Leaders Discuss Role Of IT In Powering Future Growth

Microsoft India today organized the first ever MNC IT Summit in Bangalore. The Summit brought together over 70 leaders of India-based IT organizations of multinational corporations (MNCs), in an endeavor to shape their collective vision for the industry and identify areas for collaboration. The attendees represent Fortune Global and Forbes 1000 companies with combined annual revenues in excess of $2 trillion, employing six million people globally including more than one million in India.

The Global In-house Centers (GICs) of these multinational corporations provide a range of services to their parent multinational corporations – IT services, Business Process Management and Engineering Research & Development. India’s GIC exports are expected to reach $17 Billion in 2014.

The theme of the summit was “What will it take for the MNC IT Community to increase its impact ten-fold in five years?” The MNC IT leaders articulated their vision, approach and path forward for their community. They committed to work together in enhancing India’s IT brand to attract more MNCs to set up IT centers in India, and called for sharing of best practices to help expand existing centers and enable them move up the IT value chain by doing mission-critical work from India. 

The Summit included keynotes, panel discussions and focused workgroup sessions by prominent speakers from academia, business, government and media including Adil Zainulbhai (Senior Advisor, McKinsey) Prof. Anil Gupta (IIM Ahmedabad), Dr. Pramath Raj Sinha (Founding Dean of ISB, Founder Managing Director 9dot9 Networks), Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar (Former Chairman, CSIR), Rajesh Dalal (Senior Consultant – Healthcare & Former MD – Johnson & Johnson), Prof. S. Sadagopan (Director, IIIT Bangalore) and Som Mittal (ex-Chairman, NASSCOM).

The Microsoft MNC IT Summit 2014 was kicked off by Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik who said, “The IT-GICs have been playing an important role in adoption of cutting edge technology by their organizations. At Microsoft we are committed to strengthen the ecosystem with future-ready productivity and platform tools for the mobile-first, cloud-first world.”

Microsoft CIO Jim DuBois said, “It has been amazing to watch the IT industry grow and evolve in India. Cloud is the next big trend that is driving the next wave of IT growth and transformation, not just for large enterprises but also for SMBs, governments and citizens.”

Microsoft IT India Managing Director, Raj Biyani said, “By collaborating closely, the leaders of the MNC IT units can boost India’s IT ecosystem exponentially in the next five years.” He touched upon key insights from the three-year journey that fundamentally transformed Microsoft’s own IT-GIC into a talent hub. This transformation has been documented in recent case studies by Harvard Business School and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

A documentary “Inventing the Zero, Reaching for Infinity: The Story of India and its IT Industry”, directed by Emmy Award winner Rafeeq Ellias, was unveiled at the summit which puts the spotlight on the role of MNC IT ecosystem’s symbiotic relationship with India and features perspectives of its leaders from the IT industry.

Dr. Sadagopan pointed out that IT centers in India are playing a leading role in establishing centers in other countries, including Vietnam and Argentina. Adil Zainulbhai, of McKinsey & Company, and editor of “Reimagining India: Unlocking India’s Potential” emphasized the vast untapped potential of India’s youthful economy.  In a panel discussion titled “Innovating and Winning from India”, Pramath Sinha, Dr. R.A. Mashelkar, Rajesh Dalal and Prof. Anil Gupta shared inspiring examples of successful innovations in India, what Dr. Mashelkar labeled as “affordable excellence.”

Som Mittal highlighted the contribution of the overall IT industry to India’s economy creating 3.2 million jobs and generating over $100 billion in exports. IT-GICs make a substantial contribution in this impact. He appreciated the spirit of collaboration among Indian IT organizations stating “there is no place elsewhere in the world where competitors collaborate so fiercely."

Registrations Now Open For Papers Of SUSECon 2014

SUSE is now accepting session proposals and attendee registrations for its annual global end-user conference, SUSECon 2014. To be heldNov. 17-21 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida, SUSECon will feature in-depth information on Linux plus the latest open source technologies such ascloud computing, big data and software-defined data center platforms. In addition, SUSE certification exams will be provided to conference attendees at no additional cost.

