239 Students from 19 Design Institutes Participate in India Aerospace Design Challenge 2017

Honeywell has announced the winners of the fourth edition of India Aerospace Design Challenge, the annual competition sponsored by Honeywell to attract and develop talent in India for its growing Aerospace industry. The company announced the winners on India’s National Science Day, celebrated each year to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Indian physicist and Nobel Laureate Sir Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman on February 28, 1930.

The 2017 Honeywell India Aerospace Design Challenge drew the participation of 239 students from 19 design institutes across India. The students were charged with designing a user-friendly, enhanced situational awareness solution for Aerospace communication, navigation and surveillance. Akhil Patel and Harmeet Singh from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and Harshika Jain and Salil Parekh from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, were announced winners of this year’s contest at the award ceremony held at the Honeywell campus in Bangalore.

“I’m delighted to meet the brilliant design students at the Aerospace Design Challenge 2017. They are India’s future for building human-centered software industrial solutions for our country,” said Dr. Akshay Bellare, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Technology Solutions, India, Honeywell’s technology development and engineering arm. “As Honeywell transforms into a software industrial company with about half of its 23,000 global engineers working on software, we know that digital and physical solutions will become more and more connected to change the way we live and work. Domain knowledge will become very important, and we’re committed to nurturing Indian engineering talent and building Make in India solutions to support rapid growth in the country.”

“I’m very excited about winning the Honeywell’s fourth Aerospace Design Challenge,” Akhil Patel said at the award ceremony.  “Moreover, it is a great opportunity for students like us to showcase our design capability and how our designs can help improve existing processes and create solutions to tackle present-day challenges in India.”

Started in 2014, the Honeywell India Aerospace Design Challenge is an annual contest for college students to design innovative solutions addressing specific needs of the Indian aviation industry. More than 650 students from 20 institutes in both aviation and design fields have participated in the yearly competition.    

Three-Day Mega Science Fair at GMHP School, Jakkur to commemorate National Science Day

To commemorate National Science Day, Agastya International Foundation organized a three-day mega science fair at Government Model Higher Primary (GMHP) School, Jakkur Village in Bengaluru from February 26 – 28, 2017. The students from GMHP School displayed science models to explain complex scientific concepts through simple experiments – learnt as part of the Honeywell Science Experience program at the school.

Through its uniquely scalable, hands-on teaching-learning method, the program aims to foster child and teacher participation in experiential learning, and boost science education. To promote science education among other children, the students from GMHP School demonstrated close to 100 scientific phenomena, including solar and lunar eclipse, seasonal changes, and concepts such as pressure and volume relationship, and the formation of insulin with protein chains, at the mega science fair. More than 3,000 children, including students from nearby schools, attended the science fair and experienced the Honeywell Science Experience center and mobile science lab at the school. 

  “Peer-to-peer learning instills confidence, improves communication, and helps students understand complex scientific methods in a more agile way. As we run one of the largest hands-on science education programs for economically disadvantaged students, it becomes crucial for us to introduce unique ways to nurture creativity and boost confidence. We hope that peer-to-peer teachers will catalyze a movement across India.” said, Ramji Raghavan, Founder and Chairman, Agastya. “Support from partners like Honeywell India will continue to be critical to foster a new generation of science professionals in the country,” he explained.

Munirajappa, school principal, said, “I have seen tremendous change in the way students collaborate and learn at the science center. I think it fills a critical gap in our infrastructure and provides a great platform for students who want to acquire an in-depth understanding of science.”

Vikas Chadha, President, Honeywell India, said, “The Honeywell Science Experience not only enables students to understand complex scientific concepts, but helps them realize their natural potential for learning and prepares them for leadership and proactive community engagement.” He explained, “Being one of the world’s leading technology companies, Honeywell understands the importance of STEM education and its impact on the global economy.”

Launched in August 2016, the Honeywell Science Experience reaches more than 48,000 students and 600 teachers in Gurgaon, Delhi, and Bangalore through 11 unique experiential science centres, 10 mobile labs, and 1,100 student mentors.

Shire’s Rare Count Campaign to Personalize the Global Impact of Rare Diseases

Shire plc has announced the launch of “Rare Count” in honor of Rare Disease Day and the 350 million people worldwide living with rare diseases, which equates to nearly one in 20 global citizens.¹ It is estimated that 50% of rare diseases begin in childhood. The campaign, open for all to participate at www.shire.com/RareCount, highlights the under-recognized prevalence of rare diseases.

