Express Computer (Vol.27, No.12) December, 2016

Think Fiber Think CommScope Wherever your network is headed, it’s getting there with fiber connectivity.

Nothing else offers the speed and agility your growing network demands—and no one but CommScope delivers the innovative fiber connectivity solutions you need to power the high-speed, high-bandwidth networks of tomorrow.

© 2016 CommScope, Inc. All rights reserved. AD-110637-EN

Visit CommScope.com/ThinkFiber

www.expresscomputeronline.com

edit

THE IMPORTANCE OF A CASHLESS ECONOMY W

INDIA TODAY IS AT THE RIGHT INFLECTION POINT TO TRANSITION INTO A CASHLESS ECONOMY

hile the Indian Government's recent decision to curb black money by withdrawing the circulation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from the market, has created some discomfort among the masses. Nevertheless, in the long term, the benefits can outweigh the concerns. Besides, the much wanted goal of eliminating fake notes and curbing corruption, the decision can accelerate the nation's move to a cashless economy.

In a country that is used to dealing with cash, how important is cashless to the economy? A 2016 Moody’s Analytics study commissioned by Visa, stated that the increased use of digital payments cumulatively added US$6.08B to India’s GDP between 2011-2015. The report notes that if India manages to reduce its cost of cash from 1.7% of GDP to 1.3% of GDP, it can deliver savings of 70,000 crores in the next five years.

A look at similar examples across the globe show how cashless transactions has become a way of life. In Sweden, which is on its way to become the first cashless country in the world, several banks have stopped accepting cash. mPesa, the mobile money transfer system is highly popular in Kenya which allows citizens to transfer cash to anyone with a cell phone.

That said, for cashless transactions to become a way of life in India, much more is needed from a policy point of view. The government can give fiscal incentives for both merchants and consumers to switch from cash to electronic mediums. The government must also encourage mobile-based payments for mass transit operators such as metro or road transport.

India today is at the right inflection point to transition into a cashless economy. The country has one of the largest user base accessing the Internet through their smartphones. The country also has the India Stack (a set of open APIs which allows developers to leverage government platforms such as Aadhaar). For example, many banks now offer e-KYC facility by leveraging Aadhaar for authenticating and verifying a customer's details. Similarly, the 'Digital Locker' can be used for storing and accessing legal documents from anywhere in the country, while the e-Sign can enable people to sign deals and contracts using their mobile phones. The payments can be made from their mobile phones using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

While the goal towards becoming a cashless country may seem far, Akodara a small village in Gujarat, has shown how the transition can be done. The villagers use e-banking to buy everything from biscuits to vegetables using their mobile phones, and hardly use cash.

For a country which lives in its villages, India needs many more Akodara, before it can become a cashless nation. srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

3

contents

10

TELANGANA:

STARTUP STATE Under K T Rama Rao’s leadership, India’s youngest state, Telangana, is trying to attract startups and other technology innovators, by thinking and acting like a startup

Case study

feature

HOW IOCL IS USING ENABLING SMART ADVANCED HEALTHCARE SERVICES TECHNOLOGIES FOR IN PUBLIC HOSPITALS MAKING DBT MEANINGFUL 14 4

HOW ESSAR STEEL 28 USED IOT FOR CONTRACT WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SAP S/4 HANA 32 ENABLES MANGALAM CEMENT RAISE THE BAR FOR OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

18 EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

feature 36

interviews

BANKING SO SMOOTH THATITIS ALMOSTINVISIBLE

RAJEEV

27 MEHROTRA Chairman & Managing Director, RITES Ltd

Paul Cobban, MD & COO, Group Technology & Operations, DBS Bank talks about bank's differentiators in India

DAYAKARAN

news analysis 20

HOWATECHNOLOGY STARTUP IS LOOKING TO RESOLVE CALLDROPS IN INDIA

34 SRIDHAR 22

US-BASED STARTUP 75FAIMS TO MAKE INDIAN BUILDINGS ENERGY EFFICIENTUSING IOT

Senior VP digital acquisition & customer engagement, Axis Bank

POONEN 40 SANJAY Chief Operating Officer, Customer Operations, VMware

opinion 24

MAKING INDIAFUTURE READYFOR TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

JOHN

42 MANSFIELD 38

President and CTO, Hitachi Platform Division

DCB BANK: KEEPING SIMPLICITYATTHE HEART OFDIGITALINITIATIVES 44

50

HOW RANSOMWARE IS AFFECTING INDIVIDUALS, CORPORATES AND GOVERNMENTS

event 52

60

EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

58

COMBATING CYBER THREATS FOR A SAFER DIGITAL INDIA

ITAS AN ENABLER FOR POWER SECTOR REFORMS IN INDIA

EXPRESS COMPUTER

46

SUDHEESH NAIR President, Nutanix

TAMAAL ROY CEO, Biomatiques Identification Solutions

GOPALA S 62 RAJ MD, NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies

DECEMBER, 2016

5

Vol 27. No. 12. December, 2016 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Editor Srikanth RP* Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Ankush Kumar, Rashi Varshney Mumbai Jasmine Desai, Abhishek Raval DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Vinayak Mestry, Rajesh Jadhav Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING Regional Heads Harit Mohanty - West and East Prabhas Jha - North Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Ranabir Das Ajanta Sengupta Amit Tiwari Mathen Mathew Navneet Negi Circulation Mohan Varadkar Scheduling Ashish Anchan PRODUCTION General Manager B R Tipnis Manager Bhadresh Valia

MUMBAI Shankar Adaviyar, Ranabir Das 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 Ranabir Das Mobile No. +91 9820097606 Email: Ranabir.das@expressindia.com Branch Offices NEW DELHI Prabhas Jha, Navneet Negi The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India.

Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com Navneet Negi Mobile No. +918800523285 Email: navneet.negi@expressindia.com CHENNAI Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 8th Floor, East Wing, Sreyas Chamiers Towers New No.37/26 ( Old No.23 & 24/26) Chamiers Road, Teynampet, Chennai - 600 018 Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com BANGALORE Amit Kumar Tiwari The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 502, 5th Floor, Devatha Plaza, Residency road, Bangalore- 560025 Mobile No. +91 8095502597 Email: amit.tiwari@expressindia.com HYDERABAD Amit Kumar Tiwari The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division 6-3-885/7/B, Ground Floor, VV Mansion, Somaji Guda, Hyderabad – 500 082 Mobile No. +91 8095502597 Email: amit.tiwari@expressindia.com

KOLKATA Ajanta Sengupta The Indian Express (P) Ltd.. Business Publication Division, JL No. 29&30, NH-6, Mouza- Prasastha & Ankurhati, Vill & PO- Ankurhati, P.S.- Domjur (Nr. Ankurhati Check Bus Stop), Dist. Howrah- 711 409 Mobile: +91 9831182580 Email id: ajanta.sengupta@expressindia.com KOCHI Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd., Ground Floor, Sankoorikal Building, Kaloor – Kadavanthra Road, Kaloor, Kochi – 682 017 Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com COIMBATORE Mathen Mathew The Indian Express (P) Ltd. No. 205-B, 2nd Floor, Vivekanand Road, Opp. Rajarathinam Hospital, Ram Nagar, Coimbatore- 641 009, Mobile No. +91 9840826366 Email: mathen.mathew@expressindia.com AHMEDABAD Shankar Adaviyar The Indian Express (P) Ltd. 3rd Floor, Sambhav House, Near Judges Bunglows, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad - 380 015, Mobile: +91 9323998881 Email Id: shankar.adaviyar@expressindia.com BHOPAL Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India.

Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270 Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com JAIPUR Prabhas Jha The Indian Express (P) Ltd. Business Publication Division, Express Buliding, B-1/B Sector 10, Noida 201 301, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India.

Board No : 0120 6651 500, Ext:270 Direct No : 0120 665 1270, Fax No : 0120 4367 933 Mobile : 91-9899707440 Email id: prabhas.jha@expressindia.com

IMPORTANT Whilst care is taken prior to acceptance of advertising copy, it is not possible to verify its contents.

The Indian Express (P) Ltd. cannot be held responsible for such contents, nor for any loss or damages incurred as a result of transactions with companies, associations or individuals advertising in its newspapers or publications. We therefore recommend that readers make necessary inquiries before sending any monies or entering into any agreements with advertisers or otherwise acting on an advertisement in any manner whatsoever.

Express Computer® Reg. No. REGD.NO.MCS/066/2015-17, RNI Regn. No. MAHENG/49926/90 Printed for the proprietors, The Indian Express (P) Ltd. by Ms. Vaidehi Thakar at Indigo Press, (India) Pvt. Ltd. Plot No. 1c/716, off Dadoji Konddeo Cross Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027 and Published from Express Towers, 2nd Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021. (Editorial & Administrative Offices: Express Towers, 1st Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021) Editor : Srikanth RP (*Responsible for selection of News under the PRB Act.) Copyright © 2016 The Indian Express (P) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, electronic or otherwise, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited.

8

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

INTERVIEW KALVAKUNTLA TARAKA RAMA RAO MINISTER OF IT, PUBLIC ENTERPRISES, INDUSTRIES, MA & UD, GOVERNMENT OF TELANGANA

10

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

TELANGANA:

STARTUP STATE

Under K T Rama Rao’s leadership, India’s youngest state, Telangana, is trying to attract startups and other technology innovators, by thinking and acting like a startup, says Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), Minister of IT, Public Enterprises, Industries, MA & UD, Government of Telangana in an exclusive interview with Ankush Kumar Please share your vision to promote IT and electronics industry in the state? What steps you are taking to ensure that the IT industry manages to grow and thrive in Telangana?

In the last two years, out of the world’s top five tech companies we have been able to attract the top four to Hyderabad. Some of the globally recognized brands that we have in our state are Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and Salesforce. We are also in talks with AWS. Today, Hyderabad has

EXPRESS COMPUTER

become the go-to destination for the IT industry across the world. So far Hyderabad was known for software development but now we want to bring more of product companies and hardware manufacturing companies as well. We have about three mobile manufacturers in the state but we are talking to more companies which are into the consumer electronics space. We are also setting up a medical devices park in Hyderabad along with two Electronic DECEMBER, 2016

11

INTERVIEW KALVAKUNTLA TARAKA RAMA RAO MINISTER OF IT, PUBLIC ENTERPRISES, INDUSTRIES, MA & UD, GOVERNMENT OF TELANGANA

Manufacturing Clusters. The intersection of medicine with electronics is what medical devices is all about.

Hyderabad will be known as the digital healthcare capital of the country. We call ourself as the startup state of the country.

So we think and we also act like a startup.

To promote our state globally, we are also setting up country desks in various parts of the world. For example, we are setting up two country desks in North America, one in Middle East, one in Far East, one in Europe and one more in Japan or Korea.

Country desks are basically agencies that will promote Telangana abroad. Each of our desks will be given key focus areas and they will work accordingly.

What are the factors that are helping the state Government in promoting Hyderabad as the most promising investment destination in India?

The vision of our Hon'ble Chief Minister to basically not just go for IT but to also focus on various sub-sectors with IT implications. We are the first state in the country to come out with eight different sub sectoral policies ; innovation, rural technology policy, cyber security, data analytics, data center campuses and open data policy. We also have policies for animation, gaming and multi-media entertainment, etc. So all of these policies supported by the government give you lucid details for each sector. I believe that it is important for the government to back its initiatives with policies and legislation to ensure its effective implementations in India. On ease of doing business scale, in terms of quality of doing business, we are ranked very high in India. We are setting new benchmarks as we have certain advantages in terms of large pool of resources, great weather and land availability. Power/ water is not an issue, quality of living is very high and cost of living is very low. All this makes Hyderabad a naturally attractive destination. Combining this with good governance and progressive policies makes it a killer combination. Therefore, today the entire IT world is looking at Hyderabad as a go-to-destination and it will grow further in the times to come.

12

EXPRESS COMPUTER

within the state. On the advice of our chief minister, we are also trying to follow Germany’s model of duel vocational training.

We believe that GSTwill contribute in uncomplicating things and attracting lot of foreign investments What steps has the state Government taken in the areas of skill development?

I am happy to share with you that we have formed the Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK). It basically brings about an alignment of the expectation of the industry and the academic institutions. So what is being taught in the academic institutions is aligned with the industry requirement.

We have tailor made programs within TASK. For instance, if you are an electronic manufacturer and you want to come into Hyderabad and set up an industry, you require a unique pool of human resources. We can even tailor make a course curriculum and train human resources at our cost and give it to you. Our plan is to ensure that TASK reaches all the colleges and institutions

India is an import oriented economy, how do you think the Government's ‘Make in India’initiative can help in increasing overall exports?

I think the country should transform into an export hub for manufacturing because China is getting more and more expensive especially in labour costs. And China was earlier known as the go to destination in manufacturing in the past.

India is sitting on the cusp of big opportunity as the workforce in India which is 64 per cent will keep growing and it will be the biggest in the world by 2020. The country can achieve excellence in manufacturing. Make in India is a fantastic initiative. But the central government has to take more efforts and pull in different states which are progressive into this process, or else things cannot deliver as quickly as expected. As of now we import 17 percent of our requirement, which needs to change. We should not Make in India for India but make it for other countries.

Another key focus area on the Union Government’s agenda is the Smart City project. Do you think we can replicate what some of the developed nations have achieved in making their infrastructure smart?

Smart City is a very vague and abstract concept. I would rather look at certain components of the smart city and would not try to do everything in a brown-field project. For smart city projects, I would pick certain problem areas and would prefer Indian solutions from Indian companies for Indian cities. Our problem is unique, we cannot pick what Barcelona or Los Angeles have done and try to implement in Delhi or Hyderabad. So my belief is that we have to find our own formulas and solutions because it won’t work otherwise.

Any other ICT related policies that you are planning to launch in the near future?

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

We have launched eight sector specific policies. Two more are being launched in the next month. One would be on IoT and second would be on e-waste. So there would be ten policies within ICT. We are the first state to do this and we believe we will be setting new benchmarks and new standards in India.

The GST is considered to be the country's biggest tax reform.What kind of impact that you think it will have have on India 's various sectors?

We have supported the GST in parliament, we have also ratified as the state legislature the GST amendment. So the one good thing from the industry perspective is that it rationalizes lots of taxes and uncomplicates things for them.

EXPRESS COMPUTER

It is a good initiative because in this complex tax structure – one country one tax is definitely a good idea. Now how this will pan out for manufacturing state to consuming state we need to wait and see

For smart city projects, I would pick certain problem areas and would prefer Indian solutions from Indian companies for Indian cities

because the Government of India has promised to support whatever deficit that might come about for the next five years. I believe GST should ensure that the same encouragement that was offered to manufacturing states -electronic manufacturing being one of the key areas; the duty differential was helping. I believe that GST should ensure that the same level of support is maintained irrespective of what form or shape it will be. I do hope that GST will take our economy a notch up because a two percent GDP growth will be seen through GST. We also believe that GST will contribute in uncomplicating things and attracting lot of foreign investments. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

13

FEATURE

IOCL

»

HOW IOCL IS USING ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FOR MAKING DBT MEANINGFUL IOCL markets LPG products, the majority of it in the form of gas cylinders, under the brand name Indane through 9000 customer touch points. In order to keep track of the various outlets, it has developed an in-house software solution to digitize transaction processing on the dealer side. Alok Khanna, Executive Director – Information Systems, Indian Oil talks about how the company is adopting latest technologies for simplifying its processes to ensure transparency and serve its vast customer base in an efficient manner

BY ANKUSH KUMAR

P

SUs today are leveraging IT to automate business processes across various functions such as engineering, manufacturing, materials management, production, site operations, project management, etc.

IOCL, off-late has been continuously implementing newer technologies for bringing efficiency and transparency in its system. The leading PSU oil company 14

EXPRESS COMPUTER

has recently partnered with Freecharge – a digital platform provider, to allow its customers in making cashless payments against LPG cylinder deliveries across the country.

