Trend Micro Brings DevOps Agility and Automation to Security Operations through Integration with AWS Solutions

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), the leader in cloud security, enhances agility and automation in cloud security through integrations with Amazon Web Services (AWS). As a result, Trend Micro delivers flexible and scalable all-in-one security that helps DevOps engineers securely build and innovate as they migrate to and build in the cloud. 

Trend Micro has demonstrated the strength of its collaboration with AWS since 2012 with a deep understanding of customer use cases and by integrating with leading AWS security services at launch. Most recently, Trend Micro Cloud One™ offerings have been natively integrated with AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor. These additions are designed to bring immediate benefit to security, cloud, and DevOps teams leveraging AWS by automating enforcement of security capabilities earlier in the account and resource provisioning process. 

"Trend Micro is an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) with  a long-standing history of providing security solutions to help customers address their portion of the shared responsibility model," said Siva Padisetty, General Manager, AWS Systems Manager, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Trend Micro's continuing investment in integrations with native AWS capabilities, such as AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor, reduces onboarding and management friction while adopting an enhanced security posture." 

According to a recent report from IDC, "Trend Micro is the dominant leader in Software-Defined Compute (SDC) workload protection," making up 29.5% of the worldwide hybrid cloud workload security market share, proving the company's hybrid cloud security expertise, capabilities and trust by customers. As the leading cloud security experts, Trend Micro engineers develop security solutions designed to meet the needs of cloud engineers. 

"We understand that security teams don't always have complete control or visibility into how cloud instances are being spun up, configured and used across the company," said Sanjay Mehta, senior vice president of business development and alliances for Trend Micro. "Listening to and understanding customer needs and feedback drives our innovations and collaboration with AWS. Having our solutions plug in natively with AWS offerings like AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor adds visibility and automates security for our customers." 

Through this collaboration, Trend Micro Cloud One offers the broadest platform support and API integration to protect your AWS infrastructure whether building with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, containers, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), or Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) networking. 

Trend Micro Lands Industry’s Most Comprehensive XDR Platform in Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704); the leader in cloud security, today announced that its XDR suite is officially available in Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (AMEA). Trend Micro XDR is the first in the cybersecurity industry that offers the most extensive correlated detection going beyond endpoint detection and response (EDR). It collects and analyzes activity data from emails, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks, enabling security operations center (SOC) teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats more effectively.  

Today’s SOC analysts are up against sophisticated threats that are designed to circumvent the most advanced protection. Adding fire to the fuel is the massive volume of alerts they have to triage on a daily basis. Low job satisfaction and cybersecurity talent shortage are commonplace challenges for SOCs across the region.  

Trend Micro’s XDR is designed to address such operational nightmares in a SOC. It delivers three major benefits, unparalleled by any other existing point solution:  

Reducing alert fatigue: XDR automatically correlates and analyzes data from multiple security vectors to tell a bigger story. With XDR, level one SOC analysts no longer have to comb through mountains of noisy alerts and logs to identify a potential attack. XDR does it automatically for them and generates a few high-fidelity alerts instead of a thousand low-confidence ones, significantly reducing alert volume.  

Powerful workbench that provides contextual visibility for alerts: The XDR dashboard presents attacks in a visualized manner, enabling SOC analysts to see the different stages, attack vectors, dwell time, and the spread and impact. XDR also offers contextually aware response options so SOC analysts can take quick actions within the platform.  

Augmenting SIEM and effortless API integration: Trend Micro XDR augments SIEM for the SOC team, with centralization of normalized data and incident response capability that improve operational efficiency and productivity. XDR provides pre-built SIEM connector for Splunk to pull high-fidelity alerts into SIEM dashboards. For customers with their preferred SIEM solution, a public API can be used for the integration.  

Trend Micro’s XDR is also available as a managed service (MDR), to further alleviate the pressure of constrained in-house teams. The MDR team conducts 24/7 full-threat analysis and threat hunting, and provides response plans and remediation recommendations.  

“EDR is only one piece of the whole detection and response puzzle. It’s great but it has limited reach, as it only collects data on the endpoints. To have integrated visibility across multiple security vectors is a top-priority item on any SOC’s to-do list. And XDR ticks that box”, says Dhanya Thakkar, senior vice president for AMEA. “There has been tremendous demand from our customers in the region for XDR capabilities since last year. Now they will be able to have the full XDR experience.”  

“XDR gives us an additional dimension in threat detection - it allows for faster correlation of endpoints events to related services, such as network and email, to help us quickly identify entry point and the spread of infection visually. This is a tremendous boost to the efficiency of our incident response teams”, shares Ian Loe, Senior Vice President, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure & Performance Architecture, at NTUC Enterprise Co-operative Limited.  

Trend Micro’s XDR is recently named by Forrester as a Leader in enterprise detection and response, and achieved the highest initial detection in the MITRE ATT&CK Framework.  

Infogain Achieves Google Cloud Partner Specialization in Application Development

Infogain, ​a leading provider of technology solutions, today announced that it has achieved the “Application Development Partner Specialization” in the Google Cloud Partner Specialization Program. The program provides Google Cloud customers with qualified partners that have demonstrated their expertise and success in advanced application development using Google Cloud technology. Infogain’s​proven success in building and managing applications using the best of Google Cloud in both web, and mobile environments led to this specialization. 

Infogain helps enterprises, ISVs, and innovative start-ups build modern software products and applications on Google Cloud. Infogain was one of the first to deploy and integrate Automation Anywhere RPA platform to Google Cloud Platform (​Press Release​).​Infogain’s experience spans modern application development and deployment architectures, Google Cloud IaaS, and PaaS platform development and DevSecOps driven application delivery. 

Nishith Mathur, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, ​Infogain, said, “We are pleased that Infogain achieved the Google Cloud ​Application Development Partner Specialization​. The specialization from Google Cloud is a validation of our commitment to provide the most innovative and best solutions for our clients by leveraging Google Cloud environment​. This accreditation enables us to help our clients achieve agility and security, leading to better business outcomes, using advanced Google Cloud solutions.”

About Infogain

Infogain is a Silicon Valley headquartered company with digital platform and software engineering expertise in the travel, retail, insurance, healthcare, and high technology industries. We accelerate design-led transformation and delivery of digital customer engagement systems and platforms. Infogain engineers business outcomes for Fortune 500 companies and digital natives using technologies such as cloud, microservices, robotic process automation, IoT, and artificial intelligence.   A ChrysCapital portfolio company, Infogain has offices in California, Washington, Texas, London, Dubai, India, and Singapore, with delivery centers in Austin, Kraków, New Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, and Mumbai.

Huawei Launches Digital Payment Cloud Solution at Better World Summit 2020

Huawei launched a new Digital Payment Cloud Solution recently at its Better World Summit 2020 designed to help digital payment service operators build super app centered payment ecosystems that will accelerate digital financial inclusion in emerging markets.

Ryan Wu, Director of Huawei Software Marketing & Solution Sales Dept.

