Juniper Unveils First Carrier-Grade Virtual Router

Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, today introduced a virtualized version of its flagship MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routing platform to deliver the industry's first full-featured, carrier-grade virtualized router. The Juniper Networks vMX 3D Universal Edge Router, which operates as software on x86 servers, gives service providers and enterprises the ability to seamlessly leverage the benefits of both virtual and physical networking so they can rapidly deliver services and cost-effectively keep ahead of customer demand. Juniper also today unveiled a new set of capabilities designed to help customers build High-IQ networks that leverage the benefits of virtualization and automation. 

It is estimated that there will be 50 billion networked devices worldwide by 2020(1). Service providers are pushing connectivity beyond simple access to fuel economies and deliver more personalized and life-enhancing services. As the appetite and reliance on customized services grow, service providers are looking for ways to address this need while staying profitable and capitalizing on revenue growth opportunities. This requires service providers to adopt a more agile business approach, one that allows them to develop, scale up as well as scale down new services at the pace of business, while also maintaining a high-performance infrastructure to keep up with increasing traffic volumes. 

Likewise, enterprises are also looking for ways to increase business agility, as seen by the adoption and deployment of cloud services and private clouds. As enterprises look to the cloud to drive agility and efficiency, having a network that is as flexible and dynamic as the cloud is critical. As a fully functional virtual router, the vMX brings cloud-like agility to the network, allowing businesses to quickly roll out new applications, resources and initiatives to support internal and external clients. 

By virtualizing the company's flagship routing platform -- first introduced in 2006 and today powers most of the world's top 100 service providers -- Juniper brings the feature-set and proven history of performance and reliability of the MX to the cloud. The software-driven technology delivers the agility to scale up and scale out as quickly as customer business needs dictate. Customers can combine the vMX with Juniper's complete physical router portfolio delivering the tools service providers and enterprises need to maintain a common operations environment for both virtual and physical routers, while matching network investment with revenue growth. 

With the vMX, carrier-grade routing can be deployed in the time it takes to spin up a virtual machine, scaled elastically with virtual capacity, and if the need arises, migrated to the high-performance physical MX Series platforms for high-volume workloads. This provides customers with greater freedom to start small, experiment with new services, grow rapidly and stay profitable throughout the entire service lifecycle. 

New Initiative to Increase Computer Penetration in India

 Lenovo has announced the launch of attractive finance schemes to make computers more accessible to the youth population. India’s current computer penetration is 10%, which is the lowest among developing countries like Vietnam (16%), South Africa (18%), Turkey (49%) and Malaysia (64%). Lenovo is joined by Intel in its effort to promote this initiative across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

India is set to become one of the world’s youngest countries in the next five years but the growing number of youth who do not have access to a computer is becoming an issue of national interest. To address the issue, Lenovo is offering 100% financing with zero down payment and zero interest on the purchase of high performance laptops and AIOs. The payment can be broken up across multiple EMIs with no interest fee.

Program details:

* Lenovo is offering a range of fully loaded, great value computers across AIOs and laptops starting at Rs 22,390.

* For the finance schemes, Lenovo has tied up with a consortium of 11 banks including HDFC Bank, Citibank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC Bank, Indusind Bank, American Express Bank, SBI-GE and Rathnakar Bank Ltd.

* Lenovo is also looking at tie ups with leading telco majors to provide free internet dongles with every computer purchase.

This initiative is being piloted in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as it complements their focus on education to bridge the IT divide. Lenovo is looking at a comprehensive 360 degree marketing outreach that includes Advertising and student engagement through college contact programs across the two states.

Speaking about the initiative, Shailendra Katyal, Director- Home and Small Business, Lenovo India said, “As the global PC leader, we want to address the problem of computer penetration in the country. Lenovo has seen success in driving initiatives of this nature in large, emerging markets such as China and we want to replicate this in India. We chose Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the first region, as they offer immense IT talent. We plan to roll this out in the rest of India too.”

Bhaskar Choudhuri, Director- Marketing, Lenovo India further added, “We understood the consumers’ key barriers towards computer adoption and designed a program to address them. Lenovo is looking at a comprehensive 360 degree marketing outreach that includes advertising and a student contact program through college activation. In the past, there have been such initiatives but they have been fragmented in nature.  This is a complex, multi-sectorial problem and requires a mammoth initiative to address the challenges. Our program is a call to action to make technology all-pervasive and we welcome others to partner us in our endeavor.”

