The 10 Most Innovative ICT Disruptors to watch in 2019

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Vol-03 March-2019 Issue-04

The 10 Most Innovative

Disruptors to watch in 2019

REIMAGINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY

Go Green The Universality of IOT Technology

Cloud Gaming Gaming over the Cloud – The New Realm of this Era

E The Future Belongs to ICT

T

he world of business is witness to the fact that the companies with better decision making skills have always performed better in their respective fields. And better decisions need information. Information is one of the basic requirements of any organization whether it is an established enterprise or the one which is striving to grow. It is not just limited to decision making but has its impact on a much comprehensive level. Correct information offers higher efficiency in operations by giving insights about important aspects such as requirement of raw materials, demand of stock, proper allocation of resources, etc.

It also offers advantage over the competition as more information leads to better understanding of customers which leads to better lead generation ultimately resulting into a huge, satisfied customer base. This also helps in building good relationship with suppliers. Hence it is a win-win situation from business’s point of view.

However, retrieving important information from data and utilizing it best for the purpose is not a cakewalk. Both the generation and consumption of information nowadays is dealt on a massive level and being swamped in the middle of it, it is very difficult to find what is significant. That is where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) comes in the picture/foray.

In simple words, ICT helps businesses all the way from retrieving information to sharing, exchanging, broadcasting, storing it as per the requirement of the companies, to optimizing the tools and platforms on which it is being shared, exchanged, broadcasted and stored. Now, one might ask, weren’t businesses capable of performing such simple tasks? The answer lies in the fact that the role of ICT isn’t as simple as defining it in simpler terms.

The role of ICT starts at a primal stage of data modification where it analyses data to convert it into useful information. With the help of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning, data becomes useful in almost every aspect of business from day to day processes like client acquisition to fundamental processes such as business strategy, design, engineering and controlling.

Automation is also included in one of the key functional areas which are redefined by ICT. This will lead to a range of services provided by self-managing devices. Smart handling of data will help these devices to optimize the productivity at workspaces. This will also provide better controlling and security.

With ICT, the world will become a smaller place.

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Shubham Khampariya The rapid growth of ICT industry and its collaboration with other technologies has a lot to promise. It is believed that this will push communication beyond the dimensions of vision and sound. With the emergence of technologies such as virtual and augmented reality leveraging support from 5g networking, it is possible to have virtual events in the near future. However, the ease of sharing information will only increase the risk of security breech. Therefore, next level security has to be a mandatory service in the future.

The digital revolution has brought us to the door steps of an era where machines and human beings communicate with each other, know each other, and understand each other. This means that the future is filled with infinite number of opportunities and will be driven by unprecedented information and communication solutions. And the world is going to be smaller than before.

However, such clarity in the future of ICT industry wouldn’t be possible without its key players. There are various companies that have helped the industry reach to the heights where it is today. Therefore in order to acknowledge some of the greatest contributors of excellence in ICT solutions space, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Most Innovative ICT Disruptors to watch in 2019” Featuring as our Cover Story is Endava, a public technology company, with over 18 years of experience of working with some of the world’s leading Finance, Insurance, Telecommunications, Media, Technology, and Retail companies.

Also, make sure to flip through articles, written by our in-house editorial team as well as CXO standpoints of notable industry personalities to have a brief taste of the sector.

Let’s start reading!

Expert's Outlook Living Through Fourth Industrial Revolution

Tech- Talk

Tech Advice

Top 5 Email Security Threats

Leverage Existing SAP Solutions with Cloud Procurement

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28

Cover Story

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24 Go Green The Universality of IoT Technology

08

Endava

Articles

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Instrumenting ICT Services to Empower Clients

Energy Efcienct Technology Green Cloud Computing: Saving Energy through Technology

42 Cloud Computing Gaming over the Cloud –The New Realm of this Era

C Cindicator 20

Rendering Hybrid Intelligence for Effective Decision-making

Enimbos 26

Offering Comprehensive IT Solutions

Hughes Network Systems Leading Broadband Satellite Technology Globally

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38

Sigfox When Things Come Alive

XL Axiata 46

Rendering Exemplary Connectivity Solutions

O N T E N T S

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Executive Editor Shubham Khampariya

Managing Editor Anish Miller

Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes Bhushan Kadam

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

David King

Amol Kamble

Iresh Mathpati

Senior Sales Manager Co-designer

Co-designer Sapana Shinde

Business Development Manager

Passi D.

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Kevin, Mark, Manish

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Alan, Anup

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Prashant Chevale

Research Analyst Patrick James

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com March, 2019 Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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John Cotterell CEO

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n an interview with Insights Success, John Cotterell, CEO of Endava, shares insights on various trends in ICT industry. He also speaks about the challenges faced by the industry while optimizing those trends. Moreover, he discusses about company’s core competencies and the solutions it provides.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between John and Insights Success.

Give a brief overview of the company and its vision.

In 2000, inspired by the way that technology was becoming increasingly central to the way we lived and worked, I wanted to create a company that radically redefined how humans interact with technology and the world around them by combining deep engineering expertise with experienceminded and creative sensibility. I based the creation of that organization on a simple philosophy: “to focus on helping people succeed”, the people who work for us, the people who engage with us, and the people who use the systems and applications we design, build, and operate. As a result, we began on a journey to reimagine the relationship between people and

technology. Eighteen years later, that philosophy continues to drive our success.

How do you diversify your products and solutions in order to benefit your customers?

We have a track record of building deep, long-lasting relationships with numerous clients across a range of industries. These relationships give us valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by our clients and the markets in which they operate.

As a result, we have built a range of solutions that make our clients more responsive by being more agile, more engaging through being more digital and more efficient through automation.

These solutions are underpinned by a range of service offers including strategy, design and engineering that gives us the flexibility to construct products and services that meet the individual needs of our clients.

Examples include an insurance company wanting to automate manual processes so their staff can spend more 1-1 time with clients, or a high-end retailer that wants to create a more engaging customer experience by combining ‘bricks and mortar’ with digital.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of Endava.

One of our most significant achievements is helping both our customers and colleagues to build interesting, challenging and rewarding careers. Through perseverance, we have also learned how to take niche and specialized services that were traditionally delivered onsite with a client and deliver them across distributed locations. Our near shore approach gives us the ability to improve response times and scale to meet the enterprise needs of our clients while exceeding the quality, creativity and customer service expectations achieved through more traditional models.

What are the evident challenges in the ICT services industry?

The challenge of any services industry is deciding which emerging trends are going to be most valuable for your clients so that you can build that expertize and then apply it to their businesses for maximum effect.

Currently, we see rapid development in a wide range of areas including digital transformation, application architecture, machine learning, VR and

AR, DevOps and Agile ways of working, software robotics, novel devices such as wearables and big data. We strategically evaluate which of these will have the most impact on our clients’ businesses and help to position them most effectively in their fastmoving marketplaces. In parallel, we see a skills shortage in many of these areas, as the demand for people with these emerging as well as more fundamental software engineering skills outweighs the supply, meaning that our position as an employer of choice in all of the markets that we operate in is very important to our ability to continue to hire and retain top engineers.

Describe the signiďŹ cance of Automation in ICT space.

Automation itself is not a new concept. In fact, we have been automating business processes successfully since the dawn of computing.

