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TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACE he challenge while using social media for developing platforms for collaborations lies in ensuring that there exists a clear partition between the work and the personal. Unless there is oversight, rise in social media usage can lead to instances of multitasking and context switching. If something is always beeping or flashing, and information is pouring from multiple resources, there will be distraction.

Sticking to email is also not the answer. When the operations are being handled from geographically dispersed offices, the companies have to deploy better systems for communication and collaboration to ensure that the entire workforce is aligned with the core objectives of the organisation. However, due to the proliferation of tools and approaches, many companies are still working on their collaboration strategy.

Collaboration is about bringing right information to the right people so that the right decision is taken at the right time, therefore an understanding of the organisation’s business goals and the way the work is done is a must for the designing of platforms for collaboration. It is better to get IT involved from the beginning to develop stable and secure platforms for employees to connect and collaborate. The IT teams can focus on reengineering the organisation’s processes to ensure that things get done more collaboratively in future.

You can have the best collaboration platform in your organisation, but without usage, it is meaningless. Getting the workforce to start making optimal usage of the collaboration platform can be problematic as many employees may find the new platform to be more of hindrance than a help. If a collaboration platform is implemented haphazardly and without adequate proof that it works, the employees will not embrace it. The collaboration platform should be easy to use and it must make the work and the home life of the employees simpler.

Once a well-planned system has been implemented, the best way of getting the employees to use it is the executive buy-in. The leaders of the organisation should set an example by proactively using the platform to share their ideas and interact with employees at all levels in the organisation. When the employees see the senior leaders in the organisation actively using the platform to present their views and interact with the employees, they will be more eager to get involved.

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IF COLLABORATION PLATFORM IS IMPLEMENTED HAPHAZARDLYAND WITHOUT ADEQUATE PROOF THAT ITWORKS, THE EMPLOYEES WILL NOT EMBRACE IT

anoop.verma@expressindia.com

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FLYING HIGH WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY “IT is important for building and maintaining strong partnerships between business teams and for ensuring that all the channels for delivering strong customer satisfaction are in order,” says Pankaj Khare, Director IT, IndiGo

Column

feature

5 BUSINESS ISSUES THAT CAN BE SOLVED WITH BETTER COLLABORATION

LEANING ON COLLABORATION Collaboration is a never ending process as the technologies keep on evolving, giving rise to newer solutions for creation of collaborative environment

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UNIFYING COMMUNICATION ENSURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

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Doctors and specialists can overcome resource shortages through the adoption of telemedicine solutions, and collaborate with patients and peers across any distance with the help of better collaboration

Collaboration and communication technologies should be firmly embedded in the overall framework of the enterprise

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Express Technology Sabha 2015 38

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DAY 1

Bringing Transparency and Accountability

Welcome Address

in Public Procurement

Address by Chief Guest

BatteryTechnology for Stand ByApplication

Candid Conversation Rajeev Chandrasekhar &

Cyber Security and Investigations in Digital India

Anant Goenka

Why Karnataka Rocks: State of the Art as

Power and Usefulness of Cloud

Art of the State

Digital India, Smart Nation Powered by future cities

Power Dinner by Check Point Software Technologies

Create a Trusted Digital Experience

Power Dinner by HP India

m-Governance in the Era of Modern Technologies for Governance

DAY 3

9 Pillars of Digital India - Ideas for Developing

Power Breakfast by Symantec

eGovernance

Power Breakfast byARBOR IT and Employment - Way Forward for Job Creation

DAY 2

Envisioning Digital India: Promoting Make in MP

Power Breakfast by BSA

Digital India and Relevance of Video

How Private Sector can Drive eGovernance in the

Digital Transformation and Going Beyond

Country

Smart City – Smarter Homes

Securing Dispersed and Unregulated

Important Pillar of Digital India: m-Governance on

Cyber Space

e-Governance

Stopping the Next Massive Cyber Attack

Power Panel: ICT for Inclusive Education and

Integrated Multi-Layered DDoS Protection

Skill Development

SayYES to Information Security @Digital India

IT Enabled Smart Governance

Nine Pillars of Digital India

IT Industry: Engine of Growth for India

Power Panel: Cyber Security for Digitally

Odisha – The Promising Destination for

Empowered India

IT/ITES/ESDM Companies

Data Theft Prevention

SeMT Conclave - NeGP 2.0 Taking eGovernance

Agile and Secured Information Infrastructure

to Next Level

Offering for Digital India

Power dinner byAgile Labs

Epson Governance

Power Dinner by Barracuda

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feature

SDN AND NFV SETTO GO MAINSTREAM SDN and NFV are playing critical role in the new wave of innovations happening in the areas of telecommunications, data centre and enterprise networking, leading to several new opportunities for Telcos

interviews 26

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MURALI URS

Barracuda looks to improve visibility in India SAMEER RATOLIKAR

Security knitted in all form-factors & channels AUGUST, 2015

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MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 2nd Floor, Express Tower, Nariman Point Mumbai- 400 021 Board line: 022- 67440000 Ext. 527 Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com Vol 26. No. 8. August, 2015 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Editor Anoop Verma* Chief of Product Dr. Raghu Pillai Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar Mumbai Jasmine Desai, Abhishek Raval DESIGN National Art Director Bivash Barua Deputy Art Director Surajit Patro Chief Designer Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rushikesh Konka Layout Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West and East Prabhas Jha - North Dr. Raghu Pillai - South Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Navneet Negi Ajanta Sengupta Amit Tiwari Mathen Mathew Circulation Mohan Varadkar

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AUGUST, 2015

FEATURE

INDIGO AIRLINES

»

WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY “IT is important for building and maintaining strong partnerships between business teams and for ensuring that all the channels for delivering strong customer satisfaction are in order,” says Pankaj Khare, Director IT, IndiGo Airlines

BY EXPRESS COMPUTER TEAM

P

ankaj Khare is one of those who like to thrive in changing times. He says that when he was young he decided to have a career in Information Technology because this field is completely dynamic. “Nothing can ever remain static in Information Technology,” he says. “This is a field that is always

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buffeted by innovations and disruptive technologies. New technologies emerge when they are least expected and lead to paradigm shift in the way people manage their lives and the businesses operate.

This is such a dynamic field that you hardly have any time to feel bored.”

Currently he works as the Director IT AUGUST, 2015

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in India’s leading airline—IndiGo. His responsibilities include the management of the IT operations for Data Centre, Networks, Contact Centre, End User Services across IndiGo offices—contact center, airport and Cargo locations. It gives him great satisfaction to see a significant impact of his work and that of his team in optimising various procedures at IndiGo, which is well known for its on-time and hassle-free operations.

About his work in IndiGo, Pankaj Khare says, “For me it is wonderful to work for a business that is serving the needs of so many passengers daily. I love that each day is different and there is the thrill of meeting new people every day, sharing knowledge with them about the latest innovations and new ideas in IT.” “I am motivated by the fact that the company has given me responsibilities that match my skill-set and there is ample room for me to find growth and satisfaction in what I do,” he adds.

Efficiency through IT Pankaj acknowledges that in the early years of his career he did find it challenging to understand new technologies and develop strategies for optimal deployment of IT resources. But with the consultation of his peers in the organisation and with other IT experts, he managed to overcome all the challenges.

He informs that the consolidation of IT Shared service for the group companies with different line of business was a challenging project. There were various levels of legacy that needed to be addressed before entire system could be placed on the same IT platform.

He and the IT team at IndiGo have been instrumental in developing the Cloud and Mobility solutions that have been implemented at IndiGo. “Technologies like Cloud, Mobility and Big Data not only help in reducing the cost of operations, they are also very effective in driving efficiency,” he says.

He is especially fascinated by the benefits that can be derived from Big Data analytics. “Big Data space continues to evolve and better solutions are becoming available,” he says. “Now there EXPRESS COMPUTER

The field of ITis constantly being buffeted by innovation.

New technologies emerge out of nowhere and bring paradigm shift in the way people manage their lives and businesses operate

is scope for extracting much more vital information, more quickly, from the highvolume, high-velocity and high-variety data assets that you possess. This information can be used to create substantial economic value and help the business in improving its decisionmaking, risk management and customer service.”

He agrees with the idea that SMAC is a disruptive technology, but he also says, “You have to understand that there is a lot of creative innovation that lies at the core of SMAC. The aspects of Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud are enabling businesses to improve their operations in ways that we could scarcely imagine four or five years ago.”

“IT is important for building and maintaining strong partnerships between business teams and for ensuring that all the channels for delivering strong customer satisfaction are in order,” says Pankaj. He is of the view that his strengths lie in collaborating with the business wing of the airlines to develop IT initiatives that can lead to effective procedures for resolving cross-functional issues. “Basically we seek to manage and develop an IT strategy that is fully aligned with the ultimate business goals of the organisation.”

The area of Information Technology is ever-changing, new hardware and software solutions that are often better than the earlier versions arrive at regular intervals and shake up the market, so what steps should the IT departments in organisations take to ensure that their IT systems are consistently up to date?

Pankaj acknowledges that even for the most experienced IT professionals it can sometimes become difficult to keep track of all the innovation that is happening in the IT space. He goes on to add that “the innovations in IT happens only because there is a demand for new and innovative solutions by the consumers and the business houses. Innovation leads to better outcomes for everyone.”

“Innovation in IT,” he explains, “is essentially being driven by a range of factors, like the critical need for improving the efficiency of business processes. There is the need for prioritising business needs, recognising AUGUST, 2015

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FEATURE

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and managing complexity. The focus of IT managers is to encourage technology adoption for delivering tangible benefits to the business. Such innovation is important for the long term success of the organisation.”

»

PANKAJ KHARE Full Name

: Pankaj Khare

Current Designation

: Director IT, IndiGo Airlines

Expertise

: IT Infrastructure Services, Data Center Transformation, Build IT shared services

Work Experience

: 20 Years

Favourite Quote

: Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever

Favourite Book

: The Godfather

Favorite Destination

: Hawaii

Favorite Gadget for Work

: iPhone

Favorite Gadget for Personal Use

: iPad

Personal Interests Pankaj is inspired by Jack Welch. “I am fascinated by the story of Jack Welch’s life. For almost two decades Jack was at the helm of GE, he turned the company around. His tenure saw the value of GE rising by almost 4000%.” About his own future ambitions, Pankaj says that he would like continue working with the passion in the field of IT. He hopes to inspire many more people to adopt better technology to bring ease to business operations.

An avid reader of quality literature, Pankaj also hopes to someday make a name for himself as a writer by penning his autobiography. But it is not as if he is all work and no play. He enjoys swimming and listening to music. Hawaii is his favourite holiday destination.

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AUGUST, 2015

COVER STORY

LEANING

ON COLLABORATION

BY JASMINE DESAI

C

ollaboration is a never ending process.

The technologies keep evolving, giving rise to newer solutions for creation of collaborative environment at the workplace. If there is a common principle that the CIOs have to keep in mind while selecting the best possible collaborative platform for their organisation, it is this: collaboration must never be allowed to become an additional task or routine for the employees. Instead it should naturally fit into the general flow of work.

Today collaboration is a key priority for the enterprises, but no two companies are alike, their

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business goals and strategies can be quite different. Also, the collaboration initiatives are often initiated by the departments with different budgets—they may also have different requirements and corporate cultures. Hence there must be a wide variety to the kind of collaboration platforms that have been deployed in different companies.

For this feature, we interacted with several CIOs who are playing an active role in deployment of collaboration platform in their organisations. What follows is the excerpts from the conversations that we had with the CIOs:

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COVER STORY

SC MITTAL

TG DHANDAPANI

OSD(IT), IFFCO

CIO, TVS MOTOR

C

I

believe that collaboration is most important for productivity improvement in any organisation. It not only speeds up the decision making process, but also contributes immensely to reducing the cost of operations in terms of bringing down the travel-time, decreasing avoidable disturbance in office working and adoption of green environmental initiatives.

At IFFCO, we are using Polycom video conferencing and IP Phones in a very big way. We have a video conferencing studio through which 20 sites can interact at the same time. Most of the time our Marketing Progress Reviews, meetings with our joint ventures abroad, Annual Promotion Reviews, inauguration and training, etc.,

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are conducted using the video conferencing setup. IP Phones are used heavily in day-to-day work in the organisation. I can easily and proudly say that these tools have rather become an integral part of IFFCO’s working culture.

We are using web casting heavily for our social events like inter-unit sports competition, cultural meets and Managing Directors address. We have started using Twitter and Whatsapp for our daily work. Whatsapp especially is heavily used for project direction and progress review. My preferred tool for personal interaction is Facetime. I prefer Polycom Video Conferencing for meetings and Whatsapp for project direction and review as it is a very efficient way to collaborate.

onsidering challenges that are there in today’s business environment Unified Communication and videoconferencing are becoming the gold standards for most organisations. It does not seem like an option anymore. Collaboration tools not only save cost and time, but also improve effectiveness and bring agility. Agility is a hallmark trait for success in any business.

At TVS we are pushing the middle level management to use collaboration tools. One way of doing it is by making it available through simple processes. For me, the most vital tool is Telepresence. We have deployed Polycom telepresence. It gives perfect quality and one can understand body language also, which can again give lot of insight while making decisions. Mobility is a given too. While on move I use BlackBerry Messenger, as I find it extremely effective and secured.

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ANJANI KUMAR CIO, SAFEXPRESS PRIVATE LIMITED

I

am a firm believer of “connecting from anywhere and virtual office” and this can only be done by enabling comprehensive collaborative suites. Multiple collaboration tools which work in sync can actually increase the productivity as opposed to the belief that it can create lack of focus or confusion. Unified communication is here to stay and is only going to get stronger.

Instant messenger is a favourite within the organisation as it helps in improving productivity by quick connect and desktop sharing. Mobile productivity apps are great tools for collaboration and work assignments. CRM ticketing system among employees is another form of great collaboration tool, which we utilise. It helps in removing the clutter of emails. In my personal opinion, email is a tool, which actually reduces productivity and getting to almost an email free environment can improve your productivity.

We are working to create several ways of collaboration in the company which address

different issue and departments.

Presently, adding a better instant messenger than what is traditionally being used in the industry is our core priority. We have created task collaboration system for field forces. We also have video conferencing solutions for mostly all internal users connecting to almost 100+ locations.

