Adobe Hosts Symposium For Over 350 Photographers

In concordance with its vision of empowering the creative community, Adobe  organized a Photography Symposium to enable hobbyists and professional photographers enhance their skills, get inspired by transcendent creations and learn about ways to boost their photography brand and business.

The Symposium that was open to all connoisseur of photography, witnessed a healthy participation from over 350 individuals.

During the symposium, celebrated professionals including Sudhir Shivaram (Wildlife Photographer), Naina Redhu (Luxury & Lifestyle Photographer), Neeta Shankar (Wedding Photographers), Swapnil Rane (Creative Head- Films Division, Marching Ants Pvt Ltd) and Jayanth Sharma (Natural History Photographer and Co-founder of Toehold Travel & Photography) among others, led a number of specially tailored sessions for photographers.

In addition to sharing insights on their professional journey, these specialists covered many aspects of the changing landscape in professional photography like balancing between shoots and how to become a pro photographer.

Neeta Shankar, Wedding & Lifestyle Photographer shared her experiences and aspects of photography beyond shooting. She highlighted how critical it is to engage with clients prior to the shoot to understand their culture and customs and setting the right expectations in terms of the work. These soft chords play a large role in capturing the intimate moments and emotions.

Jayanth Sharma, Natural History Photographer & Co-founder Toehold Travel & Photography Pvt. Ltd. spoke about the need to recognize business potentials in the photography space. He gave examples to commercialize photography in the form of workshops, tours, photo vacations for honeymooners, to name a few.

The 4 pillars of photography – subject matter knowledge, core concepts of photography, equipment and shooting techniques, digital post processing, were taken up in detail by Sudhir Shivaram, the well-known Wildlife Photographer.

Naina Redhu a Luxury & Lifestyle Photographer & Brand Storyteller believes that showcasing your work to the world is of paramount importance in photography. She advised all participants to keep an open mind and click everything in the dawn of their career and subsequently decide their genre.

Adobe has always been dedicated to help the photography community enhance their creative work. The Adobe Photography Symposium is a part of the endeavor to work as a partner of the creative community.

Recently Adobe announced the availability of the new Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. Designed for anyone interested in photography, the new plan brings together –- for Rs. 499 per month -- Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, two tools that have fundamentally impacted how photographs and imagery shape our visual culture, as well as Lightroom’s breakthrough mobile apps on iPad and now iPhone.

HP Enhances Managed Print Services In India

HP has unveiled a new Managed Print Services (MPS) service delivery mechanism that will enhance the experience of HP’s MPS customers.

Under the new service, authorized HP technicians will use HP’s MPS motorbike fleet to carry optimized parts and supplies inventory, allowing them to pre-empt maintenance and address multiple issues in a single visit.  To reduce down time, the HP technicians will also be assigned customers who are closest to them.

The new service will value add to all customers of HP Managed Print Services, including customers of channel partners under the HP Managed Print Specialist program. 

“Businesses need to effectively manage their print environment as they grow their operations,” said Rajiv Srivastava, Vice President, Printing and Personal Systems, HP India. “The new service delivery with HP’s MPS motorbike fleet will strengthen our Managed Print Services offering, by enhancing the customer experience and allowing more businesses in India to realize the efficiencies of an optimized print environment.”

New MPS Tool for Channel Partners 

HP also launched a new tool – the HP Express Decision Portal – for channel partners who are part of the HP Managed Print Specialist program.

The HP Managed Print Specialist program has allowed channel partners to capture new business opportunities in Managed Print Services (MPS). This structured program offers a suite of tools and resources that allows partners to focus on the MPS sales process and customer relationships, without needing to make a substantial investment in new infrastructure.

The HP Express Decision Portal will add to this suite of tools for channel partners. This cloud-based application comes with pricing, business proposal and opportunity management features, making it simpler and faster for partners to capture MPS business opportunities.

Narayan Ram Named MD of Lowe India

Lowe’s Companies, Inc. announced today that Narayan Ram will join the Company as Managing Director for India, where he will be responsible for overall strategy and operations.  He will report to Lowe’s Chief Financial Officer Robert F. Hull.  

Ram joins Lowe’s from Sony, where he served most recently as head of Sony’s Global Delivery Center for IT and Processes in India. He brings more than 24 years of experience in Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) to Lowe’s. 

