Outlook for the Indian information technology (IT) sector is ‘cautiously positive’ in 2018 as challenges remain amidst prospects of greater IT spending with global and US economies improving, industry body Nasscom said.
Dismissing speculation about 2018 being a come-back year for the IT sector, the president of the industry body Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies), R Chandrashekhar, said, “That’s the problem, that people proclaim a major revival very quickly.”
“Neither was a decline predicted nor a sudden massive revival or change this year,” he told the media here.
Stating that there is always a phase-lag and that many things can happen in-between, Chandrashekhar said outlook for the current calendar year is “cautiously positive”.
He conceded that no doubt the global outlook was looking up as “the global economy, the US economy and all of that...are all looking positive.
However, it does not immediately translate into bigger prospects for the industry,” he cautioned. “It isn’t yet time to say it (challenging times) is all over....now we are seeing everything being great and all that... No,” he stressed.
The short-term prognosis for the global economy is good; US economy is doing well, which usually does translate into greater IT spending even though it may not be visible today. But the time it (IT spending) takes and to what magnitude is something which really needs to be monitored closely, he said.
‘Old challenges’ continue and none of them have disappeared, he said, adding, some of them may have abated, while some others may have reduced either in immediacy or in their magnitude of impact.
“And then there are new ones like continued small administrative actions in the US which have been there... that don’t individually have a big impact, but collectively they add up to a number of negatives,” he said.
“So, all those things are now a part of business in a global industry which is dealing with de-globalisation and anti-globalisation,” he said.
On the industry working towards more digital influence, and subsequent revenues, he said Nasscom has been consistently saying that there are only three things India needs to focus on, “skilling, skilling and skilling.”
Forbes has released its first ever list of richest people in cryptocurrency, which is topped by Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, with an estimated crypto net worth of $7.5-8 billion.
There is a huge spike in the value of the unregulated cryptocurrencies, which are ‘mined’ using secret algorithms based on the blockchain technologies. According to Forbes, the average 2017 price change of Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, three of the most common cryptocurrencies, is a whopping 14,409%.
As per the publication, there are now nearly 1,500 cryptoassets in existence, valued at an aggregate $550 billion, up 31 times since the beginning of 2017. “Fortunes of this magnitude should never be allowed to lurk in the shadows,” Forbes Editor Randall Lane said.
The list also features Joseph Lubin with crypto net worth ($1-5 billion), Changpeng Zhao ($1.1-2 billion), Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss ($900 million-1.1 billion) and Matthew Mellon ($900 million-1.1 billion).
Others in the list include Brian Armstrong, Matthew Roszak, Anthony Di Iorio, Brock Pierce, Michael Novogratz, Brendan Blumer, Dan Larimer, Valery Vavilov, Charles Hoskinson, Brad Garlinghouse, Barry Silbert, Vitalik Buterin, Tim Draper and Song Chi-Hyung. The publication noted that given the “opaqueness” and crypto’s hyper-volatility, Forbes presented the net-worth estimates in ranges.
It further said: “It’s a near certainty that we have missed some people and that some of our estimates are wide of the mark”.
Mahindra Satyam, formerly known as Satyam Computer Services, today said it has agreed to pay $125 million to settle a clutch of class action suits filed against the company in a United States District Court.
According to Mahindra Satyam chairman Vineet Nayyer, the amount will be delivered to the plaintiffs once the US Court judge gives final approval to the settlement deal, which may take around four months.
"The $125 million will come from cash reserves which are at Rs 2,900 crore at the last count. So we don't see any problem in getting money. The amount will be put in an escrow account in a few days' time," Nayyer said.
"We will have to get the Reserve Bank approval. Once the approval comes, then this money will be transferred to plaintiffs and distributed," he added. Furthermore, the company will also pay the lead plaintiffs 25 per cent of any net recovery that it may obtain in future from PricewaterhouseCoopers-related entities that helped Satyam Computer founder Ramalinga Raju perpetrate the fraud.
The Lawrence School, Sanawar (Himachal Pradesh) in collaboration with Aspire, will present an unprecedented cast for their second edition of The Sanawar Leadership Program (TSLP), a summer leadership camp (a ten day residential camp) for 10-14 year old young leaders on their 139 acres, 150 years old majestic campus in the Kasauli Hills.
The program from 19-28 June 2018 is open to Middle School students (ages 10-14) from across the country. The Lawrence School, Sanawar opened its campus to the nation through this program, to gift its legacy of creating national leaders, beyond the students who attend the co-ed boarding between Grades 5 to 12.
The 10-day residential camp from June 19-28, 2018 will help students understand and practice enlightened leadership, develop self-awareness, grow confidence, and evolve intellectually as well as emotionally through experiential learning. The Lawrence School has retained Aspire (www.aspireindia.org), a pioneer in leadership education, to build and deliver the program. Aspire has created and conducted such programs for leading schools in India, including The Doon School (Dehradun), Oakridge International School (Hyderabad) and The Shri Ram School (Gurgaon).
