Akamai Gets Web Acceleration Services By Sify In India

Leading global provider of cloud services Akamai Technologies,  has announced a strategic partnership with Sify respected Indian leader in Managed Enterprise, Network, IT and Software services: This partnership will enable Sify Technologies to offer Akamai’s global expertise and solutions in Web acceleration and applications delivery to its Enterprise customers across India.

By mitigating the complexities of Internet, Enterprises will be able to enhance user experience for their global employee, customer and partner bases while providing a comprehensive and highly secure platform for their online applications.

“It is Akamai and Sify’s shared vision to give customers industry-leading solutions and expertise to accelerate their online delivery and quality of service.” said Sidharth Malik, Managing Director, Akamai Technologies. “We believe that this partnership will help Akamai reach out to a new set of customers through Sify and help expand our footprint across India.”

“This partnership allows Sify to extend multiple leverages to clients. In a sea of information online, it will enable precise, accelerated and optimized content delivery for our clients, both on the web and mobile platforms. For Sify, this translates into a vital service that we can extend to every Enterprise whose business model involves content and its delivery robustness,” said  Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies.

Air Purifiers Remove Contaminants From Homes

As part of Philips’ commitment to deliver meaningful innovation in personal health and well-being, Philips India introduced a new category in its Consumer Lifestyle portfolio – Air – with the launch of three variants of Air Purifiers designed to control indoor air quality. These products will help alleviate the impact of poor air quality on diseases such as allergies, skin diseases, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorders (COPD), Asthma and other respiratory disorders. 

At the launch, A. Krishna Kumar, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Philips India said, “The air we breathe is pivotal to our health and well-being, especially for children and people with respiratory disorders. At Philips, we want to give users the assurance that they are breathing cleaner air at home and in office.” 

WHO studies reveal a strong link between poor indoor air quality and Non Communicable diseases which causes upto 63% of global mortality. Small particles enter deep into human lungs and the ultrafine particles can enter the bloodstream sparking a whole range of diseases including asthma, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases (like COPD, Asthma, Bronchitis) and even lung cancer. 

According to other international studies, indoor air across the world is between 10-30 times more polluted than outdoor Air, and 80% of the world’s population breathes polluted air that exceeds the WHO prescribed level of Particulate Matter (PM). In India alone, the level of PM in indoor air is approximately three times higher than the WHO standard. In the national Capital of New Delhi, this level is upto ten times higher than the WHO standard. 

“We have no control over external air pollution, but we can definitely improve the air we breathe inside our homes and offices. While the air quality continues to deplete, Philips Air Purifiers will hopefully address the issue to some extent,” adds Jayati Singh, Business Head – Air, Philips India. 

The Philips Air Purifiers, with a unique VitaShield Technology, purify the air through a 4-stage filtration process removing 99.7% airborne particles. Philips VitaShield IPS also has a number of special new filters designed for specific environments like new homes.These filters are complemented with the Smart Sensor and light indicators that measure and show the air quality in a room. The Healthy Air Protect and Healthy Air Lock warn the user when the filter requires replacement. 

VitaShield IPS is certified allergy-friendly by the European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation (ECARF), a foundation committed to improving the quality of life for allergy sufferers by identifying products and services that are allergy friendly. 

Philips Displays Advanced Tech Innovations At Summit

Philips has showcased a range of innovations at the Philips Innovation Center (PIC) in Bangalore, specially developed for South Asia and other growth geographies. At an international media event, Philips underlined its commitment to developing and investing in innovations in the area of healthcare, energy-efficient LED lighting solutions, and locally relevant consumer appliances and services. 

“India and other growth geographies are increasingly important, not just as markets, but as centers of innovation excellence for Philips.” said Jim Andrew, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer “We believe that to be meaningful, innovation must be locally relevant. That requires innovating close to and often directly alongside, our customers, wherever they are in the world. This is a fundamental part of our innovation strategy, and why we continue to invest in centers of innovation excellence that have impact locally and also expertise that we can leverage globally.” 

