Mobile 7th Generation AMD A-Series Processors Delivered Much Ahead of Schedule

AMD has announced early availability of its new mobile 7^th Generation AMD A-Series Processors, timed to support an exciting new notebook design by HP Inc. Equipped with advanced video, graphics, performance, and security features designed to boost productivity and enhance the entertainment experience, 7^th Generation AMD A-Series Processors (codenamed “Bristol Ridge”) also provide outstanding energy efficiency. New OEM PC designs powered by mobile 7^th Generation AMD A-Series Processors – from ultrathin notebooks and convertibles to sleek All-in-Ones – will come to market first with HP in the new HP ENVY x360, and with other OEM announcements expected later in the year. AMD will officially introduce 7^th Gen A-Series APUs and showcase a wide range of OEM designs at Computex 2016, May 31-June 4, 2016, in Taipei, Taiwan.

“We know that consumers want more for their money than ever before – sharper graphics, faster performance, and longer battery life. We have focused on working with key OEM partners to develop outstanding computing platforms that will fully take advantage of the powerful 7^th Generation AMD APUs,” said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics Business Group, AMD. “I’m excited that consumers will start to see some of these fantastic systems come to market so soon. I’m very proud of the exceptional AMD engineering execution that enabled us to accelerate these exciting new products into the market for our customers and end users.”

”It is exciting for HP to be first in bringing 7^th Generation AMD A-Series APU technology to market, especially in such a compelling new notebook design,” said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, Consumer Personal Systems, HP Inc. “We think the HP ENVY x360 will resonate with consumers who are looking for the entertainment- and productivity-enhancing capabilities of the ENVY x360 design, which really showcases AMD computing and graphics prowess.”

Now shipping in volume to OEM customers are both quad- and dual-core 7^th Gen AMD A-Series processors, featuring mobile-optimized “Excavator” x86 CPU cores for high-speed computing, and Radeon R7 or R5 graphics for smooth online gaming and enhanced HD streaming capabilities. The 7^th Generation AMD A-Series FX part shows up to 50% improvement in compute performance over the FX part released just two years ago.

The 7^th Gen AMD A-Series APUs will allow users to enjoy the latest multimedia experiences in up to Ultra HD 4K video resolution, and AMD FreeSync Technology support for fluid, artifact-free online gaming performance in capable notebook and All-in-One configurations.

Semiconductor Global Revenue Down 2.3% in 2015: Gartner Inc

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $334.8 billion in 2015, a 2.3 percent decline from 2014, according to final results by Gartner, Inc. The combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors fell by 0.5 percent during 2015. This was a better performance than the rest of the market, however, which saw a 6.9 percent revenue decline. The top 25 vendors accounted for 73.5 percent of the market, down slightly from 74 percent in 2014.

"The worldwide semiconductor market declined in 2015 as slowing demand for key applications combined with strong currency fluctuations to subdue the market," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "2015 saw a mixed performance by the different device categories, unlike 2014 when all categories posted positive growth. Nonoptical sensors performed best due to increased usage of fingerprint sensors in smartphones, while discretes saw the strongest decline due to a mix of weak demand and currency issues."

Intel retained the No. 1 market share position for the 24th consecutive year, capturing 15.4 percent of the worldwide market, despite experiencing a 1.2 percent revenue decline in 2015. Infineon Technologies experienced the strongest growth among the top vendors, moving from No. 12 to the No. 9 position in 2015.

2015 saw record merger and acquisition (MnA) activity between major semiconductor vendors, including several acquisitions and disposals that had a material effect on semiconductor sales. Among the most significant deals was Intel's acquisition of Lantiq. Driven by Lantiq's broadband gateway and digital home capabilities, this acquisition helped Intel nearly double its wired ASSP business.

"2015 semiconductor revenue results are skewed by the large amount of MnA activity during the year," said Norwood. "If we adjust for this MnA activity by adding in revenue for 2015 and 2014 where necessary, then the performance is somewhat different: The top 25 vendors would have experienced a 1.7 percent revenue decline, and the rest of the market would have declined 3.9 percent."

Abhay Bagde Appointed Head of Perpetuuiti India Sales

Perpetuuiti TechnoSoft Inc., a global Enterprise Software Products company, announced the appointment of Abhay Bagde as Head of Sales, India.  Bagde, a high-tech industry veteran with more than 17 years' experience has been part of Perpetuuiti's sales team for 4 years and previously held the position of VP - Sales and Strategic Products. After the promotion, he will lead Perpetuuiti's sales team in India and will be responsible for driving sales operations, strategies and training. He will also oversee expansion of the company's business through strategic alliances and partnerships.

"I am quite excited to undertake this new responsibility," said  Abhay Bagde. "India is a very strategic market for Perpetuuiti both in terms of innovation and growth prospects. Looking at the exponential growth of the Indian economy and initiatives like "Make in India," we can foresee many new opportunities emerging in the automation space. Perpetuuiti has a diverse and innovative range of technology portfolio that offers a compelling value proposition to customers and partners," he added.