Automation has evolved to include novel and emerging approaches like machine learning, big data and software robotics. These new technologies allow us to solve automation problems which have been intractable until now. We can handle unstructured and

unpredictable data, non-textual data like images and adaptive processes, automating systems that were never intended to be automatable. This has unlocked a number of new opportunities to automate repetitive, tedious processes that historically have needed human intervention, freeing up people to use their cognitive abilities on more valuable and rewarding tasks.

What are the current trends that are driving the industry?

As you begin to break down industry trends, there are two main needs that businesses are focusing on, namely experience and efficiency.

Through the lens of experience-based trends, we are seeing a need to create business platforms that deliver rich digital experiences which increase both customer and business user engagement while simultaneously automating portions of traditionally complicated or difficult tasks. Businesses realize that the best possible digital experiences are ones where users expend less effort engaging with the products and processes to achieve their objective. In support of this, in the consumer space, we’ve conceived and built a platform that uses dynamic image recognition, machine learning, and natural language processing to automate the often skipped and mundane process of warranty registration. In the business user space, we’ve conceived

and are building a platform to solve the very costly issue of ongoing communication and distribution of key program and system status, health, and function. Through an intelligent interface, we illustrate the status and progress of business activities using Machine Learning to predict completion times and potential hold-ups.

From the perspective of efficiency-based trends, we are seeing a notable increase in the demand for strategic assistance in introducing a DevOps culture into traditional enterprise settings. Broadly speaking, the demand is for expertize in the design and realisation of continuous delivery pipelines as well as the enabling techniques and changes that teams need to embrace to build a DevOps culture. This change in demand mirrors our observation that moving to a DevOps culture further accelerates agility within organisations. Moving beyond simple continuous integration (CI) systems to a whole-scale continuous delivery (CD) approach allows enterprises to embrace automation, take advantage of large-scale test automation efforts and reduce service downtime. Endava has become well placed to support this demand by bringing our crossdomain expertizes to high-volume enterprise clients.

Where does Endava envision itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

As the pace of technology change continues to accelerate, we are excited about the opportunities to help our clients incorporate new technology and accelerate change in their organisations. We have recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which is the beginning of a new phase for us as a company. London was a great place to start, but our horizons have really opened out, and we are looking to the world as we expand and grow our business.

Considering the rising number of ICT solution providers, how does Endava stand out from its competitors?

From the start, we built Endava around agile, crossfunctional, multidisciplinary teams that blend in-depth knowledge of strategy and user-centric design with an expert understanding of technology and engineering, that when combined addresses today’s need for engaging technology platforms and services. After many years of working in this way, we are now able to deliver these solutions at scale from multiple locations and time zones.

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Expert's Outlook

About the Author Dr Danil Korchagin is an innovator and senior expert in ICT. He specialises in signal processing, data analysis and software engineering. Having worked for industries, organisations and academia, Danil Korchagin has comprehensive experience in both the industrial and academic worlds. He has managed many ICT projects with outstanding performance outcomes. He is founder of Aicue.

Dr Danil Korchagin Founder Aicue

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March 2019

Living Through Fourth

Industrial Revolution

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anil Korchagin set up Aicue, a technology company that targets to change the way audience videos are consumed on the web, in 2011. In this article, he shares his point of view on ongoing fourth industrial revolution and its impact on everyday life.

We live in amazing time of fourth industrial revolution. The industrial revolution surpasses the scope of ICT, transforms the world and businesses, jobs and life styles. The concepts such as digital transformation, artificial intelligence and connected objects, incarnated into smartphones, are already hiding in our pockets. The self-driving cars leave science fiction and arrive into reality. The old professions go into March 2019

oblivion and get replaced by new exciting jobs.

The artificial intelligence based solutions are already present in many cross-domains and quite often used by professionals and businesses to smarter use time and improve productivity. These solutions can manage financial portfolios and decrypt genetic code, pilot robots and drive cars, entertain people and even be creative. As an example, the cliperie.com platform creates new compelling clips by automatically linking audience videos all together from big data cloud.

The big data becomes de facto fuel of XXI century and industrial revolution. The amount of

information, which is being gathered and transmitted by digital gadgets, sensors and internet of things, surpasses any imagination.

Constantly increasing and improving population of digital objects results in constantly improving quantity and quality of data, while the next 5G mobile networks are going to take care about increasing digital data traffic. The big data surrounds us and helps to come up with efficient solutions.

There are already more than fifteen billion connected objects worldwide.

The population of connected devices will surpass fifty billions in less than five years. The internet of things, network of connected devices, is already present in commercial and 17

industrial, consumer and infrastructure areas: from connected wearable heart monitor wristbands to connected pullovers, from connected security cameras to connected alarms, from connected parking lot sensors to connected displays of available places.

The internet of things in turn enables smart tiers of technologies as smart homes, smart parking, smart traffic control and smart cities. The smart home hubs control communication among connected thermostats and stores, heating systems and other connected objects to enable home automation, energy savings and higher quality of life. The smart cities enable to reduce traffic jams and adjust public transportation in real-time, tighten security control and predict unforeseen events, reduce noise pollution and improve air quality.

Constantly connected digital gadgets continue to pull further more people from reality to social networks and virtual worlds. The choice of remote communication still outfights real life communication. The picture of the family together with each member navigating within its own virtual world on smartphone starts to be everyday occurrence. The same picture can be observed in the trains, airports and other places. However, some people started to apply reasonable moderation.

Even when people put away connected gadgets and back to physical world, the following interaction might be with nearby humanoid robot. Powered with same artificial intelligence as their virtual compatriots, they can follow conversations, understand individual social signals and respond appropriately. Their social interaction ability keeps improving, making future humanoid robots irreplaceable companions and assistants in nursing homes and hospitals, hotels and commercial stores.

automate production helps industries to be more competitive on the global market and has positive impact on job market in many countries due to manufacturing stays at home instead of being moved overseas.

The tangible shift in professions happens with all industrial revolutions. The current one is not an exception. Some professions get automated, freeing up people to do new tasks: data management, data interpretation, digital marketing management, robot supervision, process control, process moderation, intervention in unforeseen situations, quality control and so on. The automated places can enable work week reduction and equilibrate shift in social insurances caused by increasing life expectancy.

The advances in technologies enable to process more data with less energy and smarter use available resources. The paradox in our society is that the focus still stays on profitability and growth over durability and climate sustainability. As consequence, the digital footprint on global energy consumption keeps increasing from year to year and can reach one fifth by 2030, regardless it is feasible to pursue industrial revolution at moderate pace within fixed energetic envelope until there is an excess of renewable energy.

The years will pass. The artificial intelligence, big data and internet of things will become ordinary tools in many areas of our life just like electricity and telephones, internet and personal computers did during previous industrial revolutions. No one will be questioning them anymore. They stay under human control. The human society is free to decide up to which extent new technologies and innovations have to be validated, regulated and certified for future everyday use.

The industrial robots are separate topic. The global robot density in the manufacturing industries is accelerating around the world and there is already at least one industrial robot per 100 working people in more than 20 countries worldwide. The ongoing trend to 18

March 2019

Rendering Hybrid Intelligence for Effective Decision-making

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ounded in 2015, the whole idea behind Cindicator started with the “Wisdom of the Crowd” hypothesis. It’s based on the observation that forecasts from a decentralized group are more accurate than any individual forecasts made by experts. Cindicator offers Hybrid Intelligence, which is a combination of machine learning and human intelligence. Right now it is focused on asset management which means traders use the company’s Hybrid Intelligencebased predictive analytics in their investment decisions.

