Cyber Security Awareness Program for SMBs in India from DSCI & Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin and the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) announced the launch of a new cybersecurity education program for small and mid-size businesses to help them minimize risk from online threats. DSCI promotes data protection among the Indian industry and is partnering with Lockheed Martin to heighten the cybersecurity awareness of businesses and their workforce. The endeavour will promote responsible online behaviour will provide guidance on designing secure IT systems and securely managing their online presence. The program will spread discreetly across the country through a comprehensive and interactive cyber awareness portal to facilitate the journey of digital transformation of SMBs.

The initiative includes development of an interactive Cyber Security Awareness Web Portal with resources for businesses to safely and securely manage their digital presence. It is also intended to drive engagement within the SMB community through materials for businesses to train their workforce using computer based training modules, video messages and computer games about online safety.

 The partnership also includes stakeholder engagement activities.  Under the program, DSCI will also forge alliances with relevant stakeholders including industry bodies, development centres, and technical education boards for reaching out to the target segments and ensuring impactful delivery of the program. These stakeholders will promote the program and key messages about online safety and security.

 Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) said “I am glad that DSCI along with Lockheed Martin is launching a Cyber Security Awareness Program for Small and Medium Businesses in the country. With nearly 50 million units with over 110 million employments, and contributing over one-third of the manufacturing output in the country, this sector has wide reach in large number of verticals. A program for this sector can have huge impact on a significant part of business community in the country and a step towards realizing the vision of Digital India.  I wish the effort all success”

““Digital technologies will play a key role in enhancing SMBs competitiveness and their growth agenda. As SMBs and their workforce embark on their digital journeys, they need to protect themselves against cyberattacks,” said Rama Vedashree, CEO, DSCI. “We are pleased to partner with Lockheed Martin to build Cyber Security Awareness among the SMB workforce in India. This would contribute to two strategic programmes of the country namely Make in India and Digital India

Phil Shaw, Chief Executive, Lockheed Martin India, stated, “Phil Shaw, Chief Executive, Lockheed Martin India, added, “Lockheed Martin is proud to partner with the Data Security Council of India given that the time is ripe for a national focused cyber awareness effort. Research indicates that only 23 percent of organizations are capable of responding effectively to a cyber incident yet the impact of a cyberattack could be wide-ranging and costly. With the increasingly interconnected nature of our critical infrastructure and data, organizations must approach cybersecurity more proactively than ever before in order to safeguard assets and data.”

DSCI and Lockheed announced this partnership at their flagship event, Best Practices Meet 2016, held at Bengaluru today.  The event was attended by over 300 professionals including policy makers, security experts, and decision makers from various verticals

Qlik’s Global Operations Hub in Bangalore Supports Marketing & Globally Delivery

Qlik, a leader in visual analytics, today announced the opening of its global operations and support delivery hub in Bangalore. The new facility will enable Qlik to meet increasing demand by partners and customers from around the world for its platform-based solutions. 

The state-of-the-art facility reflects the Qlik brand ethos with its open environment for collaboration. The opening of this hub is part of Qlik’s strategic growth plan to further sharpen the scope and quality of its marketing services, IT and sales operations, as well as customer support, to a rapidly growing network of customers and partners in India and other regions.

“We are incredibly excited about our new and bigger office in Bangalore,” said Souma Das, Managing Director, Qlik India. “This milestone is timely as we continue to expand our presence in India.’’

 ‘’Bangalore is a growing, vibrant city, with first-class infrastructure and talent pool, and other world-class public facilities that make it easy for companies to connect with markets globally. We look forward to growing from strength to strength with our partners and customers in India.”

 Qlik’s extensive networks of partners in India include Wipro and Tech Mahindra, and customers from a wide range of sectors such as Mahindra & Mahindra, McLeod Russel, and Bluestone.

HPE Delivers Industry First Converged System for IoT Now in India

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) unveiled the Edgeline EL1000 and Edgeline EL4000, the industry’s first converged systems for the Internet of Things (IoT). These systems integrate data capture, control, compute and storage to deliver heavy-duty analytics and insights at the edge to enable real-time decision making. In addition, HPE announced enhanced IoT security capabilities, new services and an industry leading partner ecosystem to advance the adoption and impact of the Internet of Things.

