Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ with Bigger Storage and Faster RAM Unveiled in India

Samsung India today launched a new variant of Galaxy S8+ with 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage, following the tremendous response to its recently-launched flagship smartphones Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

The new variant, which will be available in Midnight Black colour, retains its flagship style - with a stunning bezel-less dual-edge Infinity Display that provides a truly cinematic viewing experience. The new Galaxy S8+ also comes with Samsung Pay - the mobile payment service with defense-grade security, the best low-light camera and personal assistant, Bixby.

The new Galaxy S8+ builds on Samsung’s heritage of creating stunning designs and meaningful innovations that transform people’s lives. Following the success of the flagship smartphones and great response from Indian market for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, Samsung is launching the newer variant with 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage.

"The resounding success of the recently launched Galaxy S8 & Galaxy S8+ underscores the unmatched superiority of Samsung in the premium smartphone segment. The new Galaxy S8+ variant with its best in class 6GB RAM & 128GB internal memory, will give our consumers the freedom to do infinitely more. It is the ultimate device for power users who aspire to explore new possibilities, are always on top of their game and for whom multi-tasking is a way of life,” said  Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India.

An efficient device and a definite showstopper in terms of looks, the new Galaxy S8+ is the best choice for consumers looking for a seamless experience even while using dual SIM.

 Galaxy with Infinite Possibilities

The new Galaxy S8+ packs in enhanced performance and features:

·  Infinite Performance: The new Galaxy S8+ is powered with 6GB RAM. This makes the device infinitely powerful and allows multitasking with immaculate efficiency. With increased memory, you can have a seamless experience when playing graphically intensive games.

·         Infinite Entertainment: As the world’s first mobile device certified by the UHD Alliance as MOBILE HDR PREMIUM^TM, the new Galaxy S8+ lets you see the same vibrant colours and contrasts that filmmakers intended while watching your favourite shows. It also offers next-level gaming experience with vivid and superior graphic technology, as well as Game Pack, featuring top game titles, including select titles supported by the Vulkan API.

·         Infinite Camera: The new Galaxy S8+ is equipped with 12MP rear camera with Dual Pixel Technology and 8MP front camera with smart autofocus, with F1.7 aperture that is perfect for taking bright and high-resolution photos even in low light conditions. With this enhanced variant, consumers will not have to worry about running out of space while clicking pictures and storing memories on their phones.

·  Infinite Convenience: The new Galaxy S8+ with 128GB storage makes your experiences unforgettable, flawless and smooth. It will, in particular, serve best to customers who use dual SIM and require large memory.

Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ 128GB, with its sleek and premium design, is available in Midnight Black colour. Consumers can pre-book the new Galaxy S8+ on Samsung Shop and Flipkart starting from June 2. As an introductory offer, all the customers will also be eligible for a free Wireless Charger.

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ 128GB will be priced at Rs 74,900 and will be available across India from June 9.

Murthy Asks Senior Execs to take Pay Cuts to Stop IT Layoffs

IT companies can protect the jobs of youngsters if senior executives take pay cuts, said Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy.

He added that the industry has dealt with the issue several times in the past.

Murthy said he has no doubt that all industry leaders have good intentions to solve the problem of layoffs.

"There are a lot of smart leaders in the industry, but I have no doubt at all that they are all well-intentioned people and they can find solutions," he told news channel ET Now.

Murthy also said this is not for the first time that the industry has faced the layoff problem and hence there should not be any extreme anxiety as the industry had dealt the issue and found solutions then."Let us remember we have gone through this several times in the past. We went through that in 2008, in 2001. So, this is nothing new. Therefore, there is no need for us to become extremely anxious. We have had solutions to such problems in the past," he said.

Giving example of Infosys on how they tackled the layoff problem, Murthy said the company could protect the jobs of youngsters after executives at senior management level took pay cuts.

"I have a feeling that it is possible for us to protect the jobs of youngsters if the senior management people were to make some minor adjustments - adjustment of taking salary cuts," Murthy said.

The senior-most people at the internal director level took the highest pay cut, and then to follow suit was the senior vice president who took a slightly lower cut, Murthy said.

Murthy said Infosys did this in 2001 when the market shrunk. "Let me give you example of Infosys itself. When the market became very tough and it shrank actually in 2001. We all sat together with senior management and then we said - look let us make some sacrifice and ensure that we protect the jobs of youngsters," he said.