Rewarding Questions Cindicator asserts that its solution is simple and unique. It asks questions about different market events through its app for iOS, Android, and the web.

The company has over 120,000 analysts registered on its platform and they answer these questions. They get points for accurate forecasts and then get a reward in crypto at the end of the month.

After their answers are collected, Cindicator applies over 30 machine learning models to create a predictive indicator for the event in question.

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These indicators are distributed to traders who hold its tokens. In September 2017, the company raised $15 million through a token sale. These tokens are the only way to access its indicators and other analytical products.

Co-founding Ideas Mike Brusov is the Co-founder and CEO of Cindicator. His role is to offer strategic guidance and to align various teams working to create Hybrid Intelligence. He launched Cindicator in 2015. Initially, he thought that collective forecasts could be monetized by partnerships with analytical agencies, brands or corporations. Soon, a small team began to assemble and he was joined by two Co-founders, Yuri Lobyntsev and Artem Baranov.

Quite a Journey Mike, Yuri and Artem along with the team, realized it at an early stage that predictive analytics is most valuable in finance and asset management. They made a pivot, rebranded as Cindicator, and Mike moved to New York City to pitch the company’s services to hedge funds. Their idea was to sell indicators via APIs to institutional investors.

Some hedge funds liked their product.

Yet they wanted to monopolize access to these signals. They even got an offer to acquire the technology and team. It was tempting, but they had larger goals for Cindicator.

In parallel, the company was watching the cryptocurrency phenomenon with great interest. Co-founder and CTO, Yuri Lobyntsev suggested that they should create an internal token economy to decentralize their distribution model and create feedback loops between analysts who contribute their intelligence and traders who take risks based on indicators. The idea resonated strongly with the crypto community. In September 2017 Cindicator raised $15 million through a token sale after receiving over $500 million worth of applications to contribute funds.

Trends to Look for According to Cindicator, several trends are worth mentioning. First, blockchain and crypto are turning the world more global, enabling decentralized business models. Cindicator has analysts from practically every country in the world.

Paying them in US dollars or other March 2019

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DISRUPTORS TO WATCH IN 2019

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Cindicator builds Hybrid Intelligence for effective asset management.

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Mike Brusov CEO, Co-founder

currencies would be a nightmare for the company. With crypto, it instantly sends thousands of transactions in minutes. Second, FinTech is chipping away at the most lucrative niches in finance. Previously, huge banks were dominating in every way.

Now FinTech startups are focusing on just one or two areas and start from scratch without any cumbersome legacy technology that plagues the big guys. Third, machine learning is becoming more powerful and easier to use.

There are plenty of ready packages, libraries, and models that one can quickly deploy if one has the date.

Privacy is Priority Cindicator believes that the common challenge for many tech companies is in handling data and dealing with privacy. Hence it is quite explicit with how it uses data.

Analysts registered in the company’s app understand that it uses it to create predictive indicators. The company asserts that it’s the only way to address this which is to be transparent and very clear with how it uses data.

and the company can train its machine learning models on an ever-growing data set.

Competition is Irrelevant According to the enterprise, at this stage, competition is largely irrelevant. There are companies approaching similar problems of making decisions amid high uncertainty, but everybody is tackling this from a different angle. It’s up to the market to decide what works best. At the same time, it believes in symbiotic partnerships. When companies with similar views on the world unite resources and help each other, they can develop faster than if everyone exists in a silo.

A Greater Vision According to Cindicator, it’s just the beginning. Its vision is on a larger scale. The company believes that through the symbiosis of humans and machines Cindicator will become an important decision-making tool in any field with a high degree of uncertainty: politics, science, technology, business ventures, even sports and arts. Uncertainty is only going increase as the world becomes even more complex.

The result is the crowdsourcing of intelligence, the Cindicator team explains. Social media giants have larger data sets of collective views and insights, but they don’t have the users’ permissions to use this data. With Cindicator, on the other hands, people eagerly share their views, creating a full record of their forecasts. All their statistics are available on a single screen and at any time they can download all their data. According to Cindicator, it’s a win-win: analysts can learn from their past mistakes,

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Go Green

The Universality of IoT Technology T

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he gratifying tool for companies to lead ahead IoT Technology” The Internet of things (IoT) is a revolutionary change for many sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, retail, electronic, energy and healthcare which are progressing towards the IoT phenomenon to connect digitally. It has placed an opportunity to build unusual results which increases a company’s compatibility. Enterprises seeking development are focusing on the use of real-time data management and IoT analysis. Many of the companies are adopting this technology to heighten their power of consumption. Companies are mainly concentrating on IoT application from “sensing” instead of “doing” to grow its competitive advantages. This element empowers organizations by allowing them to take the IoT advantage and adopt a more ‘innovative connected approach’.

Infrastructure Management – Optimization of Technology New applications are now enhancing their level of consumption. Likewise, manufacturing sector is also

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March 2019

getting engrossed and achieving excellence through IoT Techniques. Applications are liable for monitoring and controlling operations for urban and rural manufactures like bridges, farms, and railway tracks. It is the key features of the applications were IoT infrastructure is also used for monitoring the construction safety and risk management system and operations. This major feature represents the mechanism of IoT application which works under infrastructure management. Benefits of IoT Technology are cost reducing, time reducing, better in quality, and increase productivity. It helps to make fast decisions and save money with real-time analysis. IoT devices help to give prominent results by monitoring and controlling operations used in all infrastructure related area.

Manufacturing Techniques are Growing with IoT Technology In the manufacturing sector, networking and controlling have been used with IoT devices. It provides information about data and operation stability. Network status and the information is collected in the system by tracking IoT device. Manufacturing control process deliver information about industry application and smart manufacturing details receiving form IoT device. IoT intelligent system enables sharing information about product demands, service management, supply chain networks, sensors and control systems together. Small industries can also be integrated with IoT technology that enables real-time optimization, measurements, production compatibility and safety management.

However, intelligent systems are determined as the significant technique that implies user experience and system security which ultimately saves costs.

which land is fertile or which one is dry and predict future fields.

IoT Technology Helps to Optimize Energy Consumption Integrated Sensing and Control system helps to optimize energy consumption. IoT devices are integrated with energy consumption systems in order to maintain balance between power generation and energy usage. IoT devices offer the opportunity to remotely gather information. It enables advance functions like remote controlling and changing light conditions. IoT Technology work for home-based energy system which provide power related information, energy consumption and energy usage at homes. IoT devices set goals to improve efficiency, reliability and sustainability of the energy system.

Monitoring Environment through IoT Technology Environment monitoring application has been involved with sensors to assist information about environment changes by identifying water quantity, atmosphere, air pressure etc. It also has focus on monitoring movements of wildlife and their habitats. Devices connected to the internet also provide statistics about earthquake or tsunami - early warning systems, and also used as an emergency system. IoT device application is used to collect geographic information and majorly instructive information. This device also uses standardized approach to bring wireless sensing technique and gather finest information.

IoT Technology Helps to Sustain Building and Home Automation

IoT Technology brings Innovative Farming Methods The Agriculture sector is one of the industry to implement IoT technology for stability and better performance. IoT technology has become a significant method of farming. It also offers durability and functionality to the whole process. The combination of wireless sensors with agricultural apps and cloud platforms benefits in gathering definite information relating to environmental conditions like, rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind speed etc. Farmers are getting competent results out of it, and are able to find real-time information easily. Linked with farmland, it improves and automates farming techniques like weather information, taking decision on quality and quantity, and minimizes risk and waste. With IoT Tech farmers can find out detailed information of farm and similarly know

March 2019

With certainty, IoT devices are used to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical and electronic systems.

