Jugnoo Expands its B2B Logistics Delivery Service; Launches Dodo Deliveries in Gurgaon

Scaling its B2B logistics unit, Dodo Deliveries, Jugnoo forays into Gurgaon. Optimally utilizing its well-established network of auto-rickshaw fleet, venturing into Gurgaon is a part of the company’s natural progression. Dodo Deliveries, an on-demand, hyper-local service, is creating a marketplace which is enabling vendors to deliver products to their customers when, where and how they want to while ensuring a seamless delivery experience. This is a dual concept that only adds to the myriad of services offered by Jugnoo, but also aids the local merchants and vendors to scale their businesses.

Talking about the potential of the Millennium city, Zorawer Singh, Head of Dodo Deliveries, said, “Gurgaon or Gurugram being a rapidly flourishing market and a corporate hub, offers a lot of potential for businesses in the B2B logistics segment. Considering the growing demand in the segment, we intend to fully utilize the existing auto-supply in the region with this launch. Even though there is a lot of existing competition in the city, we are confident that Dodo can create a niche for itself and provide great value proposition for businesses. We are not limiting our services to the food space and are serving a host of other vendors like hardware shops, grocery stores, pharmaceutical distributors, retail outlets, chemists, and even florists.”

Businesses can start using Dodo's services by downloading the Dodo Deliveries App (available on Android and  iOS) and registering themselves.

Dodo has added two-wheelers and commercial vehicles to their fleet in Gurgaon, making it an omni-channel service through which vendors can customize their delivery experience.Jugnoo’s strong network of auto-rickshaws in Gurgaon currently does 5000 transactions a day in the region and therefore launching Dodo in the city is certainly a lucrative move.

Currently operational in Chandigarh-Tricity and Gurgaon, the services will soon beoperational in Noida, Indore, and Surat as well. Eventually, the service will be launched across all locations in India wherever Jugnoo is present.

Accenture & Tricentis to Bring Down Testing Automation to Enterprises Efforts by 50 Percent

Taking clients to the next level of automation with model-based testing, Accenture and Tricentis entered into an alliance relationship that integrates the Tricentis Tosca Testsuite into Accenture’s application testing services. This will help clients use intelligent testing across multiple platforms in order to launch new applications quickly and manage risk more easily.
 
Tricentis is a continuous testing company and market leader in agile software testing solutions for enterprises. Its integrated software testing solution, Tosca Testsuite, consists of a unique model-based test automation and test case design approach, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management, provisioning and service virtualization. This helps drive significant performance improvements to testing projects with automation rates that can reach over 90 percent1.

“Our approach to ecosystem innovation seeks to break the boundaries between service and tool providers, ensuring seamless collaboration so that clients can take advantage of end-to-end touchless test automation capabilities,” said Kishore Durg, managing director and global testing lead for Accenture. “This new alliance with Tricentis builds on our open testing ecosystem to bring the latest in testing automation, intelligent testing, touchless testing and digital testing to our clients.”

Accenture is incorporating the Tosca Testsuite into its touchless testing approach for enterprise applications, which seamlessly integrates the best capabilities from leading providers across the entire tool chain, beginning with requirements, to achieve end-to-end touchless test automation. Accenture has developed an industry-specific reusable testing repository comprising more than 75,000 test scenarios, scripts and conditions across 33 industries. Through a jointly developed add-in, these reusable test components can be easily imported into the Tricentis Tosca Testsuite. Combining Accenture’s deep industry vertical and testing acumen with Tricentis’ advanced model based testing experience, clients would be able to significantly accelerate their testing automation and drive down the test design effort.

For a European insurance client, Accenture used Tosca to drive innovation and agile automation across the delivery lifecycle. By providing unattended test execution for major business processes and establishing an organization-wide test factory, the insurer was able to increase productivity five-fold and reduce testing costs by over 40 percent.

“We’re pleased to expand our relationship with Accenture, which already has the most trained and certified Tosca resources in the world,” said Sandeep Johri, CEO of Tricentis. “Working together, we can disrupt traditional testing methods to help our clients deliver a seamless DevOps experience and thrive in the digital era.”