We are prototyping IP telephony with video capabilities integrated with messenger.

Social media with analytics driven intranet is another collaboration tool which we are looking toward for improving productivity. My favourite collaboration tool is Instant messenger integrated with IP telephony. This provides collaboration in real time.

And of course it gets rid of email clutter improving productivity of the organisation.

SRIDHAR IYENGAR VICE PRESIDENT, MANAGEENGINE

C

ollaboration tools are a shot in the arm for businesses because they increase the productivity of the workforce significantly.

Internal teams can coordinate with each other and brainstorm for new ideas easily. Access to real-time data in a centralised location and easy file sharing capabilities allow employees to work on the go and help complete projects quickly.

ManageEngine has incorporated a multitude of collaboration tools from Zoho.com. Some of the more popular tools that we use are Zoho Connect which is an enterprise social networking

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platform, Zoho Chat, Zoho Docs and Zoho Projects.

These tools coexist with each other. . They help our internal teams work faster and better.

These productivity tools are also available on mobile devices for users to access anywhere on the move. We encourage our employees to post their ideas on Zoho Connect or documents on Zoho docs, which makes it easy to ideate, review, discuss, and converge. Even if an employee is traveling he/she can log on and share his ideas. For example, a reviewer sitting in U.S. can access the documents of teams in India have them

reviewed and ready by the time the team walks in to the office the next day. This enables us to streamline innovative ideas within a short span of time.

The user’s preference for any tool is dictated by the need of the hour. When there is a need to communicate information instantly with other teams or individuals in real time, the preferred tool is Zoho Chat. When the need dictates the collaboration of multiple teams over a project, Zoho Connect would be the ideal choice, and if a repor needs to be reviewed, Zoho Docs comes into the picture.

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SHAILESH JOSHI CIO, GODREJ PROPERTIES

I

t is a proven fact that the enterprises can see vast improvements in productivity when the collaboration tools are in place. However, there are pros and cons to every system which is implemented and collaboration solutions and tools are not any different. Godrej Properties has implemented Office 365 and Sharepoint. We have implemented Yammer across the organisation. It is being used by various groups of people. It is like Facebook for the organisation, and has picked up in a huge way. There is R&D forum, HR forum, etc.

We have recently moved to a new headquartered building, wherein we have implemented Cisco’s UC solution. There is a single network which runs across the building, and this network serves for voice as well. This leads to large savings in the network cost. We are now integrating Cisco telephony instruments with the laptops— this will eliminate the need for landlines and desktop phones. We are also planning

to do away with extensions. The extensions would be forwarded automatically through cell phones.

The advantage of this UC set-up is that it leverages mobility and enables one to work from anytime, anywhere. Video conferencing solutions help us to keep in touch with people located in different geographical locations. As of now, we operate in 20 countries. It also saves on personal travel cost. However, it may not be possible to do everything through VC, because by going to the location in person, one can detect and solve multiple issues and also develop personal rapport.

When it comes to Unified Communication, the initial implementation cost is quite high. So there could be reluctance to adopt it.

Interoperability issues also need to be addressed. So the industry needs to come up with solutions that are interoperable.

CHANDRASHEKAR KAKAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, L&T INFOTECH.

T

echnology that enables communication has been following the journey of innovation and development since the invention of the telephone. Over the last few years, such technologies for communication and collaboration have touched every facet of the corporate ecosystem. With enterprise IT going mainstream, it opened avenues for businesses to expand their reach beyond the geographical barriers.

As a catalyst of this growth, Unified Communication came to the forefront. The way people collaborate is evolving at a

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great pace, making unified communications within the enterprise a critical first step.

In this era of mobility and cloud, we believe virtual learning is a key business driver. As a technology company, we understand the need and impact of unified communications—we are leveraging Microsoft’s collaboration tool – Skype for Business — to drive business functions effectively and profitably.

At L&T Infotech, while growing our business we faced multiple challenges ranging from lack of infrastructure to rising travel, accommodation and training

costs. With the deployment of unified communication technologies we have been able to solve this problem to a large extent. To concurrently train more than 300 employees in Java, .NET, and myriad other technologies, we have set up a virtual learning facility at our Mahape Center in Navi Mumbai. The simultaneous training process enabled by Skype for Business is helping us train employees faster and at a lower cost. In addition to using Skype for Business for accelerated learning, we are also using this platform for sales training and capturing case studies.

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ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN

MUKUND PRASAD

CIO, APOLLO HOSPITALS ENTERPRISE LIMITED

GROUP CIO, WELSPUN

T

he deployment of collaboration solutions is of great importance to the healthcare sector. Anytime – anywhere collaboration is a must. This sector has many stakeholders who need to be in lock step to ensure that clinical outcomes are positive.

Multipoint video conferencing using traditional video conferencing solutions, desktop based video conferencing , chat based applications continue to be absolutely relevant in this context. It is also important that our choice of solutions ensure that security and privacy standards are maintained. In healthcare this is very important and critical.

The productivity improvement is direct in healthcare. Nursing to clinical collaboration can be very effective. Clinicians can collaborate to discuss relevant patient cases and deliberate on course of treatment.

Clinical Grand rounds between multiple locations with experts sharing best practices and rare cases with innovative treatment protocols have immense value not just to medical professionals but also a very effective method to continuously increase and better clinical outcomes, quality and safety.

When we deploy collaboration tools in our clinical environment, it becomes a easier to communicate with patients.

With increase in maturity of the EXPRESS COMPUTER

solution and the adoption rate, the lines between UC, Video Conferencing and tele Medicine start blurring.. The maturity of collaboration tools and integration with IoT based devices coupled with effective solutions that propagate eHealth and mHealth make a very powerful solution set. It helps increase access to healthcare , increases effectiveness of various teams, increases patient safety and gives the health system high levels of efficiency.

At Apollo Hospitals, we use Video conferencing and UC solutions for Clinical grand rounds, Tumour boards, clinical second opinion discussions. Our collaboration tools coupled with our eICU solutions provide high end tertiary ICU care to tier 2 and tier 3 cities ICU units. Our collaboration tools enable virtual visitor capabilities such that family members can see their patients ( within permissible clinical limits) and thereby reduce infection rates that might occur by physical visits. Our clinical teams, operations teams and management teams use these solutions to ensure that we are tightly coupled on various operational matters there by ensuring seamless operations across our health system.

We are seeing good results of effectiveness and financial prudence with the adoption of such solutions.

U

C/VC solutions are very common tools in any organisation today. At Welspun, we are using Google Apps and SAP supported collaboration tools. Unified Communication is a widely misunderstood term. All communication, which one does for data, voice and video is Unified Communication. We are using solutions from Nortel, Cisco and HP for phones and IP telephony.

For video conferencing, we use Polycom and Tandberg solutions for connecting to different geographical locations. Collaboration tools lead to the much needed transparency. When one has face-to-face interaction it creates more trust. Time is also saved, as people do not have to travel. It inevitably results in reduced travel cost. Collaboration tools have a lot to add to an organisation in terms of ideating and reducing time to reach a business decision.

AUGUST, 2015

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COVER STORY

ARUN SHETTY

DAVE CONNORS

DIRECTOR OF COLLABORATION SOLUTIONS - INDIA, AVAYA

SVP OPERATIONS, DYNN

W

e at Avaya strongly believe that collaboration tools play an important role in establishing a good customer and team engagement.

Large and midsize organisations can benefit from a range of mobility solutions that let their employees connect and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and clients.

Integrated solutions for on-the-go workforces lets business applications

and mobile devices — employee-owned or business-owned — work together. We continuously engage ourselves in using latest technological innovations, because we believe that this type of engagement delivers exponential increase in productivity and reduction in travel costs.

Video Conferencing at Avaya, is one of the most highly preferred collaboration tool. In the Middle East, Africa and India, our video conferencing solution has been observing an outstanding growth in the adoption rate. It is becoming an essential tool, not only for collaboration, but also for use as a backend solution for the innovating mobile solutions for a number of vertical based industries. The whole concept of being able to have an eye to eye contact and talk heart to heart is the key reason behind the rise of video conferencing technology as a rising trend amongst enterprises of all sizes across the country and the globe.

RADHAKRISHNA PILLAI CIO, SRL LTD

T

echnology, if correctly used, can make communication simpler in each walk of life, like e-mail did a decade back and social media apps are doing currently. Shareholder, employees and partner collaboration is becoming more and more crucial and it cannot be achieved without technology support. It

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is well recognised today that collaboration tools are must for improving the customer response time and ensuring the availability of product or service on time.

At SRL, we are using Video Conferencing. The use of VC started as a travel cost saving project, but it soon became apparent that it was a very effective system for speedy communication on a range of business related issues. UC/VC are very helpful in ensuring better customer engagement— at times, the interaction is similar to meeting someone personally.

With the advent of mobile technology, the capabilities of VC are further enhanced. has further enhanced VC capability. We extensively use UC/VC for continuous training of employees and it will be further extended to some of the partners in our eco system.

I

think the internal productivity improvements come predominately at the boundaries of the organisation, whether that be cross-department, or across geo/timezones. The challenge is that each department or geo group has to adopt the company standard tools, which might initially appear to be less well suited for their particular group. The leadership role essentially lies in selling the value to the company and to various groups.

In our company is chat we have adopted Slack as the standard solution.

This works really well for everyone, but the sales group values using Salesforce’s integrated Chatter for communicating within the sales group about active opportunities. The good news is that the sales group now prefers to use Slack for taking care of their communication needs.

Our primary focus when it comes to collaboration is on establishing the standards, the secondary focus is on ease of use and training. Ease of use includes things like every conference room must have a simple set of instructions on how to use Google Hangouts. The training is a mix of formal classes and informal classes over pizza lunch.

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JAIDEEP SINGH IT HEAD, ECOM EXPRESS

T

he way business is conducted has undergone vast transformation; today most of our workers are working on the field. This makes it important for us to use online collaboration tools in our workplaces. The most important tool which helps us to be in touch with our field workers is FarEye’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions. FarEye provides end-to-end management of the field service operations.

This includes scheduling, dispatch, invoices, task and asset management, work orders and much more. The FarEye app is a cloud-based, and has a mobile interface for the workers and web interface for the supervisors back in office - easing the stress on the whole team. This solution has made our delivery and logistics a paperless and prompt affair. Our operations have become transparent giving us more control over it.

We at Avaya strongly believe that collaboration tools play an important role in establishing a good customer and team

engagement. Large and midsize organisations can benefit from a range of mobility solutions that let their employees connect and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and clients.

Integrated solutions for on-the-go workforces lets business applications and mobile devices — employee-owned or business-owned — work together. We continuously engage ourselves in using latest technological innovations, because we believe that this type of engagement delivers exponential increase in productivity and reduction in travel costs.

Video Conferencing at Avaya, is one of

the most highly preferred collaboration tool. In the Middle East, Africa and India, our video conferencing solution has been observing an outstanding growth in the adoption rate. It is becoming an essential tool, not only for collaboration, but also for use as a backend solution for the innovating mobile solutions for a number of vertical based industries. The whole concept of being able to have an eye to eye contact and talk heart to heart is the key reason behind the rise of video conferencing technology as a rising trend amongst enterprises of all sizes across the country and the globe.

RAJU VEGESNA CHIEF EVANGELIST, ZOHO

W

hen there was no internet, productivity was measured on an individual level. People had their own desktops, and they created and managed their own documents. Post internet, productivity became collaborative. When you add UC to business apps, you make it easier for the sales and marketing team to collaborate and be more productive.

Communication is the heart of any business. We have integrated UC with all the business apps. No form of digital communication can

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replace another. They just get increasingly inclusive. For example, an audio call is more inclusive than a chat, which in turn is more inclusive than an email.

We have also tried to make each collaboration tool productive in itself. Zoho Office Suite, for example, is a collaboration tool which comes with UC. So, while coediting a document, you can start a chat with your peer .

My favourite tool would be Zoho Connect, a social networking tool for workplace. It adds a communication layer over

UC. With Zoho Connect, you can collaborate with people on an organisational level, or at a group level or on an individual level, depending on your need.

This kind of flexibility is great for a business.

We have a plethora of tools that help business users communicate. The list of our solutions includes Zoho Mail (email, calendar), Chat (text, audio, video chat), Meeting (web conferencing), Connect (enterprise social networking) and Projects (for project management). We have mobile apps for most of these.

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COVER STORY www.expresscomputeronline.com

VIJAY SETHI VICE PRESIDENT, CIO AND HEAD CSR AT HERO MOTOCORP LTD.

PERTISTH MANKOTIA HEAD – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, SHEELA GROUP

C E

very CIO is on the lookout for ways to help the organisation reduce costs and improve productivity. As the organisations are expanding, it is almost impossible to have teams working out of one office. One needs to provide tools and technologies that will help teams work collaboratively without distance becoming a constraint.

The aim here is to help individuals work together in a coordinated fashion over geographic distances by providing tools that aid communication, collaboration and the process of problem solving. As I see it, collaboration needs to happen among project teams within a function or across functions and geographies.

From tools perspective, one can divide tools into three categories depending on the nature of collaboration: 1. Primarily Communication Oriented : These could be thought as tools for unstructured exchange of information – For example - E-mail, or IM Chat discussions, Unified Communication Tools, Audio 20

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Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Video Conferencing, etc.

2. Primarily Co-ordination Oriented : These are the tools for structured exchange of information – For example, consider a project team where everyone has to contribute at the right time as well as adjust their work to the unfolding situation, but everyone is doing something different in order for the team to achieve a goal.

We at HMCL use IT in both the categories. We primarily utilise Google Apps. Apart from e-mail, there are features for Real time collaboration like Hangouts (Text, Audio & Video Conference), Google Docs and Google Drive which are used vigorously. It is also my favourite tool to use.

We use Polycom video conferencing extensively – be it office based VC systems or VC on Laptops, iPADs or phone. All three are integrated.

Workflow systems help in collaborative management of tasks and documents within a knowledge-based business process. We widely use workflows across the organisation and most of the processes are work flow enabled.

ollaboration tools, apart from improving productivity, lead to an integrated approach that can really ease the way the employees go about managing their work. At Sheela Group, we endorse and use open source collaboration tools. We use Zimbra, along with open-source cloud, for storing our documents. We have also enabled chat.