IoT devices are used in various types of home automation and building automation systems. Control and sensory applications offer unified information. The integration of the internet with building creates an energy management system which will allow prominent energy efficiency.

There have been many ways for IoT technology to expand compatibility in the digital world, and it will be implemented in each sector to work as an important tool, to enhance its affinity. After all, the IoT network makes technology more unified and satisfying, with its tools and applications and IoT will be a step ahead towards numerous opportunities.

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Offering Comprehensive IT Solutions

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n an interview with Insights Success, Jesús Gironda, CTO of Enimbos, shares insights on how the company has become a leader in cloud migration and operations and what are the lessons that it learned along the way. Also, he broadly discusses the company’s core competencies and the services it offers.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Jesús and Insights Success.

Give a brief overview of the Enimbos and its vision.

Created in 2016, Enimbos is a leading expert in cloud migration and operation. With more than 60 high skilled cloud professionals, the company has more than 140 customers and top certifications with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. We use the most innovative technologies and develop our own Software as a Service platform to increase control, automate and secure the hybrid and multi-cloud environment for large Corporations, reducing their costs over a 40%.

How do you diversify your products and solutions in order to benefit your customers?

Enimbos’s success is based on 26

providing the agility that larger companies do not have, offering benefits to our clients in terms of delivery time, automation and costs saving. Our value proposition is focused on providing advanced cloud managed services.

On one hand, we offer our clients advisory service for defining efficient hybrid architectures which integrates tools for monitoring the multi-cloud environment, and its objective is the optimization and costs saving. This is our Compass® service. Enimbos also offers administration and 24/7 motorization services, using automation tools, control solutions and integrating DevOps procedures. This ensures the highest safety standards.

This is the Sailor® service.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of Enimbos.

We have learnt several lessons during this two-year journey. The most relevant for us is being flexible, as suppliers who adapt themselves to our customers’ needs and, at the same time, run away from the traditional outsourcing model in order to avoid technological dependency. Our customers demand us complete “tailormade” solutions.

Our model is infinitely more evolved, close and agile than the one used by the “traditional players”. Our proposal is based on an industrialized model in a “pret-a-porter” mode but tailored for covering our customer’s needs. We base our strategy on the disruptive innovation, running away from conformism and seeking excellence is our strength. Our long-term goal is to become a global reference in the “Cloud Enabling” thanks to our Software as a Service tool. And I am convinced we are on our way.

Give a detailed description of the featured person’s roles in the company.

I am a Computer Engineer and have graduated as Executive MBA from IE Business School. I started my professional career in 2004 as a System Engineer at Indra ATM. In 2006 I joined Telvent, where I held the positions of Director of Center of Excellence, managing a team of 50 engineers and Director of Innovation, leading the company’s R&D plan.

Since October 2016, I have held the position of Chief Technology Officer at Enimbos.

My role at Enimbos is focused on two different areas. On one hand, leading the technical area and innovating every March 2019

THE

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MOST INNOVATIVE

DISRUPTORS TO WATCH IN 2019

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In Enimbos, the cloud enabler company, we help organizations manage their environments in a

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cheaper, more exible and scalable way with our high level of expertise.

Jesús Gironda CTO day, deciding which technologies we use, when and why we implement them, which alliances we make and when we carry them out. I am also responsible of defining the architecture for our clients, its execution and implementation.

What are the evident challenges in the ICT services industry?

The evolution of SaaS and multi-cloud solutions generates a very complex and highly entropy environment. This situation additionally assumes new windows for cyberattacks. Besides, organizations have decentralized their decision-making process from IT as the CIO is not the technology owner anymore; he is now just managing them.

For companies, the challenge in the ITC environment is certainly simplifying and securing the new paradigm.

What are the current trends that are driving the industry?

The industry key trends are maximizing the knowledge based on using IoT and Big Data solutions, making the decision making process easier with Artificial Intelligence tools, reducing cyber-attacks risks and aligning IT costs with business needs, always looking for maximum efficiency.

Client Testimonials “Enimbos, as a technological expert of on-site and cloud systems management, allowed us through its experience and good professional practices, to carry out the migration of the hosting of our high availability platform. In the same way, the good daily doing of its professionals, makes the platform work correctly in an uninterrupted way providing the 24/7 service required in the hospital systems.” – Luis Peñas, CIO at Orden Hospitalaria San Juan de Dios “Enimbos has shown itself as a company with great professionals who have a high level of expertise and with whom coordination is not a problem but a virtue. Their closeness becomes palpable in the day to day where they have no problems in applying effective solutions to the daily problems. They have helped us to take a technologically key step: migrating to AWS our self-designed platform, making us feel confident in a field in which we are not experts. " – Roberto Adarve, CTO at Zankyou

Considering the rising number of ICT solution providers, how does Enimbos stand out from its competitors?

We are focusing our differentiation in four pillars: expertise in operating critical systems, defining efficient architectures agnostically to our cloud providers, focusing on FinOps while guarantying the maximum technology alignment with business needs and using the most innovative technologies.

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Tech- Talk

Top

Email 5

Security Threats

early 95 percent of all successful attacks on enterprise networks targeted organization’s users through email. With the industry of cybersecurity evolving so rapidly, hackers are consistently changing their tactics, keeping it almost impossible to keep up with.

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spreader modules. The negative consequences from an Emotet infection can be temporary or permanent loss of sensitive proprietary information, disruption of regular operations, financial losses incurred to restore systems and files, and potential harm to an organizations reputation.

With today’s growing security landscape, email threats are one of the most common strategies utilized by cyber criminals. What started off with spam emails sent to your junk folder, has evolved to a more robust tactic to deliver destructive content straight to your inbox. Here are the top five email security threats that we’ve seen so far this year:

Ursnif Banking Malware A new version of the infamous banking Trojan Ursnif made its appearance again earlier this year in June. This malware is well known in the cyber security community and was the most active malware code in the financial sector from the end of 2016 into early 2017. This malware is capable of stealing users' credentials, credentials for local webmail, cloud storage, cryptocurrency exchange platforms and ecommerce sites.

Emotet Banking Trojan Emotet is an advanced, modular banking Trojan that primarily focuses as a downloader or dropper of other banking Trojans and continues to be among the most costly and destructive malware affecting governments, private and public sectors. Emotet can evade most signature-based detections, and because it is Virtual Machine aware, it generates false indicators when ran in a sandbox.

Additionally, Emotet has several methods for maintaining persistence, including auto-start registry keys and services as well as Dynamic Link Libraries to continuously update and evolve its capabilities.

Initial infection of this malware occurs when a user opens or clicks a malicious download link, PDF, or macro-enabled Microsoft Word document included in the malspam. Once downloaded, Emotet establishes persistence and attempts to propagate local networks through one of its incorporated

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Once Ursnif infects a new machine it will attempt to spread to other users in the address book of the compromised email accounts. It tricks the victim into opening the malicious email because the message is presented as the reply to an existing conversation conducted by the victim in the past.

For example, if you receive an email that was a replay to a previous conversation from a while back, you can look at the “To:” field in the email and see if it's replied to a large number of unsuspecting users.

Another feature about this malware is its ability to keep track of company names and title the malicious document “VICTIM_COMPANY_.doc” in order to look legitimate.