 With the proliferation of IoT devices, or “things” generating petabytes of data every day, organizations have an opportunity to quickly capture, process and analyze that data to enable real-time control and decision making. Oil and gas, manufacturing and telecommunications industries face specific IoT challenges – they need to harness data in remote environments, from windmills in the desert to smart energy grids and manufacturing plants, to drive timely business decisions. Until now, the remote data would have to be transported to a data center or cloud for analysis, which can be a slow, risky and inefficient process. HPE today introduced new IoT solutions that enable organizations to harness the power of their data by delivering real-time analytics and machine learning at the edge, where the “things” are. 

 “Organizations that take advantage of the vast amount of data and run deep analytics at the edge can become digital disrupters within their industries,” said Vikram K, Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India. “HPE has built machine learning and real time analytics into its IoT platforms, and provides services that help customers understand how data can best be leveraged, enabling them to optimize maintenance management, improve operations efficiency and ultimately, drive significant cost savings.” 

 HPE Edgeline IoT Systems: Deep Data Capture and Analytics at the Edge

 HPE is unveiling the Edgeline EL1000 and Edgeline EL4000, the industry’s first converged systems for the IoT, integrating compute, storage, data capture, control and enterprise-class systems and device management built to thrive in hardened environments and handle shock, vibration and extreme temperatures. The EL1000 and EL4000 are optimized to deliver heavy-duty data analytics and insights, graphically intense data visualization, and real time response at the edge.

In addition, HPE announced today that the HPE Vertica Analytics Platform runs on the Edgeline EL4000, delivering historical and predictive analytic insights from in-database machine learning algorithms across a broad range of IoT analytic use cases. Vertica on Edgeline brings applied machine learning to the edge to deliver closed-loop analytics that enable organizations to derive immediate insights from their IoT initiatives. In addition, to easily secure traffic back to the data center, the EL1000 and EL4000 support Aruba’s Virtual Intranet Access (VIA) VPN client. Aruba’s VIA^TM provides organizations an automated, zero-touch, secure VPN, and is available for both commercial and high-security government IoT applications.

Dynamic IoT Security

Securing enterprise networks for the onslaught of IoT devices is also a primary concern for IT professionals today. Networks need to automatically add, detect, profile and secure new and unknown IoT devices without manual intervention. With enhancements to Aruba ClearPass, IT can profile new IoT devices, enforce security policies, and exchange policy status with other security systems including mobile device management systems. ClearPass integrates with existing network infrastructures from any vendor enabling IT teams to easily automate and scale rather than become an inhibitor for new digital transformation initiatives. 

 IoT Expertise -Helping Customers Transform, Design and Run IoT

 HPE also introduced the HPE IoT Transformation workshop (TW), an interactive HPE facilitated workshop that helps customers to define their IoT vision and strategy and gain business technology alignment. This structured discussion takes a fact-based, analytical approach to help customers achieve alignment on their vision, identify current and future states, and determine a set of specific transformational IoT projects. The IoT TW is the first step in a full suite of services designed to help customers successfully implement IoT solutions based on business needs and industry parameters. In addition, HPE’s Analytic Consulting and Predictive Maintenance Services deliver advanced analytics to business processes to achieve objectives, reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

Partnerships

HPE is partnering with industrial IoT leaders like GE Digital, National Instruments and PTCas part of its go to market plan to deliver joint solutions to customers. These solutions address industrial use cases to combine the very best of Operational Technology (OT) and IT to support the aerospace, oil and gas, manufacturing, automotive and energy industries.

HPE also announced four IoT Innovation Labs and expertise across the globe. HPE and Intel operate these labs to help customers envision how IoT can be applied in their industry, build and test IoT applications, and access technical expertise. In addition, partners and customers are able to engage, interact, assess and collaborate on solutions development and their applications. The labs are now open and located at HPE facilities in Houston, Texas, Grenoble, France, Bangalore, India and Singapore.

Eight-Fold Jump to US$ 16 Billion for Indian Analytics Sector by 2025

With a focus on driving business outcomes and customer experience by way of leveraging analytical services and products, the National Association of Software and Services Companies has inaugurated the fourth edition of its Big Data and Analytics Summit 2016 in Hyderabad. Growing at 8 times the current levels, the analytics industry is expected to reach US$ 16 billion from the current level of US$ 2 billion.

Over 600+ analytical firms in India, out of which approximately 400 are start-ups, are positioning India as an emerging hub for analytics solutions for industries across the globe. The big data and analytics industry is witnessing a rapid growth driven by increased demand for cloud-based (SaaS) and predictive analytics solutions by industries such as BFSI, retail, telecom, and healthcare.

