Tata Sky, Mindshare, Maxus Bag Gold Awards at the Ad Club Bangalore’s Big Bang Awards 2016

Ad Club Bangalore successfully concluded the 21st edition of its annual awards – Big Bang Awards for excellence in communication and mediaon September 23, 2016 at Jayamahal Palace, Bangalore. Among the Gold awardees include: Tata Sky for Client of the Year; Mindshare for Media Agency of the Year (Covers Digital, Mobile and Traditional Media); Maxus for Social Media Agency of the year; Stark Communications for Creative Agency of the Year; Saatchi and Saatchi Health for Healthcare Agency of the Year.

This year, the event wasn't just confined to awards night but was conceptualised in a manner to encourage the ideology of Connected India, which was the theme of the event. The evening commenced with eminent industry personalities- Nihaal Kashinath (Founder, IOT Bangalore), S Anand (Chief Executive Officer, Gramener) and Arunabh Kumar (Founder and CEO, The Viral Fever and TVF Media Labs) sharing their opinion and views as guest speakers on Internet of Things, Connected Data, and Connected Content respectively.

The program hosted some of the leading names of the communication and media industry and was a showcase of the impressive and outstanding work of organizations in this sector. With more than Seven Hundred influential figures in attendance, the night, besides being interactive and engaging, recognized the achievements of the recipients under the most coveted titles of the industry.

Stark Communications was named Creative Agency of the Year. Mindshare and Maxus were the biggest winners of the night bagging awards for Media, Digital, and Social Media Agencies of the year, respectively.  Saatchi and Saatchi Health won the Healthcare Agency of the Year. 

Tata Sky Won the Client of the Year Award winning across several categories.

Commenting on the awards program, Sanchayeeta Verma, President Ad Club Bangalore and Managing Partner, Maxus, South India and South Asia, said, “We had unprecedented interest and participation in Big Bang Awards this year and the effort was to have a meaningful and enriching event for our media, creative and marketing fraternity. I am happy that we were able to do so. Also, we had really interesting and spirited work which truly epitomised Connected India. Our heartiest congratulations to all the winners.”

This year Big Bang awards were presented under four major categories – Creative, Media (Including Data and Tech), Digital, and Health. The awards assessment involved an online jury selection process. On the panel, 56 senior Advertising, Marketing, Media, PR and Digital industry experts and thought leaders were deployed by Ad Club. “We are the only Indian Ad Club using a sophisticated Online Jury Process. Every jury member scores independently based on the facts presented in the Entry form. No jury member knows who else is in his group and the identity of the entrant”, explained, Arvind Kumar, Executive Director of The Ad Club Bangalore.

The Advertising Club Bangalore is one of the few ad clubs in India which has been successfully conducting workshops, seminars, professional talks, sports events and the BIG BANG awards for excellence in communication and media. The club uses a State-of-the-Art Online Platform in association with Global Best Awards of USA to receive, collate and judge entries online, on par with other International awards.  

DSCI Launches its First Global Cyber Security Chapter in Singapore

Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a premier body on cyber security launched its chapter in Singapore with the aim to encourage the exchange of information, sharing of knowledge and best practices on cyber Security.  The DSCI Singapore chapter among other things would be engaged in the following activities:

·         Building linkages with stakeholders in the government, industry, LEAs and academia 

·         Establishing channels of collaborations on policy deliberation, industry development and capacity building on Security Privacy and Cybercrime investigation, among others

·         Building community to bridge cyber security skills gap between India and Singapore

·         Exploring opportunities for developing niche capabilities in cyber security product space

Delivering the inaugural address, the High Commissioner, Vijay Thakur Singh congratulated DSCI said that “Cyber Security is a global issue and needs attention of all stakeholders. It is essential that countries become partners to address this issue collaboratively. In the light of recent affirmative steps by both the countries in strengthening bilateral co-operation and exchange of dialogue on issue of cyber security, these initiatives reinforces the vital role played by global thought leaders like DSCI in bringing the stakeholders together to address this common issue.”

Rama Vedashree, CEO, DSCI said “The formation of this chapter will be instrumental in building strong linkages between India and Singapore in the area of Cyber Security. We are working with governments across the globe to charter the way forward to address the issues in the cyber space, including the cross border data flows, Internet governance, privacy and others. I am confident the chapter will act as a catalyst for growth of a strong community in the region to address the evolving cyber challenges.”