"That time we had offered jobs to 1,500 engineers. Several companies were postponing the joining day. We said let us not do that, let us demonstrate the commitment to youngsters by senior people taking some salary cuts based on the disposable income as we go down the hierarchy and welcome those 1,500 engineers," he added.

Murthy also said parallelly, industry leaders will identify new areas of opportunity and mount training programmes to train youngsters and give them enough opportunities to pick up technologies and ask them to work hard and ensure they are in a position to add value to the company in next one year, and if they failed they could look out for another job.

"It is not fair to simply send somebody home, and then let them become very very anxious, because they may have families depending on them. They may have children, parents, spouses and all that, so it is incumbent on leaders of the industry to find reasonable solutions..." he said.

Agencies

Cisco and IBM Join Forces to Tackle Cybercrime through Technology Integration, Services and Threat Intelligence Collaboration

Cisco and IBM Security has announced they are working together to address the growing global threat of cybercrime. In a new agreement, Cisco and IBM Security will work closely together across products, services and threat intelligence for the benefit of customers.

Cisco security solutions will integrate with IBM’s QRadar to protect organizations across networks, endpoints and cloud. Customers will also benefit from the scale of IBM Global Services support of Cisco products in their Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) offerings. The agreement also establishes a new relationship between the IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos security research teams who will begin collaborating on threat intelligence research and coordinating on major cybersecurity incidents.

One of the core issues impacting security teams is the proliferation of security tools that do not communicate or integrate. A recent Cisco survey of 3,000 chief security officers found that 65 percent of their organizations use between six and 50 different security products. Managing such complexity is challenging over-stretched security teams and can lead to potential gaps in security. The Cisco and IBM Security relationship is focused on helping organizations reduce the time required to detect and mitigate threats, offering organizations integrated tools to help them automate a threat response with greater speed and accuracy.

“In cybersecurity, taking a data-driven approach is the only way to stay ahead of the threats impacting your business,” said Bill Heinrich, Chief Information Security Director, BNSF Railway. “Cisco and IBM working together greatly increases our team’s ability to focus on stopping threats versus making disconnected systems work with each other. This more open and collaborative approach is an important step for the industry and our ability to defend ourselves against cybercrime.”

Integrating Threat Defenses Across Networks and Cloud

The cost of data breaches to enterprises continues to rise. In 2016, the Ponemon Institute found for companies surveyed the cost was at its highest ever at $4 million - up 29 percent over the past three years.  A slow response can also impact the cost of a breach – incidents that took longer than 30 days to contain cost $1 million more than those containedwithin 30 days. These rising costs make visibility into threats, and blocking them quickly, central to an integrated threat defense approach. 

The combination of Cisco’s best-of-breed security offerings and its architectural approach, integrated with IBM’s Cognitive Security Operations Platform, will help customers secure their organizations more effectively from the network to the endpoint to the cloud. As part of the collaboration, Cisco will build new applications for IBM’s QRadar security analytics platform. The first two new applications will be designed to help security teams understand and respond to advanced threats and will be available on the IBM Security App Exchange. These will enhance user experience, and help clients identify and remediate incidents more effectively when working with Cisco’s Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), Next-Generation Intrusion Protection System (NGIPS) and Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) and Threat Grid.

In addition, IBM’s Resilient Incident Response Platform (IRP) will integrate with Cisco’s Threat Grid to provide security teams with insights needed to respond to incidents faster. For example, analysts in the IRP can look up indicators of compromise with Cisco Threat Grid's threat intelligence, or detonate suspected malware with its sandbox technology. This enables security teams to gain valuable incident data in the moment of response.

“Cisco’s architectural approach to security allows organizations to see a threat once, and stop it everywhere. By combining Cisco’s comprehensive security portfolio with IBM Security’s operations and response platform, Cisco and IBM bring best-of-breed products and solutions across the network, endpoint and cloud, paired with advanced analytics and orchestration capabilities,” said David Ulevitch, SVP and general manager, Cisco Security.

“IBM has long been a proponent of open collaboration and threat sharing in cybersecurity,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, general manager, IBM Security. “With Cisco joining our immune system of defense, joint customers will greatly expand their ability to enhance their use of cognitive technologies like IBM Watson for Cybersecurity. Also, having our IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos teams collaborating is a tremendous advantage for the good guys in the fight against cybercrime.”