Once the victim clicks enable macros, the second step of the infection process begins, which launches a malicious

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script that downloads and executes a payload from a server controlled by the attackers. Once installed, Ursnif can operate without being noticed by both the user and the operating system.

Extortion Campaign Extortion campaigns have been around for quite some time but there was one that was in full swing across the globe that used a clever twist to trick unsuspecting users into paying a ransom. The attacker for this extortion campaign claims to have installed malware on your system and has also used your webcam to record you watching porn. The attacker then goes on to threaten the release of this video to everyone in your contacts unless you pay the Bitcoin ransom.

The basic premise of this type of extortion attempt has been around for quite some time, but the addition of the Username/Password combination in the subject line has unsuspecting users worried. While researching this campaign, Nuspire’s Security Analytics Team (SAT) came across multiple different counts of affected users claiming the Username/Password combination was something they had used eight years ago. In this case, the attacker has somewhat automated the attack to create a script that pulls directly from usernames and passwords of a given data breach that happened eight years ago. Therefore, every victim who had their password compromised as part of that breach, is now getting this same email at the address they used to sign up for the hacked website.

Hopefully, if you were affected by that data breach you updated your username/password combination. Granted, the people who didn't bother changing this information, this attack directly affects them, but rest assured this attacker doesn’t have a recording of you that they plan to send out to your contacts. It is merely scare tactics to make some easy money, and upon investigation of multiple Bitcoin addresses associated with this campaign, the attacker was indeed making easy money.

This attack could evolve in the future and use more up to date data breaches which in turn could scare more users into paying the ransom, so be on the lookout.

Shawn Pope Cyber Security Engineer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shawn Pope is the Cyber Security Engineer of Nuspire Networks, a state-of-the-science managed network security provider for some of the largest and most distinctive companies around the world.

GandCrab Ransomware GandCrab holds the top spot in ransomware, partly because it’s used by the Magnitude botnet. Although GandCrab is usually spread via spam email, it has recently been distributed via compromised websites and is now

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appending the .KRAB extension to the encrypted files.

Towards the end of April 2018 a campaign with the subject line “Your Order #{Random Digits}” was circulating. There is limited content in the body of the email and has an attached ZIP file which includes a Word document that contains malicious macros that download and execute GandCrab ransomware.

GandCrab is under constant development where new versions are consistently being released at an aggressive pace. Its basic functionality is well document and does the same typical things ransomware does, including encrypting files with the. KRAB extension, changing the user’s background, and leveraging Tor for communications. One of the interesting elements of Gandcrab is its use of namecoin domains for Command and Control (C2) communication. These are easily identified by the .bit top level domain (TLD). Since attackers rely heavily on Tor and namecoin domains to help evade identification, it is a no brainer for them to use a decentralized DNS service that does not rely on central authority. This also increases the difficulty of having domains shut down and identifying those that are potentially behind them.

Phishing By the end of Q2 2018 Microsoft had taken over the top spot from Facebook for the number one target of corporate phishing attacks. Reason being, it’s highly profitable for hackers to compromise an Office 365 account. Hackers see email-based attacks as an easy entry point into data, files, and contacts from other Office 365 apps, including SharePoint, OneDrive, Skype, Excel, and CRM. We see all different types of Phishing attempts from quite possibly the worst attempts to exact replicas of a legitimate Office 365 login page. Unfortunately, Phishing will always exist and can slip through the gaps in email filtering due to the fact that new domains/URLs are popping up every day

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to host fake login pages. This is where user awareness training is extremely important. Educate your users, roll out training exercises where employees with fake Phishing emails and see who clicks on them and who doesn’t.

Because Phishing has become so popular, education will pay off in the long run.

Solutions Aside from training and educating employees on malware, and ransomware that might come in through a user’s email, there are a few other solutions to take into consideration that can prevent these attacks from entering your network.

1. Use antivirus programs with behavior and heuristic detection capabilities, with automatic updates of signatures and software on clients and servers.

2. Implement a spam filter to filter out known malspam indicators such as malicious subject lines, and block suspicious and blacklisted Ips. 3. Mark external emails with a banner denoting it is from an external source, this will assist users in detecting spoofed emails.

4. Implement a block policy for file attachments that are commonly associated with malware such as .dll, and .exe, and attachments that cannot be scanned by antivirus such a .zip files.

5. Implement Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC), a validation system that minimizes spam email by detecting email spoofing using Domain Name System (DNS) records and digital signatures.

6. Implement a solution that can send the unknown/suspicious files to the sandbox for further investigation and analysis.

7. And most importantly employee training on social engineering and phishing. Urge employees not to open suspicious emails, click links contained in such emails, or post sensitive information online.

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Leading Broadband Satellite Technology Globally

H

ughes Network Systems, LLC is the global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its vision is to be the global connectivity provider for people, enterprise and things. For enterprises and governments, the company’s HughesON™ managed network services provide complete connectivity solutions employing an optimized mix of wide area technologies and infrastructure solutions such as Wi-Fi, VOIP, switches and digital media products.

Hughes enterprise customers include large distributed organizations and franchises in industries such as retail, restaurant, retail petroleum and convenience, banking & finance, hospitality, healthcare, government, oil & gas and more. The company is the leader in secure managed SD-WAN for enterprise, with 30,000 deployed SDWAN sites and individual customers with up to 3,500 managed SD-WAN locations. Globally, it manages approximately 450,000 business sites within its HughesON Managed Network Services.

Customized Solutions Hughes offers a fully customizable suite of managed services that have 32

been adapted for different enterprise applications from retail and restaurant to retail petroleum and government networks. Every solution is customized to meet individual enterprise needs and site requirements including installation, project management, security, configuration management, field repairs and help desk support.

Hughes can integrate and manage SDWAN solutions with broadband access anywhere via best-available wireline, cable, wireless and satellite transport, and utilizes a range of partners to tailor security, Wi-Fi, VOIP, and LAN infrastructure to each site. Hughes additionally offers digital media and training solutions for employee and customer engagement.

The Journey of Invention Building on its legacy of more than forty years of networking innovation, Hughes continues to advance enterprise networking. From an initial foundation in X.25 equipment to the invention of the VSAT (very small aperture terminal), Hughes has pushed the boundaries of integrating technology and service. Today, the company delivers an award-winning Managed SD-WAN solution with industry-leading next generation firewall and unified threat management

(UTM) software, utilizing an edgebased approach that improves cloud and direct Internet access and reduces network traffic.

Designed for the challenges of a broadband based network, a HughesON Managed SD-WAN is the only SD-WAN solution featuring zerotouch configuration which means the system continuously senses network behavior and automatically configures itself. As both a hardware and software engineering company as well as a leading service provider, Hughes leverages real-world expertise to drive the next cycle of engineering development.

An All Encompassing Leader Dan Rasmussen is the Senior Vice President of the Enterprise Business and is responsible for leading the organization that supports large enterprise, small business, and government customers. This involves oversight of sales and marketing teams and development of enterprise solutions. Mr. Rasmussen holds a Master of Business Administration, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Hughes is a global connectivity provider for people, enterprises and things – powering a

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connected experience

Dan Rasmussen Senior Vice President

Network Demand The digital revolution creates unprecedented network demand as enterprises increasingly rely on cloud-based applications. Hughes recently commissioned a Forrester Consulting study to explore the challenges of distributed networks for enterprises with 200+ locations. The study revealed the industry is at a tipping point, with increased network complexity and demand driving migration to new solutions. Over 40 percent of those surveyed are not satisfied with overall network performance. More than a quarter are less than satisfied with network security. Twothirds report outages at least twice a year; one in five experience outages monthly.