“According to GSMA , mobile money today has over 1 billion registered users after more than 10 years of development,” said Ryan Wu, Director of Huawei Software Marketing & Solution Sales Dept. “However, merchant payment is still at its infancy. We all know that the key to success in the mobile payment business relies on the ecosystem. Super app is a critical platform and engagement point for ecosystem partners and provides an efficient merchant marketplace. Huawei’s digital payment cloud is designed to provide a payment platform and super app that helps mobile payment operators build an ecosystem quickly and efficiently.”

Huawei’s digital payment cloud solution brings value to payment operators from three aspects:

* Extremely Digital Experience: With the digital architecture, both user and transaction data can be opened in real time, ensuring real-time query experience for users and merchants. In addition, real-time risk control can be built based on AI analysis capabilities to identify fake transactions and avoid cash-out risks.

* Expedite Service TTM: With the open ecosystem, the solution provides API (application programming interface), H5, mini apps, and UI bricks technologies that  enable partners to launch the service on super app within one week and marketing campaigns from idea to launch within three weeks.

* Agile Iteration: With a cloud native platform, the solution supports container/micro-service, auto-scaling, grayscale release, and enables software updates in days.

In Myanmar, Huawei has cooperated with KBZ Bank to launch KBZPay and within 18 months successfully grew the service to six million registered users, over 1000 partners, and more than 290 thousand merchants. KBZPay’s transaction value has reached over $7 billion, cementing KBZ as Myanmar’s number 1 mobile payment service provider.

Netmagic, Zerto Partner to Expand its Disaster Recovery as a Service

Netmagic, an NTT Company, and India's leading managed hosting and multi-cloud Hybrid IT solution provider, today announced its partnership with Zerto to enrich its Disaster Recovery as a Services (DRaaS) portfolio. The partnership will enable enterprises with faster and cost-effective disaster recovery of critical IT infrastructure. Zerto, a leader in IT resilience, replaces legacy solutions with a single platform to enable disaster recovery (DR), data protection, and workload mobility across hyperscale clouds, hosted services, and on-premise data centers.

Netmagic DRaaS is a complete DR Management platform with a pay-per-use model. With workflow automation capabilities, it simplifies DR processes and dashboards to provide real-time visibility that is tied into the organization's objectives in terms of availability, Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). With this new partnership with Zerto, customers will get a lower-cost alternative to traditional DR solutions. With Netmagic managing the entire DR process, customers can stay focused on their core critical business.

Speaking about this, Nitin Mishra, Chief Product Officer, Netmagic (An NTT Company) said, “The partnership with Zerto will enable us to boost up our existing capabilities in DRaaS. With the Zerto IT Resilience Platform, we will be able to provide Cold DR Solution which will enable on Demand DR and a reduction in TCO for customers. This will be an end-to-end DR service allowing for the design, plan, and implementation of DR, with the key highlights being automated failover and failback operations beside dashboards for governance. By leveraging Zerto’s IT Resilience Platform, we will provide managed services for all aspects of DR planning, testing, and management.”

With organizations shifting to a new normal and work from home approach, data security and digital transformation initiatives are more significant than ever. Netmagic is a pioneer in offering the best tech-based solutions and with Zerto, these offerings will be further enhanced. Netmagic DRaaS service is based on per protected workload (Virtual machine) on a pay as use model. Customers will not only benefit by an upscale data continuity but also a much-optimized pay per use infrastructure.

“We are excited to have Netmagic join Zerto’s ecosystem of partners. We see Netmagic as a critical component to our strategy of providing DRaaS to the marketplace in India. Netmagic’s offering will allow customers to consume DRaaS, with the ability to scale on demand.  This offering will meet the needs of customers who need world class DR while taking advantage of the cost benefits of the pay-per-use model,” said Greg Bailey, Director of Channel & Cloud Sales EMEA, Zerto.

Trend Micro Cloud-Powered XDR Drives Monumental Business Value

Trend Micro Incorporated, the leader in cloud security, today shared the significant business value driven by cloud-powered XDR and Managed XDR offerings, which optimize threat detection and response across all critical vectors. In a recent survey commissioned by Trend Micro and conducted by ESG, organizations surveyed experience faster detection and less alert fatigue as a result of intelligently using data from all their security controls (including those covering endpoints, email, servers, cloud workloads and networks). 

According to the recent findings from ESG*, previewed here with a white paper to publish in August, 85% of organizations claim that threat detection and response is getting harder due to an exponentially more sophisticated threat landscape and a lack of highly skilled security experts over the last two years. 

Trend Micro's XDR solution is both a SaaS-based offering as well as a managed service with the "X" referring to the most extensive sets of data from more protection points, which is critical to find hidden threats. It was recently named by Forrester as a Leader in enterprise detection and response and achieved the highest initial detection in the MITRE ATT&CK® Framework. 

City of Tyler, Texas CIO and Trend Micro customer, Benny Yazdanpanahi said, "Our citizens and employees have a right to expect that their data and public services are secured from cyber-threats, but our small IT workforce can't do everything, so we turned to Managed XDR. Finding a strong, committed partner with knowledge and expertise we don't have was a game-changer for us. Our city motto is 'We are called to serve,' but the same could equally be said of Trend Micro. They care about their customers." 

Today's organizations are faced with sophisticated threats that may bypass even advanced protection. However, most current detection and response approaches are siloed, incomplete and overwhelm limited security teams with disconnected alerts that lack actionable information. Security practitioners currently report being able to find critical alerts but not necessarily having the clarity to resolve the issue due to lack of additional details.  

In fact, ESG found that only 30% of organizations are confident that their threat detection and response functions can perform at the speed needed to keep up with threats over the next 12-24 months. Additionally, on average, organizations and overtaxed IT teams ignore 32% of security alerts. 

Trend Micro XDR was the first solution to launch that offers correlated detection beyond the endpoint: collecting and analyzing data from email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks to more effectively hunt, detect and contain threats. It amounts to greater context, greater understanding and faster, more accurate incident response. ESG found that organizations that employ automated data aggregation techniques, like those enabled by Trend Micro XDR, enjoy improved security outcomes. For example, they are generally able to restore in hours vs. days by a ratio of 83% vs. 66%. 

The solution is also available as a managed service (MDR), to further take the pressure off constrained in-house teams with 24/7 full-threat analysis, threat hunting, response plans and remediation recommendations. 

"There's no such thing as 100% prevention anymore, which puts the focus on effective threat detection and response. With XDR, we've broken the mould with correlated detection across traditional siloes to help stretched IT teams optimize their response to stealthy threats," said Steve Quane, executive vice president at Trend Micro. "I'm proud of the fantastic value our solution offers businesses and of once again delivering on our commitment to secure the connected world. It's a privilege to remain a trusted cybersecurity advisor for our global customers." 

*ESG Research Insights Report, Validating Trend Micro's Approach and Enhancing GTM Intelligence, 2020, to be published August 2020. 

IBM Report: Compromised Employee Accounts Led to Most Expensive Data Breaches Over Past Year

IBM Security announced the results of a global study examining the financial impact of data breaches, revealing that these incidents cost companies $3.86 million per breach on average, and that compromised employee accounts were the most expensive root cause. Based on in-depth analysis of data breaches experienced by over 500 organizations worldwide, 80% of these incidents resulted in the exposure of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Out of all types of data exposed in these breaches, customer PII was also the costliest to businesses.  

