Micromax Appoints Sanjay Kapoor As Chairman

Micromax India’s second largest smartphone player and leading consumer electronics brand, today announced the induction of Sanjay Kapoor, former CEO of Bharti Airtel to the Micromax promoter group and Chairman of the board with immediate effect.

This development reflects Micromax’s vision of stepping up to the next phase of growth as it continues its journey to become India’s number one smartphone player and the first Indian mobile brand to be successful globally. Micromax will be leveraging Sanjay’s vast experience in building India's biggest telecom services brand and his industry expertise built playing an active role in prominent industry forums like GSMA, CII, COAI and NASSCOM over the past 13 years.

Announcing the new Chairman, Rahul Sharma, Co-founder of Micromax Informatics Limited said, “We are glad to have Sanjay to be a part of Micromax's promoter group and on our board as the new Chairman. Sanjay is one of the most respected professionals in the Indian corporate world and has been instrumental in building some of the most successful technology brands in the country over the past three decades. I am confident that he will be able to provide required strategic direction to take our billion dollar business to the next level of growth and expansion.”

He further added, “Sanjay’s strategic and inspirational leadership skills will certainly provide strong impetus to Micromax as we pursue our aim to be the first Indian hardware brand driving success globally. He will be instrumental in building synergies for our existing international businesses and spearhead our foray into other international markets in the near future.”

Commenting on his appointment, Sanjay Kapoor, Chairman, Micromax Informatics Limited said, “I am excited as an entrepreneur to be a part of the promoter group and as a professional to lead the Micromax board & management. I look forward to adding value to all stakeholders leveraging my strengths in building scale, developing brands and understanding consumers. There is a tremendous potential for Micromax, a vibrant youth brand that has led the democratization of technology for masses, offering affordable innovations to the consumers."

He further added, "Micromax is truly the new age brand that has made an indelible mark on the industry within a short time by changing the dynamics of the mobile eco-system. Proliferation in data services and cutting edge devices that make technology affordable for masses will be critical for next phase of growth and I am confident that Micromax will lead this transition.”

Sanjay is an established global leader in Telecom and allied industry. Sanjay was the Chief Executive Officer for India and South Asia of India’s largest telecom company, Airtel (March 2010 till May 2013). Sanjay remains one of the key leaders in building Bharti Airtel from being one of the many players in the industry to making it as the number one telecom player in India, during his tenure with the company from July 1998 to May 2013. He has also been a Board & Executive committee member of GSMA, (the global forum bringing together nearly 800 global mobile operators); Board member of Indus Towers (world’s largest telecom tower company with a portfolio of more than 1 lakh towers). Presently, Sanjay is an active member on the board of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd and PVR Limited. He was declared the “Telecom person of the year” at the Voice and Data Telecom Leadership Awards 2012.

Prior to joining the Bharti Group, Sanjay worked with Xerox India as Director-Operations Support. He spent 14 years with the global Document management company, handling a range of key portfolios, ranging from Sales & Marketing to General management functions.  He began his professional career as an Executive Trainee with Jay Engineering Works Ltd., the manufacturers of Usha fans and sewing machines, in 1983.

Sanjay holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce (Hons.) from Delhi University, an MBA from Cranfield School of Management (UK) and is a Graduate of The Wharton Advanced Management Program.

VMware unveils Horizon 6 for Indian Enterprises

  

VMware Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, has unveiled VMware Horizon 6, an integrated solution that delivers published applications and desktops on a single platform, for Indian enterprises. Horizon 6 is the industry’s most comprehensive desktop solution with centralized management of enterprise applications and desktops, including physical desktops and laptops, virtual desktops and applications and employee-owned PCs.

Today, end users are using new types of devices for work, accessing Windows applications alongside non-Windows-based applications, and are more mobile than ever.

In India, according to survey respondents, almost every employee (97 percent) works outside the office, and 9 in 10 employees believe that they are more productive if they are allowed to work outside the office. However, strict IT policies continue to be imposed to prevent the leakage of confidential information (73 percent) and avoid the misuse of company assets (66 percent) by employers today. These insights came from the VMware MeConomy 2014 survey that was conducted in 14 countries across Asia Pacific and Japan to understand the attitudes and preferences of employees in an increasingly mobile world. The study also found that more Indian organizations are supporting employees in ways to gain access to the resources for working outside the office (90 percent).