Everything has a single sign-on. This gets access to information quickly.

We have integrated our compliance management system within these systems. We use eXo, Zimbra for meetings. One can instantly see minutesof-meetings in these interfaces and also see the previous MoMs on it. This is lots of unstructured data which otherwise would have been harder to track. But with these tools with a click we can find the exact information that we are looking for. It links with people, functions and dates. Our R&D group finds it especially advantageous.

Tools like video-conferencing are great, but as of now we are not planning on leveraging them due to connectivity related constraints. We have also developed in-house ticketing system through which employees can issue tickets that can be immediately addressed. We also have in-house project management system through these tools.

AUGUST, 2015

FEATURE

UNIFYING COMMUNICATION

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U N I F Y I N G CO M M U N I CAT I O N

ENSURING

DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION In the highly competitive business environment, just enabling the collaboration and communication technologies is not enough, it is important to ensure that these systems are firmly embedded in the overall framework of the enterprise and are being actively used by the employees

BY ANKUSH KUMAR

I

n APAC, India has become the key market for unified communication solutions. According to 6Wresearch, India’s unified communication market is projected to reach $1,321.2 million by 2021, growing at a CAGR of 10.2% during 2015-21. “The country’s unified communication market touched $470 million in 2014. Over the next six years, market will keep growing due to surging demand for video conferencing solutions,” says Rajat Kharbanda, Senior Consultant, 6Wresearch.

The high demand that we see in India for these technologies is coming not only from the private sector, but also the government. To ensure better collaboration between the far-flung offices of different departments and institutions, the government is deploying video conferencing in a major way. The

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Digital India initiative, which seeks to connect 2.5 lakh villages with high-speed broadband, will bring further growth to the unified communications and video conferencing market.

Minhaj Zia, Managing Director, - India & SAARC, Polycom, asserts that government is the most crucial vertical for the UC & C business. In order to grapple with budgetary pressures and meet the rising demands from citizens, the government departments have to deploy technology that will lead to better communication and collaboration. A collaborative approach leads to greater interaction and engagement between various wings of the government and their stakeholders, says Zia. “We are working to deliver low cost solutions, which can be deployed in primary schools, primary healthcare clinics and

other such establishments in villages once the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) gets completed. These solutions needs to be re-engineered as we have to look at massive scale to serve the entire market. We are waiting eagerly for the NOFN project to be completed, as it will lead to a huge growth in demand from the government for UC & C systems,” adds Zia.

Mobility for Better Collaboration Kharbanda of 6Wresearch points out that the global enterprise video conferencing market is dipping, due to the advent of software and cloud based solutions for collaboration; however, the Unified Communication market is in the phase of a healthy growth rate.

“Enterprise segment is the key revenue generating segment for India’s unified communication market. The AUGUST, 2015

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We are working to develop low cost solutions,which can be deployed in primary schools, primary healthcare clinics and other such establishment once the NOFN gets completed Minhaj Zia, Managing Director,- India & SAARC, Polycom

growth is due to the surging enterprise mobility market in India that has been growing tremendously due to the rising popularity of the mobility systems and the cloud networks. Enterprise mobility has improved the productivity and efficiency of the employees, who are increasingly using IP telephony, video conferencing system, etc. India’s Enterprise Mobility market is projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 40% in the next 6 years,” says Kharbanda.

One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the rising need for information sharing among various organisations. Tata Teleservices considers the adoption of IP Telephony by enterprises the primary reason for the growth of unified communication industry. Prateek Pashine, Head, Enterprise Business, Tata Teleservices, EXPRESS COMPUTER

says “For any enterprise, unified communications is the new paradigm for employee collaboration. Therefore the solutions in this space need to be accessible from anywhere and any device, i.e., PCs, smartphones and tablets. At Tata Docomo Enterprise Business, we are focusing on creating cost effective solutions that will simplify the collaboration process for our customers.”

“As users embrace a plethora of new devices, we are seeing the convergence of IT and mobile applications, because these users want to access business applications on their mobile devices – smartphones and Tablets. Businesses also believe that mobilising these applications will improve productivity of the employees (especially the mobile workforce), bring in process efficiencies due to process automation and most

It is important to educate partners and extend every possible support to help them in their journeytowards the cloud Alok Lall, Director - Microsoft Office Division (MOD),Microsoft India AUGUST, 2015

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importantly improve the overall responsiveness of the employees to end customers and partners alike,” adds Pashine.

Reaping Benefits of Cloud Computing

Our customers are using Google Glass,integrated with our video solution Scopia,to deliver instant collaboration Sadhanand Rajanga, Head Video Sales,Avaya India

Another growth area is around conferencing,where adoption has traditionally occurred in silos of audio,video,and web,each with unique adoption curves Sandeep Mehra, Director,Collaboration Sales,Cisco India & SAARC 24

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The key factor enabling enterprises to deploy cost effective and scalable UC solutions is the availability of cloud based solutions. Sandeep Mehra, Director, Collaboration Sales, Cisco India & SAARC, says, “We are seeing a significant push towards the cloud in terms of hosted and managed services.

This is primarily because these systems provide customers with tremendous agility, along with lower risk and the ability to scale quickly.”

“In many organisations, video has become the standard medium. While voice and IP telephony adoption continues, the major transformation is taking place around the business of video.

The earlier challenges around affordability and user experience, have been addressed through multiple innovations in this space. The stage is now set for increased adoption. Another growth area is around conferencing, where adoption has traditionally occurred in silos of audio, video, and web, each with unique adoption curves. The current focus is on unifying all these mediums,” says Mehra. He informs that Cisco’s latest collaboration meeting rooms have been designed to work across platforms and devices and ensure that all mediums come together to offer users a single, seamless unified experience in the cloud.

Alok Lall, Director – Microsoft Office Division (MOD), Microsoft India, is of the view that the area of Enterprise Social is a key pillar of Microsoft’s commitment to help people get the full benefits of cloud computing. With Office, SharePoint, Skype for Business, Dynamics CRM, and Yammer, Microsoft has the expertise, portfolio, capabilities, vision and insight to make the future for workplace collaboration a reality.

Microsoft Office 365 provides organisations with a suite of productivity tools. Office comes complete with integrated email, social networking and collaboration tools along with Lync, SharePoint, cloud

storage and Office Web apps.

The company has recently launched ‘Skype for Business’ which initially started as a tool for communication among the employees. Through ‘Skype for Business’ a person can add up to 250 people to online meetings, messaging, calls and video. The system comes with enterprise-grade security, it allows management of employee accounts, and is integrated into the Office apps. It now has features like multi-party HD video and content sharing and can even support interactive meetings.

“For businesses in India, cloud technologies are here to stay. In the light of this trend, we feel it’s important to educate partners and extend every possible support to help them in their journey towards the cloud. By doing so, we can ensure they move up in terms of the business activities they perform,” says Lall.

Expansion Story of SME As per the estimates of 6Wresearch, India’s SME base is anticipated to touch 71.3 million by 2021, growing at a CAGR of 5.1% in the period 2015-21. This will significantly boost the market for unified communication solutions. “We are seeing a huge growth in the SMB and the midmarket segment. From large enterprises we are seeing growth in a single digit, but in the mid-market, SMBs and the new customers we have registered a huge growth in the resent past. In fact as per our go-to-market strategy we have expanded our reach within one year time in the SMB sectors from 40 cities to almost 70 in India,” says Zia of Polycom.

Another rising domain for the company within SMB sector is the academic centers/ tutorials space, which is expanding rapidly within the country and have crores of turnover. The demand for coaching classes in big cities has gone up. Polycom has recently taken new orders from multiple coaching institutes.

Zia informs that few coaching centers are currently deploying UC & VC solutions to ensure that the lectures being conducted in one location can be broadcast live to students based in some other location. They are also recording the lectures and playing it whenever required. The big problem that such AUGUST, 2015

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The real-time browser-based communication systems are posing a huge challenge to the video equipment market

We are focusing on creating cost effective solutions that will simplify the collaboration process for our customers

The enterprise segment is the key revenue generating segment for India’s unified communication market

Prakash Satyanarayan,

Prateek Pashine,

Rajat Kharbanda,

Vice President and Head of Telecom & Networking Business,Tata Elxsi

Head,Enterprise Business,Tata Teleservices

Senior Consultant,6Wresearch

institutions face is that of quality teachers, but through modern technology it is possible to access the best virtualised teachers and take them to every classroom.

interest in software-centric solutions. The real-time browser-based communication systems are posing a huge challenge to the video equipment market,” says Satyanarayan of Tata Elxsi. He informs that Tata Elxsi has been working with the video conference product companies in helping them transition their hardware centric products to cloud platform and virtual environment (SDN/NFV).

“The focus for many video conferencing providers will be to bring all of the new and existing technologies, hardware and software, together. One example of such a solution are the newly emerging software-based MCUs (multipoint control unit) that will enable organisations to deploy software across their own IT infrastructure, so that every individual can have his own personal HD video, audio and mobile meeting space,” adds Satyanarayan.

Software Based Solution The ongoing shift to software-centric solutions and cloud services is creating challenges for the vendors, it is also opening new opportunities for growth.

Prakash Satyanarayan, Vice President and Head of Telecom & Networking Business, Tata Elxsi, explains that currently, the transition is taking place from hardware-based video conferencing solutions to software-based solutions.

With the explosion of mobile devices for both personal and business use, and growing utilisation of cloud-based services, companies will continue to shift from hardware video conferencing to software-based solutions.

“We are witnessing a major change in the video conferencing industry, as the manufacturers are shifting their priorities and moving from specialised hardware systems to software solutions. This is because there is vast rise in customer EXPRESS COMPUTER

Innovations through Video Conferencing “Today we have projects in India for communication-enabling IoT through video conferencing. Some of our customers are using Google Glass,

integrated with our video solution Scopia, to deliver instant collaboration between branches and manufacturing sites for quick and efficient problems resolution. We also have customers who are leveraging video-conferencing to build what we call video-enabled teller machines, extending the call center capabilities to unmanned branches and enabling customers to have video-based customer experience through these kiosks,” says Sadhanand Rajanga, Head Video Sales, Avaya India.

Avaya’s video-conferencing solutions are integrated with the video teller machines of the top 10 banks in China.

Recently this kind of system has been introduced in the Middle East and some parts of Africa. This solution is currently being tested in India by few of Avaya’s enterprise clients. The R&D team of Avaya in India has recently developed a system to deploy video conferencing for telemedicine purposes. In this system, the ambulance staff use Google Glass to transmit live footage of the patient to the healthcare staff at the hospital. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

AUGUST, 2015

25

INTERVIEW MURALI URS BARRACUDA

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“Last year Barracuda grew by double digit figures—we have more than doubled our customer and partner base in India,” says Murali Urs, Country Manager - Barracuda Networks India

Barracuda looks to improve visibility in India What is Barracuda’s strategy for the India market?

For Barracuda, India is a very important market. We are offering the key solutions for solving a range of IT problems, efficiently and cost effectively. Our products cover many distinct areas of the market—content security, networking, application delivery, data storage, protection and disaster recovery. We are maintaining a strong presence in email and web security solutions space, and we are in a position to provide the organisations with a complete end-to-end protection. The focus of the innovation that we do is to address the concerns of our customers in regard to security threats, network technology, data protection and data storage. By combining our technology with powerful open source software, Barracuda is able to delivery easyto-use, comprehensive and reliable solutions to our customers.

What kind of growth is Barracuda seeing in the Indian market?

Last year Barracuda grew by double digit figures—we have more than doubled our customer and partner base in India. We are seeing very high growth in all areas of our operations and we are now focussed on further improving the prospects of the organisation.

We have appointed Redington, one of the largest IT distributors in India, as our national distributor. As a part of this alliance, Redington will be distributing the entire product portfolio of Barracuda through its network. This partnership will help Barracuda leverage Redington’s strong reseller base of 33000+ partners across the country. This will widen the reach of Barracuda’s customer solutions. The primary intent is to engage with new partners in larger cities and strengthen the reach in high-growth tier -2 and tier-3 regions. Barracuda’s product suite gives great ROI and TCO to customers who are cost conscious thereby making it ideally suited for the SME’s. The partnership with Redington will help us tap into these high priority regions.

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What kind of competition do you face in India?

There is no doubt that India is a highly competitive market. We face competition for almost every project that we have—this is primarily because we are a portfolio company.

What differentiates us is that customers find us very attractive when it comes to our licensing policy. This is because we don’t have the system of user based licensing. Every customer who uses Barracuda always ends up buying more than one technology because they are so happy with it. So the TCO and ROI which Barracuda offers is far higher than what is being offered by the competition in the market.

The cloud sector seems set for high growth in India. What kind of opportunities are you seeing in the could?

Barracuda has been a very early adopter of cloud solutions. We are one of the first vendors to publish WAF solutions for the cloud. We work with many third party cloud vendors that are global brands. Our products are available on Amazon Web Services.

We work with partners like Microsoft Azure.

If you look at it from an offering standpoint, we are offering a range of unique services on the cloud. We are very strongly focused on cloud.

We have started our operations in the country fairly recently, our biggest challenge is to strengthen our brand awareness

What challenges do you face in India?

Considering the fact that we have started our operations in the country fairly recently, our biggest challenge is to strengthen our brand awareness. On this we are working.

We are also engaged in building a team that will work with both the partners and the end customers. Going forward we will be focussed on selling strategic solutions like WAF, Message Archiving and Next Generation Firewall to large enterprise businesses.

India is already a significant market for Barracuda’s portfolio of products, and in next few years we expect the country to become a major contributor to the company’s global revenue.

AUGUST, 2015

COLUMN TONY SANDBERG POLYCOM

5 BUSINESS ISSUES THATCAN BE SOLVED WITH BETTER COLLABORATION I Doctors and specialists can overcome resource shortages through the adoption of telemedicine solutions, and collaborate with patients and peers across any distance with the help of better collaboration

A study byWainhouse and Polycom showed that 87% of companies found video collaboration helps employees work remotely without feeling disconnected from their colleagues 28

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nnovative and reliable technology is an enabler for improving processes and business issues. However it is how the businesses apply those technologies that really makes a difference in solving the fundamental business issue which individuals, teams and organisations are facing.

