Accenture Expands Mobile Government Services for Arunachal Pradesh

Accenture is developing a mobile government system for the Arunachal Pradesh Department of Information Technology, the system is designed to enhance citizen access to more than 21 government services across 12 categories in eight state departments using mobile platforms and an online portal. 

Following completion of the mobile government system -- called Arunachal m-Seva -- citizen access to government services ranging from safety and health alerts to employment services and pension benefits will be enabled using these mobile tools. Digital government services help reduce costs-to-serve and improve constituent satisfaction and engagement.

“The government of Arunachal Pradesh is committed to serving our citizens,” said Er. Gaken Ete, secretary, Government of Arunachal Pradesh Department of Information Technology. “The new mobile government system will provide increased opportunities to help us meet the needs of our citizens in new ways.”

The $70,000 contract for the development of the mobile government system has two major components -- first, Accenture has developed the system requirements, which is complete; and now, Accenture will design, test and launch the mobile government system. Arunachal m-Seva will be accessible across multiple technology platforms, including Android, Windows, Nokia and iPhone, as well as marketplaces such as Google Play, Windows Phone Store, iPhone App Store and Nokia Store. Short message service (SMS) technology will be enabled for alerts on safety, health and emergency information.

Accenture also has designed and will launch a web-based portal for the eight state departments of Health, Police, Tourism, Disaster Management, Agriculture, Land Management, Social Welfare and Employment. Government officials and citizens will be able to track citizen requests, initiate actions for solutions and view transaction details.

“By providing important information to citizens in an easily accessible manner, the state of Arunachal Pradesh is addressing citizen demands for digital government services at a time and place convenient to them,” said G. Sethuraman, managing director of Accenture’s Health & Public Service business in India. “Arunachal m-Seva is an exciting move toward a more citizen-centered government for the state.”

A recent 10-country study by Accenture ranked India eighth in its use of digital government services to engage with citizens. According to the survey, a majority (81 percent) of citizens want their government to provide more services through digital channels, including portals, digital channels and social media.

“Mobile government extends the ability of citizens to interact with government and access important services and information to mobile platforms, including smartphones, tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and wireless internet infrastructure. By making these services available on mobile platforms, mobile government helps make public information and government services available anytime, anywhere,” continued Sethuraman.   

Accenture also is working with the Arunachal Department of IT on the e-District project and with the Arunachal Pradesh Police to implement the state’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS), an integrated system to share information on crimes across India.

Novell & GWAVA Enter Strategic Tech Partnership

Novell, a global software leader for enterprises worldwide has announced a strategic technical partnership agreement with GWAVA, a leading provider of compliance, security, archiving and eDiscovery for electronic communication.Within the terms of the agreement, the two companies will collaborate to provide compliance, security, management and disaster recovery across Novell technologies. In addition to Novell GroupWise, GWAVA will also expand its integrated security, compliance and eDiscovery solution to support Novell’s file-sharing, collaboration and mobile management products.

“Novell is proud to partner with GWAVA which is equally committed to providing leading solutions that address today’s enterprise needs,” said Kathleen Owens, President and General Manager of Novell. “GWAVA is a key strategic partner that provides security, unified archiving and disaster recovery for our Novell GroupWise customers and we look forward to working with them to extend their solutions across other products within our portfolio.”

Regulatory compliance requirements to secure and archive electronic communication extends beyond just email.  GWAVA and Retain Unified Archiving are the only solutions in the market that provide Novell customers multi-platform email, mobile and social messaging security and archiving with complete information governance and eDiscovery. With this expanded agreement GWAVA’s solutions will be integrated with Novell GroupWise, Novell GroupWise WebAccess, Novell GroupWise Mobility Server, Novell Vibe, Novell Messenger, Novell FILR and ZENworks Mobile Management. 

“Novell customers trust GWAVA to provide security, management, disaster recovery and archiving for their GroupWise environment”, said Ken Muir CEO of GWAVA. “By expanding our support to other Novell technologies customers will have a single powerful and tightly integrated solution driving lower cost of ownership and greater return on investment across the Novell technologies they trust every day to solve their complex IT problems”. 

Juniper Unveils First Carrier-Grade Virtual Router

Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, today introduced a virtualized version of its flagship MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routing platform to deliver the industry's first full-featured, carrier-grade virtualized router. The Juniper Networks vMX 3D Universal Edge Router, which operates as software on x86 servers, gives service providers and enterprises the ability to seamlessly leverage the benefits of both virtual and physical networking so they can rapidly deliver services and cost-effectively keep ahead of customer demand. Juniper also today unveiled a new set of capabilities designed to help customers build High-IQ networks that leverage the benefits of virtualization and automation. 

