Automation Anywhere Unveils Industry’s Most Comprehensive Global Customer Success Program

Company reinforces its “customer first” commitment with a fully integrated program delivered by the largest dedicated customer success team in the RPA industry

Automation Anywhere, the largest enterprise software provider in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), has announced the formal launch of its global customer success program – Automation Anywhere Plus. This umbrella program combines a wide range of existing services with newly introduced offerings, delivering the most comprehensive set of services and the industry’s largest team completely dedicated to customer success. 

Automation Anywhere Plus will continue to support Automation Anywhere’s Intelligent Digital Workforce Platform, which is the most widely deployed worldwide with more than 930 enterprise customers, and the only platform in the industry with built-in RPA, cognitive and analytics capabilities to provide a complete enterprise solution.

“’Customer first’ is more than the core philosophy that underpins everything we do at Automation Anywhere. It has been the driving force that has shaped our culture, our business practices, our product and our customer services since our founding 14 years ago,” said Rushabh Parmani, Co-founder and Senior VP of Customer Success and Operations. “With Automation Anywhere Plus, we now combine the wide variety of services we offer into one overarching program that ensures our customers experience a seamless onboarding process, the shortest time to value and the organization-wide scalability that is expected from an enterprise-grade RPA solution.”

Industry’s Largest Customer Success Team
To provide round-the-clock support to its community of over 930 customers, Automation Anywhere has put together the largest customer success team in the industry. In addition to 24/7 global customer support, the team offers onsite support and an extensive self-service knowledge-base, created by the industry’s leading RPA experts combined with the knowledge and experience from Automation Anywhere’s global customers.

Automation Anywhere has also dedicated a unit of its global development team to customer support. Known as ‘Customer Success Engineers,’ the members of this team are highly skilled RPA developers who provide on-going support and assistance helping customers achieve bot velocity and scale with unprecedented speed, ease and efficiency.

Customer Success Manager: A Single Source of Truth
Every Automation Anywhere customer has a single point of contact with a dedicated Customer Success Manager who delivers a seamless, unsurpassed experience. The Customer Success Manager handles the end-to-end customer experience – including onboarding, issue resolution, training and product upgrades – ensuring timely responses and providing a single source of truth for the customer. The Customer Success Manager acts as their client’s advocate within Automation Anywhere and their performance is measured by a single KPI – their customer’s satisfaction measured quarterly via Net Promoter Score.

 “Automation Anywhere’s customer success program is top-notch – we’re especially impressed with our dedicated CSM and the experts we’ve worked with on the professional services team,” said Prateek Kapoor, Global Finance Lean Digital Transformation Leader at Juniper Networks. “Knowing we have the 24/7 support we need means we can scale our automation programs even faster and without headaches. We would not be as far along today without the help and guidance of the Automation Anywhere evangelist.”

Fantasy Sports Affirmed as a ‘Game of Skill’ in India

India’s first report on 'The Laws Relating to Fantasy Sports Games in India’ was unveiled at IFSG's GamePlan 2018.

 The Indian Federation of Sports Gaming (IFSG), India’s first industry body formed for protecting consumer interests through the self-regulation of the Sports Gaming industry, has unveiled India’s first ever report on the ‘Legality of Fantasy Sports in India’.

 An initiative of the Sports Law and Policy Centre, the legal report brings contributions from experts in sports and gaming laws from India’s leading law firms like Nishith Desai Associates, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Khaitan & Co. & LawNK.  This report delves into the skill element of Fantasy Sports games, need for self-regulation by online Sports Gaming companies, the use of third-party intellectual property in Fantasy Sports games and the recent developments in the Supreme Court of India relating to the determination of Dream11’s Fantasy Sports format as a game of predominant skill.

On unveiling the report, Harsh Jain, Chairman of IFSG & Co-Founder, CEO of Dream11 said, “We welcome the Court’s judgements which legitimise our format of online fantasy sports gaming in India as a ‘Game of Skill’. As we continue to grow exponentially, we believe that self-regulation is the way ahead for the online gaming industry. Committed to this, IFSG aims to collaborate with all stakeholders to protect the interests of Indian users by implementing best practices for responsible gaming throughout the industry.”