Accenture’s certified Tosca consultants also bring deep industry and business process understanding to help clients achieve end to end automation, and leverage an expansive repository of 75,000 industry-specific test artifacts to further accelerate test design.

New Range of Broadest 10TB Portfolio From Seagate Unveiled in India

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled a new portfolio of 10TB high capacity drives dubbed the Guardian Series. Purpose-built to help customers better manage and move the huge amounts of digital data they consume and create, the 10TB Seagate BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, Seagate IronWolf for NAS applications and Seagate SkyHawk for surveillance introduce new brand names and imagery and represent the most complete 10TB portfolio in the industry. The Guardian Series features industry leading technology that raises the bar on features, speed and capacity for use across a wide range of markets, including personal, creative and design computing, online gaming, small- and medium-sized businesses and large-scale surveillance systems.

“Consumers and organizations today face a similar challenge -- what to do about the massive deluge of data and video they confront every day,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president of Client and Consumer Storage at Seagate. “Whether it’s dominating in the latest game, producing compelling multimedia content, mining data to help create new apps and business services, helping to protect people and places around the world against new threats, and more, the Seagate Guardian Series is designed to preserve your most critical data and move it where it’s needed fast so you can make the most of it. By incorporating powerful new features and capabilities, our 10TB products also make it easier for everyone to create, consume and use data.”

Innovative capabilities in the new 10TB drives include multi-tier caching technology (MTC Technology), an intelligent caching architecture for maximized performance; AgileArray, designed to optimize drive performance through error recovery control, dual-plane balancing, and power management; and ImagePerfect for surveillance, supporting more high resolution cameras than any other industry drive.

Seagate’s 10TB product branding represents the next phase of the company’s new corporate brand unveiled at CES in 2015, in which Seagate introduced its “Living Logo” that visually captured the idea that data is most valuable as part of our daily lives at home and at work. The new Guardian Series product brands link this living data concept more directly to Seagate’s foundational technologies in a way that is memorable and easier for customers to understand.

BarraCuda Pro 10TB Desktop Drive

As data becomes the life blood of all online interaction and workforce productivity, Seagate has brought back its hugely popular BarraCuda brand to respond to demands for high capacity storage at an affordable price point. BarraCuda Pro combines 10TB at 7200 RPM for outstanding performance, and includes power-saving features to help keep drive operating costs low, as well as a 5-year limited warranty for peace of mind.

With its enduring legacy of PC Compute drives, BarraCuda responds to market demands for high performance hard drives that don’t sacrifice capacity or affordability. The 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch fierce BarraCuda drives offer a versatile and dependable line of hard drives for nearly every application and budget. Lightweight and robust, the 2.5 inch BarraCuda drive delivers market-leading cost/TB options in a thin 7mm form factor with up to 2TB of capacity.

Furthermore, the FireCuda SSHD combines flash with the latest hard drive technology for both 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch offerings. The FireCuda drives ignite both fantastic capacity (up to 2TB) and performance solutions (up to 5 times faster than its HDD counterpart) for gaming and creative applications.

“The Barracuda family has a rich history of delivering reliable drives at an affordable price point for our customers, who are struggling to keep up with the vast amounts of data they’re creating and consuming,” said Merle McIntosh, SVP Sales and Marketing, Newegg. “Seagate is pushing the boundaries on capacity and a cost-effective 10TB option is a product our customers will appreciate.”

IronWolf 10TB for NAS

Tough, ready, and scalable, IronWolf combines the legacy of big iron with tough, pack-leading performance for NAS applications and a wide range of capabilities designed to meet the most challenging always-on environments. NAS-optimized with AgileArray, IronWolf is built with drive balance, and is the first in its class of drives to have rotational vibration (RV) sensors to mitigate vibration in multi-drive systems, RAID optimization for best performance with error recovery control, and advance power management providing power savings in NAS. The result is power when and where it’s needed most. IronWolf raises the bar even further with multi-user technology that provides a 180TB/year user workload rate.

“It is critical for businesses with demanding data growth to select the right drive that is optimized for enterprise NAS usage and high capacity data storage,” said Jones Tsai, vice president, Hardware Division at Synology Inc. “Seagate IronWolf works seamlessly with our latest technology developments. With the perfect balance of durability and agility, IronWolf meets the requirements to support running multiple enterprise-level applications developed by Synology on NAS.”