Threat Intelligence and Managed Services

IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos research teams will collaborate on security research aimed at addressing the most challenging cybersecurity problems facing mutual customers by connecting their leading experts. For joint customers, IBM will deliver an integration between X-Force Exchange and Cisco’s Threat Grid. This integration greatly expands the historical and real-time threat intelligence that security analysts can correlate for deeper insights. 

For example, Cisco and IBM recently shared threat intelligence as part of the recent WannaCry ransomware attacks. The teams coordinated their response and researchers exchanged insights into how the malware was spreading. They continue to collaborate on the investigation to ensure joint customers, and the industry, have the most relevant information.

Through this expanded collaboration, IBM’s Managed Security Services team, which manages security for over 3,700 customers globally, will work with Cisco to deliver new services aimed at further reducing complexity. One of the first offerings is designed for the growing hybrid cloud market. As enterprise customers migrate security infrastructure to public and private cloud providers, IBM Security will provide Managed Security Services in support of Cisco security platforms in leading public cloud services.

Brands Ride on Truecaller’s Road-Block to Success!

Truecaller’s ad platform is taking a lead in the In-App mobile programmatic advertising by delivering nationwide scale and reach while also driving engagement with audiences. First year of the platform has seen leading businesses already keeping it at the heart of their campaign.

Being third most used and downloaded app in India, the Truecaller platform through partner campaigns delivered maximum reach and returns for leading businesses like Vivo during IPL, Amazon, Pizza Hut, Myntra, Koovs.com and Oneplus among many more…

According to Tejinder Gill, VP Sales and Head of India Operations at Truecaller, “From day one we are solving a marketer’s need to reach a wider audience in a country like India where TV, Print and Outdoor are the most used but expensive propositions. Our biggest strength is the engagement and undivided attention we can provide to advertisers. We can deliver a brand’s message and enable them to stay on top of the consumer’s mind simply by the fact that we are not an ‘appointment viewing’ app. This is proven by the fact that over 70% of our advertisers are repeat customers, which assures us of the efficacy of our platform.”

 Planning and Buying, Interactive Avenues, adds “It has been a pleasure witnessing Truecaller’s journey in the mobile ad space. From the time they opened up their ads platform, they have focused on their core, which is delivering value to clients through reach, value & scale. Interactive Avenues has been closely associated with Truecaller to deliver this very value to our clients, and they’re very satisfied with the results. For a platform to go from delivering 40 Million to 100 Million impressions a day, in 4 months is no small feat. Not to mention delivering over 100,000 clicks per day from a qualified audience of smartphone users with data. I can’t wait to see what barrier they’ll break next and I’m sure Interactive Avenues will share this achievement with them soon.”

 Associated brands have received an overwhelming traction on the platform and continue to bet big after witnessing great engagement for their campaigns.

Siddharth Banerjee - EVP and Head – Brand Communications and Insights,Vodafone India, adds “We expected Truecaller to deliver but the performance exceeded our outlook. 
Vodafone’s campaigns on Truecaller are delivering more than 100 Million impressions in a day, also delivering well in terms of performance. Vodafone India looks forward to more collaborations as we experiment with their new products and assets.”

Government IT Spending in India to Total $7.8 Billion in 2017

The government in India is forecast to spend $7.8 billion US dollars (USD) on IT in 2017, 7.5 percent increase from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This is down from Gartner’s previous projection for 9.5 percent growth this year.

“The 2 percent revision in our outlook is primarily due to the effects of demonetization and a drop in industrial production,” said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner. “However, spending plans like affordable housing scheme, and increased loans to small and medium enterprises by the government are likely to have a positive effect on IT spending in the next few quarters.”

IT services (which includes consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support) is expected to grow 10.8 percent in 2017 to reach $2 billion USD, making it the largest IT spending category.

The software segment includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), desktop, infrastructure, vertical specific software and other application tools. The software segment is expected to grow 10.8 percent in 2017 to reach $1.1 billion USD. ERP/SCM/CRM will be the fastest growing segment with 14.5 percent growth in this category.

Devices (which includes printers/copiers/MFPs, mobile devices, PCs and tablets) is expected to grow 10.4 percent in 2017 to reach $1.1 billion USD.