Every industry, business unit, business process, and organisational function has their own specific challenges to address. Let me highlight some scenarios of how collaboration tools can help solve business issues for a variety of industries and functions.

Industry: Healthcare Business issue: Head Doctor of Neurology and Stroke faces a shortage of specialists Doctors and specialists can overcome resource shortages through the adoption of telemedicine solutions, and collaborate with patients and peers across any distance. In this scenario, there are several ways in which collaboration tools supporting the workflow of specialist care and training help the Head Doctor of Neurology and Stroke to address the shortage of specialists issue by leveraging his current expertise more efficiently.

Collaboration technology can help provide consultative care to their patients where it is needed and liaise with colleagues at primary care centres by using integrated telemedicine solutions. Connecting medical devices such as medical cameras and scopes, vital signs monitoring equipment, electronic stethoscopes with High Definition video and voice solutions at the primary care centre can assist the specialist during the consultation. Further, an integrated telemedicine solution would also support the primary care centre to schedule appointments with a specialist.

Before, during and after the consultation, the specialist, patient and the primary healthcare doctor have access to the patients’ health records including images such as X-rays supported by two-way annotation capabilities. For training of staff at the primary care centre, collaboration solutions also support recording and streaming of the video and content.

Industry: Education Business issue: Dean of a University needs to increase student intake A university can enhance their education offering and attract more students and make the best use of their education experts using collaboration solutions providing more accessibility to lessons before, during and after a lecture.

Before a lecture, ‘flipped learning’ can be facilitated by recording lectures or assignments from the teacher so students can access these files in their own time. In addition, students can form study groups working at dedicated training stations collaborating with students at home or other locations.

Content can be easily shared for discussions alongside annotation capabilities for the students, while recordings from previous lectures can be accessed for reviews and discussions.

During a lecture, collaboration technology can facilitate students from multiple universities to participate.

Students also have the ability to join the class from home yet experience what the students in the classroom experiences with the same possibilities for interaction with the teacher. Professors and experts from other universities, the business community or from other parts of the society can be brought in as guest lectures without the need for costly and AUGUST, 2015

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time consuming travels, hence providing access to top expertise that the student require from a leading university.

After class the students can view the recording or search the part of the lecture that they need to focus more on for discussing in their study groups preparing for a task or an exam.

Collaborative technology can also enable the Dean of the university to design a flexible and competitive education programme to attract new students, by leveraging existing expertise within the university as well as their eco-systems of academic partners.

Industry: Financial services Business issue: Providing faster and more personalised services to high net worth clients In the financial and investment area there is a constant and rapid flow of information and factors that influence investments decisions for a bank’s customers. High net worth clients in particular request the best expertise and analysis from their banks with a personalised service. Having the capability to provide visual communication services where high net worth clients have access to their personal client manager with the ability to consult other experts immediately, will substantially increase service offerings from the bank in order to serve their clients better. Today, banks can provide this service instantly to the high net worth clients over a secure, high quality browser-based video solution, with abilities to share and discuss content and bring in multiple experts into the discussion regardless of location.

In addition, the bank can record personalised messages and provide updates to their clients to be viewed in their own time. By using visual communication, the bank can provide clients with personal and interactive customer service to differentiate themselves from the competition and develop a long-standing relationship with the client.

Industry: Retail Business issue: Operating margin Video solutions which connect all the EXPRESS COMPUTER

stores with headquarters and suppliers can substantially improve the ability for all retail staff to learn about products and promotions directly from the suppliers themselves, or from their corporate representatives. Conducting training programmes to multiple stores simultaneously does not only save time and cost but also promotes a collaborative environment between employees, the headquarters and the suppliers.

In addition, customer support from the suppliers directly to the shop will be improved as the shop can connect over video to discuss issues with product experts.

Industry: Corporate enterprise Business issue: HR executives for a global IT company need to attract new talent and keep attrition costs down Interviewing candidates for a job via video collaboration is increasing in use today. The cost savings are obvious especially for a geographically dispersed company where a candidate has to meet with multiple stakeholders from different teams and locations. Not only do video interviews save time and cost, but it is also important for evaluating and choosing the right candidate as their communication skills, expressions and body language can be seen by the interviewer.

Collaboration tools are also playing a major part in retaining talent as flexible working options for many employees are an important factor for joining a new company or for staying in their current role. In many organisations, their top talent work from home, on the road, or in small branch offices. Further, working irregular hours is common in most international businesses of today to ensure you can be online at the same time as colleagues in different time zones. More employees are choosing to work from home to save time commuting and spend this time being more productive, thereby improving their work/life balance.

It is still very important however, that these flexible workers still feel that they are a part of a team. A study by Wainhouse and Polycom showed that 87% of companies found video collaboration helps employees work remotely without feeling disconnected from their colleagues. With collaboration tools the HR Executive at this organisation can also shorten the hiring time and cost. By offering a flexible working environment where the employees will have a better work-life balance will contribute to lower the cost for attrition.

The author is Director, Industry Solutions and Market Development, Polycom Asia Pacific

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TECHNOLOGY

S D N

A N D

N F V

SET TO GO MAINSTREAM SDN and NFV are playing critical role in the new wave of innovations in telecommunications, data centre and enterprise networking, leading to several new opportunities for Telcos

BY MOHD UJALEY

T

elecom carriers across the globe are beginning to replace their network hardware with software, a process known as software defined networking (SDN). The movement to software versions of traditional hardware, such as routers and switches, lead to lower costs and significant improvement in operational efficiency. Recently Verizon Communications announced that it was moving to software-centric network architecture for cutting costs and providing a host of new features to its customers.

With SDN the companies are able to separate the control, data, and management planes of current networks and implement them in software. With such an arrangement in place, network administrators can quickly adjust to the 30

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changing conditions and optimise their operation. Such changes can be done from a single computer without having to reprogram individual switches or other pieces of hardware. On the other hand, Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) can be seen as a sibling of SDN. It basically allows you to leverage IT virtualization technology for virtualising the entire classes of network node functions into building blocks that may be put together to create communication services.

Many companies are now leaning towards SDN and NFV to achieve agility, simplicity and scale.

Rising Acceptance It is safe to assume that currently SDN and NFV are in their infancy, there has not been any large-scale deployment anywhere in the world. However, many

companies have started doing proof of concept (PoC) and there is possibility that the actual deployment of SDN and NFV may happen soon. In India, the enterprises are showing lot of interest in SDN and NFV, and these technologies may soon achieve a critical mass. According to Gartner, the Indian server, storage and networking market stands at approximately Rs 153 billion. Of this, 5-10% is SDN centric.

“The telecom operators are always looking to deploy innovative technologies that can lower the cost of operations and improve revenues. They want to speed-up the rollout of their new services to attract new customers. The best way of achieving these goals is the path of SDN and NFV,” says Nishant Batra - vice president and head of engagement practice at Ericsson India.

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Batra further explains that the growth of 3G and ongoing launch of 4G telephony in the country will lead to increase in adoption of SDN and NFV. Operators can leverage SDN and NFV for the orchestration of a cloud-based radio access network (RAN) environment and simplification of the backhaul infrastructure. In addition to this, SDN can be used to organise traffic flows and hand-off mechanisms across small cell architecture.

Ryan Perera, country head of Ciena India, is of the view that both SDN and NFV are relatively new initiatives in the Indian context, but many (if not most) of the Indian telcos have already been engaging vendors to better understand the potential benefits and deployment scenarios for India.

“In India, during the initial days of any technology, there is a general attitude of “wait and see, and try to learn from the failures that others make—this will definitely pose as a challenge to any positive change. Also, the workforce, which is supposed to support SDN and NFV systems , must be highly motivated and they should keep abreast of the new rules of networking,” asserts Santanu Ghose, Director, Networking, HP India.

Fundamental Shift SDN and NFV are bringing a fundamental shift in communication service providers’ (CSP) approach to build network infrastructure. The network transformation is expected to happen in a phased manner. This will not only be helpful in maturing the technology introduction methods and processes, it will also de-risk the business from scenarios like the disruption of network services.

“Today, the networks are built in silos wherein independent infrastructure is deployed for mobile, fixed, and enterprise markets with minimal or no infrastructure reuse or sharing. Realising the benefits from virtualization, CSPs are stepping up the efforts to analyse the impact of virtualization. It is expected that the initial targets for virtualization will be the software components with minimal or EXPRESS COMPUTER

no dependency on underlying hardware,” says Vikram Nair, assistant vice president and global head of innovation for communication service providers segment at Aricent.

In the next 2-3 years the first steps towards virtualization are expected to find its place in the networks wherein selective independent network components will get virtualized. For instance, in LTE networks, the components that are only software implementation driven (with no specific hardware dependencies) such as mobility management entity (MME), ip multimedia subsystem (IMS), policy and charging rules function (PCRF), home subscriber server (HSS) will be the first target.

Operations support systems (OSS) transformation is likely to happen simultaneously to manage virtual assets.

This phased transformation will require OSS to support both legacy as well as virtual assets with an external management system to manage the virtualization platform infrastructure.

According to Nair in the next five years, it is expected that majority of network components will get virtualized enabling CSPs to sell Network-as-aService (NaaS). Additional network components which earlier were not targeted for virtualization because of their dependency on hardware platforms will see de-coupling of such components into control and data plane functions, with control plan functions being pushed onto virtualization platforms. For instance, in LTE networks, such network components will be deep packet inspection (DPI), serving gateway (SGW) and packet data network gateway (PGW). This phase will have OSS transformation to not only manage the virtual assets but also the virtualization platform infrastructure in a holistic manner.

Growth Drivers Major factors that drive the demand for SDN and NFV are improved time-tomarket, reduction in capex and opex and opening up of new revenue streams from business standpoint. From operations standpoint, network elasticity, multiAUGUST, 2015

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SDN & NFVare relatively new in the Indian context, but telcos have now started engaging with vendors to understand the potential benefits and deployment scenarios Ryan Perera, Country Head,Ciena India

The initial target for virtualization will be the software components with minimal or no dependencyon underlying hardware Vikram Nair, AVP and Global Head,Innovation for Communication Service Providers, Aricent 32

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tenancy and ease of operations are the key drivers.

“Telecom sector is undergoing rapid growth and change. Increasing competition with new players entering the domestic market and the availability of emerging technologies is propelling the demand for SDN. The dynamic nature of the traffic load demand, faster convergence needs, dynamic QoS (Quality of Service) and prioritisation needs and dynamic network provisioning for internal and external customers are propelling the demand for SDN in this sector,” says Ghose of HP India.

He further informs that the decreasing cost of networking infrastructure – particularly with low-cost commodity switching boxes combined with control plane software, running either locally in the box or remotely on industry-standard servers, will be more economical than traditional proprietary routers that do the same job.

“Network-enabled Cloud technology brings cloud capabilities into the network with the flexibility and elasticity to deploy software applications wherever and whenever they are needed. Services and applications can be deployed, modified and withdrawn in a matter of minutes.

Together these technologies transform the network and the cloud into networkenabled cloud – one that is more fluid, more dynamic and more responsive to emerging service needs. This is leading to optimism around SDN and NFV,” says Batra of Ericsson India.

“Telcos in India are aiming to be competitive and hence they are looking for combination of solutions which can provide them reliability, agility and security. SDN and NFV are capable of fulfilling these needs and therefore we are noticing a gradual rise in the demand for these technologies,” says Jean Turgeon, vice president and chief technologist at Avaya.

According to IDC, the SDN market in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) consists of spending from the enterprise and cloud service provider segments, is set to grow from $6.2 million in 2013 to over $1 billion by 2018.

Also, recent Infonetics Carrier SDN and NFV Hardware and Software market size and forecast report, expects this market to reach USD $11B by 2018. “We believe that there lies the real opportunity for Indian telcos. The operators should develop a clear vision of why they need to deploy SDN and NFV. Bringing in cost efficiencies through using current infrastructure and upgrade it to support future technologies is a thoughtful step that operators need to take,” points out Batra of Ericsson India.

Legacy Challenge The legacy systems are major challenge.

The revenue generating legacy assets cannot be discarded or swapped unless there exists a business case that balances the capex with opex savings over the next few years. But the legacy assets that are at the end-of-life phase must be removed.

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TECHNOLOGY

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`153Bn

Indian server, storage and networking market stands at approximately Rs 153 billion,

of this, 5-10% is SDN centric Souce: Gartner

$1

$6.2 MILLION

BILLION 2018

Growth of 3G and ongoing launch of 4G telephony will lead to increase in adoption of SDN and NFVin the Indian market Nishant Batra,

Workforce that supports SDN and NFVsystems, must be highly motivated and should keep abreast of the new rules of networking

VP and head of engagement practice,Ericsson India

Santanu Ghose,

2015

SDN market in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) consists of spending from the enterprise and cloud service provider segments, is set to grow from USD $6.2 million in 2013 to over $1 billion by 2018 Soure:IDC

$11 BILLION SDN and NFV market is expected to reach USD $11Billion by 2018 Souce: Infonetics

FACTORS DRIVING THE DEMAND FOR SDN & NFV ■ Improved time-to-market, Reduction in capex and opex, Opening up of new revenue streams ■ Network elasticity, multi-tenancy and ease of operations

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For addressing the challenge posed by legacy assets, the service providers are now focusing on developing strategies that allow the legacy and SDN/NFV infrastructures to co-exist till the time when a complete overhaul of the system can be engineered. For instance, from a commercial standpoint, capex for SDN/NFV will largely happen for new infrastructure and services, but not for swapping the legacy infrastructure and from a technology standpoint, legacy infrastructure will get controlled via the so-called proxy agents. These proxy agents will represent the legacy infrastructure as a SDN entity in the network until the legacy is replaced with SDN entity as part of network transformation.

The Telcos in India face a unique challenge, which is primarily due to the large investment that they have made for acquiring spectrum. With so much funds being deployed for acquiring spectrum, the companies don’t have the capacity to invest in network modernisation. Nair of Aricent says “There is limited scope for network modernisation or expansion, and

Director,Networking, HP India

the choice between either of those will have to be made.”