On the occasion Madan Oberoi, Indian Police Service (IPS) officer presently deployed in Singapore, in his address said “In the globally interconnected society, it becomes important to engage stakeholders and share the best practices and benefit from the learnings of each other. The need of the hour is to create credible deterrence, which should be done by law enforcement agencies through successful prosecutions. DSCI Singapore chapter needs to engage different stakeholders like regulatory bodies, enforcement agencies, industry, think-tanks, Internet governance bodies, academia, research organizations and other stakeholders and encourage them to contribute to the common cause for making the cyber space safe, secure and trusted.”

Co-anchor of DSCI Singapore Chapter, Ajay Kumar, Regional Managing Director- Asia Pacific, Branch Transformation and Payments Solutions, Entrust Datacard, said “In rapidly changing digital eco-system, it’s important to engage with various stakeholders from government, financial services, academia and enterprises to share global best practices and use cases to protect trusted identities and transactions. DSCI Singapore Chapter would help to establish channels of collaborations on policy deliberation, development of the industry, exchange ideas and learning in Cyber Security space.”

DSCI has created and nurtured a network of over 4000 security and privacy professionals in India in with 12 chapters operating successfully in different cities in India. DSCI Chapters are directed by voluntary association of individuals – Anchor and Co-Anchor are appointed to conduct regular affairs.

Healthcare Provider Qyura Aims to Bridge the Gap between Patients & Medical Service Providers

Qyura, from the Spanish word ‘Cure’ aims to educate users on and about the available healthcare solutions around them, enabling them to make informed decisions in case of any medical requirement. Unlike any other e-healthcare provider in the market, Qyura is not just about doctor bookings or medicine delivery, but covers nearly every aspect of healthcare ranging from getting an X-ray done from the nearest diagnostic centre to calling for an ambulance in case of an emergency. Qyura is also the first and only provider in the category which networks hospitals and enables the users to make the right choice.

It is a platform that is designed to enhance revenues, reputation and operational efficiency as well as reduce expenditure for the healthcare service providers. The mobile application has been launched in three cities - Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore. Over more, users can avail all the services offered by Qyura through the website.

In a span of 60 days, Qyura has been successful in partnering with 2000+ medical service providers and boasts of names like SRL, Manipal Hospital, Apollo Spectra Hospitals amongst others.

Additionally, to expand fast and penetrate multiple markets quickly, Qyura will be entering into a Franchisee model. It will support its franchisees by offering them 360° marketing, tech and operational support. The emphasis would be on the philosophy of building up entrepreneurship and corporations through their designed network infused with the company culture.

Commenting on the launch, Siddhant Jatia, Founder and Director, Qyura said, “Healthcare in India is still a severely unorganized sector. Patients are subjected to indefinite queues, bad customer service, unequal pricing and most importantly, severe neglect in times of dire need. Moreover, critical information with regards to medical institutions, doctors, blood banks, emergency services - is fragmented, unclear and sometimes entirely unavailable. Qyura aims to organize the medical sector to allow patients to make informed decisions by becoming both a discovery platform as well as an opinion generating medium. Be it preventive healthcare, a person’s day today medical requirement or assistance at the time of emergencies, Qyura is the go-to place for everyone.”

The platform aims to offer booking assistance, reminders before appointments, letting the patient know if the doctor cancels and a gamut of impromptu calls-to- action which demonstrates the extra-mile to its users. The back-end team is extensively trained to offer solutions and assistance, and most importantly, to Dare to CARE.

The company will also be launching a pharmacy module, where medicines will be delivered at the user’s doorstep.

Keypoint Technologies Adds Intenticons Features to Xploree Keyboard

Keypoint Technologies has added a new feature -Intenticons to the Xploree keyboard gallery.

The company announced the roll out of this new feature addition to Xploree, its revolutionary keyboard. The feature is available for users from September 2016.With Intenticons, Xploree promises to deliver a novel mobile discovery experience to its users. This new age feature merges users’ conversational context with predictive imagery. These images – Intenticons –are predictive visual manifestation of users’needs even as the latter gesture, converse or type on the keyboard.