Role and Responsibility Indian Oil is the biggest downstream PSU oil company of India having annual sales of 76.5 million tonnes of petroleum

products in 2014-15. It has ten refineries, countrywide network of 9500 km long pipelines and 400 plus oil terminals and LPG plants.

This itself summarizes the scale of business on which the company operates and also states its complex IT requirements. Alok Khanna, who is the executive director – Information Systems at Indian Oil along with his DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

team is responsible for the company’s IT needs like ERP operations, software development, procurement of hardware, network, security management, business process management for IOCL consisting of ten refineries, pipeline division, 700 plus operating locations serving over 50000 direct bulk consumers as well as over 50000 dealers serving 200 million customers of EXPRESS COMPUTER

petroleum products across the country. “As the CIO of the company, I would like to summarize my role and responsibility into basically three categories: Execution, enablement and development. Under execution, I am responsible for keeping systems up and running, while keeping close tabs on the organization's overall IT spend.

Controlling the impact of IT spend on the

organization and ensuring that IT and security needs fulfilled. Under enablement, I have more of operational focus on something more strategic in nature – from improving business decisions by acting as an information broker to proactively enhance business processes. Providing insight to support business decisions and enhancing business processes by being an active DECEMBER, 2016

15

FEATURE

IOCL

business partner. When it comes to development I am responsible for developing the business further. This includes preparing and developing the organization for change and shaping the future of the business with the right technology,” explains Khanna.

»

Ensuring Transparency in DBT

IOCL markets LPG products, the majority of it in the form of gas cylinders, under the brand name Indane through 9000 customer touch points. In order to keep track of the various outlets, it has developed an in-house software solution to digitize transaction processing on the dealer side.

Almost every household in India uses

Indian Oil's network of over 45,000 customer touch-points reaches petroleum products to every nook and corner of the country. These include more than 25,000 petrol and diesel stations, including 6,200 Kisan Seva Kendra outlets (KSKs) in the rural markets. Over 9400 fuel stations across 55 cities are now fully automated. Indane LPG cooking gas reaches the doorsteps of 8.5 crore households through a network of 9144 distributors.

Managing such a vast network and ensuring transparency in the system is a massive task. “We have built a framework that supported the identification of the entitled government subsidy and transfer them directly into the consumers’ bank account,” shares Khanna.

Various analytic reports have been developed for stakeholders by deploying business intelligence tools to provide data in the form of data visualization,graphics for easier monitoring and controls

16

EXPRESS COMPUTER

gas cylinders and they were being sold at dual prices, informs Khanna. “The first task was to eliminate this from the market and this was established through a national scheme called PAHAL. Under this scheme, the product was offered at market price and the intended government subsidy would reach the customer’s bank account directly from the LPG service provider. This would be facilitated by the Aadhaar card as brought forward by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).”

By leveraging most of the existing inhouse developed Indsoft software platform and retaining the “batch” plus “real time” processing with same code base, IOCL built a framework which supported the identification of the entitled government subsidy and transfer them directly into the consumers’ bank account. This platform also enabled other government schemes like “Give it up” & “Ujjwala”.

On the LPG distributor network side, the architecture synchronizes the distributor end with the central server and exchange data in near real-time. The DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

transactions are based on the web service request – response mechanism.

On the transparency front, all the data are now available in the public domain and is accessible to the customers.

“Various analytic reports have been developed for stakeholders by deploying business intelligence tools to provide data in the form of data visualization, graphics for easier monitoring and controls,” informs Khanna. The DBTL scheme of Government of India has been recognized as the world’s “Largest Cash Transfer Benefit Program” (per the “Guinness Book of World Records”), with direct benefit transfers affecting more than 160 million households.

Khanna further informs that in the future scenario IT is going to play a major role in some of the following areas of IOCL. “It will help in providing a business platform that can handle growing scales and complexity of IOCL business, and provide accurate demand projections up to market level. This will also help us initiate end-to-end supply chain optimization to bring agility in delivering product to consumer with competitive pricing. This will drive automation in production units, supply units, supply points like retail outlets. We will also increase productivity of call centers, dealers and distributors and field officers. IT will boost customer centricity through lower TATs, convenient channels of service, self-service and social media engagement. Therefore, overall IT will increase the brand strength and higher customer loyalty.”

Bringing all applications on one platform India's largest commercial enterprise IOCL is also working on procuring a COTS dealer management solution and a CRM solution for the 50,000 plus secondary dealers of the company. The COTS dealer management solution is going to ultimately replace the strategic business unit (SBU) specific applications and all SBUs will operate on a single platform.

The CRM solution will be implemented across all SBUs and will cater to the customer relationship management functions like lead management, master data management, complaint management, grievance redressal system, loyalty management, campaign management, sales force automation, multi-channel interaction and social media integration.

Elucidating on the use of emerging technologies and its implementations, Khanna explains that IOCL is resorting to cloud services wherever required in order to bring agility in processes, “Several of our applications are hosted on a private cloud. The proposed Dealer Management System and CRM are also going to be hosted on a private cloud.”

IOCL is also exploring implementation of technologies like machine learning/ AI, ChatBots, IoT to enhance efficiency in various processes.

IT intervention in IOCL businesses IT intervention plays a major role in EXPRESS COMPUTER

Safeguarding critical information

IOCLis also exploring implementation of technologies like machine learning,artificial intelligence, chatbots and IoTto enhance efficiency in various processes delivering service through this vast network, says Khanna. “Marketing of petroleum products is undergoing a transformation in the country and each marketing organization is bringing technology based initiatives to make processes more efficient as well as connect directly with their end customers. We have come up with various mobile apps both on the B2B and B2C segments ensuring transparency, consistency, ease and rich user experience. With our field force also being equipped with the state of art technology, our time to market, grievance management and operational efficiency has improved.”

The IT policy of IOCL has been prepared keeping the impending cyber threats and risk mitigation approach against these threats, informs Khanna. “Indian Oil has implemented ISMS Information Security Management System since 2011 and has got all data centers certified for ISO27001:2013 standard. Multi-staged heterogeneous firewalls and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), DDOS are in place for all the traffic originating or destined to Indian Oil gateway. All the devices in Data & Communication Centre are put in high availability mode.

A Security Operation Center (SOC) is being maintained at the corporate data center which is manned on a 24x7 basis by highly skilled IT security professionals. The processes at SOC have been designed with full compliance to industry best practices in order to rapidly address and mitigate to the evolving threats. A SLA of 99.9 percent availability has been ensured since its inception in December 2009. We ensure proper patch management – both Antivirus & OS patches. White-listing of applications – only the trusted applications to be allowed to be executed in the ICS setup.” ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

17

FEATURE

HSCC (INDIA) LIMITED

»

ENABLING SMART HEALTHCARE SERVICES IN PUBLIC HOSPITALS HSCC (India) Limited is a "Mini Ratna" Government of India enterprise under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, offering health consultancy services. Gyanesh Pandey, CMD, HSCC shares his vision of building a smart public healthcare infrastructure by leveraging Information Technology

BY ANKUSH KUMAR

H

SCC (India) Limited is a “Mini Ratna” Government of India Enterprise under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare that offers services in feasibility studies, design engineering, detailed tender documentation, construction, supervision, comprehensive project management, procurement support services in all areas of civil, mechanical, information technology and auxiliary medical service areas.

The PSU healthcare consultancy service company, under the leadership of its CMD, Gyanesh Pandey is taking new strides towards developing smart infrastructure for public healthcare institutions. The performance of the company has also increased tremendously in the past few years, points out Pandey.

18

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

“Four years ago when I joined as the CMD, the turnover was `90 crores and now it is `1150 crores. Our job is to provide maximum returns to our shareholders. Last year we paid around `4 crores to the government as dividend and this year we are paying more than `16 crores.”

25 to 30 public hospitals and soon all these institutions can share information online. Anywhere we are involved, we are making IT as a key component of the infrastructure that we build. I am happy to see that our IT team has grown big, we have developed an IT vertical in the last two to three years. As the country faces shortage of medical professionals therefore IT enabled hospitals are important for our us.”

Key initiatives and projects Revealing how IT has become an integral part of the organisation, Pandey states, “Before I joined this organisation, IT was considered computer maintenance and LAN system for data sharing. I have always believed that the IT business is much bigger than the core construction business that the company was doing. I started with a very small project in AIIMS, of around `12 crores. I was surprised to see a huge crowd of around 30,000 people, including patients and their guardians, queue up every day for OPD tickets. It was a small hall and the challenge was accommodating such a large crowd every day. I observed this and suggested that we can renovate and computerise the whole process so that people can be accommodated comfortably. Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur OPD of AIIMS was successfully computerised. The process is online now and the effective queue management system that we implemented is enabling the public to sit comfortably. Currently we are doing computersation in 25 to 30 big hospitals.”

Enabling IT in public healthcare HSCC is IT enabling Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, including two new blocks of 1300 beds. Kalpana Chawla Medical College in Karnal and AIIMS’ new campus being built by HSCC will be paperless. “By paperless we mean when patients register they will be given a smart card. Though this smart card system is existing in many private hospitals but in public hospitals it is happening for the very first time. For rural people this is very helpful as they find it difficult to carry all kinds of reports like X-rays, pathology reports, etc. We are upgrading the IT systems in EXPRESS COMPUTER

Roadmap for smart public infrastructure

Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur OPD of AIIMS was successfully computerised.The process is online now and the effective queue management system that we implemented is enabling the public to sit comfortably.Currently we are doing computersation in 25 to 30 big hospitals

Medical procedures are being automated so that relatives of patients in other locations are well informed. “In Safdarjung Hospital, relatives of a patient can access his medical records, even on a mobile phone, through his medical id number. In Safdarjung Hospital, we have created a system wherein, if a patient is given a medicine, his relative can know the moment a nurse enters the medication details in the computer. We are planning that every medical procedure in treating a patient should be available online and can be accessed by his relative, irrespective of location.”

Talking about his vision for building smart infrastructure which is well connected and patients from rural areas are well informed, Pandey explains, “We are also planning that the smart card need not be swiped anywhere. The moment a patient with a smart card enters the hospital an alarm or warning is flashed on the computer that this patient is entering with a particular critical problem, so that medical care can be provided instantly. This entire system is still in a trial stage and we have also shown the presentation to the ministry.”

Giving further information about queue management in hospitals, he says, “Patients standing in queues are not aware of the exact counter where they need to go. Right now we are planning to build a kiosk where a patient can swipe his smart card and his entire details will come up on the screen.” ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

19

NEWS ANALYSIS

RESOLVE CALL DROPS IN INDIA

»

HOW A TECHNOLOGY STARTUP IS LOOKING TO RESOLVE CALL DROPS IN INDIA

20

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

Despite the advancement of technologies, call drops are still a huge issue.

A technology startup is looking to solve this issue through a unique solution SRIKANTH RP

EXPRESS COMPUTER

W

hile India is quickly adding mobile subscribers, and has already become the 2nd largest market in the world, the telecom infrastructure has not kept pace with the growth. Despite the advancement of technologies, call drops are still a huge issue. Call drops have become such a major problem, that it has required the regulatory body, TRAI to step in, and warn telecom operators to compensate users for dropped calls. On the other hand, telecom operators complain of insufficient spectrum allocated to them.

Technology startup, 5Barz India, believes that the solution lies in not upgrading networks and base stations, but in fixing in the last mile connectivity.

States Samartha Raghava Nagabhushanam, CEO, 5BARz India, “The real innovation is in fixing the last mile connectivity when the signal is able to reach its full strength inside buildings or closed spaces without any modifications to the building infrastructure.”

The startup has developed technologies for resolving last mile cellular network connectivity challenges and improving signal strengths in India and emerging markets through its patented products. The startup has built an extender that produces a superior 5 bar signal which indicates maximum signal strength for voice, data and video reception on cell phones and other cellular devices at homes and offices. A network extender incorporates the patented technology into a small plug-and-play box, which removes the need for telecom companies to invest billions of dollars in network (tower) infrastructure or making structural modifications to existing building infrastructure (by creating permeable and less concrete walls), to ensure signals reach optimal strength inside closed spaces.

“By engineering a technology that enhances the cellular signal quality in low or poor coverage areas and delivering high quality signal for voice and data reception, we are addressing the most important aspect of providing superior connectivity experience in India,” says Nagabhushanam.

The market opportunity According to IBEF, the Indian telecommunication services market is likely to grow by 10.3 per cent year-onyear to reach US$ 103.9 billion by 2020 being consistently higher than the Indian GDP growth rate. At the same time, the 3G subscriber base in India has grown at a CAGR of 144%.

According to a report by Deloitte, average data consumption per user in 2014 was 688 MB per user for 3G and 216 MB per user for 2G. Hence, on an average, a 3G user consumed about 3 times data payloads as compared to 2G counterparts.

“With more than 30% growth rate in smartphone usage and lower data tariffs, India has already started experiencing Scurve data growth and this trend is expected to continue in the near future.

Moreover 90% of mobile usage now happens indoors (as per Ericsson’s report on Indoor experience). This data consumption explosion with high teledensity puts tremendous pressure on the already choked network/signal bandwidth consumption, especially in homes. Considering India has over 200 million households and that our core business is solving poor performance and efficiency with connectivity solutions, India is the ideal market for an innovative technology solution that can solve the network connectivity challenges. This is as big an opportunity as it can get in this sector,” says Nagabhushanam.

The startup’s forte is last-mile connectivity for cellular and broadband networks. Currently, the top tier telecom companies are its clients. These firms are using 5Barz’s cellular solution and technology to help their customers or subscribers resolve the network issues.

Considering the opportunity, 5Barz India is estimating network extenders alone to cover cellular technology in 10,000 homes by the end of 2016 and 50,000 by the end of 2017, based on its estimates. This translates into a revenue of over USD 10 million. With its focus on resolving last mile connectivity, 5Barz India hopes to become a partner for technology players who are betting big on smart cities and smart homes. srikanth .rp@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

21

NEWS ANALYSIS

STARTUP

»

US-BASED STARTUP75FAIMS TO MAKE INDIAN BUILDINGS ENERGY EFFICIENTUSING IoT 75F Dynamic Airflow Balancing is a commercial HVAC and building control system that uses cloud computing to predict a building’s needs and proactively achieve comfort, improve air quality and increase energy savings

BY RASHI VARSHNEY

22

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

E

nergy consumption of a building registers a major cost for any enterprise today. In energy, air conditioning or air balancing comes at highest cost. One of the most serious problems for commercial buildings today is Heating Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC) – as it represents the largest single cost of operating a building.

Amidst factors like climate change, increasing air pollution and the changing demands of millennial workforce, innovative technologies comes as a boon for all. Internet of Things (IoT) as a technology spans across the economy for various purposes owing to its communication powers. Realizing the same and paying heed to the issue of air balancing, Indian techies Deepinder Singh (CEO) and Pankaj Chawla (CTO), founded 75F in 2012 in US. The startup creates solutions that harness the power of IoT (Internet of Things) and cloud computing to predict a building’s energy needs and manage them proactively, making buildings more energy-efficient, automated, smart and comfortable. The name 75F was inspired by a United Nations initiative in 2008 to make its conference rooms greener by raising summer thermostats from 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

“We believe in the promise of IoT to improve our lives by designing systems that work so well, you forget they are there,” said Pankaj Chawla, co-founder and CTO of 75F. 75F Dynamic Airflow Balancing is a commercial HVAC and building control system that uses cloud computing to predict a building’s needs and proactively achieve comfort, improve air quality and increase energy savings.

The company claims that it offers an entire solution – from HVAC airflow management to building sensors and controls and automation to Big Data analytics. “No other player in the market offers predictive, pro-active controls that are truly based on cloudcomputing and IoT. Others use legacy EXPRESS COMPUTER

at a time to achieve the perfect balance.