PIC is one of the 59 Philips R&D centers in the world, of which 13 are in Asia and 3 in Latin America. In 2013 Philips invested more than EUR 1.7 billion in research and development globally. 

The centre focuses on building complete products for India and growth geographies, in addition to developing solutions and products for global markets, across the three sectors Philips operates in, Healthcare, Lighting and Consumer Lifestyle. Products include, ultrasound devices, Mother and Child Care products like Warmers and Incubators, the Intellispace Consultative Critical Care Solution and a whole host of solutions for India. It also contributes to Global solutions in MR, CT and Component development for connected consumer devices, connected Lighting solutions and renewable energy. 

Products and solutions unveiled at the event include: 

Mobile Obstetrical Monitoring (MOM) is a prototype scalable telehealth solution for early high-risk pregnancy detection in regions where increasing maternal mortality is a concern. Using a mobile phone* application, midwives can easily collect data from physical examinations and tests at local nursing clinics or even at the soon-to-be-mother’s home. Obstetricians or gynecologists in a different location are enabled to determine if a pregnancy might be high- risk, anywhere and anytime. Based on initial testing in India, Philips Indonesia is currently running a one-year pilot project. 

IntelliSpace Consultative Critical Care (ICCC) is a telehealth solution for remote intensive care delivery (tele-ICU) in rural and urban areas of India, where specialist care is not always available. Designed by the PIC team in India and already used by a total of thirteen regional hospitals in the country, it enables patients who suffer from a serious injury or illness to be monitored and evaluated by an intensive care specialist from a central hospital command center through the latest audio-visual technology. 

Air Purifier: As part of Philips’ commitment to deliver meaningful innovation in personal health and well-being, Philips introduced in the India market a new category in its Consumer Lifestyle portfolio – Air Purification – with the launch of three variants of Air Purifiers designed to manage indoor air quality. These products can help to improve the lives of those suffering from allergies or respiratory problems – good indoor air quality can help prevent such issues from occurring or worsening. 

Solar Energy -The DC Grid: The Philips Solar DC grid is a new LED-based solution that realizes an efficient link between a renewable energy source and an efficient luminaire. The development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits, especially in growth geographies where there is an increasing gap between supply and demand. 

This has driven Government agencies to look out for sustainable sources of energy. The Philips Solar DC grid will lead to reduction in investment as LED luminaires will demand less energy from the source to produce the same amount of light and this reduced energy can be supplied from smaller photovoltaic (PV) panels due to the efficient DC grid infrastructure. 

Connected LED lighting powered over Ethernet- As the global leader in Lighting, Philips unveiled a breakthrough connected office lighting system that delivers extraordinary value to facility managers, office workers, and building owners. The groundbreaking system uses Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to connect office lighting fixtures to a building’s IT network. The lighting system acts as an information pathway, enabling workers to control and access other building services via their smartphones, allowing them to enjoy greater visual comfort and productivity. 

Visiq Ultrasound Delivers Good Images For Expectant Mothers

Royal Philips has introduced Visiq into the India market during the Global Media Meet 2014 held at the Philips Innovation Centre in Bangalore. Visiq is the first Philips ultrasound system which combines various features such as high performance and simplicity into a compact single miniaturized solution. It allows clinicians to increase access to quality diagnostic scans for Ob/Gyn patients, especially in labor rooms and remote areas. 

This compact ultrasound device can be easily taken wherever care is needed. It wakes from sleep mode to scan-ready in seconds, and can scan continuously for 2.5 hours on a single battery charge. It delivers the same image quality of premium ultrasound system, allowing expectant parents to clearly see their unborn child’s fingers and toes on the tablet’s screen. 

Visiq’s touchscreen gesture controls are familiar to anyone who has used a smartphone or tablet, and allow users to capture images, take measurements and share data easily. In addition, Visiq offers many of the same automatic image optimization features found on Philips’ premium EPIQ systems, as well as built-in Wi-Fi for DICOM data transfer to hospital or cloud-based PACS. 

