Cisco Brings Out Vision to Accelerate Digital Transformation of Telangana

Cisco has announced a series of strategic initiatives to help accelerate the digital transformation of Telangana. Digital disruption is a reality and is transforming every country, state and city.

A digitized state aims to drive GDP growth, create jobs and foster innovation, enhance education, stimulate entrepreneurship, accelerate business innovation, develop economic cluster initiatives, and support infrastructure. Toward that end, Cisco and the Government of Telangana have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which includes the Digital Zone smart city project in Hyderabad, establishing an Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Hub and a Living Lab near Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad, a Center of Excellence and Living Lab in T–Hub premises, the largest building in India to be entirely dedicated to entrepreneurship, remote education in 10 schools in Karimnagar, and deploying digital solutions at the historical landmark monument of Hyderabad, the Qutubshahi tombs.

The MoU between Cisco and the Government of Telangana was signed today as part of the IT Sectoral Policy Launch event in Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad, in the presence of the Honorable Minister of IT EnC, MAandUD, Industries and Commerce, Mines n Geology, Public Enterprises and NRI Affairs K. T Rama Rao, other government dignitaries; and Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC.

Partnership with Government of Telangana to deploy Digital Zone Project

As part of the Digital Zone project, Cisco will deploy City Digital Platform (CDP) in the 2.2 km area near Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad, including smart Wi-Fi, smart parking, smart lighting, traffic analytics at key junctions, Remote Expert for Government Services (REGS), smart environmental sensors, smart waste management, and a smart control center to monitor and manage the city with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

In the Digital Zone project, Cisco will collaborate with local ecosystem solution providers to build a scalable model for the effective rollout of city services across the state of Telangana. This project will utilize Cisco’s global expertise and intellectual property in the areas of IoT, mobile technology and applications, cloud computing, data analytics, social media, energy, and lighting solutions. Cisco will also engage with ecosystem partners in the state to develop new applications specifically for Indian smart cities and collaborate with the state for its upcoming smart cities in Telangana.

Boost Research and Local Innovation in Telangana

Cisco will set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and a Living Lab on the T-Hub premises to foster regional innovation, and will enable partners and startups to build solutions around IoT and cyber security and engage in rapid prototyping. This will also act as a platform to bring startups, accelerators, developers, researchers, ecosystem partners and the venture community together to showcase possibilities of the Internet of Things. In the CoE, Cisco would showcase its global smart cities platform, “City Digital Platform (CDP),” which can integrate various smart city services onto a unified platform along with Cisco Collaboration solutions and Cisco Mobility Services Engine.

The Cisco CoE will be hosted in the IIIT campus in T-Hub, which is part of the state-of-the-art 70,000-square-foot building called Catalyst, the largest building in India to be entirely dedicated to entrepreneurship. T-Hub’s mission is to catalyze the growth of Hyderabad into one of the most vibrant startup communities in the world.

Delivering Remote Education in Telangana

The vision of the state government of Telangana is to bring the best education to all the students across the state and bring in the best of faculty remotely to every school in the state. Toward that, the Government of Telangana will collaborate with Cisco to help deliver remote interactive education bringing in benefits of virtual expert learning.

Cisco will set up virtual video-based classrooms in 10 remote schools in Karimnagar district for inter-school learning. The solution will connect the district school to the remote schools for the sharing of faculty. Cisco will deploy the solution to connect these schools over HD-quality video conferencing to share the faculty across the connected schools. The solution will also enable digital sharing of content, live streaming, recording, creation of a repository and accessing the content on demand.

Partnership with Government of Telangana to digitize historical Qutubshahi tombs – in Hyderabad.

As part of the digital blueprint of the state of Telangana, Cisco will collaborate with the government on developing smart city infrastructure in Telangana to transform itself into a digital state of the future. Cisco will digitize one of the most important landmarks and monuments of Hyderabad - the Qutubshahi tombs close to the Golconda Fort. Cisco will deploy digital solutions to enhance the experience of visitors to the Qutubshahi tombs and boost tourism in the state. Cisco will also deploy public Wi-Fi, surveillance, smart lighting and smart parking solutions to provide visitors and citizens details of each of the monuments in the area. The solutions will cover 3 acres of the monument site.