According to Vinay Pande, Headmaster of the school, “The Lawrence School, Sanawar, understands leadership intimately. In 2013, we became the first school in the world to send a team of students to successfully climb Mount Everest. Our motto, ‘Never Give In’ underlines the lessons we teach at TSLP. The first edition of TSLP secured very high student satisfaction rating of 4.8 on a scale of 1-5.”
Amit Bhatia, Global CEO of London-headquartered, The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment or GSG and formerly, Founder of McKinsey Knowledge Centre commented, “Our children are our future leaders. They can seize their and our futures if we nurture, groom and invest in them. Every year, I take a fortnight away from work to invest in this shared future. It’s a privilege to be part of TSLP. ”
The participants of the leadership programme experience Sanawar life under the watchful eyes of the highly experienced school teachers and staff, learn about leadership through reflective and discussion based socratic dialogue and case studies, participate in camping and other adventure activities, engage in community service, learn oratory and other communications and life skills. Most importantly through all activities and sessions, there is a common thread that will lead students towards greater knowledge and experience of values-based leadership and help them to start discovering what they can achieve as individuals and enlightened leaders.
Triansha Tandan, Chief Learning & Development Officer at Aspire, who will lead TSLP commented, “For six years, our Leadership Programs have created real impact on hearts and minds of students. We connect with students at a deep personal level, enable them to learn about their inner selves, practice decision-making, and evolve as powerful and values-based leaders.
The program will feature two TiE-Aspire Young Achievers:
• Jamuna Boro an international boxer who grew up in challenging environment in her Assam village. She won a gold medal in the 2013 at the Second Nations Cup International Sub-Junior Girls Boxing Tournament in Serbia.
• Vidya Y, is a Bangalore academician completely blind from birth. She was the first blind student to take a Computer Science major in Christ University. She received a Gold medal for topping the M.Sc. (Digital Society) at IIIT Bangalore, interned with Microsoft and founded a non-profit ‘Vision Empower’ to encourage blind students to pursue Math and Science through technology
They will lead the students towards a greater realisation of their potential, an inherent belief in themselves and the indomitable human spirit that can conquer and nurture all. In 2017, guest speakers and trainers at TSLP included Navin Gulia, author and adventurer; Abhilash Tomy, the first Indian sailor to complete a solo circumnavigation of the globe; and Bhakti Sharma, a world record holder in open-water swimming.
A participant from Blue Bells International School said, “The Best Programme in the world, I would love to come again!” Another from The Heritage School commented, “Very glad to be here. Positivity and higher thinking level.”
The participants will:
a) learn about and experience leadership through reflective and discussion based socratic dialogue and case studies,
b) participate in camping and other adventure activities,
c) engage in community service,
d) learn oratory and other communications and life skills,
e) move towards greater knowledge and experience of values-based leadership and
f) start discovering what they can achieve as individuals and enlightened leaders.
Microsoft Corp. and Red Hat Inc. have expanded their alliance to empower enterprise developers to run container-based applications across Microsoft Azure and on-premises. With this collaboration, the companies will introduce the first jointly managed OpenShift offering in the public cloud, combining the power of Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, and Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud.
"Gartner predicts that, by 2020, more than 50% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production, up from less than 20% today."
With organizations turning to containerized applications and Kubernetes to drive digital transformation and help address customer, competitive, and market demands, they need solutions to easily orchestrate and manage these applications, across the public cloud and on-premises. Red Hat OpenShift on Azure will be jointly engineered, and designed to reduce the complexity of container management for customers. As the companies’ preferred offering for hybrid container workflows for our joint customers, Red Hat and Microsoft will jointly manage the solution for customers, with support from both companies.
In addition to being a fully managed service, Red Hat OpenShift on Azure, will bring enterprise developers:
* Flexibility: Freely move applications between on-premises environments and Azure using OpenShift, which offers a consistent container platform across the hybrid cloud.
* Speed: Connect faster, and with enhanced security, between Azure and on-premises OpenShift clusters with hybrid networking.
* Productivity: Access Azure services like Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure SQL DB, making developers more productive.
When customers choose Red Hat OpenShift on Azure, they will receive a managed service backed by operations and support services from both companies. Support extends across their containerized applications, operating systems, infrastructure and the orchestrator. Further, Red Hat’s and Microsoft’s sales organizations will work together to bring the companies’ extensive technology platforms to customers, equipping them to build more cloud-native applications and modernize existing applications.
Customers can more easily move their applications between on-premises environments and Microsoft Azure because they are leveraging a consistent container platform in OpenShift across both footprints of the hybrid cloud.
The expanded collaboration between Microsoft and Red Hat will also include:
* Enabling the hybrid cloud with full support for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on-premises and on Microsoft Azure Stack, offering a consistent on- and off-premises foundation for the development, deployment, and management of cloud-native applications on Microsoft infrastructure. This provides a pathway for customers to pair the power of the Azure public cloud with the flexibility and control of OpenShift on-premises on Azure Stack.
* Multi-architecture container management that spans both Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux containers. Red Hat OpenShift on Microsoft Azure will consistently support Windows containers alongside Red Hat Enterprise Linux containers, offering a uniform orchestration platform that spans the leading enterprise platform providers.