He will lead the new Lowe’s Customer Support Center in Bangalore (Lowe’s Services India Private Limited), established to expand the Company’s analytics and technology functions in an area with critical access to a rich talent base.

“Ram’s experience building and leading a world-class service delivery team will help Lowe’s further its transformation to an omni-channel retailer with advanced web search, mobile and social systems,” explained Hull. “His ability to integrate world-class business practices and technology platforms will further our ability to rely on data-driven analysis to inform business decisions.”

In his new role, Ram will build a highly collaborative team to support data-driven analytical and technical functions. He will work with partners across the global organization to apply the power of analytics and technology to the Lowe’s business to ensure customers can engage with Lowe’s whenever and however they need support and inspiration for home improvement projects.

Cisco & ELCIA Partner For Internet of Things Innovation Hub in Bangalore

 Cisco today announced a strategic engagement with Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) to develop Asia’s first end-to-end ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Hub’ in Bangalore. Riding on India’s fast growing Internet penetration, this collaboration will help establish the foundation for a new ecosystem to help Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) companies and other companies of electronic city engaged in IoT product development. ELCIA has been chosen for this ambitious project as it is the only brown field ESDM cluster in the country, which has received an in principal approval for a financial grant from the Government of India to spur innovation in product design and manufacturing.

According to a Task Force report commissioned by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the demand for electronics hardware in the country is projected to increase to $400 billion by 2020 and this initiative will help address domestic demand, allowing local manufacturers to capture this growing market opportunity and save precious foreign exchange for India.

As part of this effort, Cisco will help provide the network infrastructure and expertise for testing and production of electronic product prototypes for an IoT enabled smart city environment. Through the ‘Living Lab’, ESDM start-ups and other electronic city companies can build solutions for City Infrastructure Management (CIM) including Smart Parking, Smart CCTV Surveillance, Smart Street Lighting, Smart Water Management/Leak Detection and Community Messaging. The project will utilize the Cisco Smart+Connected City WiFi solution that will help enable community WiFi services and allow access to public utility offerings. ELCIA will also embed Cisco network equipment comprising of access points, routers, switches, and other required hardware and software applications that will be connected to the smart city’s fibre-optic backbone network. The first phase of this smart city project will be rolled out in Electronics City and will serve as a replicable model for the rest of Bangalore as well as other cities in India, across the region and other emerging markets. Participating companies would gain access to boot strap funding for their ventures under Cisco’s IoT Innovation Fund, provided there is a strong idea for new IoT product / application development with a commercially viable business case, as well as a chance to participate in the global Cisco IoT Challenge.

This project is being undertaken as part of the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities concept that places technology at the heart of economic development and better quality of life in modern cities. The focus is on using the network to deploy digitally enabled transportation, healthcare, education, utilities, energy grid and real estate in cities.

On this occasion, Anil Menon - President, Smart+Connected Communities and Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer said, “India has always been at the core of our emerging market strategy, and we see this arrangement as a tremendous opportunity for us to demonstrate our global expertise in IoT enabled technology. According to our IoE value index, the potential value at stake in India is $34.8 billion, and this initiative underscores our commitment to build an effective ecosystem to enable Indian startups help realize this potential to the fullest, in turn creating employment opportunities and contributing to economic growth through innovation.”

Commenting on the project, Kiron Shah, Chairman Electronic City Industrial Township Authority (ELCITA) said, “ELCIA together with ESDM and other electronic city companies have an opportunity to utilize the support of the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities team and collaborate with them during the sensor devices / applications development, testing, prototype manufacturing and field deployment phases by using the IoT Innovation Hub and Living Lab that will be set up in partnership with Cisco Systems”.

Expanding on the scope of this collaboration, Aruna Newton, President of ELCIA said, “This partnering with Cisco Systems will provide an opportunity for ELCIA along with ESDM and other electronic city companies to innovate and develop products and software applications that could be deployed in real world Smart City projects across India and emerging countries that could help optimize city infrastructure management functions. This project will also help ELCIA contribute towards the national objective to place India as a prominent member on the global electronic manufacturing and ESDM map.