“NAS hardware and software has greatly evolved to cover potentially limitless applications for home and business users. This evolution now calls for a new breed of hard drive that can provide the capacity, performance and flexibility for next-generation QNAP NAS,” said Meiji Chang, GM of QNAP. “IronWolf from Seagate represents a great leap forward for NAS hard drives, and we are amazed at its potential to take QNAP NAS to the next level.”  

SkyHawk 10TB for Surveillance

An industry first, Seagate celebrates its 10^th year of shipping surveillance drives with its latest 10TB SkyHawk offering for surveillance systems relying on large storage solutions for network video recording (NVR). SkyHawk drives use rotational vibration sensors to help minimize read/write errors, and can support the razor sharp vision of 64 cameras, more than any other drive on the market. Ideal for modern, hi-resolution systems running 24/7, SkyHawk drives also come with a data recovery services option for additional peace of mind.

“Seagate pioneered surveillance purpose-built drives more than 10 years ago with Hikvision’s R&D team, and today they continue to lead and partner closely with us to develop surveillance storage solutions of the future,” said RnD director Chenghua Sun at Hikvision. “With the advances in camera technology from 4k to thermal to panoramic recording, Hikvision believes in Seagate’s technology to optimize storage for highest quality recordings and to ensure customer data is safe and secure.”

“Seagate is a powerful storage brand in the surveillance market,” said James Wang, vice president of Dahua Overseas Business Center. “We’re proud to stand-by them as a strategic partner and to introduce the next evolution of Seagate surveillance storage with SkyHawk and an incredible 10TB capacity point.”

“Libraries of digital content continue to expand, both in the home and the workplace,” according to John Rydning, IDC’s research vice president for hard disk drives. “Seagate’s new 10TB HDD product lineup provides consumers and organizations with a range of capacious, on-premise HDD storage alternatives to the cloud that address a wide variety of storage use cases.”

IronWolf and BarraCuda Pro are now shipping worldwide, and SkyHawk is currently sampling to select customers with wide-scale availability to be announced shortly.

Meizu’s Flagship Smart Phone Models MX6 & M3s Soon in India

Meizu Technology (MEIZU) launched its new flagship smartphone MX6 in Beijing, China.  The handset MX6 is the first smartphone in Meizu’s much acclaimed MX-series which would be equipped with 10-core A72-based CPU to offer users high performance and processing speeds. All models under MX-Series would have 4GB RAM which will provide a seamless experience to consumers while switching between multiple apps.  

The new smartphone comes with a series of high end features like precision 5.5-inch screen, Sharp TDDI technology with improved touch sensitivity, 2.5 D front panel & camera powered by the Sony IMX386 CMOS sensor for exceptional image quality.

MX6 OS comes with Flyme 5.2.2 version based on Marshmallow with the innovative features of Cloud Permission Control, Eye Protection Mode, Auto exposure mode and long screenshot feature.     

Along with these, a smooth metal body of MX6 with a 3D nano-molded structure for a precisely integrated antenna represents Meizu’s expertise of making perfect beautiful smartphones. 

MX6 is crafted using a new metal processing technique for a sleek and elegant, yet robust appearance.  While the new smartphone remains focused to offer ultra-advanced features, careful selection of materials and use of graphite heatsinks leads to a significantly improved heat dissipation.

The new 5.0-megapixel front camera in Meizu MX6 is equipped with a large ƒ/2.0 aperture, having improved image processing algorithms which ensures crisp and detailed shots even in low-light situations.

Determined to provide users with an extended battery lifespan, Meizu MX6 comes packed with 3060 mAh battery which gets fully charged in only 75 mins.

MX6 is set to make its official entry in Indian market soon. However, last month in china, To target youngsters who seek affordable and beautiful smartphones with great specifications, Meizu launched another high end smartphone ‘Meizu M3s’  which is also expected to make an entry in India soon too.

Meizu M3s also features a smooth and delicate metal body with a 5-inch HD (1280 × 720) 2.5D curved glass display. MediaTek MT6750 octa-core processor makes it a perfect choice to experience outstanding performance. It also features Flyme 5.1 operating system, an in-depth customization from Android. 