The transcension of Big Data has gone beyond disruptive, by now. Exponential growth of the number of devices, paired with the deluge of unstructured data - in the form of social media interactions, video or text - has ensured that. Being able to tap into this data and act on the insights, is a key differentiator between digital attackers and the laggards. The key to the future in leveraging big data technologies lies in the ability to harness its use in addressing complex problems. 

This rapid rise of analytics is reflecting in job creation across verticals and functions with skills from analytics, business and technology. With over 90,000 analytics professionals in India across HR, marketing, risk & security, healthcare, and verticals like retail and finance, the industry is witnessing the emergence of specialised roles like data architect, data strategist, data visualization analyst and change manager etc.

Speaking at the occasion, KS Viswanathan, Vice President, NASSCOM mentioned, “India is today amongst the top 10 destination for analytics and our aspiration is to be amongst the top 3 in the world by 2025. NASSCOM is partnering with its members to build a multi-pronged approach that encompasses – skill development, thought leadership, products and platforms to realise this vision”.

Artificial Intelligence and deep learning algorithms have advanced rapidly to enable the development of machines that can now do tasks that require deep expertise and skill. The best companies today are realizing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and investing in utilizing these algorithms in all aspects of their business. Industry will start exploring artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms for analytics and radically change product delivery to create new markets and engagement models.

BVR Mohan Reddy, Former Chairman, NASSCOM and Founder and Executive Chairman at Cyient, added, “Multiple opportunities are emerging across business verticals and are opening up large opportunities for companies in data, infrastructure, software and analytics. Of special importance is emergence of custom visualisation software, development of algorithms for predictive analytics, cloud based services and Machine to Machine Learning. The growth trajectory shows that India will soon emerge as big data and analytics hub of the world.”

Now Watch TV on the Go with New Zee's DittoTV Prized at Rs 20 Only

Zee Digital Convergence Ltd., one of India’s leading entertainment companies that has been at the forefront of innovation in entertainment, today unveiled the new avatar of dittoTV - the ideal live TV platform that allows viewers to watch their favourite programmes at the time of broadcast. Positioned as ‘DeshKaTV’, it promises to make live television available to every Indian via any device – phones, tablet or PC, at just Rs 20 per month.

The app in its new avatar allows users to access 100+ Hindi, English and regional-language channels, encompassing general entertainment, sports, movies, news and lifestyle. It is designed to deliver an affordable and effortless viewing experience and flexible viewing options.

To ensure that live television is within the reach of every Indian, it has joined forces with one of India’s leading telecom players Idea Cellular, to offer its users of 3G and 4G internet packs a free monthly subscription with every recharge. It provides its customers the ease of streaming their favourite TV channels live on their smartphones. Under a promotional offer, all Idea customers in Idea 3G and 4G provider circles will be able to subscribe to dittoTV free of cost, along with select monthly data packs, until 31st July’16.

Speaking at the launch, Punit Goenka, MD and CEO Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd said, “The digital entertainment space in India is at the cusp of a strong phase of growth. With the new avatar of dittoTV, we aim to change the media landscape to suit the evolving media consumption preferences of consumers. It will allow consumers to control where they watch television in a way that has not been possible before. We are proud to present a platform that will help scale up this transformation by making it affordable for people across a wide economic spectrum.”

dittoTV is available on Android, Windows and iOS platforms, making cumbersome annual contracts, satellite dishes and set-top boxes obsolete. The subscription charges for three months, six months and one year are INR 50, INR 90 and INR 170 respectively.

In keeping with its brand promise of being the nation’s television, dittoTV has partnered with Siti Cable and ITZ Cash to supply easy-to-use recharge cards at retail channels. The app’s adaptive technology will adjust to a range of internet speeds in order to deliver a seamless viewing experience, making it the first TV entertainment app that is customized for both urban and rural markets.

Archana Anand, Business Head, dittoTV added, “With the new avatar of dittoTV, we expect to change the way India watches TV forever. At the incredible price of Rs 20, we see dittoTV becoming a necessity and everyone’s default app on their mobile phones, allowing them to access TV just about anytime and anywhere. We see it serving as your first and only screen, as your second screen or just your TV on the go! Keeping the Indian landscape in the mind, dittoTV is also available in Hindi and will soon be available in all regional languages.”

With dittoTV, a phone or second screen is all that is needed to ensure that no one ever misses their favourite programme again.

Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular said, “With the rapid rollout of our 4G services and increased penetration of smartphones in the country, we are providing our customers an array of rich digital services to meet their demand for engaging apps and content. TV being synonymous with entertainment for the Indian masses, we are excited to partner with dittoTV to enable consumers to carry their entertainment wherever they go.”

