies to invest, given the cost competitiveness, the availability of labour and the potential of a huge domestic market.

Jaijit Bhattacharya talks about the sector based policies such as M-SIPS that government of India has launched for electronics hardware manufacturing.

He informs that the state governments bring in their own policies which include innovative taxation policies, subsidies and other incentives. “The combination of sectoral incentives at the central government level and various policies promoted by the state governments, together make India a very attractive JUNE, 2015

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COVER STORY

Electronics Demand and Production 450.0

400

Demand and Production

400.0

CAGR - 37%

300.0 250.0 200.0 150.0 100.0 50.0 0.0

Dmand CAGR 21.1% 99.5 69.6

CAGR - 15%

92.5 2011-2012

2012-2013 2013-2014

2014-2015

2015-2016

2016-2017

2017-2018

2018-2019 2019-2020 Values in US$ Bill

Year

Production is characterized by low value addition (5-10)

destination for FDI,” says Jaijit.

“Companies looking to invest in India should understand the market in terms of sector opportunities, wage cost arbitrage, distribution channels for finished products, availability of raw material, and other factors. They must have a clear and precise understanding of the FDI policy governing the sector that they are looking to invest in,” says Amar Babu of MAIT.

Challenges Ahead For attracting investments from IT and electronics companies some of the critical factors like connectivity to seaport, air and road connectivity, availability of talent, and adequate availability of power and water, is a must. The global perception of India as a destination for electronics manufacturing is not as high, as that of other low-cost destinations, so greater efforts have to be made on not 14

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only creating the infrastructure that can serve the needs of the investing companies but also on branding and promotion.

Piyush Somani of ESDS points out that transportation is major hurdle for India’s manufacturing sector. “Average speed of the goods trains and vehicles on the roads is less than 25 Km/Hr, which shows how bad our internal transport system is. Air connectivity is also very poor if we exclude the metro cities. We don’t need speed of Bullet Trains in India, we can do far better even if we manage to achieve average speed of 150 Km/Hr for trains and speed of 100Km/Hr for goods carriers on the road,” he says. Well developed and well maintained infrastructure, particularly roads and highways are vital for an efficient inbound and outbound logistics of a manufacturing firm to ensure efficient movement of raw materials and finished

goods across the country as roads carry 65% of the freight in the country.

Jaijit Bhattacharya of KPMG agrees that India has a long way to go before it can have an infrastructure of the same level as China. But he also points out that some of the core infrastructure projects for creating key highways, port to hinterland connectivity, dedicated freight corridors and energy supplies are on the fast-track of development. “India will definitely need to keep pace with the larger deadlines laid out by the Prime Minister,” he says optimistically.

Mahalingam of IDC accepts that China is far ahead of India when it comes to infrastructure. “We need to keep in mind that China opened its economy 14 years before India, hence India is playing catch up. In aspects like labor development, water management, healthcare facilities, civic amenities, China is clearly leading India from an infrastructure point of view.

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The current Indian government is focusing on infrastructure development as a priority area and so, there is a good opportunity for India to strengthen its infrastructure,” he says.

“Companies considering India for investment decisions should plan for the long term horizon. Given the fact that India will be one of the top markets in the world by next decade—given that the country has a vibrant democracy, robust institutional framework and cost competitiveness—India is and will continue to be an attractive destination for investments. However, the companies need to be mindful of multiple stakeholder management (like central and state government departments), the importance of local knowledge and the lack of good infrastructure,” Mahalingam adds.

The lack of Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication Manufacturing Facilities

The expansion of the smartphone and tablet market has also led to a massive rise in the data traffic—this in turn has led to the development of high-speed communication networks (FAB) in the country is often regarded as a major stumbling block to the growth of electronics industry in the country. A FAB can lead to the development of an entire ecosystem for electronics manufacturing, but till now investors have not shown interest in setting up a FAB in India because, such units can cost up to $5 billion and the technology involved is also very advanced. Very few companies in the world have the expertise to set up a FAB. But Dr. Ajay Kumar of DeitY is hopeful that India will have two FABs in few years time. He says, “The government has already

approved the setting up of two FABs in the country. Two business consortia are involved in setting these up. Once these FABs become operational they can create direct job opportunities for more than 20000 people.”

If the Make in India initiative continues to advance in the current manner, we can definitely hope to see significant and sustainable growth in electronics sector and progress towards India becoming a global manufacturing hub. anoop.verma@expressindia.com

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FEATURE

PERIPHERALS

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DOWN B U T

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With new advances in technology happening in the mobility space and IoT also gaining traction, the stage is now set for a quick turnaround for peripherals segment in India

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

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n the past couple of years, the PC market in India has been following the global trend of decline in shipments. The slump is mainly the result of consumers preferring tablets and smartphones to do many of the tasks for which they had earlier been using PCs. But now the trend seems to be changing as consumers are once 16

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again warming up to PC the sector.

According to Gartner, the worldwide PC shipments totalled 83.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014—1% increase from the fourth quarter of 2013.

These results indicate a slow, but consistent improvement following more than two years of decline.

“The PC market is quietly stabilising

after the installed base reduction driven by users diversifying their device portfolios. Installed base PC displacement by tablets peaked in 2013 and the first half of 2014. The tablets have penetrated some key markets, consumer spending is slowly shifting back to PCs,” says Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst at Gartner.

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Tablet adoption peaked amongst mainstream consumers with tablet penetration reaching 40-50%.“The weakness in emerging markets reflect a saturation in consumer segments where they can afford PCs. In the meantime, consumers who don’t have PCs are likely to buy low priced tablet. This is one of the major reasons for the slow growth in EXPRESS COMPUTER

PC shipments in the emerging market,” adds Kitagawa.

How did the PC market fare?

The APAC market is showing a modest recovery in the PC segment, with 26.6 million units being shipped in the fourth quarter of 2014. This is an increase of 2% from the fourth quarter of 2013. Though

as a region the news is positive, there are still growth variations by country.

The overall trend is towards a slowdown of the declining growth, with mature markets in Asia/Pacific leading the recovery. This bottoming out of the market suggests that the installed base is stabilising, and replacement demand is recovering.

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PERIPHERALS

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The transition from PCs to tablets has faded as tablet penetration has reached the 40-50% range

At present the proportion of wireless peripherals to wired ones is 50:50 AshokJangra, Cluster Category Manager,India & South West Asia,Logitech

Consumers are now more aware of the benefits that a Solid State Drive has to offer Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director,Kingston Technology India 18

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Consumers in countries like China and India are more inclined towards smartphones. “Users here are more focused on content consumption or on specific tasks where functions can be handled by a smartphone. Coupled with limited disposable income, these buyers are delaying PC purchases if they do not see the need, therefore making the consumer market more lacklustre than what it used to be,” explains Kitagawa.

It has also been suggested that sales of PCs were partly affected when Microsoft ended support to Windows XP OS. But from the perspective of the Indian market, this ending of support for XP may not have too much of a negative impact. In fact, the sales could go up as more people might decide to invest in a PC with new Windows OS. According to IDC, PC shipments during third quarter of 2014 did slightly better than expected, dropping just 1.7% instead of the previously estimated 4.1% drop. IDC data indicates that the PC shipments totalled 78.5 million units in Q3 of 2014.

“Commercial PC purchases play a key role in many markets and the top three vendors – Lenovo, HP, and Dell, showed solid year-on-year growth.

Lenovo shipped 15.7 million units while HP’s PC shipment reached 14.7 million units. Dell took the third spot with 10 million units. Surprisingly, Apple moved to fifth spot with more than 4 million units sold,” says an report from IDC. Shipments did not decline too much as it was being feared, but the Q3 of last year was one of the weaker calendar quarters on record till date. These sales were primarily driven by back-to-school sales and renewed business purchasing.

The Fall of Monitors Desktop monitors have evolved—the huge bulky boxes have paved way to the sleeker LCD screens, which are becoming smarter by the day. Today people are demanding bigger screens

which give sharper and clearer images.

18.5 inch screens are being replaced by 22’, 23’ and 24’ inch screens.

Yet despite the innovations the segment has been hit by the slowdown that has impacted the rest of the PC market.

“Flat growth has been witnessed over the last year, but few categories have significantly contributed to the shipments in the peripheral segment.

These include display monitors, security and surveillance, gaming and high performance hardware,” says Nitya Prakash Patnaik, Director, Neoteric Infomatique Ltd, a well known IT distributor in India.

Atul Jasra, Sales Head at AOC, says, “Decline in desktop PC sales had an impact on monitors along with processors as both processor and monitors are an integral part of desktop PC. Market for unbundled monitor declined by 18-20%. We at TPV (AOC and Philips combined) also witnessed 12-13% decline compared to 2013.”

“The key factors behind this decline,” says Jasra, “is the forex instability during the year and not a very conducive business environment due to the impending general elections.”

One needs to note that the market for unbundled monitors has continuously declined in the last 3 years. “It had declined almost 30-40% in the last 3 years,” says Jasra.

Also due to the rise in the penetration of smartphones and tablets, the desktop PC market has taken a huge hit.

Majority of the retail customers have now switched to these palm devices, which have eaten the desktop and laptop’s share of the market, which, in turn, has affected monitor sales as well.

Speakers, Mouse, Keyboard The traditional IT accessories market – mostly chassis, keyboard, mouse or combinations, larger speakers, gaming add-ons, etc., remained stable. This JUNE, 2015

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happened majorly because of the consolidation of brands in this segment and also the fact that consumers now prefer to buy reliable branded products.

Says Rajesh Doshi, Director – Purchase & Marketing, Top Notch Infotronix, India, “We have registered 25% year-on-year growth in this segment.”

Doshi further adds that, “It has been reported that 79% of the Indian population are either owning or using a mobile device. Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are becoming common, and these are not just voice-communications devices any more. People are carrying their choice of music and videos in small portable devices, using social media onthe-go and generating or downloading rich media content all the time. Easy availability of internet has added to this factor. As a result, there is great demand for such accessories as portable and desktop speaker systems, wireless accessories, personalising skins, cooling pads, sleeves or lifestyle add-ons for phones, tablets, laptops.”

For such a terrific growth, Doshi credits the company’s pan India presence in sales as well as service.

“Computer hardware is perpetually evolving and changing, and keeping pace with the ongoing change is very critical.

The brands that have invested in brand building would be in better position to find success in the changing market,” he says.

Another trend witnessed in the market, is that the peripherals market is moving swiftly from wired to wireless products. “We believe that at present, the proportion of wireless peripherals to wired ones is 50:50. But with consumers preferring uncluttered devices to suit their conveniences, the proportion of wireless peripherals is going to increase,” notes Ashok Jangra, Cluster Category Manager, India & South West Asia, Logitech.

