Avaya’s Smart Solutions to Drive Digital Transformation Strategies at Avaya Technology Forum Dubai

Avaya, a global leader in business communications software, systems and services, will showcase its cloud-enabled solutions designed to help public and private-sector organizations achieve their digital transformation objectives at the second annual Avaya Technology Forum 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The three-day event will strip away industry hype and dive into the real challenges facing today’s business and technology leaders.

The Avaya Technology Forum, which will be hosted at the Intercontinental Festival City Hotel, Dubai, on March 15-17, will feature keynote presentations from Avaya’s global leadership team, industry experts, and key technology partners. Customers for the Middle East, Africa, India and China will learn more about Avaya’s development of smart applications, which can be tailored for specific vertical industries and sectors, helping organizations transition to the smart digital world.

Spending on the 3rd Platform technologies – such as Big Data, analytics, mobility, and Cloud – that form the raw materials of digital transformation will account for over half of IT expenditure within the next two years, according to industry analyst firm IDC, as enterprise CEOs increasingly place digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategies. Through in-depth technical sessions and tailored expert engagement, ATF 2016 is focused on helping organizations make the most informed decisions possible about transitioning to a truly integrated Digital Enterprise.

Through in-depth technical sessions and tailored expert engagement, ATF 2016 provides a unique opportunity for attendees to experience how Avaya’s solutions and services are addressing the challenges facing today’s industry leaders. At ATF 2016, Avaya will share and showcase roadmaps and solutions to help businesses improve operational excellence, enhance customer satisfaction and drive greater competitive differentiation. Smart applications can be customized to suit any sector or industry’s specific need, through the Avaya Engagement Development Platform.

ATF 2016 is sponsored by Axis Communications, Integrated Research Limited, Plantronics, Senetas, Siemon, and Verint. The Official Broadcaster is CNBC, the Business Media Partner is Bloomberg Business week and the Technology Media Partner is CPI Publishing.

Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific, Avaya says, “Digital transformation offers businesses, vendors and channel partners the opportunity to re-define their customer experience and achieve greater levels of enterprise engagement. Avaya’s vision and innovations revolve around helping our customers in the region accelerate digital transformation, make smarter decisions and deliver seamless customer engagement through innovative technologies. ATF 2016 is the perfect platform to showcase how we are helping enterprises of all sizes to create new experiences that deliver value to their customers and drive competitive advantage.”

IT Leaders Need a More Agile Approach to Support Marketing

Most new marketing technology initiatives will require a new IT approach focused on agility and speed rather than security and accuracy, according to Gartner, Inc. However, Gartner predicts that by 2018, only 25 percent of IT application leaders supporting marketing will focus their IT strategy on speed and agility.

"Marketing has always been an area focused on innovation and competitive differentiation, however, new technical forces for social, mobile, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) have opened up a plethora of new ideas and opportunities for marketers," said Kimberly Collins, research vice president at Gartner. "Speed and organizational agility of both business and IT departments are needed to test new ideas and innovations to keep pace with market changes. The pace at which IT delivers new solutions, or supports existing implementations, must be the same at which its partners in marketing operate."

This means that IT leaders supporting marketing need to provide an IT environment where marketers can test and experiment with new ideas and innovations while still providing IT governance, technical assistance and assessment. Marketing leaders will benefit by being able to innovate faster while selecting more technically sound solutions that can scale and better integrate with other marketing applications as their competency in this area matures.

Other predictions from Gartner include:

By 2018, IT will be involved in nearly 50 percent of social marketing application decisions, up from 30 percent today

Historically, social marketing technology and strategy decisions have been managed and budgeted for by marketing. Over the last three years, as marketing has sought to scale its social media operations to the entire enterprise, it has needed to employ IT to create an organizational standard for social marketing technologies and strategies.

"IT's increased involvement in social marketing application advisory and decision making will result in the further contraction of the social marketing application market," said Jenny Sussin, research director at Gartner. "This means the number of independent, social-only vendors will decline and leave customers with two options: social media suite offerings, or multichannel marketing solutions such as those supporting multichannel campaign management or marketing business intelligence. We are already seeing some of this today in the rapid consolidation of the social marketing application space."

Through 2019, 90 percent of large marketing application vendors will lack a fully integrated marketing solution.

As a result of rapidly growing marketing technology investments, large vendors are acquiring midsize and small vendors across a wide variety of marketing application areas including campaign management, marketing resource management (MRM), digital marketing, social marketing, social listening, mobile marketing, analytics, and digital asset management. Many of these larger vendors are now touting their "marketing clouds" — which implies, and is often perceived by clients to be an integrated set of technologies offered on the same platform and code base with a software as a service (SaaS) deployment model. In reality, however, many of these acquisitions remain as silos and separate divisions of the acquired organization, with limited integration and a variety of different deployment and pricing models. Many of these vendors will attempt to bypass IT and sell directly to marketing, which may not be aware of these issues and their impact on pricing, deployment models and integration. It is, therefore, important to get IT leaders involved early in these decisions.

