Modi Makes Pitch For Make In India at Aero India 2015

Making a strong pitch to end India’s dependence on defence imports, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today promised a conducive environment for manufacturers, including a discrimination-free tax system, and asked foreign firms not to be just “sellers” but “strategic partners”.

Inaugurating the 10th ‘Aero India’ show here, the Prime Minister said while the country needs to increase its defence preparedness and modernise its forces due to security challenges that were well known, it should aim to manufacture 70 per cent of military hardware domestically in next five years and remove the tag of being number one importer of defence equipment.

Stressing that developing domestic defence industry “is at the heart of the ‘Make in India’ programme”, he said, “We will build an industry that will have room for everyone – public sector, private sector and foreign firms”.

“From sellers, foreign firms must turn into strategic partners. We need their technology, skills, systems integration and manufacturing strength,” he said.

He said the foreign players can use India as part of their global supply chain and India’s frugal but sophisticated manufacturing and engineering services sectors can help reduce costs.

Also India can be a base for export to third countries, especially because of its growing defence partnerships in Asia and beyond, he said.

He said the government was reforming defence procurement policies and procedures.

“There would be a clear preference for equipment manufactured in India. Our procurement procedures will ensure simplicity, accountability and speedy decision making,” he said.

Modi noted that his government has raised the permitted level of Foreign Direct Investment to 49 per cent and this can go higher, if the project brings state-of-the art technology. Aero india 2015, Aero India, Narendra Modi, Narendra Modi news, Make in India campaign, Indian defence market, Air Force Station Yelahanka, H D Deve Gowda, Indian Institute of Sciences

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar watching the flying past display during the inauguration of the Aero India 2015, Asia’s Premier Air Show at Yelhanka Air Base in Bengaluru on Wednesday. 

“We have permitted investments up to 24 per cent by Foreign Institutional Investments. And, there is no longer a need to have a single Indian investor with at least a 51 per cent stake. Industrial licensing requirements have been eliminated for a number of items. Where it is needed, the process has been simplified,” he said.

“We have to equip ourselves for the needs of the future, where technology will play a major role. As a nation of one billion people, we also have huge requirements for managing internal security,” he said.

The Prime Minister said that effort is on to expand the role of private sector, even for major platforms.

“Our goal is to provide a level playing field for all. We speak in terms of national capacity, not public sector or private sector,” he said.

Ten Thousand MS Partners Help SMBs Drive Cloud Services

Microsoft India has simplified cloud adoption for small and medium businesses (SMBs) further with the addition of Dynamics CRM Online under the Open Licensing programme.  The availability of Dynamics CRM Online along with Office 365 and Azure through Open Licensing gives SMBs the opportunity to secure the benefits of cloud solutions with the help of a trusted local partner. With this announcement, all three large-scale public cloud offerings from Microsoft are now available under open licensing. This presents India’s SMBs with unmatched accessibility to the benefits of the latest technology while also presenting a significant business opportunity for Microsoft’s Partners.

SMBs will now have the ability to manage their customer relationships better using Microsoft’s enterprise-grade Dynamics CRM Online solution on a pay-per-use model. The solution provides SMBs with simple but powerful customer relationship management tools over the Internet. This helps individuals and teams improve sales, marketing, and customer care operations in their offices and in the field.

Dynamics CRM Online in Open Licensing will create new business models and opportunities for Microsoft’s partners, while helping SMBs build deeper engagement with their customers without the need for large capital expenditures traditionally required for enterprise-grade software. SMBs will be able to access customer insights anytime, anywhere and on any device by leveraging the cloud.

“Our 10,000-strong partner network in India has been instrumental in bringing the benefits of IT to SMBs. Availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online under Open Licensing allows our partners to bring a powerful new tool to the market.  In the process, our partners will get an opportunity to improve their top line while raising the profits of their customers through customer insights and management tools” said Meetul Patel, General Manager, Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners, India.

Earlier customers could purchase CRM Online either directly from www.dynamics.microsoft or as part of an Enterprise Agreement (EA) with Microsoft. While these options would continue, SMBs are likely to leverage their existing partners to procure CRM Online.  This new approach empowers partners with a compelling cloud product portfolio covering the most open Microsoft Azure platform, the world-leading Office 365 productivity service and CRM Online customer relationship management offering.