Storage Though the overall PC peripheral market has been declining in the last couple of years, the storage market, especially the personal storage segment has seen a growth rate of 25-30%. “We EXPRESS COMPUTER

83.7

MILLION UNITS

Q4 total PC shipment globally Tablet penetration of market peaked 40-50% range according to Gartner, thereby slowing down PC adoption.

DECLINED BY

18-20%

Market of unbundled monitors The personal storage segment has seen a growth rate of 25-30% in 2014.

Given the rate at which we are creating data, personal cloud devices are bound to become popular Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director - South Asia, Middle East and Africa,WD

$15Bn

IoT market in the country within the next five years

have seen increased traction with new technologies – faster memory modules, Solid State Drives and USB 3.0. Also, there has been better penetration of PC usage in the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, and there is reduction in the price of peripherals. The e-commerce markets have matured further,” explains Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology India.

Today the customers are aware about latest technologies and the market has witnessed an increase in the number of system upgrades. “These are indications of positive development that will happen in the years to come,” adds Parekh.

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director - South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD, says, “Given the stupendous

As computer hardware is perpetuallyevolving and changing,it is critical to keep pace with the change Rajesh Doshi, Director – Purchase & Marketing, Top Notch InfotronixIndia JUNE, 2015

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PERIPHERALS

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rate at which we are creating and amassing data, people are opting for higher capacity drives that support their changing lifestyles in terms of increased capacity, contemporary looks, and mobility. Personal cloud devices have also become popular because they complement the ‘on-the-go’, mobile lifestyle of the consumers.”

The government’s approach to rejuvenate the economy by embracing digitisation can be vital for the growth of the storage market. Whether they are agricultural or eGovernance reforms, anti-corruption or women empowerment, a need to arm these initiatives digitally has been recognised. “This has a potential to generate enormous volume of data which has to be managed and analysed efficiently. An increased focus on security, both at a personal and national level, is leading to a surge in the demand for surveillance drives,” adds Saifuddin.

About the hard drive market, Saifuddin is of the view that besides being a price sensitive market, the Indian hard drive market is also driven by extra benefits that are there in the product and the quality of after-sales service. WD, which has become a market leader in hard drives, with its famous product ‘Passport’ a 1TB hard drive, credits its success on the after sales service that the company provides.

“Our products offer solutions to consumers’ specific needs. We offer convenience, utility, and most importantly, peace of mind, because of our after-sales service and warranty support across India. We believe that a user should be able to get a replacement product with the same ease as he purchased his product.

This is where we make a difference,” he says.

WD provides ‘WD Express’, a doorto-door replacement service that ensures that in case a customer’s product has to be replaced, it is collected from the user’s address. Once it passes the warranty criteria, a replacement drive is then delivered to the user at the same address.

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Consumers in countries like China and India are now more inclined towards smartphones, which are economical and offer good computing powers

India/SAARC and ASEAN, Seagate, says, “Data storage is increasingly becoming the backbone of both businesses and consumer experiences.

The company is developing and offering innovative products and solutions that enable Indian businesses to create, share and preserve their most critical business data. It is also helping consumers store content so that they can store, share and re-live their precious experiences and memories.

The more people and businesses embrace the digital age, the more they will need a secure, robust and intelligent storage solution.”

The Potential for Growth SMB NAS With the manifold rise in the data consumption during the last few years, there is a significant growth in the demand for efficient and safe data backup and storage solutions. There is rising demand for anytime, anywhere accessibility to business and networks.

The small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), in particular, have to find ways to face IT challenges and overcome limitations on data storage performance. NAS or network attached storage solutions offer cost-effective, scalable and manageable options for the evolving data requirements of SMBs, especially in the light of current and emerging technology trends.

The SMB NAS market, according to experts, has been witnessing inflated adoption of hybrid NAS and SAN systems. But with customers increasingly opting for SAN device in place of NAS, it can act as a challenge to the growth of NAS market.

However, consolidating data storage with NAS makes it easier for businesses to grow, manage and protect information. The biggest benefit that NAS offers is convenient data storage backup and file sharing services. For IT managers, NAS technology is easy to use. It offers secure centralised storage of business information.

Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager

The mobile computing sector is definitely on the rise as compared to the desktop segment. Due to this the peripherals are now moving towards smaller form factors and are being designed from the point of view of less clutter.

The overall peripheral market last year was more or less positive, with many new product launches happening in various categories. For memory cards, according to Kingston, there has been a growth of about 20-25% in terms of sales per units. “Consumers are now more aware of the benefits that a Solid State Drive has to offer. With this, there is a very high rate of adoption and we have seen a strong rise of more than 40% in terms of units. Speaking of the USB drives, with our innovative Dual Drives and much faster USBs, we have seen a growth of more than 20% in terms of units,” says Parekh of Kingston.

Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to have a significant impact on the technology landscape in the coming years. Last year, the Indian government unveiled its plans to create a $15 billion IoT market in the country during the next five years. According to Gartner, 4.9 billion connected devices would be in use in 2015, this represents 30% from 2014. The number of connected devices is expected to reach 25 billion by 2020. This is certainly a good news for the players in the PC peripherals space.

JUNE, 2015

INTERVIEW JEAN TURGEON AVAYA

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“The Avaya SDN Fx architecture has the ability to support the security and mobility of devices connecting to the ever-growing Internet of Things,” says Jean Turgeon, VP & Chief Technologist, Software Defined Architecture, WW Sales, Avaya

Securing the Smart Cities of the Future What kind of solutions are the government departments looking at to manage their national security?

The Indian government is looking for solutions that deliver components such as video surveillance, engagement models and sensors that can lead to faster enablement of IoT. From a more fundamental security point of view, governments and enterprises are concerned about anyone penetrating their corporate networks and assets, which exposes their intellectual property and other critical information concerning the citizens and customers. Solutions that reduce the ability for hackers to gain access and visibility of their IP infrastructure and topology, is the primary need of the decision makers in private and public sector. There are solutions out there which can assist; however, they require a shift in mindset and a transition from the legacy architecture.

Customers need to urgently open their minds and quickly evaluate what’s on offer. The key to a viable solution is to embrace an eco-system of technology to address these needs.

The Avaya SDN Fx architecture has been launched in India recently.What are its key features?

The Avaya SDN Fx architecture has the ability to support the security and mobility of devices connecting to the ever-growing Internet of Things. Environments such as those that are found in cities, hospitals, schools, airports, manufacturing floors are blanketed with devices that require a more secure, mobile connection to the network, and may also require that the rest of the network is better protected from potential threats that could be triggered by them. The Avaya SDN Fx solution provides automated and dynamic connectivity, mobility and a level of security to the network based on the device or user identity.

How are vendors like you linking IoTwith security?

What are the challenges?

To address and enhance security, many devices such as cameras, sensors, wearables, etc., need to be deployed. All these require connectivity at the edge of the networking infrastructure. Carrier wireless will play a key role in this, but many will require connectivity to the city infrastructure EXPRESS COMPUTER

and even the carrier connected devices will likely have to connect back to some common analytics infrastructure securely. All these are what we refer to as edge devices, which is what the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Everything (IoE), is all about. The challenge is how to securely connect all these devices at the edge of my city network, and connect securely the ones through a carrier or 3rd party infrastructure? This means we need much more agility to add 10,000’s of devices to a network that, in the past, would require multiple physical networks to scale and not compromise security. IoT and security as well as scalability and reliability, all need to be seriously evaluated.

From a technical perspective,how can governments make their cities safer?

Cities have to move to a different architecture model to support next generation smart-x services. The legacy client-server model has served us well, but over 25 years we have increased its complexity and made reliability a huge challenge due to complex protocols required to address all of these business needs. From security, to scalability, to video streaming to recovery times from failures; the legacy model is no longer suitable and it is time to press the “reset” button and start with a new mindset.

Technically and simply, it is all about Ethernet and IP. That’s it. So, how do we best support wireless or wired services over Ethernet to better support IP based applications and services? It is not by renaming old stuff something different that we will achieve these objectives.

The market has to stop tolerating vendors trying to fool them and challenge all of them to offer something innovative and suitable to meet the Smart Cities, IoT/IoE requirements

In your opinion what is the way forward?

The market has to stop tolerating vendors trying to fool them and challenge all of them to offer something innovative and suitable to meet the Smart Cities, IoT/IoE requirements. Consider this: how many of residents or end users sit in the data center? How many video cameras for traffic control or sensors to detect gas leaks are deployed in data centers? Some vendors are clearly missing the mark. Avaya saw this opportunity and has differentiated its offering by optimising its next generation architecture to be perfectly tailored to enable IP services over Ethernet. Avaya SDN Fx is the smart choice for Smart Cities and IoT. JUNE, 2015

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INTERVIEW

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JAYESH RANJAN TSIIC

“INNOVATE, INCUBATE, INCORPORATE IN TELANGANA” “We are working with the aim of encouraging Information Technology companies to innovate, incubate and incorporate in Telangana,” says Jayesh Ranjan, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd & Commissioner of Industries, Telangana The logo for TSIIC carries the words “innovate, incubate, incorporate.”

How do you plan to “innovate, incubate and incorporate,”a new wave of private sector investments in the state?

The new state of Telangana, and its capital city of Hyderabad, offer a number of advantages to the industries. The new Industrial policy that has been recently introduced has a number of novel features for ushering in a very industry and investor friendly regime. This policy has received an overwhelmingly positive response. After its introduction, the state government conducted two investor meets, one international at Dubai and one national at Gandhinagar during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit. On both these occasions, which saw a gathering of over 100 investors and industrialists, a very positive feedback has been received about the unique features of the policy.

Investors and industrialists are satisfied with the fact that the process of obtaining approvals and permissions have been made automatic, time bound and based on self-certification. Many of them are of the opinion that they do not find such simplification in any other state.

TSIIC has identified about 15 lakh acres across nine districts of Telangana for new industrial units.What kind of response are you expecting from private companies for investments in Telangana?

Our Chief Minister has taken the bold decision that all land that is not fit for agriculture will be earmarked for industrial purposes. As a result of this policy, we now have an industrial land bank in the excess of 2.50 lakh acres. No other state in the country is blessed with such a large industrial land bank. Given the reality that acquiring private land for industrial purposes is nowadays very difficult, the availability of such huge expanse of government land in Telangana is a major plus point for the state. These parcels of land are well dispersed throughout the state and are amenable for locating different types of industries.

Unlike in the past, all the required infrastructure will be developed and 22

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the raw land will be converted into ready to use industrial estates before land allotment is done to the industries.

Often investors have to go to multiple departments to get their investment related proposals cleared.What initiatives is TSIIC taking to provide investors with the benefit of single window clearance?

The key highlight of the new Industrial Policy is the simplification that it brings to the process of obtaining industrial approvals and clearances. For mega industries, the requirement of prior approvals has been done away with.