Similar opinion is being expressed by Shiv Putcha, associate research director, consumer mobility at IDC. He says, “You may not see massive roll-out or expansion but the telcos will have to focus on network modernisation for better service delivery.”

However, Jean Turgeon of Avaya is of the view that irrespective of the challenges, the service providers will make substantial investments in addressing the TTS (Time to Service). Just like MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), which required months and months of development to build provisioning tools to mask and hide the great deal of complexity associated with it, the same journey has started with SDN. Hence it is not surprising to see investment in these areas to address the orchestration challenges associated with transition to SDN. “With any new technology, there comes a learning-curve. In due course of time the full range of benefits that can come from SDN and NFV will dawn on the operators and enterprise customers in India. Once everyone knows about the economic AUGUST, 2015

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benefits of SDN and NFV, the shift to these technologies will happen rapidly,” says Perera of Ciena.

The deployment of low and cheap quality of hardware products makes it much more challenging to deploy new innovations. “India is a competitive market and the telecom space is a good example of that. Importing low quality hardware products in the market is certainly not going to stop Telcos from innovating and deploying technology like SDN and NFV when they and the market are ready for it. So we don’t see the technology transformation slowing down given that adoption of SDN and NFV technology is important,” says, Ghose of HP India.

Agreeing with Ghose, Nair of Aricent says, “If that is the case, then the argument should also hold true for SDN and NFV equipment which will have similar gap in price to performance ratio when comparing top of the line vendors and vendors offering low cost alternates. Here, the key is to appreciate the fact that benefits SDN/NFV brings, are on top of the traditional mode of operation.”

“SDN is one of the most revolutionary technologies in recent years and will continue to transform the way networks are managed, controlled and used – ultimately helping to accelerate businesses in India,” asserts, Ghose of HP India.

However, Andrew Bond-Webster, vice president, Asia Pacific at Infinera has a word of caution, he says, “In India, there are different network environment in different states, in such cases, the level of complexity increases very dramatically when you are trying to deploy SDN . From finance and short term point of view, the deployment decision could be the easy one but in longer term it can make the life more complex for operators.”

NaaS: Business opportunity Large-scale deployment of SDN and NFV is likely to have an impact on the contract between the operators, network gear makers and other stakeholders. Nair of Aricent is of the view that there could be new business models that will emerge and it will be the service providers who are EXPRESS COMPUTER

going to benefit from it.

He further says that the success with business models that IaaS and PaaS providers such as Amazon and Google had, will be replicated by service providers by offering NaaS (network as a service). NaaS will be an opportunity for engineering services companies to drive new technology introduction into the networks, deliver network programming functions in the form of apps, drive efficiency in network operations through automated and centralised network orchestration and assurance.

Agreeing with Nair, Batra of Ericsson, says that new technology introductions entail an impact on the ways of working, however, it is a little premature to talk about the impact on the contract.

“With NaaS, the enterprise customer can use bandwidth more dynamically.

With LTE / 4G services growing in India and bandwidth speeds of up to 20 Mbps being delivered through cellphone infrastructure, SDN will bring dynamic bandwidth provisioning to IP based core telco systems.” says Ghose of HP.

In India,there are different network environments in different states.This leads to increase in the levels of complexity when you are trying to deploy SDN Andrew Bond-Webster, Vice President,Asia Pacific,Infinera

The Road Ahead Given the exponential growth of the telecom space, connectivity spreading across the devices and Internet of Things likely to add more connected data sources, companies will have to overhaul the infrastructure. It is inevitable that SDN and NFV are going be the key technologies that will enable this transformation and help in better management of networks and data.

“In time to come, we will see an increasing adoption of SDN by telcos because it enable them to build and offer differentiated services to their customers, that help telcos in enhancing their position in market places,” says Andrew BondWebster of Infinera.

Batra of Ericsson is of the view that growth of broadband wireless including LTE networks and prospects of wider use of cloud applications and services which are features of SDN/NFV may bring lot of benefits for the Indian market. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

Telcos in India are aiming to be competitive and hence there is a gradual rise in the demand for SDN and NFV Jean Turgeon, Vice President and Chief Technologist,Avaya AUGUST, 2015

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INTERVIEW SAMEER RATOLIKAR CISO, HDFC BANK

SECURITY - WELL KNITTED IN ALL FORM-FACTORS & CHANNELS “Role of the CISO is to make sure that the risks are mitigated to an extent, the product is void of any risks or is only left with residual risk. A complete risk mitigation is possible by putting forth a convincing case to the business in making them to look at the product from a risk perspective,” says Sameer Ratolikar, CISO, HDFC Bank. In conversation with Abhishek Raval Recently HDFC Bank has launched the system for enabling the disbursal of personal loans in under 10 seconds to its current customers.This service is receiving good response from the customers. How is the Information

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security handled for a fast moving service as this one?

As a part of the product life cycle management, any new banking product is rolled out subject to various committee and departmental clearances. The information security group (ISG) is one of the departments. We suggest that the specific controls should be embedded as a part of the product – two factor authentication, out-of-band based authentication, transactional monitoring, right access controls etc. This results in an information security aligned product roll-out.

The bank’s ISG has a proper application framework in place.

Whenever the requirement comes up from the business for rolling out a specific product for the customers, our team prepares a simulation about what kind of threats is it vulnerable to and at what levels. To be specific, the threats on the operations part, product features, etc. Look at it from a hacker’s angle; try to break the product, breach the functionality.

We develop various fraud scenarios, which is a part of the product assessment and then suggest the appropriate mechanisms that makes the product

free from any vulnerabilities. At HDFC Bank, the business understands the importance of information security. If any of the layers is breached, it could turn into a lot of adversarial consequences. The business is aware of it. The appropriate mitigating measures suggested are incorporated in the product after the submission of the proposals by the ISG. It comes back to us again for further fine tuning. The business, if convinced rolls it out.

The role of the CISO or the ISG is to make sure that the risks are mitigated to an extent, the product is void of any risks or is only left with residual risk. A complete risk mitigation is possible by putting forth a convincing case to the business in making them to look at the product from a risk perspective.

We keep hearing that Information Security is sidelined in a hurry to achieve numbers: QoQ, yearly targets. What is your view on this?

I concur. At times, there is huge pressure and the information security review of a soon to be launched initiative is expected to be completed in under 24 hours!

Whereas a wholesome information security review for new launches requires about 4-8 days. In that case, on that particular day, we have to pour in all our energy, time and experience on the review.

In case if the original controls proposed are send back to us for further review and revision then we have to make sure that AUGUST, 2015

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the compensating controls are as robust as the actual controls, after which the permission is granted for market entry.

However, the residual risk remains.

HDFC bank leads the race in mobile banking in India.What is your approach for managing information security for the mobile channel?

Mobile banking is not very different from internet banking. The form factor changes, but the risks are more or less same. The fear of identity theft from the mobile device getting stolen is high.

There are issues regarding mobile malware. Primarily, in the world of mobile device, risk-based scenarios should be created and charted out.

At HDFC Bank, we have integrated mobile banking with internet banking as far as the transaction monitoring is concerned. So, even if the credentials are stolen, the fraudster won’t be able to add any beneficiary through the mobile device. He will have to access the internet banking channel to add the beneficiary.

The systems are engineered to be seamless, making sure that different form factors and channels talk to each other. We have adopted an integrated approach towards fraud management.

In order to provide better services to its clients, HDFC bank has partnered with many organisations. How can you ensure that a customer’s information is secure even when he is transacting on some other website?

The extent of partnership determines the approach we take. The ISG plays an active role under the following conditions - If it involves transactions happening through the website; whether the partner website is talking to the HDFC Bank website through API calls or web services calls; is there a customer data exchange involved, etc. We conduct a proper due diligence because they might not have the controls as robust as the bank. Our team check the websites for how frequently do they conduct vulnerability assessment, the kind of website application firewall they have, the kind of counter DDoS mechanisms EXPRESS COMPUTER

Organisations should follow the Prevent,Protect, Detect and Response (PDR) approach.The controls are designed based on these three categories and then a particular execution strategy is developed and website access controls put in place.

Insider theft is something that all banks have to live with. Privilege Identity Management (PIM) is considered to be a strong tool to address this threat. Both public and private banks have evinced strong interest in PIM in the last few years. Your views.

We have a privilege user monitoring solution, which monitors the activities carried out by the privileged users. The bank is now in the process of upgrading the solution to a better version. It is also integrated with the Security Operations Centre (SOC). So on a single screen, we are able to see all the activities on the dashboard.

Is HDFC bank working on any security certifications ?

Yes, we are working on PCI-DSS certification. We hope to achieve it by December.

In your career span, you have worked with a government agency, a public sector bank and two private sector banks.What lessons have you have learnt on the way?

In every organisation, the approach towards information security is different.

There is divergence in attention, structure and budgets for information

security.

My learning: Don’t take information security for granted. No matter, the necessary systems are in place, the hackers and fraudsters are a step ahead.

Another learning is to have visibility of the threat landscape. It acts as a compass to structure and strategise the information security programme.

Awareness is a key learning. No matter, how strong the preparedness of IT to safeguard the systems, it’s of no use unless the employees, customers are unaware about the basic security hygiene.

Another takeaway is the importance of structuring information security.

Organisations should follow the Prevent, Protect, Detect and Response (PDR) approach. The controls are designed based on these three categories and then a particular execution strategy is developed.

How is the bank using technology to manage frauds?

HDFC Bank has invested in Enterprise level solution for Digital Banking such as monitoring of NetBanking, Credit and Debit Cards & Merchant acquiring transactions with the capability to decline transactions with the fraud trend. The Bank is first to implement adaptive authentication technology for providing enhanced security for online transactions.

The ‘Fraud Action & Intelligence’ Service is another initiative of the Bank.

It gets insights on emerging fraud trends around the world. The bank's adoption of two factor authentication for ecommerce transactions on credit and debit cards helps in securing online transactions. Scoring engine to compute fraud score for each of the transactions is also done in the Bank.

We are also actively engaged with card schemes like Visa & MasterCard, external consultants in understanding the global fraud trends and accordingly risk mitigation strategies are decided.

A progressive investment on risk based solutions provides a safe & secure platform for our customers and the merchants. abhishek.raval @expressindia.com

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eGOVERNANCE EVENT OF THE YEAR

With 200+ guests from governance, industry and thought leadership, the 18th Express Technology Sabha was bigger than ever before.

This time the big excitement centred around the Nine Pillars of Digital India.The wave of deliberations that took place, generated several ideas and made it clear that with the pace of innovations in e-governance being high, the possibilities are pretty endless.We’re already looking forward to the 19th Technology Sabha.

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EXPRESS TECHNOLOGYSABHA

EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA 2015 Welcome Address Address by Chief Guest Candid Conversation Rajeev Chandrasekhar & Anant Goenka Power and Usefulness of Cloud Digital India,Smart Nation Powered by future cities Create a Trusted Digital Experience – Symantec Enterprise Security m-Governance in the Era of Modern Technologies for Governance 9 Pillars of Digital India - Ideas for Developing eGovernance 40

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he 18th edition of the Express Technology Sabha began at 5 PM in an auditorium packed with guests who were eager to exchange knowledge on the most pressing issues in the Digital India initiative. In the panel discussions, presentations and speeches there was overwhelming consensus that Digital India will ensure that the new e-governance projects take advantage of the improvements in technology and move forward at a rapid pace.

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Welcome Address

Anant Goenka

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nant Goenka said that The Indian Express Group had a strong commitment to promote egovernance in the country, and it was extremely encouraging that the present government is taking technology in administration very seriously. He said that the Express Technology Sabha, India’s first and largest conference on egovernance, has been consistent in making a case for e-governance during the last nine years. Coming to the present edition of the Sabha, he told the guests that the threeday conference would focus on the 9 Pillars of Digital India. “The dream of Digital India can only be realised when the government and the private companies can come together,” he said. He emphasised that urbanisation and city management were important for improving the quality of peoples lives. He said that the Smart City initiative was a step in the right direction.

“There is no doubt that the Smart City project is promising, but it is still unclear how we plan to fund such projects,” he said.

Address by Chief Guest Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

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Rajeev Chandrasekhar EXPRESS COMPUTER

n his keynote address Rajeev Chandrasekhar focused on the general theme of technology in administration, while touching upon aspects such as e-governance, Digital India and Smart Cities. He said that while we continue to take new initiatives for improving governance through the deployment of technology, it is also true that most of the large e-governance projects in the country have not yielded the desired results. He said, “eGovernance is now going beyond the usage of smartphones and social media.

There is a direct relationship between technology and efficiency that we see in the government.”

He was of the view that technology was of great importance to the government. He said. “Every

government should appoint a chief technology officer (CTO) and the country must use the technological capacity of private companies to the fullest.” Speaking on the subject of Smart Cities in India, Chandrasekhar said, “The term Smart City has been misunderstood by many to mean just technology deployment. But that is not the case, the term Smart City also envisages smarter government.

It is all about urban reforms and urbanisation.

To the delegates from government and private companies at the summit, he said that Digital India represents huge opportunity for all the stakeholders including government, private companies and ultimately people at large.

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CANDID CONVERSATION

RAJEEVCHANDRASEKHAR AND ANANTGOENKA

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP, Rajya Sabha, in conversation with Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director & Head – New Media, The Indian Express

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t was the areas of Digital India, Smart City and e-governance that dominated the conversation between Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Anant Goenka. Interesting views on urbanisation and digitisation were discussed. On how the present government is performing when it comes to the technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, “In the past, the large e-governance projects have not

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given satisfactory outcome, but the Digital India initiative of the present government has a huge potential. There is high-level of commitment in the government to ensure that this programme is successful.”

When Anant Goenka asked if the government had the capacity to spearhead initiatives like Digital India and Smart City, Chandrashekhar said, “These are really large projects. They

can only be executed when the government and the private sector join hands. The focus of the government should be in creating capacity within the government.” He went on to say that such e-governance initiatives must be seen as an opportunity to overhaul the infrastructure in the country and enable the private companies to provide better services to the people at lower costs.

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Power and Usefulness of Cloud Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India

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Prashant Shukla

n this interesting presentation, Prashant Shukla presented an overview of the key advantages that government departments can have by putting their applications on the Cloud.