* More ways to harness data with expanded integration of Microsoft SQL Server across the Red Hat OpenShift landscape. This will soon include SQL Server as a Red Hat certified container for deployment on Red Hat OpenShift on Azure and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform across the hybrid cloud, including Azure Stack.
* More ways for developers to use Microsoft tools with Red Hat as Visual Studio Enterprise and Visual Studio Professional subscribers will get Red Hat Enterprise Linux credits. For the first time, developers can work with .NET, Java, or the most popular open source frameworks on this single, and supported, platform.
Availability
Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is anticipated to be available in preview in the coming months. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure and Azure Stack are currently available.
Paul Cormier, president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat remarks, "Very few organizations are able to fully silo their IT operations into a solely on-premises or public cloud footprint; instead, it’s a hybrid mixture of these environments that presents a path towards digital transformation. By extending our partnership with Microsoft, we’re able to offer the industry’s most comprehensive Kubernetes platform on a leading public cloud, providing the ability for customers to more easily harness innovation across the hybrid cloud without sacrificing production stability.”
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft says, "Microsoft and Red Hat are aligned in our vision to deliver simplicity, choice and flexibility to enterprise developers building cloud-native applications. Today, we’re combining both companies’ leadership in Kubernetes, hybrid cloud and enterprise operating systems to simplify the complex process of container management, with an industry-first solution on Azure.”
SHAREit, a leading one stop content platform, announced that it has acquired Fastfilmz, one of the top movie app for South Indian movies. SHAREit’s acquisition of the number one South Indian OTT platform Fastfilmz will help expand their content catalogue and increase their regional user base in India. With this acquisition, Mr. Karam Malhotra, the founder of Fastfilmz will now become the CEO of SHAREit India.
This strategic deal will have a greater benefit for the users as they can now view their favourite films without much buffering and less usage of data. Fastfilmz, which is valued at around $13m (INR 80-100cr) and has raised $4m (INR 25cr) in last series funding round in 2017 , has always promised to add the best of titles of in its catalogue. Users can now enjoy these hit films from 4 south Indian languages whenever and wherever they want to just by accessing SHAREit app.
Jason Wang, Managing Director, SHAREit India said “We believe that in a mobile-first consumption environment like India, a platform like SHAREit is the answer to all their entertainment needs. We think adding Fastfilmz to our product will help us enhance the engagements to millions of users. We are witnessing excellent organic virality so far and are at the forefront of a secular movement in media tech, which is the rise of massive simultaneous online social communities. We are very excited to work alongside the Fastfilmz team to bring this experience to Indian consumers.”
Karam Malhotra, Founder Fastfilmz, said “SHAREit has a huge user base and their loyalty towards the platform is incredible. My team and I are thus very humbled to be given the opportunity to serve this community and be associated with a brand like SHAREit. Indian users are spending nearly 60% of their time on their phones watching videos, movies, mobile TV.Thus SHAREit’s focus and promise to provide these users a new interactive form of engaging content is truly exciting!
The acquisition supports SHAREit’s vision of becoming one stop entertainment solution by combining content, technology, and distribution in an interesting and inimitable manner. The app is highly differentiated from a slew of OTT offerings and gives SHAREit a direct distribution to complement its strong reach via social media networks. The combination of Fastfilmz and SHAREit’s media assets will ensure strong user growth and quality community engagement, which is the bedrock of any successful content consumption platform.
SHAREit has over 1.5 billion users globally and the app has reached out to more than 200 countries and regions and it is currently available in 39 languages. It is the most preferred platform for data sharing and content acquisition among internet users worldwide. SHAREit has a huge user base in India. Based on the intensive research conducted it has been noted that youngsters in major Indian cities, in the age group of 16-28 are the most active downloader’s and avid users of SHAREit.
Sameer Shelke, Cofounder & CTO of Aujas, a global cybersecurity transformation company, has been accepted into the Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.
Sameer joins other Forbes Technology Council members, who are hand-selected, to become part of a curated network of successful peers and get access to a variety of exclusive benefits and resources, including the opportunity to submit thought leadership articles and short tips on industry-related topics for publishing on Forbes.com.
Forbes Councils combines an innovative, high-touch approach to community management perfected by the team behind Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) with the extensive resources and global reach of Forbes. As a result, Forbes Council members get access to the people, benefits and expertise they need to grow their businesses — and a dedicated member concierge who acts as an extension of their own team, providing personalized one-on-one support.
“I am excited to be a part of the Forbes Technology Council, enabling me to learn from and contribute to the community. My acceptance to the council is a testimony to the value created by Team Aujas, working with clients across the globe. Participation in the council’s initiatives would further enable us to engage with the industry on critical cybersecurity transformations required to mitigate risks in the digital age.” Says, Sameer Shelke.
Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, says, “We are honored to welcome Sameer into the community. Our mission with Forbes Councils is to curate successful professionals from every industry, creating a vetted, social capital-driven network that helps every member make an even greater impact on the business world.”