Based on self-certification, the investors can straight away begin the construction of their industrial unit, and all approvals can be obtained by them before commercial production starts.

For all other categories of industries, a time bound system of giving all approvals within 30 days has been provided. For the first time in the country, a right to single window service has been created under which any government agency found to be negligent in giving the approvals within a stipulated timeframe will be held accountable for it and penalised.

It has been reported that the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) will be given higher incentives and packages.

Please give us the details?

Every state government provides incentives to the industries for attracting more investments. In its Industrial Policy, the Telangana government has come out with an attractive package of incentives.

The government has improved upon whatever was given during the time of the composite state. The present package can now be considered comparable to the best that any other state in the country offers.

What kind of industries are showing interest in coming to Telangana?

The new Industrial Policy has clearly identified the thrust areas and core sectors which will be accorded priority by the Government. There are 14 of them in all—Life Sciences—including bulk drugs; IT Hardware; Precision Engineering, including Aviation, Aerospace, and Defence; Food Processing; Automobiles; Textiles; Plastics and Polymers, Chemicals and EXPRESS COMPUTER

Petro-chemicals; FMCG and Domestic Appliances; Engineering and Capital Goods; Gems & Jewellery; Waste Management and Green Technologies; Renewable energy & solar parks; Mineral-based and wood-based Industries; Transportation and Logistics Hub. The Government will come out with sectoral policies for each of these core sectors. We are in the process of working

Hyderabad is an important magnet for Information Technology companies from around the world

on three sectoral policies. These are life sciences (including biotechnology and pharmaceutical), textiles, aerospace and defence.

What steps are being taken to help the IT industry in the state?

Hyderabad is an important magnet for Information Technology companies from around the world. We are ready to host many new IT establishments in and around Hyderabad. The Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) is the primary instrument for encouraging IT investments. The ITIR will leverage the Outer Ring Road Growth Corridor to encourage private investments for creating office space, residential development and other amenities for the IT sector. The new pharmacy, which is being planned by the government on a massive scale in the outskirts of Hyderabad, will do the same for life sciences sector including biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

JUNE, 2015

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TABLEAU & ASHOK LEYLAND

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ASHOK LEYLAND

CASE STUDY

RIDES THE DIGITALWAVE WITH TABLEAU In face of rising competition in the heavy motor vehicles sector, Ashok Leyland came up with the strategy of implementing digital solutions that will lead to better business outcomes

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

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Tableau has enabled direct and native connection for the SAP environment at Ashok Leyland Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager,India, Tableau Software

T

oday we are seeing an uptake in the commercial vehicle segment in India, but during the last few years the sector witnessed considerable decline due to not only the inflationary pressures that the economy has been posing but also the steep rise in competition, with several new contenders entering the fray.

Ashok Leyland, which is the second largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in India and the fourth largest manufacturer of buses globally, wanted to implement the best possible IT solution for bringing efficiency to its operations and reducing cost while improving the quality of commercial vehicles. The

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management understood quite well that investing in the difficult times was the best way of ensuring that the company is in a position of reaping a rich harvest when the economic cycle turns.

Growth of business is often directly linked to the better usage of data that the company has at its disposal. With the aim of digitally transforming itself and cultivating an information culture, Ashok Leyland decided to implement an interactive and user-friendly self-service platform.

Their search for a suitable digital solution ended with Tableau, which offers ease of use and helps in development of “frictionless business intelligence�.

We were not facing any challenges, but we have undertaken the initiative of digitally transforming the organisation Venkatesh Natarajan, Vice President Information Technology,Ashok Leyland JUNE, 2015

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TABLEAU & ASHOK LEYLAND

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The problem Venkatesh Natarajan, Vice President Information Technology, Ashok Leyland says that technically there was no problem and the company was merely going through a digital transformation.

“We weren’t facing any challenges in particular, but as a company we were undergoing a digital transformation, i.e., moving from being an IT-enabled to an ITled organisation. We have the vision of building an organisation that makes decisions based on data driven intelligence and insights. The question in front of us was how to get people to use information for daily decision making. To proliferate this information culture and democratise information access, we needed an analysis and insights tool and Tableau was the answer to this question,” says Natarajan.

The vehicle major was already using other BI tools for their reporting capabilities and were looking for a powerful tool that could provide ‘insights’ with interactive Dashboard features. “To find the tool best suited to our requirements we undertook an extensive research and identified Tableau from the Gartner Magic Quadrant,” adds Natarajan.

The company wanted to install a self–service tool, instead of a transactional, hygiene reporting tool.

Basically Ashok Leyland was looking for a tool that is not only user friendly and interactive, but also capable of visualising the data. This according to Natarajan was the need of the hour.

“Tableau provided us with the capabilities that we were looking for,” he asserts.

Ease of use In the initial stage, Ashok Leyland equipped itself with a trial version of Tableau. The company wanted to have a

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real-time experience of how the software worked in the company environment.

“Tableau’s columnar data engine, which drastically cuts down on time taken to mine the data impressed us in particular.

Once we were convinced about the power and capability of the software, especially its depth, interactivity, etc., we acquired the software,” says Natarajan.

Ashok Leyland also made additional investment in the Tableau Server for publishing interactive workbooks. “The server allows us to control access regionally, so users can see only the information they are permitted. Using Tableau's server, the company is also able to ensure data security, which is extremely critical given the dire consequences of data leakages,” he says.

Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager, India, Tableau Software, says, “Tableau is an easy to use tool. Ashok Leyland's inhouse analytics team was able to learn the nuances of using the tool quickly with expert guidance from Tableau consultants. Since the development of dashboards on Tableau is very easy, it did not take much time for us to implement the dashboards.”

Talking about the solution that has been implemented, Ghodke further says, “Tableau enabled direct and native connection against the SAP environment at Ashok Leyland. This was done through the inbuilt connectors without any coding and enabled all data with appropriate governance to be available to the business user. The native connectors from Tableau were leveraged to access data from Oracle, MySQL and even user files, enabling true democratisation of decision making based on data.”

The resulting insights were delivered to the business users via reports, dashboards and fully interactive mobile

applications through Tableau Server.

The Data Server capabilities within Tableau were used for governance, security and enabling easy meta data management for all users.

With Tableau, employees at Ashok Leyland, can make strategic recommendations to their executives based on the insights they acquire at every level.

Tableau The implementation of Tableau has been a major success at Ashok Leyland.

“We measure the success of this software in terms of ‘Eureka’ moments that it brings; there have already been plenty of those with Tableau. For instance, our head of quality was able to get deeper insights on warranties which in turn helped us improve product quality. The ease of use and the speed at which we can get phenomenal insights has had a definite impact on the organisation,” says a happy Natarajan.

According to Natarajan, earlier the company used to take 10 days to build a dashboard, but with Tableau the same activity can be completed in half a day.

With reduction in time taken to build dashboards and analysing data, swifter decision making was made possible.

Today, Ashok Leyland is analysing about 4 TB of data and approximately 5 million rows from AP and CRM. The time spent on constructing dashboards has gone down by 95%. The company is also training more staff members to design and build analyses. A plan to build a data analytics team is in the offing as well.

“Tableau is a great way for the IT team to become popular within the organisation, simply because it helps so many teams do their work better,” notes Natarajan.

JUNE, 2015

INTERVIEW JULIE CULLIVAN FIREEYE

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“At a time when we are having rapid increase in cloud deployments and BYOD, the CIOs need to ensure that there is balance between productivity and protection,” says Julie Cullivan, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, FireEye. In conversation with Mohd Ujaley

Keeping an Eye on Cyber Security What strategy is FireEye adopting to develop better security solutions for enterprises?

We are focusing on the advanced cyber threats.

Today there is vast rise in the sophistication of the attacks. We help organisations deal with such threats. Our solutions are unique, because we combine technology and intelligence to develop the pattern with the help of sock analysts and security experts. In recent past, the security landscape has changed significantly. The current crop of security solutions mainly is signature based—it will not fully safeguard the enterprises. We provide advanced persistence threat protection across web, mobile, email. In case, a company faces an attack, we will be in a position to provide forensic solution for answering critical questions such as what was threat and how it happened. We will also ensure that the attack that does happen again.

provides cyber threat map based on subset of real attack data. It is true that there is always security risk and the enterprise might not be able to control everything that is happening in their environment, but with the help of technology, intelligence and right analyses, it is possible to have a much more robust system of security, one that is virtually impregnable.

With the government launching the Digital India project, what kind of opportunities do you see for business growth?

Enterprises and government, both are aware about the security risks. In India we are now seeing a willingness to address the myriad challenges. As far as Digital India is concern, we agree that it will lead to the development of many eco-systems with large numbers of connected devices. This will increase the security challenges. I feel, India has the capacity to spread this mammoth task of digitalisation. In India, we started two years ago and have seen fair success. The market here is maturing, people are understanding that persistence threat can’t only be met with technology, it must be supplemented by intelligence and analysis. We are working with partners in tier-I and tier-II cities. We are empowering them with our modern technologies, skills and intelligence. Our huge R&D facility in India is a big advantage for us, we can leverage them for our customers.

When BYOD is the new reality, what steps should CIOs take for balancing productivity and security?

As a CIO, one really needs to balance productivity, protection and security. All of these are very crucial for the success of an enterprise, one can’t go too far one way or the other. Organisations have to develop clear strategy for managing issues related to data and access. A clear plan must be there to define who should access what data and with what device.

Cloud and BYOD are the modern trend, they are going to spread-head the next IT revolution. You can’t shy away from this reality. Therefore the CIOs should invest in new security measures while also endeavouring to define the rules around access to data and its protection.

We had many high profile breaches, including that of Sony recently. But it seems that an extensive postmortem of the breaches are not being conducted. Do you think that a more elaborate research should be done on the breaches for ensuring that such attacks do not happen again?

Attacks have become very sophisticated, they may not leave any trace, which, at times, makes it difficult to investigate their source. I agree that the sharing of information, which impacts large numbers of people is important. FireEye EXPRESS COMPUTER

Attacks have become very sophisticated,they may not leave any trace,which,at times,makes it difficult to investigate their source

In what ways is cloud impacting the dynamic of security business across the globe?

Cloud is re-defining the security paradigm and putting huge challenges on enterprises as well as security companies to meet the expectation of customers. People are leveraging services through cloud, which we could not thought of few years ago. There is growing trend of enterprises using cloud application for HR management.

However, in terms of security compliance, the deployment is still very rigid. It is important for organisation to analyse and see what they would like to do with cloud. As far as security industry is concerned, cloud will only lead to more challenges and opportunities. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com

JUNE, 2015

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CASE STUDY

CANARA BANK

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CANARABANK IMPLEMENTS IMAGE BASED CHEQUE CLEARANCE With the aim of improving its customer service, by reducing the Turnaround Time (TAT) in clearance of cheques, Canara Bank has deployed an Image Based Cheque Clearance solution

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C

anara bank, one of India’s largest and most reputed nationalised banks, is known for its customer centricity. Founded in 1906, the bank is over a hundred years old, and as on December 2014, the total business of the bank stood at Rs. 774718 crore. Today the bank is offering a complete spectrum of financial services to its retail and corporate clients through different delivery channels. In the financial year 2011-12, the number of the bank’s branches reached 3600.