Bagde joined Perpetuuiti in 2013 year and quickly advanced to the role of VP - Sales and Strategic Products. His rich industry experience in customer-focused technology solutions, sales, marketing, and operational management make him a natural fit for the current role and responsibility.

Prior to working with Perpetuuiti, Abhay Bagde has held a range of executive positions with start-up venture capital companies and global organizations such as Red Hat, EMC and Clover Technologies. He has a successful track record when it comes to building a sales organization, moving business to the next level, and successfully managing the overall business to achieve company objectives.

Neil Wu Becker Appointed Vice President of A10 Networks Worldwide Marketing & Communications

A10 Networks, a leader in application networking and security, today announced that Neil Wu Becker has been appointed vice president of worldwide marketing and communications. Reporting directly to CEO Lee Chen, Neil is responsible for driving A10’s brand awareness, marketing strategy, and sales enablement.

“Neil brings a unique skillset to the A10 Networks team. He is an award-winning marketing and communications veteran with extensive experience developing and managing strategic global communications plans for a broad spectrum of companies in the tech sector, from Fortune 100 firms to early-stage startups,” said Lee Chen, CEO of A10 Networks. “Neil’s impressive ability to drive organizations to new levels of success –including at Cisco, one of the world’s largest technology companies – will greatly benefit our global partners and customers looking to grow with us.”

Neil brings more than 15 years of marketing and communications leadership experience to A10 Networks. For eight years at Cisco, he led several communications teams that supported Cisco’s largest multi-billion dollar business units and its biggest growth opportunities. Most recently, Neil served as the head of public relations and corporate communications at Micron Technology, where he successfully ran and helped grow the worldwide PR function and oversaw the development of the company’s strategic positioning.

 “For several years, the paradigm governing IT infrastructure has been shifting from building networks for networks’ sake to focusing on the application as the atomic unit of network design and implementation,” Wu Becker said. “As the pendulum swings prominently toward applications, the increasing focus on making them work better, faster, and more securely naturally heightens A10 Networks’ value and relevance. The market trends are heading our way. For that reason, A10 Networks is in prime position to not only ride the industry’s momentum, but to help shape its future. I am optimistic about the company and look forward to working with our valued customers on the journey ahead.”

Neil joins at a time when A10 Networks is deepening its portfolio. The company recently released several new updates, including the worldwide availability of Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW), a standalone security product built on A10’s ACOS Harmony platform. Thunder CFW is the first converged security solution with unmatched performance in a compact form factor.

A10's application networking technologies allow enterprises, service providers, and other organizations to accelerate, secure and optimize the performance of their data center applications and networks.

K'taka IT Sector is India's Top Job Creator with 24% Share: Assocham

According to a study conducted by Assocham, Karnataka has been ranked as the India's top job creating state with over 24 per cent share during the fourth quarter of the last fiscal.

It is followed by Maharashtra (23 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (10.5 per cent), said the study.

Information technology (IT) sector created about 57 per cent of about nine lakh job openings recorded between January-March, 2016, followed by services (19 per cent) and manufacturing (11 per cent), according to the report.

Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector accounted for just over eight per cent share followed by construction and real estate (3.5 per cent share).

Within Karnataka, ITEs accounted for over 65 per cent share in job openings across the state followed by services (16 per cent), manufacturing (eight per cent), BFSI (six per cent) and construction and real estate sector (2.5 per cent).

The Assocham Economic Research Bureau (AERB) had analysed the data sourced primarily from vacancies posted by companies via various job portals together with advertisements offering employment opportunities published in national and regional dailies across India.

Karnataka had recorded 2.16 lakh job openings in the first quarter of the last fiscal followed by Maharashtra (two lakh), Tamil Nadu (93,000), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region combined (82,000) and Haryana (72,000).

Sector-wise, Karnataka leads in terms of job openings in ITES sector with 28 per cent share in over five lakh jobs created by the sector followed by Maharashtra (20.5 per cent), Tamil Nadu (11 per cent), Andhra Pradesh-Telangana (10 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (eight per cent), it said.

Services sector recorded 1.69 lakh jobs in January-March quarter of 2015-16 with Maharashtra accounting for the "lion's share" of about 24 per cent followed by Karnataka (21 per cent), Haryana (8.4 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (8.2 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh-Telangana (8.1 per cent).

In manufacturing sector, Maharashtra has recorded highest share with 22.5 per cent in over 99,000 job openings, followed by Karnataka (19 per cent), Tamil Nadu (12 per cent), Andhra Pradesh-Telangana (nine per cent) and Gujarat (eight per cent).

Maharashtra also topped with highest share in job openings recorded in BFSI and construction and real estate with a share of about 31 per cent in both sectors each, while Karnataka followed with a share of 18 per cent and 17 per cent respectively, it added.

Agencies

EMC Opens Second Advanced R&D Centre in Pune; 2nd After COE in Bangalore

EMC Corporation has inaugurated a second RnD centre in Pune India. In addition to the current EMC Centre of Excellence (COE) in Bangalore, the new centre in Pune expands and strengthens EMC’s presence and innovation engine within India, including plans to increase its workforce.