As companies are increasingly accessing sensitive data via new remote work and cloud-based business operations, the report sheds light on the financial losses that organizations can suffer if this data is compromised. A separate IBM study found that over half of employees new to working from home due to the pandemic have not been provided with new guidelines on how to handle customer PII, despite the changing risk models associated with this shift.  

Sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Reportis based on in-depth interviews with more than 3,200 security professional in organizations that suffered a data breach over the past year.1Some of the top findings from this year’s report include: 

Smart Tech Slashes Breach Costs in Half: Companies who had fully deployed security automation technologies (which leverage AI, analytics and automated orchestration to identify and respond to security events) experienced less than half the data breach costs compared to those who didn’t have these tools deployed – $2.45 million vs. $6.03 million on average.  

Paying a Premium for Compromised Credentials: In incidents where attackers accessed corporate networks through the use of stolen or compromised credentials, businesses saw nearly $1 million higher data breach costs compared to the global average – reaching $4.77 million per data breach. Exploiting third-party vulnerabilities was the second costliest root cause of malicious breaches ($4.5 million) for this group.    

Mega Breach2Costs Soar by the Millions: Breaches wherein over 50 million records were compromised saw costs jump to $392 million from $388 million the previous year. Breaches where 40 to 50 million records were exposed cost companies $364 million on average, a cost increase of $19 million compared to the 2019 report.  

Nation State Attacks – The Most Damaging Breaches:  Data breaches believed to originate from nation state attacks were the costliest, compared to other threat actors examined in the report. State-sponsored attacks averaged $4.43 million in data breach costs, surpassing both financially motivated cybercriminals and hacktivists. 

“When it comes to businesses’ ability to mitigate the impact of a data breach, we’re beginning to see a clear advantage held by companies that have invested in automated technologies,” said Wendi Whitmore, Vice President, IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence. “At a time when businesses are expanding their digital footprint at an accelerated pace and security industry’s talent shortage persists, teams can be overwhelmed securing more devices, systems and data. Security automation can help resolve this burden, not only enabling a faster breach response but a significantly more cost-efficient one as well.” 

Employee Credentials and Misconfigured Clouds – Attackers’ Entry Point of Choice  

Stolen or compromised credentials and cloud misconfigurations were the most common causes of a malicious breach for companies in the report, representing nearly 40% of malicious incidents. With over 8.5 billion recordsexposed in 2019, and attackers using previously exposed emails and passwords in one out of five breaches studied, businesses should rethink their security strategy via the adoption of a zero-trust approach – reexamining how they authenticate users and the extent of access users are granted. 

Similarly, companies’ struggle with security complexity – a top breach cost factor – is likely contributing to cloud misconfigurations becoming a growing security challenge. The 2020 report revealed that attackers used cloud misconfigurations to breach networks nearly 20% of the time, increasing breach costs by more than half a million dollars to $4.41 million on average – making it the third most expensive initial infection vector examined in the report. 

State Sponsored Attacks Strike Heaviest

Despite representing just 13% of malicious breaches studied, state-sponsored threat actors were the most damaging type of adversary according to the 2020 report, suggesting that financially motivated attacks (53%) don’t translate into higher financial losses for businesses. The highly tactical nature, longevity and stealth maneuvers of state-backed attacks, as well as the high value data targeted, often result in a more extensive compromise of victim environments, increasing breach costs to an average $4.43 million. 

In fact, respondents in the Middle East, a region that historically experiences a higher proportion of state-sponsored attacks compared to other parts of the world3, saw an over 9% yearly rise in their average breach cost, incurring the second highest average breach cost ($6.52 million) amongst the 17 regions studied. Similarly, the energy sector, one of the most frequently targeted industries by nation states, experienced a 14% increase in breach costs year over year, averaging $6.39 million.  

Advanced Security Technologies Prove Smart for Business  

The report highlights the growing divide in breach costs between businesses implementing advanced security technologies and those lagging behind, revealing a cost-saving difference of $3.58 million for companies with fully deployed security automation versus those that have yet to deploy this type of technology. The cost gap has grown by $2 million, from a difference of $1.55 million in 2018. 

Companies in the study with fully deployed security automation also reported significantly shorter response time to breaches, another key factor shown to reduce breach costs in the analysis. The report found that AI, machine learning, analytics and other forms of security automation enabled companies to respond to breaches over 27% faster than companies that have yet to deploy security automation – the latter of which require on average 74 additional days to identify and contain a breach. 

Incident response (IR) preparedness also continues to heavily influence the financial aftermath of a breach. According to the report, companies with neither an IR team nor testing of IR plans experience $5.29 million in average breach costs, whereas companies that have both an IR team and use tabletop exercises or simulations to test IR plans experience $2 million less in breach costs – reaffirming that preparedness and readiness yield a significant ROI in cybersecurity. 

Some additional findings from this year’s report include: 

 

Remote Work Risk Will Have a Cost – With hybrid work models creating less controlled environments, the report found that 70% of companies studied that adopted telework amid the pandemic expect it will exacerbate data breach costs.  

CISOs Faulted for Breaches, Despite Limited Decision-Making Power: Forty-six percent of respondents said the CISO/CSO is ultimately held responsible for the breach, despite only 27% stating the CISO/CSO is the security policy and technology decision-maker. The report found that appointing a CISO was associated with $145,000 cost savings versus the average cost of a breach.  

Majority of Cyber Insured Businesses Use Claims for Third Party Fees: The report found that breaches at studied organizations with cyber insurance cost on average nearly $200,000 less than the global average of $3.86 million. In fact, of these organizations that used their cyber insurance, 51% applied it to cover third-party consulting fees and legal services, while 36% of organizations used it for victim restitution costs. Only 10% used claims to cover the cost of ransomware or extortion. 

Regional & Industry Insights: While the U.S. continued to experience the highest data breach costs in the world, at $8.64 million on average, the report found that Scandinavia experienced the biggest year over year increase in breach costs, observing a nearly 13% rise. Healthcare continued to incur the highest average breach costs at $7.13 million — an over 10% increase compared to the 2019 study.  

 

About the Study 

The annual Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches taking place between August 2019 and April 2020, taking into account hundreds of cost factors including legal, regulatory and technical activities to loss of brand equity, customers, and employee productivity.  

What COVID-19 Means for the Data Breach Landscape?

A three-month analysis on the possible impact of COVID-19 on the data breach landscape has shed light on an increasing number of threat actors worrying cyber-security specialists.  The Verizon Business study reviewed 474 data breach incidents from March – June 2020 based on contributor data, publicly disclosed incidents and Verizon’s own observations drawn from its collective years of experience. It focuses on 36 confirmed data breaches which were identified as being related directly to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“ In view of the COVID19 pandemic,  many large and small organisations have adopted new technologies such as software- as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, increased cloud-based storage and the use of third-party vendors in record time to continue to support their customers. While the  SaaS solutions mentioned above, or the cloud itself, are not inherently less secure, however the  concern arises from the fact that due to the conditions the pandemic has created, most organizations are adopting them in a hurried fashion, and they are often forced to do so while relying on fewer resources in terms of both personnel and revenue thereby multiplying the risk.. ” said Prashant Gupta, Head of Solutions, Verizon Business.  

