NetApp Data Fabric Enables Businesses to Drive Competitive Advantage with AI

NetApp, the data authority for hybrid cloud, has announced ONTAP 9.5, MAX Data, StorageGRID SG6060, NetApp Solution Support for FlexPod, and Flash Performance Guarantee. These new data services and solutions further extend the NetApp Data Fabric across edge, core, and cloud and enable organizations to fully realize the promise of artificial intelligence.

Global business value derived from AI is projected to total $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70 percent from 2017, according to Gartner, Inc.1, and IDC predicts that nearly 75 percent of commercial enterprise applications will use AI by 20212. However, even though businesses plan to use AI to create new and innovative business opportunities fueled by diverse, distributed, and dynamic data, they often find that their most valuable data is trapped in siloes, hampered by complexity and too costly to harness for resource-intensive AI applications.

“With the speed and volume of data now generated and managed across IoT devices and sensors, on-premises data centers, and in hybrid cloud environments, having a Data Fabric that spans edge, core, and cloud is essential to AI success,” said Joel Reich, EVP, Storage Systems & Software, NetApp. “With today’s new data services and solutions, integrated through the NetApp Data Fabric, organizations can accelerate data pipelines across an entire enterprise to train deep learning models and power AI applications with the simplicity, choice, and scale necessary to achieve real impact.”

Modernize Storage to Enable Data Management for AI

NetApp ONTAP 9.5 software helps companies modernize their data services with solutions that deliver leading cloud integration, the highest all-flash performance, and greater efficiency and simplicity.

NetApp ONTAP 9.5 software:

Delivers unmatched versatility that offers high performance and consistent low latency, accelerating critical workloads with industry-leading end-to-end NVMe capabilities.
Unifies data management across storage environments — flash, disk, and cloud.
Automates tiering of petabyte-scale datasets to object stores in the cloud or on the premises.
Reduces deployment costs for multisite business continuity solutions.
Accelerates read performance with cached data sets within a cluster and at remote sites.
Increases storage efficiency savings by up to 15% for relational database applications.
Radically increases performance by auto-tiering data between AFF systems and NetApp MAX Data on servers.

MAX Data allows customers to turbo charge their application performance without rewrites to application code. MAX Data is the industry’s first solution to leverage persistent memory in servers to deliver memory-like ultra-low latency and flash-like capacity.

MAX Data:

Accelerates performance of application-level data, enabling faster processing of data for AI applications and real-time data analytics.
Speeds application data recovery with data protection services for persistent memory in servers.
Improves efficiency by using fewer servers to achieve similar or better performance.
Leverages all the data management capabilities of NetApp ONTAP.

Flash Performance Guarantee:

NetApp offers the industry’s first latency guarantee that allows customers to consume AI applications with the confidence of predictable low latency. Unparalleled in the industry, the performance guarantee offers consistent latency of .5 msor less and enables businesses to reduce cost and risk by deploying flash with confidence.

Build a Hybrid Cloud Architecture for IoT

NetApp provides industry-leading data management capabilities and solution support to tap into growing data sources with virtually unlimited scalability and performance to feed, train, and operate data-hungry AI, machine learning, and deep learning applications.

NetApp StorageGRID SG6060:

Flash-accelerated object storage addresses the needs of high-performance, high-concurrency workloads for IoT, big data analytics, and machine learning environments.
Combined with ONTAP FabricPool capabilities, customers now have best-in-class data management capabilities while harnessing the value of object storage economics.

NetApp Solution Support for FlexPod:

The single-point-of-contact support team has expertise across the key components of the entire solution — storage, storage network, compute, compute OS, LAN networking, and hypervisor.
NetApp Solution Support also includes NetApp Converged System Advisor (CSA) software, which simplifies the customer’s operations and lifecycle management of FlexPod. The CSA superior monitoring and management with a single-pane view of the system’s health helps reduce time to resolution for support incidents.

