openSUSE Project Board Chaired By Richard Brown

IThe openSUSE Project has announced Richard Brown has been appointed chairperson of the openSUSE board. The openSUSE board provides guidance, governance and support for the openSUSE Project, developer of the reliable, modern and easy-to-use multi-purpose Linux operating system. The board members are elected by the community, and the chair is appointed by SUSE.

“Richard brings a tremendous amount of experience and understanding to his new role as openSUSE board chair,” said Ralf Flaxa, SUSE vice president of engineering. “openSUSE is fortunate to be supported by an active, enthusiastic community – a community Richard is a part of and knows well. His leadership combined with the community's diligence and support will help advance the project to even greater heights.”

Brown has been active in the openSUSE community since 2005 when the project was launched, and he has served as a board member since early 2013. Initially active in testing, bug reporting and providing support via the project's IRC channels, Brown has worked with the Artwork, Marketing and Advocates (formerly Ambassadors) teams and helps maintain GNOME and the branding/theme packages in openSUSE. He is also currently on the openSUSE Membership Officials team that recognizes community contributors. In 2012, Brown was a mentor for openSUSE's involvement in Google's Code-In. In recent years he has led the organization of openSUSE's presence at the FOSDEM conference, the largest FOSS event in Europe. He has more than 10 years of experience as a sysadmin and is currently a QA engineer for SUSE.

Brown said, “As a long-time Linux user and community developer, it is both humbling and exciting to participate in the openSUSE Project as board chair. Hard work and collaboration in the openSUSE community has contributed to a remarkable Linux distribution, and I'm looking forward to ongoing growth in both the community and the openSUSE distribution.”

Innovative Mobile Talent Hunt For Aspiring Film Directors

Continuing to engage with audiences through Cinema, Idea Cellular, India’s 3rd largest mobile operator, has announced ‘Raju Ban Gaya Director’, a unique mobile based contest on its flagship digital property – www.IdeaPopcornStreet.com – to hunt for talent for film making.

The talent hunt will give an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to aspiring film directors to intern with celebrated Bollywood Director, Imtiaz Ali. Aspiring movie directors from across the country can fulfil their dream to work with leading Bollywood directors and step into their shoes to experience the world of Indian cinema by just participating in the ‘short-movie making on mobile’ contest.

According to Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular, “Cinema is core to Entertainment in India and forms a key genre of brand engagement for Idea. Our flagship Bollywood destination, Idea Popcorn Street is designed keeping this insight in mind, and forms an unique and innovative platform which not only entertains users but also encourages them to showcase their creativity. ‘Raju Ban Gaya Director’ is India’s first mobile hunt for film makers, and I am confident that this will provide a stepping board for many aspiring directors to demonstrate their talent and become famous.”

Speaking about the talent hunt, Imtiaz Ali, said "Gone are the days of the legendary 'struggle'. For today's generation a great film is just a mobile phone away. And there are stories everywhere waiting to be captured, and opportunities waiting to be explored.”

Any mobile user in India can participate in ‘Raju Ban Gaya Director’ contest, by just creating an original concept movie of 1 to 3 minutes on the mobile phone and upload it on www.ideapopcornstreet.com. The Jury, comprising of experienced film makers, will shortlist the Top 30 films in the first Round, which will then be put up on the portal for public viewing and voting. Basis the number of votes, the Top 10 films will be selected and the makers of these films will then be asked to create another 5 minute duration film, based on a script given by the Jury, which will once again have to be shot using a mobile phone. The directors will be given two weeks to make this film and will be required to promote and popularise their movie using social media.

These Top 10 movies will also be showcased on www.ideapopcornstreet.com as India’s first mobile film festival. Of these, the Top 4 film makers will be selected who will then go through an interview with the Bollywood Director and his team. The final winner will then get to spend time with the Director, Imtiaz Ali, on the sets of his next venture and get an opportunity to intern with him. 

Last date for submission of the film is July 22, 2014. More details on www.ideapopcornstreet.com

Riverside Selects Accenture To Implement SAP Billing Applications

Accenture has been selected by Riverside Utilities Private Limited (RUPL), a franchise of the Central Electricity Supply Utility (CESU), the largest electricity distribution company in the state of Odisha, to implement and manage a new deployment of the SAP Billing application.