Speaking on the launch of the campaign on World Rare Disease Day, Vineet Singhal, Country Head, Baxalta Bioscience India Pvt. Ltd (now part of Shire) said, “Awareness about Rare Diseases in India is very minimal and there is a dire need to create awareness on the importance of timely and appropriate diagnosis that can help make difference in the lives of patients suffering from rare diseases. The Rare Count campaign in India and Globally will aim to reach out to such patients through social media platforms. As 66% of the 180 million Internet users in urban India regularly access social media platforms, we strongly feel this campaign will help in reaching out to rare disease patients. At Shire we are committed to these patients and put their wellness first.”

The Rare Count campaign applies the “one in 20” rare disease statistic to calculate the potential number of contacts in a user’s social network who could be living with a rare disease.  The shareable result represents the user’s “Rare Count” and underscores the potential personal impact of rare diseases. Anyone can go to www.shire.com/RareCount to calculate and share their individualized Rare Count through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. For every person who participates, Shire will contribute $1, up to $10,000 to each of the following umbrella patient advocacy groups focused on rare diseases: National Organization for Rare Disorders, Global Genes and EURORDIS (Rare Diseases Europe).

“At Shire, we believe that that every patient counts, no matter how rare the condition, and we are focused on championing for people living with rare diseases to ensure their distinct unmet needs are met,” said Philip J. Vickers, Ph.D., Global Head of Research and Development at Shire.  “Correct and timely diagnoses remain key challenges in the rare disease community. Our commitment extends beyond our innovative drug pipeline to our unwavering efforts to increase rare disease awareness with the goal of improving the diagnosis pathway for rare disease patients.”

Today, there are about 7,000 known rare diseases.¹ While rare disease communities are small, the overall prevalence of rare diseases may be higher than the public recognizes. Since low awareness can contribute to the ongoing challenges facing people living with rare diseases, public education is critical. Shire is timing The Rare Count campaign to coincide with Rare Disease Day, an annual awareness day focused on educating the public about rare diseases and their associated challenges.

In addition to the Rare Count campaign, Shire employees at sites around the world are honoring people living with rare diseases by leading or participating in awareness-raising activities.

“Rare Count”

Shire’s Rare Count campaign underscores Shire’s commitment to raising awareness of rare diseases. The campaign uses a social media calculator to apply the “one in 20” rare disease statistic to a user’s personal network, thereby estimating the potential number of contacts in their network who could be living with a rare disease. The calculator and results can be shared via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  The landing page also includes options to customize results by country. The personalized, shareable result represents the user’s “Rare Count.”

Next Three Years Will See Indian Inc Investing More Time, Money and Skills In Cloud

VMware, Inc.,  a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today announced key findings from a VMware-commissioned study that identifies key CIO priorities in India for the next three years. Conducted by Kantar IMRB, the study suggests how IT/ Data security is a key challenge organizations face in the mobile cloud era and how most organizations surveyed are keen to adopt cloud computing to enhance business agility and efficiency – hence information security and cloud services will have maximum impact on businesses in the next 3-5 years.

As per the research findings, even though organizations are progressively looking for a modern business environment, they are concerned about having a proper security environment in place owing to the open nature of the Internet and increasing cyber threats. 86 percent of organizations see their IT budget increasing over the next 3 years and 80 percent of businesses are willing to invest time, money and skill on cloud services.

The study surveyed IT leaders and decision makers from a number of Indian companies across various verticals, ranging from medium-sized enterprises to very large organizations. Each respondent was interviewed via a structured questionnaire on their business and IT priorities for their organizations in the next three years, including:

·         What they would like to see from IT vendors

·         The role of cloud computing in their businesses

·         Their outlook on their organization’s IT budget spend

Key insights:

·  Companies are willing to invest time, money and skills on cloud services and currently the adoption of the public cloud is high compared to that of private/hybrid cloud. Only basic data such as emails, messaging services, CRM are stored on the public cloud owing to data security concerns

o    Study findings reveal that very large enterprises (80 percent), large enterprises (83 percent) and medium enterprises (82 percent) are likely to invest in private cloud. Likewise, a high majority of them are also keen to invest in public and hybrid cloud.

o     

o    While business and performance is a key priority, the study indicates IT security is now a major concern and has gone up the business priorities list

o    87 percent of respondents in the IT/ ITeS/ Telecom sector; 55 percent of respondents in the manufacturing sector; 64 percent in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); 53 percent in government/public sector/defence; and 65 percent from other services agree IT security is amongst the top business priorities.

o     

·  Apart from CIO’s focus on IT operational efficiency and improvement of IT agility, managing security and compliance risk is gaining prominence as a top IT priority for companies

o    61 percent of respondents from BFSI and 57 percent of respondents from IT/ ITeS/ Telecom rank managing security and compliance high owing to the nature of their business.