By 2019, more than 50 percent of MRM implementations will include marketing financial management, up from less than 25 percent today.

Social, mobile and big data are having a significant influence on marketing and are generating more opportunities than ever for marketers to engage with their customers. However, marketing budgets are not growing at the same rate as the number of potential ways to communicate with the customer. Therefore, allocating and optimizing marketing budgets based on marketing performance metrics is more important than ever. The agility required to reallocate money in real time, as marketers experiment with new ideas and innovations, makes marketing financial management a key requirement for MRM in the age of the agile marketer. 

Impetus Infotech Recognised as Dream Company to Work for in India

Underlining its position as a great place to work, Impetus Infotech (India) Pvt. Ltd., a big data thought leader and a software services & solutions company, was recently ranked 14th in the list of ‘Dream Companies to Work for in India 2016’ at the World HRD Congress. Impetus emerged as one of the leaders in this category which saw over 460 participating companies across multiple industries. This year Impetus was also recognized under two individual categories - Managing Health at Work and Institution Building. The company’s position as a leader in HRD was also bolstered by its VP – Operations & Human Empowerment Group, Sanjeev Agrawal, being named ‘The Most Influential HR Leader’ at the event which took place on February 16 in Mumbai.

The World HRD Congress Awards recognise the efforts of organisations that have demonstrated excellence through their innovative programs, showing clear and measurable business results to drive organizational excellence. All nominations go through a rigorous six step process from receiving the entries to the final rankings. Entries pass through a thorough screening process after which they go to the Academic Council for their review. Once that is done, the entries are further evaluated by a Professional Council. As a fifth step, all shortlisted companies are requested to send their representatives for the Jury round and make a live presentation. After a detailed discussion and analysis, the final rankings are pronounced.

The ‘Most Influential HR Leader in India’ award was decided by the jury after evaluating the credentials and achievements of individuals in the field of HR and the impact that that they have made in their companies, and was only conferred to 100 HR professionals in India. This achievement marked the first time an individual award was won in the HR space by Impetus.

Speaking on the twin achievements, Sanjeev Agrawal, VP – Operations & Human Empowerment Group, said, “I am extremely happy and proud to be a part of the setup at Impetus. It really is heartening to see that our efforts in keeping the employees enthused and committed are being recognised on such a major platform. Being ranked 14^th as a ‘Dream Place to Work’ ahead of several bigger competitors motivates us to do much more for our employees and their experience of working here. Having consistently figured amongst the leaders in the field of HRD; we aim to keep raising the bar with more innovative and employee-centric measures in the future as well.”

“I am overwhelmed by the recognition bestowed on me personally. Being honored at an individual level is doubly inspiring and motivates me further to maintain the healthy and inspiring work culture Impetus is known for,” he added.

This is not the first time that Impetus is being recognised for their employee-friendly work culture. In 2015, Impetus was adjudged as a ‘Dream Company to Work for in India’ in the IT sector and a ‘Dream Company to Work For in Asia’. In 2014, it featured among the 'Top 100 Companies to Work for in India' by The Great Places to Work Institute in partnership with NASSCOM, and was also acknowledged as the ‘5th Best Company for Flexibility & Work-Life balance’. Impetus has been a consistent name in ‘Great Places to Work in India’ list for the past four years.

Kone Innovation in Smart Buildings Gets Lift with IBM Watson IoT

IBM and KONE, one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry, announced the multiyear agreement in which IBM will provide cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and services to drive innovation in smart buildings.

Through the agreement, KONE will tap into the IBM Watson IoT Cloud Platform to connect, remotely monitor and optimize its management of millions of escalators, doors and turnstiles in buildings and cities worldwide. The system will analyze vast amounts of data from sensors embedded in equipment helping to identify and predict issues and minimize downtime. Instead of having to call in a service engineer, KONE will be able to predict and resolve selected technical issues remotely by running tests and making commands over the cloud.

”Our partnership with IBM is exciting and it is an important stepping stone to deliver the best People Flow experience,” says Henrik Ehrnrooth, President & CEO of KONE Corporation. ”We operate in a connected world and by working with IBM, new solutions like remote diagnostics and predictability means we will deliver even better services to our customers, and great experiences for the people who use our equipment."