The system also factors in real-time events, such as occupancy, to make instant adjustments to the plan as needed.

IoT-fying Indian Buildings

There is a need to harness the power of connected devices to better control and optimize all systems inside a building like lighting, security, water usage and more Pankaj Chawla Co-Founder and CTO of 75F

on-premise server architecture with the inherent costs, complexity, maintenance and limited life,” said Chawla. Since its inception, the startup has worked with 99,000 commercial buildings in India and 15,000,000 worldwide.

How does it work 75F installs multiple ‘wireless zone controllers’, which senses and collects data from the room every minute and sends the data to the Central Control Unit. Each night, cloud computing algorithms analyze thousands of data points, including weather forecast data feed that allows the system to predict future conditions.

A new set of instructions are sent to the Central Control Unit and the dampers are modulated a few degrees

The company recently started its business operations in India with R&D facility in the country. “We launched operations in India in August 2016, and hope to hit ` 100 crores in revenue by end of fiscal year 2018-2019,” told Chawla.

The company has installed over 1000 control zones in the US, and the clientele includes Taco Bell, Yoga Fit, Magnet 360, Rockler amongst others. In India, the company has clients across sectors such as e-commerce, BPO, airports, etc.

The co-founder also told that the company is now focused on establishing its foothold in verticals like IT/ITeS, healthcare and hospitality, in about four major metros in the country.

“Even though we are still at the initial stages of our business operations in India, the response from the customers has been very positive.

Indian facility managers are increasingly becoming energy conscious while at the same time are prioritizing occupant comfort and safety. Customers see value in investing in our truly predictive, pro-active and self-learning solution that drives away inefficiencies increasing their bottom line,” said Chawla.

In the current calamitic situation, there is a need to harness the power of connected devices to better control and optimize all systems inside a building like lighting, security, water usage and more. “We strive to provide smart systems that are both easy to deploy and easy to use, thus giving building owners and facility managers insights into how their buildings are performing in real-time allowing them the power to manage and optimize their building resources sitting anywhere in the world,” said Chawla. rashi.varshney@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

23

OPINION V S PARTHASARATHY M&M

MAKING INDIAFUTURE READY FOR TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION Technology is growing at an exploding rate, changing the way we function in our daily life.

We are celebrating the win of robots over top-notch players in complex games, eagerly waiting to buy our first autonomous car and discussing smart cars, smart devices, smart cities and what not.

But is India ready to be at the forefront of technology innovation?

India’s innovation journey

Corporate, Government and the public are the ‘trimurtis’three key stakeholders who will be at the forefront of the innovation journey.Together they will build ‘the pyramid of prosperity’and lead India in its innovation journey

As per Global Innovation Index 2015, India ranks 81 out of 141. We are a slow and late adopter of technology. Color TV came to India in the 1980s, however Japan had already started developing HD technology by that time. At present farmers in the US are using drones and geographic information systems (GIS) to manage irrigation problems, soil variation, and pest infestations, Mobile apps to calculate the grass level. Israel, a desert country, has become a world-leader in agriculture technologies whereas our farming is largely at the mercy of nature, we lose hectares of the harvest every year to drought or flood. The medical world is advancing through technologies like telesurgery, telehealth while in India more

24

EXPRESS COMPUTER

than 70% of the population lack access to advanced medical facilities. A report from the World Economic Forum and Harvard School of public health in 2014 says that India would incur a cost of nearly US $5 trillion by 2030 owing to non-communicable diseases and mental illness. The world is gearing up to take transportation to the next level with concepts like Hyperloop and driverless cars, on the other hand, we are struggling to provide cheaper, faster and easily accessible travel options for commuters.

These are just a few instances how we are still lagging behind other developed nations. The problems are numerous so are the reasons. We have issues with affordability, economies of scale, distribution of resources. We are still DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

largely dependent on R&D outcome of other countries with India’s R&D expenditure never exceeding 1% of its GDP. But the situation is not completely bleak. The last couple of years brought significant change in the attitude towards innovation and technology adoption. We are slowly but surely marching towards a digital future. ‘Thoda hai par bahut ki jarurat hai’. Instead of just imitating the strategies of western nations, the focus should be on creating our own. To continue on the path towards becoming a pioneer in technological innovation, all the stakeholders should come together and play their part. Corporate, Government and the public are the ‘trimurtis’ - three key stakeholders who will be at the forefront of this innovation journey. Together they will build ‘the pyramid of prosperity’ and lead India in its innovation journey.

Role of Government as a facilitator Just think about what transformed India digitally – Jandhan, Aadhaar and mobile numbers (JAM trinity) and UPI. All these transformed and liberated India. And even as we talk about there is a massive transformation happening both in India and Bharat. None of this can be undermined. We have come a long way. And the government is leading from the front.

The Government has unveiled ‘Technology Vision 2035’ attempting to envisage the country’s technology future.

Initiatives like Digital India, Startup India, and Aadhaar are examples of few steps taken to achieve this target. As per World Bank Doing Business Ranking 2016, India was ranked at 130, 4 ranks ahead of previous year’s ranking. While this achievement is laudable, it signifies India has still a long way to go. And the government will play a major role in facilitating the creation of nationwide digital infrastructure which will enable different sectors to grow, likewise maintain a smooth regulatory framework for new business to grow.

India’s R&D expenditure may be dismal, nevertheless we are able to attract FDI in research with various companies setting up their R&D centers EXPRESS COMPUTER

in Chennai, Bangalore, Pune or Hyderabad. We have experienced a hike in the number of entrepreneurial ventures launched in fields like medical, biotechnology where research plays a major role in success. All these calls for increasing funding for research and innovation, promoting public-private partnership and facilitating access to global research infrastructures.

Government as a facilitator can create a framework to support the innovation drive in the nation. Few steps that can be taken are easing policies for startups and new businesses, making technology an important part of higher education, investing in infrastructure, providing financial support to SMEs, and creating more flexible job markets. The government should form the firm base on which the pyramid of prosperity will rise.

The middle layer of the pyramid is the partnership angle where the trimurtis should come together. It is the layer of PPGS – private, public, government and social partnership.

Role of public as innovation ambassador The general public has awakened to the opportunity of becoming a technologically advanced nation. Digital literacy is on the rise so is the internet penetration; India is now the 2nd largest base of internet users. Similarly, the mobile data consumption is growing nearly at 65% rate annually. This shows people are showing interest to access

digital services like e-commerce, online banking, and e-learning. They are actively participating in government initiatives. When smart city project started, citizens actively contributed from ideation to gathering support. The motive was to bring their cities at par with global megacities. They do not want to remain as beneficiaries, they wish to drive the change themselves.

The public can play the role of the cocreator along with the research scientists.

In this day and age, we have seen several companies opening up their new product/service design as a challenge to public as part of competitions. Public, especially younger generation is actively participating in these and coming up with innovative solutions. This is of enormous benefit as participants from non-research background bring a social dimension to innovation.

One more arena where the public has played a significant role is tech entrepreneurship. India is the third largest startup ecosystem globally and one of the fastest growing. The average tech entrepreneur has become younger, sharper and better. While age may not necessarily hold any direct correlation with the success of the startup, rise in number of young entrepreneurs indicates that they are not afraid of taking the plunge into entrepreneurship early in their career. More tech startups will lead to further innovation and mass job creation. Here one may argue this has limited contribution in India’s innovation DECEMBER, 2016

25

OPINION

www.expresscomputeronline.com

V S PARTHASARATHY M&M

journey as the success rate of the tech startups is not even 10%. But then again, Thomas Edison had 1000 unsuccessful attempts before inventing the light bulb with each failure contributing in enhancing the final output. Likewise, each failed startup can lead up to a new idea, a new story and a new success.

Role of corporate as change incubator The corporate has a dual role to play: social benefactor in the middle layer of the pyramid and economic value creator in the top layer. Corporates are contributing 2% of their net profit for CSR activities, working in education, healthcare, and other sectors. Like Project Nanhi Kali by Mahindra group which works in the girl child education domain or Project Samudaya by Cisco to build homes, schools and healthcare center for flood affected people. Can we bring digital aspect to the social development tasks we are undertaking?

For example, women safety is a major concern for our society, can digital technology transform it? We all believe so. There are multiple safety apps available. Tech Mahindra has a safety application ‘Fight Back’ which is not only for mobile devices but part of physical devices like digital key chain, lockets, etc.

Despite all these has crime truly gone down? This is just one example from the myriad of social issues we are facing.

Corporates have a significant role to play along government in this aspect.

The topmost pyramid is for business, profit making, which will ultimately lead to prosperity. Being digital is the key to success here. Time and again we have experienced new technologies disrupting existing business models. e - commerce in the retail segment and mobile banking in finance are few such examples. We have already experienced the journey from ‘ATM to Paytm’; who knows in the future we may have a completely different mode of transaction. Products will change to services; business models will transform to business moments. No company will know who its competition is.

Consequently, there is a constant need for corporates to keep themselves 26

EXPRESS COMPUTER

abreast of technology advancement and innovate accordingly. Decades back, the ‘bluechip mantra’ for the corporates were – leadership, global presence, financial returns and customer centricity. On top of this base, business were able to sustain and grow. Now, innovation stands at the core of this mantra. Business cannot just survive on cost arbitrage; innovation arbitrage is the new norm.

In the past, most of the consumers used to be the passive participant in the business transformation journey. Now, after being digitally enabled, they are driving the change. Their expectations for advanced product and services have grown manifold. Therefore corporates

need to revamp their business model and competitive strategy, taking inputs from these empowered consumers. The best way to do so is by collecting enormous data from different sources like social media, surveys, customer feedbacks, etc, and using the power of analytical tools to generate productive insights.

Corporates have access to global business market much better than the general public or government. Large organizations have acquisitions and alliances across the globe. They are in a much better position to learn and bring new technologies to Indian soil. Also, they have the financial capability to invest more in research and innovation. By enhancing their research capability, corporates can create new employment opportunities for public. Consequently, people will be educated in new skills and industry as a whole will be benefited from it.

One more arena where large corporates can contribute is by mentoring entrepreneurs. The benefit will be twofold. Startups will be able to gain insight from already established businesses whereas corporates can link the startup’s innovative ideas to their own organizational processes and strategies.

Mahindra also acts as an incubation center for startups. We have tried to develop a startup ecosystem within the organization by utilizing our in-house talents. Initiatives like SmartShift, Trringo, M2ALL are few such examples.

We believe in the concept of disrupting ourselves before anyone else disrupts us.

If I must visualize the future of technology as a movie, we will be in the opening credit. The story is yet to unfold.

At present India is following the developed nations in its journey to become a digitally advanced country. We may have started late, but being digital is the only way we can take on the world. In the future, we may become the forerunner showing the path of innovation to rest of the world. For now we have miles to go; not just last mile.

Are we at a riverlet, a pond, a river or an ocean? We must reach to the ocean stage where there will be “Water water everywhere and every drop to drink”.

– ByVS Parthasarathy, Group CFO,Group CIO,M&M DECEMBER, 2016

INTERVIEW

www.expresscomputeronline.com

RAJEEV MEHROTRA RITES LTD.

MAPPING THE VALUE OF DIVERSIFICATION “With our in-house IT as well as outsourced development we are able to monitor the direct cost booking, the overheads allocation and the profitability of each project at anytime,” says Rajeev Mehrotra, Chairman & Managing Director, RITES Ltd. In a conversation with Ankush Kumar, he talks about how the company has diversified its business over the years to sustain its competitive edge Tell us about the company’s business and how it has evolved over the years?

Rites is basically a consulting company with almost 70-80 percent business coming from the consultancy domain that we initially started for railways and then moved on to highways, airports, seaports, etc. Put together, you will find that there is a stable growth because if one sector falls, the other covers up for the deficit. In the last five years, we have grown almost 13 percent in our core area but growing forward, there is good competition coming from consultants outside India as well as Indian consultancy groups. I see lots of growth in railways investments. We have a very good order book now and as the investment continues to peak, I see good growth prospects for RITES in the next 5-7 years. Another area that has picked up very well in last one year is airports and we have a clear dominance in the country now in terms of consulting experience. We are present in about ten large cities in the country and it’s a large organization as we have about 3200 people, of which about 2300 are engineers (technical experts). So it is really an important challenge to see that where they are deployed and what projects they are doing.

How crucial is the role of ITfor your business?

We have a very good IT based support system for decision making or I would say performance management. We typically have around 800 projects of various sizes going on currently. With our in-house IT as well as outsourced development, we are able to monitor the direct cost booking, the overhead allocation and the profitability of EXPRESS COMPUTER

should hopefully integrate all the business units on ERP. We are now looking at data analytics.

each project anytime. We also have to allocate the manpower as well as the overheads to these projects and based on this database, we have an excellent system of management by exception.

What kind of ERP has been adopted by the company?

About ten years back we were in the range of 600 crores turnover. Today, we have almost doubled this in the last nine years.

The challenge now is to keep up with the systems that give confidence to the management. Our subsystems and systems are in place to take care of the financial and other commitments. So there is a lot of focus on those procedures, systems that are adopted in the ERP system that we have introduced in the last three-four years. Earlier we used to work on a homegrown system, now we have gone for ERP from SAP. Most of the business components have been already covered in this. By the mid-of next year, we

How is the company using the online medium for solving its various business problems?

We are trying to increase the interaction with our clients through our online portals as through our inspection portal, a client can put in his request and monitor his inspection call. A major initiative that I would like to share is that we have most of the employee services online. Leave application to performance management, performance related papers; provident fund etc is now through ePortal. We call it employee self service and this is accessible through the Internet. Another major initiative is on eTendering side. Our tenders are of various sizes including services, works and small procurements.

Therefore the company doesn’t need raw material very frequently. PMC (Project Management Consultancy) is one of the key areas for Rites. We have a team of people who can conceptualize a project, who can do a detail feasibility design of the project, who can do tendering and then who can also do monitoring of the project.

This company was started with only `10 lakh paid-up capital. From `10 lakh to `150 crores, we have grown exponentially. The government has never contributed further cash. The initial `10 lakhs has a networth of `1800 crore today. Our numbers look small because we book only fee income and the total project handled. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

27

CASE STUDY

ESSAR STEEL

»

HOW ESSAR STEEL USED IOT FOR CONTRACTWORKFORCE MANAGEMENT The IoT solution of contract workforce management system by FlamencoTech helped Essar Steel to register an estimated billing savings worth Rs 15-18 crore per annum, along with 100% compliance adherence for medical, safety, PF & ESIC

BY RASHI VARSHNEY

28

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

E

ssar Steel India is an integrated steel producer with an annual production capacity of 10 million tons. Essar Steel’s manufacturing facility comprises ore beneficiation, pellet making, iron making, steel making, and downstream facilities including cold rolling mill, galvanising, pre-coated facility, steel processing facility, extra wide plate mill and a pipe mill. The steel plant located at Hazira has modern infrastructure like a power plant and a port that can handle 30 million tonne cargo annually.

The area is a mega steel plant at Hazira, Surat, covering approximately 400 hectares and is accessed through five gates. There are a total of about 12000 such workmen who are indirectly employed in the steel plant for various jobs through contractors. The business problem Essar was facing was the monitoring of the‘check-in’ and ‘checkout’ time of the contract workforce. The engagement of contract workforce inside the steel plant is work/job oriented and hence can be for a variable time period (number of days) depending upon the work type. The company could not keep a direct recording of the various contractor teams, as their constituents are dynamic.

The company felt a need of an IT central procurement cell to better manage the large contract workforce.

Besides the workforce management, the company was facing several other challenges, including security.

Considering the dynamic nature of the contractor teams, a real time people counting under various plants is very important.