The images have been pieced together on the guiding principle of making information discovery on mobile more purposeful, sorted, and self-explanatory during the conversation. All research & development at Keypoint Technologies revolves around human reasoning and linguistics. Hence, the name for the new feature - ‘Intenticons’.

The Intenticons illustrate the combination of intents and imaginative icons through pre-defined images. They are intuitive and indicative, capable of guiding users towards relevant content, offers and services– in the same frame, at the tap of a key. The Intenticons will help and guide the Xploree user in multiple ways. To explain with some examples:

-         Even as the user types “Flight” – a pop-up image of Tour operator Intenticoncan suggest flight deals

-     As the user chats about food – Grocery Intenticoncan help him/her find nearby grocery options.

-    the Art & Entertainment Intenticon can keep user updated with reviews of the latest Bollywood movie.

As of now KeyPoint has introduced Intenticons across 150categories covering food, restaurant, grocery, fashion and travel. The company sees endless possibilities for delivering useful content to its users with the help of these images. Sunil Motaparti, CEO KeyPoint Technologies says,“With Intenticons, we have introduced a novel visual trigger to assess and consume information at the tap of a finger. At that very precise moment within a conversation, which we call mobile interlude, it becomes utmost important to be able to switch to the information you need and come back to where you original are. With increasing usage of imagery language comprising of emojis and stickers, we see ‘Intenticons’ serving this very purpose for the Xploree consumers.”

Idea Cuts Pack Rates by Upto 62% Across Karnataka Circle

In its efforts to provide its customers with superior and affordable wireless services, Idea Cellular; India’s fastest growing telecom operator, announced upto 62% reduction in the MRP of various recharge packs available in Karnataka. Idea customers in the region can now avail same benefits at a much reduced cost.

The Idea pack priced at Rs. 84 with Idea to Idea local call benefit of 10 paisa/minute is now available at just Rs. 32 (62% reduction) and Rs. 65 pack that provided the benefit of local mobile calls at 30 paisa/minute is now priced at Rs. 29 only (55% reduction). Another pack with STD call benefit at 25 paisa/minute can now be availed at Rs. 28, this pack was earlier priced at Rs. 67 (58% reduction).

All these packs are available at your local retail store with 28 days validity and there will be no 1^st min charging applicable on any of these. Idea has also reduced the prices of other such tariff packs and the details are as follows:

Talking about the newly announced offers for Karnataka,  Siva Ganapathi, Chief Operating Officer, Karnataka, Idea Cellular, said, “In Karnataka, the major portion of this population uses voice as the primary way of communication. Our revised prices for local and STD call packs are aimed at providing the new and existing customers with superior wireless experience at an affordable rate. We hope our customers will make best use of this opportunity and will derive maximum benefit.”

Idea is one of the leading operator in Karnataka serving 8.5 million customers. The company provides 2G services on superior 900MHz, high speed 4G services on 1800Mhz and 3G services through ICR.

Talking about the newly announced offers for Karnataka,  Siva Ganapathi, Chief Operating Officer, Karnataka, Idea Cellular, said, “In Karnataka, the major portion of this population uses voice as the primary way of communication. Our revised prices for local and STD call packs are aimed at providing the new and existing customers with superior wireless experience at an affordable rate. We hope our customers will make best use of this opportunity and will derive maximum benefit.”

Idea is one of the leading operator in Karnataka serving 8.5 million customers. The company provides 2G services on superior 900MHz, high speed 4G services on 1800Mhz and 3G services through ICR.

NestAway to Provide Verifies Rental Assistance for Brigade Residences

Brigade Group signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NestAway, a premier rental solutions provider to become the first builder in India to address the commonly-faced rental concerns of its customers on exclusive basis. 

Through this collaboration, Brigade Group will offer comprehensive rental assistance to all its existing customers as well as 10000 apartments in different stages of construction that are currently in the process of being readied for handover. Brigade customers will now be able to avail of a rental default guarantee that assures them timely rent. 

Brigade Group is one of the India’s leading Real Estate player headquartered in Bangalore has over the past 29 years created many landmarks and innovative projects across South India. It offers property development, property management services, hospitality and education services. The firm develops luxury apartments, integrated enclaves, software and retail facilities, serviced residences, resorts, clubs, schools, hotels, a convention centre and hospitals.