Honorable Minister of IT EnC, MAUD, Industries and Commerce, Mines n Geology, Public Enterprises and NRI Affairs K. T Rama Rao, said, “Hyderabad has a rich past of attracting investors for its geographical location, its culture, the suitable weather, excellent connectivity, the infrastructure and most importantly the government’s vision to digitally transform the state and rollout initiatives to help the industry. My vision for the state is to continue that rich legacy of making Hyderabad the most preferred IT destination in the world and expand it to the rest of Telangana. I envision digitally empowering every citizen of the state, enhancing quality of life of citizens, accelerating economic competitiveness, boosting local innovation and becoming a knowledge and technology hub of the country. We are happy to partner with Cisco for this transformative project, and we believe Cisco’s global experience and expertise in digitization will benefit Telangana immensely and catapult the state to the forefront of the digital revolution.’’

Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC, said, ‘“Digitization will be key to how cities, communities and countries maintain global competitiveness, increase GDP growth, foster innovation and create new jobs. The government’s vision to transform Telangana into a digital state is visionary and will create huge opportunities for the state, its citizens and the nation. We are thrilled to partner with the government of Telangana and are committed to help make Telangana a truly digital state in India.”

Smart Innovations Leads to Smarter Devices at Astrum India

Astrum Holdings, the company dedicated in creating intelligent products for use with computers, tablets and mobiles, announced its Smart range of products designed to transform people's lifestyle and further surge everyday experience. The debut into this range of offerings with practical innovations infused throughout, Astrum's products will be unveiled in near future.

Markets and Markets research report says that, smart device market which includes home appliances, kitchen appliances, technology, end user is to reach USD 37.2 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 15.4% between 2015 and 2020. And according to IDC, approximately, 11billion devices are connected to internet now, and the figure is expected to nearly triple to 30 billion by 2020 and then nearly triple again to 80 billion five years later.

"As smart devices become more prolific in the home, we at Astrum wanted to offer products which reflect our assurance to our customers, an easy, affordable and better quality lifestyle. Aligned with the objective of connecting and enhancing the active lifestyle, the products are designed to involve and empower the rural, semi urban and urban population of India," said Rohit Agarwal, CEO at Astrum Electronics India Pvt Ltd. "With the evolving and ever-changing market scenario, we are looking forward to continuing our growth and serve Indian customers with the best and top-notch technology products."

Astrum Electronics' Smart Devices line ups

• Smart Gadgets: SC170, SC120, DR080, DR130 & VR210
• Selfie Stick: SS110, SS150 & SS160
• Smart Deodorizer: SD 300
• Smart Security: AL100, AL150 & SL210
• Smart Health: SB100, SB110, SW130, WS040, WS050, WS100 & WS150

 Headquartered in Hong Kong, Astrum is engaged in manufacturing of top in class products and also involved with leading ODMs for exclusive design and manufacturing of products. They are member of the Apple MFi program and have been developing Apple MFI certified lightning connectors, supporting all the Apple devices in any versions. The company's products are sold in over 20+ countries and undergo extreme research and development prior to manufacturing, ensuring only the absolute highest quality tech accessories reach consumers worldwide. Astrum envision itself as undisputable and most reliable brand in providing innovative technology, designs and high quality assurance products with stable quality to meet and satisfy the ever-changing market.

Global Public Cloud Services Market to Grow 17 Percent in 2016

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.2 percent in 2016 to total $208.6 billion, up from $178 billion in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), which is projected to grow 42.8 percent in 2016. Cloud application services (software as a service [SaaS]), one of the largest segments in the global cloud services market, is expected to grow 21.7 percent in 2016 to reach $38.9 billion.

"Growth of public cloud is supported by the fact that organizations are saving 14 percent of their budgets as an outcome of public cloud adoption, according to Gartner's 2015 cloud adoption survey," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. "However, the aspiration for using cloud services outpaces actual adoption. There's no question there is great appetite within organizations to use cloud services, but there are still challenges for organizations as they make the move to the cloud. Even with the high rate of predicted growth, a large number of organizations still have no current plans to use cloud services."