Canara bank achieved 100% branch computerisation in 2004, and in 2005 the bank implemented core banking in select branches. In order to provide better services to its increasing customer base, the bank needed to align its processes as per the Central bank’s specifications.

This required the implementation of electronic document management system for better maintenance of cheques. The bank understood that they needed an advanced solution, which can easily integrate with the bank’s existing core banking system.

After studying many technology solutions, the bank zeroed in to Softage, which is a leading document management company. Softage became the bank’s partner in the process of JUNE, 2015

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implementing electronic document management system.

From Manual to Digital Traditionally the bank had been using the manual process of sending and receiving cheques. This process was highly time consuming, and it took almost three days for the cheques to be cleared. It entailed that the data on the cheques be entered through the old interface before being sent for storage and archival. The physical cheque flow processes were not only time consuming, they also led to huge expenses in archival, storage and transportation.

There was also the mandate from the apex bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), that all the commercial banks should implement image based, electronic cheque clearance solution. Thus Canara Bank needed to urgently implement a robust and scalable solution, one that would facilitate seamless automation of the cheque clearing process. Such a process would lead to the optimal utilisation of the resources, resulting in better customer service with lower turnaround time (TAT).

The foremost requirement was that the solution should be capable of working as per the central bank specifications for document management and better maintenance of the cheques. From the perspective of Canara Bank, it was also important that the solution should be versatile enough to integrate seamlessly with the bank’s core banking system and other applications. A solution that could perfectly fit into the bank’s core banking system, would not put any extra burden on the IT infrastructure.

Deploying A Comprehensive Solution The bank deployed Softage Document Management solution and manpower for facilitating automated processing of corporate and retail transactions. The solution enabled high-speed scanning of various banking instruments. The technology from Softage enables straight through processing, and brings speed to the cheque clearing cycle. The cheque images seamlessly flow from the various branches of the bank to the head EXPRESS COMPUTER

office and back. The inbuilt workflow handles mapping of cheques to the respective banks, routing cheques for approval, signature verification, etc.

Using the public key infrastructure (PKI) technology, the solution provides secure data exchange and nonrepudiation of information. The solution has been implemented for Outward clearing, Inward clearing, and for, On-Us clearing.

“Softage solution has enabled the bank to become compliant as per the Central Bank’s mandate of the cheque clearance process. It has allowed the bank to achieve lower operational costs, faster TAT by processing large numbers of inward and outward cheques. The Softage solution not only provides a holistic view of the business, but also supports the audit and compliance features,” says Fahmida Ozair, CEO, Softage.

Canara Bank is now enjoying the facility of efficient storage and instant retrieval of cheque images Fahmida Ozair, CEO,Softage.

Key Benefits The solution deployed by Softage is leading to many benefits for Canara Bank. It has shortened the time of cheque clearing cycle. There is reduction in cost of operations, as the cost associated with the physical transportation and storage of cheques has got slashed drastically. The solution is highly scalable, and so it can be upgraded at any point of time.

Canara Bank is now enjoying the facility of efficient storage and instant retrieval of cheque images. The chances of loss of sensitive customer data during the transit is now negligible. The reduced turnaround time is leading to higher customer satisfaction. And the best thing is that the solution meets all the compliance requirements.

“PAN India demand for digitisation is huge, as many private banks have initiated the digitisation activity in-house to cut down the clearance TAT and efforts drastically . Cheques are deposited in each branch and Canara bank wanted to streamline their processes PAN India for an efficient and standardised output. So they opted for the DMS process PAN India,” says Ozair. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

Softage solution has enabled the bank to become compliant as per the Central Bank’s mandate of the cheque clearance process JUNE, 2015

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ESSAR GROUP

FUTURISTIC OUTLOOK IS MUST FOR A CIO “While it is a fact that the constant evolution in technology is a good thing, maximum benefits can be realised only when the CIOs are fully aware of the direction in which technology is moving,” says Jayantha Prabhu

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

“

A

futuristic outlook,” says Jayantha Prabhu, “is a musthave quality for a CIO.” It is only by having a clear view of the direction in which technology is moving that a CIO can be in a position of taking quick decisions about the areas where he must introduce new innovations or make transformations in the existing technology setup. He talks about the Unified Communications Strategy that has been set-up at Essar.

“I am proud to say that today all our sites across the globe are connected via VoIP,” he says. “We have extended the communication to mediums such as IM, Voice, Video, Web and Presence— these services are available to every employee on a range of devices, 32

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including mobile phones.”

“Essentially we are now extending the extensions, which bring much more functionality to the mobile phones,” he adds. According to Prabhu, this system has ensured better connect between the employees, it has definitely helped in speeding up the decision making process, while ensuring that there is lower travel related cost and improvement in efficiency of the overall lifecycle of the business. He talks about the new technologies such as WebRTC that are now making deep inroads in the industry. “Unless you have a clear understanding of the futuristic technologies, you will not be able to take the right decision at the right time.”

Most major companies are encumbered by legacy systems, which must have been fairly advanced when they were initially implemented, but now better systems are available. It can be a long drawn process to discard the legacy systems that run on old infrastructure and go in for completely new technologies. Prabhu agrees with this point of view. He says, “We had tough time, with our own legacy systems, but thanks to internal expertise, we could work with OeM’s/ partners for enabling interoperability and reduction of the overall cost to business. Such initiative and risk taking ability is also helpful in tackling the dynamic scenario.”

“The goal of my work has always been to create a positive and productive JUNE, 2015

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environment in which we can continue to innovate, accept challenges, and provide the solutions that can help the organisation to excel in every sphere of activity,” he says.

Efficiency Through Enterprise Mobility Associated with the Essar Group since 1999, Jayantha Prabhu, in his current assignment, is responsible for establishing the company’s technical vision—he leads the development and implementation of Information Technology projects in all areas of the company. With a team of 45 members, he manages 5 data centres across the globe and IT services for around 20,000 users working from 98 different locations.

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“Essar has a long tradition of creating opportunities and implementing innovative technologies for keeping pace with rapidly changing market conditions.”

According to Prabhu, the trends in IT are changing constantly and the IT departments must keep upgrading their infrastructure and reforming their policies to keep pace with the new innovations. “At Essar, we work with the aim of supporting our employees, customers, and consumers with an entirely new set of capabilities, which enable them to meet their tasks more effectively.” He sees lot of value in SMAC. According to Prabhu, the enterprise mobility solutions, which have been developed, are leading to tremendous

opportunities for driving higher performance and ensuring competitive advantage.

Prabhu feels that enterprise mobility has received this much traction in Essar only because Essar is essentially a young organisation. “The average age of the employees at Essar is 28-32 years,” says Prabhu. “When majority of the employees are young, they drive dramatic changes in the way that enterprises utilise mobility.” The rise in the scope of social media is driving the adoption of enterprise mobility in Essar. “We realised that the employees are making extensive use of social media for taking care of tasks related to sales, marketing, customer support, and other activities. It is a no-brainer JUNE, 2015

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that we have to enable the usage of social media.”

The critical and broad aspects of the enterprise mobility, which has been implemented at Essar, includes: user collaboration through enterprise mobility (EM) solutions; efficient and effective social engagement through inhouse developed portal; a clearly defined ‘BYOD’ policy, which has been made live at Essar; a reassessment of security and overall IT infrastructure so that EM solutions can be easily integrated into the existing infrastructure in a secured way; deployment of MDM solutions for management of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets; development of internal business apps, and an internal app store.

Prabhu is of the view that a CIO must take the necessary steps to ensure that the current investment in IT is protected while efforts are being made to extract the best features from emerging technologies. “In order to achieve this outcome at Essar we had to do lot of innovation for integrating with legacy systems. By doing this we were able to spread the VoIP network across different geographies without having to make any new investments.”

New Innovations in IT & Business “We are working at Essar for creating an environment that nourishes an innovative culture across the entire spectrum of the organisation. A proper environment is the key for sustaining value and therefore we are making substantial efforts and investments in the internal social and collaboration platforms and at the same time encouraging employees to participate, contribute and collaborate,” says Jayantha Prabhu. He is of the view that the digital transformation that is taking place due to the forces of Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Mobility and Social Networking, can lead to major benefits for the enterprise. “SMAC can lead to big benefits for the enterprise. There can be improvements in customer reach, customer care and productivity. There can be scope for development of better 34

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Organisations can’t meet their business needs by deploying pure technology,rather it is the solutions that you create through the use of technology that often lead to the maximum benefits

avenues for collaboration and innovation. All this will lead to more revenue and lower cost of production,” he adds.

He makes the point that the best results can only be achieved when the business users and the IT professionals work together to develop new ideas and strategies for exploiting the emerging technologies. A cultural change is a must.

He says, “So far the IT departments had been focussing on building the right systems for technologies, but now we must focus on building the right systems from the point of view of ensuring better business outcomes. To achieve this objective, we are adhering to the serviceoriented architecture (SOA) concept, which makes it easier to try out newer ideas on social and mobile interactions.

We are focussing on bringing more agility and ensuring that the underlying IT systems are more open and flexible with adequate instrumentation, service orientation and Application Programming Interface (API) management.”

Prabhu informs that in Essar the process of cloud adoption in the form of SaaS and PaaS, through solutions offered by multiple partners, is already complete. “We have adopted a strategy of going for the private cloud infrastructure for IaaS solution,” he says. In the area of ‘social’, Praphu informs that the deployment of the onpremise social media solution offerings have been conducted at Essar and all employees of the organisation can access the systems. “Mobility has been our chief area of focus,” he says. “We have put in place a Hybrid Architecture, which enables us to use a judicious mix of technologies like HTML 5, OEM applications, etc., for catering to any particular business requirement.”

Efforts are being made for deploying Big Data. Prabhu says, “We are taking the initial steps in the adoption of Big Data, primarily because of the difficulty of having a clearcut ROI, as we have seen in the other trending technologies. We have, however, started working on structured data with the aim of improving operational efficiencies.”

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ESSAR GROUP

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

Aligning IT Vision with Business Goals Prabhu asserts that the organisations can’t meet their business needs by deploying pure technology, rather it is the solutions that you create through the use of technology that often lead to maximum benefit. “In Essar we have deployed technologies from different types of OeM’s,” says Prabhu. “Everything is integrated and customised to meet our internal business needs.”