“We have over 22 properties in South India and many residential on the verge of occupation. We have many existing customers looking for quality rental assistance. Assuring clients of an organised rental and maintenance service is a value-addition that we are offering as a first in the building industry," said Om Ahuja, CEO, Residential at Brigade Group.

Jitendra Jagadev, Co-founder and Managing Director of NestAway says, “There is a need for rental assistance for residential houses and apartments in India as well. We have a database of over 18,000 verified customers across India and have provided assistance to about 4,500 home owners so far. Assured rentals and maintenance handling are additional bonuses which help the current and future needs of Indian home buyers.”  

BT & Microsoft Join Forces To Simplify Hybrid Cloud Customers

 

BT has announces BT Compute for Microsoft Azure, a new service that allows BT customers to order Microsoft Azure alongside BT’s own cloud services through its award winning Compute Management System (CMS) online management tool. The service enables customers to build hybrid cloud infrastructure with a single service wrap, contract and on a single bill.

BT customers already use private and public cloud services – also known as hybrid cloud - hosted in BT Compute’s 48 data centres globally. With BT acting as their cloud services integrator, and by using CMS, customers can manage their cloud services end-to-end from datacentre to network, maximising the benefits and minimising the complexity, risk and costs of moving to the cloud. Using local delivery with global scale allows BT to meet the evolving needs of organisations for cloud services and at the same time address the complexity of regulatory requirements.

Integration of Microsoft Azure into the CMS expands the choice for BT customers. They gain access to Microsoft’s rapidly growing collection of integrated cloud services, including leading Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) computing capabilities.

Neil Lock, vice president of BT Compute at Global Services, BT, said: “Hybrid cloud has become a major focus for many large enterprises as they choose a variety of cloud solutions to suit their complex business needs. In fact, BT research suggests that 90 per cent of its largest customers expect to be using a combination of public and private cloud in the next few years. Through our relationship with Microsoft, customers can build their own hybrid cloud environment and enjoy the benefits of Azure whilst removing costly management concerns from the equation. Our Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy is all about empowering our customers take advantage of the choice, flexibility and control of cloud without concerns about the complexity and security.”

Aziz Benmalek, vice president, Worldwide Cloud and Hosting Services, Microsoft Corp, said: “BT is a natural fit to provide managed cloud services on Azure. Through our relationship with BT, we're able to help customers with their infrastructure management and give them the ability to scale their business in a consistent hybrid cloud environment."

The service will be available during the final quarter of 2016, adding further value to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute available through BT Cloud Connect Direct. 

Bill Thies from Microsoft Research India Awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Bill Thies, a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research India, has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship or as popularly known a ‘genius grant’, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the largest private philanthropies based in the United States. 

According to the MacArthur Foundation the fellowships, are awarded to“talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”. The award recognizes Bill for his contributions to the socio-economic development of underserved communities. With a deep understanding of the real-world constraints, Bill’s socio-economic research projects bring life-needs like education and healthcare to the less empowered by leveraging the power of the mobile in the rural areas of India.

His recent work includes the 99DOTS initiative; a new model of delivering tuberculosis medications and ensuring adherence to the full treatment regimen, which is crucial for preventing the spread of drug-resistant strains of the disease. Currently being scaled up across all states of India, the initiative utilizes basic mobile phones and augmented blister packaging to provide real-time adherence monitoring of the disease.

In addition to his contributions to the field of healthcare, Bill has been instrumental in driving CGNet Swara, a voice portal for citizen journalism across physically and socially isolated tribal communities in India. In collaboration with the India journalists, Bill and his team developed an interactive voice response (IVR) system that allows users to report or record events of notice via mobile phones. As part of the initiative, a team of moderators review the audio messages received via the IVR and, if warranted, bring the recorded concerns to the attention of government officials.

Bill is also a co-inventor of several low-cost technologies for education, including a mobile application that automatically detects and aggregates student responses using computer vision, as well as an interactive tool that helps translate educational videos into local languages. 

PayPal Extends Refund Period from 60 to 180 Days for Indian Merchants

In a bid to facilitate refunds for customers and merchants, PayPal, one of the world's leading payment platforms, extended the time limit from 60 to 180 days for filing a refund claim, a company official said on Thursday.

