Mercedes-Benz India Enhances IT-Enginnering for its new Models

Mercedes-Benz India Ltd. (MBIL) and Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India (MBRDI) jointly showcased at the CeBIT Bangalore the latest products within the Mercedes-Benz passenger car range available in India and presented examples of their captive research, development and IT-engineering activities in India.

With the growing importance of IT in product development, infotainment- and connectivity applications, CeBIT offers a unique forum to exhibit how much IT has become the backbone of automobile engineering today – and its ever growing importance in the future.

‘IT is everywhere’ has been a philosophy within the company for quite some time, acknowledging that without the support of state-of-the-art IT solutions, important activities such as product development, order processing, production, simulation, testing, aftersales-service, billing and payment cannot be done successfully.

“Our customers expect not only appealing design, outstanding quality and superb performance from a Mercedes-Benz vehicle, they also like to stay connected,  entertained and informed when using their vehicles”, explained Eberhard Kern, CEO of Mercedes-Benz India. “We offer our customers an ideal in-car infotainment system and the new C-Class sets benchmark in terms of integrating next generation telematics and IT systems. We are constantly implementing the the latest technologies available, up to the stage where we are a front-runner in the development of semi-autonomous and autonomous driving.”

Manu Saale, MD and CEO of MBRDI emphasised: “We are very proud to be an important contributor within the global RD and IT network at Mercedes-Benz. MBRDI has grown from strength to strength and with over 2,000 associates, we contribute to our global vehicle development with our vast experience. This includes working on Design, Simulations, E&E, Testing, IT applications development and IT services and as such we play an important part to assure top customer satisfaction globally - and as well here in India.”

Digital Life has entered all fields of daily social life. This mega-trend has impact to Mercedes-Benz and its business model, products and competitiveness. Communication with customers and target groups can be done more diversely and effectively than ever before. New business fields with new services can be created in the transportation sector. There are opportunities in all fields of corporate life – and behind all processes operates a clever IT system.

“In line with our global IT-strategy, we further develop our IT-department into a worldwide organization with strong international teams, representing a striking variety of skills, know-how and foreign cultures, “ explains Helmut Schütt, CIO Daimler Trucks, Buses and Vans, “for example here in Bangalore we already have a significant footprint in various IT-domains, such as a ‘Shared Service Center‘ for SAP applications, as well as developments for mobility services, computer simulations and augmented reality – and we are further expanding our presence”.

Four entities of Daimler are currently operating in India: Mercedes-Benz India Ltd. (MBIL) in Pune, is responsible for production and sales and marketing of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars; Daimler India Commercial Vehicles operates under the brand name Bharat Benz in Chennai, covering all activities for commercial vehicles; Daimler Financial Services operates under the brand Mercedes-Benz Financial Services for passenger cars and Bharat Benz Financial Services for commercial vehicles; Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India Private Limited (MBRDI) in Bangalore is the largest Daimler Research and Development Center of Daimler outside Germany and contributes to various RD domains and IT engineering.

MAIT's Unveils I AM GREEN National Engagement Programme

MAIT is undertaking a major drive to educate enterprises, small business, media and general public on the perils of e-waste through an initiative called “IAM GREEN”.

MAIT will also set up an ‘I AM GREEN’ Stall at premier consumer electronics and technology event  PLUGGED-IN between 14^th and 16^th November 2014 at BIEC Bangalore, and invites both organizations and individuals to collect e-waste and dispose it at the stall.  

“E-Waste is not just an environment issue, but through proper e-waste disposal and e-waste recycling, we can control depletion of several natural resources including precious metals such as Gold and Platinum,” said Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT.  He further added, “The Indian Electronic Waste (management and handling) Rules, 2011, is an important step towards e-waste management, and is applicable to all producers, dealers and collectors.”

Majority of e-waste is getting disposed along with waste collected by civic authorities such as municipalities which results in health hazards for civic workers employed. 

India produces an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of e-waste every year with an expected CAGR of 25% (compound annual growth rate). Out of 1.5 million tonnes of e-wasteless than 10% per cent is being disposed in a scientific manner.

Through the ‘I AM GREEN’ programme MAIT wants to build awareness among citizens. MAIT in partnership with Plugged In is conducting over 15 roadshows in Bangalore as a part of the education drive, where it would connect with students.

According to a report by UNEP titled, "Recycling - from E-Waste to Resources," the amount of e-waste being produced - including mobile phones and computers - could rise by as much as 500 percent over the next decade in some countries, such as India.

MAIT is hopeful that  the “I AM GREEN” Programme can make a significant contribution to address the environmental challenges in re-manufacturing, repair, maintenance, re-cycling and eco-design having  a great potential  to promote green entrepreneurship and job creation in future, preventing environmental damage and moving towards a low carbon economy  and later transit into a green economy.

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