•      Despite increase in IT budgets in very large enterprises, CIOs are unhappy as the budget is either insufficient nor aligned properly

o    Findings also indicate that respondents from the government (70 percent) and BFSI (67 percent) feel that budget for security should increase by 25 percent over the next year.

·  Losing customers’ trust and public disclosure of sensitive data are considered as main concerns by organization

o    87 percent of organizations’ security team want to have business data safe from breaches and secure against cyber-attacks

o    Organizations are extensively looking at new technology trends like anytime, anywhere any device access to business applications, enterprise mobility etc., to provide greater work flexibility to their employees

“With nearly 25 percent of all IT workloads being managed in the cloud today, and the number expected to double by 2021, it is evident that the traditional on-premises IT environment is undergoing a profound change. Today, CIOs play an extremely essential role in their organization’s IT, and it is of utmost importance to have enterprise data available always – anytime and anywhere while tightly secured,” said Arun Parameswaran, managing director, VMware India. “This study brings to light what CIOs should look out for in the next three years where new security approaches are needed as data center infrastructures increasingly move to the cloud.”

The survey was conducted from May to June 2016 across five industry verticals including Manufacturing, Banking and FSI, Government/ PSU / Defense, IT/ ITeS/ Telecom and Other services (Media, Healthcare, Retail & other Professional Services) covering Pan-India locations. Inputs were gathered from over 150 respondents across a variety of companies ranging from medium-sized to very large organizations. All respondents surveyed were IT leaders and decision makers in their respective organizations with designations that included CIO or an IT Head.

Each respondent was interviewed via a structured questionnaire on their business and IT priorities for their organizations in the next three years, including:

·         What they would like to see from IT vendors

·         The role of cloud computing in their businesses

·         Their outlook on their organization’s IT budget spend

Now ACT Internet Speeds Upto 5x in 6 Months at No Extra Costs

ACT Fibernet, India’s largest non-telco ISP and 3rd largest ISP (internet service provider), has announced upgradation of its existing internet plans for customers in the city of Hyderabad.  

At a similar upgrade in October 2016, ACT Fibernet had increased its entry level plan A-Max 410 from 1 Mbps to 2 mbps and is now taking it to a new level of 5 mbps with an exceptional download and upload limits of 60 GB each, making it the only internet package in the market to be offered at such a phenomenal value.

Likewise, A-Max 650 has been upgraded to 25Mbps versus its previous offerings of 10Mbps with new upload and download FUP of 100 GB at no extra costs. A-Max 1050 is being upgraded to 60 Mbps from speeds of 40Mbps with new upload and download FUP of 200 GB again at no extra costs.

With over 70 per cent market share in Hyderabad, ACT Fibernet is Hyderabad’s largest and favoured internet service provider that bring the best internet plans coupled with incredible speed and reliability to its customers. The new offerings will enable access to high speed and uninterrupted internet services to meet entertainment, business and utility services requirements.

Speaking on the newly introduced plans,  Bala Malladi, CEO, Atria Convergence Technologies Pvt Ltd commented, “In Line with our philosophy of offering exceptional speeds and download limits that empower our customers – we are upgrading our plans to offer the best speeds and FUP limits at exceptional value to our customers. With the ultimate objective of liberating our customers from speed and data inhibitions, our new plans will open a whole new world of possibilities such as HD and 4K movie downloads.“

Ducati Corse Races Ahead of the Pack with Accenture and Machine Learning

Ducati Corse, the racing department of Ducati Motor Holding, a world leader in sports motorcycle manufacturing, is working with Accenture to integrate Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence technologies into the testing of its MotoGP racing bikes.

Ducati Corse wants to make testing its race bikes faster, cheaper and more effective. Accenture Analytics, already Official Digital Partner to the Ducati Team racing in the MotoGP World Championship, has lately been working with them to create an intelligent testing approach with a bespoke analytics engine. Integrated Machine Learning technologies mean that the more data that enters the system, the more configurations are available for testing with increasingly accurate performance predictions. Data visualization tools designed for an intuitive user experience will allow testing engineers to interact with insights, tweaking them at any point to create a new perspective on configurations and race times. This will provide more results from fewer on-track testing sessions, saving the time, money and effort previously required for testing, and creating bikes that become smarter with every test run.