The extended refund period will be applicable for all its users covering both goods and services. "The extended refund period is another step towards improving the user experience and enabling them to manage refunds effectively. An extended refund window is a manifestation of our vision of being a customer centric organisation and an enabler of smoother digital payments," said the company's managing director Anupam Pahuja.

With the extension, merchants will get more time to elevate customer concerns and process refunds in a smooth and efficient manner. This will allow them to manage queries independently and in turn reduce the number of escalations thereby helping them to control their fund flow, said the company statement.

US$50 Billion Revenues for Indian BPM Industry by 2020: Nasscom

The Indian Business Process Management (BPM) industry is forecast to touch $50 billion by 2020, according to the software lobby group Nasscom. The BPM industry present revenues amounts to $28 billion in both domestic as well as in exports.

Nasscom has kick-started the two-day Nasscom-BPM Strategy Summit 2016 in Bangalore. Growing at a CAGR of over 8%, the BPM industry clocked a total revenue of US$28 billion during FY2016. With a share of over 25% of the total IT-BPM exports, the industry added 49,000 employees to its workforce, at a rate of 4.7%, taking the total no. of employees to 1,086,000.

The top management attributes analytics and process innovation evolve as key driving factors of Indian BPM that are likely to trigger off the growth. Over the last five years the industry grew about 1.7 times and has about 2,500 companies.

Keshav Murugesh, appointed as the new chairman of Nasscom’s BPM Council said, “The industry that has demonstrated resilience in the face of economic uncertainty by constantly re-inventing itself to meet market needs, is forecast to touch $50 billion by 2020 from the present $21 billion.

“While BPM 1.0 in the late nineties was centered on cost efficiencies and productivity, BPM 3.0 in late 2000 focused on specialisation, process re-engineering, technology-enabled platforms and taking BPM to the rural areas. I believe that the era ahead is that of clients and providers working together even more closely on disruptive innovations.”

“We have a rather audacious goal ahead of us as a Council. We are looking to rebrand the image of the industry from BPO to BPM to signify the evolution and the value that it creates for client companies globally.”

Speaking about the wave of change, R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom said, “Automation, digitalized processes and new business models are enabling the BPM sector to take a step forward in adopting a more strategic role as compared to being just another outsourcing platform. The next wave of growth for the industry will come from increasing demand of technologies like advanced analytics, social media, mobility and other new technologies, driving demand for specialised services.”

Nasscom also discussed the preliminary recommendations of its Consumer Interest Protection Task Force (CIPTF) in dealing with reputational risk. These recommendations will be shared with the Government and other relevant agencies in greater detail. The recommendations identify the following intervention points to address cases of tech fraud, and enhance consumer interest protection.  

i.        Prevention via development of a common code of practice featuring standards security, privacy and ethical practices

ii.      Detection and Reporting by setting up an accessible whistleblowing mechanism for registering complaints
iii.    Investigation through an independent govt. investigation agency with the jurisdiction and power to co-ordinate between governmental agencies and departments

Oracle Beats Amazon Web Services; Claims its Database-as-a-Service is 20 Yrs Ahead of AWS

Oracle Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Ellison has demonstrated that Amazon databases are 20 years behind the latest release of the Oracle Database in the Cloud. In his keynote presentation at Oracle OpenWorld 2016 in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Ellison shared detailed analysis that showed that Oracle Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) is up to 105X faster for Analytics workloads, 35X faster for OLTP, and 1000+X faster for mixed workloads than Amazon DBaaS. 

Ellison also showed that the Oracle Cloud is optimized for running Oracle Database while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not. An Oracle Database running on the Oracle Cloud is up to 24X faster than an Oracle Database running on AWS.

“Oracle’s new technologies will drive the Cloud databases and infrastructure of the future,” said Ellison.“Amazon are decades behind in every database area that matters, and their systems are more closed than mainframe computers.”

Ellison also announced the availability of Oracle Database 12c Release 2 in the Oracle Cloud with the launch of the new Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service. This service provides the full enterprise edition of the Oracle Database running on the database-optimized Exadata infrastructure. Starting at just $175 per month, Ellison showed this Cloud service is lower cost than similar offerings from Amazon.