On the launch of the legal report, Nandan Kamath, Principal Lawyer - LawNK & Researcher - SLPC said, “The recent developments in the courts are an encouraging sign for the Fantasy Sports ecosystem in India as it shows the willingness of Indian Courts to carefully and favourably evaluate game formats on criteria of predominance of skill. The SLPC report is a collaborative effort by leading law practitioners which aims to document the state of the law relating to online Fantasy Sports gaming and lend clarity to the industry. We hope this empowers the entrepreneurial spirit and benefits and protects the interests of the wide variety of stakeholders involved with Fantasy Sports games, including operators, fans, players and governing bodies.”

The Fantasy Sports ecosystem has been growing exponentially in India over the last few years. From 20 lakh users in 2016, the base has grown to over 2 crore Fantasy Sports users in 2018, with estimated projections of over 10 crore Indian sports fans playing Fantasy Sports by 2020. India now has 56 Fantasy Sports operators, with 2017 alone seeing 30 new entities entering this exciting space. Popular sporting tournaments such as the IPL, NBA, ISL, PKL and others are increasingly relying on fantasy sports as their primary tool for fan engagement.

ServiceNow Launches New R&D Centre in HITEC City, Hyderabad, India

The new innovation center in Hyderabad significantly expands ServiceNow’s local operations, and will support global R&D efforts in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and excellence in product engineering

 ServiceNow today announced further investment in Indian talent and technology with the opening of its new Hyderabad R&D Centre, located in the heart of the HITEC City’s premium IT park, Madhapur.

The new centre is ServiceNow’s first R&D operation in Asia and will support ServiceNow’s continued growth, with the company aiming to reach $4 billion in annual revenue in 2020. Serving regional and global clients, the facility will be home to product engineering teams developing ServiceNow’s next generation AI and machine learning capabilities.

The opening of the centre will double the number of ServiceNow employees in Hyderabad, with space for up to 1,000 staff. The Hyderabad office and Bengaluru operations represents ServiceNow’s largest R&D center outside the US.

The facility will significantly expand the Product Engineering, Product Management, Applications Development, Service Engineering, Product Operations and Customer Support teams in the region, covering all areas of ServiceNow’s product offerings including IT service management, human resource service delivery, customer service management and security operations. It will also house local HR, finance, sales and leadership teams.

Mitch Young, VP & GM of APJ, ServiceNow said: “Hyderabad is one of the region’s most exciting technology centres that has rapidly established itself as a global software development hub. With access to world-class talent, superior infrastructure and a thriving technology sector, the city is a perfect match for ServiceNow’s continued growth and investment in the region.

”The opening of this centre reflects our commitment to engineering excellent and creating a world class team to support our product development, which is critical to maintaining our rapid company growth.

“Our success in the market has been underpinned by a multiplying customer base and a stronger enterprise ecosystem in India. With continuing technological advancements and the swell of data businesses must manage, finding new ways to enhance productivity will be core to business success and economic growth. The opportunity for Indian organisations is vast and only growing, and the new centre represents an important step as we continue to expand across the region,” Mitch concluded.

Key Developments
·         Growing from just two employees in Hyderabad in 2013 to over 500 today, the new centre will be doubling floor space in the city from 66,000 sft to 132,000 sft
·         The expansion will bring up the number of ServiceNow offices to three in India
·         The India business supports a range of commercial and enterprise customers across all major industries

Juniper Networks and The Satellite Applications Catapult Build 5G Testbed for Mobile and IoT Services for UK Critical Infrastructure

Juniper Networks, an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, today announced that The Satellite Applications Catapult, a UK-based  technology and innovation company, has selected Juniper to construct a secure, end-to-end network infrastructure in support of their 5G testbed.