He informs that the innovation approach in Essar is not focussed only on managing the short-term goals or the fancy functionalities, rather it is about achieving the objectives of the business in the long term. “The IT vision of Essar is firmly aligned to our business goals. This approach helps us in taking advantage of the emerging technologies by the deployment of minimal resources,” he adds.

He gives the example of the enterprise mobility solutions that have been deployed at Essar. These solutions are not only conducive for better employee connect, they also help in facilitating faster decision making, reduced travel cost and increased efficiency in the overall business lifecycle. “Such technologies are becoming the new reality,” he asserts.

“I strongly believe that one must always have a clear understanding of the key technological trends, so that the right decisions get taken at the right time.”

Prabhu is of the view that as the implementation of new technologies and solutions can lead to disruption in the traditional way of doing things, such initiatives have to be carefully managed.

“You can’t carry on with the legacy systems forever, at some point of time change becomes critical,” he says. “We have to face the reality, the world is changing fast, and it is technology that is, in most cases, driving the change. As CIOs, our job is to not only drive the change, but also manage the change in such a way that there is minimum disruption and maximum benefit to the business.” anoop.verma@expressindia.com

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JAYANTHA PRABHU Current Designation

: Group Chief Technology Officer at Essar Group

Current Role

: Establishing the company’s technical vision and leading all aspects of the technology development across all areas of Information Technology

Expertise

: IT Project Delivery / Strategy, Business Transformations,Vendor Alliance, New Innovation, IT Procurement, Digital Transformation, New technology evaluation / Architecture, and IT Centre of Excellence

Work Experience

: 20 Years

Favourite quote

: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish ~ by Steve Jobs

Favourite food

: Coastal Indian food

Favourite destination

: Maldives and Rome

Favourite gadget for work

: Apple Gadgets JUNE, 2015

FEATURE

MANAGED IT SERVICES

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MANAGED IT SERVICES

SWAMPED WITH BRISK CHANGE With enterprises gravitating towards new technologies for dealing with myriad transformations that are happening due to SMAC, providers of managed IT services have to come up with an array of new solutions to take care of the emerging needs of their clients

BY JASMINE DESAI

D

uring the last few years, the managed IT services market has undergone a sea-change.

The sector is now being driven by the adoption of new technologies and service consumption models. Pressure has mounted on IT departments to align their services more closely with the wider businesses and to demonstrate their contribution to the success of the enterprise, which in turn 38

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has led to host of new demands on managed IT service providers.

Sanjay Bajaj, Global Head, IT Delivery, BirlaSoft, says, “We need to see the direction in which we are going with Managed Services Business. Most companies are increasingly turning to their software providers to manage infrastructure, software and numerous business processes.”

He adds that in the last decade, the

focus of the service providers was on technology capabilities, optimised cost with labor arbitrage. However, this has changed during the last few years. The emphasis of the services is clearly on agility, service levels and outcome based models. There has also been a convergence between cloud and managed services. The first wave of cloud integration was driven by the need of businesses to reduce costs and support the JUNE, 2015

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agility of business, but the next wave in cloud computing will lead to seminal transformation in the way enterprises do business. To remain competitive, managed services providers need to offer their clients a greater level of insight.

According to Anand Sukumaran, VPManaged Services, ITC Infotech, “The managed services market is undergoing a rapid change due to the vast technology changes in the last few years. While it EXPRESS COMPUTER

started off with consolidation and virtualization, it is now the cloud services area that is affecting this market the most.

Multiple options for customers With services now being available as a utility, customers have the option of going for flexible and scalable solutions available at attractive price points. Customers are actively looking at moving their DC workloads to the cloud and looking at

providers to help them with this move.

This is also forcing them to re-look at the strategy, workforce mobilisation and overall services in defining the managed services space.

Says Gopalakrishna Bylahalli, VP & CTO, IT Services, Happiest Minds Technologies, “With the advent of SMAC+, the world of Managed IT Services is gaining complexity. The sector has moved to the hybrid technology JUNE, 2015

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MANAGED IT SERVICES

»

MANAGED SERVICES HYPE CYCLE

Companies are turning to software providers to manage infrastructure, software and numerous business processes Sanjay Bajaj,

Visibility

Digital Signage

Unified Comm.

Open Source

ERP

Email

CRM Video Surveillance

Tele Presence

Security

Data Centers

VoIP

Storage

Technology Peak of Inflated Trough of Slope of Plateau of Trigger Expectation Disillusionment Enlightenment Productivity Source Joe panettieri, www.MSPmentor.net Based on the Gartner Hype Cycle

Maturity

Global Head,ITDelivery,BirlaSoft.

Customers are activelylooking at moving their DC workloads to the cloud and looking at providers to help them with this move. This is also forcing them to re- strategise Anand Sukumaran, VP-Managed Services,ITC Infotech 40

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landscape.” He says that the managed IT service providers will take over existing assets and over a contractual period of 3 to 5 years they will modernise the applications and the infrastructure. This will enable the service provider as well as organisations to monetise their data and services. This is possible through exposing APIs and building platforms, which can be offered as service. Adoption of SaaS will increase and many options for PaaS will emerge. Data as a Service and Analytics as a Service will take its shape as well.

It is quite clear then that with lowtouch, high-value, high-margin solutions in their product portfolios, IT service providers have to look into business transformation. Getting ahead in managed services requires adopting new approaches as they emerge. Presently, Managed services has made itself felt in various facets and workings of an enterprise right from ERP, cloud computing, storage to security, analytics and networking.

According to Sunil Jose, Managing Director, Teradata India, “To be able to deliver managed services and provide 24x7 global support, enterprises are now turning towards professional IT players who are running specialised centers staffed with specialists dedicated to the

managed services tasks.” To meet organisational requests, there is the growing need for specialists who have the expertise in data management and business intelligence software, as well as a superior knowledge of enterprise data warehouse management.

Moreover, enterprises are now moving out of the “request report from IT” mode to self-service business intelligence. The entry cost for analytics is relatively low especially when considering the software solution landscape. Two constants in the market are represented by the demand to optimise IT costs and innovate the core infrastructure. This gives rise to new and agile services, that are not only managing the as-is model, but also bring in a riskadverse and cost-effective mechanism to allow IT to quickly innovate and transform into a business-support function.

Evolution of services The evolution of services to include service and cloud providers is transforming the managed services landscape. Vendors are looking at all the service providers, regardless of their level and capacity as potential managed service providers. They see the need for more than just service delivery. Services need support and automated support, which JUNE, 2015

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makes use of specialised team of experts, is more lucrative and less expensive.

According to Neeraj Jaitley, Vice President, Managed Services, Dell Services, “While the support models continue to be geared towards data centre, enterprise network, end-user, communication and collaboration and security services, managed service models have also refocused to include capabilities that used to be kept in house such as governance, vendor management and services integration and management.”

He adds that directly influenced by an increased demand for IT to be more aligned to business, the managed services and IT outsourcing market has continuously created as-a-service offerings across the entire spectrum of supported capabilities, allowing organisations the flexibility, scalability and ability to anticipate business-level outcomes from the received services.

Digital business and Internet of everything adoption, combined with an increased pressure to improve, innovate and transform the “ageing” infrastructure core and reduce costs, have also changed the market behaviour, where “run the business” outsourcing models are no longer attractive to the customers. These models are being replaced by the desire to acquire “transformational” managed services surrounded by consistent and proven delivery methodologies and frameworks, and designed to provide short-, mid- and long-term benefits to the business.

According to him, in the future, companies will look to managed services providers to take accountability for business outcomes, not just service levels.

The business value of managed services lies in transforming project delivery capabilities; access to expert skills and technology innovation; and flexibility and scalability to take advantage of business opportunities.

From a technology perspective, the continual expansion of cloud into the Software and Platform as a Service arena, together with new and disruptive technologies such as big data and analytics, mobility continues to captivate customer’s attention and, with it, the managed services providers’ focus.

Another major shift is the increased EXPRESS COMPUTER

interest in reliable security services.

According to Shree Parthasarathy, Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte in India, “In the light of recent security breaches and challenges, organisations are re-evaluating the information security landscape and, in doing so, they are looking for trusted providers in the market, to partner with and drive a more consistent security management program, without compromising the usability and costs.”

According to Teradata, the availability of advanced business intelligence skills has become increasingly important for businesses that depend on analytics from the data warehouse, to improve customer acquisition and retention, reduce operational costs and shorten product time-to-market.

According to Shree Parthasarathy, Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte in India, “Global market for managed security services is growing with the proliferation of digital information across devices and technologies.

Discovering or recognising an attack is important, but it is even more important to reduce the response time to prevent or limit damage.” He adds that to optimise the response time, security operations (Secops) capability needs to be aligned with business risk appetite.

Abilityto consume IT,based on business demands, has put pressure on the services market Neeraj Jaitley, Vice President,Managed Services, Dell Services

Mired in challenges Organisations implementing managed services have reported almost 50-60% increase in the operational efficiency of their outsourced processes. Enterprises have accepted outsourcing services as a means to enable them to reduce their capex and free up internal resources, which in turn leads to business efficiency.

According to Gartner blogpost by Douglas Toombs, Research Director, Gartner Inc, “Human expertise will always be a part of the equation in the managed end of the market, but automation when envisioned and implemented properly, can serve as a significant amplifier for an organisation’s existing technical expertise, and deliver better customer outcomes overtime.”

Managed IT services are fraught with challenges that organisations must circumvent. Says Bylahalli of Happiest

ITteams are facing the issue of IP protection and government regulations,both of which make them hesitant about going the managed services way Gopalakrishna Bylahalli, VP & CTO,ITServices, Happiest Minds Technologies JUNE, 2015

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MANAGED IT SERVICES

» www.expresscomputeronline.com

Global market for managed security services is growing with the proliferation of digital information Shree Parthasarathy, Senior Director,Enterprise Risk Services,Deloitte in India

Enterprises are now turning towards professional IT players who have specialised centers staffed with specialists in managed services tasks Sunil Jose, Managing Director,Teradata India.

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Minds Technologies. “The IT teams in the enterprises are facing the issues of IP protection, data boundaries and government regulations that will make them hesitant to go managed services way.

At the same time, they also face the pressure of reducing total cost of ownership (TCO); they must also deal with the rapidly changing technology as well as the skill gap.

These IT teams are expected to innovate and participate in “Change the Business” and NOT just look at “Run the business”.

“It is no longer sufficient to provide assurance of “Five 9s”, i.e., systems available 99.999% of the time and keep the “lights on”. Customers are looking at a value add with respect to automation and agility, business value add through outcome based models. These service providers have to be innovative in adopting the SMAC+ technology and evolve outcome based business models,” he adds.

Having a smorgasbord of choices in the Managed Services market, enterprises tend to get confused in the selection.

According to Bajaj of Birlasoft, “Finding the right partners who not only keep the costs low but also align to customer business growth is a common challenge for the customers. Enterprises know their businesses would not be successful without the right resources and support from their partners.”