The additional EMC COE in Pune will help EMC to further advance its mission to help customers transform their business by creating their digital future and modernize, automate and transform IT through cloud computing. The news comes at a time when India is accelerating its journey toward digital transformation with the government’s sterling initiatives like ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Cities.’

"India continues to be a key source for technology innovation, outstanding engineering talent and significant business potential,” said Howard Elias, President and Chief Operating Officer, Global Enterprise Services at EMC Corporation. “India is important tour strategic global growth plans. The EMC COE in Pune will play an important role in helping EMC deliver comprehensive, next-generation technology solutions for our customers.”

EMC’s first COE in Bangalore opened in 2003 to advance the company’s globalization goals, accelerate R and D efforts and expand services by leveraging India’s vast pool of highly skilled engineering talent. As EMC’s largest RnD centre outside of North America, the EMC COE in Bangalore hosts product, services and support groups across EMC’s offerings. The Pune centre will supplement the EMC COE in Bangalore with added capabilities to undertake additional R and D and Services work for cloud and storage technologies.

Congratulating EMC on inauguration on its second RnD center in Pune, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said,"India offers tremendous opportunities to technology companies both in terms of business potential, as well as quality talent. Indian talent is fast becoming synonymous with new technology expertise and high-end engineering. EMC's decision to open a second world-class RnD centre in India is testimony to this.”

"This is a significant step towards accelerating our innovation efforts. Pune is fast emerging as the next technology innovation hub in India and will complement the pioneering work done by our EMC COE in Bangalore. We are confident that the new campus in Pune will help attract quality talent to help us deliver increased value to customers and partners." said Sarv Saravanan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMC Centres of Excellence, Asia Pacific Japan.

The new EMC COE in Pune will have 137000 square feet of usable office space and includes a state-of-the-art Executive Briefing Centre.

Technology Service Providers Must Implement a Bimodal Road Map or Risk Being Left Behind

As digital business transforms buying behaviors, organizations are quickly adopting bimodal strategies and questioning whether service providers can rapidly adapt to their evolving needs, according to Gartner, Inc. Service provider executives and strategists must implement a bimodal roadmap to exploit this unprecedented differentiation opportunity.

“Confronted by digital transformation IT leaders recognize the need to innovate more, manage uncertainty better and establish more agility,” said Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “We anticipate that three out of four organizations will be at some level of bimodal maturity by 2017. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for providers' ability to aggressively transform into organizations that are able to respond to the needs of agile, bimodal enterprises.”

Many incumbent providers have found themselves challenged to make the necessary transition to embrace a bimodal work style, to deliver different product and services via new consumption models, to provide the basic sales model enhancements, and to focus on rapidly changing customer expectations across both Mode 1 and Mode 2 IT demands.

“The speed of digital business not only is dictating a new speed for IT, but a new pace for providers' own internal innovation if they want to remain relevant and competitive,” said Da Rold. “While a few service providers have begun to employ bimodal capabilities in some business units, they face substantial cultural and mind-set challenges in scaling this across the organisation.”

While not all providers need to contemplate building bimodal capabilities organically, if a provider is targeting a customer segment that is interested in building stronger digital and bimodal capabilities, it is in their best interest to identify how best to transform. CEOs and business unit leaders need to recognize the need for deep change and accelerate investment in digital services and its unprecedented opportunities.

“Realize that success will be built on culture change. Strong leadership is a must,” said Mr. Da Rold. “Start with small experiential steps but keep the momentum going by transferring a sense of urgency from top to bottom and from Mode 2 to Mode 1. Use small Mode 2 proof of concept (POC) projects to influence and sell the large Mode 1 projects that will follow.”

In the next two years, many organizations will reconsider existing provider relationships while implementing their roadmap to implement bimodal IT and adaptive sourcing. A layered approach to sourcing decisions is driving organizations to evolve: new models, including MnAs, industry associations or consortia, and crowdsourcing; new channel partners, including independent software vendors, IT, operational technology, the Internet of Things and industry-specific partners and new providers, including startups and smaller, nimbler and more focused providers.

In a similar way, service providers looking to differentiate themselves in the market and evolve rapidly toward a bimodal approach must create a practical roadmap of the many changes required for a successful bimodal transformation. When providers make the decision to embrace a bimodal work style and capabilities, they must also consider the overall go-to-market, sales and partnering strategy as well. Providers that fail to co-innovate with their customers will not realize the full potential of digital business.

Service Providers that demonstrate understanding, alignment and prioritization of both Mode 1 and Mode 2 initiatives will accelerate their relevance and exploit large opportunities. “Winning providers will co-innovate with customers, get linked into their POC and pilots, and ramp up in influence, volumes and large-scale Mode 1 transformation and modernization projects,” said Da Rold. “Providers that are unable to meet Mode 2 business buyers' expectations of speed, trust and credibility will face a market of cost-reduction-oriented services, frozen IT budgets and high competition for traditional spending.”