The analysis has thrown up an increasing number of commonly seen threat actors, which include: 

Increase in Error -- The Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) outlined that almost a quarter of all breaches were due to human error and this trend continues during the pandemic. This is due in part to organizations operating with a reduced number of staff due to illness, redundancies and/or with staff who have limitations due to their remote status. At the same time, these organizations are often experiencing unusually heavy workloads with a much higher reliance on new and unfamiliar solutions that need to be deployed quickly. 

Stolen credential-related hacking -- The DBIR shows that over 80 percent of breaches within the hacking category are caused by stolen or brute­ forced credentials. During the pandemic, this is now being exacerbated by the large number of employees working from home and the maintaining external workstations for remote access, leaning on SaaS platforms. Business IT departments are being challenged to secure company assets on the corporate network while the majority of the workforce is out of the office. 

Phishing -- In order to utilize stolen credentials, an attacker must first be able to obtain them and phishing remains one of the most commonly used methods. Prior to COVID-19 the 2020 DBIR flagged that credential theft and social attacks such as phishing and business email compromises were at the root of the majority of breaches (over 67 percent) and this trend has continued. Specific terms in combination with "COVID" or "CORONAVIRUS," such as "masks," "test," "quarantine" and "vaccine” were found to be widely used within the time period. In March, a phishing simulation, conducted by a DBIR contributor, performed on approximately 16,000 people found that almost three times as many people not only clicked through a phishing link, but also provided their credentials to the simulated login page.  

“Businesses need to start taking far greater responsibility in protecting their technology infrastructure. From deploying more robust security protocols to ensuring timely data breach disclosure policies. Once you lose public confidence, gaining that credibility back can often be an uphill task”, said Dr Zaki Qureshy, Founding Father, Hyderabad Security Cluster. 

Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report 

The Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, analysed 32,002 security incidents, of which 3,950 were confirmed breaches; almost double the 2,013 breaches analysed last year. These cases came from 81 global contributors from 81 countries including the Government of Telangana and the Hyderabad Security Cluster.  

A New Season Every Week: How Myntra is Using Data to Disrupt the Fashion Industry

Using Azure Machine Learning, Myntra is enabling international and domestic fashion brands to cater better to consumer demands in the current COVID world and beyond.

As the threat of COVID-19 started emerging in the country, the biggest worry on Amar Nagaram’s mind was the safety of his employees, delivery partners, and customers. As the CEO of Myntra, India’s leading online fashion retailer, Nagaram and his management team not only had to think about business continuity but more importantly the role the organization could play in a world so profoundly changed by the pandemic.

Like almost every business, Myntra also had to move all their employees to work from home overnight just days before one of their biggest annual sale events.

“From a vibrant office to working from home, I was pleasantly surprised how quickly we adapted to working from home. Thanks to being on Azure, we were able to deliver one of our most successful End of Reason Sale remotely,” Nagaram says.

Taking stock

For Myntra, which has a strong delivery network across 27,000 PIN codes in India, one of the first order of business was to secure essential personal protective equipment like face masks, which were in acute short supply and difficult to procure.

“We realized that face masks were the need of the hour. Together, with our partners, we decided to serve our customers in the most meaningful way right at their doorsteps,” says Nagaram.

Myntra partnered with Wildcraft, India’s fastest-growing outdoor gear, clothing, and footwear brand, to manufacture and sell face masks on its platform. Within days, other brands too launched their masks and a new category for masks emerged on Myntra.

“One of the things I’ve realized in the past three months, after how we regrouped, recouped, and reimagined our business, is that the pandemic showcased the significant role we can play in an unfortunate situation like this,” Nagaram adds.

Selling what customers want

Face masks were just the beginning. With physical brick and mortar stores shut due to lockdowns and consumers staying away from shopping centres, major fashion brands had to reimagine their go-to-market strategy overnight. Myntra found itself uniquely placed to help them.

Right before the pandemic, Myntra had migrated its entire data platform including supply chain management, inventory, and website capabilities to Microsoft Azure. Apart from providing Myntra the elasticity to cater to demand spikes, Azure’s built-in Machine Learning tools expedited the development of advanced analytics capabilities to understand their consumers better.

“The amount of data from which we learn today is six to seven times more than the pre-COVID world. Microsoft Azure has enabled us to scale-up overnight and Azure Machine Learning gave us the right kind of levers to expedite our learnings,” explains Nagaram.

As a result, right from the early days of the lockdown Myntra was able to provide actionable insights to partner brands about what consumers were looking for and helped them prioritize their offerings accordingly.

Some of the immediate insights from what consumers were searching, viewing, and buying, highlighted how a larger set of customers was now staying at home, balancing between work and household chores, and needed clothes that were functional yet comfortable.

As a result, Myntra was one of the first out of the block to identify these changing needs and introduced ‘Work from Home Edit’ on its app that focussed on categories like comfort wear, loungewear, athleisure, home wear, and ethnic wear.

“The use of technology to generate actionable insights is a big reason for the success of our recent End of Reason Sale. We’re now selling what consumers want and not what we want to sell. The credit also goes to the brands that responded to these insights in a matter of days and not weeks,” Nagaram says.

Apart from gleaning insights from what consumers are searching and buying, Myntra is also understanding the aspirations of its consumers thanks to Myntra Studio. A personalized content destination, it features fashion style guides from influencers and brands that users can shop directly from Myntra.

During the early days of the lockdown, insights from customer behavior on Myntra Studio suggested a spike in interaction with certain categories like DIY makeup, among others. These insights enabled Myntra’s partner brands to move their inventory from their physical stores, which were shut due to the lockdown, to Myntra.

“We saw that COVID blurred the lines between online and offline retail. The economy is going to be more digital for sure, but retail isn’t going to be online only. It will be a mix of online and offline,” Nagaram says. “We have witnessed offline retail embracing technology at a large scale in the last three months. Some of the brands that used our omni-channel technology during the End of Reason were able to sell inventories out of their stores that they could not sell due to the lockdown.”

Making data fashionable

Nagaram’s vision for the use of technology in fashion goes far beyond helping brands navigate the current uncertainties. The way Myntra has managed to help brands in their go-to-market strategy at the onset of the pandemic is just the beginning of using data insights to make the industry more consumer focussed.

“I’ve always believed the fashion industry could use technology to disrupt some of the orthodox practices that have been going on for a very long time and make them more eco-friendly and business friendly,” he says. “The industry has always relied on the concept of seasons—Spring-Summer and Autumn-Winter. The trends are decided a year in advance, and they go into production. It is the bets that the industry makes—this design will work, and that pattern will work— that leads to the unsold inventory problem which the industry faces.”

Myntra is disrupting the age-old practices of the fashion industry with data and machine learning. It is now able to provide brands with consumer insights that take into account not only the consumer’s profile but also variables like their location, the weather patterns, and what other consumers with similar parameters are buying.