Cloud-Based eHealth Centres To Expand Across India

HP and Narayana Health, one of India’s leading healthcare providers, today announced they will work together to expand the number of HP Cloud–enabled eHealth Centres in India, to deliver quality, affordable healthcare services to more people living in the country’s resource-deprived locations. 

eHealth Centres are rapidly deployable healthcare facilities, powered by HP’s cloud-enabled solution. They are built to connect patients in remote areas, who couldn’t previously afford or access healthcare, to receive remote consultations and diagnoses from physicians and specialists. Housed in shipping containers or existing facilities, each eHealth Centre is customized and fully equipped with cloud-integrated diagnostic equipment, HP Workstations and video conferencing. These technologies enable the collection, analysis and tracking of individual and communitywide data—such as disease patterns and risk factors—as well as regional-health profile monitoring to facilitate real-time disease surveillance.

Narayana Health will serve as a healthcare partner in this initiative to implement, operate, run and manage newly established eHealth Centres for providing primary healthcare to patients, and addressing healthcare delivery and awareness challenges in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. This includes screening and primary healthcare and progress towards early detection, diagnosis and evidence-based preventive healthcare.

”Our goal is to provide high-quality healthcare on a large scale to people in India,” said Dr. Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, vice chairman, managing director and group chief executive officer, Narayana Health. “Partnering with an innovation leader like HP allows us to leverage technologies, such as telemedicine and cloud capabilities, to accelerate our goal of reaching more people and delivering early detection and diagnosis to patients, while maintaining manageable costs.”

Raising awareness

The phased implementation program will build on the successful pilot program Narayana Health and HP launched in Paryadanga in April 2014 to establish five eHealth Centres in Karnataka and West Bengal. The organizations plan to install up to 20 eHealth Centres over the next 18-24 months. The equipment and training will be provided by HP, and Narayana Health will create awareness and understanding about the program locally through outreach camps, public awareness campaigns and healthcare education programs 

Additionally, HP and NH will launch three new “health hub” support centres to serve the eHealth Centre network, providing a facility where staff can get support on technical and medical issues related to operations, and explore the addition of other healthcare services that improve the healthcare experience for patients and providers. 

Building on a strong foundation 

The first eHealth Centre was established in 2012 in Chausala, India, (Kaithal district, Haryana), and recorded more than 4,000 patient visits in the first 100 days of operation. The solution was designed by HP Technology Services in India and leverages best-of-breed technologies, including open-source solutions. There are currently six eHealth Centres operating in India, which collectively have recorded more than 36,000 patient visits as of June 2014. The catchment area for existing ehealth Centers represents approximately 2 million people.

“Addressing the challenges of providing quality and affordable healthcare to patients in rural India requires a New Style of IT,” said Neelam Dhawan, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Group and Country Managing Director, HP India. “HP cloud-enabled technology, which is central to eHealth Centres, is helping to change the dynamics of the healthcare system in India. By working with organizations like Narayana Health, we are able to expand the eHC program to more parts of India”

Global expansion of eHealth Centres

HP is applying a similar approach to collaborative problem solving and innovative 

technology solutions to improve access to primary healthcare in underserved areas. In Bhutan, HP collaborated with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Royal Government of Bhutan to pilot the eHC program in to the country in a basic health unit facility under Ministry of Health. And in the Philippines, HP is partnering with the Philippines Disaster Recovery Fund (PDRF) to bring two eHealth Centres to the Tacloban and Eastern Visayas areas in August, as part of ongoing disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts following 2013 typhoon Haiyan.

SAP Fiori App Rapid-Deployment Solutions Enable World-Class User Experience

SAP AG has announced four new user experience (UX) rapid-deployment solutions that enable businesses to adopt the latest user UX innovations from SAP, including SAP Fiori and SAP Screen Personas software. These solutions are a simple and predictable way for users to take advantage of the next generation of user experience, which is now included with the underlying licenses of SAP software.

Each rapid-deployment solution includes detailed best practices on how to use and deploy user experience offerings from SAP and follow a universally applicable approach for customers deploying across the cloud, on premise or in hybrid landscapes. They also include implementation content and risk-reducing methodologies that help get businesses up and running with a predictable outcome in a short time. Whether a single application or an entire platform, customers can deploy new solutions or migrate existing SAP solutions using this proven approach. Together, these four UX driven rapid-deployment solutions offer predictable business outcomes by combining best practices-based implementation methodologies from SAP with the simplicity and power of SAP Fiori UX and SAP Screen Personas:

*  To accelerate the adoption of the latest user experience innovations by end users, the SAP Fiori apps rapid-deployment solution includes the implementation of SAP Gateway technology and one or more SAP Fiori apps for full production purposes.