IT modernization is currently the top driver of public cloud adoption, followed by cost savings, innovation, agility and other benefits. The focus on IT modernization indicates a more sophisticated and strategic use of public cloud services. Not only are public cloud services being used to recognize the tactical benefits of cost savings and innovation, but they are also being used to establish a more modern IT environment — an environment that can serve as a strategic foundation for future applications and digital business processes.

Security and/or privacy concerns continue to be the top inhibitors to public cloud adoption, despite the strong security track record and increased transparency of leading cloud providers.

"Gartner's position on cloud security has been clear — public cloud services offered by the leading cloud providers are secure. The real security challenge isusing public cloud services in a secure manner," said Ed Anderson, research vice president at Gartner. "More education is needed to help organizations overcome the hype associated with security concerns. This should be a key area of focus for providers in working with their clients to unlock the benefits of public cloud services."

Most organizations are already using a combination of cloud services from different cloud providers. While public cloud usage will continue to increase, the use of private cloud and hosted private cloud services is also expected to increase at least through 2017. The increased use of multiple public cloud providers, plus growth in various types of private cloud services, will create a multicloud environment in most enterprises and a need to coordinate cloud usage using hybrid scenarios.

Although hybrid cloud scenarios will dominate, there are many challenges that inhibit working hybrid cloud implementations. Organizations that are not planning to use hybrid cloud indicated a number of concerns, including: integration challenges, application incompatibilities, a lack of management tools, a lack of common APIs and a lack of vendor support.

"Of course in the case of hybrid cloud, these top concerns also highlight some of the top opportunities for providers," said Mr. Anderson. "We know that public cloud services will continue to grow. We also know that private cloud services (of various types) will become more widely used. Therefore, providers must focus on the top hybrid cloud challenges to be successful in meeting the growing demand for hybrid cloud solutions."

Overwhelming Response on Day 1 for Indiabulls Housing Finance’s Public Issue of NCDs

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ndiabulls Housing Finance Limited,  a laeding housing finance company of the country saw an overwhelming response with more than 190% subscription on the base issue of Rs. 3500 crore. The company has decided to close its public issue of NCDs on Friday September 16, 2016, the 2nd day since opening and nearly a week ahead of the scheduled closure on September 23, 2016.

The issue opened to an overwhelming response with a base issue of Rs. 3500 crore, and the option to retain an equal amount from oversubscription. The issue had been oversubscribed by over 138% within minutes. Offering secured and unsecured bonds with interest rates ranging from 8.55%-9.15% for 3-year, 5-year and 10-year tenures, Indiabulls Housing Finance has leveraged its strong credit position to attract investors to buy into stable and appreciating investments.

Extremely encouraged by the response on the first day, Gagan Banga, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited said, “We thank our investors for placing their trust on us. We uphold the value of our stakeholders above all else and will ensure greater value for them. This issue will not only diversify our borrowing portfolio, but it places us perfectly to launch forward and capitalize on a period of immense potential ahead.”

The company has since 1st July 2016 privately placed Rs. 7,180 crores of NCDs. Indiabulls Housing Finance is also only the second housing finance company to have raised masala bonds of 1,330 cr at 8.567%, recently. The NCDs have been rated as “CARE AAA” by CARE and “BWR AAA” by Brickwork.

The proceeds raised through this issue will be used for onward lending, financing, and for repayment of interest and principal of existing borrowings of the Company and for general corporate purposes.

Yes Securities (India) Limited, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited, A. K. Capital Services Limited, Axis Bank Limited, IIFL Holdings Limited, INDUSIND Bank Limited, SBI Capital Markets Limited, Trust Investment Advisors Private Limited were the lead managers to the issue. 

IDBI Trusteeship Services Limited is the Debenture Trustee, while Karvy Computershare Private Limited is the Registrar to the Issue.

Now An Mobile App to the Rescue of Diabetic Patients in South India

An App to help the diabetic patients who can get assistance through video clinic. Yes. First video clinic of South India for Bariatrics will be launched by Tulip’s Bariatric and Diabetes Surgery Centre. This will help patients to get expert advice and consultation on finger tip.

Highlight of this video clinic is that this pioneering “Connected Care” is combining expertise in healthcare, biomedical devices and information technology to deliver high-quality service and care to patients.