KaHa Leads Strategic Multipartite IoT Innovation Lab in Singapore

Internet of Things (IoT) and smart wearable company KaHa today announced plans to open a multipartite innovation and research lab in Singapore, modelled after the network philosophy of IoT and created in response to market demands for faster development and commercialization. Public and private partners across the IoT development value chain including A*STAR SIMTech, Bridgestone, Curtis Australia, MHA Manufacture de Haute Accessoirie Partners, Tex Line and Titan, will come together under-one-roof to streamline development resulting in faster prototyping, testing, and go-to-market.

Designed for efficient multi-party collaboration, the various development stations will be onsite and in close proximity – from business to project management, hardware to software, prototyping to testing, and from remodification up to delivery. Development time and costs will be greatly reduced, for instance speeding up schedules of weeks into just days. Whereas in conventional processing, work is done piecemeal and transported partially and gradually at intervals, and delays occur frequently and are exacerbated by minor changes.

The lab’s core infrastructure is the KaHa platform and its AI capabilities. KaHa has over the past 3 years developed an architecture which is unparalleled and optimised for consumer-centric experiences like health and wellness, fitness and sports, digital payment and safety. The company has big data architecture and tools for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and recently its proof-of-concept on natural language processing (NLP). The company has also created a Network Operations Lab (NOC) that  facilitates the proof-of-concept process through real-time testing of available/simulated data with live demonstrations all within the same space. Regular reviews at the NOC will ensure data integrity and projects timeliness.

The lab is located at the vibrant one-north technology hub of Singapore and the launch is targeted for initial projects in healthcare and wellness, smart apparels, sensor hub and power consumption. The lab will also work with KaHa’s brand partners and co-plan their roadmap and play the role of bringing all stakeholders towards achieving these use case on smart wearables, as well as the building of a comprehensive healthcare IoT ecosystem capable of integrating medtech and public-private healthcare and related service providers. The pioneering partners are:

KaHa: Singapore-based and the region’s only end-to-end IoT and smart wearable platform company with patents in IoT platform architecture. KaHa possesses deep industry links, including being the strategic partner for A*STAR SIMTech and EAC flagship industry programmes.
A*STAR SIMTech: Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology develops high value manufacturing technology and human capital to contribute to the competitiveness of Singapore industry.
Bridgestone:  A Hong Kong-based watch manufacturer with International reach including its own production base in China.  The company specializes in creative design, production and sales of lifestyle and fashion watches.
Curtis Australia: With a heritage from the 1890’s, an international jewellery, watch and pen atelier known for its distinctive, handmade and desirable luxury products crafted in solid carat golds and precious gems.
MHA Manufacture de Haute Accessoirie Partners: A division of Niklaus LNI SA, established over 110 years ago on the foundation of swiss watch manufacturing, MHA is the premier Swiss designer and manufacturer of private label luxury accessories.
Tex Line: A one-stop apparel and sportswear sourcing supply chain and service provider, with reliable capability in overseeing sourcing to production and delivery.
Titan Company Limited: The fifth largest integrated own brand watch manufacturer in the world. Over the last three decades, Titan has expanded and explored into under penetrated markets and created leading brands across categories.

IoT and the smart wearables industry will touch the lives of over a billion people in the next 5 years with a market value of close to USD120B. With  KaHa’s proprietary platform coupled with the presence and expertise of local and international partners, the lab will be a driver of growth for the Singapore IoT and wearable ecosystem having a global impact. KaHa plans to hire and train locals talents and create a  strong local capability and know-how, and help strengthen the Singapore core and competitive edge for Industry 4.0.

Managed by a head of lab with end-to-end IoT experience, the lab will provide opportunities for jobs and upskilling The lab will also host hackathons and release software development kits (SDK), with the latest tools in areas including AI, Machine Learning, NLP, Big Data and health-oriented algorithms, digital payment, enabling participants to problem-solve real use cases and understand how their work contributes towards building the ecosystem.

CEO and founder of KaHa, Pawan Gandhi comments, “As a home-grown company committed to the development of the local IoT and wearable ecosystem, it’s important that we have core development capabilities here in Singapore that can capitalize on opportunities and respond to market demands quickly. We are also actively engaging ETPL, the commercialization arm of A*STAR to harness local industry expertise to boost the nation innovation engine. We have taken the philosophy of IoT and connectivity to heart, ensuring we have oversight and responsibility each step of the way, while becoming even more nimble and flexible to cater to manufacturers’ needs faster.”