*  The SAP Fiori Infrastructure rapid-deployment solution enables the quick deployment, configuration, and validation of the landscape components required for experiencing the full range of apps applying SAP Fiori UX made possible by SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, including advanced analytical apps.

*  The SAPUI5 Design rapid-deployment solution includes a design thinking workshop, best practices for SAP Fiori UX and a proof-of-concept service to help businesses create their own apps. The SAP Screen Personas rapid-deployment solution enables users to improve, simplify and personalize key desktop-based SAP user experiences.

These new rapid-deployment solutions also play a key role in the recently announced UX adoption services.

“With an increasing demand for consumer-like user interfaces and applications, our customers were delighted with the simplified approach of SAP Fiori,” said Abhijit Purkayastha, CEO, Element Five Solutions. “By delivering SAP Fiori with a rapid-deployment solution, our customers were up and running on the solution in no time. The rapid-deployment solution helped them tap into the latest UX innovation from SAP through an easy systemic approach to implementation.”

SAP plans to enable its customers and partners through the openSAP platform in order to benefit from the latest user experience from SAP innovation. The openSAP platform hosts massive online open courses built for professionals, students and the general public free of charge. These courses, to be launched later this year, will focus on explaining the latest user experience innovations from SAP, the use cases of these innovations and how best to deploy them leveraging SAP Rapid Deployment solutions methodology.

“The workforce nowadays expects their enterprise apps to look and function like the best consumer apps,” said Dr. Bernd Welz, executive vice president, Solution and Knowledge Packaging, SAP. “These new UX driven rapid-deployment solutions enable businesses of all sizes to accelerate the adoption of this SAP innovation by delivering flexible, yet predictable, cost-effective outcomes. Through these rapid-deployment solutions, every SAP user can have a personalized, responsive and simple user experience.”

50% Indian Are Satisfied With Salary But Not Job

At least 50 per cent employees in India Inc are satisfied with their current pay package. However they are not satisfied with their job, revealed a recent TimesJobs.com study.

Long working hours

Nearly 52 per cent employees are reportedly not satisfied with their current working hours. Employees polled saying that they are working over 40 hours a week and it’s not something they like.

* 42% employees do overtime for 2-3 days in a week but 64% are not paid for it

* 60% employees said that they are allowed to work from home for less than 2 days a week

Other key reasons:

* 18% are not happy with the career growth opportunities provided by the employer

* 14% feel that the work culture is not good

*  9% are unhappy with their job profiles

*  7% are not happy with their boss

What does job satisfaction mean to them?

Work-life balance is what gives today’s workforce a sense of contentment from a job. About 44 per cent employees are contemplating job change in the next 6 months and nearly 60 per cent are seeking a better work-life balance from the new job.

“Today’s employees don’t just want to work; they want to enjoy life also. Work hard, play harder – defines the motto of the current breed of working professionals. This is the key reason behind the rising importance of a better work-life balance.” says Vivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.com

Ranked ahead of money, rewards and recognition, work-life balance is a key determiner for nearly 60 per cent Indian employees to jump ship for a job.

Nearly 50 per cent men and 60 per cent of women employees base their job change decision on the level of work-life balance offered by their organisation. The need for flexible hours is greater among middle level employees.  Over 40 per cent employees belonging to 5-10 years experience category ranked it higher than salary and other work factors.

The first to notice the trend

Small organisations are the first to notice the growing demand for workplace flexibility. Nearly 42 per cent of these organisations said they have a formal flexible work schedule policy in place. The bigger organisations are yet to embrace this change in employee expectations. Only 12 per cent organisations with employee size of over 1000 agree to flexible work options.

“Employees in Asia value work-life balance, career opportunities, company growth rate, and stability most. Connected to work-life balance – location is increasingly an area of more notable concern to employees in India. That’s especially true in some of the cities where infrastructure challenges can lead to quite excruciating commute times for employees,” said Brad Adams, Head of HR Research in Asia, CEB (Corporate Executive Board), while speaking to TimesJobs.com on findings based in their report ‘Employee Engagement Insights of India’