Dr Tulip has been a leader in adopting technology to deliver health care in a better way. With expensive experience of performing obesity and diabetics surgeries during the last 10 years, Dr Tulip’s has now established the first ever surgical center in south India, totally dedicated for this purpose. She is now going further to help patient to reach her with ease by establishing a video clinic.

Why this video clinic?

According to the experts, the main challenges that India is facing include lack of trained manpower including doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff which in turn resulted in delayed detection of chronic diseases in time.   Poor monitoring and management of these causing complications and increased need for hospitalization. As a result patients forced to shell more on health care services so much so that they are becoming unaffordable.

Technology to the rescue: but technological advancement come as a big blessings to the cores of patients now.  These technological advancement will help patients in getting easy access to doctors from the comfort of home, an online Health Record, reduce complications and cost, save time and money and convenience and comfort. 

TODS is a centre par excellence for long term weight loss solutions and diabetes remission. One of its kind in south India dedicated to the care of India's dreaded enemy -Diabetes and obesity which seems to be growing in epidemic proportions. diabetes is a major concern in India and it’s high time we address it on a broader  platform not only offering control of blood sugar but remission of diabetes. Goal is to give precision care which is possible only because we are concentrated approach. Create awareness about diabetes remission via a surgical approach - a step forward in avoiding long term complication related to diabetes.

Instead of a multi thronged approach to treat obesity and its associated comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, amnesia, joint pains, GERD, infertility, using bariatric surgery as a single solution to treat multiple problems.

Unless we have stand-alone centers dedicated to the management of diabetes and obesity surgery, we will never be able to stress upon the necessity of insurance to be made available to this very large segment of health care in society.

 SG a very innovative surgery which came up as a first step to a two stage procedure for weight loss surgery in the super obese. But this procedure is now done as a stand-alone procedure for weight loss wherein the stomach is stapled vertically to create a pouch having a volume of approx 60-80 ml. The resected part of the stomach is removed from the body.

Banded procedures like the banded sleeve gastrectomy and banded gastric bypass are add-ins to the standard procedures of regular sleeve and gastric bypass. A non-adjustable ring of silicon is placed about 3-4 cms away from the OG junction either on the gastric sleeve or the gastric pouch of the gastric bypass. This is done in an attempt to continue the restrictive element of the standard procedure even years after the surgery thus ensuring long term weight loss and avoiding weight regain.

Gastric bypass: indeed the gold standard for weight loss surgery having withstood the test of time in achieving substantial weight loss and maintaining the same. Here, we create a gastric pouch having a volume of 30-40 cc and connect it to the small intestine so that the residual part of the stomach and approx 100cms of the small intestine is bypassed.

Mini gastric bypass: another variant of weight less surgery wherein a long gastric tube is created along the lesser curve and the small intestine is attached to it approx 200-250 cms from the DJ flexure.

Ideal interposition:
This is a novel procedure where a segment of the distal ileum (small intestine) is interposed between the upper part of the jejunum or joined directly to the duodenum.

Hitachi Social Innovation Forum To Delve on Digitalization and Urban Transportation

Hitachi India Pvt. Ltd .(Hitachi India), a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. has organized the Hitachi Social Innovation Forum2016in partnership with Times Network in Mumbai towards an effort to support India’s infrastructure development. The forum was jointly inaugurated by Devendra Fadnavis, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra, His Excellency Kenji Hiramatsu, Ambassador of Japan to India, Kojin Nakakita, Managing Director, Hitachi India and M K Anand, Managing Director and CEO of Times Network.

This event served as a platform for Hitachi to bring together thought leaders to deliberate on themes pertaining to Transition from Traditional to Digital Banking, Increasing Railway Capacity and Reliability through IT and ICT, Building a Robust IT Infrastructure and Digital Transformation for India.

Devendra Fadnavis, while addressing participants said, “I would like to thank Hitachi for organizing this event at such an appropriate time. Today, technology is at the forefront, the world is transforming and disruptions are impacting the lives of people.”