“With India’s increasingly mobile and young workforce today, organizations are busy preparing for the mobile cloud era. They want to transform their applications and enterprise desktops and extend access to employees on any device, from anywhere and want a comprehensive solution that is simple, secure and cost effective,” said Ramesh Vantipalli, Head EUC India & Regional SE Manager - South, VMware India.

In this new mobile cloud world, managing and delivering services to end users with traditional PC-centric tools has become increasingly difficult and can lead to security and compliance concerns. Horizon 6 provides IT with a new streamlined approach to deliver, protect, and manage Windows desktops and applications while containing costs and empowering end users to work anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Next-Gen Leadership For Cisco In India

Cisco today announced the next generation of its leadership in India, reflecting the strategic importance of Cisco India for the company. The new leadership comprises Dinesh Malkani, President - Sales for India & SAARC; Amit Phadnis, President - Engineering & India Site Leader; and V C Gopalratnam (Gopal), President - Strategy, Planning and Operations, India and CIO, Asia Pacific and Japan & Greater China. Together, this leadership team will help accelerate Cisco’s momentum in India by strengthening its focus on innovation to lead market transitions. This announcement underlines Cisco’s commitment to India and marks an exciting new phase of growth, aligned to the country’s national transformation agenda. The Cisco India site is a complete ecosystem with a significant presence of engineering, Services, Sales, IT, and other support functions.

Dinesh Malkani takes over from Jeff White and will report to Irving Tan, Cisco’s President, Asia Pacific & Japan. India is at the heart of Cisco’s emerging markets strategy, and Dinesh will lead the company’s efforts to help transform the country’s economy through technology. He will drive Cisco's senior level external engagement, including those with government and industry associations, to drive growth and market leadership in India and SAARC.

Amit Phadnis as the new India Site Leader will lead Cisco’s focus on innovation, ecosystem and talent development in the country. Amit will drive the India Site charter, focusing on strengthening the interlock between Cisco’s teams, including engineering and sales, and customers, while aligning the company’s India site strategy with evolving customer and partner needs. As part of his focus on the India site, Amit will drive the university relations strategy, employee engagement and talent development for the employee base in India. Another major focus area for Amit is developing the Engineering and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner ecosystems. In addition to this role, Amit leads the Enterprise Engineering portfolio in India and will continue to report into the organization led by Rob Soderbery, Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Enterprise Networking Group in the US.

V C Gopalratnam (Gopal) will take on the newly created role of President of Strategy, Planning and Operations for Cisco India, in addition to his role as CIO for Asia Pacific, Japan & Greater China. Gopal will help create better synergies between Cisco’s internal IT organization and the company’s technology roadmap as well as drive infrastructure development and operations to facilitate growth and productivity. Gopal will work closely with the university relations team in shaping curricula to help produce next generation industry ready talent. He will also oversee enablement of Cisco’s priorities of inclusion and diversity (I&D), employee volunteering and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Gopal will continue to report to Rebecca Jacoby, Cisco’s global CIO. Gopal also serves on the board of the Cisco Foundation.  

Cisco is uniquely positioned to help its customers navigate the demands of the cloud, mobility, the application economy, and the Internet of Everything. In India, over the next few years, a key priority for Cisco is to be a transformational partner to the government and help build an ecosystem that brings technology and services into villages, and benefits the masses. The new leadership team will drive this agenda through sustained engagement with customers and external influencers; delivery of relevant products, services, and solutions; and an ongoing focus on local innovation and engineering to offer business outcome based solutions.

India Tops Asian Smartphones Market In Q1 2014

India was the highest growing market in Asia Pacific with a year-on-year smartphone shipment growth of over 186% in 1Q 2014.The vast majority of the country's user base migrated to smartphones from feature phones and as a result Indian smartphone market outshone other emerging markets like China which registered a year-on-year growth of 31% in 1Q 2014.