“Visiq marks a new vision for Philips, allowing clinicians to take ultrasound where it has never been possible before,” said A. Krishna Kumar, Vice Chairman & MD, Philips India. “From small clinics to community medicine programs, care workers now have access to ultrasound in the field to provide pre-natal scans to expectant mothers in remote areas who wouldn’t otherwise have access to this type of innovative technology – helping reduce maternal mortality.” 

“Having used many other ultrasound systems, I find Visiq so handy. I could carry it anywhere I need it: to the bedside, the labor room or even the operating theater. The way it works is also quite simple, and we could easily train people to use it. The other big advantage is the use of Doppler. We don’t have to send patients to the scan room and try to extract information afterwards; we can just use this simple machine and take immediate decisions. So the patient and the doctor will be happy because everything is happening fast,” said Dr. Shashikala Bhat, Ob/Gyn at the TMA Pai Hospital in Udupi, India. 

 At the heart of the Visiq system is a smart transducer that fits comfortably into the user’s hand. It comes with single probe solution, high quality 2D B&W pulse Doppler and 2 of 2  color Doppler. Drawing on over 30 years’ experience in ultrasound, Philips has taken advantage of advances in miniaturization to integrate a sophisticated broadband digital beam former and powerful image acquisition module into the transducer. Visiq targets OB/GYN and abdominal applications. In addition to its utility in labor and delivery room it has potential application in other areas like point-of-care and critical situations like calamities and accidents. It lays the foundation for a future range of portable ultrasound products to meet the evolving needs of clinicians and patients. 

Firm Expands Big Data Search with Elasticsearch

MapR Technologies, Inc.,the top-ranked distribution for Apache Hadoop, and Elasticsearch Inc., the popular open source search and analytics solution, today announced the integration of Elasticsearch’s real-time search and analytics capability with the MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop, enabling customers to search and store tremendous amounts of information in real time.

With the growing need for businesses to store, search and analyze huge volumes of unstructured data from multiple sources, big data technologies such as Hadoop are necessary for businesses to extract critical insights.The MapR Distribution helps customers realize the benefits of Hadoop at a lower cost of ownership than other distributions while enabling the widest number of use cases. 

With the combination of MapR and Elasticsearch, developers gain a scalable, distributed architecture to quickly perform search and discovery across tremendous amounts of information. The combined solution is already in use at leading enterprise companies including Solutionary, the leading pure-play managed security service provider, and several Fortune 100 financial services institutions. 

Free Online Classes On SAP Business Suite Powered By HANA

Following the success of the openSAP platform and its massive online open courses (MOOCs), SAP AG has announced it will increase the diversity of its online courses to maximize their value and reach to learners worldwide. The current focus on developers using SAP technology will continue while new classes are introduced that target a business audience as well as application experts.

All openSAP courses are free of charge and built for professionals, students and the general public. SAP strives to provide the most relevant information in a digestible form through openSAP. Participants can learn about the latest technology and business trends directly from the market leader in business applications and enhance their understanding of how SAP solutions can help grow their business. Upcoming courses include:

* SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA: The course will provide insight into the business value of SAP Business Suite with the added value of SAP HANA. It will answer the questions of what is going to change and what will stay the same, and will give an overview on why SAP Business Suite powered by HANA is relevant to various lines of business. It will also discuss the importance to different industries and how companies there drive value. The course begins April 9. 

        

* Sustainability and business innovation: Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP, will share the key learnings from the sustainability and innovation journeys of SAP and SAP customers, including how companies drive significant business value from acting environmentally and socially responsible. The course covers best practices in sustainability, from strategy to business cases, business processes, engagement and reporting. 

* Rapid-deployment of SAP solutions: SAP offers a fast and simple way to implement solutions with best practices for rapid deployment. The course explains how the methodology can be used to shorten the time-to-value, reduce project risk and deliver predictable business outcomes for users.