It is estimated that there will be 50 billion networked devices worldwide by 2020(1). Service providers are pushing connectivity beyond simple access to fuel economies and deliver more personalized and life-enhancing services. As the appetite and reliance on customized services grow, service providers are looking for ways to address this need while staying profitable and capitalizing on revenue growth opportunities. This requires service providers to adopt a more agile business approach, one that allows them to develop, scale up as well as scale down new services at the pace of business, while also maintaining a high-performance infrastructure to keep up with increasing traffic volumes. 

Likewise, enterprises are also looking for ways to increase business agility, as seen by the adoption and deployment of cloud services and private clouds. As enterprises look to the cloud to drive agility and efficiency, having a network that is as flexible and dynamic as the cloud is critical. As a fully functional virtual router, the vMX brings cloud-like agility to the network, allowing businesses to quickly roll out new applications, resources and initiatives to support internal and external clients. 

By virtualizing the company's flagship routing platform -- first introduced in 2006 and today powers most of the world's top 100 service providers -- Juniper brings the feature-set and proven history of performance and reliability of the MX to the cloud. The software-driven technology delivers the agility to scale up and scale out as quickly as customer business needs dictate. Customers can combine the vMX with Juniper's complete physical router portfolio delivering the tools service providers and enterprises need to maintain a common operations environment for both virtual and physical routers, while matching network investment with revenue growth. 

With the vMX, carrier-grade routing can be deployed in the time it takes to spin up a virtual machine, scaled elastically with virtual capacity, and if the need arises, migrated to the high-performance physical MX Series platforms for high-volume workloads. This provides customers with greater freedom to start small, experiment with new services, grow rapidly and stay profitable throughout the entire service lifecycle. 

New Initiative to Increase Computer Penetration in India

 Lenovo has announced the launch of attractive finance schemes to make computers more accessible to the youth population. India’s current computer penetration is 10%, which is the lowest among developing countries like Vietnam (16%), South Africa (18%), Turkey (49%) and Malaysia (64%). Lenovo is joined by Intel in its effort to promote this initiative across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

India is set to become one of the world’s youngest countries in the next five years but the growing number of youth who do not have access to a computer is becoming an issue of national interest. To address the issue, Lenovo is offering 100% financing with zero down payment and zero interest on the purchase of high performance laptops and AIOs. The payment can be broken up across multiple EMIs with no interest fee.

Program details:

* Lenovo is offering a range of fully loaded, great value computers across AIOs and laptops starting at Rs 22,390.

* For the finance schemes, Lenovo has tied up with a consortium of 11 banks including HDFC Bank, Citibank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC Bank, Indusind Bank, American Express Bank, SBI-GE and Rathnakar Bank Ltd.

* Lenovo is also looking at tie ups with leading telco majors to provide free internet dongles with every computer purchase.

This initiative is being piloted in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as it complements their focus on education to bridge the IT divide. Lenovo is looking at a comprehensive 360 degree marketing outreach that includes Advertising and student engagement through college contact programs across the two states.

Speaking about the initiative, Shailendra Katyal, Director- Home and Small Business, Lenovo India said, “As the global PC leader, we want to address the problem of computer penetration in the country. Lenovo has seen success in driving initiatives of this nature in large, emerging markets such as China and we want to replicate this in India. We chose Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the first region, as they offer immense IT talent. We plan to roll this out in the rest of India too.”

Bhaskar Choudhuri, Director- Marketing, Lenovo India further added, “We understood the consumers’ key barriers towards computer adoption and designed a program to address them. Lenovo is looking at a comprehensive 360 degree marketing outreach that includes advertising and a student contact program through college activation. In the past, there have been such initiatives but they have been fragmented in nature.  This is a complex, multi-sectorial problem and requires a mammoth initiative to address the challenges. Our program is a call to action to make technology all-pervasive and we welcome others to partner us in our endeavor.”

Speaking about the initiative, Anand Ramamoorthy, Director Consumption Sales, Intel South Asia said , “We believe that the more people know how they can use technology to improve their employability or livelihoods; the more interested they will be in adopting it and using it right, as one of the biggest barriers to investing in technology are lack of awareness and relevance. We are proud of working with Lenovo on this initiative in enabling more people to transform themselves with the power of computing technology by stressing on the need for adoption of computing devices.”

The offer will be available from mid-November 2014, across all Lenovo stores in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.       

Mobile POS Solutions Boost Growth of Digital Payments

Mahindra Comviva, a leader in providing mobility solutions, in collaboration with Ovum Consulting, has published a whitepaper on the growing adoption of mobile POS solutions. Mobile POS solutions are fast becoming mainstream. An approximate 1.2 million mPOS were shipped to Master Card merchants globally and 75% of merchants have been able to accept card payments.

Mobility is transforming the way merchants execute sales and interact with customers. The mobility shift is having a profound impact on card payments, fuelling rapid adoption and acceptance of mobile payment solutions amongst a wide base of merchants. Beyond transduction processing MPOS solutions can create a fundamentally new source of value by improving productivity and extending apowerful new channel to improve transaction experience and engage in targeted marketing. 