VLCC Acquires Wellscience Forays into Nutraceuticals and Direct Selling

VLCC, a globally renowned brand in beauty and wellness industry, today announced its foray into the fast growing nutraceuticals industry with the acquisition of the Direct Selling business of Wellscience, a Gurugram-based company that offers a comprehensive range of high quality nutraceutical supplements and personal care products catering to customer requirements across age groups.To be rebranded VLCC Wellscience, the company’s products are all Ayurvedic or herbal and address condition specific wellness needs of customers, using an innovative Active Identifiable Marker (AIM) technology.

Commenting on the acquisition, Mukesh Luthra, Chairman, VLCC Group, said, “Combining its strategy to enter new and emerging categories in the Beauty and Wellness domain at large with the strategy to enter new channels of distribution, to reach out to a larger set of consumers of Beauty and Wellness offerings, VLCC is now further extending its presence in the high-growth Fast Moving Healthcare Goods (FMHG) segment, with its foray into the nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals segment, and retailing these products through the Direct Selling channel, which is an emerging opportunity given that the Government of India has very recently clarified regulations governing this industry.”

“VLCC is already present in the FMHG segment with its VLCC Slimmer’s range of fortified/functional foods and expanding to nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals is a natural extension our products business”, Mr. Luthra further added.

Wellscience was established in 2009 by a team led by Lajinder Bawa. He will continue to lead the business as the CEO of VLCC Wellscience. A 20-year veteran of the Direct Selling Industry, he is credited with having brought it to the country when he became the founding CEO of Oriflame India in 1995. He has also been an advisor to leading Direct Selling players, including Modicare and Hindustan Lever Network.

Commenting on the synergy between the two businesses, Mr. Lajinder Bawa said, “This is a significant step forward for Wellscience. VLCC has been committed to transforming lives for close to three decades and ensures that its product lines and service offerings are of utmost efficacy and quality, at all times. We believe that the brand values of Wellscience are in sync with the values of VLCC and this partnership will provide us the necessary thrust required for our next level of growth.”

Within the overall FMCG domain in India, the FMHG segment is one of the fastest growing. According to a 2015 Assocham-RNCOS study, this segment is likely to touch US$ 6.1 billion by 2020 from the current level of US$ 2.8 billion, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17 per cent.

More specifically with respect to the nutraceuticals market in India, it is expected to double to INR 267.64 billion by 2020 and grow at a CAGR of 16% over the next 5 years, as per a recent study by the Drug Marketing and ;Manufacturing Association (DMMA).

Furthermore, the Health and Wellness products market in India through Direct Selling is estimated at over Rs 35 billion, contributing 47 per cent share to the total Direct Selling market.

Uber Brings New App for Driver Compliments to 29 Cities Across India

Uber, the world’s largest ridesharing app that connects riders with drivers to provide convenient, reliable and affordable rides at the push of a button, today announced the launch of the ‘Driver Compliments’ feature. Through this feature Uber aims to make it possible for riders to positively reinforce good behaviour and in the process humanize the relationship between the riders and driver partners.

“Last month, we launched community guidelines with the objective of encouraging mutual respect, and we are now excited to introduce ‘Compliments’. Our driver partners deliver millions of safe rides everyday and in many instances go beyond their call of duty. We hope our riders take a moment to express their appreciation by using this feature. It will encourage our driver partners to do even better!,” said Pradeep Parameswaran, Head, Central Operation, Uber India.

Once a rider leaves a compliment, drivers will get a notification in app, taking them to the message and the compliments badge they’ve collected - whether that’s for expert navigation, great music choice or excellent service - because sometimes the little things make all the difference, and 5 stars are not enough.

Bharat Electronics Plans for ₹700-Crore Capex for FY17-18

Public sector defence major Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) plans a capex of ₹700 crore for 2017-18. 

“The sanctioned amount is more, but planned spend is around ₹700 crore on two new plants at Anantapur and Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh,” said BEL’s Chairman & Managing Director M Gowtama.

At Nimmaluru village, near Machilipatnam, the company is building new advanced night vision products factory and plans are afoot to expand night vision devices business. At Anantapur, a dedicated defence systems integration complex at Palasamudram is planned. In addition to these plants, the company is also creating dedicated business groups to address home land security and smart city business. On the sales outlook for 2017-18, Gowtama said “Our aim is to cross ₹10,000 crore. During 2016-17, we clocked ₹8,825 crore. Currently our turnover from indigenous technology is 87 per cent and sales from defence business is 88 per cent.”