Speaking about the initiative, Anand Ramamoorthy, Director Consumption Sales, Intel South Asia said , “We believe that the more people know how they can use technology to improve their employability or livelihoods; the more interested they will be in adopting it and using it right, as one of the biggest barriers to investing in technology are lack of awareness and relevance. We are proud of working with Lenovo on this initiative in enabling more people to transform themselves with the power of computing technology by stressing on the need for adoption of computing devices.”

The offer will be available from mid-November 2014, across all Lenovo stores in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.       

Mobile POS Solutions Boost Growth of Digital Payments

Mahindra Comviva, a leader in providing mobility solutions, in collaboration with Ovum Consulting, has published a whitepaper on the growing adoption of mobile POS solutions. Mobile POS solutions are fast becoming mainstream. An approximate 1.2 million mPOS were shipped to Master Card merchants globally and 75% of merchants have been able to accept card payments.

Mobility is transforming the way merchants execute sales and interact with customers. The mobility shift is having a profound impact on card payments, fuelling rapid adoption and acceptance of mobile payment solutions amongst a wide base of merchants. Beyond transduction processing MPOS solutions can create a fundamentally new source of value by improving productivity and extending apowerful new channel to improve transaction experience and engage in targeted marketing. 

This early mPOS growth was driven by adoption among micro-merchants and while still an important segment, there are further opportunities for mPOS with larger merchants as well. mPOS allows larger merchants to create efficiencies and enhance the in-store shopping experience for consumers, as well as to equip their field sales force with an integrated payment capability. Another benefit to all merchants, big or small, is the ability of mPOS solutions to gather customer data. Sophisticated analytics can sift through payment transactions and make recommendations to merchants like optimal inventory, ordering cycle or even to customers based on buying patterns and preferences.

Commenting on the study, Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior Vice President and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said, “In a world of anywhere commerce the point of sale is fundamentally changing. It is moving from traditional checkout lines to wherever the customer may be: shopping on the Internet, walking a store’s aisles, traveling or lounging on the beach. The implementation of mPOS solutions is not without its challenges and technology executives must work together to select an mPOS solution that can play well with existing back-office systems, adapt to rapid change, and meet the expectations of a new breed of the connected shopper.”

The paper also highlights the need for customization of mobile POS solutions. Although merchants have certain common requirements, a one-size fits-all POS approach is out of step with the fact that needs differ depending on the verticals they serve. The business needs of a small coffee shop vary from a business with a large field sales force, which are different from those of a high street chain. Enabling mPOS can take on different flavors of integration, depending on the size and the category of the business. Large merchants, for instance, have a need to integrate mPOS with existent POS and IT infrastructure such as ERP, loyalty and catalogue solutions. 

mPOS solution providers should offer open APIs to support integration with third-party applications, for example enterprises such as banks and insurance who have equipped their field force with app can leverage APIs for premium and deposit collection, safeguarding existing investments 

PayPal to Incubate 2 New Tech Startups in Chennai

PayPal India has announced that it has selected two new tech startups for its ‘Start Tank’ Incubation Center in Chennai. The winners — Clockwork Interviews Private Limited and Demach Software India Private Limited — were chosen from among 11 other startups that presented their business pitch at the Start Tank Incubation Challenge final on October 31, 2014. The selection was organized as part of PitchFest in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai.

The unique Incubation Challenge was launched in September 2014 across four cities in Tamil Nadu to identify and nurture some of the country’s next generation technology-centric startups. More than 60 applications were received for incubation at PayPal’s Start Tank Chennai.

Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology – Asia-Pacific, PayPal, said, “PayPal is proud to announce the selection of Demach Software and Clockwork Interviews for incubation at Start Tank, Chennai. As a company that was started by young entrepreneurs, PayPal recognizes the importance of encouraging the growth of tech startups and the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. We truly believe that the new incubatees will benefit from our technology mentorship and the obligation-free environment we provide at Start Tank.”

“TiE Chennai welcomes the two new tech startups for the Incubation Center at PayPal facility. I am excited to see their promising business ideas, and I am sure that the mentorship that will be provided by TiE Charter members and PayPal technologists will help them become recognizable brands,” Lakshmi Narayanan, President, TiE Chennai, said.