This early mPOS growth was driven by adoption among micro-merchants and while still an important segment, there are further opportunities for mPOS with larger merchants as well. mPOS allows larger merchants to create efficiencies and enhance the in-store shopping experience for consumers, as well as to equip their field sales force with an integrated payment capability. Another benefit to all merchants, big or small, is the ability of mPOS solutions to gather customer data. Sophisticated analytics can sift through payment transactions and make recommendations to merchants like optimal inventory, ordering cycle or even to customers based on buying patterns and preferences.

Commenting on the study, Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior Vice President and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said, “In a world of anywhere commerce the point of sale is fundamentally changing. It is moving from traditional checkout lines to wherever the customer may be: shopping on the Internet, walking a store’s aisles, traveling or lounging on the beach. The implementation of mPOS solutions is not without its challenges and technology executives must work together to select an mPOS solution that can play well with existing back-office systems, adapt to rapid change, and meet the expectations of a new breed of the connected shopper.”

The paper also highlights the need for customization of mobile POS solutions. Although merchants have certain common requirements, a one-size fits-all POS approach is out of step with the fact that needs differ depending on the verticals they serve. The business needs of a small coffee shop vary from a business with a large field sales force, which are different from those of a high street chain. Enabling mPOS can take on different flavors of integration, depending on the size and the category of the business. Large merchants, for instance, have a need to integrate mPOS with existent POS and IT infrastructure such as ERP, loyalty and catalogue solutions. 

mPOS solution providers should offer open APIs to support integration with third-party applications, for example enterprises such as banks and insurance who have equipped their field force with app can leverage APIs for premium and deposit collection, safeguarding existing investments 

PayPal to Incubate 2 New Tech Startups in Chennai

PayPal India has announced that it has selected two new tech startups for its ‘Start Tank’ Incubation Center in Chennai. The winners — Clockwork Interviews Private Limited and Demach Software India Private Limited — were chosen from among 11 other startups that presented their business pitch at the Start Tank Incubation Challenge final on October 31, 2014. The selection was organized as part of PitchFest in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai.

The unique Incubation Challenge was launched in September 2014 across four cities in Tamil Nadu to identify and nurture some of the country’s next generation technology-centric startups. More than 60 applications were received for incubation at PayPal’s Start Tank Chennai.

Anupam Pahuja, General Manager, Technology – Asia-Pacific, PayPal, said, “PayPal is proud to announce the selection of Demach Software and Clockwork Interviews for incubation at Start Tank, Chennai. As a company that was started by young entrepreneurs, PayPal recognizes the importance of encouraging the growth of tech startups and the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. We truly believe that the new incubatees will benefit from our technology mentorship and the obligation-free environment we provide at Start Tank.”

“TiE Chennai welcomes the two new tech startups for the Incubation Center at PayPal facility. I am excited to see their promising business ideas, and I am sure that the mentorship that will be provided by TiE Charter members and PayPal technologists will help them become recognizable brands,” Lakshmi Narayanan, President, TiE Chennai, said.

Jayadev Mahalingam, co-founder of PiQube, a product of Clockwork Interviews, a Hiring Analytics company, said, “We are eagerly looking forward to the technology and business mentorship support from PayPal and TiE, and we hope to make the most of this opportunity to fuel our business.” Srikrishnan Ganesan, co-founder of Demach Software, makers of Konotor, a user-engagement solution for mobile apps, said, “The Start Tank Incubation Challenge gave us an opportunity to meet some very promising startups. The incubation, along with the world-class support from brand names like PayPal and TiE, will certainly enable us to take our company to the next level. The timing is perfect for us as we expand our team and bring in new people into a dynamic environment.”

PayPal’s Start Tank provides an obligation-free environment for select startups to evolve. The exclusive facility in PayPal’s Chennai development center has an office area of more than 11,000 square feet with a world-class incubation space, state-of-the-art conference rooms and other amenities.

Start Tank runs globally across PayPal offices in Boston, London and Chennai, and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. PayPal formally launched its Chennai startup incubator in association with TiE Chennai in November 2013 and currently hosts four startups: DoPartTime, Fantain, Hey Feedback, and Kobster.com.

$62 Million for 16 New Investments at Intel Capital Global Summit

Intel Corporation’s global investment organization, today announced at the Intel Capital Global Summit investments in 16 technology companies. Totaling approximately $62 million, the investments cover a broad spectrum of innovative technologies.

“Intel Capital invests in the technology continuum that runs from wearables and the Internet of Things to big data analytics – and everything in between, including silicon, smart devices, PCs, the cloud and datacenters,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president. “We are focused on helping innovative companies develop across this technology ecosystem, and we expect to invest a total of $355 million this year.”