To clock more sales, “we plan to continue indigenisation efforts in line with Make in India. We plan to enhance capacity and create new test facilities for defence business and are pursuing new opportunities in solar, energy, homeland security, smart cities, smart cards and telecom,” he added.

On electronic voting machines (EVMs), Gowtama said EVMs made by BEL are safe and the Election Commission (EC) has placed an order for 17 lakh machines with a budget of ₹3,100 crore. “The EC has placed order of 8.5 lakh each with us (BEL) and ECIL. We are committed to supply the order by September 2018. For us revenue with tax comes to ₹1,500 crore and without tax it will be ₹1,300 crore.”

The company’s exports dipped 23.52 per cent to $65 million in FY17 as compared with $85 million in FY16. Gowtama attributed the fall to Reliance Defence failing to raise LoI. 

“Otherwise we could have achieved the last fiscal sales’ level,” he said. The company’s order book as on April 1 is at $82 million. This includes offset order book $15 million. “This year our thrust is on exports and offsets. Focus is on build to print, build to spec and buyer-nominated equipment.”

The company has drawn a three-year (2017-2020) research and development (R&D) plan.

ISRO GSLV Mark-III Shall Put Mega Payloads of 4,000 Kg into the Orbit

After the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has established itself as a dependable workhorse, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is paying special attention to its next generation rocket — the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark-III which is capable of launching 4,000-kg satellites into space.
The GSLV version of the rocket was used to launch 2,000-kg satellites. The three-stag GSLV Mk-III adopts the flight-proven solid and liquid stages of the PSLV and a cryogenic upper stage.GSLV was developed to enable India to launch its heavier satellites without dependence on foreign rockets. If successful, the new rocket can project the country as a competitive player in the multi-million dollar commercial launch market.Isro scientists are optimistic over the success of the Mk-III mission in the backdrop of a series of tests carried out before going ahead with the launch arrangements.The cryogenic stage, designated as C25, was tested for a flight duration of 640 seconds at the propulsion complex at Mahendragiri in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu in February.The rocket will be carrying the GSAT-19 to space. It is likely to be launched in the next two months. The satellite is planned to carry Ka and Ku band payload along with a Geostationary Radiation Spectrometer (GRASP) payload to monitor and study the nature of the charged particles and influence of space radiation on spacecraft and electronic components.Isro working on three missions at same time For the first time, all the infrastructure at India’s spaceport — the Satish Dhawan Space Centre — is being put to use. Work related to the launch of rockets is progressing at a brisk pace.While integration of PSLV-C38 and GSLV-F09 are in progress at the buildings attached to first and second launch pads, work related to GSLV-MK 111 is going on at the solid stage assembly building. Isro officials said MK III would be shifted soon after the launch of GSLV-F09.The engineers of Isro said it is the first time that work of three launch missions is going on in full stream. The launch of the GSLV-F09 carrying the GSAT-9 satellite is planned probably on May 5. The PSLV-C3 will launch the Cartosat-2D and some foreign satellites on May 25. The bigger GSLV Mk III will carry the 4,000-kg GSAT-19 to space in June.
The GSLV version of the rocket was used to launch 2,000-kg satellites. The three-stag GSLV Mk-III adopts the flight-proven solid and liquid stages of the PSLV and a cryogenic upper stage.GSLV was developed to enable India to launch its heavier satellites without dependence on foreign rockets. If successful, the new rocket can project the country as a competitive player in the multi-million dollar commercial launch market.Isro scientists are optimistic over the success of the Mk-III mission in the backdrop of a series of tests carried out before going ahead with the launch arrangements.The cryogenic stage, designated as C25, was tested for a flight duration of 640 seconds at the propulsion complex at Mahendragiri in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu in February.The rocket will be carrying the GSAT-19 to space. It is likely to be launched in the next two months. The satellite is planned to carry Ka and Ku band payload along with a Geostationary Radiation Spectrometer (GRASP) payload to monitor and study the nature of the charged particles and influence of space radiation on spacecraft and electronic components.Isro working on three missions at same time For the first time, all the infrastructure at India’s spaceport — the Satish Dhawan Space Centre — is being put to use. Work related to the launch of rockets is progressing at a brisk pace.While integration of PSLV-C38 and GSLV-F09 are in progress at the buildings attached to first and second launch pads, work related to GSLV-MK 111 is going on at the solid stage assembly building. Isro officials said MK III would be shifted soon after the launch of GSLV-F09.The engineers of Isro said it is the first time that work of three launch missions is going on in full stream. The launch of the GSLV-F09 carrying the GSAT-9 satellite is planned probably on May 5. The PSLV-C3 will launch the Cartosat-2D and some foreign satellites on May 25. The bigger GSLV Mk III will carry the 4,000-kg GSAT-19 to space in June.