Specifically, the testbed creates a secure, network infrastructure to foster the innovative use of 5G, providing ubiquitous connectivity across terrestrial and satellite communication in support of mission critical applications including use cases for IoT, autonomous systems and e-health initiatives.

Juniper’s News Highlights.

The 5G testbed is due to be officially opened in April 2018 and brings together leading academics and key industry partners towards a shared vision to help define and develop the next-generation of terrestrial and satellite 5G infrastructure and applications.

The testbed infrastructure brings together a range of Juniper’s technology and solutions, including routing, switching, security and software-defined networking, as well as network functions virtualization (NFV), mobile edge computing and software orchestration in the core. There will be a presentation of the project in Juniper’s booth (Hall 2, #2J60/ 2J61) at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona.

Once completed, the testbed could be used for collaborative development projects such as those recently proposed by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). This will enable Juniper and The Satellite Applications Catapult, to support other partners to realize the 5G ambitions of the UK Government.

“Communication infrastructure services underpin the development of many next generation innovations and satellite connectivity is a critical element. The two cannot develop independently from one another. 5G underpins the overall agenda for better connecting digital infrastructure to data sharing devices across the country and hence is a key part of UK Government digital strategy. Juniper Networks’ role in helping The Satellite Applications Catapult’s involvement in 5G has been instrumental in helping us deliver on these next generation communication infrastructure advances and data services innovation,” says Kieran Arnold, Director 5G at The Satellite Applications Catapult

“The deployment and use of 5G testbeds is crucial to enabling the early engagement of infrastructure end-users to provide a way for them to shape the way services will be delivered by 5G infrastructure. Having the opportunity to provide many of the key components that enable that delivery in a seamless and secure way is a fantastic way to showcase how Juniper is providing a simplified answer to an incredibly complex problem,” says Tom Ruban, chief technology officer EMEA at Juniper Networks

Reliance JIO and Cisco Continue Co-Innovation For Multi-Access Edge Computing

Video will comprise 82% of all IP network traffic by 2021, as more people are watching on multiple screens. This presents unique challenges for mobile operators, including w to scale their networks to handle all this video traffic and how to manage a profitable business around video.

To address the changing dynamics of network traffic, Reliance Jio and Cisco’s strategic relationship scales across multiple domains and technology areas. Over the past year, Reliance Jio’s Cisco-powered, all-IP network has grown significantly in size, and with new growth is further expected to see tremendous growth over the next several months.

Cisco and Reliance Jio are now working together to leverage  the power of multi-access edge computing, beginning with a use case to further optimize and enhance video experience over the network by developing a mobile content delivery network (CDN). In this concept, the CDN is integrated into the mobile LTE network with edge caches in close proximity to the mobile users. With a mobile CDN, the mobile operator can deliver content via edge cloudlets to provide a better user experience with lower latency and higher performance. 

Mobile Video Delivery From the Edge
For the prototype, the companies used a combination of IP address management techniques based on the mobile core, requiring tight integration between edge cache, mid-tier cache, and the traffic router in the Cisco Open Media Distribution system. The mobile core and the Cisco Open Media Distribution were combined into one system level solution for the CDN embedded in the mobile network.

To solve the problem of user plane selection, they used a technique called Control/User Plane Separation (CUPS) as defined in 3GPP R14[2] (Third-Generation Partnership Project R14 standards release). Cisco and Reliance Jio also solved the issue of assigning a geographically appropriate IP address to the mobile device and the issue of handover resiliency in the face of IP address changes on the client side and the CDN cache site without change or disturbance to the current services.

“Reliance Jio is  always about innovation and disruption, and multi-access edge computing enables a new way to deliver a broad range of media and mission critical services with enhanced customer experience with improved network efficiency,” said Mathew Oommen, president, Reliance Jio. “Reliance Jio and Cisco continue to drive advancements in technology and create unique best practices for service aware networking, and this joint collaboration on edge computing is another example of our effort to constantly reinvent the network and the services.”