“There are 18 MotoGP tracks, and to make sure our bikes perform to their limit, we need to test as many configurations and scenarios as possible,” said Luigi Dall’Igna, Ducati Corse General Manager. “So far, we’ve seen excellent results in the lab with the Accenture solution. The ability to use existing and new testing data will help us choose the optimal configuration for our bikes. This innovative tool will make our testing a more intelligent process, helping us get the best performance from our bikes, whatever the weather or the track.”

Using data from up to 100 IoT sensors on the bikes and existing testing data, the Accenture solution will allow team engineers to create new perspectives by simulating and assessing bike performance under a range of conditions. By applying advanced analytics and machine learning techniques, simulated results based on data from previous tests run on real-world tracks will allow engineers to learn from and act on the data to optimize bike configurations for any MotoGP race. All of this intelligence is delivered at new speeds through an intuitive dashboard, enabling new dialogues and collaboration across the team. More potential configurations than ever before can then be tested, maximizing the benefits of on-track testing and gaining competitive advantage for race day.

“With this solution, Ducati Corse can operate an intelligent testing program to help deliver better race results,” said Marco Vernocchi, EALA Lead of Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital. “By simulating and monitoring a motorbike’s performance under a vast array of track and weather conditions, we’ve been able to apply machine learning integrated with IoT sensor data, to help minimize the time, expense and effort of traditional on-track testing. Ultimately, we hope this innovative solution will help the Ducati Team stay ahead in every race they compete in.”

To date, around 4,000 sectors of race tracks and more than 30 different racing scenarios have been analysed, with a wider roll-out of the solution expected. In testing, data such as engine running parameters, speed, revs and tyre and brake temperatures are collected, and the Ducati Team will use this to plan, prepare and test for MotoGP races.

Marcello Tamietti, Connected Transport lead in Accenture Digital’s IoT practice, noted: “Early results of this solution are extremely promising. The power of collating data from the bikes and earlier races allows us to compute several potential outcomes per setting, starting a new dialogue about how to get the smartest, fastest bike on the track. Test engineers can use real insight to alter bike configurations according to conditions, which could transform the way the Ducati Team operates its entire testing apparatus, adding new value to on-track, intelligent testing.”

Seclore’s New ERM Solution Release Adds Data-Centric Security Solutions

Seclore, the leader in Enterprise Rights Management (ERM), has announced the latest release of its flagship data-centric security solution. New capabilities offered provide a more seamless experience for both the sender andrecipient.

The most impactful update in the new release is the ability to edit protected documents natively in Mac. Seclore for Mac 2.0 packs in powerful new features which make the enterprise even more secure and compliant – while reducing the burden on both IT and end users. The skyrocketing number of enterprise Mac users are now empowered with the same level of data-centric security as their Windows counterparts.

“Existing Seclore users that use the Mac platform will now be empowered to do much more than just apply rights and view protected files. They can now open, edit, save, and print protected Office documents in their native Office 2016 apps running on Mac,” statedAbhijit Tannu, CTO at Seclore. “Our goal with this release is to decrease end user friction and increase adoption by enabling users to leverage the entire universe of features provided by Office when working with their protected files on Mac devices.

Additional features in the latest version of Seclore Enterprise Rights Management, include:

·         Enhanced user on-boarding - With innovative password free file access, Seclore’s pioneering user on-boarding process isnow even faster and easier. Users can open protected files immediately after a one-step email verification – no password required.

·         Upgraded user interface - Seclore’s award-winning secure browser-based viewer now allows viewing of multiple files simultaneously. Combined with additional enhanced viewing options, agentless access is an effortless process.

·         Gain access through Google account - Further expanding on Seclore’s identity federation, users can now login into Seclore automatically through their Google account making access to protected documents even faster

·         Auto-discovery of permissions - Email auto-forwarding capabilities enable the ‘auto- discovery’ of those who need access to protected content, eliminating the need to manually grant permissions to users. Forwarding a protected email automatically transfers access permissions to all new recipients, making ad hoc use of rights management while emailing a breeze. Through this feature, unregistered recipients are registered automatically, eliminating the need for manual registration.

“Our newest features form an integral part of Seclore’s vision of providing easily adoptable data-centric security solutions to organizations,” said Vishal Gupta, CEO at Seclore. “With a relentless focus on reducing friction at both the sender and receipt stages of the rights management process, Seclore is leading the way in closing the remaining security gaps in organizations’ IT ecosystems.”