Automation Anywhere Launches IQ Bot, Software Bots Capable of Learning

Automation Anywhere, the global leader in enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA), today announced the availability of IQ Bot, software bots capable of studying, learning and mimicking human behavior for intelligent process automation. By combining cognitive abilities with practical, rule-based RPA capabilities, organizations can quickly scale and up level their Digital Workforces to fully automate processes end-to-end and run them independently with minimal human intervention. The product was launched at Automation Anywhere’s Imagine, the company’s premier customer experience event taking place in New York City.

IQ Bot is skilled at applying human logic to document patterns and extracting values in the same way that a human would, but with instantaneous speed, the accuracy of a machine and with a near-zero error rate. Fully integrated with the Automation Anywhere Enterprise platform, IQ Bot delivers organizations enormous gains in productivity because it is capable of processing and automating business tasks involving complex documents with unstructured data. With Automation Anywhere’s comprehensive Digital Workforce platform, comprised of RPA, cognitive and analytic capabilities, organizations can automate up to 80 percent of business processes, compared to the 30 percent automation capability by using RPA alone.

“IQ Bot is the next evolution of cognitive capabilities that significantly extends the proficiency of RPA beyond anything we’ve yet experienced. It enables companies to leverage what humans do best and what machines do best, delivering the first intelligent automation platform,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-founder, Automation Anywhere. “We strongly believe the full potential of enterprise automation is only realized when RPA and cognitive computing work together. With the release of IQ Bot, we are delivering critical functionality, which can be truly transformational.”

IQ Bot has a built-in, intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to setup and manage. IQ Bot relies on supervised learning, meaning that every human interaction makes IQ Bot smarter. In addition to English, IQ Bot can extract data in Spanish, French, Italian and German.

Metso and CDE Collaborate to Provide Comprehensive Solutions for Manufactured Sand Market in India

Metso (India) Pvt. Ltd. and CDE Asia Limited have agreed on marketing cooperation in order to provide comprehensive manufactured sand solutions to customers in India. Metso's scope covers the crushing and screening technology, and CDE Asia will provide the wet classification equipment required in the manufactured sand production process.

The agreement is in line with Metso's strategy to strengthen its capabilities by extending its portfolio in cooperation with strong partners around the world, CDE in this case, and offer comprehensive high-quality end-to-end solutions for an important segment like manufactured sand.

"As a leading provider of equipment and services for the mining and aggregates industries, we always aim to provide the best solutions to our customers that are not only qualitative and efficient in terms of profitability, but also environmentally sustainable. This new marketing cooperation agreement allows the customers to acquire the whole process easily, and at the same time forms a good platform for future growth for both Metso and CDE Asia in India," states Kamal Pahuja, Vice President, Mining and Aggregates, Metso India.

"The cooperation agreement with Metso presents new opportunities for both organizations and has been well received by our customers. The combination of Metso's and CDE Asia's sustainable technologies produces well shaped, washed and graded manufactured sand, helping to replace natural sand, which is fast becoming scarce and expensive. This collaboration will benefit the sand manufacturers by providing best-in-quality graded sand and sustainable operations by reusing up to 95% of water used. By utilizing normally low-value crusher fines for sand production, we can extend the life of natural resources and also add huge commercial value to our customer's enterprise," shares Manish Bhartia, Managing Director, CDE Asia.

The cooperation agreement between Metso and CDE Asia is restricted to marketing and development of common offerings for the manufactured sand market by pooling the companies' expertise and knowledge. Both parties negotiate and sign the terms of contracts independently with the end customers, representing their respective companies only.

CDE is the leading provider of washing equipment for quarries, mines and recycling operations on the global market. The CDE equipment range has applications across a wide range of materials and is delivering significant efficiencies in the construction and recycling, mining, specialist industrial sands and environmental sectors. Working across 5 sectors and 8 regions, CDE has been co-creating with customers for over 20 years to deliver collaborative, imaginative and unique processing systems.  