Next Gen SAP S/4 HANA Software Targets Enterprise & SMB Customers in India

SAP India has announced the launch of SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4 HANA), heralding a new generation of business suite designed to enable Indian customers run simple in a digital and networked world. SAP S/4 HANA is the new product that is fully built on the advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA and is designed on the most modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX) for mobile devices. The firm intents to target both the enterprise as well as SMB customers in India during the next fiscal.

Designed to drive business innovation with simplicity by connecting people, devices and business networks in real time, SAP S/4 HANA will help Indian enterprises to take better business decisions by accessing the capability for planning, execution, prediction and simulation from within the business application. It will also extend the value of simplicity to all lines of business and industries end-to-end with guided configuration for adoption, a modern user experience for business users of all roles in a company on almost any device, a simplified data model, on-the-fly insight at the highest level of granularity and re-imagined real-time business processes.

“As Indian enterprises aim to enter new markets and engage with their consumers across a variety of channels, SAP S/4 HANA brings unprecedented innovation, combined with more than 40 years of experience across industries”, said Ravi Chauhan, Managing Director, SAP India. “History proves, India to be an early adopter for new generation technology in the last decade. We are confident our customers will derive real-time business opportunities by adopting S/4 HANA the innovation platform designed to drive their growth.” he added.

The development of SAP S/4 HANA was a global collaborative project and leveraged on the talent pool at SAP Labs India. The team from SAP Labs India contributed towards the development of the core architecture, Fiori user experience, Applications and Platform for S/4 HANA which is the key to get rid of all the complexity and redundancies to make the entire IT landscape simple.

“SAP’s vision and strategy is to help customers run simple to drive the perfect enterprise. To deliver on this mission, we are redefining how enterprise software creates value in a digital, networked, yet complex world”, said Dilip Kumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India & Executive Vice President, Suite Engineering, SAP SE. “SAP S/4 HANA is designed to drive instant value across lines of business and industries with the ultimate sophistication: simplicity”, he added.

Together with an established partner ecosystem that has already undergone enablement workshop, SAP India is ready to resell and provide services for customers along their journey to run simple with SAP S/4 HANA. SAP India, along with SI and partners are committed to work towards providing an easy path for customers to move to SAP S/4 HANA with pre-defined migration and deployment packages for quick time to value.   .

Tata Tech & Singapore Aero Engines to Launch Global Engineering Centre

Singapore Aero Engines Services Ltd. (SAESL) has announced a partnership with Tata Technologies, a leading global provider of engineering services and manufacturing enterprise IT to launch a Global Engineering Centre (GEC) that will help provide comprehensive services for equipment harmonization, improvements in workforce efficiency, and turnaround time optimization.

SAESL is a Trent Centre of Excellence that has overhauled over 2000 engines for wide body aircrafts. Through this engineering partnership, Tata Technologies will provide a dedicated team with expertise in the designing of various ground support and ground handling equipment, process engineering and technology optimization for the Rolls-Royce Trent engine types to be overhauled at SAES.

For this strategic partnership between Tata Technologies and SAESL, four distinct domains of services encompassing Tooling and Manufacturing Engineering, Engineering Services, Technology Consulting, and Component Repair have been agreed upon under the GEC model.  With this model, Tata Technologies will help in the streamlining of processes, delivery acceleration, resource optimization, cost reduction, and overall enhanced customer satisfaction leading to better return on investment. A proven GEC model will enable SAESL to achieve results faster and keep operating models flexible.

“In the aerospace sector, the requirement of meeting customer demands with high reliability and faster delivery are of the utmost importance. Through the GEC model, we will be able to leverage Tata Technologies’ expertise as an engineering partner and technology consultant, allowing us to further develop engine and component repair capability.  Through our existing relationship, Tata Technologies has understood our requirements and is helping us meet demands while focusing on building quality and reducing costs,” commented Paul Inman, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Aero Engines Services Ltd.

Talking about this collaboration, Warren Harris, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Tata Technologies said, “It gives us great pleasure to announce this collaboration and it is an honor to partner with SAESL for a multiyear relationship to support their business ambitions. At Tata Technologies, we focus on working as a team with our partners to create exceptional products through improved engineering and design and product development technology. It is our constant endeavor to meet and resolve critical challenges most companies face around accessibility and availability to cutting-edge technology.”