The smartphone penetration in India still hovers at 10% and it is expected to grow due to a variety of factors including greater availability of low-cost devices and additional sales emphasis by top-flight vendors on less populous parts of the country.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the overall India mobile phone market stood at close to 61.07 million units in 1Q 2014 which is a 10% quarter-on-quarter dip and a mere 1% year-on-year growth. The dip in the overall mobile phone market shipments can be attributed to the 18% decline in the feature phone shipments from 4Q 2013 to 1Q 2014. This was offset by the smartphone market, where units shipped grew by close to 17% in 1Q 2014 compared to 4Q 2013. The consistent growth in the smartphone market is driven by enhanced consumer preference for smart devices and narrowing price differences.

The share of feature phones in the overall market further slipped further to 71% in 1Q 2014 which is a considerable decrease from 90% share in 1Q 2013.

The India smartphone market grew by a whopping 186% year-on-year in 1Q 2014. According to IDC Asia Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker (excluding Japan), vendors shipped a total of 17.59 million smartphones in 1Q 2014 compared to 6.14 million units in the same period of 2013. The shipment contribution of "phablets" (which IDC defines as 5.5 inch-6.99 inch screen size smartphones) in 1Q 2014 was noted to be around 5% of the overall market. The category grew by 125% in 1Q 2014 in terms of sheer volume over 4Q 2013. The primary reason behind this trend is the launch of low-end phablets by international and local vendors alike.

The sub-200 USD category in smartphones contributed to about 78% hinting at the fact that the growth in the India Smartphone market still remains constrained towards the low-end of the spectrum.

  "As more vendors continue to launch low priced smartphone models, the price gap between feature phones and smartphones will be narrowed, driving rampant user migration in the price sensitive Indian market," says Manasi Yadav, Senior Market Analyst at IDC India.

"This rapid pace of growth in smartphones is expected to continue in India. While we notice that much of the growth is coming from low-cost devices using the Android operating system, Windows is making adequate gains too based on the strength of the entry level product mix in smartphones," comments Kiran Kumar, Research Manager- Client Devices at IDC India.

Top Five Smartphone Vendor Highlights

* Samsung maintained its leadership in the smartphone market with 35% market share in 1Q 2014. High volumes came in from the low-end devices like S7262 Galaxy Star Pro Dual SIM and Galaxy S Duos 2 S7582.

* Micromax held onto its 2nd position with approximately 15% market share. The top selling models for Micromax came in from the low-end Bolt Series.

* Karbonn was 3rd position with approximately 10% market share. Its low-end range of 2G smartphones did well in 1Q 2014.

* LAVA climbed up to the 4th position with close to 6% market share. New XOLO launches like A500S and A500 have fared well.

* Nokia made its way back to the top 5 list with about 4% market share. The Nokia X launch coupled with other low-end Lumia phones helped in improving the overall performance of the brand.

IDC India Forecasts:

IDC anticipates that the migration from feature phones to smartphones will increase as cheaper variants of smartphones are launched in the market. Growth in the smartphone segment is expected to outshine the overall handset market growth in the foreseeable future. According to the 1Q 2014 lDC forecast, the India smartphone shipments will reach 80.57 million units by the end of CY 2014. IDC expects that the Indian smartphone market will grow at a CAGR of about 40% for the next 5 years.

Integrated Wealth Mgt Platform From Two Providers

Mphasis, a leading IT services provider, today announced that it will debut its new wealth management solution developed in conjunction with AppCrown at the INSITE 2014. The combination of Mphasis’ CRM and Support Services in conjunction with AppCrown's applications empower financial institutions to better manage their wealth management businesses. AppCrown is the leading provider for cloud based financial systems across CRM for Banking and Wealth Management. INSITE is a premier industry event for success-minded financial advisors, produced by Pershing, the financial industry's largest global outsourcing provider.

At the show, Mphasis and AppCrown will provide first-ever demonstrations of their joint solution that provides:

*  A 360-view of the client from leading CRM systems: This single view to success helps wealth management professionals keep their finger on the pulse of business without having to reference multiple systems.