SAP announced its first MOOC, “Introduction to Software Development on SAP HANA,” in April 2013 and it has seen massive adoption, with more than 80,000 participants to date. In total, more than 200,000 learners enrolled across the eight openSAP courses that have been offered. Vishal Sikka, member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, recently became a presenter on openSAP and delivered a simplified introductory course for SAP HANA with positive feedback.

“With openSAP, we now offer education on the latest technology and business innovations to everyone,” said Bernd Welz, executive vice president and global head, Solution & Knowledge Packaging, SAP. “We believe that by addressing the broadest possible audience of professionals, students, experts and the general public we help drive positive, tangible business outcomes across the world. This is specifically true for the three exciting new classes we are launching today!”

SAP is also enhancing openSAP through additional capabilities, such as social collaboration capabilities and a new app for iPad that allows users to download and complete course materials offline. Once reconnected to the Internet, learners’ progress will automatically be synchronized with the openSAP platform.

Code Gladiators: India’s Major Coding Contest Invites Registrations

Renowned for creating the largest community of Techies in India – TechGig has taken the next logical step of getting Corporates involved in the community a big way.. Code Gladiators is going to be a corporate battle – the best talent from IT companies will battle it out to a fight to the finish.

The contest is all set to showcase the Company with the best Coders by identifying the Best Coder in the Country. This online event takes place through out the months of April and May in an online format – leading up to the LIVE finals, which shall be held in Delhi in June between the top 40 coders from across the country .

TechGig has been a pioneer in conducting technology related contests  for internal employees, , company-sponsored contests for talent engagement and various employer-branding activities. Code Gladiators combines all these activities and takes the scale to an entirely different level – one where employees from companies across India will be involved at the same time. This innovative format will start with internal contests to identify the best coders in companies, then give coders a chance to compete against the best coders from other companies, and give companies the opportunity to prove that they have the best coding talent and the best ecosystem to nurture and  encourage coding talent – the best place to work.

Speaking of TechGig Code Gladiators , Business Head, Avnish Anand explains, “The scale of this contest gives us an unparalleled opportunity to provide industry insights by creating detailed analyses of how coding ability varies across demography and present a host of benchmark reports including geographic, academic, institutional and corporate benchmarks. Such a study has not been undertaken before due to lack of scale and data.”

“While traditionally organisations have been wary of such competitions fearing that their best people might be ‘exposed’ – we are surprised to find that more progressive organisations have responded and 37 companies have already signed up, even before the official launch.” adds Anand.

Companies echo the same sentiments

“We live in an era of rapid technological changes and I think Code Gladiators is a great platform to challenge the brightest minds in the field to show their mettle. This is the first time Team Persistent will be participating in a coding competition. We see it as a good opportunity for individuals as well as for the organization to assess where we stand as compared to our competitors.” agreed Nitinchandra Shende, Head-Talent Management, Persistent Systems limited.

“We believe that global industry is at an inflection point where business innovation is being driven by user experience. Technology is playing the role of the enabler. Code Gladiators, we think will set up the ideal platform to incubate the philosophy of innovation among developers. This event helps our technical experts to showcase their capability on a national level. At the same time also enables us to identify and engage with the top technical talent in the country.” states Arvind Ramachandra, Chief Architect of Altimetrik

Other major corporates participating in the TechGig Code Gladiators Championship include the well-known names of Akamai, Synechron, Schneider Electric, Symantec, Nokia Siemens, Sasken, Calsoft, Panacea, Informatica, Seclore, McAfee, Cvent, and Unisys.

Registrations are open to Companies who can register for the event and use internal coding contests to identify their top coders. A company can enter upto 8 coders for the inter-company battle.

The second stage will be the Regional Semifinals – where the best winning coders from each company will pit themselves against each other. Followed by the National Final - a live event to be held in Delhi.

The contest will be held in the following programming languages – C, C++, C#, Java, Java script, PHP,  VB.NET, Ruby on Rails, Python and Perl. Gladiators will be allowed to compete in multiple languages.

Applications are open to all IT firms  till the end of April 2014. – companies can contact Ankur Gupta ( ankur.gupta2@timesgroup) to participate in the contest.