With the launch of Oracle Database 12c Release 2 in the Cloud first, Oracle has demonstrated that the Oracle Cloud is the most optimized, complete and integrated Cloud for Oracle Database. The latest release provides organizations of all sizes with access to the world’s fastest, most scalable and reliable database technology in a cost-effective and open Cloud environment. In addition, the world’s #1 database includes a series of innovations that add state-of-the-art technology while preserving customer investments and supporting their transition to the Cloud.

Ellison shared detailed analysis during his keynote that showed how the new Oracle DBaaS delivers unparalleled performance for analytics, online transaction processing (OLTP) and mixed database workloads. In a direct comparison between Oracle DBaaS and Amazon databases, Ellison shared the following analysis:

·         Oracle Cloud Database is dramatically faster than Amazon Cloud Databases:

o   Oracle Cloud is up to 105X faster for analytics than Amazon Redshift

o   Oracle Cloud is up to 35X faster for OLTP than Amazon Aurora

·         Amazon is 20 years behind Oracle in database technology

o   Amazon Aurora is missing critical OLTP features that Oracle shipped 20 years ago, including scalable read-write clusters, parallel SQL and the ability to replicate encrypted databases

o   Amazon Redshift is missing critical analytics features that Oracle shipped 20 years ago, including table partitioning, materialized views, support for rich data types and sophisticated query optimization

·         Amazon databases do not support mixed workloads

o   Oracle runs analytics workloads 1000+ times faster than Amazon Aurora

o   Oracle runs OLTP workloads 1000+ times faster than Amazon Redshift

·         Amazon databases are more closed than IBM Mainframe databases, and are not compatible with on-premise enterprise database applications

o   Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift and Amazon DynamoDB only run on AWS

o   With AWS, organizations can’t use dev/test for on-premises, can’t use disaster protection for on-premises, management is incompatible with on-premises

o   Amazon databases are not compatible with existing enterprise database applications such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server and Teradata and force organizations to throw away decades of on-premises investments

·         Ellison also demonstrated that AWS is not optimized for the Oracle Database:

o   Oracle Database is up to 24X faster for analytics on the Oracle Cloud Platform than on Amazon Web Services

o   Oracle Database is up to 8X faster for OLTP on the Oracle Cloud Platform than on Amazon Web Services

o   AWS has limited storage performance: Amazon Elastic Block Storage limited to 48,000 IOPs/nodes, which is 8X slower than Oracle Cloud; Amazon Elastic Block Storage limited to 800 MB/sec/node, which is 19X slower than Oracle Cloud

o   AWS cannot scale-out Oracle across nodes: AWS provides no support for Oracle Real Application Clusters

Oracle is the only vendor with true workload portability across on-premises and Cloud deployments. This helps ensure customers can continue to leverage their existing investment, keep costs down and easily benefit from the efficiency of Cloud. With proven continuous innovations and industry-leading performance across the entire platform from infrastructure to database, including support for mixed workloads, Oracle Data Management Cloud is the leader today and in the future.

Now 100G Open Ethernet Switch Spectrum in India from Mellanox Technologies

Mellanox Technologies, a world leader for data center Ethernet interconnect solutions, for the first time presented in the Indian market 10/25/40/50 and 100GbE solutions. Mellanox introduced the Open Ethernet switch ‘Spectrum’ with a switching capacity of 6.4 Tbits that can transfer 4.77 billion packets per second. The company also revealed to the Indian audience, its ConnectX-4 Lx Ethernet adapter and the LinkX family of Ethernet cables and transceivers.

‘Spectrum’ switch based on the 100GbE Ethernet switch ASIC of Mellanox Technologies, is recognized as the world’s leading Ethernet switch. It provides a flexible choice of ports at 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100Gb/s and ensures zero packet loss. This will help users to fully utilize their network resources and maximize the efficiency of the applications in their data center. Compatible with a range of network operating systems, this switch provides customers with the freedom to choose the preferred network operating system. Spectrum is the most efficient solution for cloud-based applications, web 2.0, storage, database and machine learning.