The biggest challenge lies in getting the correct infrastructure and equipment to the distributed enterprise to meet increasing needs for reliability and bandwidth.

Additionally, the new set of applications combined with growing data volume means that every network experiences congestion that can impact mission critical applications unless the right configuration is implemented.

Uniform Experience Hughes unifies its solutions around the world so that customers have a uniform experience globally. The company continues to incorporate advanced data science – such as machine learning and artificial intelligence – across a wide range of use cases, from improving network performance to improved security. In 2018, Hughes established an in-house data-science incubator, with the goal to significantly improve network performance to customers while reducing operational costs.

Cliental Assessment “Earlier we had to install a dedicated circuit at each store just for our increasing store applications, with no backup protection. Now we can do everything with one Hughes solution and gain backup for our back-office operations.

That’s huge for us because we rely on Market Basket and other applications every day to maximize profitability and efficiency at our stores. Hughes ActiveTechnologies with 4G backup was the key to getting all those things working.”

A One Stop Provider Hughes is the leading one-stop provider of secure SD-WAN managed services for multi-branch organizations globally, serving nearly half a million sites worldwide. It is a true business partner, understanding and addressing client challenges as its own and going the extra mile to craft the right solutions, without limit to provider or transport. The company also helps clients “future proof” and scale their networks, preparing for the demands of tomorrow. Hughes has a cadre of customers that have utilized its services for 10+ years -- the trust built over years of partnerships is one of Hughes greatest strengths.

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Green

Cloud Computing Saving Energy through Technology

T

he rapid expansion in data centers, due to the exponential growth of the cloud computing has caused the dramatic increase in energy consumption and its effect on the environment in terms of the carbon footprints. To reduce the power consumption, it is required to develop some energy efficient solutions. The Green Computing is the practice of executing policies and the procedures to improve efficiency of the computing resources in such a way as to reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of their utilization. Green Cloud Architecture is rising from these trends leading, not only to energy efficiency, but also a carbon emission aware concept. In order to reduce energy consumption, a greener environment needs to be built.

Among all industries, the information communication technology (ICT) industry is arguably responsible for a larger portion of the worldwide growth in energy consumption. The goal of green cloud computing is to promote the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste by reducing the use of hazardous materials and maximizing the energy efficiency during the product's lifetime.

Energy to be saved The objective is to reduce power consumption of the data center. It offers the features like online monitoring, live virtual machine migration, and optimization of Virtual Machine Placement. Through this proposed Green Cloud Architecture, energy up to 27% can be saved. The need to manage multiple applications in a data center creates the challenge of on-demand resource provisioning and allocation in response to time-varying workloads. Data center resources are statically possessed to applications, based on the peak load characteristics, in order to provide performance guarantees and to maintain the isolation.

Energy-efficient resource management has been first introduced in the context of battery fed mobile devices, where energy consumption has to be reduced in order to improve the battery lifetime. Techniques which are developed for mobile devices also can be applied or adapted for servers and data centers; this kind of systems requires specific methods.

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March 2019

Energy Efď€ cient Technology

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The primary method is to consolidate the Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling technique in an efficient way to maximize the resource utilization and to minimize energy consumption of the datacenters which will result in the reduced carbon footprints and thus will help more in achieving the Green Computing.

The Green Benefits Cloud computing is the way to save money and energy for the business. Users emphasize Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and can improve their manageability and facilitate the maintenance of the resources. It means that benefit of business enterprises implicates to avoid spending on software and infrastructure resources, and allow business clients to focus on earning money rather than being weighted down with infrastructure concerns. Therefore, operating this model allows reducing the consummation of the power energy without spending money on running the servers. Moreover, with no servers to repair, the absence of hardware to upgrade and no software to install, labor costs are also reduced.

With SaaS software accesses usually through a browser-based client, i.e., it can run on virtually any authorized computer, making desktop and laptop resources easily replaceable. Thus, when the user also saves on the support, it doubles the impact and in fact increases green role in business. The employees can work remotely, traveling and moving from one place to another because they have fast access to the internet and the ability to use all the services at hand, on the other hand, it reduces the consumption of fossil fuels and the harmful pollution that results from vehicle emissions as well.

The reduction of energy and power consumption has become a first-order objective in the design of modern computing systems. The roots of energy-efficient computing, practices can be traced back to 1992, when the U.S. environmental protection agency had launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program which was designed to identify and promote the energy-efficient products in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Computers and monitors were the first labeled products. This has led to the widespread adoption of the sleep mode in electronic devices. The term “green computing” was introduced to refer to the energy-efficient personal computers.

Interesting Research Findings While deploying data center, the sole concern is high-performance, and this demand has been fulfilled without paying much attention to the energy consumption. An average data center guzzles energy as much as 25,000 households. There is a necessity to move the focus to optimizing for energy efficiency while maintaining high service level performance than optimizing data center resource management for pure performance, as the energy cost is increasing while the availability dwindles. According to certain reports, the total estimated energy bill for data centers in the year 2010 was $11.5 billion and energy costs in a typical data center doubles every five years.

For the development of cloud computing and it to sustain green technologies is exceedingly essential. Of the numerous green methodologies enquired, the DVFS technology is a highly hardware oriented approach and hence it is less flexible.

Cloud computing is a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for running an enterprise and the web applications. But the critical issue is the drastic surge in the energy consumption of data centers which is triggering by the growing demand for cloud infrastructure. Hence, the energy-efficient solutions are required which results in less number of carbon footprints and thus help in achieving greener computing.

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March 2019

S

ince the invention of Internet human lives have changed across the globe. Nowadays we humans use Internet for everything.

Internet is also being used to connect billions of devices, which are commonly called IoT devices.

Their data is being stored in the cloud and will participate in the digitalization of the environment.

Having a global, simple, low-cost and low-power connectivity solution is fundamental. This is the challenge that Sigfox addresses by deploying a lowbandwidth dedicated network, already present in 60 countries.

Created in 2010, the organization is a recognized global pioneer in a sector that is already revolutionizing the society. The ambition of Sigfox, embodied in the slogan “Make Things Come Alive”, is to give a voice to the physical world around us and to allow these billions of objects to play a role in economic and social development.

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Delivering Sustainable End-to-End Solutions Sigfox has rolled out a single global public network across 60 countries.

This enables devices to connect without pairing, at very low connectivity cost, with battery life lasting years and without roaming complexity or cost. The organization’s network allows the customers (or users or end users) to connect devices without having to own or operate a private network or datacenter infrastructure – its solution delivers device to data via APIs from Sigfox’s cloud platform.

The company also has a strong ecosystem of partners delivering sustainable end-to-end solutions, at affordable prices, via its Sigfox operators in 60 countries.

Through indirect channels such as these Sigfox Operators or strategic partners such as device manufacturers, and through direct approaches via Sigfox’s IOT Agency and its Global Business Development team, the organization sees itself as IOT enablers

that help identify and tackle final customers’ pain points to improve cost and efficiency in multiple domains.

The Key Strategist Recently, in 28th of November 2018, Jeremy Prince has been appointed as the CSO of Sigfox. As the Chief Strategy Officer, he works closely with Ludovic Le Moan, CEO and Cofounder of the organization.