Jayadev Mahalingam, co-founder of PiQube, a product of Clockwork Interviews, a Hiring Analytics company, said, “We are eagerly looking forward to the technology and business mentorship support from PayPal and TiE, and we hope to make the most of this opportunity to fuel our business.” Srikrishnan Ganesan, co-founder of Demach Software, makers of Konotor, a user-engagement solution for mobile apps, said, “The Start Tank Incubation Challenge gave us an opportunity to meet some very promising startups. The incubation, along with the world-class support from brand names like PayPal and TiE, will certainly enable us to take our company to the next level. The timing is perfect for us as we expand our team and bring in new people into a dynamic environment.”

PayPal’s Start Tank provides an obligation-free environment for select startups to evolve. The exclusive facility in PayPal’s Chennai development center has an office area of more than 11,000 square feet with a world-class incubation space, state-of-the-art conference rooms and other amenities.

Start Tank runs globally across PayPal offices in Boston, London and Chennai, and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. PayPal formally launched its Chennai startup incubator in association with TiE Chennai in November 2013 and currently hosts four startups: DoPartTime, Fantain, Hey Feedback, and Kobster.com.

$62 Million for 16 New Investments at Intel Capital Global Summit

Intel Corporation’s global investment organization, today announced at the Intel Capital Global Summit investments in 16 technology companies. Totaling approximately $62 million, the investments cover a broad spectrum of innovative technologies.

“Intel Capital invests in the technology continuum that runs from wearables and the Internet of Things to big data analytics – and everything in between, including silicon, smart devices, PCs, the cloud and datacenters,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president. “We are focused on helping innovative companies develop across this technology ecosystem, and we expect to invest a total of $355 million this year.”

 Sodhani’s announcement came at the opening of the 15^th annual Intel Capital Global Summit. The venture capital industry’s premier networking event convenes more than 1,000 founders and CEOs from Intel Capital’s global portfolio, Global 2000 business executives, and industry influencers for two days of company building. This year, the invite-only event featured distinguished speakers including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Stanford President John L. Hennessy, record-setting polar explorer Ben Saunders and former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt.

The founders of the newest portfolio companies run the gamut from 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee, who has invented low-cost Braille printers for the blind using Legos and Intel Edison chips; to Sundari Mitra, a 25-year semiconductor industry veteran who is now running her second startup; to Earnest Earon, a rocket scientist whose new company uses unmanned aircraft and cloud-based software to perform data analytics for agricultural, emergency response and other uses.

More on the new investments, grouped by technology sector:

New Devices/Wearable Computing

Avegant (Redwood City, California), developing the next generation of wearable devices, is bringing to market the Glyph, a mobile personal theater that uses a micromirror display with built-in premium audio. Glyph raised more than $1 million in its Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.

Braigo Labs Inc. (Palo Alto, California, U.S.), founded by 13-year-old entrepreneur and middle schooler Shubham Banerjee, provides scientific and technological services by researching and developing technology-based innovations and services. Its products include Braigo v1.0, a Lego Braille printer that dramatically reduces the price of a printer from more than $2,000 to $350 for education, teaching and home-use purposes.

Eyefluence* (Reno, Nevada, U.S.) transforms intent into action through your eyes. The company's robust, low-power, eye-tracking technology, with its iUi interaction model, integrates into any augmented reality or virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) to provide natural, intuitive eye tracking and control.

Mobility/Wireless

AnDAPT (Santa Clara, California, U.S.) brings a new genre of analog adaptive products for multifunction sensor integration and integrated system power management, enabling enterprise customers to achieve lowest power consumption, smart power management, high integration, high system reliability and lower cost.

Audyssey (Los Angeles, U.S.) is a leader in research-based audio technologies that correct acoustical problems to improve the sound quality of any device or listening environment. The company’s technologies are integrated into home theater products, automobiles, TVs, mobile phones and movie theaters from industry-leading manufacturers.

Incoming Media (Santa Clara, California, U.S. and Sydney, Australia) is a mobile video platform that uses predictive data analytics and intelligent content pre-loading to learn how a viewer consumes video on a mobile device and delivers a personalized mobile video experience with no interruption.

INRIX (Kirkland, Washington, U.S.) leverages big data analytics and predictive technology to help automakers, corporate fleets, governments and news organizations reduce the economic and environmental toll of traffic congestion.