The CDE Global Design Headquarters are located in Northern Ireland and the company also has bases in Kolkata, India to serve the Asian market, São Paulo, Brazil to serve the Latin American market, Ormeau, Australia for Australasian market and North Carolina, USA, to serve the North American market.  CDE also has representatives based in North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Audi Announces Attractive Sales & Service Benefits in May-June, 2017

Audi, the German luxury car manufacturer has today announced attractive offers on Sales and Service on the entire range of its product offerings.These offers are being rolled out with immediate effect across dealerships and are only applicable until the end of June, 2017.

“Customer Delight is at the center of Audi’s focus and we are sure that our current offers will delight Audi enthusiasts. The attractive prices and packages bring fantastic value to the Audi enthusiasts. It is the best time to join the Audi family, buy your dream Audi and benefit from the privileges of the Audi Club India. As opposed to the market trend, this is not a measure to clear old stock; we are extending the benefits on our new cars as well. This is what Customer Delight stands for,” said Mr. Rahil Ansari, Head, Audi India.

Under the new schemes on Sales and Service, Audi is offering competitive pricing on the entire model range. In addition to this, the company has also announced a tailor-made Comprehensive Service Package, which offers a variety of time and mileage options and range of service plans for customers to choose as per their individual needs and driving habits. The Comprehensive Service Package covers full maintenance, warranty and wear and tear. The brand with the four rings has also announced attractive finance and insurance schemes to make the experience of owning an Audi even more exciting. Customers can now approach their nearest dealership to avail tailor-made benefits to suit one’s requirement.

Cloudera’s Altus to Simplify Big Data Workloads in the Cloud

Cloudera, Inc, the provider of the leading modern platform for machine learning and advanced analytics, announced the release of Cloudera Altus, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that makes it easier to run large-scale data processing applications on public cloud. The initial Altus service helps data engineers use on-demand infrastructure to speed the creation and operation of elastic data pipelines that power sophisticated, data-driven applications.

Data engineering applications like ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) or batch scoring are often large, batch-oriented workloads that run for a fixed period of time and help companies extract critical insights from raw data. Organizations can gain significant flexibility and efficiency advantages by running these pipelines on elastic infrastructure. Enterprises want to leverage cloud infrastructure alongside familiar large-scale data processing tools and technologies.

The Cloudera Altus Data Engineering service simplifies the development and operations of elastic data pipelines; putting data engineering jobs front and center and abstracting infrastructure management and operations that can be both time consuming and complex. Altus also reduces the risk associated with cloud migrations. It provides users with familiar tools packaged in an open, unified, enterprise-grade platform service that delivers common storage, metadata, security, and management across multiple data engineering applications.

“Data engineering workloads are foundational for today’s data-driven applications,” said Charles Zedlewski, senior vice president of Products at Cloudera. “Altus simplifies the process of building and running elastic data pipelines while preserving portability and making it easy to incorporate data engineering elements into more complex BI, data science and real-time applications.”

Cloudera makes it easy, cost-effective, and convenient to deploy these workloads on cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), taking advantage of cloud elasticity, low-cost storage and compute options, and rapid provisioning to deliver a modern data service that can tackle even the most challenging business problems. Cloud object stores such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) are becoming increasingly popular for their resiliency, scalability, and relatively low cost.

According to IDC, public cloud deployments are now at 12% of the overall worldwide business analytics software market and expected to grow at a 25% CAGR through 2020^[1]. Cloud is one of the fastest growing deployment environments for Cloudera customers, and Altus makes it easier than ever to run data engineering workloads in the cloud.

Features and benefits of Altus include:

●       Managed service for elastic data pipelines - Cloudera Altus is a PaaS that allows data engineers to easily and quickly provision Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Hive on Spark, and MapReduce2 capacity on cloud-native infrastructure. Altus presents intelligent default cluster settings and environments that dramatically reduce cluster deployment times and operations, automating processes like cluster provisioning, configuring, and termination.

●       Workload orientation - Cloudera Altus centers around data pipelines rather than clusters or infrastructures, so users can easily submit, clone, and troubleshoot pipelines with minimal attention paid to the underlying infrastructure.

●       No data siloes - The Altus Data Engineering service enables data engineers to run direct reads from and writes to cloud object storage as does the rest of Cloudera’s platform. This data is immediately available for use by other Cloudera workloads without requiring data replication, ETL or changes to file formats. In doing so users can more easily incorporate data engineering into their data science, BI and real time DB applications.