Security, he asserted, is one of the key advantages of cloud. The level of security can be layered on the basis of requirement. Logging can also be done in an advanced manner.

One major advantage from Cloud, according to Prashant, is the availability of massive computing power. He gave examples to highlight the ways by which government departments could use the

power of cloud computing to provide a range of services to different categories of citizens. For instance, the farmers can be provided important information related to weather, fertilisers, healthcare, etc., through the use of Cloud based applications that can send messages directly to mobile phones owned by the farmers.

Flexibility is a major factor. Prashant shukla gave a demo of how cloud can enable the setting up of a 32 core, 500 GB RAM, 64 TB storage machine in just 10 minutes.

Digital India,Smart Nation: Powered by Future Cities Laxmi Narayan Rao, Country Leader, HP Future Cities, CTO- Technology Services, HP India

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Laxmi Narayan Rao EXPRESS COMPUTER

axmi Narayan Rao began his presentation by saying that the global economy is now the quintessential ‘idea economy’.

This is because now it has become easy to convert an idea into a business. He gave the example of Uber, which does not own a single car, but has disrupted the car pooling services. The super valued company has gained presence in 250 cities across 55 countries within few years of its existence. It has taken very few years for Airbnb to become the largest inventory of hotel rooms, even though the company does not own a single room. “Digital is disrupting the conventional business models. All businesses are thinking digital,” asserted Rao. He said that today India stands at the cusp of a transformation through digital technologies. He informed the guests that

billions of dollars were being lost in the country due to traffic snarls, but this problem can be easily solved by the use of technology. He pointed out that by 2030, 40% of the Indian citizens would be living in urban areas and 70% of the GDP would be sourced from economic activities in the urban regions. “If we use the American parlance, then India needs to create one Chicago every year to enable its citizens to realise their aspiration for urban lifestyle,” he said.

There are many ways by which IT can be used for the benefit of the poor. Rao said that HP has done lot of research for developing solutions that can lead to the development of Smart Cities where even the poor people can enjoy a safe, healthy and modern lifestyle. “HP is helping cities around the world in using technology for solving a range of urban problems,” he said.

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Create a Trusted Digital Experience Paul Gollamudi – Regional Business Manager, Information & Advanced Threat Protection, Symantec

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Paul Gollamudi

aul Gollamudi stated that the cost of computing has come down dramatically over the years. The vast downfall in the prices has ensured that the number of computing devices working in any company has skyrocketed. But this has led to another set of complexities, as larger number of devices often means larger vulnerabilities.

He gave the example of the “Audi Connect”, which is the in-car infotainment system installed by Audi in its vehicles. This system have many useful services like traffic and weather

updates, maps features, but we must also keep in mind that the system has over 400 IP addresses. “This only means that there are over 400 possibilities for attack.”

According to Paul, the enterprises are already facing huge challenges in managing the vast array of computing platforms within their network, and the challenges will reach soon a new level of complexity with IoT. He also gave an overview of the security solutions that Symantec is providing to enable enterprises to tackle the emerging threats.

m-Governance in the Era of Modern Technologies for Governance Akash Saxenaa, Director – Enterprise Business Division, Samsung India Electronics

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amsung is at the forefront of technological innovation and launching new products. The company does not outsource manufacturing of its devices and is still able to launch new products every month,” said Akash Saxenaa. He was of the view that the government can take advantage of this policy of Samsung to encourage manufacture within the country. It is possible for the government to clearly specify their requirements and the company can develop devices accordingly. It is even possible to change the firmware as per the requirements.

He expressed the view that skill development should be the top priority

for the government of India. In this area also, Samsung is playing a key role. The company has tied up with technology institutes for providing quality training to students. This initiative of Samsung fits well with the overall agenda of the Digital India programme. Saxenna informed the guests that Samsung was also working with the Government of India to develop devices that can quickly conduct an iris scan and identify people.

“Samsung is in a position to make important contribution to the Swach Bharat programme,” he said. The company has a waste management solution, which can geo-tags the garbage collecting trucks for tracking purposes. This can bring much needed efficiency.

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9 Pillars of Digital India - Ideas for Developing eGovernance

(L-R) Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India; R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM; Akhilesh Tuteja, Partner and Head of Technology, KPMG India; Amer Warsi, Director - Commercial & Public Sector, Enterprise Group, Hewlett-Packard India; Srivatsa Krishna, Secretary IT, Biotechnology, Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka

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he focus for this panel discussion was to exchange ideas on the impact that the 9 Pillars of Digital India can have on the development of e-governance in the country. The discussion began with Akhilesh Tuteja putting the question, “What steps must be taken to actualise Digital India in such a way that the government does not have to keep pushing the initiative forward, instead there is a pull effect and all the stakeholders participate in a proactive manner?

R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said, “There are many things that the government can do to make this happen. First of all the state governments and the central government must work as a team. Much of the work will be done by the private companies, the government should concentrate on developing the right kind of policies. For instance, in the healthcare sector, the government can play a role in policy formation and creating an environment where the healthcare institutions are encouraged to

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digitise patient records and use IT for improving the quality and reach of healthcare services.

On the broader subject of the Nine Pillars of Digital India, R Chandrashekhar said, “Huge effort is going to be involved in the execution of the Digital India programme. The programme will have impact on many other programmes such as Make in India, skill development, broadband connectivity, etc.” He also expressed the opinion that the programme can lead to vast improvements in the critical areas of financial inclusion, healthcare and education.

In response to Akhilesh Tuteja’s question on what should be the execution plan for Digital India, Srivatsa Krishna said that the state can play a vital role in ensuring an efficient execution for Digital India. “As far as Karnataka is concerned, the state is now working on making Begaluru the nation’s first city to have free public wifi. We are developing applications that can provide all kinds of

necessary services to the people. A mobile governance programme has already been launched for the citizens.”

Shankar Aggarwal was of the view that the government already has a good ICT infrastructure, which is being used to provide many public services. Akhilesh Tuteja said that given the fact that mobile phones have become omnipresent, what can be done to ensure that there are useful apps running on this ICT infrastructure. Shankar Aggarwal replied that there is no doubt that apps have become a convenient way of reaching out to the people. “We should have apps for skill development, healthcare, language classes, etc.,” he said. “IT must be deployed for providing quality education in local languages.”

Amer Warsi spoke about the role that the private companies can play to ensure the success of the Digital India programme. “The industry is enthusiastic about the Digital India programme, we are sure that we will be able to execute projects on time.” he said.

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Power Breakfast

by BSA | The Software Alliance

Power Breakfast by BSA How Private Sector can Drive eGovernance in the Country Securing Dispersed and Unregulated Cyber Space Stopping the Next Massive Cyber Attack Integrated Multi-Layered DDoS Protection Say YES to Information Security @Digital India Nine Pillars of Digital India Power Panel: Cyber Security for Digitally Empowered India Data Theft Prevention Agile and Secured Information Infrastructure Offering for Digital India Epson Governance Bringing Transparencyand Accountabilityin Public Procurement Battery Technology for Stand By Application Cyber Security and Investigations in Digital India Why Karnataka Rocks: State of the Art as Art of the State Power Dinner by Check Point Software Technologies Power Dinner by HP India 48

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he discussion at the breakfast table centred around issues related to licensing, technology neutrality, procurement policy, open sources and the space that commercial software occupies in overall procurement by the government. Vipin Aggarwal, who chairs the BSA India committee 2015; Yolynd Lobo, Director, BSA India; and other representatives of the BSA, presented an overview of the work that BSA is doing in India. In his opening remarks, Aggarwal said that technology was going to play an important role in execution of the 9 pillars of Digital India. Hence it is important to focus on the strategy for procurement policy and security.

He was of the view that the government’s decision to prefer only open source software in every procurement is challenging.

“Commercial software has done amazingly well in the lat 50 years, and if we don’t allow it into the government procurement, then we will be limiting the choice of the organisations,” he said.

The participants in the session were

mostly the officials form different government departments—they shared their views on the software licensing and government’s procurement policy. As the session progressed, the guests became convinced that we need to have a mix of both open source software and commercial software. Rajiv Praksh Saxena, Deputy, Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), said, “We would like to support both, open source software and the commercial software.”

As the discussion progressed, considerable emphasis was also given to cloud technology. Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, said that cloud provides a compelling economic and business case for government as well as for private enterprises. He said, “Cloud is more affordable and secure than most existing mechanism.” However, many of the representative of the government departments were of the view that although cloud was efficient and affordable, more improvements need to be made from the standpoint of security.

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How Private Sector can Drive eGovernance in the Country R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM

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R Chandrashekhar

he second day of the Technology Sabha began with the keynote address from R Chandrashekhar.

He began by reminding the audience that over the years, the Indian IT industry had adopted a reactive role while providing services to the government—they would only respond to a request. But now the time has come to take a more proactive stance. “So the question is: how can the private sector drive e-governance?” he said.

The global IT industry is changing. It’s no longer operating as a plain vanilla outsourcing for cost arbitrage. As far as outsourcing is concerned, India has a 50% market share in the global outsourcing market. However, IT is no longer delivering IT systems and processes, it is now delivering business

outcomes. The tasks that the Indian IT is executing is mostly related to running business processes, and helping optimise systems. “The service providers are now interacting with a wider range of functions such as product department, marketing, finance, etc.,” he said, “What does this mean for e-governance?”

R Chandrashekhar said that so far the government had not used the capabilities of the IT industry for process exercise. “If we can combine the power of IT with process expertise, we will be able to unlock huge efficiencies in the government sector.” He informed that there are valid reasons for the disinterest of IT industry to e-governance projects as RFPs are loaded against the IT companies and the payments often get delayed.

Securing Dispersed and Unregulated Cyber Space Anshuman Singh, Director - Product Management & Engineering, Barracuda Networks

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nshuman Singh began his presentation by reminding the audience that while most organisations are facing a resource crunch, the threat landscape keeps widening. Due to cost cutting pressures, it is difficult for IT leaders in the organisations to get budget approvals for information security solutions. There is vast rise in the sophistication of the attacks, but the information security budget continues to be static for the government and the private sector.

“According to most estimates, about 5% of the organisation’s budget is allocated for IT and a small part of this

budget is deployed for management of IT security,” he said. It is important for the organisations to secure their network, and their web applications, their email and other elements in the IT infrastructure. The threat vectors are capable of breaching any area of the IT infrastructure.

He also referred to the work that Barracuda is doing for improving the security of a remotely located mining company in China. The mining company wanted to have its ERP in an always connected state. Barracuda is today providing a secure multi-channel connectivity to the mining company.

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Stopping the Next Massive Cyber Attack Kapil Awasthi, Regional Head - North & East, Check Point Software Technologies Limited

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he modern enterprise has to deal with not just the trends like IoT, Social, Mobile, Cloud, Big Data analytics, etc., but also the threats such as hacktivism, cyber crime , etc. These trends and threats are providing multiple opportunities to the hackers. Such is the rise in the sophistication of the attacks that nobody can claim immunity from all the threats.

“This leads us to the crucial question– how can security be managed?” He said that it is important for IT officials in private sector and government to keep in mind the threats of tomorrow and accordingly set their IT security strategy.

He spoke at length about the security solutions that Checkpoint has developed for providing security to every aspect of the organisation.

Kapil Awasthi also informed that Checkpoint provides security to the Meghraj project of the Government of India. The solution is API based security.

The solution allows security related orchestration based on the changes made and also provides Machine Readable Threat Intelligence (MRTI), which is basically the ability to derive insights from the data provided by machines.

Cleaning the digital data before using is the key for the protection.

Integrated Multi-Layered DDoS Protection to Counter AvailabilityThreats to the Digital Infrastructure Samuel Sathyajith, Country Manager - India & SAARC, Arbor Networks

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n his presentation Samuel Sathyajith had many interesting slides, which gave a visual representation of the kind of DDoS attacks that are being launched against major organisatons. He informed the guests that during the last few years we are seeing a spike in DDoS attacks. There has been a vast increase in the instances of e-commerce sites being targeted by DDoS. “E-commerce vertical is being targeted because they are flush with money, and the impact of an attack on them is very widely felt,” he said.

Samuel also spoke about the Indian banks that have taken a proactive approach to shield themselves against such DDoS attacks. Their investments in security have resulted in a more secure

banking framework.

He emphasised that the time was now ripe for organisations to accept that DDoS is here and it is happening all around us. There has also been reports of organisations paying ransome to these attackers as an outside settlement.

He informed that Arbor Networks was of the view that all organisations with a public interface must take steps to protect themselves against DDoS. Arbor Networks has developed a layered DDoS protection solution, which is also being used by world’s major companies like Yahoo! and Amazon. It is time for Indian companies and government departments to also deploy similar solutions for effective security.

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Say YES to Information Security @Digital India Anubhav Tyagi, Senior Solution Specialist – India & SAARC, Gemalto

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Anubhav Tyagi

nubhav Tyagi began his presentation by saying that in order to guard against advanced threats in the environment of massive innovations in the areas of virtualization, cloud services, and mobility, the organisations must take a data-centric approach. They must insure that their sensitive information is safeguarded at all times.

He said that SafeNet offers the complete enterprise encryption portfolio that provides persistent protection of sensitive data at all critical points in its lifecycle. We provide Data centric security for securing confidentiality and integrity of data

which can be achieved via encryption technology. We recommend hardware based encryption as it will do away with software based encryption approach.

He asserted that it was high time for the organisations to become pro active in their response to security threats.

Perimeter security is not enough, we need to learn how to secure ourselves from the breaches by encrypting sensitive data, having strong authentication mechanisms, etc.

“Whatever be the scenario the approach should remain data centric as data is at risk and is the reason behind most of the breaches,” he said.

Nine Pillars of Digital India R S Sharma, Secretary, DeitY, Government of India

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n his address, R S Sharma explained the broader vision of the Digital India initiative. He said that the Digital India programme is an umbrella programme to prepare India for a knowledge based transformation. It aims to provide much needed thrust to the nine pillars of growth, namely broadband highways; universal access to mobile connectivity; public internet access programme; eGovernance: reforming government through technology; eKranti - electronic delivery of services; information for all; electronics manufacturing; information technology for jobs; early harvest programmes.