Both the phones are available in color variants of silver, gray, gold, and rose gold

Developers, Students & Start-ups Showcase Innovative Prototypes on Crowd-Sourced at iTech 2016 Hackathon

ITC Infotech, a global scale full service provider of technology solutions and a fully owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd, successfully concluded the 2^nd chapter of ‘iTech 2016’, its annual technology innovation & co-creation platform aimed at promoting entrepreneurship. As part of iTech 2016, ITC Infotech organised a 30-hour hackathon on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) at its Bengaluru campus on July 16 and 17, 2016.

The event concluded with ITC Infotech hosting a unique ‘Showcase’ session where the winners were provided the opportunity to directly present their solutions to ITC Infotech’s biggest global customers as well as the business division heads from ITC Ltd. to explore real-time business opportunities.

The hackathon was organised for professionals, developers and students as well as talented individuals from start-ups. It provided the participants with an opportunity to develop their ideas into prototypes, addressing a host of crowd-sourced business challenges from the Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, Retail, Hospitality, Education & Stationery Products, Banking, Financial Services & Insurance and Agriculture sectors.

A total of 45 teams were shortlisted from over 1,700 entries. The winning teams received cash prizes in addition to mentorship and go-to-market partnership offers. The winners, a team of 4 students from SRM University, created a smart phone app, titled ‘Nomi’, that would re-define the shopping experience in stores. The app, designed using artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning, creates an immersive and interactive AR and VR environment to assist customers choose the right product.

The first runner-up, a team of 3 students from M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, created a Smart Helmet, ‘ridAR’, based on AR to help bikers navigate smoothly on roads. The second runner-up, a team of 4 professionals from SAP India, created a Virtual commerce platform aimed at increasing the sale of lifestyle retailing products by reaching customers through the various digital communication channels available in the market today.

The teams ranking fourth and fifth were also recognised for their AR/VR solutions in the categories of hospitality and education & stationery products, respectively. Further, 7 teams were identified and felicitated for conceptualising, prototyping and presenting business-relevant solutions.

The panel of judges consisted of business leaders from ITC Infotech’s partners and global clients, such as KONE, BAT, Microsoft, PTC and SAP Labs along with senior leaders from ITC’s businesses.

Commenting on his experience as a jury member, Jason Schern, Senior Vice President, Global Services, PTC, said, ‘It was great to see a mix of both students and professionals from start-ups applying emerging technologies and combining augmented reality and virtual reality to create business transforming solutions. I am taking back with me a really great perception of the level of capabilities of both of students and start-ups here in India. iTech 2016 made it much easier for me to understand the skills and capabilities that can be leveraged for companies like PTC global services and others.’’

Commenting on the success of the event, Sushma Rajagopalan, CEO and MD, ITC Infotech, said, "Though AR and VR technologies are still at a nascent stage, they have the potential to revolutionise customer and employee experience. The maturity of the solutions that emerged at the hackathon was indeed encouraging. In addition to selecting 3 winners, we were compelled to award prizes to the two other teams in the top 5 as well as 7 ideas that had high business relevance. Through iTech, our annual technology festival, it is our endeavour to offer a platform that will build an ecosystem of students, IT professionals, entrepreneurs from start-ups, technology enthusiasts, clients and partners and help create solutions for real business challenges. We will help the winners implement their solutions and assist them in gaining global market access in an accelerated time frame”.

ITC Infotech believes in promoting innovation and fostering a culture of entrepreneurship in the ecosystem. iTech 2016 is a step towards nurturing entrepreneurs and start-ups in creating the technologies of the future.

Deval Parikh Appointed New Chairman & Manging Director of Beetel

Brightstar Corp. has appointed Deval Parikh as the CEO and Director of Beetel Teletech Limited, a Brightstar Company, effective immediately. Parikh will lead all Beetel business lines to include the growth of handset and accessories services, sales and distribution presence, as well as the fixed line telephone, enterprise solutions and IT peripheral functions.