As part of a three-year agreement, through Accenture Enterprise Services for Utilities, Accenture will assist RUPL to implement and run the new solution, which is designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of meter readings, and customer billing and collections processes. This will help the company enhance its customer service, drive customer satisfaction and reduce complaints. It will also enable the company to better control electricity leakage and more closely monitor its distribution.

“We strive to provide our customers with great service and accurate and timely bills, irrespective of the amount on the bill,” said SS Vashisht, VP Operations, RUPL. “In order to do that in a cost-effective way, whilst also keeping pace with our customers’ rising expectations, we need a billing system that is robust, agile and able to support our growth agenda. We selected Accenture for the implementation due to its extensive experience with integrating SAP solutions and its vast knowledge of the utilities industry.

Sandeep Dutta, managing director, Accenture’s utilities industry group in India, said, “The challenge faced by regional utilities like RUPL is two-fold; first energy losses tend to be quite high, due to commercial and technical leakage; and secondly they have to service a large population of customers in remote regions. This puts a lot of pressure on costs and infrastructure. This new billing solution will help RUPL better manage these costs, while also driving improvements to its customer service.”

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Mphasis Wins Silver In ContactCenterWorld’s 2014

Mphasis, a leading IT services provider, has been awarded the Silver medal in the prestigious Contact Center World’s 9th annual APAC Top Ranking Performer Awards – 2014. This award, widely recognized as the Number 1 Global Contact Center accolade, recognizes the breadth of Mphasis’ offering, the strength of its partnership-style of working, the quality of its people-related processes in addition to the strong impact of its results on the client’s business. Mphasis was awarded the Silver medal under the APAC Large Outsourced Contact Center Category. The award was presented at the regional Contact Center World 9th annual APAC Top Ranking Performer Awards, held in Singapore in early June 2014.

Mphasis was selected as a finalist in a long process, from around 700 entries in APAC, and went on to compete and present at the APAC event, and win the Silver. The Mphasis Banking & Capital Markets BPO team will later compete for the Global Awards amongst the Silver Awardees to be held at Las Vegas in November 2014.

Over the past eleven years, the winning team has grown from a 40 Full Time Equivalents (FTE), single-work stream, simple back-office processing operation, to a multi-channel, 350 FTE center (plus 75 managers and support staff) that provides the full gamut of inbound and outbound customer-facing services for our client’s customers. In the past year, the team has produced excellent customer satisfaction scores (Fizzback Average of 4.6), exceeded targets in key areas, and was awarded an unprecedented score of 100% by the client’s independent UK auditors for LSB (Lending Standards Board) call compliance.

Obi Mobiles Brings Octopus S520 Smartphone

Obi Mobiles has announced the launch of its much anticipated smartphone, Octopus S520 which shall be available initially for purchase through the largest online Marketplace-Snapdeal at Rs. 11,990.

The flagship smartphone from Obi Mobiles packs extreme performance and multitasking capabilities in a sleek metallic design powered by a 1.7 GHz Octa Core processor. As expected in the device of this class it sports the current version of Android Kit Kat 4.4 and an HD IPS Touch Screen.

While introducing the Obi Octopus S520, Ajay Sharma, CEO, Obi Mobiles said, “S520 is a beautifully designed product. It is engineered to highest quality specifications to reliably deliver a superior performance. This flagship device is an affirmation of our stated commitment to extend the best in class smartphone experience. From hardware specifications to the quality of accessories there are no compromises whatsoever, because we know our young customers conduct their lives around their smartphones.”

Speaking about this launch, Tony Navin, Senior Vice President, Snapdeal.com said “The Mobile market in India is growing by folds as customers are increasingly demanding newer technology and innovative products and are willing to support brands that deliver this. In order to meet the growing demand of new technology we have tied up with Obi Mobiles to further enhance the shopping experience of the 25 million+ users of our portal. The latest launch by Obi Mobiles comes packed with features and is sure to offer a great smartphone experience to its users. We are very excited in launching this phone and we look forward to a long term and mutually beneficial relationship with Obi.”

With a full touch 12.7 cm, the Dual SIM, 3G device comes in a sleek minimalistic design with a maximum thickness of just 8.4 mm, 1GB RAM and 8GB Internal Memory expandable to 32GB.

The device is optimised for seamless rendering of media content while all standard smart phone functions are supported in multitasking situations by the powerful octacore processor. The phone package contains a Flip Cover, a Screen Protector along with a best in class USB Charger and in-ear bud type ear phones as a standard offering. The phones are supported by country wide network of over 95 service centres for after sale support.