Anupam Pahuja Takes Charge as PayPal India MD & Country Manager

PayPal, one of the world’s leading payments platforms has appointed Anupam Pahuja as the Managing Director and Country Manager for India.  Anupam is a PayPal veteran and has been with the company for over six years, heading technology for APAC.

As the MD and Country manager for India, Anupam will be responsible for all aspects of PayPal’s India business and further strengthening the company’s  operations in India. 

Rohan Mahadevan, APAC CEO, PayPal Pte Ltd said “India continues to be a key part of PayPal’s growth strategy. In India’s fast-growing e-commerce and payments market, we have enabled hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs participate in the global economy. With Anupam’s appointment as the business leader of this market, we will continue to bring our global scale, experience and risk management platforms for safe and frictionless experiences to our customers.”

Anupam has a wealth of experience in managing large-scale multinational enterprises and is an entrepreneur and innovator at heart. He was instrumental in establishing PayPal’s technology centers in India and making PayPal India one of the best places to work in the country.

Prior to PayPal, Anupam was the Managing Director for India for NASDAQ-listed SumTotal Systems, the world’s largest eLearning company. In this role, Anupam managed the company’s global product development and led sales, marketing, and professional services for the APAC region.

Anupam has founded and sold several businesses in the US and in India and serves as a Board Member for several companies and nonprofit organizations.

Anupam holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in International Business from Georgetown University.

Oracle’s Digital Hub in Bengaluru; Aims to Hire 1,000 to Drive Mid Markets in APAC

To help ensure the most simple, personalized and effective sales experience for customers and future customers, Oracle has significantly transformed and digitized its sales operations. As part of this plan, the company will build five “Digital” sales hubs placed strategically throughout Asia Pacific. Oracle also plans to hire 1,000 professionals to keep pace with continued demand for cloud, among midsize organizations.

Last year, Oracle hired 1,000 cloud professionals throughout Asia Pacific. Across Asia Pacific, midsize organizations continue to invest in Oracle’s complete cloud portfolio because Oracle offers enterprise-grade cloud capabilities that are flexible, affordable and scale over time.

Through the company’s new Digital sales unit, Oracle aims to help more midsize organizations transition to the cloud quickly and seamlessly. With the recruitment of 1,000 professionals, coupled with innovative technology and enhanced business processes, Oracle is well-positioned to make cloud purchases quicker and easier for the burgeoning mid-market. In India, Oracle will hire 200 professionals as part of this recruitment initiative.

The Oracle Digital team will leverage the most modern sales tools, techniques and technologies transform the buying experience, provide elite customer service, and deliver customized solutions.

Armed with world class training and resources like “Smart Walls” (to deliver real-time demos to customers anywhere in the world, without leaving the office), “Social Listening Hubs” (to provide the sales team with the most advanced tools to stay ahead of industry and customer trends in real-time), one-click contracts and more, the Digital sales representatives will be equipped for rapid response to customer requests and market changes. These sophisticated tools and infrastructure will be built directly into the Digital Selling hubs, new state-of-the-art Oracle offices slated for Australia, China, India, Korea and Singapore.  

“The demand for cloud is rising fast. As a result, Oracle’s cloud business in Asia Pacific has been on an upswing. Today, Oracle supports many customers in the region with our vast cloud portfolio,” said François Lançon, senior vice president, Oracle Asia Pacific. “We are going through an exhilarating phase of growth; the industry is going through a major transformation in the way IT is consumed. Cloud is the future.”

“Our new, one-of-a-kind sales unit will focus solely on supporting cloud development in Asia Pacific’s mid-market economy, which includes a thriving start-up community,” continued Lancon.

“We are witnessing one of the fastest technology adoptions in India with Oracle cloud. The combined forces of cloud, mobility and social are changing how customers want to buy and be catered to in today’s digital market place. To meet this growing demand we want a ‘quick action’ sales force that is digitally savvy and will leverage modern software tools to offer a seamless buying experience to our customers. We will train them and equip them with the most advanced tools and infrastructure to support their roles.” added Shailender Kumar, managing director, Oracle India.

In the last year, Oracle has significantly grown its cloud business throughout Asia Pacific, and helped a diverse range of organizations in their cloud journey. These companies represent large and midsize firms across industries including communications, insurance, high tech, media, financial services, healthcare, e-commerce, natural resources, and education, among others.