Screenovate Technologies (Israel) offers mobile solutions that cover entertainment, productivity and education. Among other applications, its technology enables smartphone and tablet users to wirelessly beam movies, games, presentations or other content from their mobile devices to their TVs or other large displays.

Thundersoft (China and Taiwan) is a mobile OS core technology and solution provider that accelerates product development by providing leading technology and services, specifically for Android smartphone and tablet services. [Investment subject to satisfaction of closing conditions.]

Advancing Microprocessor and SoC Development

NetSpeed Systems (Mountain View, California, U.S.) offers a system-on-chip (SoC) design platform and advanced on-chip network solutions that let SoC architects create designs that are significantly smaller and more power-efficient in a fraction of the usual time.

Reno Sub-systems (Canada) designs, develops and delivers subsystems used to control process systems made by OEMs, including vacuum-based chambers to deposit and etch specialty materials needed in advanced integrated circuit fabrication.

Big Data and Cloud Infrastructure

Gigya (San Francisco, U.S.) makes a cloud-based customer identity management platform that helps customers turn unknown Web or mobile visitors into loyal and engaged customers.

PilotTV (Taiwan) is a digital signage network operator that designs, deploys and jointly operates digital signage systems for retail venues, operating over 6,000 screens in various channels including convenience stores, fast food chains, drugstores and rapid transit stations.

PrecisionHawk (Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.) is an information delivery company that uses a small, unmanned aerial vehicle and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyze aerial data. Its solution provides actionable information to clients in civilian industries.

Prelert (Framingham, Massachusetts, U.S.) packages data science into downloadable applications for everyday users. It uses machine-learning predictive analytics to learn the normal behavior patterns of populations of individual users, devices and resources.

Stratoscale (Israel) develops new technology to rethink next-generation data centers. It is building the runtime software infrastructure for scalable computing to help customers use all available computing resources and unify computing and storage across the data center.

In addition, Intel Capital announced Ossia (Redmond, Washington, U.S.) has joined the Intel Capital portfolio. Cota*, Ossia’s smart antenna technology, redefines wireless power by safely delivering remote, targeted energy simultaneously to multiple devices as far away as 30 feet without line of site and regardless of whether a device is stationary or moving.

Panasonic Phablet P55 Smartphone Priced Rs 10,290

Delivering on its commitment to constantly innovate, Panasonic India today unveiled its latest smartphone- P55. The company has been introducing new & unique design elements with every new smartphone, and this time has proved new grounds with the launch of P55. Its unique tile patterned back cover gives the phablet a premium & elegant look while keeping the thickness to just 7.9mm making it a delight to use.

The P55 is the latest addition to its phablet line-up, having a 13.9cm (5.5) IPS HD display, and a Quad Core processor clocked at 1.2GHz. It runs on Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) and has an 8MP Autofocus camera capable of Full HD capture. It houses a 2500 mAh battery to power the device.

Panasonic P55 comes with an innovative “Tap Play” feature where the smartphone has an in-built capability to recognize touch while in sleep mode, i.e. users can double tap to wake-up the phablet instead of reaching the power button every time.

 Likewise, it can be returned to sleep mode with the same gesture. P55 also features “Gesture Play”, a gesture based feature to launch apps directly from home screen; “Pop-i Player” which lets you multi-task while playing videos & a single hand operable music player named “Music café”.

Expressing his pleasure on the launch, Manish Sharma, Managing Director, Panasonic India said “With technology constantly changing it allows our brand to push boundaries and create new and exciting products that are customized according to the needs and requirements of the Indian market. With continuous innovation as our baseline strategy, the new P55 gives our consumers the ability to operate their smartphone seamlessly while meeting the easily accessibility aspect.”

Keysight Technology Signs MoU with IEEE India

Keysight Technologies, Inc. has announced that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with IEEE India to develop tools, programs and activities to help increase technical engineering capabilities In India. Their mutual interest is focused on workforce development, technical advocacy, and creating technical communities to assist the industry at-large.

The work will include private and government sector involvement to setup technical labs with state-of-the-art equipment, hosting seminars and creating certification programs to benefit engineering students across India.  Among the various programs offered will be the IEEE Labs Initiative and Wireless Certification and Electronic Test Program.