PayPal Wins Top Technology Leadership Award

PayPal India was honoured with top accolades at the 2014 Zinnov Awards in Bangalore today, establishing itself as a leading technology company in India. Zinnov, a reputed globalization and market expansion advisory firm, recognized PayPal India for excellence in four technology categories — ‘High Impact Global Roles,’ ‘Potential to Solve Large Scale Problems,’ ‘Ecosystem Enablement – Startups,’ and ‘Thought Leadership.’ The jury focused on key attributes such as sustainability, drivers, best-in-class practices and impact. PayPal India stood out in the face of competition from over 250 other nominations from 70 organizations to receive one of the highest number of awards won by any company at the event, setting a new benchmark for industry recognition.

“This is a recognition of our relentless efforts towards becoming one of India’s top technology companies. We are at the forefront of building innovative and impactful solutions for our global customers and the larger ecosystem,” said Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, PayPal India Development Centers. “We are honoured to be recognized in multiple categories by Zinnov, one of the most prestigious awards programmes in the industry. It is a moment of great pride for PayPal in India, and we will continue to focus on enabling connected commerce for a better world through innovation, execution, and technology leadership.”

PayPal India emerged as the winner in the ‘High Impact Global Roles’ and ‘Potential to Solve Large Scale Problems’ categories. Recognizing PayPal for creating a global platform for its employees, the award for ‘High Impact Global Roles’ acknowledged the company for having global leaders from India responsible for delivering the overall PayPal product experience to customers and merchants alike. The award for the ‘Potential to Solve Large Scale Problems’ category recognized PayPal for enabling the development of tangible strategies and state-of-the-art products that can solve customer problems around the world.

PayPal was also awarded for its support for the entrepreneurial community through ‘Start Tank,’ which earned the company the accolade for the ‘Ecosystem Enablement – Startups' category. PayPal Start Tank provides early-stage start-ups with a world-class incubation space and access to global mentors, angel investors, and venture capitalists. The Start Tank runs globally across PayPal offices in Boston, London, and Chennai. PayPal formally launched its Chennai startup incubator in association with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai in November 2013 and currently hosts four startups.

Pragati Rai, Chief Technology Evangelist at PayPal, received the ‘Thought Leadership Contribution’ award, which recognized her work across various ecosystem initiatives that ensured the success of global campaigns for technologies such as mobile and cloud for engineers. A member of eBay Women in Technology (eWIT), Pragati has made Open Source contributions to the LiMo Foundation for security policies of open source Linux-based mobile operating system, and authored the best-selling book Android Application Security Essentials. 

Significant Growth In Digital Wallet Services In India

Mahindra Comviva, the global leader in providing mobility solutions, in collaboration with Ovum Consulting, has published a whitepaper tracing the growth and uptake of digital wallet services across developed and developing regions over the last 18 months.

The whitepaper examines why these services are becoming increasingly important, along with the benefits offered to customers and the overall ecosystem of operators, banks and merchants. It further highlights the growing trend amongst operators of inking partnerships and deploying white label platforms to enable merchant acquisition, transaction processing and functions pertaining to the role of trusted service manager.

“The potential for digital commerce and payments is extremely promising. However, the true value of digital wallet goes beyond the transaction. Digital wallets have the potential to generate an unprecedented amount of customer transactional data. Service providers can harness this information to design engaging, contextual experiences for each stage of the customer’s interaction on the path to purchase. As the customer progresses through a transaction, service providers for instance, can leverage customer location and transaction data to “listen and respond” to customer’s needs in real-time– e.g. deliver personalized offers”, said Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior Vice President and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva.

“Realizing the benefits of a customer centric payments strategy requires an open platform that can seamlessly integrate with multiple systems. The underlying wallet delivery architecture must support an open services framework to integrate with payment networks, payment terminals, loyalty and personalization platforms. This drives acceptance at merchant locations, as well as allows consumers greater accessibility to more third-party services, such as price comparisons, offers and deals, accelerating consumer adoption”, he added.

Service providers need to capitalize and further accelerate the uptake of digital services by addressing critical issues like security, possible misuse of personal data and lack of information pertaining to the same. To overcome this, the whitepaper recommends that security credentials be made visible to customers by adopting a simple approach. Moreover, customers require adequate information pertaining to the benefits of using this service, particularly vis a vis other payment mechanisms.