With degrees in Political Sciences & Economics and in International Law, he started his career working for a press group before moving to the Digital world, first Internet, then Mobile. He worked on two major successful IPOs (Index Multimedia & Seloger.com), before joining M6 (one of the main European media groups).

He spent 10 years working there, first as CEO of a joint venture in the Digital field, then as Director of all Gaming activities, to finally hold the position of “Secrétaire Général” of an in-house TV production company. After that, he was recruited by Technicolor as the COO of Mikros, before finally joining Sigfox.

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Sigfox makes things come alive

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Jeremy Prince CSO Addressing Pain Points Sigfox believes that there are three key challenges to address in the IoT market; Energy consumption, Cost, and Compatibility; Lowest-energy consumption – Sigfox enables sensors to function without the need for batteries, which will remove the need for battery recharging and replacement.

Today, multiple sources of energy in the physical world can enable energy-harvesting, including solar, wind, and electromagnetic waves. The simplicity of the technology means that Sigfox can provide the best possible user experience and lowest maintenance costs. One day, it should even allow us to remove the need for replacing or re-charging batteries since the devices will generate energy themselves. Ÿ Lowest-cost: Sigfox has dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of device silicon to accelerate time to market and IoT adoption. Cellular SIM card module can cost up to $40, a Sigfox module is as little as a few dollars. At this cost one can economically connect virtually anything. Sigfox’s ecosystem recently announced the world’s lowest cost modules starting at just $2. Sigfox will also launch in the coming years a simplified connectivity service that transforms any short range wireless device into a long range IoT device running on a module that should just cost $0.20! Ÿ Complementary technology: Sigfox is compatible with Bluetooth, GPS 2G/3G/4G and WiFi. By combining other connectivity solutions with Sigfox, business cases Ÿ

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and user experience are drastically improved. The benefits of having dual connectivity technologies in the same IoT devices offer huge benefits such as additional security, reliability (backup and troubleshooting) and anti-jamming.

When the Plan is to bring the Most Effective Solutions Recently, Sigfox launched a micro base station which allows indoor and outdoor Sigfox network coverage of up to two kilometers.

The organization is also planning to bring Sigfox Bubbles to market, that can be compared to beacons, enabling asset location device that provide accuracy within less than a meter – once the domain of RFID, now in the sights as SFID (Sigfox Frequency Identification). The Sigfox Bubble architecture enables technology where the company believes it can achieve 2 cents sensors in the future.

Additionally, the organization is also working on its satellite aspirations at an accelerated pace while ambitiously expanding its global terrestrial coverage. Finally, Sigfox has the ambition to make its 0G network a standard for the Telecom industry.

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Tech Advice

Leverage Existing

SAP Solutions

with Cloud Procurement

C

ompanies that have already invested in SAP find that they can achieve even better results from their existing investment with cloud technology and eProcurement. After the initial investment, companies find certain roadblocks preventing mass user adoption and diminishing cost savings. Issues such as inability to stay connected, lack of insight into data, and complex and fragmented business rules stop businesses from using the full power of SAP. As cloud application technologies advance, companies gain the benefits of rapid deployment cycles, increased self-service tools, and faster performance.

Vroozi delivers on the promise and power of eProcurement in the Cloud with seamless integration into SAP. SAP users looking to the cloud generally face a few questions, including: · How can I benefit from using cloud procurement? · Will my transition to the cloud be cost-effective? · How will my business processes be affected by cloud technology?

To understand the benefits of cloud technology to existing SAP users, let’s evaluate three procurement strategies that highlight the power of cloud procurement.

Value Realization Return on Investment (ROI) is a central factor in any

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procurement strategy. Buyers and trading partners of cloud procurement solutions need to feel confident that solutions will lead to cost savings and higher productivity and efficiency. Users quickly see returns by focusing on user adoption, compliance, and spend management. Spend Management allows companies to visualize purchasing spending patterns and usage and drives employees to leverage preferred pricing with contract suppliers. To increase user adoption and compliance, the cloud empowers a mobile workforce with the right resources and experience so everyone stays connected and available so that business is not disrupted. As user adoption and compliance frameworks increase with cloud-based systems, organizations gain immediate cost savings in procurement by decreasing transaction costs and preventing spend leakage with your supply chain.

Efficiencies Process efficiency is key for a successful, healthy business.

Cloud technology enables better processes by keeping everyone connected through a mobile experience and automating transaction tasks through the use of machine learning and pattern matching. With a centralized, unified system, cloud automation can yield immediate benefits in requisition to invoice and payment business processes and reduced errors and issues leading to higher productivity and decreased processing costs. Further, by allowing employees

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to interact with cloud procurement via smart Phones and tablets, business can continue to move with efficiency and speed.

IT Cost Savings Perhaps no determinant is more important in realizing the benefits of cloud technologies versus traditional on premise software is in IT Cost Savings. Systems and applications which required large physical infrastructure and monetary investments can now provide inexpensive and scalable solutions through the Cloud and cloud infrastructure providers. A procurement solution that integrates with SAP is easier to access, less expensive, and takes a fraction of the implementation time companies once faced with traditional software solutions.

Cloud technology relieves the user of hidden costs such as hardware, consultants, infrastructure, maintenance, and costly upgrade cycles, providing lower risk and lower total cost of ownership.

Conclusion The cloud offers little upfront expense, automatic upgrades, and pre-integrated best practices which allow organizations to focus on business growth and improved operating margins. Vroozi’s eProcurement solution that takes SAP solutions to the cloud empower users with better returns, better processes and higher savings, so their overall SAP investment’s ROI is accelerated.

According to IDC, spending on Cloud computing is growing at 4.5 times the rate of IT spending since 2009 and is expected to continue growing at more than 6 times the rate of IT spending from 2015 through 2020. (via Forbes) This massive growth is easily understood when businesses understand the power and value of cloud solutions. With the Vroozi Platform, companies can take advantage of robust eProcurement technology delivered in the Cloud and integrated seamlessly with SAP.

March 2019

Brad Hill Director of Global Sales & Marketing Vroozi Brad Hill, Director of Global Sales & Marketing of Vroozi is a passionate leader and is responsible for expanding the Vroozi Product Suite, Brand Adoption, Partnership Network & ensuring our customers receive an unparalleled experience with Vroozi. Brad spent the last 20 years building Enterprise Sales and Product strategies with leading IT Services organizations. His entrepreneurial strategies have served a vast number of Fortune 500 industries and verticals. He is also an aspiring mechanic and frustrated golfer, two good reminders to keep his day job.

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Cloud Computing

over the Cloud

G

ames have been known to push consumer computing platforms to their maximum capacity. In traditional systems such as desktop computers, it is often expected and accepted that Gaming software will push a system to its limits. However, mobile environments are in a strikingly different scenario as they have limited power reserves. A fully utilized mobile device may have a greatly reduced running time, thus it is important to reduce the complexity of these gaming softwares for mobile devices. Luckily, cloud gaming systems provide a potential way by offloading complicated processing tasks such as 3D rendering and physics calculations to powerful cloud servers.

Cloud Gaming enables new business models for games as well as cloud service providers. Users no longer need to purchase powerful hardware to run new games and can play virtually on any device, which is capable to displaying videos in HD format. On the other hand developers no longer have to fear software piracy as the software never leaves the cloud and also can reduce development costs by focusing on one specific platform. This allows developers to spend more time on improving the quality of the product instead of worrying about compatibility. Even small non-HD devices can be supported, e.g. by reducing the resolution. A smaller resolution requires lesser bandwidth and the video can be decoded at the end device with less energy consumption enabling the use of hand-held mobile devices as clients.