With real-time insight about the operation of its equipment, KONE’s plans to drive further innovation and develop new solutions and services to improve the flow of people in some of the world’s busiest cities and buildings. Using IBM’s open standards-based Watson IoT Cloud platform, KONE plans to allow a vast developer ecosystem via Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) to build new applications to make a smoother, safer and more personalized people flow experience for building users. For instance, community-based systems could help people pre-order elevators during the busiest times of the day or speed up evacuations during emergencies. 

As buildings get taller and taller with the capacity to serve tens of thousands of users simultaneously, there is increased pressure on elevators and escalators to keep people moving smoothly. KONE is leading the way in bringing together technology and innovation to meet the requirements of some of the world’s most ambitious and iconic buildings. Its projects include the Leadhenhall Building in London which features the world’s largest and fastest suite of panoramic elevators; the Makkah Clock Royal Tower Hotel, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which is the tallest hotel, clocktower and largest indoor space in the world; and the Jeddah Tower, Saudi Arabia, which at over 1km tall, will be the world’s tallest building when completed.

“Efficient, people-centric cities and buildings are better for business, societies and economies. Central to this is how people move around within them and intelligent systems are poised to make their experience more convenient, intuitive and enjoyable,” said Chris O’Connor, General Manager, Offerings, IBM Watson IoT. “With IBM’s cognitive IoT technologies, KONE is embedding intelligence across its operations and driving a wave of innovation in smarter buildings.”

Fifth Phase of Nasscom 10K Tech Start-Ups - Konnect - Shortlists 200+ Applications

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) announces the fifth phase of NASSCOM 10,000 Startups ‘Konnect’ and will be impacting applications from technology startups across the country.This phase five is focussed on identifying, supporting, incubating, and accelerating innovative technology start-ups in India.

Sharing his views, Rajat Tandon, Vice President, NASSCOM 10K Startups said, “India is the third largest startup ecosystem in the World with immense talent and innovative startups flourishing each day. With the strong support from mentors, industry experts, investors and VCs, we have successfully created a significant impact on the startup ecosystem of the country. Phase 5 is going to be our biggest Konnect to date as we are aiming to create a greater impact across the early stage startup ecosystem.”

For the fifth phase, NASSCOM has shortlisted 200+ domain centric applications from startups, which will provide a detailed overview of their business idea and the market opportunity. Startups who have applied in the last 4 months are now being considered for Phase 5 shortlisting and for the 10K Nurture program. The shortlisted startups will be pitching to over 100 investors in 6 locations and will have the access to participate in the intensive accelerator pitch and mentoring Konnect sessions. The program has strong support from 50+ industry experts (NIPP) and close to 100 incubator partners. The sessions will start in the first week of March across Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Kochi and Hyderabad.

In its last four phases, a total of 11,000 startups applied,   1,100 shortlisted and 500 have been impacted by way of funding, acceleration and mentoring. Some of their impacted startups include SmartVizX, Lazylad, EnglishDost, Flutura, SeekSherpa, Faircent, Hiree, Sliderule, Vidgyor, CustomerXPS to name a few.

NASSCOM 10,000 Startups, is a startup incubation program whose objective is to create 10,000 domain specific startups in the country by 2020. Phase Four of the NASSCOM 10K Start-ups Konnect had 150+ startup shortlists that went through pitch and mentoring sessions.

Voices for Race Against Rare Diseases Now Draws Attention in India

The Organization for Rare Diseases India (ORDI), a patient centered non-profit organization today announced Race for 7, a unique first of its kind event being held to commemorate Rare Disease Day and draw attention to the needs of rare disease patients in India. The 7km run to be flagged off on 28^th February 2016 at St. Joseph’s Indian High School will target 7000 people to symbolically represent 7000 documented rare diseases matching strides and expressing solidarity with patients.

The primary objective behind Race for 7 is to raise awareness about rare diseases and the needs and challenges of rare diseases patients in keeping with the global theme of Rare Disease Day which is Patient Voice. There are an estimated 70 million Indians or 1 out of 20 Indian who suffer from rare diseases. Almost half of these are children, most of who do not live to see adulthood due to lack of appropriate medical intervention. The scenario worsens due to lack of early diagnosis along with expensive treatment options which pose major hurdles in rare disease management. Race for 7 will raise funds to help ORDI in its mission to improve the health of patients with rare diseases across India through awareness, advocacy, collaborations and information dissemination.

Prasanna Kumar B Shirol, Founder Director, ORDI and the father of a young teenager with a rare disease said, “It is ironic that while the number of patients with rare diseases is increasing every year, there is no treatment for more than 90% of the diseases and patients can, at best, depend only on supportive therapy. Awareness, accessibility and affordability are key needs of patients suffering from rare disease. The Rare Disease Day 2016 theme ‘Patient Voice’ recognises the crucial role that patients play in voicing their needs and in instigating change that improves their lives and the lives of their families and careers. We hope Race for 7 will bring the patient’s voice to the fore.”