Multiple registrations of constituents at various levels were creating duplicate identities and thus giving false people count and EXPRESS COMPUTER

identifications. Also such events create an advantage for blacklisted people to change identity and register with fake identity, thus posing a serious challenge for the security personnel in maintaining peace and harmony in and around the premises. Tracking workmen entering and exiting the large area was a challenge without proper processes and a well crafted and executed technology solution.

Challenges in contract cell / procurement Assigning contracts to contractors (industry experts) and tracking the workmen requirements in terms of turnouts on any given day was also a big challenge, especially with a manual gatepass process. The Contract Cell also needed to staff contracts with the right workmen and had to rely solely on business user inputs for knowing the contractor / workmen performance during the period of their service. In such cases trending contractor and their workmen performance was also not practically possible.

Challenges in industrial relationship and environment health safety Manually tracking contractor compliances in terms of wage payments, ESIC and PF payments is mandatory process as per contract labour law.

Managing non-compliant contractors and their workers was a huge and almost impossible challenge with the manual processes. Tracking labour license and workmen compensation policy expiry was another challenge. As per safety compliance, restricting workmen with an expired medical and safety certificate is mandatory. But manual tracking failed to achieve such regulatory norms.

Managing workmen attrition and upgrading and tracking individual skills was also a big challenge in the manual process.

The IoT solution Essar resorted to FlamencoTech solutions to solve the challenges.

FlamencoTech is an IoT Soutions company offering solutions for Smart Worksites, Smart Buildings, Smart Healthcare and Smart Retail. Our unique value is a combination of domain and process expertise, our own IoT Platform, the Digital Blanket, several pre-packaged solutions along with an Service Management Overlay to create unique highly scalable solutions to solve real-life problems.

This Work Associate ID or WAID project involved extensive process analysis, requirement analysis, use case development, stakeholder approvals, hardware and software integration, operational process modification, middleware customization and cloud hosting, work-associate registration of over 12000 users, training of contractors, work associates and stakeholders, work associate mentoring, extensive testing and correction, pilot run and then finally production.

The WAID solution developed on FlamencoTech’s IoT platform, the Digital Blanket, has automated the existing processes to make them better and faster and also helped modify some of the existing processes and has helped the company improve its services and reduce its costs and has the potential of deeply impacting the business performance on a continual basis.

Integrating and digitizing various processes in contract labour assisted Essar Steel to overcome all of the above

DECEMBER, 2016

29

CASE STUDY

challenges. Associating / mapping entities like contractors, contracts, work associates, skills, shifts and also the automation of the various processes like enrollment, allocation, authorization, authentication, compliance, medical and health records and police verification helped in tracking and managing issues related to contract labour law, multiple employment, duplicate identities, etc, and eliminated paperwork.

The entire WAID solution runs on Microsoft Azure Cloud with local authentication. The work associate entries and exits are tracked and authenticated locally and synced to the Microsoft Azure Cloud in near real-time.

The WAID application with its reports and dashboards are accessed by the Essar stakeholders and the contractors through a secure web portal.

The work associate authentication is based on RFID and biometric (Fingerprint & IRIS) and leverages FlamencoTech’s scalable IoT Platform, Digital Blanket. All the data in the cloud is encrypted and the data transfer is secured through 256 bit SSL. Thus the deployment is very secure, safe and also ensures highest availability, performance and reliability. This solution can scale to several hundred thousand work associates as the need arises.

The digital gatepass along with

30

EXPRESS COMPUTER

Âť

ESSAR STEEL

automation is a significant step towards a transparent work culture. The work associate enrolment (biometric) creates an unique identity for each work associate. In addition, associating contractors and contracts with the skilled associates and their current and updated skills and certifications avoids violations at various levels. The WAID system also assists Essar stakeholders to simplify the authorization process and thus eliminate paperwork and also duplicity of work while ensuring the environment, safety, health and industrial compliances.

Once a gatepass is approved by all stakeholders, the work associates are allowed entry to the premises under a valid gatepass for a configurable period or duration. The work associate now can leverage technology enhancements using biometric, RFID, and barcode, etc, to mark their presence in Essar premises. The technology helps to track real time people counts, long absenteeism (absconding cases), overstay at work, late arrivals at work, early goings, etc. Trending and patterns assists future improvisations in processes and thus improving productivity continuously. Reports, analytic dashboards, notification and alerts allows quick responses/action against violations and analytics helps in intelligent decision making. The deployment architecture allows reliable functionality even during multiple points of failure.

The results The WAID system brings in complete control and automation; there is data available with extensive transaction details, which allows extraction of several metrics across various dimensions. The data is now available to multiple stakeholders across the business process as per

their roles and authorization rules. In past 3 years, Essar Steel has successfully leveraged benefits from the WAID solution deployed at their Hazira Campus. Essar Steel is tracking and managing contract labour compliance, safety and medical compliance, wage payments, industrial compliance and ESIC PF payments. Automation of processes have eliminated duplicacy of work thus improving employee performance. Reducing the paper usage has assisted Essar Steel in reducing the Carbon Footprint. Digitizing various documents have made documentation reliable and handy. The digital gatepass process has reduced the authorization timelines and assisted third party contractors to deploy skilled resources transparently. The WAID Solution has assisted Essar Steel in getting real time head counts, actual duration on premises and controlling authorized people movements. Centralized work associate database has assisted Essar security to gather information related to work associate identity, education, DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

qualification, experience, reference, etc.

There are several benefits that have been evaluated during project approval, including reduction of labor costs through time management & control, work contract mapping with workmen skills, time-based payments compared to earlier paper certifications, regularization of wage payments and medical checks, safety regulation monitoring and weeding out irregularities which were observed in the past.

Increased efficiencies through workflows, contractor freedom to engage and disengage valid workman into his team, wage payment for workmen based on valid attendance proof, mapping of contractor, workmen, time period, statutory compliances and payments, database of past employment records and skills of workmen, debarring ‘blacklisted’ workmen EXPRESS COMPUTER

permanently, real-time checks on overstaying inside the plant and overtime work and security validation on entry and exit gates.

“At the outset let me place on record that WAID has changed our outlook towards management of contractual labour. The system covers the entire process of management of labour to include their skills, regulatory issues, time and shift management and of course their safety and security at work place. An associate does not have to worry about his attendance or entitlements. A contractor can’t manipulate the same. He is assured of his PF and ESIC contributions being regularly paid on time. Then he doesn’t

have to carry so many cards, papers or credentials with him. One WAID card speaks all about his medical, safety, IR clearances and due date thereof, his PF and ESIC number and references, etc.

These are some of the reasons why an associate feels connected with the system and the company he works for. And once he feels connected every day you could watch him confidently and cheerfully walking in for his job. He is motivated to give his 100%. He seeks more responsibilities and challenges. He does not have to depend on anybody for most of his job-related benefits but on his WAID card and WAID system. That associates have developed a bond with the company is reflected in their increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and downfall in their attrition rate. At the end of the day it is good to see smiling faces exiting ESSAR Steel’s Security gates,” said Col. Rakesh Vasal, Head Security & Fire, Essar Group, Hazira. rashi.varshney@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

31

CASE STUDY

MANGALAM CEMENT

»

SAP S/4 HANA ENABLES MANGALAM CEMENT RAISE THE BAR FOR OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY In the highly competitive cement sector, the implementation of SAP’s flagship product, SAP S/4 HANA will help Mangalam Cement reduce fuel, production and sales and distribution costs significantly

BY ABHISHEK RAVAL 32

EXPRESS COMPUTER

A

ccording to a recent cement sector report by Religare, cement volumes will grow 7-8% CAGR over FY16-FY18. This will be primarily driven by a renewed government thrust on big-ticket projects such as the dedicated freight corridor, state metros and low-cost housing.

On the back of this positive macro outlook, cement majors like Mangalam Cement, have been boosting their production capacity. The firm has expanded its production capacity to 4.0 MTPA from 3.25 MTPA, at its factory in Kota, Rajasthan.

To further boost their efficiencies, cement manufacturers like Mangalam Cement, are trying to improve the productivity of the entire value chain using the latest technology. The firm is DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

among the first few firms in India to take the lead and implement SAP S/4 HANA ERP. “Among all, the tool will bring in tremendous benefits in saving fuel, production and sales and distribution costs,” says Yaswant Mishra , President (Corporate) & CFO, Mangalam Cement. High freight and fuel costs are some of the costs that directly affect margins for cement manufacturers, and a technology like SAP S/4 HANA ERP, will help in improving efficiency.

After going live on SAP S/4 HANA on 1 April, 2016, Mishra is upbeat about the implementation. He says, “After implementing, SAP S/4 HANA, the management is expecting a minimum 2-3% of savings on logistics-related costs. Advanced information availability will enable us to take decisions about how, when and where to send the material”.

SAP S/4 HANA: The power of real time for the entire value chain The real time availability of data guides the firm to take the right decisions at the right time. “The S/4 business suite will also help us in sending the right material to the right location, which will help us in reducing the number of godowns in a particular location, which in turn will lead to reduction in costs,” says Mishra.

The gate entry system at the company’s factory in Morak, Rajasthan and Aligarh, UP have been completely automated. “We have got rid of the manual system of registering the incoming and outgoing material. The visibility of the goods in transit (GIT) is also a major benefit. For example, in case the goods have left the Morak factory for Jaipur, the related person can view the GIT,” says Sandip Pradhan- IT Head, Mangalam Cement Ltd.

Taming freight and production costs The cement prices see swings on a daily basis. “The main cost for us is the freight cost. If we use SAP S/4 HANA and optimize the routes taken by the vehicles to deliver the consignments, EXPRESS COMPUTER

and go by destination pricing mechanism, it will result in a definite reduction in the freight costs which has a direct bearing on the bottom line,” says Pradhan. The greatest advantage with online and real time monitoring of raw material consumption allows the management to take appropriate decisions to reduce the production costs.

After implementing SAP S/4 HANA, both the freight and sales & distribution costs – the top two cost items will reduce to a considerable extent and production costs will also reduce.

In the legacy ERP system, the production, plant maintenance and “Quality management modules were absent but in the SAP S/4 HANA system, these three modules are also integrated. In the long run, this will help us big time in improving the operational efficiency to a great extent,” says Mishra.

Faster decision making by the top management Mangalam Cement has also implemented, the Decision Support System (DSS) tool, Business Objects (BO). It is composed of near to real time dashboards – logistics, commercial, production available on laptops and mobile. This is useful for the top management to take decisions quickly and also find root cause analysis of various challenges.

Due to the disconnected processes, there was a requirement to do a lot of reconciliation at the month end. The MS-Excel has been eliminated and access to any financial reports is possible in a matter of clicks. The ‘SAP Fiori’ makes SAP S/4 HANA available to the top management on mobile for faster decision making.

Mangalam Cement has bought about 320 licenses of SAP S/4 HANA and 30 separate licenses for Business Objects and SAP S/4 HANA. This marks the beginning of becoming a true digital Organization. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

The greatest advantage with online and real time monitoring of rawmaterial consumption allows the management to take appropriate decisions to reduce the production costs Sandip Pradhan ITHead - Mangalam Cement

Among all,the tool will bring in tremendous benefits in saving fuel, production,sales, and distribution costs Yaswant Mishra President (Corporate) & CFO, Mangalam Cement DECEMBER, 2016

33

INTERVIEW DAYAKARAN SRIDHAR AXIS BANK

THE DIGITAL CIRCLE Eighteen months ago, India's third largest private-sector bank, Axis Bank, set-up ‘Digital Circle’ as a new channel to focus on customer engagement, acquisition and cross sell. So far, the newly established channel has covered most of the retail banking products under its umbrella and within a year, it has achieved break-even. The division is now aiming to become one of the primary channels for the bank. In an interview with EC's Mohd Ujaley, Dayakaran Sridhar, Senior VP - digital acquisition & customer engagement, Axis Bank shares his views on the technology driven Digital Circle. He says, “If everything continues the way we have moved in last 18 months, Digital Circle could become a strong channel for the bank in the years to come.”

What is the role of Digital Circle in Axis Bank?

Like telecos operation which is split into circles, we also have circles in banking sector. 18 months ago we established a new channel called Digital Circle to engage with customers digitally. For the bank it is a new business line.

What business proposition Digital Circle has brought for Axis Bank? Is there any impact on physical branches?

Branches have been and will continue to remain a very critical mode of reaching out to the customers. With Digital Circle, we figure out the need of the customers and accordingly create solutions for them. As you know there are a bunch of customers who have a lot of requirements but cannot be served by the branch because of the physical, geographic and resource limitations. But fortunately with the help of technology, this challenge could be address centrally and this is what companies like Genesys omni-channel CX solutions bring to us from a customer proposition perspective.

With the help of their solution, we are just a call away, video call away or chat away from a customer. Today, we are almost on the fly – that is the proposition Digital Circle brings to the bank.

In terms of what it can do for the bank, the plans are huge but without getting into specific numbers, I must tell you that we have already become a relevant channel. The thought process is that if everything continues in the same way – in 34

EXPRESS COMPUTER

18 months ago we established a new channel called Digital Circle to engage with customers digitally.For the bank it is a new business line terms of the way we have moved in the last 18 months – we believe it could be a strong channel in the years to come.

What have been the major achievements of Digital Circle in last 18 months?

First, we have been able to create a new business model for the bank and I personally believe that this is the future.

And, internally we are trying to create that thought process across multiple business groups. Above all, the management clearly believes that there is future in this setup.

Second, we have been able to cover most of the retail banking products, which is an achievement in itself because typically banks would do it productspecific. So there are specific people who are doing this for specific products. So now there is a lot of specialisation involved in the Digital Circle.

Third, we have brought actual value to

the bank. For example, we have achieved break-even in the first year of operation itself. That is something which shows that not only we are on the right track but customers are also happy with what we are doing.

Based on your experience, what is your view on the direction of digital banking business in India?

Let me share our experience, we have created a three year road-map after researching the different facets of the market. When we started off, it looked really far off kind of an effort but as we speak, we are on track to achieve our defined goals – we are right bang in the middle of it.

So, my feeling is that there is definitely potential for this kind of a setup. Also, there are organisations, in the US and in eastern Europe who are following this digital model. Right now, the process is not standardised – everybody is doing it in their own way – but we strongly believe that the way we are doing, will be a gamechanger in the years to come.

Is the Digital Circle fully focused on high valued customers or do we see the channel also playing some role in financial inclusion part of the bank?

Nothing that we do is only for the high valued customers. Basically, it is about giving the right proposition to the right people. So, there could be a relationship manager (RM) of a different caliber for an affluent customer. Similarly, for a DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

mass-segment, there would be a different kind of RM. It is not that we are only servicing the top end of the customers.

We are servicing across the spectrum, with different propositions for different customers.

As far as being part of the financial inclusion goal of the nation is concern, I believe Digital Circle could be a great enabler. Right now, we are in a phase where we are still exploring these things.

Currently, we have not thought about a business plan for it but it can be done.

For banking sector compliance to RBI guidelines are key. Do you see any challenge on that front for Digital Circle?

Basically, Digital Circle has three major focus areas – acquisition and cross sell, digital high-value customers, and customer engagement – all these relates to our own customers. There is nothing in the RBI guidelines which says that you cannot contact your customers remotely.

With Digital Circle, we are addressing the specific requirements of the customer with the help of analytics solutions.

In general, there is nothing which is completely compliant, that is why I always use the term 'compliance'. For example, I heard that a bank is doing the end-to-end process for liability accounting. To my knowledge, we cannot do the end-to-end process because the RBI guidelines say that we have to visit the customers. So, we still visit the customer. We want to be digital but obviously compliance comes first.

You mentioned about use of Genesys CX platform, can you tell us more on – how technology is spread-out in the back-end for Axis Bank?