“We’re no longer following the traditional seasons of the fashion industry. The calendar has been expedited, it is no longer an annual calendar, in many ways it is a weekly calendar,” he says.         

The Holy Grail, however, is to be able to provide a personalized fashion shopping experience to consumers. Myntra already has implemented one of the most comprehensive sizes and fit recommendations when customers are buying on its platform, which has brought down returns significantly. The next phase is to be able to provide highly customized experiences to its users.

“We’re trying to learn about our consumers at an individual level. So when you open our app, we should be able to show things based on your style preferences,” Nagaram says. “Having the right Cloud and AI partner is key to enable this. We’re happy to have Microsoft on our side as a partner to make it happen.” 

In the age of digital interactions and experiences, data is fashionable.

Industry 4.0 and 4 Ways to Leverage and Connect Industrial IoT

The fourth wave of the industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, connects industrial devices and permits organizations to use arranged information from IoT gadgets and PC controlled frameworks. Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to this information makes fully automated smart factories, smart cities and more.

Industry 4.0 is all about being digitally enabled and data driven, bringing together new technologies and compute services across edge and cloud assets to drive productivity, create new business models, and innovate faster. These technologies include everything from advanced analytics and AI to augmented reality, digital twins, and industrial IoT platforms, and, together serve the core needs of the manufacturing sector.

IoT and Industrial IoT power mission-critical applications that require high reliability and unwavering quality. An excellent arrangement joined with a top-notch programming process for these gadgets during assembling is fundamental to the general execution of the application.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) seeks to drive operational efficiencies in industrial settings through automation, analytics, and connectivity. Utilizing a network of sensors and communications technologies, all parts of an industrial process can be interconnected and managed from a single platform. It analyses the data captured by the sensors and organizes it into actionable information. The goal of IIoT is for manufacturers to achieve unrivalled perceivability into production stages and processes, recognise any tricky holes or torment focuses, and fix them before they develop into critical or complex issues. The outcome is a progressively effective modern procedure with more uptime and higher production quality.

Regardless of whether it's a mechanical arm in a manufacturing plant or a drone monitoring agricultural fields, these machines work under altogether different conditions, and will require the right connectivity solution to optimally handle the deluge of data they will produce, process, and devour.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) grows its span and limit with regards to operational efficiency, increasingly industrial facilities are seeing the advantages of IoT connectivity for industrial applications. Industry 4.0, the IIOT is one of the quickest developing segments of IoT. Accenture report estimates that IIoT could add $14.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

While the conversations encompassing IIoT focus on what is conceivable when everything is connected, some companies still are at a loss when it comes to utilizing connectivity to take data-driven action. A study by McKinsey found that, of the companies who have deployed an enterprise-level IoT solution, more than half have used only 10% or less of the information they collect. As the future of manufacturing is likely to be dominated by those who appropriately leverage Industry 4.0, companies that would like to remain significant must look to the current chiefs in IIoT advancement and decide how their techniques can be applied to improve operations.

Below are three examples of commercial companies where cutting-edge IIoT solutions are driving the industry forward. Through their innovative approaches to IIoT deployment, manufacturers and other industry leaders have a roadmap to help them stay ahead of the curve.

Paragon footwear advanced their operational productivity with IoT Solutions

India’s leading footwear brand Paragon deployed an integrated IoT solution and managed services from Aeris in partnership with Sify.

Paragon faced challenges like unexpected delays due to vehicle breakdown or wrong routes taken which led them to the search for an IoT-based solution to remotely track and monitor Paragon’s fleet in real-time in order to prevent vehicle misuse, idle time in the logistics chain and even driver behaviour.

Since footwear is a distributor-retailer led business, all of these were critical to ensure that supplies reach the market on time, every time. Paragon decided to use technology to manage their nationwide fleet. As a first step towards digitizing their supply chain, Paragon decided to implement the Aeris IoT solution across its nation-wide fleet, thus making them a single connected entity. To address the growing need of data management arising from the accelerated growth projection of IoT in India, Aeris collaborated with Sify Technologies, to develop niche IoT offerings with managed services for the Indian enterprises. At the core of Sify’s Digital Transformation model is the cloud iteration of IoT services.

How BSNL provides bandwidth for IoT solutions

IoT is the next wave of growth in telecom sector. State owned telecom player BSNL, entered into a landmark strategic alliance with Aeris to take IoT solutions to the masses, in India. Together the companies are offering packaged IoT solutions and services to enterprises, small and medium businesses and public sector undertakings among other segments in India. This partnership has opened the doors for wider propagation of IoT projects across the country as part of India’s digital transformation drive.

BSNL is the only service provider making efforts and planned initiatives to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in the ICT sector in India. Through its wide and unmatched network, BSNL will enable IoT projects through solutions designed to meet various end uses such as improving supply chain efficiency, enhancing customer experience, tracking and monitoring assets, improving logistics and empowering smart cities through a bouquet of solutions.

How Omnicomm helps fuel monitoring across various segments of logistics

Fleet Industry of India is undergoing a lot of difficulties ranging from lack of data for fleet utilization and management, to lack of vehicle safety and most importantly, the fuel theft. Fleet operators of all scale are facing difficulties in preventing fuel thefts. Siphoning and high consumption of fuel due to overspeed are compelling issues in the transportation industry in India. Finding reliable ways to monitor actual fuel consumption requires automation without human intervention.

Aeris added fuel monitoring feature from Omnicomm in its portfolio of packaged IoT solutions to address fuel pilferage across segments like logistics & transportation, construction equipment, locomotives, etc.

Altizon delivers Industrial Internet of Things Solutions for the Manufacturing Sector in India

With a global footprint of more than 100 enterprise users, Altizon is a leading Industrial IoT platform provider and its proven technology helps enterprises accelerate their Smart Manufacturing initiatives, modernize Asset Performance Management services and launch new business models for service delivery, among other processes. To provide end-to-end connected  technology and smart solutions for the  manufacturing sector,  Aeris and Altizon have integrated Altizon’s machine learning and IoT Edge technologies with Aeris’ IoT Services platform. Altizon’s proven technology is successfully being used in a number of industries, including the automotive, tire, steel, chemical, energy and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) markets.

Utilize the Complete IIoT Ecosystem with Aeris

Aeris provides IIoT solutions that allow businesses to set up customized and automated processes within factories, warehouses, and in the field, leading to more efficient and cost-effective processes and procedures. Our purpose-built infrastructure provides real-time business data regarding operational inefficiencies and monitors machinery to see exactly what would happen if an accident or hold up on the line occurred.

Microsoft Kicks Off - Microsoft Inspire 2020: Empowering Partners to Make More Possible Via Digital Platform

Microsoft has kicked off its annual global partner conference, Microsoft Inspire, via an all-digital experience. In its 17th year, the event on July 21 and 22 (PDT) unites partners in new and exciting ways and encompasses a wider community than ever before, allowing partners to develop increasingly valuable business relationships. Along with industry leaders and motivated partners from around the world, this is a unique platform to strengthen partnerships, learn from experts and help one another thrive in unprecedented times.