After performing extensive cloud gaming experiments using both mobile and desktop clients several interesting insights have been revealed. For example, gamers’ satisfaction on mobile clients is more related to graphics quality, while the case on desktop clients is more correlated to control quality. Furthermore, graphics and smoothness quality are significantly affected by the bitrate, frame rate, and network latency, while the control quality is determined only by the client types. The amount of 42

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resources allocated to high performance multimedia applications such as cloud gaming continues to grow in both public and private data centers. The high demand and utilization patterns of these platforms make the smart allocation of these resources paramount to the efficiency of both public and private clouds. The impact on multiplayer games might be lessened as the synchronization between players is no longer impacted by the distance between the game server and client. In the cloud scenario, the client is virtually located within the data center and thus has an (in theory) optimal connection to the game server at all times.

Advancement in Cloud Gaming From Virtual Machine placement to shared GPUs, researchers from many areas have been exploring to efficiently use the cloud to host cloud gaming platforms. Although many cloud computing workloads do not require a dedicated GPU, cloud gaming servers require access to a rendering device to provide 3D graphics. As such VM and workload placements have been researched to ensure cloud gaming servers have access to adequate GPU resources. The efficiency and robustness of the communication channels between cloud gaming servers and clients are crucial and have been divided as the data compression algorithms to reduce the network traffic congestion and the transmission adaptation algorithms to cope with network dynamics. Graphics compression is proposed for better scalability, because 3D rendering is done at individual client computers. Compressing graphics data, however, is quite challenging and may consume excessive network bandwidth to design a cloud gaming platform based on graphics compression. These platforms require graphics compression tools which are applied to graphics commands, 3D structures, and 2D textures.

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Cloud Storage and its Usage To estimate the kind of effect cloud computing has on the video game industry, one has to observe the way in which video games are currently using the cloud. Perhaps the most common use of cloud computing at the moment is cloud storage.

Gamers have the opportunity to save games onto cloud servers provided by gaming bigwigs like Sony and Microsoft. Some publishers and developers provide saved game storage space as well. The arrival of the current generation consoles (PlayStation 4, WiiU, Xbox One) has also ushered in a wealth of new capabilities with the cloud. The advances in technologies turn playable cloud gaming services into reality; more optimization techniques gradually make cloud gaming services profitable.

Cloud gaming services such as OnLive, GaiKai and Core Online have recently triggered interest in the gaming community by allowing low-end devices (i.e. a low cost set top boxes or mobile devices) to stream games that were typically reserved for high-end consoles. Besides cost-efficiency and power consumption, platform independence is a major advantage of these solutions. Cloud gaming is all about flexibility, with networking being the huge advantage. Consoles and PC’s were always limited by the hardware inside. All the games being stuck on one piece of kit where one needs to upgrade everything for the next best thing. Now, it is only limited by the power of the internet connection. With 5G rolling out globally in the next few years and the cost of internet dropping worldwide, it will be hard-pressed to find a spot left on the globe where one can’t connect in a fast-approaching future.

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March 2019

Rendering Exemplary Connectivity Solutions

F

irst Operating commercially since 1996, XL Axiata is one of the major cellular providers in Indonesia. Its focus is to provide digital services for the people of Indonesia as well as to encourage the development of Indonesia’s digital economy. XL provides various digital services for both the consumer and corporate segments which is supported by its wide and high-quality network across the nation. The company is a part of the Axiata Group (“Group”). The Group’s mobile subsidiaries and associates operate under the brand name ‘Celcom’ in Malaysia, ‘Dialog’ in Sri Lanka, ‘Robi’ in Bangladesh, ‘Smart’ in Cambodia, ‘Ncell’ in Nepal, ‘Idea’ in India and ‘M1’ in Singapore.

XL Axiata continues to ensure topnotch quality of data experience to its customers with continued roll-out and upgrades of its network. XL Axiata’s total BTS recorded more than 118,000 BTS with 4G-LTE service now available in 400 cities and areas across Indonesia and with over 28,000 4G BTS, and more than 46

45,000 km fiber optic network across Indonesia, serving approximately 55 million subs. XL Axiata remains innovative and is the first telecommunications operator in Indonesia to commercially launch 4.5G Ready on the 1,800 MHZ spectrum.

Unique Solutions for Unique Customers XL Axiata serves people as well as corporate markets through business solutions and services. These services are Mobile communications, fixed connectivity services, Internet of things, Cloud & data Center, and Mobile Advertising. For consumer market, the company serves through dual brand, which are XL and AXIS brand. XL brand focuses to serve the market of white collar, blue collar, and alsi premium market segment via XL Prioritas, while AXIS serves youth segment market.

Intrigued by Telecommunications Dian Siswarini is the CEO and President Director of XL Axiata.

She believes the telecommunications space is very dynamic compared to other industries. This intrigued her and drove her to start her career in the industry. Therefore she decided to focus on telecommunications field after she graduated from Electrical Engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Dian started her career as a supervisor in engineering at PT. Citra San Makmur (CSM) in 1991 and in 1994; she joined PT Satelindo for the same position. Dian was appointed as a Manager of Network Design & Engineering an year after she joined XL. Her hard work and passion for her work led her to occupy the Vice President Network in 2005. Dian also took an executive program at Harvard Advance Management Program, Harvard Business School, in USA in 2013.

Releasing Pressure Currently, telecom industry in general, is facing pressure in most of its products including retail and business segments due to more fierce March 2019

THE

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XL Axiata’s focus is to provide digital services for the people of Indonesia as well as to assist encouraging the development

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of Indonesia’s digital economy.

Dian Siswarini CEO & President Director

competition. For retail customer, it is clearer to be seen since all operators are trying to offer competitive packages for customers which definitely is slashing companies’ margin. Different with enterprise segment, the offering is based on tender of projects where XL Axiata has tailored the offers based on its client needs.

However, the pressure comes when its clients are also trying to be more efficient in term of cost.

Despite the pressures coming from all angles, XL Axiata is confident that it can compete in the market as it keeps investing in its network for wider outreach and better quality and always innovates to be more efficient internally, for example, in digitalization, network design, power management, etc. to bring the most competitive products for its customers.

Revamp. Rise. Reinvent.

The development of telecom industry in Indonesia is still very challenging. Competition among operators is still high, especially in providing better services to customers. The operators also face challenges in terms of the declining of voice and SMS services. XL Axiata also believes that the voice services will gradually vanish from the market. Therefore, it is very important for it to push the business of data services for the company growth. In order to face the upcoming challenge, the company has already prepared itself by implementing March 2019

business transformation through the strategy of 3R since 2015 until now.

The transformation involves: Revamp - to shift subscriber acquisition (from largely ‘no value’ to ‘value’ subs) & distribution strategies as well as a total overhaul of the product portfolio to improve yields. Rise – moving the XL brand up the value ladder and via a dual-brand strategy with Axis to address different segments of the market. Reinvent – going beyond today’s business model.

Aspiring Development Right now XL Axiata provides various digital services for both the consumer and corporate segments which is supported by its wide and high-quality network across the nation. For future, its focus is to provide digital services for the people of Indonesia as well as to encourage the development of Indonesia’s digital economy. Additionally, the company’s vision is “to be the most preferred data connectivity provider by 2020.”

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