* Advanced reporting and analytics: Business intelligence tools help advisers better understand their customers, provide better service and increase transactions. For executives, comprehensive reporting tools enable both at-a-glance KPIs and in-depth reporting into team performance and the bottom line.

* Maximize CRM investment: The ability to utilize data from all leading CRM systems, helping financial institutions maximize their investment in Salesforce.com and other systems.

* Integrated workflow for advisers to increase efficiency

AppCrown’s SVP Corporate Development and Chief Operating Officer, Franklin Tsung, noted, "The collaboration with Mphasis has brought AppCrown into some of the largest banking firms in the globe, and allowed our technology to quickly scale into institutional customers while maintaining a high level of service and support. As a part of our alliance announcement last February, we are eager and ambitious in our goals to bring AppCrown’s new account opening and CRM capabilities to every financial institution looking to make their Salesforce.com become more vertically integrated and focused on wealth management business needs.”

“The INSITE 2014 conference provides a prime opportunity for Mphasis and AppCrown to demonstrate the power of our innovative solutions for global financial institutions to deliver a superior customer experience in a fully integrated platform,” said the Vice President and Head of ISG - Wealth Management at Mphasis, Robert Kirk. “It’s the ideal solution for Wealth Management leaders to integrate proprietary legacy applications, SaaS vendors, and middle and back office providers into a single enterprise cloud model through Salesforce.com.”

To experience an insightful demonstration of how Mphasis and AppCrown can help wealth management businesses gain competitive edge, visit booth #618 at INSITE 2014. The companies will also conduct multiple giveaways throughout the show.

SAP Unveils Simple & Modern Set of Finance Solutions

SAP AG has introduced SAP Simple Finance, a set of solutions to bring the simplicity of SAP Cloud powered by SAP HANA to finance departments worldwide. As a leader in finance solutions for the last several decades, SAP worked closely with customers to identify the most complex tasks in finance and make them simpler to consume and perform. The result is SAP Simple Finance, based on SAP HANA in SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, delivering real time insights to CFOs and finance departments so they can transform their business. SAP Simple Finance takes full advantage of the in-memory SAP HANA platform with new finance capabilities, offers a new and beautiful user experience for easy access, all deployed in SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud under a full subscription model, making it easy for finance departments to adopt these solutions. This modern finance software is designed to help CFOs accelerate their finance transformation and deliver strategic outcomes to their business. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held June 3-5, 2014, in Orlando, Florida.

With these integrated solutions, finance departments can now run their mission-critical processes in real time — including planning, analysis, accounting, consolidation, treasury, financial operations, risk and compliance — on a truly reliable and secure cloud. SAP Simple Finance is planned to be released for customers in 25 industries and more than 50 countries to match the local and global requirements of finance departments.

In addition to driving agility in finance, SAP Simple Finance is also designed to provide the most simple and unified end-to-end experience for easy adoption — from the discovery of the solution to the deployment, until the actual usage by finance users. By leveraging modern design principles, customers also have the option to deploy the SAP Fiori user experience for personalized, responsive and simple interactions across most common financial tasks.

“Thousands of companies around the globe run their finance processes relying on SAP solutions. The launch of SAP Simple Finance defines a completely new era with solutions designed to help our customers foster agility, flexibility and therewith simplicity in every business process,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP, Products & Innovation. “Delivered in SAP Cloud powered by SAP HANA, SAP Simple Finance sets a new standard of business software in our industry. CFOs and finance departments can now augment their strategic role in driving the business performance with real-time analytics and planning capabilities delivered in the cloud .”