“Reliance Jio marked many innovation milestones with Cisco on the buildout of its LTE network, and that was just the tip of the iceberg,” said Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president, general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco. “With this multi-access edge computing demo, we are showcasing the possibilities enabled by edge computing to deliver premium-quality mobile entertainment experiences to RJIO customers.”

The companies are demonstrating this concept at Mobile World Congress, in the Cisco booth in Hall 3 Hybrid Hall, #3E30.

Cisco is leading the disruption in the industry with its technology innovations in systems, silicon, optics and security, and its unrivalled expertise in mass-scale networking, automation, optical, cable access, video, and mobility. Together with its portfolio of professional services, it can enable service providers and media and web companies to reduce cost and complexity, help secure their networks and grow revenue. 

Airtel and Huawei Conduct India’s First Successful 5G Trial Network

In a major milestone for Indian telecom, Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) and Huawei announced that they have successfully conducted India’s first 5G network trial under a test set up. 

The trial was conducted at Airtel’s state-of-the-art Network Experience Centre in Manesar (Gurgaon). The setup included 5G RAN operating on 3.5 GHz band, 5G Core and 50GE Network Slicing router.

During the test trial, a user throughput of more than 3 Gbps was achieved using the setup. This is the highest measured throughput for a mobile network in 3.5 GHz band with 100MHz bandwidth and end-to-end network latency of approximately 1 msec.

The setup demonstrates high spectral efficiency and potential for diversified services such as IoT and AR/VR, which can be delivered by 5G technology to serve a digitally connected world.

Abhay Savargaonkar, Director – Networks, Bharti Airtel said, “This is small but a very significant step in our journey towards 5G. The promise of 5G is endless, it will be a game changer and, it will change the way we live, work and engage. We’re moving quickly to begin collaboration towards 5G interoperability and development testing (IODT) based on the 3GPP R15 standards. We look forward to work closely with our partners for developing a robust 5G ecosystem in India.”

5G R15 is focusing on eMBB, laying the key building blocks to support services like virtual reality, ultra high definition immersive video and diversified long tail of future use cases and innovations. 3GPP completed the first drop of 5G New Radio (NR) standards in December 2017.

"We have been focusing on developing 5G ecosystem and use cases, and the show with Bharti Airtel impressively demonstrates the performance capability of 5G in 3.5 GHz band. We shall also continue to work with Vertical Industry players to develop wider ecosystem use cases beyond enhanced mobile broadband." says Emmanuel Coelho Alves, Director, Wireless Marketing, Huawei HQ.

KNOLSKAPE Releases AktivLearn Ver 2.0, Gamified Learning and Engagement Platform

KNOLSKAPE, a leading provider of talent transformation solutions for the modern workplace, have announced the release of a major update to AktivLearn, the advanced gamified learning and engagement platform. The updated version enhances its core reporting and analytics features for learners and the Learning and Development (L&D) team. The new version will also boost overall user experience through faster response time, improved navigation and additional learning analytics.

The highlights of this release are:
Wholly integrated web and mobile usage analytics on a single platform
5x faster response time
Integrated Action Learning Projects
Real time monitoring of learning journeys and ALPs
Participation analysis from a single learning component to the overall learning journey, including usage status, platform adoption, region, and learning patterns
Easy-to-navigate admin mode for clients to trace their employee engagement and advancement.
Advanced leaderboards and ability to monitor individual users, including identification  of outliers and actions to improve program effectiveness

Comprehensive reporting and analytics, including inputs on journey completion, number of active users, number of active courses, adoption of mobile learning components, heat maps and module level data, to name a few

Real time feedback on learner experience
Vijay Kalangi, Chief Technology Officer, KNOLSKAPE says, “Organizations are becoming more and more data driven, and as the leading provider of talent transformation solutions, it is but natural for KNOLSPAKE to push the boundaries on providing industry best experiences for learners and L&D teams alike, while take learning analytics to the next stage. Our new release of AktivLearn includes important features and analytics to help HR and L&D teams take more data driven decisions.”