“Organizations today are having to deal with decreasing IT budgets alongside increasing demand for always-open enterprises,” said Kent Wimmer, director of global strategic events for SUSE. “SUSECon provides solutions and ideas to effectively address those competing priorities. A few days filled with keynotes by industry leaders, expert-led technical sessions, demos, case studies, technology showcases and opportunities to interact with other open source technology users and providers will pay valuable dividends in real-life implementations following the conference.”

Breakout sessions will address a wide variety of new and existing technologies, customer scenarios and deployments, and how-to guides for implementation of the latest open source technologies. To submit a session proposal, review the topics atwww.susecon.com/call-for-papers.html and follow the submission link.

For more information or to register for SUSECon as an attendee, visitwww.susecon.com. Early bird pricing is available through August 31.

Altem Technologies Wins India SME 100 Award

Altem Technologies, a Bangalore-based 3D printing Technology Company, was awarded the prestigious India SME 100 Award for 2013-14 in the IT / ITES segment. It is the first time that a company that is involved in 3D printing has been recognized for its efforts to promote the technology in the country. 

Altem Technologies is among the 5 award wins from the state of Karnataka and the only one from the IT / ITES segment for the state. There were several evaluation parameters, such as growth performance, innovation, financial soundness and international outlook for the award.

Speaking on the milestone, Prasad Rodagi, Founder Director – Altem Technologies (P) Ltd., said, “We’re elated on Altem Technologies being chosen as among the top 100 SMEs in the country. The award is a testament to our success thus far and to the growing 3D technology market in India. We believe that Altem’s efforts to promote and educate the people about 3D technology through efforts like printmyCAD.com, an experience platform for 3D Printing was one of the factors behind this award.” 

Sharath Chandra, Director, Sales – Altem Technologies (P) Ltd., said, “The wide applications of this technology can soon be predominant in various fields such as consumer goods, electronics, engineering, medical equipment, automobile, architecture, education, aerospace, defense, and design and art.” We hope we can continue to build this industry and contribute to development of manufacturing and design in India with 3D printing.” 

3D Printing is bringing about the next industrial revolution, and Altem is leading the change by innovating new ideas to enable manufacturers and designers to realise their products faster and in an economical way. 

Altem’s initiative, printmyCAD.com is an attempt to help people experience the benefits of 3D printing in various designs without any charges. It helps highlight how 3D printing technologies have accelerated the design process and helped achieve new dimensions in creativity and manufacturing.

Altem’s clients include leading Indian and Global companies across diverse segments viz automobile, architecture, aerospace, defense, medical, consumer durables, electronics, academia etc. For these organizations, happiness comes from bringing new ideas to the market faster and continuing to grow while keeping their teams productive. Altem passionately unites with these teams to take on today’s challenges for our customers and help them in achieving their innovation goals faster.

Laurels For JDA Soft At Puma Urban Stampede Race

JDA Software Group, Inc., the leading provider of Supply Chain Management solutions worldwide, announced that it has won yet again at the Puma Urban Stampede, held today at the Bhartiya City, Thanisandra Main Road Bangalore, organized by PUMA and Runners for Life.

The 2nd Runners Up prize was bagged by Pratibha Jose, Soundarya Singh, Reshma Deshpande, and Nikita Mokhariwale at the 4 X 5km corporate relay race in the women’s category. This is the 7th consecutive year win for JDA Software in the corporate category.

JDA has also been consistently bagging the Pulse of the Stampede award, given to the organization with maximum number of participants. This year, there were 120 associates (30 teams) who won it for JDA.

“We are once again delighted to participate in the PUMA Urban Stampede corporate relay race. With JDA’s support for our training and participation at this event, we have been able to bag another win.” said Nitin Gupta, who is heading the JDA Runners Club.

“Our participation in this run is since its inception in 2008 and we have been consistently winning. The win by women’s team this year adds yet another feather to JDA’s cap. In JDA, we not only provide opportunities to each of our associates to grow professionally by empowering them, but we also believe in supporting and promoting various wellness programs to groom their physical and mental health. Moreover, this also helps in demonstrating the value of teamwork amongst associates.” said Vinok Sequeira, group vice president of human resources, JDA Software. 