From security perspective, preserving valuable business data is the most common concern with protecting IP and other critical information is the second highest concern. Parthasathy of Deloitte elaborates, “This is no surprise, considering there has never been more data for businesses to maintain a complete and easy-to-access archive, to comply with government mandates, industry regulations and corporate policies.

Customers need to find exactly what they need, whenever they need it. Service Providers face a challenge to evolve on new technologies that help customers overcome their challenges.”

According to Jose of Teradata, “The key issue will always be about ‘choice’. For customers especially, it comes down to geography or location. Whether they are looking at on-premises centers, or to put it up in the cloud? What they want to do in terms of the cash flow model? It will all

depend on whether service providers will be able to offer complete flexibility to customers.”

Connecting IT with businesses In the managed services and IT outsourcing arena, one of the major issues is represented by the continual disconnect between IT and businesses. Says Jaitley of Dell Services, “Often IT is seen not as a business enabler, but more like a slow and non-flexible/non-adaptable organisation, which is not supporting the overall business strategy. This has become a challenge during managed services engagements, single or multi-sourcing ones, and if the right governance models are not in place, the initial success of the outsourcing program is quickly overcome by the inherent issues that arise from a continuously increasing gap between business demand and IT supply.”

A major area of concern lies in emerging technologies such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service, which may seem to quickly allow organisations to consume services and drive quick benefits, without the burden of going through a long implementation programs.

In this area, integration is definitely a pain point and an issue.

The managed service providers have the ability to meet a the emerging demands of business by designing a specific services at the moment of the engagement.

Managed IT service market will continue to face challenges till there is a harmonious synchronisation of technologies and business needs. Also, the service providers must have the ability to satiate these needs in the most costeffective and agile manner. Mentions Jaitley from Dell Services, “Ability to receive and consume IT services, tailored on business demands, in flexible, scalable and cost-effective manner has put a lot of pressure on the managed services market and providers, who are now facing the challenge of continuously transforming and innovating their services in a closer alignment with customer business demands.” jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

JUNE, 2015

BUSINESS AVENUES

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www.expresscomputeronline.com

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43

COLUMN SRIKANTH KARNAKOTA, MICROSOFT INDIA

CLOUD IS FASTBECOMING AREALITYIN INDIA A The shift to cloud is not restricted to businesses alone; the Government of India has recognised the immense capabilities of the cloud and recently launched the ‘MeghRaj’

For many enterprises,existing ITinvestments,policies, regulatory issues,etc.,do not warrant a full-fledged adoption of the public cloud.For them hybrid cloud can be a good option.

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cross the world, cloud is becoming one of the biggest transformational trends in our industry. It has moved beyond being a technological innovation and is now changing the business landscape and delivering tangible results such as savings on capital expenses, affordable monthly payments (pay as you go model) and better agility. We are living in a truly mobile-first, cloud-first world, particularly in India where cloud is also enabling social computing and the way people collaborate. At the heart of all this is cloud, bringing smart devices to life and enabling increased collaboration, cost savings and agility for businesses of all sizes.

This cloud-first environment has rapidly evolved from simply delivering software as a service (SaaS) to providing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities, that are a being used by start-ups, SMEs and large enterprises to address a number of business challenges.

Global cloud players are leveraging the strong demand for cloud-based productivity services and engaging with local partners to expand the reach of cloud services and multiply their business growth. Today, for a customer, cloud essentially presents an unlimited platform and infrastructure with capabilities that suit almost all business needs.

Benefits of Cloud Public cloud offerings, where the physical cloud infrastructure is not owned by the organisation, are rapidly being adopted across India, as customers can save on capital expenditure, infrastructure maintenance costs, and move to a pay-asyou-go model. In addition, customers get

better flexibility and agility and can easily address scenarios where there is a sudden spike in demand for compute resources, for instance the increased load on infrastructure during a festival season. By the end of the year, technology research firm Gartner expects that the public cloud services market in India will grow by 32.2 percent and reach $556.8 million. And, this is expected to touch $1.7 billion in 2018.

For many enterprises, existing IT investments, policies, regulatory issues, etc., do not warrant a full-fledged adoption of the public cloud. For them hybrid cloud offerings makes it possible to retain existing infrastructure, get cloud benefits on-premise with private cloud and leverage the flexibility and scalability of public cloud. These hybrid solutions keep proprietary and business sensitive data on premise, while giving businesses the flexibility of moving workloads to the public cloud. Along with this, seamless manageability is provided, as necessary.

A report by management consultancy Zinnov says that 78 percent of Indian CIOs confirm that a reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the technology infrastructure is the major benefit that the hybrid cloud brings. Going by industry predictions, hybrid deployments could help companies save anywhere between 35 percent and 45 percent at steady state.

However, customers should have the option of choosing between public, private, and hybrid cloud based on their environment, scenarios and needs. They need to partner with the right cloud provider based on need. The right partnership will help enterprises realise the benefits that cloud provides – reduced costs, better agility and ability to focus on their business needs. .

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Large enterprises are looking to get the most value from their existing investments and reduce cost by embracing the cloud - driven largely by initiatives like bring-your-own-device (BYOD), and enterprise mobility. Out-ofthe-box cloud offerings like CRM, SCM, HRMS and domain-specific solutions, are helping businesses, especially mid-sized companies, enhance productivity and improve financial performance. For start-ups and small businesses, familiar, easy-to-deploy, low-cost solutions are helping them enhance their productivity, become more competitive, and scale up much faster. According to a study by NASSCOM and Frost & Sullivan, SMBs are expected to spend about $18.5 billion (Rs 1.11 lakh crore) on information technology by FY2018. A significant chunk of this growth will be driven by the adoption of cloud and mobility solutions.

In this changing ecosystem, IT partners need to closely examine and augment their business model and best practices to succeed. The partner community needs to seize the opportunity, which can help them adapt to this changing world that cloud offers. They also need to understand the advantages that it creates for them and their customers to sell these new solutions. An IDC study commissioned by Microsoft states that channel partners who sell cloud solutions generate more than 50 percent of their revenue from the cloud.

Cloud for Robust Government Services The shift to cloud is not restricted to businesses alone; the Government of India has recognised the immense capabilities of the cloud and recently launched the ‘MeghRaj’. The government’s ambitious Smart City project will also involve major cloud computing initiatives to ensure collaboration and seamless connectivity.

Citizens nowadays expect their governments to interact with them in fundamentally new ways. Systems must be developed to tackle natural disasters more effectively using information technology. Under the ‘Smart City’ initiative, Surat was the first city to use a EXPRESS COMPUTER

combination of cloud technology, mobile applications, data analytics and social networks to provide real-time data for all civic services. Cloud is becoming one of the critical assets for cities as they work to stay securely connected, transform data into greater operational efficiency, and collaborate with constituents in real time.

Local data centers in India will power the cloud services and these will serve as

Local data centers in India will power the cloud services and these will serve as the backbone for large scale government initiatives.It will also help meet regulatory compliances

the backbone for this kind of a large scale government initiative. Local data centers for hosting of data and cloud services will help provide the robust platform that India needs to handle the large volume of digital transactions. These data centers by global cloud players in India will further make use of the benefits of cloud services at nominal costs. It will not only cut costs but also manage the data that is generated as a result of digitally enabling 1B+citizens in this country. Cloud customers and partners in the country will benefit from data sovereignty, lower latency and geo redundancy with the availability of a local infrastructure. Local data centers will also help meet regulatory compliance requirements and reiterate organisations’ commitment to India.

The adoption of cloud is not just a way forward for businesses and government organisations, it will help accelerate India across multiple growth parameters.

By Srikanth Karnakota, Director – Server and Cloud Business, Microsoft India

JUNE, 2015

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FEATURE

BIG DATA

Âť

BIG DATATALENT

SHORTAGE HOWTO BRIDGE THE GAP? Big Data can be big business if the enterprises can find the right kind of talent to deploy and manage the technology

BY ABHISHEK RAVAL

A

manufacturer of tractors sends alerts to the farmers, who own the tractors manufactured by the company, on when a particular part in the tractor is most likely to fail. For accomplishing this task, the company deploys many different technologies, including Big Data platform, through which information can be extracted from the data related to weather, soil, agriculture patterns, etc.

In banking industry, Big Data is making significant contributions. Many Indian banks have developed robust risk-analysis models for analysing the quality of credit—

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Agood data scientist will use his knowledge in the context of the business problem Bhavish Sood, Research Director, Gartner India

this has led to record decline in the credit losses that the banks were suffering earlier. There are many such stories of Big Data technology adoption in India. Yet, the truth is that India has barely scratched the surface, when it comes to Big Data.

The Big Talent Crunch The overall experience of the few enterprises in India that have actually deployed Big Data is positive. A recent Accenture report says that 94% of the Indian organisations, which have made one or more Big Data implementations, JUNE, 2015

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Big Data is a highly innovative area, and it takes time for anyone to grasp the fine details of the technology Ankit Khanna, Senior VP,Product Management, Snapdeal

94% of the Indian organisations,which have made one or more Big Data implementations, are satisfied with the business outcomes of the technology Arnab Chakraborty, MD,Advanced Analytics, Accenture Digital EXPRESS COMPUTER

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BIG DATA

The analytics professional should have the ability to present his findings in a business-like language Udo Sglavo, Senior Director,Advanced Analytics, SAS R&D

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are satisfied with the business outcomes of the technology.

The survey also informs that 78% of the enterprises in India see Big Data as something that is necessary for the development of better customer relationships. About 53% of the enterprises surveyed have cited the lack of talent to be one of the key challenges in the deployment of Big Data. Mckinsey estimates that India will need 200,000 data scientists in the coming years.

There is consensus in the Industry on the issue of talent crunch, and the enterprises are trying to address it by reskilling the existing workforce and by undertaking a different kind of employment model, which is based on selecting professionals with multiple skills.

“The shortage of Big Data professionals is a major issue. We have a lot of young statisticians and computer scientists in the country, but the skills of majority of these young professionals are limited to their own niche areas,” says Bhimasankaram Pochiraju, Clinical Professor and ED, Applied Statistics and Computing, ISB.

The E-Commerce Industry

The evolution of the Big Data deliverymodels can onlyhappen when we have the adequate industry specific Big Data talent Rajamani Srinivasan, VP and Head of Platform & Technology Business,SAP India 48

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The e-commerce vertical is an early adopter of Big Data. As large number of consumers have warmed up to online shopping, enterprises such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc., are becoming repositories of consumer data. These organisations are also sitting on massive amounts of historical data. They see huge potential in deploying Big Data for achieving meaningful insights from the data that they hold.

Snapdeal has undertaken a Big Data project, which is on verge of completion.