Speaking on the occasion,  Eyal Waldman, President and CEO, Mellanox Technologies said, "In today's world, the speed of access to information resources is the competitive advantage. Mellanox’ Spectrum based Ethernet switch enables datacentres to deliver the highest performance and lowest TCO. Implementing Mellanox’ solutions in data centers, we help create a solid foundation for improving the competitiveness of businesses in the fast-paced modern world of digital services.”

The products unveiled by Mellanox, are expected to trigger adoption of high speed networking in the Indian data center industry.  Spectrum based Ethernet switches, will ensure maximum performance, efficiency and throughput with lowest latency and the lowest power consumption; thereby reducing costs significantly. This will maximize ROI and ensure highest application performance, in datacenters powering the telecom, manufacturing and the cloud services market in India.

Mphasis & UiPath Partner for Next in Robotic Process Automation

Mphasis, a leading IT services and solutions provider, has entered into a strategic alliance globally with UiPath, one of the top process automation software companies, to grow its Robotics Process Automation (RPA) capabilities. This partnership will allow Mphasis to deliver and implement UiPath’s full spectrum of RPA software, aiming to provide best-in-market automation services to Mphasis’ banking & financial services customers. It will also help UiPath expand its industry-specific customer base through Mphasis.

The partnership is core to Mphasis’ drive to deliver powerful, technology-enabled business solutions. Mphasis aims to leverage its domain expertise in banking, capital markets, insurance and beyond as well as UiPath’s expertise in RPA to strengthen Mphasis’ RPA service capabilities. This will allow its customers to streamline processes, enhance productivity and efficiency thereby dramatically improving on services delivered to the end customer. Mphasis is focused on enabling organizations transform by adopting state-of-the-art technologies & Cognitive computing solutions.

“Automation is transforming the way business processes are delivered, and we are pleased to partner with UiPath in order to offer their powerful technology to our customers,” said Gopinathan Padmanabhan, Chief Innovation Officer and President Global Delivery at Mphasis. “As automation drives the next wave of growth for our industry, our goal of the partnership is to take the automation services, including the Business Process Services, to Mphasis’ focused verticals. By coupling the technological advances of RPA with our deep vertical domain knowledge, we will enable transformation and optimization of our customers’ businesses.”

“I’m excited to partner with Mphasis – we are highly impressed by their extensive expertise in deep client verticals and partnering with a company, like Mphasis, allows us to continue to deliver top notch service to our clients. As we’ve watched the demand for automation grow, we believe that our relationship will make an impact on the market,” said Daniel Dines, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, UiPath. “We look forward to working with Mphasis to continually build and grow our capabilities,” he added.

“Through this partnership, Mphasis would leverage UiPath’s best-in-class Enterprise RPA Platform as part of their automation offerings and deliver superior business value to customers. With UiPath, partners and customers will be able to Automate More and Quickly and generate faster ROI for their investments.” said Raghunath Subramanian, President and Chief Executive Officer, India and APAC at UIPath. “we are very excited to partner with Mphasis at a time where we are seeing very fast adoption of RPA  Technology across the globe.” he added.

Paytm-Enabled FASTag for Highways Tolls across the Country

India’s largest payment and commerce platform, Paytm has partnered with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to enable cashless transaction on highway tolls across the country. 

The Paytm FASTag will allow commuters to pass through 350 toll plazas covering 55,000 kms, without having to stop. The vehicle tag employs RFID technology to allow cashless toll fee payment with the Paytm Wallet. Going forward, Paytm aims to collect over Rs 1,800 Cr in toll charges in the coming months.

Kiran Vasireddy, Sr. Vice President – Paytm said, “Cash slows down traffic at important toll plazas as attendants and motorists are left grappling with the hassles of dealing in loose change. The roll-out of Paytm-enabled FASTag will come as a relief to both commuters and toll plaza attendants and help towards the national cause of saving fuel.”

With this move, Paytm is inching closer to its vision of making cashless transactions a way of life across India. This will propel India towards becoming a cashless economy in the truest sense of the word.

Paytm is currently aiming to get a larger market share in O2O categories by reaching every nook and corner of the country. Paytm customers can now pay at petrol pumps, grocery outlets, restaurants and coffee shops, multiplexes, local tea or vegetable vendors and even the newspaper vendor who will prefer Paytm because of its seamless payment solutions.