The Messengers Launches New Business Growth Initiatives

                

The Messengers, a Bangalore-based business enabler company, as part of its growth strategy -- is launching new business innovations that will cater to the demands of the Indian market.

The company has invested in building capabilities in-house to enable it to deliver on its stated promises. Some of the business innovations are – the launch of a dedicated IT and Embedded technology news portal TechSpirIT that aims to bridge the gap between industry and academia, shortly. Other ventures are into social issues’ online publication and an innovative health news portal for the general readers towards proving right healthcare perspectives. As part of CSR projects, it is also working in the rural development space that will enhance the technical and managerial skills of marginalized people. The company has moved its operations to MG Road in order to address clients’ needs better.

In another development, seasoned senior journalist Verghese V Joseph has joined The Messengers as it Vice President, Communications strategy. He will drive the editorial and communications’ projects at The Messengers. He brings with him nearly 20 years of business journalism and communications’ perspective. He has worked in various capacity with publications such as The Economic Times, The Times of India, Financial Express and other leading B2B publications. He is also the Founder-Editor of several online and print publications. “The industry’s focus is on bringing about values and strategies that can help companies focus on their core areas. The Messengers is ideally positioned to bring about this transformation to enable clients address critical issues with holistic solutions.”

Commenting on the developments, Ashish Srivastava, Founder & Managing Director, “As a business enabler company, The Messengers’ public relations, social media, client servicing and marketing communications teams are fully equipped to deliver quality work comparable to the best in its segment. The industry is currently moving towards consolidation and our team understands this trend perfectly. Hence, we are working towards ensuring the reputation of our client's businesses and adopting a tool neutral approach for delivering quality communications outreach.”

According to Poragmoni Das, Co-Founder and Director Strategy, “Now more than ever, communications are at the center of clients’ lives as they look to capture, curate and expand businesses on the go. With the experienced team on hand, the quality and value that The Messengers deliver continues to grow as we partner with newer clients and our quality and value resonate with our clients’ vision.

Persistent Achieves Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialization

Persistent Systems, a leader in software product and technology services and a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today announced it has achieved OPN Specialized status for both Oracle Identity Governance Suite 11g and Oracle Access Management Suite Plus 11g.

Persistent Systems’ approach to Identity and Access Management is fast, iterative and industry-specific, harnessing its allied experience in areas of Cloud, Mobility and Analytics. It has expanded its Oracle Identity and Access Management offerings to cover value-added services such as platform upgrades (from 10g to 11g), migrations and post-implementation training and managed services support. Persistent Systems also offers a suite of ready-to-deploy integrations and preconfigured functionality that can translate into rapid time to value, fast return on investment and lower CapEx.

Highlights

* By achieving a Specialized distinction, Persistent is recognized by Oracle for its expertise in delivering services specifically for both Oracle Identity Governance Suite 11g and Oracle Access Management Sue Plus 11g through competency development, business results and proven success.

To achieve OPN Specialized status, Oracle partners are required to meet a stringent set of requirements that are based on the needs and priorities of the customer and partner community.

SAP In Leaders Quadrant For Data Integration Tools

SAP SE today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the leaders quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools”* 2014 report. The report evaluated data integration products from SAP and recognized it as a leading provider based on its “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision”. The evaluation marks the company’s seventh consecutive year as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools.

“Cloud, Big Data and social media are powering new opportunities for companies that can leverage data-driven insights in real time to respond to customer preferences, identify operational efficiencies and in some cases create completely new business models,” said Byron Banks, vice president, Enterprise Information Management, SAP. “SAP provides a comprehensive data integration solution for organizations to consolidate data from any application or service, organize it in into any format and provide it to any user or device. We believe the Gartner Magic Quadrant result affirms SAP’s leadership in the data integration space. The SAP solutions for enterprise information management deliver complete and trusted information for better analytics and more responsive business processes whether they are deployed on-premise, in the cloud or in a combined hybrid landscape.”

According to Gartner “the demand for data integration tools emphasizes broad applicable use, a well-integrated portfolio and interoperability with information and application infrastructures. Flexible deployment and scalability are still expected, while interest in business-facing and platform-as-a-service models grows.”