The company is also on the lookout for the right kind of talent to take its Big Data initiatives forward. “There are two major challenges that we face. The first is that there aren’t many people who have the experience of working with Big Data technologies. The second is that in order to derive meaningful insights from Big Data, it takes lot of time,” says Ankit Khanna, Senior VP, Product Management, Snapdeal. Khanna is of the view that in the fast moving world of ecommerce, the enterprises need access to necessary information.

“The talent that we are currently having in the organisation is good for problem-solving, but we are looking for more experience. Big Data is a highly innovative area, and it takes time for anyone to grasp the fine details of the technology,” adds Khanna.

As mind boggling amount of data is being created on a regular basis, the companies are also looking for the best possible ways of deriving information out of this data. There is need for professionals who can use Big Data analytics to make effective decisions. They have to be capable of integrating the findings from Big Data with the knowledge derived from other techniques. Bhavish Sood of Gartner says, “A good data scientist will use his knowledge in the context of the business problem.”

Big Data Skills An ideal Big Data professional would be one who understands the big picture of the business. If he is good in mathematics, statistics and working in the retail industry, but is not well-grounded in the retail business, the constraints of the supply chain operation, then he will not be able to solve the supply chain issues by using Big Data. Data science is the combination of advanced computational science, mathematics, statistics and advance analytics. While there are experts available who are good at one of these disciplines, the industry needs a steady supply of workforce that is equipped with the knowledge of a combination of all these disciplines.

Fractal Analytics provides expertise in the areas of Big Data analytics. The company has about 800 analytics professionals, some of whom are currently deputed at Fortune 500 enterprises.

Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder & CEO, Fractal Analytics says, “The expertise in Big Data, Analytics and BI is not available in India. Very few people are well-trained in the Big Data stack of technologies.”

Velamakanni says that the Indian companies are not in a position to offer stable and interesting career option to the data scientists. “The enterprises don’t have the ecosystem in place for hiring and grooming talent,” he says.

According to Udo Sglavo, Senior JUNE, 2015

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The data science community can learn from the Indian ITindustry the ideas for rapidly developing skilled resources Rajiv Gupta, Head,TechnologyAdvantage Practice,BCG India

Aseasoned analytics professional should have a combination of skills from the fields of statistics, data management including Big Data analytics, and programming

The expertise in Big Data,Analytics and BI is not available in India.Very few people are welltrained in the Big Data stack of technologies Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder & CEO,Fractal Analytics

Bhimasankaram Pochiraju, Clinical Professor and ED,Applied Statistics and Computing,ISB

Director, Advanced Analytics, SAS R&D, a person who wants to have a career in Big Data must have three skills—firstly, he must have interest in statistical modelling, maths, engineering; secondly, he should have good experience with at least one programming language such as Java, SAS or any open source language; thirdly he should have the ability to present his findings in a business-like language so that the business leaders in the organisation can easily digest the information.

“The third skill is usually the most difficult to develop,” says Sglavo.

“A seasoned analytics professional should have a combination of skills from the fields of statistics, data management including Big Data analytics, and programming. A sound business acumen is also a must,” says Bhimasankaram Pochiraju of ISB. Khanna of Snapdeal is of the same view.

He says, “You have to understand the business from all angles and use Big Data to develop the information that will lead to EXPRESS COMPUTER

better outcomes.” The problems that the enterprises face need speedy redressal; if too much time is spent in analysing the data, then the information gleaned may become obsolete by the time it reaches the business heads.

Some enterprises are trying to tackle the resource crunch by having specific training programmes. There are also those, like Snapdeal, which have now started scouting for talent outside the country. “There are lot of Indians working in the Silicon Valley and other technology centres of the world. We are trying to give them an option to relocate back to India,” says Khanna.

The Way Forward “The evolution of the Big Data delivery models can only happen when we have adequate industry specific Big Data talent.

The companies can outsource their Big Data needs, but for that we need to have the Big Data professional services players,” says Rajamani Srinivasan, Vice President & Head of Platform & Technology

Business, SAP India.

The data science community can learn from the Indian IT industry the ideas for rapidly developing skilled resources. The idea is to break down the Big Data value chain into “specialised” roles and deliver “industrialised” training processes. “In the area of Big Data, I see the need for three kinds of professionals—the Big Data programmers, the Data Analytics professionals and the domain experts,” says Rajiv Gupta- Head Technology Advantage Practice, BCG India.

It is clear that to address the talent gap in the Big Data space, the HR and the talent management professionals must begin by educating themselves about the technology. They must learn how Big Data will be the strategic driver for bringing competitive advantage to their organisations. The managers and the senior managers must also have the knowledge of the real potential of Big Data. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

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EVENT MICROSOFT

Microsoft Azure Conference 2015 The Microsoft Azure Conference, organised in Pune, was all about the fast-growing cloud industry in India. The bright minds that had arrived for the event had the opportunity to hear several announcements on Microsoft’s cloud offerings

BY JASMINE DESAI

Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, giving keynote address 50

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loud is now the fastest growing vertical in enterprise IT—this was the resounding message of the Microsoft Azure Conference 2015. In his address, Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, said, "Cloud represents a unique democratisation of technology. Due to the rise of cloud, technology is no longer the limitation, affordability is no longer the issue."

Microsoft India announced that the company would start a data centre in Pune by the end of 2015. It was also revealed that across India, Microsoft would be starting three data centres. The DR sites for these new data centres will be contained within the Microsoft sites.

The representatives from Microsoft spoke about the Cloud Accelerator Program, which the company feels will lead to the acceleration in the adoption of cloud services in enterprises and government organisations.

Equipped with in-house experts and trained partners, Microsoft India’s Cloud Accelerator Program is specially designed to help Indian customers start and complete their cloud journey. More than 15 Microsoft partners, including HCL, Wipro and Tech Mahindra, will be part of the rollout of the Cloud Accelerator Program in India. In times to come, Microsoft expects more partners to join the Program and increase the range of offerings.

Azure Vidyapeeth and GuruVarta— Microsoft’s two cloud training programs were also explained at the event. These two training programs are especially developed for enabling SMBs to transition their applications to the cloud.

Microsoft expects that the program will help 10,000 SMBs across 250 cities to move to the cloud.

Pramanik explained Microsoft's strategy of mobile first and cloud first. He gave a glimpse into the hyper-scale of Microsoft’s cloud offerings. He informed that the company has invested $4.5 billion in setting-up data centres across the world. It is investing in hyper-scale data centres in India. Microsoft is also facilitating the development of the hybrid environment, which offers

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Dave Campbell, CTO, Cloud and Enterprise Engineering Group, Microsoft

the advantages of both, private and public cloud.

“Big Data and cloud will open lot of service opportunities and great ecommerce opportunity,” said Pramanik.

“Twelve months ago, the Azure footprint consisted of just eight data centre regions in USA, Europe, Singapore and China. Now it has expanded to India, Australia, Japan and South America. Presently, 19 Azure data centre regions are open for business,” he added.

Microsoft Azure led to the spotlight being placed on many of the key concerns that CIOs in enterprises and IT officials in government face. Today many government departments and even enterprises are not prepared to place their applications on the cloud due issues related to security, speed, and

accessibility. "Our data centres meet all regulatory requirements. Customers can take back the data if they stop using the service," said Pramanik. “Security, privacy and compliance makes it a trustworthy cloud.” There is a single signon capacity, and all authentication activity of SaaS applications is happening on single platform.

The enthusiasm that the present government in Maharashtra has about cloud deployments was well articulated

by Apurva Chandra, Principal Secretary- Industries, Government of Maharashtra. He said that the adoption of cloud by the governments was inevitable. "Aaple Sarkar portal has been launched. State government land records have been digitised. Registration of documents from 2002 to 2015 have been digitised. This has brought lot of efficiency and transparency to our operations,” said Apurva Chandra.

“Maharashtra Industry and Development Association bought a server four years back. Now the server needs to be upgraded, but we are deciding to go for Microsoft cloud,” he added.

Dave Campbell, CTO, Cloud and Enterprise Engineering Group, Microsoft, said, "India has combination of three things: technical skills, entrepreneurial spirit and pragmatism.

These three things will lead to rapid development of the cloud industry in this country.” Elaborating on Azure cloud, he said that the most important currency at Microsoft is the pace of learning. There are 1,200,000 SQL databases in Azure.

Azure is getting 10,000 new customers a week. 60% of Azure customers use higher level of services. One interesting point that Campbell made is that currently 40% of Azure revenue is coming from start-ups and ISVs. Subramanyam Petrevu, CIO, Mindtree, said, "In next 2-3 years the start-up ecosystem will grow, and this will lead to a more accelerated adoption of cloud." Mindtree is presently working on developing solutions for establishing DR in the cloud. jasmine.desai@expressindia.com

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COLUMN NIRAJ KAUSHIK ORACLE INDIA

THE BENEFITS OFERPIN THE CLOUD T Cloud ERP offers faster time to value, improved scope for innovation and scalability; it is increasingly being seen as a potential replacement for ageing core ERP systems.

ERP cloud solutions have matured to the point where they are a smart strategic alternative for many organisations—especially for those whose ERP system is focused around CRM,HCM, and finance management.

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he adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications running in the public cloud has increased significantly in the recent years.

Research from Forbes and ZDNET predicts a significant increase in adoption of ERP public cloud applications in the next five to 10 years. This will lead to disruption in the traditional deployment of ERP applications.

While looking at the full spectrum of ERP, ranging from customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM) to finance and supply chain management, we notice that organisations usually adopt cloud applications to add value to distinctive business processes such as talent recruitment and management or sales automation.

What are the key drivers supporting these decisions? Also, what are the businesses achieving by adopting ERP in the cloud?

Faster time to value: Cloud applications enable businesses to implement new functionality immediately and at a lower cost than with traditional onpremise implementations. With cloud applications, IT is focused on integration and security, and the cloud services vendor can be leveraged for these tasks. Onpremise implementations require significantly more IT effort, and a lot of energy is focused on maintaining the consistency of the existing, often complex, IT environment. This complexity can prevent new functionality from being rolled out and usually results in higher IT cost and longer implementation time and effort for the business.

Increased innovation: With cloud applications, the functionality is deployed in a standardised manner. This means that all customers run the same software. As customisations are not allowed, new innovations can be rolled out much faster and the experience from the user group can be shared. Further, in most cases,

cloud applications have standard innovations such as analytics, collaboration tools, and mobile support readily available.

Scalability with growth: ERP cloud applications enable business leaders to act immediately if they need to scale. Typically, after a pilot period, they can evaluate success and decide in what manner and at what pace the functionality can be rolled out in the business. ERP cloud solutions have matured rapidly in recent years.

Today, even core transactional processes in finance and procurement can be supported in a way that is suitable for most organisations. This leads to greater value and opens new business opportunities as described in the following cases based on real-live customer engagements.