He added, “The need of the hour is to promote digital communication that can integrate the country by bridging the gap between villages and cities. Every extraordinary situation needs an extraordinary solution and Social Innovation acts as a catalyst towards this. Technology is a great leveller. For instance, it can provide solutions and can transform remote villages that do not have accessibility to the world.”

Kenji Hiramatsu said, “I am very happy to be part of this event and to promote bilateral relations with India. Japan is already partnering India on various initiatives such as collaborations on high speed railway, dedicated freight corridor, global technology support to Smart Cities and Digital India initiatives. We are happy to work on more technology transfer programmes with India”

Kojin Nakakita said, “A multitude of business and developmental challenges are fast-emerging globally and in India. The question is, how do we respond to rapid urbanization, large-scale concentration of people in cities, exploring sustainable transportation solutions, efficient supply and management of water and energy and creating stronger security solutions for the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). Delivering individual products and systems to customers will no longer suffice. Today the keyword is “connecting” these products and systems through Digitalization.”

The Hitachi Social Innovation Forum is Hitachi’s global flagship event. In its 4^th year in India, the event sought to bring together influential leaders from diversified backgrounds, policy makers, domain experts and industry representatives to delve on collaborating with each other to arrive at holistic solutions for sustainable urban development.

To support the overall theme of Hitachi Social Innovation Forum an exhibition with Hitachi showcasing its diversified solutions, technologies and products such as GIS (Geographical Information System), Industrial Plant Maintenance System, Integrated CEP (Citizen Experience Platform) solutions and so on in real-time for the benefit of its visitors was organized at the venue.

World’s Premier Database Management Forum VLDB Back in India

The 42nd International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB) made its return to India nearly twenty years later at The Leela Ambience Hotel. The five day-long conference saw attendance from academicians, industry experts, and entrepreneurs. Persistent Systems was the key organizing sponsor for this event.

First VLDB conference was held in 1975 and brought to India over two decades later in 1996, where it had a great impact on the database community of the country.

The conference comprised of two keynotes by renowned academicians- Professor Ion Stoica and Dr. Anand Rajaraman. Professor Ion Stoica from University of California, Berkeley shared his insights on the Big Data revolution, while Dr. Anand Rajaraman, a well-known serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, spoke on data-driven disruption.

Besides these, the event included an array of research paper presentations, tutorials, workshops and demos.

In conjunction with the VLDB conference, Persistent Systems also hosted a day long Digital India event on 5^th September, 2016. The event aimed at addressing large-scale data problems of India due to its population and size and highlighting how technology can be instrumental in solving them.

The event was graced by Union Minister for Law and Justice and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad as the chief guest. He said, “The Prime Minister’s vision is for all the citizens of the country to be connected and have easy access to information. For this vision to be a reality, there are many India specific challenges that need to be tackled as discussed by representatives from both the academia and industry here at the Digital India and VLDB conference.  These challenges offer a unique opportunity to both the start-up community and more established players in the industry to innovate and find solutions that will disrupt the status quo while tapping the USD 350 billion opportunity Digital India holds for the technology sector.”

The Digital India event comprised of a keynote by Padma Prof. D.B Phatak from the Department of CSE, IIT-B followed by a panel discussion about India’s journey from data poor to data rich. A pan-India data-centric hackathon was organized by Persistent Systems and ACM at the Digital India event. The hackathon, which saw participation from about 9065 teams, consisted of online and offline participation revolving around 5 key themes including healthcare, employment, citizen services, social media and government and agriculture. Participants came together to build data driven applications and bring in big data and analytics expertise around the mentioned themes. In the concluding ceremony of the Digital India Hackathon, the first prize of two lakh fifty thousand rupees was won by a sensor and augmented reality based smart healthcare solution developed by Team Healthcare123.

The second prize of one lakh rupees went to Team StringIt, who developed a block-chain based election voting system.

Commenting on the success of VLDB 2016, Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent Systems said, “We are delighted to bring VLDB back in India again after twenty years and are proud to showcase an outstanding program. VLDB conferences have always been a testament to the importance of researchers exchanging ideas with practitioners. The ideas that have been exchanged during the course of the conference underline the fact that data and data driven solutions will play a pivotal role in the years ahead, including in the success of the Digital India initiative.”