The vision of Digital India is centred on three key areas - infrastructure as utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and digital

empowerment of citizens. Cloud computing model can play a major role in providing governance and services on demand to the citizens. As per the objectives, all shall be provided access to a shareable private space on a public cloud. All citizen entitlements shall be made available on the cloud to ensure easy access. All Government documents and certificates shall become available on the cloud platform. Individuals will not be required to produce these documents for obtaining various services. Also, portability of all entitlements for individuals would be ensured through the cloud platform.

One of the nine pillars of Digital India programme is broadband highways. Broadband connectivity will be provided to all the 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats.

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Power Panel: Cyber Security for Digitally Empowered India

(L-R) Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India; Praveen Sood, ADG, Karnataka; Ranjan Dwivedi, DGP, Home Guards, Uttar Pradesh; Siddharth Vishwanath, Partner, Cyber Security, PwC India; Bhaskar Rao, ADG, Police Computerisation Wing, Karnataka; Maj. Gen. Sandeep Sharma, Indian Army; Sajan Paul, Director – Sytems Engineering, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks during a panel discussion on Cyber Security for Digitally Empowered India at the 18th Express Technology Sabha in Goa

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he discussion emphasised on the scale of cyber security related challenges that the country faces as it moves towards becoming a digitally empowered nation. In the beginning, Ranjan Dwivedi gave an overview of different mediums through which security breaches could occur. He said that the proliferation of mobile apps can lead to security breach and this problem has to be managed. Different apps require different kinds of security levels. He was of the view that mobile computing can be a major challenge.

Another concern will be from the IoT related security issues. He also spoke about the emerging threats from APT and the difficulty in discovering an APT in the system.

Bhaskar Rao described the challenges that the government departments face in dealing with cyber security issues. “Many states are planning to build a central location to control the gates of the dams.

What if the IT system managing such function gets into wrong hands?” said Bhaskar Rao. He said that it is absolutely critical for us to educate all levels of

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government officials in security related issues.

Maj. Gen. Sandeep Sharma was of the view that when there is growth in awareness about cyber security all over the world, India cannot be a slow mover in this area. He said, “NATO is already working on the protocols for digital war.”

Praveen Sood spoke from the perspective of cyber security aspects in policing. “The cyber crimes are becoming more sophisticated in nature. There are cyber frauds in which the fraudster dupes many people of small sums. As the amount involved is very small, nobody cares to file a complaint. But the thing is that by targeting multiple entities for small amounts, the fraudsters are able to collect a large sum. The police department is ill-equipped to counter such IT enabled frauds.”

Prashant Shukla, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, suggested several ways for the better management of security. He said that instead of looking at securing the data end-to-end, companies should focus on safeguarding their crown jewels. The

need is to identify the most critical data asset in the company and ring fence it.

The other data, in any case, also available through the RTI route. It doesn’t make sense to spend resources in securing that data. The priority should be to focus on the minimal that can be protected.

Sajan Paul, Director - Systems Engineering, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks, was of the view that the time is now ripe for investing in the right areas in IT security. According to a CISO survey, they usually invest in Anti-malware, Sandboxes, etc. These systems can be easily hacked. CISOs should give priority to systems like TFA, which require less investment and which are less prone to counter-measures.

Offering his recipe for fighting cyber crime, Sood recommended that we should create more cyber police stations, and also take initiatives to care awareness among users. Dwivedi was of the view that the underreporting of cyber attacks must be stopped. “There should be a clear mandate that every security breach must be reported,” he said.

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Data Theft Prevention – Adaptive Security for an Evolving Threat Landscape Gurinder Singh, Sales Engineering, Raytheon Websense

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Gurinder Singh

urinder Singh began the session by informing the delegates that to safeguard their business interests in today’s evolving threat landscape, the organisations must deploy data theft prevention with adaptive security. He informed that recently Websense has made Raytheon their security partner.

“Raytheon and Websense will empower customers to develop systems for defence against threats,” he said.

“Through this collaboration we have came up with four the Ds for management of cybersecurity: defend, detect, decide and defeat.”

He asserted that many of the government organisations that are under attack are not even aware of the attacks. There is a need for a solution that can give them protection against the

advance threats. He referred to Tom Clancy’s bestselling novel, “Red October,” in which a Soviet submarine became undetectable to sonar as it was using silent propulsion system. “Today ‘Red October’ is also known as the online spear phishing attack that has been lauded at several organisations.” He informed that such attacks lower the victim’s guard by appealing to his or her interests.

“It is important to be careful while opening unsolicited emails that have attachments or links,” he said. He informed that the customers of Websense are protected by Websense ACE (Advanced Classification Engine).

“We will continue to monitor the evolving security threats and bring further advancements to our products,” he asserted.

Agile and Secured Information Infrastructure Offering for Digital India S Rajesh Kumar, Tech Lead, Juniper Networks

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Rajesh Kumar began the session by stating that Digital India programme has a huge potential for creating superior infrastructure in the country. He was of the view that emerging technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization will play crucial role in achieving the goals of Digital India. He said, “The current trends show that cloud computing, data center consolidation, and virtualization are gaining momentum,” he said.

He expressed the view that with the movement towards digitisation, there

will now be focus on ensuring that there is efficient use of data centers. Kumar said, “The interaction within the data centers has increased and we are coming to a situation where management of data center has become an important subject for the enterprises and government.”

While highlighting the importance of connectivity, he said, “Right bandwidth should be available at the right place and at the right time.” He emphasised that now the focus is on ensuring that there is intelligence in the network infrastructure.

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Epson Governance R V Ramprasad, Director - Sales, West & South India / Sri Lanka, Epson India

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his interesting presentation began with a video of few minutes that demonstrated the evolution of the printing technologies during the last few years. R V Ramprasad said, “E-governance is being run on papers, but now the government wants to move in the direction of paperless office. Yet it is difficult for us to imagine an office without papers because the task of record keeping and verification requires hard copy.”

He said that one of the goals of the government is to reduce power

consumption. In this area Epson can make lot of contribution with the power efficient printing systems that the company has developed. The cost of printing is going up, so to tackle this problem, Epson’s latest ink-tank printers are using cost effective printing technology. “The per page cost for a colour printout is just 12 paisa through this technology,” he said. The Ink-tank printers can print 34 pages per minute.

He suggested that companies should visit yourfreeprintaudit.com for calculating how much money they have been losing on laser printers.

Bringing Transparency and Accountability in Public Procurement - Karnataka Gunjan Krishna, Former Head, State e-Mission Team, Government of Karnataka

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he Government of Karnataka implemented a united platform through which e-procurement can be done by all government agencies in the state. It is an end to end solution catering to the typical procurement workflow - from indent preparation to work completion. The project has been designed on the Public Private Partnership model.

To ensure success of the e-procurement project, a change management exercise has been undertaken. The key officials from various departments were were asked to rally support for the project.

The government employees and bidders have been trained in using the platform, which is modular in structure.

It starts with the indent management module, e-tendering module, contract management module, catalogue management module, e-auction module for auctioning of government assets, e-payment module, which has option for payments. Payment can be made online, but in rural areas the option of payment through demand draft is also available.

The security related concerns in the e-procurement platform have been adequately addressed. The system is hosted on HTTPS. The access to the bidding process is given only through a digital signature, which is encrypted on the local machine of the bidders and not on the internet. The platform is giving very encouraging results.

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Battery Technology for Stand By Application Manoj Kumar Hazarika - Head Marketing I-UPS, Exide Industries Limited

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Manoj Kumar Hazarika

anoj Kumar Hazarika began his presentation by saying that the availability of uninterrupted power and back up is of paramount importance in providing e-governance services.

“Exide Industries has always been playing an important role in bringing high-quality UPS batteries to the market,” he said. He informed the delegates that the company was currently providing long life batteries for deep cycle operations, which require continuous does of energy. “For such batteries, there is high demand,” he added.

He informed that Exide has recently

launched the Tubular VRLA, which is a combination of AGM VRLA and Flood Tubular battery types. “This battery model uses the best aspects of both the battery types,” he informed. He also spoke about another offering from Exide, the Powersafe XHD, which provides the best value for money. It is maintenance free and can operate in non Air-condition environment. It comes with a 5 year warranty and its life expectancy is more than double that of other such products.

He said, “Exide is one of the largest battery manufacturing company in India and now spreading operations in the rural areas also.”

Cyber Security and Investigations in Digital India Loknath Behera, Additional Director General of Police,Trivandrum

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ith the intention of shedding light on the unconventional manner in which the terrorists operate, Loknath Behera began his presentation by citing the case of Aftab Ansari, a terrorist, who was nabbed in 2003. At the time of investigations it was found that the terrorists don’t use mobile phones for communication, they prefer to send and receive emails through devices that are not easy to detect or monitor.

He said that social engineering techniques are one of the top risks, apart from email and spear phishing attacks. He was of the view that the government departments need to take a more proactive approach to managing their security. At times, the security issues are not

adequately addressed because of the lack of awareness in government departments.

Even the employees in the lawenforcement departments and in security agencies do not have adequate information.

“The advantage with cyber crime is that it is a rewarding activity whilst prosecution is difficult,” he said.

Evidence collection is also a big challenge because of the lack of cyber forensic tools. The country needs better forensic tools and it will be in our best interest if the tools are “Made in India”.

He said one of the key problem in investigating cyber crime is that many cops have low level of digital skills.“There is an acute need for cops trained in cyber crime forensics to be present in selected police stations,” he asserted.

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Why Karnataka Rocks: State of the Art as Art of the State Srivatsa Krishna, Secretary IT,Biotechnology, Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka

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rivatsa Krishna began the presentation by informing the audience that as on January 20, 2015, the tiger population of Karnataka was 570, the largest in the country. “This is why Karnataka roars!” he said. He provided an overview of the strides that Karnataka has made in the field of IT. He said, “Karnataka has created the world’s second largest IT cluster.”

According to him, the state government is currently working to ensure that by 2020, the state has 20 lakh IT jobs, and the IT exports are in the tune of Rs. 41 lakh crores.

He spoke about the state of the art Internet of Things lab that the state government was setting in partnership

with Motorola. Coming to the area of egovernance, Srivatsa Krishna said that Karnataka was running the country’s largest e-procurement platform, which does an annual business of $15 billion. He spoke at length about the MobileOne app, which was launched on December 8, 2014 by the President of India. He said, “Even though we are not having any marketing efforts, the app is getting about 1lakh downloads per day.”

He asserted that the MobileOne app was popular with the people because it brings together the services of multiple state and central government departments as well as private service providers.

Power Dinner by Check Point Software Technologies

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he power session began with a video presentation showing the global map that had data on which country’s information system is being attacked by hackers based in which country. The presenters from Check Point informed the guests that it was popularly believed that China is the major source of hacking attacks on India, but the truth is that majority of the attacks on the country were coming from US soil.

The guests were of the view that with the world moving towards IoT, no entity can be immune to security threats. The presenters from Check Point gave an over view of the security solutions that the company, which is the world’s largest pure-play security vendor. It provides industry-leading solutions, and protects customers from cyber attacks with an unmatched catch rate of malware and other types of attacks.

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The need is to deploy comprehensive and intuitive security management for

defending everything, from enterprise networks to mobile devices.

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Power Dinner by HP India

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nitiating the discussion, the speaker from HP said that the evolution of cloud is giving rise to many new emerging technologies for the management of different kinds of IT needs. It was also highlighted that today organisations spend up to 90% of their IT budgets on the maintenance of existing systems. According to HP, if 40% of the existing systems are migrated to the cloud, the organisation can save approximately 40% of its IT budget.

A movement to the cloud can free up the capital, which can then be used for the modernising different aspects of the organisation’s operations. The speakers from HP emphasised that there is vast increase in the number of data centres that HP is operating. It was also revealed that HP is providing cloud services to a

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public sector bank.

Much of the discussion centred around the HP Helion CloudSystem, which is currently a leading private cloud solution for a hybrid world. It is a fully integrated end-to-end, private cloud solution built for traditional and could native workloads and delivering

automation, orchestration and control access across multiple clouds. As this could platform has been built with integration in mind, it is possible for the users to incorporate cloud services with the existing IT assets, making it a perfect fit no matter where the organisation is on the journey to cloud.

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EXPRESS eGOVERNANCE FELICITATION CEREMONY The Express eGovernance Felicitation Ceremony was held to provide recognition to outstanding achievements in various areas of eGovernance. The plaques of recognition were given to the officials by R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM

Srivatsa Krishna receiving Plaque of Recognition from R Chandrashekhar ●

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Recognition of Excellence in eGovernance Implementation in North-East Donald Wahlang, Commissioner/Secretary, Information Technology Department, Government of Meghalaya Recognition of Excellence in Use of mGovernance for delivery of eServices Srivatsa Krishna, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka EXPRESS COMPUTER

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Recognition of Excellence in Bridging Digital Divide Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)

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Recognition of Excellence in Capacity Building in Information Technology Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, NIELIT

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Recognition of Excellence eGovernance Implementation in Madhya Pradesh M Selvendran, Managing Director, MP State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd, Government of Madhya Pradesh

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Recognition of Excellence eTendering Project in Goa Shilpa Shinde, Secretary to Governor; Secretary/Director, Department of Information & Technology, Government of Goa

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Recognition of Excellence for Transparency in Admissions in Junior & Degree Colleges Student Academic Management System (SAMS) Pradeep Kumar Jena, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Odisha AUGUST, 2015

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Power Breakfast

by Symantec EXPRESS TECHNOLOGY SABHA 2015 Power Breakfast by Symantec Power Breakfast byARBOR ITand Employment - Way Forward for Job Creation Envisioning Digital India Promoting Make in MP Digital India and Relevance of Video Digital Transformation and Going Beyond Smart City – Smarter Homes Important Pillar of Digital India m-Governance on e-Governance Power Panel: ICTfor Inclusive Education and Skill Development ITEnabled Smart Governance ITIndustry: Engine of Growth for India Odisha – The Promising Destination for IT/ITES/ESDM Companies SeMTConclave - NeGP 2.0 Taking eGovernance to Next Level Power dinner byAgile Labs Power Dinner by Barracuda EXPRESS COMPUTER

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he discussion at this breakfast session took an overview of the changing dynamics of enterprise security. Paul Gollamudi of Symantec spoke about the work that Symantec had been doing in this area. He explained the key benefits of the solutions that the company has developed.