Here's a quick snapshot of the top announcements from Microsoft Inspire:

Enhancements to Azure Lighthouse bring Multi-Factor Authentication and Privileged Identity Management support

Two new playbooks help partners build an effective cloud practice to last: the Microsoft Azure Center of Excellence playbook guides partners on how to scale an Azure-focused practice, and the App Innovation Practice Development playbook outlines how partners can be successful using Microsoft’s cloud-based applications

New Power Platform solutions enable customers with Location Readiness, Employee Health and Safety Management, Workplace Care Management, and Location Management tools, which will help bring employees back to the workplace safely. Innovation across Dynamics 365 applications including Customer Voice, Connected Store, and Fraud Protection are focused on making sure we’re helping customers weather the current crisis while also setting them up for future agility and resilience

Azure Stack HCI, the latest in Microsoft’s hybrid portfolio and now in public preview, brings hybrid capabilities to customers’ datacenters while enabling them to leverage existing skills and investments

New capabilities in Teams help Firstline Workers connect and engage with information, apps, and coworkers, while enabling organizational agility. New public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention in Microsoft 365 helps customers identify and protect information on endpoints. New enhancements to the Power Platform experience within Teams make Teams an even more powerful hub for teamwork and business process.

You can get to know more about these announcements from the blog post by Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. News and highlights from Microsoft Inspire will be available at https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire.

Google Cloud, Netmagic Partner for Center of Excellence in India

Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Company) a leading managed hosting and multi-cloud hybrid IT solution provider in India, today announced its partnership with Google Cloud to create a Centre of excellence (CoE) that will enable their customers to accelerate their hybrid cloud journey by modernizing their mission-critical IT infrastructure and applications that leverage the advanced capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Analytics at scale.

The CoE will serve as a multi-disciplinary customer showcase hub to develop and deliver solutions, leveraging Google Cloud’s modern application platform, Anthos, for consistent development and operations experience across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“We are extremely pleased to partner with Google Cloud to enable our customers to enhance their digital experiences capitalizing on the capabilities, value and benefits of an open, collaborative and secure cloud platform,” said Sharad Sanghi, MD and CEO of Netmagic (An NTT Company). “This partnership reinforces our commitment to our customers with an integrated approach to hosted infrastructure, connectivity, security and managed support – helping them derive greater value while delivering business outcomes.”

Karan Bajwa, Managing Director of Google Cloud India said, “We’re excited to partner with Netmagic and help businesses make a smooth transition to the cloud. The CoE will help businesses leverage Google Cloud’s leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions to  build for the future; and Netmagic, as a managed hosting and hybrid cloud IT solution provider, is uniquely positioned to help customers along this path.”

Through the strategic partnership with Google Cloud, Netmagic will be able to help organizations in their cloud journey, from strategy and design, to implementation and management of their hybrid architecture, which includes capacity and billing management, comprehensive support across cloud adoption through logical data center extension and getting a unified view of their entire hybrid cloud ecosystem.

By leveraging Google Cloud Partner Interconnect program, Netmagic customers can also securely and privately connect to Google Cloud’s global network. This will enable them to run a wide variety of mission critical workloads, including bare met al solutions to GCP-native managed offerings and help reduce their operational overhead and drive innovation and agility. This logical extension will also provide low latency support for other workloads such as on-premise to GCP migration, disaster recovery, and burst capacity for existing Netmagic customers.

About Netmagic

Netmagic, an NTT Company, is India’s leading Managed Hosting and Multi-Cloud Hybrid IT solution provider serving more than 2000 enterprises globally. Headquartered in Mumbai, Netmagic also delivers Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) services to various enterprise customers globally across Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific region. The Company was the first in India to launch services – Cloud Computing, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and Software-Defined Storage. Netmagic has been recognized with 8 awards at the CIO Choice 2020, and 2 awards at the Datacenter Dynamics India 2019. To learn more, visit us at: www.netmagicsolutions.com

About NTT Ltd.

NTT Ltd. is a leading global technology services company bringing together 28 brands including NTT Communications, Dimension Data and NTT Security. We partner with organizations around the world to shape and achieve outcomes through intelligent technology solutions. For us, intelligent means data driven, connected, digital, and secure. As a global ICT provider, we employ more than 40,000 people in a diverse and dynamic workplace that spans 57 countries, trading in 73 countries and delivering services in over 200 countries. Together we enable the connected future. Visit us at our new website https://hello.global.ntt

Trend Micro Finds 72% of Remote Workers Have Gained Cybersecurity Awareness During Lockdown

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today released survey results that show how remote workers address cybersecurity. Nearly three quarters (72%) of remote workers say they are more conscious of their organisation’s cybersecurity policies since lockdown began, but many are breaking the rules anyway due to limited understanding or resource constraints.

Trend Micro’s Head in the Clouds study is distilled from interviews with 13,200 remote workers across 27 countries on their attitudes towards corporate cybersecurity and IT policies. It reveals that there has never been a better time for companies to take advantage of heightened employee cybersecurity awareness. The survey reveals that the approach businesses take to training is critical to ensure secure practices are being followed.

In India, the results indicate a high level of security awareness, with 84% of respondents claiming they take instructions from their IT team seriously, and 83% agree that cybersecurity within their organisation is partly their responsibility. Additionally, 67% acknowledge that using non-work applications on a corporate device is a security risk.

However, just because most people understand the risks does not mean they stick to the rules.

For example:

44% of employees admit to using a non-work application on a corporate device, and 46% of them have actually uploaded corporate data to that application.

83% of respondents confess to using their work laptop for personal browsing, and only 45% of them fully restrict the sites they visit.

42% of respondents say they often or always access corporate data from a personal device – almost certainly breaking corporate security policy.

14% of respondents admit to watching / accessing porn on their work laptop, and 14% access the dark web.

Productivity still wins out over protection for many users. 52% of respondents agree that they do not give much thought to whether the apps they use are sanctioned by IT or not, as they just want the job done. Additionally, 44% think they can get away with using a non-work application, as the solutions provided by their company are ‘nonsense.’

Dr Linda K. Kaye, Cyberpsychology Academic at Edge Hill University explains: “There are a great number of individual differences across the workforce. This can include individual employee’s values, accountability within their organisation, as well as aspects of their personality, all of which are important factors which drive people’s behaviours. To develop more effective cybersecurity training and practices, more attention should be paid to these factors. This, in turn, can help organisations adopt more tailored or bespoke cybersecurity training with their employees, which may be more effective.”

Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro, said, “It’s really heartening to see that so many people take the advice from their corporate IT team seriously, although you have to wonder about the 16% who don’t. At the same time those people also accept their own role in the human firewall of any organisation. The problem area seems to be translating that awareness into concrete behaviour. To reinforce this, organisations to take into account the diversity across the organisation and tailor training to identify and address these distinct behavioural groups. The time to do this is now, to take advantage of the new working environment and people’s newfound recognition of the importance of information security.”

The Head in the Clouds study looks into the psychology of people’s behaviour in terms of cybersecurity, including their attitudes towards risk. It presents several common information security “personas” with the aim of helping organisations tailor their cybersecurity strategy in the right way for the right employee.