Accelerated Finance Transformation
SAP Simple Finance has been built to help meet the evolving business needs of finance departments. This set of solutions includes advanced capabilities and innovations, including:

* Providing a single source of truth between transactions and analytics to streamline and eliminate cycle times and reconciliations of the data

* New on-the-fly capabilities for moving finance processing, such as month-end activities, from batch to real time

* Innovative rapid planning and forecasting combined with predictive analysis to explore new business models and immediately assess potential effects on the bottom line

* New reporting and analytics capabilities for finance users with self-service access to all information, allowing instant insight-to-action

* Connections to business networks in real time to establish an integrated business ecosystem and help drive optimal collaboration with customers, suppliers, banks and government authorities

* Global regulatory compliance capabilities across currencies, languages and industries with built-in legal compliance capabilities and continuous risk assessment along all enterprise processes

“SAP Simple Finance is a major step forward in changing how enterprise software is deployed and used across the financial operations of a company,” said Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. “It combines the ease of cloud-based deployment, a full set of standard financial functions and net new functionality that enables a company to conduct a soft financial close and model different financial scenarios. The result is not just better day-to-day financial management, but also an improved financial planning and execution function that can help companies stay abreast of rapidly changing market conditions.”

Simpler IT With Choice
For maximum choice and flexibility, SAP Simple Finance is offered with subscription pricing and can be deployed as a managed service via SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. This set of finance solutions can also be connected to other cloud and on-premise applications in a hybrid deployment model, allowing customers to protect and extend their current IT investments.

Existing SAP customers can move to SAP Simple Finance by transferring their current finance landscape to SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

The offering can be easily connected to the broad portfolio of public cloud applications from SAP for key lines of business such as human resources (HR), procurement, sales, service and marketing, as well as to the Ariba Network, enabling collaboration in the world’s largest trading community.

Customers can rely on a large ecosystem of partners established across regions to drive rapid value with SAP Simple Finance. SAP’s cloud ecosystem already includes more than 900 partners engaged as system integrators, resellers, ISV partners or managed services partners. SAP plans to continue to integrate more partners in alignment with customer requirements and the innovation roadmap of the SAP Simple Finance solution set. 

SanDisk Extreme PRO SSD Suits High Speed Gaming

  

SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced the availability of its new SanDisk Extreme PRO SSD—a drive designed for gamers, PC enthusiasts and media professionals who demand the highest possible consistent, real-world performance. With sequential read speeds of 550 megabytes/second (MB/S) and write speeds of up to 520 MB/s, the SanDisk Extreme PRO loads and runs graphics-intensive applications and game levels in a heartbeat. Additionally, by offering up to 1TB-Class of capacity, the SanDisk Extreme PRO SSD provides the space needed to store even the biggest programs, games or files, and load them blazingly fast—transforming any PC or console into a serious gaming machine.

“Building off the success of our award-winning SanDisk Extreme II, the new SanDisk Extreme PRO leverages the latest developments in our innovative nCache Pro Technology to enable 24x7, real-world drive performance and responsiveness,” said Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager India, SanDisk Corporation. “With its ability to deliver consistently fast computing backed by the industry’s first 10-year limited warranty**, the Extreme PRO SSD delivers the performance, trusted reliability and value that enthusiasts and professionals expect from SanDisk.”

SanDisk’s nCache Pro technology utilizes a two-tiered caching architecture to optimize speed and endurance for heavy workloads, efficient multi-tasking, and incredibly fast responsiveness from desktops, laptops, and gaming consoles. The technology allows the SanDisk Extreme PRO to super-charge a PC for power gamers, developers, media professionals and PC enthusiasts who need consistent, real-world, pro-level performance for their most demanding and graphics-intensive applications.

According to DFC Intelligence, PC gaming revenue recently eclipsed console gaming and they forecast that the PC gaming market will exceed $25 billion in 2014. This increasing popularity is being largely driven by the rise of multiplayer online battle arena titles and free-to-play games. With the SanDisk Extreme PRO, an industry leading, real-world performance SSD, anyone can upgrade their PC to boot up faster, open files more quickly, and load programs, applications, and games in a fraction of the time. The SanDisk Extreme PRO is also supported by the new SanDisk SSD Dashboard application for Windows, which provides drive performance monitoring, firmware updates, manual or scheduled TRIM, secure erase, drive health, longevity, and temperature indicators, so that users can increase the operating efficiency of their SSD. The SanDisk SSD Dashboard is available for download immediately at www.sandisk.com/ssddashboard.