●       Backward compatibility and platform portability - Altus supports multiple versions of CDH the most widely used open source platform in the industry. Users can easily move workloads to and from the cloud without needing to modify their applications. Because CDH is backward compatible across minor releases, customers can harness the latest innovation from the Apache big data open source community without fear of breaking their applications from release to release.

●       Built-in workload management - Altus automates and simplifies the common operational issues related to elastic data pipelines with workload management. Users can troubleshoot failed jobs with or without the clusters or compute infrastructure being present.  In addition Altus’ workload management flags significant performance deviations and proposes a root cause analysis. In doing so customers can run their data pipelines with greater reliability and lower cost.

The initial rollout of Cloudera Altus includes support for Apache Spark, Apache Hive on MapReduce2, and Hive on Spark. It is available today in most Amazon Web Services (AWS) regions. Over time Cloudera plans to expand Altus to support other leading public clouds such as Microsoft Azure, etc.

The Tamara Coorg Opens Doors to its New ‘Yoga Temple’

The award winning luxury resort – The Tamara Coorg, known for its picturesque, tranquil and peaceful experiences, will add another exceptional feature to its property with the launch of its Yoga Temple. As the name suggests, the ‘Yoga Temple’ will be a place of divine worship where one can connect with one’s inner self. Inspired by the garbha griha or a sanctum sanctorum, with The Yoga Temple, The Tamara Coorg takes another step towards facilitating an environment of wellness for its guests, attained through a feeling of deep purity, peace and contentment. The spiritual soul of The Tamara Coorg will be launched on World Yoga Day on June 21, 2017.

The Yoga Temple, the first of its kind in India, was conceptualized to be a secular meditative space which unites the mind, body and spirit amidst an exuberant interplay of light, colour and texture. It is located on one acre of converted land surrounded by the lush greenery and serenity of the neighbouring organic coffee plantation and east facing mountain ridges.   

In line with the World Yoga Day, The Tamara Coorg will observe a special ‘Week of Revival’ between June 19 and 22, 2017. Whether a beginner or an advanced practitioner, guests’ can choose to partake in any or all of the below sessions with the in-house yoga expert –

-          Start the day by mastering the art of Asana, the posture while performing yoga and Pranayama, the practice of controlling the breath which is the vital life force, between 8:00 – 9:00 hrs

-          Stimulate different body parts and the mind with Yoga Mudra between 11:00 – 12:00 hrs

-           Indulge in deep relaxation when performing Yogic sleep with the Yoga Nidra session between 15:00 – 16:00 hrs

-          End the day by calming one’s senses with the guided meditation and art of breathing session between17:00 – 18:00 hrs

Speaking about the launch Shruti Shibulal, Promoter & Director of The Tamara said, “At The Tamara, we endeavour to provide our guests an all-encompassing experience through a series of our thoughtfully curated offerings. We want our guests to unwind and absorb the goodness and the calmness of the surroundings at The Tamara Coorg. With the launch of the ‘Yoga Temple’ we are certain about enabling a holistic experience for our guests that will help them restore balance, harmonize energy and revitalize their mind, body and soul.  We take great pride in presenting a truly authentic experience, which can heal, calm and connect one to a larger positive force.”

A team of well trained and experienced yoga instructors will assist practitioners replace restlessness with calm, impatience with fortitude and the constant search for the self with a complete sense of being.  At The Yoga Temple, guests will experience for themselves a sense of complete relaxation which enables one to attain spiritual happiness and inner strength.

The Yoga Temple is exceptional in all aspects of architecture - proportion, colour, sound and temperature. It is built through the fusion of long-established knowledge and contemporary technology celebrating the amalgamation of sacred art and architecture. Adorned with traditional Mangalore clay roof tiles and laterite stone craft, the Yoga Temple has been re-imagined to revive indigenous art and extend appreciation to local artisans. 

The oil diyas light up the space and elevate the divinity of this place. It is spread across ­­­­1000 sq. ft. of land which is part of the Elevation Spa and leisure area.  The Yoga Temple can accommodate 10 to 12 practitioners at any point in time.

The ‘Yoga Temple’ will be open from 7:00 – 9:00 hrs and from 17:00 – 19:00 hrs.