Parikh has more than two decades of experience in the telecommunications and technology domains in both Silicon Valley (U.S.) and India, with focus on marketing, product management, engineering, supply chain and sales. He joins Brightstar from Reliance Jio, where he served as SVP of the mobility business, and he also led the youth segment and other national and regional roles. Additionally, Parikh has had several leadership positions at Virgin Mobile USA and Virgin Mobile India, which included leading the handset, innovation and services portfolios, as well as the Pan-American supply chain and operations.

“India is a crucial market for Brightstar to continue to develop our world-leading platform for managing mobile devices across the wireless ecosystem,” said Jaymin B. Patel, Brightstar’s President and CEO. “With 4G about to take off in India, the smartphone and accessories segments are about to see one of their most rapid growth phases, and we’re now investing in the Beetel leadership team to help drive the business to its next level.”

“I am quite excited to join Brightstar India and help usher in the mobile data revolution by having a wide range of devices and telecom equipment for the Indian consumer and businesses.  This is a very promising opportunity to be part of the device ecosystem in India and I am keen to drive the business to the fullest and leverage Brightstar’s global competencies,” Deval Parikh said.

Parikh is an alumnus of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and he completed his undergraduate degree in engineering from North Carolina State University. He has also written several articles in technology strategy for publications such as the Harvard Business Review.

Two-Fifths of IT Professionals Consider Their IT Organisation Ready for Digital Business

A recent Gartner, Inc. survey found that 41 per cent of surveyed IT professionals believe their IT organisation to be ready for the digital business of the next two years. Twenty nine per cent of those surveyed said that engagement with the demands of digital business would be their primary duty or a significant part of their duties.

In the first quarter of 2016, Gartner surveyed 948 Gartner clients across 30 countries. Those surveyed were IT professionals representing many job categories and technology disciplines and were asked about their role in their organisation's efforts to transform itself in order to meet the challenges of digital business.

"IT professionals indicate that their investment priorities, infrastructure changes, skills development and business-IT interactions are in flux, and that they are unsure how their IT organisation will make it through any digital transformation," said John Hagerty, Vice President and Distinguished analyst at Gartner. "For some, change is coming too fast. For others, it's not coming fast enough. Many know they need to change, to think and act differently, but they struggle with these shifts. Many find it hard to balance today's demands — including simply keeping their organisation running — with tomorrow's must-haves."

 Most IT Organisations Are Unprepared for Digital Business Changes

Ninety-one per cent of the surveyed IT professionals are in no doubt that they have a role to play in their organisation's digital transformation. However, 59 per cent added that their IT organisation is unprepared for the digital business of the next two years.

 The latter finding highlights a real concern. Uneasiness about how well IT organisations are prepared reflects skills deficits in both technological and non-technological areas.

 Cloud Technology Will Have Most Influence on IT Professionals' Jobs

The survey found that the technology areas that will most influence IT professionals' jobs and careers in the next 18 months are considered to be cloud computing, analytics, mobility and security.

 "Emerging technologies in fields such as cloud computing, mobility, and data and analytics, in addition to security and risk management, are permeating nearly every aspect of the IT landscape," said Hagerty. "It's essential that IT professionals identify and fill the main technology- and effectiveness-related skills gaps now — otherwise, they risk impeding their organisation's progress toward strategic goals."

 The surveyed IT professionals identified the cloud as the technology that will have the single-biggest impact on their career in 2016. Twenty-two percent selected this option — a figure double that for the next most popular choice, data and analytics.

 "Acquiring cloud skills quickly is essential for IT professionals to be able to reimagine and remake their firm's IT infrastructure to better enable digital business strategies," added Hagerty. "However, it's not only cloud — there's a whole collection of technology- and effectiveness-related skills that IT professionals must plan for now."

 The survey asked the IT professionals to identify up to three skills gaps that their organisations were trying to fill in relation to information, technology or digital business. Cloud and data and analytics led the list. The respondents also pointed to gaps in general technical skills (indicating a lack of broad technology knowledge), as well as in the fields of security, legacy modernisation, mobility and the Internet of Things. "But it's not just about technology, as three of the top 10 responses were professional effectiveness skills, namely critical thinking/problem solving, business acumen/knowledge and communication skills," said Hagerty.