NASSCOM Announces Launch of Career Guides for IT-BPM Industry

IT-ITeS Sector Skills Council NASSCOM (SSC NASSCOM), today announced that it has developed ‘Career Guides’ which will provide clarity for all stakeholders, especially students about the career opportunities available in the IT-BPM industry.

 Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions, especially for students. Availability of a career guide will enable students make an informed choice about their aspirational career goal. These guides provide details about the skills & competencies required, to join the IT-BPM industry. The career-paths provided are for various job roles starting from entry to leadership level, including details of vertical and horizontal mobility within this industry and across other industries.

 Career Guides are a key milestone in SSC NASSCOM’s mission to create a talent pool for the IT-BPM industry. According to the National Skills Mission, about 350 million professionals would need to be skilled by 2022 to make them employable. To be able to achieve this target, a structured approach is required involving all stakeholders. One of the critical actions required is to create awareness with students about the career opportunities available in the IT- BPM industry across the four sub-sectors, namely IT Services (ITS), Business Process Management (BPM), Software Products (SPD) and Engineering & Research Development (SPD).

On the occasion Sandhya Chintala, Executive Director, SSC NASSCOM & Vice President, NASSCOM said “In the last couple of years SSC NASSCOM has made great in-roads in identifying unique job roles/ qualification packs across all IT-BPM industry sub-sectors. We are pleased to announce that they are now packaged in a comprehensive manner as “Career Guides”. Today these career guides are launched and will be available on our website www.sscnasscom.in. All individuals keen to grow and thrive in the IT-BPM industry, basis the clarity provided in these career guides about particular career paths can make long term career plans. Informed career decisions about one’s aspirational career role will greatly benefit the individual, the companies and the community at large, thus creating a strong value proposition for all concerned.”   

Idea Prepaid Users Can Now Share Data, Voice & SMS Benefits Across Multiple Users

With the evolution of Mobile internet, an increasing number of consumers are now getting connected to multiple devices such as Smartphones, Dongles on Laptops, Tablets, etc. Also, two or more family members with multiple connected devices is a common sight now. This changing usage pattern has led to a rising need for a ‘Single Mobile Plan’ which reduces the hassle of managing multiple payments and recharges for the customer. Keeping this in mind, Idea Cellular had launched the Easy Share postpaid plan in some markets last year, and its success has prompted the company to extend the offer to the large base of prepaid users now.

 Users of Idea’s Easy-share plan can share the data, voice minutes and SMS between multiple devices and with other Idea users. This unique product is the first such initiative for prepaid users in India, and caters to the need of both individual customers with multiple devices, as well as members of a family using multiple connections. 

 The Idea ‘Easy Share’ prepaid plans start from Rs. 158 onwards, loaded with internet, Local & National Minutes and SMS benefits. Users can transfer internet packs, minutes and SMS to their friends and families, through a simple process of USSD or just by logging to Idea website – www.ideacellular.com/easyshare

 Talking about this new initiative, Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular said, “Convergence’ is the new trend in technology and devices and we feel that it should also reflect in our tariff and billing planning to offer seamless user experience. For postpaid subscriber, Easy share plan is already available since last one year and we are now happy to introduce sharing plan for our prepaid subscribers. The plan not only helps users to share their voice and data benefits but also provides great value for money.”

NI Explores Internet of Things Impact In India

National Instruments (NI) , the provider of solutions that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, announced today the release of NI Trend Watch 2015. The second annual report examines a range of topics – from the industrialization of the Internet of Things (IoT) to the growth impact of the maker movement.

According to Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director, National Instruments- India, Russia & Arabia, “IoT promises to revolutionize the engineering world. We see Graphical system design platform playing a significant role in enabling the industrial IoT.”

NI Trend Watch 2015 covers trends in these areas

5G: The Internet for Everyone and Everything – The mobile Internet encourages innovation and inspires researchers to think beyond faster data and greater capacity. New networks, referred to as 5G, may unleash enormous economic potential.

When Exposed to IoT, Big Iron ATE Will Rust – For the testing challenges of tomorrow, traditional automated test equipment (ATE) falls short. Test engineers need smart ATE for the smart devices of the IoT

The Industrial IoT (IIoT) – The IIoT is a vast number of connected industrial systems that are communicating and coordinating their data analytics and actions to improve industrial performance and benefit society as a whole.

The Impact of the Maker Movement – The Internet is fueling a massive maker community. As the maker movement continues to grow, it is important to assess the impact it will have on innovation, economic growth and  future generations.