Nasscom sees great opportunity for SaaS in product cos

Nasscom believes that cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) provide excellent paradigms for software product companies to reach out to the mass of small businesses that require IT solutions.

SaaS allows small businesses to pay for what they need at the time they need it, instead of spending large sums upfront on IT solutions that are implemented onsite. This could substantially reduce the costs of IT, as also increase the ability of small businesses to access IT solutions.

Som Mittal, president of Nasscom, urged software product companies to rework their business models to provide their solutions as services.

Sharad Sharma, chairperson of the product forum of Nasscom and part of VC fund Canaan Partners, said the small business segment was opening up “really well”. “There’s a lot of opportunity for Indian software product companies in this because many of these companies have solutions that are world class,” he said.

He also noted the growing eagerness of large system integrators to work with software product companies to add value to their offerings. Product companies, he felt, could use such partnerships to reach global customers.

Agencies

Are new technologies rescuing Web start-ups?

Web entrepreneurs are increasingly embracing new technologies from "cloud" computing to new computer languages to try and slash costs as investors disappear because of recession.

Investors and entrepreneurs say cloud computing, new and free programming languages, open-source software, and use of the Internet to distribute and publicize products have made starting a company relatively inexpensive and will allow startups to ride out the credit crunch and recession.

"What you're talking about is life or death," said Drew Clark, director of strategy for IBM's venture capital group, speaking to media on the sidelines of a business conference.

Venture capital investment dived 71 percent in January and is not expected to rebound for much of 2009.

"For the best of these companies, this could be the difference. If this had happened three years ago, they'd be gone," Clark said, adding that IBM advocates open source.

One much talked-about innovation is cloud computing using the Web to access programs and data at remote computer centers. That makes costly, long-term capital expenditure and storage unnecessary.

Persistent concerns about the security of data stored on remote servers and the dependability of external systems are offset by its economic advantages, entrepreneurs say.

"In 2005 we needed 10 to 20 times the money we need today. There was a certain amount that entrepreneurial intelligence couldn't get around. Somehow you had to pay that piper," said James Siminoff, chief executive of Grid.com and Simulscribe, which changes phone messages into text.

One hour and $50

A decade ago, Michael Eisenberg, a general partner with Benchmark Capital in Israel, recalls he had to pay $10,000 each for Sun Microsystems servers.

"Today if I want to start up, it takes me one hour and $50 and I can turn on my capacity from Amazon Web Services from anywhere in the world," Eisenberg said.

Some fledgling companies like Delve Networks are capitalizing on that trend, charging clients over $250 a month to host video on their websites. Delve itself owns little more than the personal computers used by its 20 employees.

Time is critical for start-ups because they burn cash every day. Hence the rise of streamlined programming languages such as this year's hit, Ruby.

Ruby is a free, open-source language that Siminoff's chief technology officer, Mark Dillon, said is so concise he can do in three lines of machine code what it took him 25 lines in Java, an older language. That speeds up program revisions.

Corporations have turned to offering free, open source software -- a boon for cash-strapped start-ups. Sun Microsystems, IBM and others give away software to attract developers and gain contracts.

Finally, Internet marketing allows start-ups to publicize their wares at a fraction the cost of more traditional marketing or advertising campaigns.

"There are all these social conventions about companies that assume they are very big expensive things," said Silicon Valley start-up guru Paul Graham, whose "Y Combinator" invests $10,000 to $20,000 into quick, ultra-cheap startups. "It's just not true anymore."

Agencies

Cut costs & beat recession with cloud computing

The global recession is taking a toll on every industry and the construction industry is no exception. However, Aurigo Software Technologies, a provider of software and solutions for the construction and real estate, is offering companies its web-based products on a cloud computing model to save on huge IT expenditure.

Established in the US in 2003, Aurigo launched its solution BRIX for the Indian market in early 2008. Aurigo has three customers in India now - RDS Projects, IDEB and Navin Housing. All three companies have opted for the cloud computing model, thereby reducing their burden in managing the IT infrastructure, investing in the server hardware and software components and also on the power that is a huge expenditure.

Talking to CXOtoday, Balaji Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of Aurigo Software, said, "Cloud computing is becoming a necessary requirement by customers seeking to deploy IT solutions even in the construction and real estate industries and is here to stay for the long haul."

Cloud computing helps companies and end-users access solutions without the hassle of having to invest in the computing power (hardware and software) required to run that solution internally. So if you are using gmail or hotmail to access your email, you are already a cloud computing proponent.

"As customers generally do not own the infrastructure, they merely access or rent, they can avoid capital expenditure and consume resources as a service, paying instead for what they use," said Sreenivasan. Many cloud computing offerings have adopted the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis.

Other benefits of time-sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overheads and immediate access to a broad range of applications.

In fact, IDEB's cloud computing model is expected to go live within the next six months, while RDS Projects, which has multiple projects spread across six locations in the country is expected to go live in the next 8 weeks. The remotely located and managed servers belong to various server farm providers that are highly secure, ISO 9001:200 certified and are located across India with overseas backup mirror locations with a committed 99.96% uptime.

Since these projects are yet to go live it would take a minimum of six months to one year to assess the actual ROI. However, BRIX is fairly well deployed across the US and at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), which is involved in a $3 billion bridge reconstruction, they have experienced a near 40% boost in productivity. This was measured by computing the reduced time to carry out inspections, transmit the data and increased information retrieval speed after deploying BRIX. The solution has been delivered on the cloud computing model with the entire solution being hosted on a central server and accessed by all the stakeholders at ODOT.

CXOtdoday

IBM to host gen-next technology competition

As part of its University Relations programme, IBM has rolled out a novel gen-next technology challenge titled "IBM Blue Battle" in over 25 leading engineering colleges across India.

The first in the "IBM Blue Battle" series has been launched at IIIT Hyderabad and is being conducted on IBM Multi-core architecture for gaming. Colleges to follow include UVCE Bangalore, JNTU Hyderabad, Madras Institute of Technology (Anna University) Chennai, few IITs and NITs.

Amol Mahamuni, programme director, WebSphere Solutions and Technology and University Relations-IBM India/SA, said, "The challenge will enhance the students' knowledge on technologies that are at the helm of innovation across the industry and provide them with an opportunity to develop innovative solutions in real work scenario." It hones their technical skills while learning basic on-the-job skills such as teamwork, organization, and working under deadlines, he added.

The competition will enable participants to work on technologies such as Multi processors/Nano technology, electronics, service oriented architecture (SOA), Multi Core Architecture, Enterprise Computing (IBM System z), Information Management, Web 2.0, cloud computing, virtualization and High Performance Computing (HPC). Mentors from IBM, along with the college faculty, will closely work with the students throughout the programme.


This competition will also enable students to work on projects using IBM products, applications, tools and services in the future through further collaboration and mentoring by IBM experts.


The winners of this competition will receive prizes including Lenovo Ideapad laptops, along with certification from IBM.

IBM's University Relations has been partnering with academia to drive evolving open standards-based IT skills.

CXOtoday.com

Is the slowdown, an opportunity in itself?