He emphasised that in the last couple of years, there has been a vast transformation in the dynamics of the enterprise security across the globe. New ideas had to be developed to meet the constantly evolving challenges.

On the subject of the enterprise security solutions from Symantec, he said, “We are focusing on endpoint

security, data protection, email security, trust services, authentication and authorisation and managed security services.” On the issue of latest trends in the management of cyber security, he said that there has now been more focus on understanding threat patterns for better prediction and response to any threat.

On the role of security in government projects, he said that with the government of India focusing on Digital India and Smart Cities, the threat landscape is likely to increase with every connected and embedded device, and in such a scenario, it is important to focus on cyber security with right solutions and policies.

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Power Breakfast by ARBOR

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he presenters from Arbor Networks spoke about the company’s multiple solutions for identifying and stopping DDoS and advanced targeted attacks. They said that Arbor had an impressive track record of working for world’s most demanding network operators. It was also emphasised that company believes that the security solutions must be coordinated to mitigate attacks before they reach a customers network whenever possible, and then quickly identify and stop threats once they have made it past an increasingly pros perimeter.

It was highlighted at the discussion that as the bandwidth in India is not reliable, the internet pipe must be protected for minimising the security threats. Some of the government officials said that low bandwidth was leading to huge problems in the operations of their departments. It was said that when the

government creates a new application, it is also necessary to see that there exists

the bandwidth capacity to properly run the application.

ITand Employment - Way Forward for Job Creation Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India

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hankar Aggarwal began his address by underlining the challenges that India is facing in becoming an open economy. He spoke about the hurdles that the country has to overcome for achieving a high growth rate, which can lift people out of poverty.

He said, “We can only have sustainable peace, when we learn to value each of our citizens. Currently we are adding around 10 million people to our workforce every year, but we are unable to provide quality jobs to most of them.”

He emphasised that while the nation was growing at the rate of around 7%, not enough jobs are being created.

“In terms of Human Development Index, we seem to be going down; even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are doing better than us,” he said. He was of the view that the state of affairs could only be improved when we invest in ensuring quality education. He expressed concern over the fact that even in the best colleges in India, adequate attention was not being paid to the skilling of the students.

He was of the view that IT must be used to improve the quality and scope of education.

On the subject of labour policy, he said that it was quite unfortunate that our labour policy served as a discouragement to those who can create quality jobs.

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Envisioning Digital India: Promoting Make in MP Tarun Kumar Pithode, Project Director, MPSWAN, MP

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arun Kumar Pithode began his presentation by stating that Madhya Pradesh is promoting IT with the aim of attracting investments in the state. Many IT companies are showing interest in setting up their development centres in the state, he stated.

Speaking about the initiatives that are being taken in the area of e-governance, Pithode said, “In order to ensure the availability of good quality communication network across the state, the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) has been launched. The SWAN project ensures the dissemination of government services and information anytime and anywhere.”

“It will reduce the cost andwill provide secure network infrastructure to enable electronic transfer of sensitive data and payments.”

The MPSWAN is serving as a highway of connectivity and providing several G2G, G2C and G2B services, with a minimum speed of 2 Mbps. “We are now trying to improve the quality of services that are being provided to the citizens,” he said.

He also informed about the MP Mobile app, which has been recently launched to enable the citizens to access a range of services from various government departments, private companies and institutions through their mobile devices.

Digital India and Relevance of Video Ankur Goel, Head Corporate and Government Business, Polycom India

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nkur Goel began by showing a thrilling audio-visual presentation which focussed on the advanced gadgets that can lead to vast improvements in communication and collaboration. “We are now living in the most interconnected era in human civilisation,” he said. He was of the view “BYOD, IoT, will play the critical role in driving innovation.”

He asserted that technology is now bringing a new culture as video is becoming the preferred tool for collaboration and communication. It is important that the video should be adaptable enough for being displayed on any browser. He said that Polycom has developed the architecture for efficient video based communications.

He gave an overview of the solutions

that Polycom has developed to unleash the power of human collaboration. He spoke about the Head Acoustic Bubble, which Polycom has developed. This system dramatically reduces the background noise from the office by comparing sound of the headset microphone and the built-in microphone on the laptop or the web cam.

“The goal of the system is to make it easier for people in a noisy environment to participate in voice and video calls,” he said.

He informed that product is built into the RealPresence Desktop ver 3.1 for Windows, and is enabled under Settings/Audio Devices. It works with USB headsets. Full support including support on Mac OSX is expected in version 3.2.

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Digital Transformation and Going Beyond C R Srinivasan, Vice President, Global Product Management, Data Centre Services, Tata Communications

C C R Srinivasan

R Srinivasan stated that the enterprise IT market is evolving at a rapid pace. The changes that we are seeing in this space are being driven by digitisation. The CIOs need to adapt themselves and the IT architecture to cater to the emerging demands for digitisation. As more and more devices get added to the IT ecosystem, there is a huge need for integration and interoperability.

He informed the audience that Tata Communications has developed a standardised format for managing this distributed architecture. The system also

takes care of all aspects related to security in this highly connected platform. “We are there to help you stop the enemy when he is still closer to his own home than to your company’s network,” he said.

Currently Tata Communications is operating many data centres all over the world. These data centres support different enterprises by helping them store their information and run applications in a secure environment.

He also pointed out that government’s Digital India project is an initiative in right direction and has potential to change the IT landscape of the country.

Smart City – Smarter Homes Piyush Garud, GM- Solution Consulting, India and SAARC, D-Link (India)

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iyush Garud began his presentation by shedding light on the complexity that is inherent in the Smart City projects. “The efficient implementation of such projects is only possible when there is high level of expertise areas such as funding, urban planning, architecture, transportation, energy supply, communications, etc.,” he said. High level of partnership between the public sector and the private sector is a must for the execution of such massive projects.

He informed that being a wireless and wired infrastructure provider, D-Link has contributed immensly for smart ethernet infrastructure in the country.

He gave examples of some ongoning smart city projects to substantiate his argument. He spoke of the projects that D-Link had executed. He asserted that the Smart City projects could become

successful only when there was collaboration between private sector, government and the public.

On the question of need for Wi-Fi at at public places, he said, “Some state governments have announced their plans for developing Wi-Fi zones in public places.

In few cities these projects have already been initiated. But the thing is that there are several challenges in the management of public Wi-Fi zones. We need to have adequate security. A viable business model that is beneficial to all the stakeholders must be worked out.”

He explained that the normal ethernet device would lead to poor user experience and lower usage. This will mean a waste of costly equipments.

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Important Pillar of Digital India: m-Governance on e-Governance Vasudeo Purushottam Behere, Business Head Government Vertical, NetCORE Solutions

V Vasudeo Behere

asudeo Purushottam Behere began his presentation by stating that with the mobile population of India reaching 80 crore and growing at the rate of 8 million per month, the mobile marketing services space is now all set for rapid growth.

There are multiple channels through which marketers can reach their audience - SMS-Pull & Push; Missed Call; Voice Call; USSD. He informed that NetCORE had conducted the voice campaign for

creating awareness for the Pradhanmantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). This campaign entailed the making of recorded voice calls for reaching out to a population of about 20 crore people. According to him this is the cheapest medium for reaching out to the masses.

He also spoke about the missed call campaigns, which can be used to deliver many G2C services. He also gave an overview of other marketing campaigns that NetCORE has conducted.

Power Panel: ICT for Inclusive Education and Skill Development

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he focus of this panel discussion was to share knowledge and experience on how information and communications technology can be used for ensuring education for all.

There was overwhelming consensus amongst the speakers that ICT can lead to equity in education by ensuring improvement in the quality of learning and teaching. ICT has a role to play not only in the teaching of the students, but also in the professional development of the teachers, and in the improvement in the management and the general governance of education.

The Digital India programme, under which the government has been trying to develop a holistic and comprehensive approach for promoting ICT in education, was also discussed. The main challenges that the Government seeks to address through the deployment of ICT EXPRESS COMPUTER

Dr. Ranjan Maheshwari, Director, NIELIT; Dr. Piyush Gupta, Associate VP, NISG; Dr. V S R Krishnaiah, Sr. Technical Director, NIC; Vidya Subramanian Nath, Research Director, Digital Media, Frost & Sullivan during the panel discussion

are related to access, inclusion and quality. The view that digital education is now being eagerly embraced by the most of the educational institutions in the country was repeatedly expressed.

If the use of ICT is to have a positive impact, technology should be made an inseparable part of the teaching process, it should not be supplemental to teaching.

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IT Enabled Smart Governance Sabarish Santhanam, CTO & Director, Agile Labs

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Sabarish Santhanam

abarish Santhanam informed the audience that Agile Labs has a patented software development technology called ‘Axpert’. Essentially Axpert is an easy-touse Enterprise Software Platform for application development and maintenance. For conducting application development using this platform, it only requires Database experts and domain experts. There is no need to have high skill in several technologies.

He gave an overview of the conventional Software Development Cycle followed by Axpert and informed the audience that by using this system they could cut down their application

development time by almost 50%. There is no need to write the code in case of most applications, and hence large enterprise-scale applications can be built with far less effort. It is possible to develop business reports on site in collaboration with the customer.

He gave several examples from Rajasthan, where the government has chosen Axpert as its preferred software platform.

He said that even the judiciary can use Axpert for court management. Similarly, it can also be used for management of the skill development programme - for registering new training providers and online registration of students.

IT Industry: Engine of Growth for India Dr. Omkar Rai, Director General, STPI

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Dr. Omkar Rai

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mkar Rai began his address by acknowledging the important role that IT and electronics industry are playing in the economic growth of the country. He said that the developments that we had seen till now are just the tip of the iceberg, for there exists the scope for further unleashing the potential of these sectors and unlocking a new level of growth for the Indian economy. “It is time for the Indian IT/ITES sectors to move to next level and develop the capabilities for doing IPR based work in manufacturing and electronics,” he said.

He acknowledged that as of now the IT industry has made substantial contributions to the economy; the sector employs close to 3.5 million engineers. In the overall services exports from India, the share of IT/ITES is close to 38%. “We are doing so well in many of the parameters,” he said, “What we lack is

manufacturing of IPR based products.”

He informed that steps are being taken by the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) to boost manufacturing and tap the opportunities. He said, “with IPR based products activity we can create more jobs and earn more wealth for the country. There is massive scope for R&D based growth for the exporters.

He also gave an overview of the initiatives that STPI is taking to promote IT and electronics industry in the country. He siad, “STPI has allocated about 20 lac Sq. ft. of land bank dedicated for the start-ups, small companies and it also plans to support 50 startup companies working in the space of electronics design and product development in the next 10 years. Ten most promising startups will be selected each year based on the proposals filed by them.”

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Odisha – The Promising Destination for IT/ITES/ESDM Companies Pradeep Kumar Jena, Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Government of Odisha

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Pradeep Kumar Jena

radeep Kumar Jena began his address by informing the audience that today all states in the country are tying to develop their IT & ITES industry. In this regard, Odisha is also taking a number of initiatives to promote the sector. He informed that Odhisa was the first state in the country where STPI began its operations.

He expressed the view that the state is very well situated to become the next

major hub for IT & ITES companies.

“Bhubaneswar is a very planned city and it has excellent connectivity through air, rail, roads and ports,” he said. “There is enough space for IT/ITES/ESDM sectors to set up their development centres.”

He gave an overview of the infrastructure that the goverment of Odisha is developing for the needs of the IT, ITES and electronics players.

SeMT Conclave - NeGP 2.0: Taking eGovernance to Next Level

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n this panel discussion, the SeMT officials from states of Manipur, West Bengal, Goa and Delhi joined Nirav Shah of PwC to hold discussion on NeGP 2.0, through which the next phase of e-governance in the country is being launched.

They expressed the view that with the Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, giving approval for the Approach and Key Components of “eKranti: National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) 2.0”, the role of SeMTs becomes even more crucial. The transformational and outcome oriented eGovernance initiatives of the government can succeed only when there is an adequate capacity building in the government. Most of the states are of the view that the SeMTs have added immense value to the state’s IT endeavours. The SeMTs have expertise in the areas/functions of EXPRESS COMPUTER

(L-R) Sandeep Ahlawat, Head SeMT, Delhi; Subir Roy, Head SeMT, West Bengal; Nirav Shah, Director, Government & Public Sector, PwC India; Subhasis Chatterjee, Head SeMT, Manipur; Mangala Nagaraj, Head SeMT, Goa

Programme Management, Financial Management, Technology Management and Change Management, and hence they can make a critical difference in taking the government’s agenda of eGovernance forward.

Under NeGP 2.0, the government of

India is planning to develop systems that will ensure that a wide array of government services become available to citizens through electronic means. This will lead to efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services. The cost will also become affordable.

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Power dinner by Agile Labs

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he focus area for this session was to analyse the ways by which Axpert platform developed by Agile Labs could be used to improve the workings of the government departments. It was brought to light that the government of Rajasthan has already chosen Axpert as its preferred software platform. The Chief Minister’s office in the state has been using Axpert to monitor district level offices. The system provides the Chief Minister with the real time knowledge of what projects are in what stages of implementation. All the revenue courts in Rajasthan are also integrated to Axpert.

There are many significant advantages of using Axpert. The application development is faster than with conventional coding, hence large applications can be built with far less effort.

This ensures that the government projects get completed on time and without any unnecessary complications. As Axpert

application is process independent, change management gets simpler. Rules can be changed merely by editing the process

structures. New processes can be created by defining new process structures and mapping them to the existing ones.

Power Dinner by Barracuda

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n this session hosted by Barracuda, the discussion centred on the best of the breed security products that the private sector and the government organisations can use for secreting their systems for email, web browsing, mobile devices and remote access. The speakers from Barracuda informed that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) is one of the largest core customers for the organisation.

The company provides a range of solutions for cost effectively solving the key IT issues. The products that Barracuda offers include solutions for content security; networking and application delivery; data storage, protection and disaster recovery. An interesting range of ideas were exchanged on the solutions that can be 66

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deployed and steps that can be taken for lowering risks, improving transparency

and minimising costs with enterprises and government’s deparmtents.

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