 Sodhani’s announcement came at the opening of the 15^th annual Intel Capital Global Summit. The venture capital industry’s premier networking event convenes more than 1,000 founders and CEOs from Intel Capital’s global portfolio, Global 2000 business executives, and industry influencers for two days of company building. This year, the invite-only event featured distinguished speakers including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Stanford President John L. Hennessy, record-setting polar explorer Ben Saunders and former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt.

The founders of the newest portfolio companies run the gamut from 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee, who has invented low-cost Braille printers for the blind using Legos and Intel Edison chips; to Sundari Mitra, a 25-year semiconductor industry veteran who is now running her second startup; to Earnest Earon, a rocket scientist whose new company uses unmanned aircraft and cloud-based software to perform data analytics for agricultural, emergency response and other uses.

More on the new investments, grouped by technology sector:

New Devices/Wearable Computing

Avegant (Redwood City, California), developing the next generation of wearable devices, is bringing to market the Glyph, a mobile personal theater that uses a micromirror display with built-in premium audio. Glyph raised more than $1 million in its Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.

Braigo Labs Inc. (Palo Alto, California, U.S.), founded by 13-year-old entrepreneur and middle schooler Shubham Banerjee, provides scientific and technological services by researching and developing technology-based innovations and services. Its products include Braigo v1.0, a Lego Braille printer that dramatically reduces the price of a printer from more than $2,000 to $350 for education, teaching and home-use purposes.

Eyefluence* (Reno, Nevada, U.S.) transforms intent into action through your eyes. The company's robust, low-power, eye-tracking technology, with its iUi interaction model, integrates into any augmented reality or virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) to provide natural, intuitive eye tracking and control.

Mobility/Wireless

AnDAPT (Santa Clara, California, U.S.) brings a new genre of analog adaptive products for multifunction sensor integration and integrated system power management, enabling enterprise customers to achieve lowest power consumption, smart power management, high integration, high system reliability and lower cost.

Audyssey (Los Angeles, U.S.) is a leader in research-based audio technologies that correct acoustical problems to improve the sound quality of any device or listening environment. The company’s technologies are integrated into home theater products, automobiles, TVs, mobile phones and movie theaters from industry-leading manufacturers.

Incoming Media (Santa Clara, California, U.S. and Sydney, Australia) is a mobile video platform that uses predictive data analytics and intelligent content pre-loading to learn how a viewer consumes video on a mobile device and delivers a personalized mobile video experience with no interruption.

INRIX (Kirkland, Washington, U.S.) leverages big data analytics and predictive technology to help automakers, corporate fleets, governments and news organizations reduce the economic and environmental toll of traffic congestion.

Screenovate Technologies (Israel) offers mobile solutions that cover entertainment, productivity and education. Among other applications, its technology enables smartphone and tablet users to wirelessly beam movies, games, presentations or other content from their mobile devices to their TVs or other large displays.

Thundersoft (China and Taiwan) is a mobile OS core technology and solution provider that accelerates product development by providing leading technology and services, specifically for Android smartphone and tablet services. [Investment subject to satisfaction of closing conditions.]

Advancing Microprocessor and SoC Development

NetSpeed Systems (Mountain View, California, U.S.) offers a system-on-chip (SoC) design platform and advanced on-chip network solutions that let SoC architects create designs that are significantly smaller and more power-efficient in a fraction of the usual time.

Reno Sub-systems (Canada) designs, develops and delivers subsystems used to control process systems made by OEMs, including vacuum-based chambers to deposit and etch specialty materials needed in advanced integrated circuit fabrication.

Big Data and Cloud Infrastructure

Gigya (San Francisco, U.S.) makes a cloud-based customer identity management platform that helps customers turn unknown Web or mobile visitors into loyal and engaged customers.

PilotTV (Taiwan) is a digital signage network operator that designs, deploys and jointly operates digital signage systems for retail venues, operating over 6,000 screens in various channels including convenience stores, fast food chains, drugstores and rapid transit stations.

PrecisionHawk (Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.) is an information delivery company that uses a small, unmanned aerial vehicle and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyze aerial data. Its solution provides actionable information to clients in civilian industries.

Prelert (Framingham, Massachusetts, U.S.) packages data science into downloadable applications for everyday users. It uses machine-learning predictive analytics to learn the normal behavior patterns of populations of individual users, devices and resources.

Stratoscale (Israel) develops new technology to rethink next-generation data centers. It is building the runtime software infrastructure for scalable computing to help customers use all available computing resources and unify computing and storage across the data center.

In addition, Intel Capital announced Ossia (Redmond, Washington, U.S.) has joined the Intel Capital portfolio. Cota*, Ossia’s smart antenna technology, redefines wireless power by safely delivering remote, targeted energy simultaneously to multiple devices as far away as 30 feet without line of site and regardless of whether a device is stationary or moving.