Globalisation strategy A professional service organisation had grown significantly in over 20 countries.

Each country had implemented an onpremise finance solution tailored to country-specific needs. This resulted in a significant lack of transparency and insight into profitability and cost across the business. This bottleneck started to affect the ability for finance to support the business. ERP in the cloud enabled a new business opportunity. It enabled organisations to avoid high cost IT reimplementation and paved way for an easier way of redesigning the existing processes and procedures. As a result, this organisation started to move to a global, uniform, and scalable system. Other benefits enabled include improved collaboration between finance resources in different countries and consistent management information in various dimensions (country, resource, service line) available instantly when needed.

Business expansion A medium-sized organisation on an acquisition strategy had inherited many ERP applications with bespoke business JUNE, 2015

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processes. The existing ERP systems could not scale to support the business, and processes became increasingly fragmented. If this situation were to continue, there was a risk that the number of back-office and IT staff members needed would increase significantly as the organisation continued to grow. Moving to ERP cloud applications enables this organisation to have a common platform for existing and future businesses designed to support best practice processes. With this platform, IT and back-office costs were mitigated while new functionality requirements could be introduced easily.

Managing an ageing ERP environment A medium-sized public sector organisation had adopted several ERP applications over the last ten to 15 years. This environment became increasingly customised. The result was that the cost of maintaining this environment had increased over the years EXPRESS COMPUTER

ERP cloud solutions have matured rapidly in recent years.Today,even core transactional processes in finance and procurement can be supported in a way that is suitable for most organisations.

and upgrades were mostly executed out of technical need and were not functionality driven. Given the size of the organisation and its functionality requirements, the cost of ERP in the cloud was lower than maintaining the existing applications. In addition, the cloud functionality was richer.

These use cases indicate that ERP cloud solutions have matured to the point where they are a smart strategic alternative for many organisations— especially for those whose ERP system is focused around CRM, HCM, and finance management. In other cases, the traditional ERP suite can be replaced by a hybrid ERP environment consisting of a well-secured and integrated combination of public cloud for generic ERP capabilities and private cloud for business-specific ERP capabilities.

Niraj Kaushik, Vice President, Applications Business, Oracle India

JUNE, 2015

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EVENT CANON

EXPRESS DIGITAL GOVERNANCE SERIES L U C K N O W

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UPWITH DIGITISATION Organised in Lucknow, on 6th May 2015, the Express Digital Governance Series took account of what we’ve learned over the last few years about the importance of digitisation in government offices.

The event also provided an overview of how digitisation can be accomplished through the range of innovative products developed by Canon

BY MOHD UJALEY

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Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards, Uttar Pradesh, with government officials

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n order to make their operations clearer, simpler and faster, the government departments in India are now eagerly implementing various software and hardware solutions for enabling Digital Office. It is now widely accepted that one of the key aspects of a successful governance model is the incorporation of systems that lead to easy, transparent and seamless document management.

With the objective of facilitating exchange of knowledge on the solutions that lead to seminal improvements in the operations of government departments, the Express Computer magazine organised the “Express Digital Governance Series” in Lucknow.

Powered by Canon, the event was attended by several key officials from the Government of Uttar Pradesh. The roundtable discussion was moderated by Subhmoy Bhattacharjee, Deputy Editor, Indian Express.

Ranjan Dwivedi, Director General of Police and Commandant General Home Guards, who was part of the eminent roundtable, said, “It is now well recognised that digitisation is of critical importance.

The government of Uttar Pradesh is putting lot of effort to ensure that there is speedy digitisation in all its departments, but it is primarily up to the companies such as Canon to innovate and come up with the appropriate solutions.”

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K. Bhaskhar, VP - Office Imaging Solutions Division, Canon India

“In my opinion, Canon should focus on introducing machines that function in Indian Languages. This will ensure that many people, who are more comfortable in using Indian languages, are able to use these machines,” Dwivedi added.

He also informed the guests at the roundtable that the government of Uttar Pradesh understands that it is critical to reduce the use of paper in government offices. Canon should provide solutions that consume less paper.

K. Bhaskhar, VP - Office Imaging Solutions Division, Canon, said, “Uttar Pradesh is high-growth market. Today Lucknow is a hub for many large corporations. Canon is dedicated to serve the needs of the state.”

“In Uttar Pradesh, Canon is working closely with ten partners to offer its customers a vast range of innovative, cost-effective products, which follow international environmental guidelines and help organisations comply with the environmental norms,” Bhaskhar added.

Talking specifically about the solutions that Canon is designing, Bhaskhar said, “With our world-class EXPRESS COMPUTER

imaging technology, we aim to contribute in their growth journey by taking care of their imaging requirements. Canon’s endto-end imaging solutions can help companies save costs, while enjoying better security and eco-friendly printing features. All this will lead to increase in employee productivity.”

Senior officials from the Uttar Pradesh

One of the key aspects of a successful governance model is easy,transparent and seamless document management

unit of National Informatics Centre were also present at the event. NIC officials were of the view that digitisation is a must for the smooth functioning of the government offices, but they also highlighted the concerns related to security and whereabouts of the data.

“We in the government want to digitise after ensuring that all the security related safeguards are in place.

We don’t want to store our data outside the country. Indian data must remain inside India,” an NIC official said.

“We will be very happy if the data generated by Uttar Pradesh, resides within Uttar Pradesh,” an NIC official added.

The presentation by K. Bhaskhar was the highlight of the event. Bhaskhar gave a broad overview of the solutions that Canon is offering for digitisation and document management in the government sector. He consistently expressed the view that proper document management is critical for bringing efficiency, saving energy and ultimately improving the revenues of the organisation. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com

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EVENT SAP

DATAIS AN ASSETAND OPPORTUNITY SAP TechEd Bangalore, placed the spotlight on Cloud, Big Data, Predictive Analytics, IoT, Open Source and the SAP HANA platform, which is now enabling new wave of business innovation

BY MOHD UJALEY

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AP TechEd 2015 Bangalore kicked off with a keynote address from Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE Products and Innovation. Data is an asset, a differentiator, and also an enabler for creating and driving new business models—this was the resounding message of Leukert’s speech.“Data must be seen as the raw material for creating new business models that can drive the business to a new high,” Leukert said.

A major attraction at the event was

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Bernd Leukert

the SAP’s demonstration of the functionalities of the SAP S/4 HANA platform. The platform can be used for creating mobile apps, which can easily be deployed both on mobile and HANA platform. The representative from SAP informed that the SAP S/4HANA has eliminated the complexity with its simplified data model. Earlier, an update in logistic process used to touch 26 tables, but now the same has been reduced to one. The new platform is more integrable and flexible.

The representatives from Asian JUNE, 2015

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Paints were there to share their experience of working with the SAP HANA platform. Manish Choksi, President, Home Improvement, Supply Chain and IT, Asian Paints, said that their relationship with HANA started in 2002 when Asian Paints was repositioning its business. Company was not only looking at paints, but also other areas of home improvement.

“We wanted to ensure that our community which includes painters, architectures, interior decorators, partners, and people within the EXPRESS COMPUTER

organisation should be able to deliver more integrated performance. With the help of SAP HANA we revamped our HR processes by using the paradigm of mobility to improve anytime, anywhere access of all the data and applications,” said Choksi.

Organisations such as Oracle, CyberSafe, Security Weaver, and few others participated at the event and showcased their solutions for SAP platform. Most of them were of the view that the cloud platform would provide huge opportunity to SAP customers, but

it was also true that any cloud deployment would also lead to emphasis being given to security.

Tim Aslop, CEO and MD, CyberSafe, a company that provides authentication solution to SAP customers said, “Today, there is a kind of hybrid solution in which enterprise has some application in the cloud and some on the premise, therefore, it is important to safeguard both and bridge the security gap between on premise and cloud.”

Stephen DuBravac, Executive Vice President Marketing, Security Weaver, was of the view that the cloud platform is the way forward. He said, “SAP HANA cloud platform will improve the speed of analytics and it is likely to have something unique for every organisation, including the security companies.”

The three-day event had vibrant lecture sessions in which the technical experts from SAP shared vital information and ideas. Attendees also had the opportunity to have an one-toone interaction with the SAP development experts.

Dilip Kumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India, informed that 7000 people participated in the event from 25 countries. Eight technology tracks provided about 1000 hours of learning experience for the participants and students.

The SAP Techniversity was an important part of the event. 1500 university students experienced how SAP would drive Innovation into the Digital Enterprise and how they can be a part of the next generation Digital Enterprise. A thrilling experience, indeed, for the students.

The students were taught how to build next generation applications on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, and how Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things are going to fireup the next business, preparing them for the ‘Future of Work’ empowered by SAP. “We are passionate about developing talent that will one day contribute to the SAP innovation story,” said Ann Rosenberg, Vice President and Global Head of University Alliances. mohd.ujaley @expressindia.com

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NEWS eGOV

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Bangalore police to use Whatsapp for improving the beat system

Madhya Pradesh govt launches digital locker facility MADHYA PRADESH GOVERNMENT has launched the facility of ‘digital locker’, in which every citizen can safely store digitalised copies of important documents.

“Facility of digital locker has been introduced to concretise concept of paperless governance. Through this facility, space will be available to every

citizen on government cloud,” an official release said.

Secretary to Chief Minister and Science and Technology Hari Ranjan Rao has asked all government departments, heads of departments and collectors to ensure benefit of digital locker to people in the context of Centre’s directives.

BANGALORE CITY POLICE are using the social media tool Whatsapp to improve the police beat system in order to prevent crime and get tip-offs on anti-social elements.

Every police inspector in Bangalore has now been asked to create jurisdictional Whatsapp groups featuring key citizens, all policemen from the local police station, and the inspector in charge of the local police station.

The new initiative has taken a cue from a similar initiative launched by the traffic police in Bangalore.

Dr.RajeevPapneja receives “Bharat Gaurav”Pride of India Award INDIA INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP Society (IIFS) has conferred Dr. Rajeev Papneja with “Bharat Gaurav Puraskar” for 2015, said a statement from IIFS. Papneja was facilitated in a function in New Delhi by Former Governor of Assam & Tamil Nadu, Dr. Bhishma Narain Singh. O P Verma, who has served as the Governor of Punjab & 58

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Haryana, and Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court, were also present.

Dr. Papneja, one of the youngest candidates to have received this award, is the COO & Executive Vice President at ESDS Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd. He is also the COO of bodHost (USA), a web hosting company that is a subsidiary of ESDS. JUNE, 2015

REGD.NO.MCS/066/2015-17, PUBLISHED ON 28TH OF EVERY PERVIOUS MONTH & POSTED AT MUMBAI PATRIKA CHANNEL SORTING OFFICE, DUE DATE 29 & 30 OF EVERY PREVIOUS MONTH, REGD. WITH RNI UNDER NO. MAHENG/49926/90