For us, it is a combination of multiple things – it is not only Genesys. Genesys platform, we use to connect to the customers. Parallely, there is a CRM which is in the back-end, which has all the customer relationship related information. In addition, we have a Digital Experience System (DES) for agent and RM. DES provides combination of all the information needed to serve the customer. So basically, these three are inter-related EXPRESS COMPUTER

systems in the back-end. We have also integrated Secure Trading Payment Platform (STPP) core-system so that the actual delivery can happen seamlessly.

Why have you chosen Genesys CX platform? Did you also evaluate solutions from any other companies?

Yes, we did evaluate other technologies.

Without mincing words, first parameter that we looked at was cost because we need to look at return on investment (RoI). Apart from the cost, we did look at the quality of the solution, the ability of the partners in terms of being able to implement what is stated, and the flexibility because we came up with an inhouse solution. So the partner needed to be flexible enough to accept, rather than coming in with some pre-conceived notion. And, the fourth was time to market. We aimed and achieved fastest time to market. So, somebody who could commit these to us was also a factor.

We covered all the things, when we went out to search for a partner who could help us deliver great customer experience. Personally, I believe this is how banking will move going forward – banks will continue to have branches, but

with the changing demographics, digital is going to be the way forward, where people would prefer 'self-service digital' and if needed, bank should be ready to provide support with the click of a button.

What are you future plans?

Right now, we want to engage maximum customers. This model is still in infancy.

We see value in it for the customers and for the bank. That is probably the reason why it is moving forward. Now, the critical part is to take this digital relationship model to the next level, in terms of making it one of the primary channels of the bank.

That is what we will focus on, may be over the next couple of years.

On the mass front, we will keep on reaching out to customers as the number of the customers in this segment is huge.

We will increase our reach and work around strategy to segregate customers to be served in the branch or digitally as per their needs.

The other piece would be to concentrate on the STPP by figuring out within the river veins of compliance to offer best experience. mohd.ujaley@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

35

FEATURE

DBS BANK

»

BANKING SO SMOOTH

THAT IT IS ALMOST INVISIBLE Because of our investment in human centred design we have come up with the concept of, ‘Making banking joyful’, says Paul Cobban, MD & COO, Group Technology & Operations, DBS Bank

36

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

T

he idea of having a digital bank was born two years ago, when we recognized that the idea of banking is changing dramatically.

The banking landscape in near future will be unrecognizable as it is today.

Technology sector is recognizing this change in BFSI. At the same time, we realized unless we do something about this all of our traditional revenue is going to be eaten away. We had already made lot of significant investments in the preceding five years in data centre design, innovation, technology in terms of breaking down boulders of monolithic systems into micro-services or pebbles which has smaller components making it more configurable. We came to a point where we realized that we had got the foundation of this investment and saw these threats coming alongwith huge opportunity. That is how we made the decision to come up with Digibank.

The reason we came to India is multidimensional .Firstly, the infrastructure stack in India is very compelling. At that point of time banking in India was quite frustrating with lot of bureaucracy and form-filling. Yet with this new stack we thought we could differentiate ourselves by embracing that and offering very seamless banking.

Secondly, two years ago we just started seeing the pick-up of smartphones in India.

It was a sudden tipping point. The network coverage was still a bit patchy. The challenge was how to create a mobile bank when network was unstable. It was a key engineering challenge we needed to address. If we were in a place like Singapore where 4G was in 99% of the area, we would not care how big the footprint of the application was, how many calls it makes to do a transaction etc. We knew that could not be relied upon here, so we chose the footprint of the application and reduced the need for flows between the phone and host.

It does not work in zero coverage. The constraining factor for us right now is the banking licenses. There are only certain cities where we have the license.

Journey from boulder to pebble In 2009, our CEO set the vision to be the best bank in Asia. When we set ourselvesa new vision, we wanted something quite EXPRESS COMPUTER

Can we create an eco-system where we form partnerships with other companies and offer banking services that customer doesn’t even know? To do that we need to make a few decisions in terms of investment in technology, breaking down monolithic systems into micro-services Paul Cobban MD & COO,Group Technology & Operations,DBS Bank

ambitious. We ended up centering on, ‘Making banking joyful”. Because of our investment in human centred design we came up with this concept. Banking is clearly not joyful and the reason nobody thinks like that is because nobody wakes up and says that it is a great day to do some banking. Banking is usually part of someone’s day to get some things done.

Thus, for example if going on a holiday buying air ticket is only a small portion of it.

We have trained a lot of people in human centred design and one of the aspects it focuses on is the job to be done and what the customer is really trying to do. Digital banking is to make the banking part almost invisible, in the same way. Can we create an eco-system where we form partnerships with other companies and offer banking services that customer doesn’t even know?

To do that we need to make a few decisions in terms of investment in technology, breaking down monolithic systems into micro-services. We have also a tagline that we want to become the D in ‘Gandalf’ (Google Amazon Netflix Apple Linkedin.

Facebook). We have an aspiration to operate like these other companies and not just in term of technology. All of them have gone from boulder to pebble story. They also have aspects of culture that we want to reinforce. For example, Netflix doesn’t have a vacation policy but allows employees to take as many leaves as they want. They allow the staff to be more creative and give them lot of freedom, but on the other hand they need to perform. We are introducing elements like this slowly. In order to behave like a technology company we need to think differently around what kind of people we hire. In Digibank team we have hired people with no banking experience like designers, entrepreneurs, innovators married with traditional bankers and eventually these guys are working seamlessly together. The non-bankers are the ones that push boundaries.

One of the major concerns for BFSI is always security. We take security extraordinarily seriously. Everytime there is a breach news we analyze and make sure that we are secure from such an attack. As far as Digibank is concerned, we have put lot of engineering into applications and processes to make the security very responsive and visible.

This is an area where simplicity is very challenging. To get security one typically trades off visibility. We have managed to achieve high level of security and to make most of it visible to our customer. In big markets like India when you enter there are attackers looking out to attack from first day. We are very aware and have high monitoring to identify such attacks.

– As told to Abhishek Raval and Jasmine Desai DECEMBER, 2016

37

OPINION SAMEER JAINI DCB BANK

DCB BANK: KEEPING SIMPLICITYATTHE HEARTOFDIGITAL INITIATIVES DCB Bank has introduced a slew of digital initiatives with many more lined up.

However, keeping simplicity at the heart of these innovations is what brings out the best in them, opines Sameer Jaini, CTO, DCB Bank, as he shares the key digital initiatives undertaken by the bank

We will collaborate heavily with the Fintech community on our digital initiatives.What they bring is innovation and speed, and we bring distribution and capital 38

EXPRESS COMPUTER

A

s former Washington Post investigative journalist and KrebsOnSecurity blogger Brian Krebs told attendees at ISACA’s CSX conference, ransomware is becoming more targeted and more expensive. Recent discoveries from multiple security companies demonstrate that the ransomware threat landscape is rapidly evolving to incorporate new tactics and propagation methods.

Our most unique offering is Aadharbased ATM. It is a simple concept. We have linked Aadhar to the account number of the customer. The customer can just put their thumb print and take the cash out. Nandan Nilakeni inaugurated our ATM in Bangalore when he mentioned that Aadhaar-based ATMs was one of the use cases they had planned while doing Aadhaar. Over a period of time, more and more Aadhaar based ATMs will be coming across the country. One does not need a card or PIN. It is encrypted end-to-end. It gives permanency. The bank does not have to dispatch another PIN. The second option is card and biometrics. One might have forgotten the PIN, in which case the customer can use biometrics. And lastly, the card-based PIN model is always available. Thus, there are varied options for customers to choose from.

Another digital initiative is around fixed deposits. If a customer wants to open an FD, he does not need to come to a branch. Customers initially may only want to set-up a term deposit or fixed deposit account with us. Without doing much campaigns, we have been able to get customers not only from metro areas, but from really far-flung areas which we were not anticipating. We are making exit also easy. Normally, banks

make exit difficult. But we have a process wherein customers can onboard, process and offboard themselves.

Omni-channel play Another initiative we are working on is around a real omni channel platform which can handle multiple services of customers in the same structured way. If the customer accesses the account or a transaction through PC or mobile, he can see the same transaction. This is to make it the channel agnostic. We will also collaborate heavily with the Fintech community on our digital initiatives.

What they bring is innovation and speed, and we bring distribution and capital.

There are lot of innovations in the queue.

Over a period of time, you should see us associating with multiple Fintech partners.

We are also looking at multiple scenarios of IoT where it can be leveraged. For example, when we disburse a loan on a tractor, can we track usage of the tractor? We are looking at Chat as a platform. Chat as a platform ought to have AI behind it or else the customer is typing in his details and writing natural English, and if AI is not behind the scene, then one cannot figure what he said during his previous interaction. For our website, we made a very simple look where it is not cluttered and does not confuse the customer.

Even our lending side is digitized. A customer can know about his account details on the app. There is an app for missed call. With a missed call, the balance will come up automatically. It is not innovation, but simplicity out there.

For example, when a customer comes to a branch, he may not have the required documentation with him. So we have DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

rolled out eKYC. Thus, he can do his KYC or KYC refresh there.

Making it efficient for employees Another internal innovation is DCB Delight, wherein we give a customer kit, and the servicing is done in just half an hour reducing the overall turn-around time of a transaction. We are more into frugal engineering, and do lot of development in-house. We have rolledout a mobile based collection platform. It is a platform to digitize a customer touch-point.

Even from an employee perspective, digital initiatives have to be about how to make their work simple and efficient. For EXPRESS COMPUTER

We are also looking at multiple scenarios of IoT where it can be leveraged. For example, when we disburse a loan on a tractor, can we track usage of the tractor? example, employees had to look into multiple systems to get customer details.

However, it leads to increased turn-

around time. We built a system through which the front-line staff has the information available immediately. No training was required for this.

Sales staff used to keep excel sheets to track their meetings. We have a tool now, which they use for all their meetings.

They know who to meet, who they have already met and the entire meeting cycle can be tracked. Also, to enable instantaneous decision when a sales staff is meeting a customer, there is a tab kind of platform where basics like KYC is done immediately. They can process the transaction during the meeting itself. – As told to Jasmine Desai DECEMBER, 2016

39

INTERVIEW SANJAY POONEN VMWARE

IOT IS A BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR US India represents one of the top growth markets for VMware when it comes to End User Computing and, the company is excited about the opportunities that are emerging for the business. In 2015, VMware’s End-User Computing business grew over 30% year-over-year. In an extensive interaction with Srikanth RP, Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer, Customer Operations, VMware, shares VMware’s mobile strategy, and why he is excited about VMware's expanding role in the digital era How does VMware look at the opportunities unleashed by the wave of digital transformation initiatives undertaken by organizations?

At VMware, we look at business in two halves. One is digital transformation of the data center preparing it for the world that’s increasingly using cloud computing.

The second or maybe the top part of that is digital transformation of the workplace, and preparing it for the mobile era. The data center has the cloud digital transformation, the workplace prepares for the mobile transformation. India and China collectively represent a significant part of the mobile workforce. And increasingly many other countries in Asia, the younger generation is accessing the Internet much more through a mobile device than through a PC. So in the workplace transformation space, the key problem we are trying to solve is allowing business people to work at the speed of life.

For example, for listening to music, you don’t carry around 200 CDs with music.

You have it on the cloud, and have it streamed to you.

Young folks who are used to using Facebook or Instagram are shocked at how complex is enterprise IT. So. what we are trying to do is radically bring consumer simplicity to the world of enterprise security. In essence where we are trying to be consumer simple and enterprise secure. And, we bring together the concept of virtualization, mobility, desktop virtualization, and the concept of mobility and concept of identity management. And then we combine this 40

EXPRESS COMPUTER

probably number two and three in the market to the unquestionable number one in mobility. Market share wise we are ahead of anybody else and now we are seeing enormous attraction. India is killing it. Japan is doing really well. Australia is doing really well. China is trying to ramp up. We are seeing lot of potential. Asia for us is going to be a hot proposition.

How does India rank? Does it have the highest growth?

I don’t compare it with the others but it is going to be in the top three -- Japan, Australia, China, India. For end user computing, I think India has done better than China so far. In terms of employees, and number of citizens in the population, there is huge potential in India and China.

with some of the deep technology that we have in the data center like storage virtualization, network virtualization and network security. That is the power of VMware being in the data center and in the end user world. We believe that it is an incredible combination So how is this business growing from last year?

This business was about 300-400 million when I joined 3 years ago. And of course in the last 3 years, we crossed a billion dollars last year. AirWatch is the key part to that. I drove that acquisition. It’s sort of been my baby, so I put my adrenaline to make sure it is successful, and in two years, it is done really well. We have gone from being

So what does the opportunity look like?

We can’t quantify it. We think it’s about a 10 to 15 billion dollars total available market. We are only a billion last year, so there is lot of room in there and we are the leader. So we have a huge opportunity to continue to grow inside that total market.

Our competitors are very fragmented. I have a very strong cultural heritage with India and I think we have a huge potential in India and other parts of Asia. But the rest of the world is also doing well.

There was a recent alliance with AWS.How big is this for your company?

All the cloud vendors would like to work with us. We are a well regarded king maker in the private cloud. We are the leader in the private cloud. So every cloud vendor DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

would like to work with us because we represent 500 thousand customers over 15 million workloads. AWS is the leader in the public cloud and you want to get that right.

There is benefit for both the sides. For example, from the same tool that you use for your VMware cloud, you can now get utility computing and that is a huge breakthrough.

In the last couple of years,has there been a significant change in strategy for VMware?

From the VMware perspective, in the last year, we had three priorities -- software defined data center, end user computing and hybrid cloud. The world probably understood our proposition very well in SDDC. We were very well known in the end user computing space and the digital workspace in the last 3 years. We were not very clear about our strategy last year and our customers were confused. Is it vCloud or public cloud? Are you trying to compete with AWS? So we built our strategy for the cloud, and we got phenomenal feedback.

Launching the IBM partnership and EXPRESS COMPUTER

the AWS partnership are some of the biggest partnerships that have ever been announced. This is the new VMware.

Now I think the three priorities that VMware had is complete -- SDDC, End User Computing and Hybrid Cloud.

What are the next priorities?

Quite frankly, we could live on these two priorities for the next decade. There is so much to get done. For example, we just began our journey in network virtualization. So we can spend a lot of time getting that and end user computing market crossed a billion while the total market is 10 billion. I could double that business.

One is the world of IoT, where there is going to be huge opportunity for AirWatch. I think the opportunity would be huge in any country that has lot of manufacturing like India, China, Germany, US or Japan.

How do you see the opportunity in IoT? We always look at what the customer

wants. For example, we were managing mobile devices for a company which was creating a smart vending machine. Now when the same company approached us for a possibility for managing their vending machine, we saw it as an opportunity. From using AirWatch to manage the phone, we are now managing the vending machine. Essentially, mobile management, mobile device and app management can be applied to any machine. We can take it to a healthcare device and we can take this to cars too.

The bigger opportunity clearly is machines where the cost of the machine is high enough. For example, think of a airplane which has to fly efficiently and safely. So where the cost of the asset is high, the value add that we can bring in can lead to huge benefits. If it’s a very cheap device, it may not be possible to create that much value. So we are basically looking at these high value assets in manufacturing.

IoT is clearly a very big opportunity for us. srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

41

INTERVIEW JOHN MANSFIELD HITACHI PLATFORM DIVISION

‘CAPABILITIES BUILT AROUND THE OBJECT STORE GIVES US COMPETITIVE EDGE’ The functionalities engineered around the core object store platform not only results in cost reduction but offers many added features like compliance adherence, data search, file sync and share, cloud on RAM, says John Mansfield, President and CTO, Hitachi Platform Division, in an interaction with EC’s Abhishek Raval Some of the recent product enhancements done in the private and hybrid cloud space?