“We understand that knowledge, skills and resources are critical to advance economic and industrial development in India,” said Sudhir Tangri, country general manager, Keysight India. “As the need for knowledge workers with high levels of technical and soft skills increases, we will require intensive focus on advancing the technical know-how and growth of individuals in test and measurement.”

“IEEE carries lot of respect and brand value in the engineering community, especially among our academic customers. We are pleased to work with IEEE India in activities that benefit this community,” added Tangri.

“Keysight’s technical competence and their wide portfolio of solutions for academia in the field of basic electronics, RF/microwave, communications, nanotechnology and optics complements IEEEs core objectives of enabling standards and education in engineering,” said Harish Mysore, director of IEEE India.

“This work further enhances Keysight’s engagement with academia. Our academic customers stand to gain with these activities between Keysight and IEEE,” said V.V. Pathy, head of business development, Keysight Technologies India. “In addition, Keysight intends to be an active part of the IEEE Bangalore chapter driving other valuable engineering community activities.”

Ezetap & Microsoft Partner For POS Payment Solution

Ezetap has launched Point of Sale (POS) payment solution on Windows devices.  Ezetap’s solution integrates with Windows mobile devices to give the full functionality and security of a POS system with more flexibility and significantly lower cost than normal POS devices provided to retailers by banks. This will allow more retailers and users of POS devices to use Ezetap across 20 different verticals including PSU, insurance and banking.  The Ezetap solution turns a merchant’s mobile device into an intelligent point of sale that is able to complete any type of financial transaction from a credit card sale to a real-time bill payment, to an ATM cash withdrawal or deposit.

“Ezetap on Windows allows us to address increasing demand from our existing and prospective customers for Windows-based POS,” said Abhijit Bose, CEO & Co-Founder of Ezetap.  “Intelligent and mobile POS solutions will not only redefine how businesses work, but they will also have a huge impact on consumers and society in general.  We expect our solution to be deployed on 100,000 Windows devices over the next 12 months. By leveraging the power of cloud and mobility, we are simplifying transactions and this partnership brings us closer to achieving our vision.”

Vineet Durani, Director – Windows, Microsoft India said, “The deployment by Ezetap on Windows devices addresses a key market demand for integrated and intelligent mobile POS system. Payments are a high-risk operation and partners like Ezetap building POS solutions need a stringent level of authentication, security and manageability. Windows devices now start at Rs. 8,000 and therefore organizations can deploy large number of fully-featured and highly-secure mobile POS on these devices at significantly lower capital outlay.”

Windows supports industry standards in high security areas and continues to work with security groups to further strengthen the platform. With 1.5 billion users across the world, Windows is a familiar global platform for most organizations.

The Ezetap solution is comprised of a secure and lightweight card reader, a configurable mobile application, and a flexible platform that allows Ezetap to provide customized value-added services and integrate to a merchant’s existing systems.   The solution is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) and the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PADSS) global security standards.

Fashion Brand Esprit Opts for Mindtree as IT Partner

 Mindtree, a global technology services company, today announced that it is working with international fashion brand Esprit to deliver IT solutions that will make Esprit more competitive. In the first phase of this relationship, Mindtree will monitor and support Esprit’s SAP applications suite for more than 300 directly managed retail stores and over 7,500 wholesale points of sale in Europe.

As part of this multi-year contract, Mindtree will ensure the stability of Esprit’s SAP systems through early detection and resolution of system, functional and process issues. In addition, Mindtree will maintain on-time availability of Esprit’s data and provide flexibility to IT management to meet their business needs.  Most importantly, Mindtree will improve the processes service quality, allowing Esprit’s IT team to focus on their strategic business needs without having to worry about the reliability of their SAP systems. 

Dr. Thomas Pirlein, Group CIO, Esprit said, “We sought a long-term managed services partner to bring efficiencies and technology leadership. Mindtree’s SAP managed services expertise, agility, collaborative culture and team leadership made them the ideal choice. Mindtree will play a key role in our efforts to gain long-term competitiveness with its technology leadership and deep understanding of trends shaping the future of retail.” 

Radha R, Executive Vice President - Retail, CPG, MFG and Travel, Transportation & Hospitality, Mindtree said, “We took a business process view rather than a system centric view to provide Esprit the flexibility to achieve their goals in the highly competitive fashion retail space. We see this program as an important first step among many to come as part of Esprit's commitment to drive sustainable growth using technology.”