Speaking on the occasion Dr. Meenakshi Bhatt, Consultant Clinical Genetics - CHG (Centre for Human Genetics) said, “A rare disease is often referred to as an ‘orphan disease’, since the condition is not likely to be researched or studied, therefore making treatment of the condition much more difficult. We have 22,000 genes in our system out of which 4600 are known to be associated with rare diseases and the list keeps on growing. With limited or no access to proper diagnosis, medical treatment or cure, mortality rate among patients suffering from rare diseases is high.”

“We must remember that rare disease is no longer a ‘rare’ occurrence. Globally, 350 million people are living with a rare disease,” said Dr. Vikas Sharma, Chief Medical Officer, India & Senior Director, Medical Ethics & Research, Quintiles who are key sponsors for Race for 7. “The lack of available treatments leaves patients and their families searching for new options and new hope. We therefore need more investment in rare disease research to develop better and more affordable treatment for patients and help them live qualitatively better lives.”

Rare disease patients who spoke at the media event highlighted the challenges they faced in living with a rare disease. Patients living with a rare disease and their families are often isolated. The wider community can help to bring them out of this isolation was the unanimous sentiment expressed by the patients who appealed for support in creating awareness about Race for 7 and urging the people of Bengaluru to come together for this noble cause and  register for this unique race. It’s a roar against rare.

Danish Collaborative Human-Robots Now Accessible to SME Manufacturers in India

The Danish Ambassador to India, Peter Taksøe-Jensen launched Universal Robots, the Danish robot manufacturer that pioneered collaborative robots, at the Le Meridian, New Delhi. The collaborative robots range was unveiled in a launch event by Esben Østergaard, Chief Technology Officer of Universal Robots, along with Pradeep David, General Manager, India. 

Human-robot collaboration has come of age with collaborative robots (also called co-bots) designed to work with humans and assist them with a variety of tasks. Co-bots help automate and streamline repetitive and potentially unsafe processes thus, ensuring safe work environment while increasing productivity and efficiency. Given these advantages, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are eager to adopt this technology. In a human-machine study conducted by MIT researchers at a BMW factory, it was shown that teams made of humans and robots collaborating efficiently can be around 85% more productive than teams made of either humans or robots alone. Also, the cooperative process reduced human idle time by virtue of its pace-setting ability.

With the goal of making robot technology accessible for small and medium sized enterprises, Universal Robots offers simple, flexible and affordable collaborative robot arms- UR3, UR5 and UR10 named after their payloads in kilos. Having sold over 7000 collaborative robots, and ranked #25 on MIT Technology Review’s 2015 list of the 50 Smartest Companies, Universal Robots continues to revolutionize the way industrial robots work and operate alongside workers. Workers can collaborate with the robots in close proximity on assembly lines with no safety guarding (subject to application risk assessments) The co-bots are easy to program and the first set up takes less than one hour.  They can also be moved easily around the production facility for multiple applications. Flexible ±360 degree rotation of all joints allows usage in confined spaces. Infinite rotation of the UR3 tool is possible for screwing and drilling applications. The co-bots can be floor, ceiling, and wall mounted as required.

Speaking about the launch of Universal Robots in India, Chief Technology Officer, Universal Robots, Esben Østergaard said, “We are delighted to introduce our advanced tools to the Indian market for increasing productivity, quality, and market competitiveness. Our collaborative robots help ease out processes in task driven industries like manufacturing, assembly and food processing. They work alongside their human co-workers to optimize and automate time consuming, repetitive and physically challenging activities in the production flow. We have also seen end users integrate our robot arms in applications and industries that we didn’t initially expect. They have differentiated themselves in the market using our advanced tools innovatively. Universal Robots are being used with innovative applications like Neurosurgery, Bartending, Kiosk-based manufacturing, Physiotherapy, Aviaries, and even as Chef’s assistants.”

“Advanced robotics is now accessible to anybody who wants to increase productivity while maintaining high safety standards. Our smallest collaborative robot is world’s most flexible, light weight, table top robot that has been embraced worldwide especially in the electronics and metal industries. We are growing our channel partner strength in all major locations of the country and will continue to expand our network in the coming years.” said Pradeep David, General Manager of Universal Robots’ India.

“This is a proud moment for Denmark as we continue to establish ourselves as a country that believes in innovation and knowledge export as a way forward in bringing global communities closer. Universal Robots was named one of Denmark’s 30 most important export companies and received the Danish award for fast growth at Digital Gazelle last year. We believe that Universal Robots will enable our interest of supporting growth in various sectors of India with their world leading technology.” said Peter Taksøe-Jensen, Danish ambassador to India.