There have been many but the major enhancement has been in the object storage space. It’s a new market. We have built a whole suite of products around distributed object store, which is currently, the market share leader in the world.

Elaborate on object storage and how does it score over the traditional file servers ?

We have a large number of customers, whose file servers are spread all over the departments. A large enterprise might have ten to fifteen thousand file servers sharing data in one location. But there is no aggregation. Using the object storage technology, we eliminated the need for the file servers market. The data is now stored centrally and distributed geographically and shared with many organisations. Hence, historically, the cost structure is thirty to fourty percent less and whomsoever is authorised, can have access.

The distributed object storage technology build at the back end is very similar to Amazon. We started in 2007.

But we have built functionalities on top of it: A file sync and share; built in security; compliance capability in the object store and now data is shareable amongst anyone in the organisation.

Hitherto, data preservation and simplicity of architecture was absent.

42

EXPRESS COMPUTER

of petabytes of data. It has been hugely complex. Our major competitor has gone through three or four versions and haven’t got it right yet.

The challenges include managing multiple petabytes of data under one management structure; gaining access to that data; ingesting data into it; sharing data within the enterprise and looking for value in that data. A bunch of data intelligence capabilities have been built into it. For example, the enterprise can run analytics, correlation engines, to find every document in the company associated with the name, XYZ. It can indexed to know the relationship XYZ has with other people who are associated with it.

The object store can scale out to tens

So what’s the USP? Above all, the compliance capabilities in the object store system. All the regulatory compliance for healthcare, financial services, government agencies have been catered to.

It’s the separation of the data and the meta data. The national archives of the US uses it for all the administration records. The capabilities that we have been able to engineer over the years enables fast data access after the queries are fired. In being able to find the right data in the pool of petabytes of data.

Enabling the indexing and keeping the metadata separate.

The other value proposition is that we have build a portfolio around the object store platform. We have built a cloud on RAM on it. No player in the industry has been able to build such features. We have designed file sync and share on top of it, natively. This is again an Industry first.

Two of the four largest US banks use your solution.What are they using it for?

These banks use object storage solution for long term data preservation. For one of the banks, almost eighty percent of the data end up in their object storage. Data coming from ATMs, video surveillance cameras, voice calls recordings from call DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

centre, email archives, documents, etc.

Even the database archives, backup servers are moved into the object store.

We can make it referenceable and indexable using the cloud connect feature.

How have some of the Indian organisations benefited from the object store ?

Infosys was incurring significant costs on backing up their visa applications, expense status, etc. These documents largely remain the same. As a result there was proliferation of the tier 1 storage.

After moving to the object store, they were able to solve many problems.

Stopping the growth of tier 1 storage.

Also, they were able to preserve all the records on the object platform. Thirdly, Infosys eliminated backups and the shipping of tapes from the primary to the DR site for data availability. Thus Infosys was able to drive down the data protection costs by 65%.

Another example is the RBI. Since they are a regulator, all the emails have to be preserved. They are all saved on the EXPRESS COMPUTER

Hitachi object storage. Reason: the emails can be preserved, secondly, the emails can be retrieved, leveraging the metadata – by

The entire mygov initiative is on the Hitachi object platform.At any given point in time,two million users are having conversations with the government.The data on the platform can be retrieved and analysed.The government can write applications on top of the platform

name, date, person, any item. The object store also enables for the forensics.

The entire mygov initiative is on the Hitachi object platform. At any given point in time, two million users are having conversations with the government. The data on the platform can be retrieved and analysed. The government can write applications on top of the platform.

Aadhaar is using the Hitachi’s Pentaho analytics platform to undertake all the analytics done on the Aadhaar.

The cloud service providers are leveraging our object platform, to create new services for their existing customers.

There are a couple of CSPs who are using the platform to deliver data protection as a service. They have customers who are primarily using it for colocation and infrastructure as a service. Henceforth, they want to expand the service to include file sync and share and also to provide preservation as a service. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

43

INTERVIEW SUDHEESH NAIR NUTANIX

NUTANIX WANTS TO BE THE APPLE OF THE DATA CENTER SPACE Just like Apple which transformed the music industry and the ecosystem by ‘appifying’ every possible function, Nutanix wants to create a similar trajectory by converting every possible hardware component into software. Sudheesh Nair, President, Nutanix, speaks with EC’s Abhishek Raval What is Nutanix’s value proposition?

Apple converted the concept of music and turned it into an app in the form of iPod. The company checked all the boxes in terms of having some basic features i.e. the music can be rewind, paused, looped, etc.

On top of that, Apple did much more. iPod was the first app and then it was turned into a phone. Subsequently, the camera, calculator was turned into an app. There are thousands of apps in the Apple ecosystem. The App store, itunes, icloud – all of them worked together.

To apply the same analogy to Nutanix – the data centre is composed of a variety of hardware like servers, firewalls, storage, load balancers, WAN accelerators and there are a number of vendors who provide each of these devices. Most of these devices have nothing but the Intel servers. Intel owned 96% of the data center hardware CPU. The difference is in software. We can significantly change the value by commoditizing the hardware as a single piece. We give different profiles to the servers. One day it could be a storage system, then a firewall or a load balancer.

We have OEM partnerships with Dell and Lenovo and Cisco. We have also partnered with companies like F5, and Citrix to port their load balancing solutions on the Nutanix software. This is the level of portability that customers are looking for.

What’s your view on Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) and the importance of solving the storage problem in the data centre?

Storage is the biggest problem that enterprise customers are facing. There are many issues, but storage is a very 44

EXPRESS COMPUTER

Our approach of taking the storage and turn that into a software app inside the server and then using a Google like architecture to scale it out truly integrated the server, storage and network complex issue. It’s a universal problem because of two reasons – storage is very critical because due to data quality, the business gets disrupted. Thus the number one priority for storage is reliability. The second reason is performance, as business users want faster data availability.

Since the last four years, we have built an excellent storage platform that can do everything a physical storage can do. Our software app can compete with an IBM, Hitachi, EMC, Netapp and others.

About CI vs HCI, CI solved the problem of customers having to go to different vendors for server, storage and network.

Companies like Cisco, EMC and Vmware partnered and founded a new entity to launch the CI portfolio. The advantage for the customer is they had to call for one place for support but the disadvantage – there are still three different products. So, sometimes when the application is slow because of storage, they are still suffering.

Our approach of taking the storage

and turn that into a software app inside the server and then using a Google like architecture to scale it out truly integrated it. However that’s not the end goal, but the industry termed it as Hyper Converged. Then the market started thinking HCI is not important, may be just for VDI, virtual desktops, etc. But in the last four years we have executed well with a dominant market position.

The reason why I am not excited about HCI – the customers are not looking for a box. Our real competition is with cloud giants like Amazon, Azure. They are not selling boxes but complete solutions.

Amazon allows buying and provisioning of IT resources in minutes – by swiping a credit card.

HCI is one midpoint for us. While it is an interesting category but the real target is to provide an enterprise cloud – Amazon like experience inside the data centre. It’s not possible without solving the storage problem in a really well and then, scale out like Google.

So how do you solve the scale problem?

Scale is important because of two reasons.

One is seasonality. In a holiday season, the number of transactions go up. Another reason could be the requirement to scale up because of acquisitions. In a short span of time, the capacities have to be increased by 4x, 5x. Because of these two reasons, scaling is a real problem.

On the other side of scalability, is cyclo creative destruction, it’s like a hype cycle.

Usually it is ten years. Every decade, every piece of technology in the data centre becomes obsolete and it is replaced by an even faster or smart machine. But that was last decade. The cycle now has been DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

crunched to two years. In the context of scaling, if my business model is the old way of doing business – which is, I buy something in capex, then I hold it for three-five or seven years then as a result I am depriving the company of all the innovation that’s happening in those years.

The biggest advantage of our scalability is – byte size consumption. If the customer’s requirement is 10x, we can start at 3x. Very rarely, the vendors suggest to under provision vis-a-vis what the customer has asked for. So, start small.

Our architecture allows us to do that because we can mix and match and scale.

The system is designed to integrate and scale upgraded versions without any down time. The load balancing happens automatically. The system also enables the IT infrastructure to shrink itself. We call this elasticity.

It’s possible because of our web scale architecture. This is an extremely important component because it allows the CIO not to be in two minds whether they bought the right amount of infrastructure. This is the key underpinning of our architecture of how we do hyper converged.

We have already entered times when departments directly subscribe to cloud services without intimating the CIO – to avoid a long approval chain.What is the experience with respect to your Indian customers?

Today, the budget process has changed.

Earlier, the storage guys controlled most of the budget. The servers were cheaper and virtualization was expensive.

However, today, most of the applications are delivered as SaaS. For example, many Indian customers have subscribed to Office365. Remember, email used to be the domain of the corporate IT, and today IT doesn’t do anything other than writing a cheque every month to Microsoft. The budget however is now with the CFO and the applications.

Another example can be about CRM software like Siebel, which was deployed and managed by IT. Salesforce.com owned it. SaaS changed the budget, so suddenly if 50-60% of software is delivered as a monthly subscription over EXPRESS COMPUTER

a data centre owned by someone else, what is IT getting paid ? So the budgets shifted resulting in the change of power equation. Thus during conversations, the application owner is also involved. We ask them about their pain areas. They need more performance, and capacity. The term they use is time to value and speed to market. The CIOs are still involved, but a lot of the decision making power is going to the application owners.That’s the shift we are seeing.

The Nutanix platform automates a string of jobs.Is it by any chance a possibility that after opting for the platform,the CIO will have to cut some jobs ?

One of our sales leaders in Bengaluru, actually lost a deal, where the customer was convinced of the applicability of the platform for his company. However they called our partner and said, they will have to cut a few jobs after going onboard the Nutanix platform.

Which new products are you working on ?

Nutanixs’ initial play was in virtualization.

HCI is thought about only as

virtualisation. We think otherwise. A lot of applications are still not virtualized in the IT environment of enterprises. We have announced support for non virtualized applications and we recently announced the support for containers too.

What are some of the primary business verticals that Nutanix will target in India ?

In India, we are excited about government and telecom. Nutanix has seen tremendous success in the IT/ITeS, financial services and manufacturing sectors. So, those are the top three right now and the solution applicability is also there for the mid market. In India, we have about 35 thousand SME mid market customers and some of the early customers have been the smaller customers in the mid market space. We are starting to see traction in government.

Globally, our top two verticals have been financial services and healthcare.

The others are manufacturing, retail and government. The US government is a huge customer of ours. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

45

INTERVIEW TAMAAL ROY BIOMATIQUES IDENTIFICATION SOLUTIONS

IRIS RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGIES INCREASINGLY BEING DEPLOYED IN GOVERNMENT PROJECTS With the huge success of Aadhaar (more than 1 billion Aadhaar numbers have been issued), biometric based authentication solutions have received increased attention. Biomatiques, an Indian company, specializing in iris recognition technology, believes that the growth in the Indian market for iris recognition technologies is set to explode due to the increasing use in corporate houses, schools and industries for identity and access management coupled with rising demand from IT/ITeS to authenticate access to confidential information.

Tamaal Roy, CEO, Biomatiques Identification Solutions, shares with EC, his perspective on the huge demand for biometric based solutions in the Indian market, and why every sector from BFSI to the Government can benefit significantly from using biometric-based solutions. Some edited excerpts: What is the demand for iris based solutions? Which sectors are driving demand?

Biometrics market in India is projected to grow at a robust CAGR of over 35% till 2020 according to “India Biometrics Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2020”.

Growth in the market is anticipated on account of increasing use of IRIS/Fingerprint biometric products in government and BFSI sector across the country. Increasing use in corporate houses, schools and industries for identity and access management coupled with rising demand from IT/ITeS to authenticate access to confidential information are other factors that are expected to propel market growth over the next five years.

In India, we have a huge scope for iris recognition technology as it is about “Who you are” and not about “What you can carry” or “What you can remember” and considering the working class population of India.

In terms of applications, this technology has generated tremendous demand from the following segments. For example, consider government welfare 46

EXPRESS COMPUTER

schemes. Various government sectors in India provide public services and welfare schemes for the benefit of people in the society. Iris recognition technologies are increasingly being employed for large scale applications, especially in government supported projects. Like Aadhaar initiative which was taken by the government, iris recognition can be used in the pension as well as in PDS. By doing so, it can be rest assured that the right person is getting the welfare benefits with this beneficiary authentication method.

In the BFSI and telecom sector, opening a new bank account, getting a new credit card or issuance of new SIM can be possible within just a matter of few minutes as KYC details of every consumer can be accessed from Aadhaar database and verified using iris scanner.

Even ATM transactions can be made more secured using iris enabled authentication. Along with debit card and PIN, having iris scanners at ATM machine will act as additional secured authentication using biometric properties.

In the case of automobiles, iris-

based solutions can be used to unlock your car or bike with the blink of an eye.

An iris scanner can be integrated in car or bike. Without your iris scan the vehicle will not be unlocked and thus will reduce thefts of automobiles significantly. Thus it can be combined with key to act as a double layered security mechanism.

In the case of the medical or healthcare sector, a patient’s medical history and personal information is very critical and confidential which should be accessible only when the patient or doctor is available. The iris biometric technology will help patients not to carry any physical documents while visiting a medical practitioner and allowing the practitioner to retrieve medical history of patients without any gaps resulting in right diagnosis.

At airports and borders, the security check can be time consuming. Also there are cases of identity theft and change of identity which can be of serious nature.

This again can be eliminated as iris scanners can provide the highest levels of security compared to other forms of biometric methods.

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

How can iris recognition technology be useful in e-governance? Please give some examples?

70% of the population in India belongs to the labor class. When someone is constantly doing hard labor, there is a possibility that their fingerprint keeps changing as they are one of the most abused part on human body. Their finger may develop cuts and bruises. This creates a problem when you have to use a fingerprint scanner. It does not match your saved data. All the features in your body will undergo daily changes except your eyes which remain same from the time of your birth till death. Hence iris scanning proves to be one of the most accurate forms of biometric identification.

When Aadhaar was introduced in India, it required two forms of biometrics, one was fingerprint and the other was iris.

That’s where we saw a big opportunity. We chose iris technology because at that time there were only 12 companies in the international market. And there was no Indian name amongst these. We became the first Indian company to enter this field when we were certified with STQC certificate from DeitY, New Delhi. We had started working on our business model in June 2012. The technology goes well with the “Make in India” initiative of GoI. Thus, we bring the heritage of Indian software superiority to the world. We have designed our product after keeping in mind the Indian demography and considering working conditions of India’s population who is engaged in manual labor.

Iris recognition as an authentication method has a wide range of applications in government’s Public Distribution System (PDS), Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), pension and MNREGA schemes which could be used for identifying individuals. The technology has already been implemented in 12 districts of Andhra Pradesh where we have also earned the largest order in India for 33,310 iris Authentication scanners for beneficiary authentication.

How can this technology help in curbing crime?

Even if an individual’s laptop or mobile is EXPRESS COMPUTER

lost or stolen nobody can access the device if it’s operated through the iris recognition technology. The iris biometric is quite compatible with any application which requires username or password. The iris authentication scanners can also be integrated with ATM machines reducing the use and cost of credit/debit and passwords which can easily be forgotten or noted. Every digital or online payment will be connected to Aadhaar database. While performing online transactions, there will be an additional step for iris biometric check.

The scanned iris will be captured and

verified with the Aadhaar database and the same will be monitored by the bank.

There is further verification performed by the bank to check if the Iris matches with the Aadhaar number which is linked to the account before approving the transaction. This will eradicate the scope for online fraudulent activities.