The current slowdown will also give an impetus to many technologies, some of which include Green IT, cloud computing, graphics and Web, writes Anil Chopra, editor at Cybermedia.

Media the world over is predicting this to be the worst economic slowdown ever. But then, people who have lived through various economic cycles would easily be able to split the hype from reality, and tell that while the causes of a slowdown vary, their impact is usually similar in nature. We can easily apply this formula to the current slowdown and predict that this one is no different from the previous one or the one before that.

Let's look at the slowdown of 2001, which happened due to the great dot com bust and compare it with the current one. Much before it actually happened, people predicted that there was a dot com bubble just waiting to burst, and bring with it a recession. But nobody of course could in their wildest of dreams predict the disaster that followed and brought down with it the US and world economy-the Sep 11 attack on WTC. Markets crashed, demands dipped, giving rise to higher unemployment, pink slips, and company closures.

Now let's come to the current slowdown. Much before it started, people knew that it would be caused by the US sub-prime crisis. Nobody however, had predicted that it would be so bad that many leading multi-national banks and financial institutes would go bankrupt. But the results of the current slowdown remain similar to the previous one-job cuts, stock market crash, dip in market demands, and the like.

So the key learning from slowdowns is that they're a way for markets to correct themselves and provide everyone an opportunity to think about the next big thing. After the dot com bust, the web emerged stronger than ever. Today everyone's going gaga over Web 2.0, social networking, and the benefits it provides. The humble server room transformed itself into a powerful data center to host business critical applications, and e-Commerce became a standard practice amongst most enterprises. The WTC attack reduced air travel, giving a boost to video conferencing, and also made DR and BCP common practice amongst enterprises.

Likewise, the current slowdown will also give an impetus to many technologies, some of which include Green IT, cloud computing, graphics, web, etc. We've talked about ten of them along with their likely future impact in this month's cover story.

It's also forcing CIOs to reduce their IT purchase and focus more on improving efficiencies within their existing IT infrastructures. We've talked about the impact of the slowdown on enterprises at length in our IT strategy guide for CIOs along with tips on how to survive the slowdown.

Lastly, the good thing about a slowdown is that it reduces complacency and forces people to think differently and identify new opportunities. So why should it be different during the current slowdown? Our IT careers story this time explains just how bad is the job market and areas that are growing.

So treat the slowdown as an opportunity and take yourself to the next level. All the best and wish you a fulfilling new year ahead!

Source: Cybermedia

Why must enterprises move to Green technologies?

Going green is the mantra often heard among Indian IT enterprises. It is an important business initiative that is driving good corporates towards greener technologies.

Going green is not just about being environment-friendly but also translates into one of the best ways to save money. A recent IDC report indicates that energy and cooling expenses will grow eight times faster than purchasing costs of new servers through 2010. In IDC’s latest Green Poll in the APAC region, almost 81 percent of the participating organizations said that the Green-ness of an IT technology would become increasingly important when it comes to selecting suppliers. About 18 percent of the organizations said that they were already considering this factor while selecting suppliers, while 30 percent said they were putting systems into place to start doing so in the near future. So Green IT opens up an abundance of opportunities for enterprises in any country.

Why should your IT go Green?
Rising global warming, increased energy costs and greater awareness about its socio-economic implications has forced organizations to look for ways to reduce their carbon-emission footprint. However, what has escaped attention is the massive amount of energy your IT consumes. Enterprise IT, which accounts for up to 40 percent of an organization’s energy requirement, has a big role to play to reduce greenhouse gases. According to a Forrester survey, over 41 percent of people in the IT departments believe energy efficiency and equipment recycling are important factors that need to be considered. In the same survey, 65 percent believed reduction of energy related operating costs as the driving factor for implementing Green IT.

What drives Green in India?
Adoption of Green IT is not just about buying green data centers and setting up Green IT infrastructure. It needs a complete 360-degree approach - starting from the vision of the top management to the awareness among employees. “An environment-conscious organization should define what ‘green’ means to it as there is no global, industry-wide recognized standard today that defines a green data center or organization, and take steps to follow the corporate green guidelines. The long-term goal of the green data center operation is to achieve carbon neutrality.

Data centers – The Energy Guzzlers
Undoubtedly, data centers have the maximum energy requirements, given the massive number of powerful servers that are housed in today’s data centers, which are sometimes as big as the size of a football field. And these data centers may require as much cooling power as the electricity to run them. Some studies say that these data centers account for between 1.2 and 2.0 percent of electricity consumed in the United States. It is also a known fact that many of the servers in the data centers run at a low utilization level of 10% to 15%. This causes significant wastage through redundant hardware, memory, network devices and power supplies. In earlier times, enterprises would have put up with this excess capacity, given the IT department’s risk-aversion. However, with maturing IT coupled with need to rein-in energy use, organizations are now forced to adopt strategies to reduce their data center operational costs.

Strategies to implement Green technologies
What are the steps you should take to optimize the consumption of electricity as well as reduce the number of servers in your data center? Enterprise IT groups are looking at various options – such as PC Power management software and deployment of energy efficient servers and network devices. However, these piecemeal steps will not yield the desired results; you need a more holistic approach to solve this problem. The answer lies in the adoption of Cloud computing and Virtualization within your enterprise IT – two strategies that can a go a long way in reducing your energy-dependency and thus make your organization truly green.

Embrace Cloud Computing
Cloud computing lets you use computational power and storage space from a third-party service provider, thus lowering demand for addition of more servers in your data center. You can also reduce the number of applications deployed on your data centers by using similar applications hosted by SaaS providers. Now, cloud computing means different things to different people – depending upon which vendor you talk to. Therefore, it could be utility computing or grid or Software-as-a-Service or even Platform-as-a-Service. However, one thing is clear – all of them refer to some service provided by a third-party provider outside the corporate firewall. It is true there are concerns with respect to security, availability and customer’s data privacy in these services – as shown recently by the outage at Amazon’s S3 storage service. However, these issues will get addressed as the technology and industry matures.

There are primarily two types of cloud services, namely Infrastructure in the cloud and Applications in the cloud. Infrastructure in the cloud refers to raw CPU power and data storage space you can use on-demand over Internet.

You should also explore applications in the cloud type of services as a tool to minimize data center load. Look at business applications that are not critical to your business or those you can’t afford to maintain with a separate IT group in-house – such as CRM apps, HR/HCM, Backup and Restore, Security etc. Instead of running these applications on your data center, you should consider using applications provided by third-party service providers. This, in turn, reduces the number of servers in your data center – which means you have less energy consumption.

Virtualize your data center
As you look for ways to optimize your data center operation, consolidation of servers through virtualization technology provides considerable energy savings. Virtualization is a technology that allows you to partition a physical hardware into multiple logical boxes, with each having its own operating system and network connectivity running in a sandbox. This makes additional standby servers redundant since you can dynamically provision a new virtual machine and then run a new instance of your application on this VM. With advances in virtual machine technology, you can now move a running virtual machine from one server to another server. This further increases the utilization rate of your server stack in the data center; hence you can host more applications with reduced number of servers.