India is the only country with the largest biometric database available. No other country has adopted the biometric technology the way India has. Adoption and acceptance of this technology has been on the rise as of now. Even the new Government offices have introduced DECEMBER, 2016

47

INTERVIEW

www.expresscomputeronline.com

TAMAAL ROY BIOMATIQUES IDENTIFICATION SOLUTIONS

Aadhaar enabled biometric systems to mark attendance. Even at shops the verification of the individual is done based on Aadhaar, which ensures that the right person is getting the right benefits. We have successfully supplied 33,310 scanners to the government of Andhra Pradesh which are being implemented for pension and ration distribution.

The latest iris scanner can be useful in our day to day lives as well. It can be fixed outside our door and used for key- less entry. It can double up as additional security for mobiles and personal computers and even apps, email clients and social networking websites. Iris recognition technology eradicates manual validation and proxies, encourages punctuality and efficiency in schools and organizations where capturing attendance is mandatory. It can be further used for forensic and criminal investigation, for security checks at airports and border security. It 48

EXPRESS COMPUTER

can also be useful at data centers, labs, hospitals, banks and utility centers.

Considering that the country continues to face the danger of terrorist attacks, how can Iris recognition technology help? Can such technology be integrated with CCTV cameras, and help in alerting the key stakeholders about the possibility of suspected terrorists or criminals, if a known face of a criminal is detected?

There is always a possibility that there are people who cross the border showing only their passport as their identification proof, but there is no thorough proof that the same person is returning to the country. In such cases the key stakeholders can conduct their Iris recognition test to evaluate the exact identity of that particular person. For doing this, the stake holders should have backup of Aadhaar details stored in their systems. By doing this, there is a good possibility of avoiding any terrorist activities.

Can you name some of your clients in India, along with the way they use these solutions?

We are the only leading supplier of iris Authentication scanner in the state of Andhra Pradesh which is the first state that has implemented Iris recognition technology for beneficiary authentication in PDS and pension schemes. And now, the state of Rajasthan has taken the first step in adopting Iris Authentication Technology.

There is a humongous opportunity that lies within this state and within India as they have vision of transparency in the public sector to mitigate fraud for better trust and serviceability. Biomatiques has managed to supply 33,310 Iris Authentication Scanners so far to Andhra Pradesh Govt. which no other company has managed to achieve so far in India. In the private sector, Asian Paints was our first major client to go in for irisbased authentication scanners.

DECEMBER, 2016

BUSINESS AVENUES

EXPRESS COMPUTER

www.expresscomputeronline.com

DECEMBER, 2016

49

OPINION SUNDER KRISHNAN ISACA

HOWRANSOMWARE IS AFFECTING INDIVIDUALS, CORPORATES AND GOVERNMENTS A ransomware attack is one of the most damaging types of malicious intrusions a network can experience. Ransomware is a malware that locks victims’ computers or encrypts their data, and then demands ransom before giving control over the affected devices or files back to the users

According to the US-based Symantec Corporation, India is now receiving ransomware attacks at a rate of 65,000 per annum.This translates to approximately 170 ransomware attacks a day 50

EXPRESS COMPUTER

T

he ransomware threat landscape is constantly changing as both attack and defence adapt to the changes of the other.

As former Washington Post investigative journalist and KrebsOnSecurity blogger Brian Krebs told attendees at ISACA’s CSX conference, ransomware is becoming more targeted and more expensive. Recent discoveries from multiple security companies demonstrate that the ransomware threat landscape is rapidly evolving to incorporate new tactics and propagation methods.

A new variant of crypto-ransomware capable of preventing operating systems from even loading was recently unearthed. Unlike conventional ransomware, which encrypts files and holds them hostage demanding payment for a decryption key, the Petya cryptoransomware variant has the ability to overwrite an affected system’s master boot record. This has the outcome of locking users out of their computers, with start-up resulting in a blue screen of death. A ransom message demanding payment in the form of bitcoins is then displayed at system start-up.

Since mid-2015, it has been observed that there is a significant escalation in ransomware-related threat activity, largely due to the highly publicized successes of established ransomware families and enhanced distribution frameworks.

New variants boast evolving tactics, which represent deviations from past malware iterations, a trend that is expected to continue. It has also been observed that the sustained distribution of multiple, well-established ransomware families is used in both geographically targeted and mass infection campaigns.

The emergence of ransomware-as-aservice (RaaS) has provided a profitable and repeatable business model that has fueled the underground ransomware economy.

The evolving mobile ransomware threat landscape is still largely focused on Android operating systems (OS); however, cyber criminal intent to target Apple OS is evident.

How will it affect individuals, corporates, and even governments A ransomware attack is one of the most damaging types of malicious intrusions a network can experience. Ransomware is malware that locks victims’ computers or encrypts their data, and then demands ransom before giving control over the affected devices or files back to the users.

While the targets are often individual users’ devices, corporate and even government networks also can be affected.

The number of ransomware victims has risen by 550% in recent years, from 131,000 in 2014-2015 to 718,000 in 20152016, according to Kaspersky Lab. Cryptoware (encrypting ransomware) has become the most prominent malware threat for citizens and enterprises alike.

Recent examples of ransomware attacks in India India is already the fifth-most attacked country in the world and the third-most attacked in Asia.

According to the US-based Symantec Corporation, India is now receiving ransomware attacks at a rate of 65,000 per annum. This translates to approximately 170 ransomware attacks a day.

FireEye, another US-based security firm, observed that ransomware detections in India rocketed by a factor of 292 in February 2016 over November 2015.

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

Ransomware targets in India have included: ● Three banks and a pharmaceutical company hit by LeChiffre ransomware ● Two business houses reported having paid $5 million ● Maharashtra Government lost data on more than 150 computers ● Small businesses

Why it is being seen as a top threat by law enforcement agencies The ransomware industry is exploding. For cybercriminals, it’s profitable, low-risk, and easily accessible. For CEOs, it’s a nightmare that conjures images of down networks, lost productivity, bad press and angry calls from board members. Each day there seems to be a story of a new ransomware victim or variant, and hardly a week goes by without hearing about a new attack from an affected client, or from someone in our personal lives who has become infected by this weapon of mass extortion.

Ransomware is an industry. Like any industry, there are profits, customers, and competitors. As a result, ransomware operators seek to maximize their return on investment (ROI), successfully engage their customers, and win market share.

As the ransomware market matures, it will likely continue to segment. So, along with widespread ‘spray and pray’ attacks aimed at infecting as many devices as possible, we should see an increase in more focused attacks. To achieve this goal, attackers will need to research individual victims to identify vulnerable targets with higher potential ROI.

Accessibility of cryptocurrency In the early days of ransomware, payment typically was made with wire transfer, prepaid cards or by SMS and mobile payments. Now payment is almost always demanded in Bitcoin. Prepaid cards are actually more anonymous because they can be mailed and then used or resold internationally with effectively no trace.

The rise of cryptocurrency has led us to a world riddled with ransomware. Bitcoin is a pseudo-anonymous currency, meaning it is very difficult to track. Additionally, with the minimal back and forth EXPRESS COMPUTER

communication necessary for ransomware, finding the person behind the keyboard is difficult for law enforcement and often requires weeks or months of lengthy investigative work.

Mitigation tips Mitigation tips to address ransomware threats include: ● Implement a regular backup scheme that allows an organization to recover entire volumes of data ● Provide only the minimum required security rights to users ● Use of application whitelisting ● In addition to managing network traffic and patching, utilize layers, firewalls, IPS and HIPS and restricted interfaces ● Be vigilant and promote security awareness ● Adjust security software to scan compressed or archived files, if this

feature is available Deactivate AutoPlay Block known malicious Tor IP addresses.

Ransomware has exploded in 2016 and is increasingly targeting business networks instead of individual users. The total cost of damages related to these attacks is set to US $1 billion this year. The primary drivers of ransomware growth have been that attacks are easy to carry out and victims are willing to pay to get their data back. The bad news is that ransomware doesn’t show any signs of slowing down and it’s likely to only become a bigger problem during 2017.

Building awareness, regular back-ups and a good web security solution can go a long way in protecting networks from ransomware.

● ●

– By Sunder Krishnan,Advisor,ISACA DECEMBER, 2016

51

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE (HITS): SOME HIGHLIGHTS The Healthcare Information Technology Senate (HITS) was organised as a part of the Healthcare Senate 2016 in Hyderabad. The event was attended by 150+ healthcare IT professionals. The gathering saw presentations from hospital CIOs and major vendors about the contemporary topics on how IT is being adopted by major hospitals.

T

he Healthcare Information Technology Senate (HITS) under the parent platform of Healthcare Senate saw the presence of 150+ healthcare IT professionals.

HITS hosted talks on myriad topics from some of the marquee hospital CIOs. Sumit Puri, CIO, Max Healthcare spoke on ‘Healthcare’s Digital Future’ and the digital strategy of the hospital. He informed about the hospital’s connected healthcare programme for the elderly using technology devices. Sumit also touched upon the partnership with GOQii for preventive healthcare.

Dr Mahesh Kappanayil, Senior Cardiologist, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences showed various live cases of how 3D printing helped cardiologists at Amrita to precisely identify the heart ailment, which

How 3D printing can transform healthcare: Dr Mahesh Kappanayil, Senior Cardiologist, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences

52

EXPRESS COMPUTER

otherwise would not come out in the conventional cardiogram. Presenting the case for the deployment of cloud in the healthcare sector, Dilip Ramadasan, CIO & CTO, Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital listed out the benefits from implementing cloud at the hospital. The desktop costs were reduced by 75 per cent; launching new modules in the HIS; cloud will help to manage the massive storage requirement that would come up as a part of the Mission 2020 programme, where the plan is to have 50 overseas centres and 150 in India. The panel discussion had some of the top hospital CIOs talking about their IT initiatives. The last session was by Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Healthcare Management who, presented some of the best practices in security from a hospital’s angle.

Ensuring information security in healthcare: Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Healthcare

Video conferencing solutions for healthcare segment: Kaushal Singh, Head Sales, HDVC Panasonic

Keynote Address Healthcare’s digital future Sumit Puri, CIO, Max Healthcare

Global Trends in Imaging IT: Robin Gu, Marketing Head, APAC, Agfa Healthcare

Innovation versus RoI challenge: Dirk Dumortier VP Sales Enablement & Healthcare Solutions, APAC, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

Data Security for the Digital Healthcare Industry : Noman Khan, Regional Business Manager, Seqrite – Enterprise Security Solutions by Quick Heal

DECEMBER, 2016

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

Healthcare’s digital future Sumit Puri | CIO, Max Healthcare

S

umit Puri defined digital as “user experience and interactions powered by technology,” in which the patient should be at the centre of all the value creation coming out of the interactions. The digital architecture of Max Healthcare (MHC) is built on the characteristics of convenience, collaboration and engagement. The digital platform supports APIs, service bots, mobile / tablet apps, kiosks and social media. MHC has partnered with GOQii for solutions related to preventive healthcare.

A host of patient and clinical KPIs have been built for the patients to book appointments faster with the doctors. The physicians can also inform the patients about any potential change in the appointment. Apps have been built for enabling clinical care pathways. For example, with diabetes and oncology apps, the patients can manage the key disease solving interventions independently. MHC engages with the patients on social media

The digital architecture of Max Healthcare (MHC) is built on the characteristics of convenience,collaboration and engagement and alerts are sent for medicine refills; wearable monitoring devices are provided and the queries can be posted to doctors.

The hospital does remote emergency care with an ambulance tracking feature.

The medical administration has been bar coded to help nurses to medicate patients. MHC is conducting pilots for remote OPDs and in understanding how the hospital can provide technology enabled low cost care in ICUs.

Global trends in Imaging IT Robin Gu | Asia Pacific Marketing Head, Agfa Healthcare

R

obin Gu gave an elaborate introduction of the company.

He also explained the vision for enterprise imaging, which is to have one patient record — all the disparate records of a particular customer can be consolidated with a one view; one enterprise wide imaging solution and not have separate imaging platforms. The patient’s records can be checked with a single window view on the electronic health records platform, instead of having to check different platforms for specific details. Typically, hospitals face the challenge of operating disjointed IT

EXPRESS COMPUTER

systems for imaging and other process workflows run for the patients. The core strength of Agfa lies in bringing them all together and work as one.

The company provides one login for using any imaging solution. Robin stated that one out of two hospitals globally use solutions from Agfa. The company can also provide a common platform for Integrated Health Networks (IHN), wherein different hospitals can come together to host the patient data for better collaboration and efficiency. The governments abroad subsidise hospitals for joining such a consortia.

DECEMBER, 2016

53

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

Wi-Fi management for healthier hospitals Samiksh Aggarwal | Asst VP, Sales, Data Networks, Sterlite Technologies

W

54

hen the hospitals get digitized, Internet connectivity is crucial for different user categories.

EXPRESS COMPUTER

There are three types of user groups at hospitals: Registered group (existing customers), non registered users (first time users) and the trusted user group (internal staff). The users can download the mobile app, register the user in the system and start scheduling appointments with the doctors and also start conducting many other functions.

The users are connected with the Hospital Information System (HIS), and the 24Online Internet Access Management System (from Sterlite Technologies). Users can get registered and the information is stored in the

system. For the hospitals, the access management system is beneficial for ensuring smooth and secure Internet access; adhering with legal compliance; proper monitoring and management of the users and extensive reporting of the relevant logs.

The solution also has a single console for managing the internet access for network of hospitals.

Hospitals like Kokilaben Ambani hospital, Hinduja hospital, Medanta Hospital, Global hospitals and HCG are some of the clients of Sterlite Technologies.

DECEMBER, 2016

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

Tech-themes that are changing the face of healthcare

Nagendra Balasubramaniam, Account Executive, Microsoft

N

agendra Balasubramaniam, Account Executive, Microsoft presented on four themes to change the healthcare landscape in the country using technology. Moreover, how enhanced technology interventions can help reduce cost and move the profitability northwards. The four themes include: cloud computing, Big data and analytics, geographical freedom and IoT. Cloud computing enables to break down the walls of healthcare and bring in data portability. The LV Prasad Eye Institute has used the big data platform from Microsoft for clinical operations, EXPRESS COMPUTER

which is basically a self service business intelligence (BI) platform. BD & A can also be used for staffing and resourcing.

Nagendra also touched upon using telemedicine using the VC experience; leveraging the IoT technology model using wearables for monitoring patients and making healthcare more proactive.

In the panel discussion on 'How emerging technologies are transforming healthcare', TSY Aravindakshan National Manager - Health Industry Microsoft stressed on IT playing a strategic role in achieving the business goals. He gave the examples of the

purposeful role of technology intervention in clinical BI, productivity related KPIs and patients engagement.

He said that the business wants to drive three specific priorities using IT: to drive productivity of the existing systems; effectively use current data and patient engagement. The other panelists include Veneeth Purushotaman, CIO, Fortis Healthcare; Sumit Singh, CIO, WockHardt Hospitals; Dr Deepak Sagaram, CIO, Global Hospitals; Niranjan Kumar, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Vishal Anand Gupta, Head IT, Suasth Healthcare.

DECEMBER, 2016

55

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

HEALTHCARE IT AWARDS he Winners at the maiden Healthcare IT Awards were felicitated in different technology categories like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, IoT, EHR, Cloud, CRM, Data Centers (Infrastructure Transformation), EMR, Mobile Apps, Enterprise Mobility and Networking.

The awards were presented by the Chief Guest, Dr. A. Velumani, Promoter, Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Thyrocare Technologies

T

Care Hospitals

MIOT Hospitals

Fortis Healthcare

Manipal Hospitals

Max Healthcare

Nayati Healthcare

Sir Ganga Ram Hospitals

Ruby Hall Clinic

Apollo Hospitals 56

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

EVENT EXPRESS HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SENATE 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

HEALTHCARE IT SESSIONS

Keynote Address: Healthcare’s digital future: Sumit Puri, CIO, Max Healthcare

Use cases of Internet access management in healthcare : Samiksh Aggarwal, Asst. VP, Sales, Data Networks, Sterlite Technologies

The role of cloud in driving efficiency : Dilip Ramadasan, CIO & CTO, Dr Agarwal's Eye Hospital

Global Trends in Imaging IT: Robin Gu, Marketing Head, APAC, Agfa Healthcare

Data Security for the Digital Healthcare Industry : Noman Khan, Regional Business Manager, Seqrite – Enterprise Security Solutions by Quick Heal

How 3D printing can transform healthcare: Dr Mahesh Kappanayil, Senior Cardiologist, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences

Agfa Healthcare Power Discussion

Niranjan Kumar, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital introduced the ‘Healthcare Tech’ platform to the congregation of Healthcare IT professionals

[L-R] Sumit Singh, CIO, WockHardt Hospitals, Veneeth Purushotaman, CIO, Fortis, Deepak Sagaram, CIO, Global Hospitals, T.S.Y Aravindakshan,National Manager, Healthcare, Microsoft, Niranjan Kumar, CIO, Sir Ganga Ram Hospitals, Vishal Gupta, GM-IT, Suasth Healthcare

Tech-Themes that are changing the face of Healthcare : Nagendra Balasubramaniam, Account Executive, Microsoft

Power Back up Solutions: Suraj Kumar Singh, Head - Institutional UPS (South), Exide Industries Limited

Ensuring information security in healthcare: Ishaq Quadri, Group CIO, KIMS Healthcare

Innovation versus RoI challenge: Dirk Dumortier VP Sales Enablement & Healthcare Solutions, APAC, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

EXPRESS COMPUTER

Video conferencing solutions for healthcare segment: Kaushal Singh, Head Sales, HDVC Panasonic

DECEMBER, 2016

57

EVENT MICROSOFT

COMBATING CYBER THREATS FOR A SAFER DIGITAL INDIA Understanding the crucial importance of security for building the foundation of a safer Digital India, the Indian Express Group has associated with Microsoft as a media partner to organize a knowledge exchange forum on ‘Combating cyber threats for a safer digital India.’

BY ANKUSH KUMAR

A

fter a successful year-long pilot, Microsoft recently launched its first full-scale Cybersecurity Engagement Center (CSEC) in the country. Situated in Delhi, this center will bring together Microsoft capabilities to foster deeper cybersecurity collaborations with public and private sector organizations and build a trusted and secure computing environment, a critical enabler for India’s digital transformation.

This is the first such center in India and Microsoft’s seventh Cybersecurity Center in the world. Microsoft has also rolled out a nationwide campaign, Microsoft Secure to raise awareness about cybersecurity among Indian organizations.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law & Justice, Electronics & Information Technology in the presence of Gulshan Rai, Cyber Security Chief under the Prime Minister’s Office; Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India and many senior government officials delivered the inaugural address. This was followed by a panel discussion to establish a dialogue with business and government decision makers on how cybersecurity could be built in to the roadmap of Digital India.

“I am happy that the engagement of Microsoft in India is getting deeper and deeper. We don’t want to miss the digital revolution as we want to become the leaders in this era of digitization,” said

58

EXPRESS COMPUTER

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law & Justice, Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad in his inaugural address. One of the areas of promise Prasad shared is data analysis. Sanctity and integrity is important to lift India to a larger role of data analysis. Decrypted data must not be revealed under any circumstances. The minister further added, “The entire ecosystem of digital spread is rising in India. Internet is one of the finest creations of the human mind but it should not be allowed to be abused by few. The internet governance architecture must be a multi-stakeholder model namely; the people, the civil society, the academia, the industry, etc.”

Elaborating about the newly opened center, Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, ”At Microsoft, we are committed to helping our customers achieve more in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. Our customers trust us to help make the world a more productive and secure place. It’s an important responsibility and one we’re deeply committed to, especially given the security challenges present all around us today. While security has always been a focus for Microsoft, we recognize that the digital world requires continuous evolution in to how we protect, detect, and respond to security threats. Microsoft is steadfast in ensuring security to enable the digital transformation through a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and broad partnerships. Our CSEC investment is a demonstration of the Microsoft commitment to create the capability within India and help build greater trust in technology for government, enterprises and individuals.”

Addressing the gathering, Sanjeev Gupta, general manager – Public Sector, Microsoft India, said, “Microsoft firmly believes that a steady, consistent approach to security and privacy is crucial. It is imperative to protect critical information of enterprises as well as safeguard citizens’ data and transactions in order to aid the country’s digital transformation.

Launch of the Cyber Security Engagement DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

(L to R) Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India; Sunil Jain, Managing Editor, The Financial Express; Sumit Puri, CIO, Max Healthcare; Smt Neeta Verma, Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC); B N Satpathy, Sr. Consultant, NITI Aayog; Sanjeev Gupta, General Manager, Microsoft India and Dr Gulshan Rai, National Cybersecurity Coordinator, Government of India Center is a significant investment for Microsoft and a step forward in our commitment to security and partnering India’s digital ambitions.”

One of the highlights of the event was a panel discussion on, ‘Securing Digital India through a Public-Private model’ which was moderated by Sunil Jain, managing editor, The Financial Express.

Jain posed many interesting questions to each of the panelists. Answering Jain's question on how secure are the Indian systems in this era of increased cyber attacks, Neeta Verma, director general, National Informatics Centre (NIC) says, “There are two dimensions to it; one that its an ongoing challenge posed to all of us as we continue to defend ourselves. The other is that it is also significantly important that we should have the right kind of system and compliance in place.

Applications have to be secured by design and there has to be a secure coding.”

Jain then asked Sumit Puri, CIO, Max Healthcare on his views on mitigating security risks to which Puri answered,“We live in a connected world, it is important that we institutionalize our processes at various levels. We need to inform and educate various stakeholders in this exercise because we know that our security is as good as our weakest link.”

Answering the security budget question, Sanjeev Gupta, general manager, Microsoft India said, “Data security is of EXPRESS COMPUTER

paramount importance in this digital age.

Security policies and implementing controls to prevent cyber risks from becoming reality have become a top priority in every company. Hence, security spends should increase as everyone must protect against cyber attackers who assiduously research and target their assaults.”

On linking Aadhaar with IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number, B.N Satpathy, Sr. consultant, NITI Aayog expressed, “In a free economy it is difficult to link everything with Aadhaar. You need investment in cyber security at every stage. There is nothing called perfect security.”

This engaging discussion was followed by another interesting panel discussion moderated by Rahul Gupta, director, KPMG as he opened the dialogue by saying, “cyber threats have been emerging and it has always worried people at large, about the changing landscape.” Gupta then raised an open question on the fast changing threat landscape. Commodore A. Anand, director, NCIIPC suggested that there should be a nodal agency to which the attack has to be reported immediately. Companies have to also keep in mind their customers’ trust before declaring publicly that they are breached.

Continuing on Anand's remark, Indrajit Saha, CISO, Indian Oil Corporation limited said, “In refineries most systems are connected with with IT.

Risk assessment frame is very important.

Risk requires the knowledge of the system and the industry standards.”

“We have the second largest database after Facebook and WhatsApp,” informed Davesh Singh, CISO, UIDAI. The biggest gap lies with the people who are managing the network. We don’t really have adequate skilled manpower in cyber security space and it is important if we work at the college level to fill the gap at a faster pace,” he said.

Answering about the strategy for cyber security, Manish Tiwari, national information security officer, Microsoft India, said, “One of the biggest challenges in digital transformation is ensuring security, privacy, and compliance. In order to stay safe these days we need to proceed with an assume breach mentality.

Microsoft enables customers by building security into the products and solutions.

Additionally, Microsoft’s team works with enterprises to understand their business goals, challenges and technical maturity to develop an enterprise security strategy to stay ahead of trending threats.”

Vijay Devnath, CISO, CRIS stressed on the importance of proper audits. “We have not been providing enough details as to how the audit is going to be done.

Technical information through proper audits should be disseminated to CISOs at the earliest,” he stated. ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

59

EVENT SAP

www.expresscomputeronline.com

IT AS AN ENABLER FOR POWER SECTOR REFORMS IN INDIA Express Digital Utility Series Jaipur, offered glimpses of the great potential that the princely state offers in the areas of energy (generation, transmission, distribution) and how technological interventions can make it more robust

BY ANKUSH KUMAR

ith an aim to highlight the continuous technological advancement in power sector, Express Computer in partnership with the leading enterprise application software company, SAP India, organized, 'The Express Digital Utility Series'. Thought leaders, visionaries, policy makers and IT leaders from the state came together to discuss and debate the great potential that Rajasthan offers and how it could be utilized.

In his welcome address, R.P Singh Dadiala, Director Public Service, SAP India highlighted the transformation that is

W

happening in energy sector through technological interventions, and how SAP with its innovative products and solutions is taking a lead in the implementation. He said that adoption of latest technologies by the Power sector is bringing crucial transformation as these are essential for capacity building and operational efficiency; business process efficiency; smart metering; billing and collection efficiency; energy accounting and revenue protection; consumer relations and satisfaction, etc. ‘‘To excel in the new energy era, we need the right expertise to develop our strategy, transform our business, gain competitive advantage

through innovation, and optimize asset operations and efficiency, explained Dadiala.

K.K Pathak, Special Secretary to Chief Minister, Government of Rajasthan gave an insightful presentation on, ‘Citizen Data Repository.’ He emphasized on having one gateway for retrieving all kinds of citizens data. “Can a repository of citizens be made and what benefits can be availed. It is important to know which data can be integrated first. ‘‘He gave an example of data integration from the school education to the professional level. According to him why can't there be a data of a student which can be availed by the authorities

Amar Jadhav

Cdr Avanish Dureha (Retd)

Supriyo Thakur

Solutions Architect,Utility Solutions,SAP India

Industry Director Strategic Industries,SAP India

Business Manager,Strategic Industries,SAP India

60

EXPRESS COMPUTER

DECEMBER, 2016

www.expresscomputeronline.com

anytime, so that one should not have the burden of carrying all their certificates while applying for a job or undergoing any other legal process. There should be single identity for everyone which can be achieved by a well denied IT policy and can result in easy sharing of data between the departments. He also gave the example of Estonia and how its citizen can view their educational record, medical record, address, employment history and traffic offenses online - and even change things that are wrong (or at least directly request changes) as the citizen is in control of their data.

One of the main highlights of the conference was the address by R.G Gupta, Advisor, Energy Department as he agreed on the importance of IT in the energy sector. “IT needs to be implemented in a much better manner and if the government agencies can work efficiently, IT has the potential to do wonders. With IT, a sense of transparency could be added in the system.

Data analysis and its effective delivery is required in the public sector.” He also spoke about Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) as a Central sector scheme launched on July, 2008. One of the major focus of the program was the adoption of information technology in the areas of energy accounting, consumer care and strengthening of distribution network of state power utilities. He said that implementation agencies were to play a major role in the time bound

implementation of the scheme as the project has got delayed and still not completed till date. He also talked about the importance of RFP as he explained that there are gaps in RFP. He shared how the energy department is working on a system in the rural areas of the state to ensure spot billing, collection, reading of the power usage by a household. The department he said, has also developed a mobile application for consumers by which they can share information real time and problems can be immediately addressed.

Gupta's address was followed by a presentation from Amar Jadhav, Solutions Architect Utility Solutions, SAP India. Elucidating on some of the trends he says, “Around 60-70 percent power plants in India are aging as they are about to expire their life. Out of 100 percent we are only leveraging 64 percent of the capacity of the power plants. There have been instances when the gradation of power plants have been delayed because of insufficiency in managing projects.” He talked about key policy changes in the power sector and some of the digital trends that are happening in the energy sector. How IT can be an enabler to embrace kinds of technologies to have a win-win situation. He also shared some of the innovations that SAP's customers have done leveraging these technologies and how are they benefiting.

Another interesting presentation, ‘‘SAP in the Public Sector’’ was given by Cdr Avanish Dureha (Retd), Industry

Director Strategic Industries, SAP India.

He shared some of the facts and figures that will impact the public sector. ‘‘We are entering a new era of unprecedented changes across a multitude of dimensions.

Around 600 million people in India will soon become middle class. Around 75 percent of India's workforce will be millennials in the times to come. Also 50 percent of India’s population will live under water shortage. Approximately 1.3 billion users are on business and social networks today. Around 50 billion connected devices and 'internet of things' will be active by 2030. All these changes unveil new areas of opportunity for public sector organizations to innovate and deliver better outcomes." With all these advancements coming up in the near future he explained that the expectation of the consumer from the service industry will rise and therefore urgent technological interventions are required.

Smart devices are now being used to know the actual consumption of water and electricity on real time basis so that the consumer can restrict its consumption.

The event then concluded with a vote of thanks given by Supriyo Thakur, Business Manager, Strategic Industries, SAP India. He emphasized on the importance of public-privatepartnership and how it can help in meeting consumer expectations at large.

R.G Gupta

R.P Singh Dadiala

K.K Pathak

Advisor,Energy Department,Govt.of Rajasthan

Director,Public Service,SAP India

Special Secretary to Chief Minister,Govt.of Rajasthan

EXPRESS COMPUTER

ankush.kumar@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

61

INTERVIEW

www.expresscomputeronline.com

RAJ GOPAL A S NXTGEN DATACENTER & CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES

DATA LOCALISATION: MORE FOR DATA PROXIMITY THAN DATA SOVEREIGNTY The data, when it is as nearer to the customer as possible brings the data latency costs down, says Raj Gopal A S, MD, NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies, in an interview with Abhishek Raval What opportunity do you see in the wake of the thrust on data localisation ?

The opportunity is massive. Today there is so much of data being consumed and generated. We import or export 90% of the data that we use because data from sites like Google is pulled from outside the country. Very little data being consumed is actually generated in the country. Primarily we should not make it as a ‘data sovereignty’ issue but we must look at it as a much better end user experience. If the data is local, we can reduce latency.

To give you a perspective about why are we doing it (data localisation), we currently have nine data centers. The idea is to position them as close to the customer and businesses as possible.

India has a vast geography, so we should have 12-14 locations for the data proximity to the customer. Hence, the latency goes down and so is the cost.

During your dialogue with the customers, how often the data localisation issue is raised ?

Most of the customers want to keep their data local. In India, telecom costs are high. It costs close to 6.5 paise to move 1GB of data. More than storing and serving the data, the telecom costs are a burden. Hence most customers want to do it but they are inhibited by the associated costs with it. It is a driver because of the economics rather than the inherent benefits. Most customers are aware of them.

What we are trying to do is that, instead of moving the data, across the country for every single transaction, we have stationed multiple data centers, and then we host the data which is most relevant, as local as possible. Which is to 62

EXPRESS COMPUTER

say, it’s not only local (within the country) but in the respective state. We cover fourteen states in India. Thus we are favourably positioned to cover 80%-90% of the data consumption. We are heading towards that.

From a data localisation angle, what are your differentiators vis-a-vis your competitors ?

One of our key offerings is Data Protection as a Service (DPaS). The data is stored and made available for the long term on a guaranteed basis. If the customer requires the data after, say, ten years, it is guaranteed that it’s available. This is unlike other competitors, where there is no retrieval guarantee. What we commit to the customers is their data is stored for the

long term and it is made sure that it will be available, when required and on demand. It’s a significant differentiator.

The service costs almost the same as offered by any other player. In India, inspite of having much lower economies of scale in terms of consumption, we still can beat the costs that are available globally. We can provide a much better service. When the data is much closer, let’s say the data center is 50 kms away, a 1Gb link will cost the same as a 10 Mbps link, when accessed through the Internet. The local loop from a service provider within 50 kms is low cost. It cannot be replicated using an Internet link where the data has to be transported to another country. abhishek.raval@expressindia.com

DECEMBER, 2016

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