Dr Lim Ser Yong, Executive Director of SIMTech added, “SIMTech has had a long history of collaborating with the industry. We have partnered KaHa in our emerging applications programmes over the past years, and I am happy to see that it has yielded innovative breakthroughs in IoT and smart wearable technology that will significantly contribute to the local ecosystem. We are pleased to take our partnership to the next level and work together with COVE R2C IoT Innovation Lab to speed up the development and commercialization of emerging technologies to drive Singapore’s advanced manufacturing industry.”

Vice President of Bridgestone Watch LTD, Ray Lin added “Providing the best quality products and services to our customers has always been our formula of success.  Therefore it is an honour to be able to join hands with so many industry leaders and together, and continue to innovate and create some of the best watches in the world.  We look forward to contributing our expertise and also bring these innovation to our customers and the market.

CEO of Curtis Australia, Glenn Curtis comments “The high-end luxury timepiece and jewelry market is seeing an evolution as even the most discerning ultra-high networth clientele develops interest in smart wearable technology functions simply because they have become ubiquitous and improve living habits. As a partner in the research center, Curtis will contribute design knowledge through years of handcrafting the finest timepieces and writing instruments and gain first-hand understanding of the most efficient ways of incorporating smart technology.”

CEO of MHA, Andy Ras-Wok added “With decades of private-label specialist manufacturing experience in luxury accessories from jewellery to writing instruments, we are keenly aware of the exciting opportunity IoT and smart wearables present to the international luxury market. This is a great opportunity to enhance our value network internationally and work with specialist partners. We are especially excited to represent the Swiss brand of manufacturing in this collaboration, and are already thinking of further bringing on fellow Swiss partners to the lab.”

CMO of Titan, Suparna Mitra comments “As the global wave of wearable and digital innovation continues to rise, Titan too is proactively creating new lifestyle products and experiences for everyone, especially today’s millennial consumers.  The success of many of our smart watches powered by KaHa IoT technology confirms our investment into smart wearables. Participation in the lab will further our partnership with KaHa as our technology collaborator and strengthen Titan as the leader in watches and accessories.”

Product Manager of Tex Line, Justin Tan added “Through our years of building up expertise and relationships in the apparel and sporting goods industry, we pride ourselves on our constant ability to offer our customers cost-competitiveness and quality. As the highly-competitive sports apparel market moves into smart wearables, we must stay ahead of the curve by re-thinking how we can accelerate product development and cut go-to-market time. COVE R2C IoT Innovation Lab will provide our industry an important advantage.”

Security-as-Code and Security Automation Key in Battling Cyberattacks in the Cloud Era: CLOUDSEC 2018

CLOUDSEC India 2018, hosted by Trend Micro Incorporated attracted more than 650 business and technology leaders this year, making it one of the most important cybersecurity conferences in India. During the event, Trend Micro highlighted security-as-code and security automation as two important trends defining the future of cybersecurity. These two trends are in line with application development in the cloud computing era. By moving security into the early stages of the development lifecycle – or implementing DevSecOps, bugs can be discovered and fixed quickly before they make it to production.

Trend Micro has seen tremendous growth in India this year, especially in its cloud security business, which now contributes to nearly 40% of its overall revenue in the country. The company observes strong uptake of private cloud from the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector; and that of public cloud from manufacturing, e-commerce, IT and IT-enabled Services (ITeS) sectors, and born-in-the-cloud businesses. New local customer acquisitions from 2017 to 2018 include the State Bank of India (SBI), the Syndicate Bank, Lupin Pharma, Bandhan Bank, PolicyBazaar, and Capillary Technologies, to name a few.

Addressing the crowd, Nilesh Jain, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro said, “India presents a huge and strategic opportunity for our business, and we will continue to invest in the country. In fact, early next year, we will be launching a Certification Program in IT Security (CPITS) in India. The program aims to equip recent computer science graduates with hands-on experience and skills, helping them kickstart a career in the cybersecurity industry with Trend Micro. We have successfully run CPITS in Egypt and Brazil, and India will be the first Asian testbed for this exciting initiative.”

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this October, Trend Micro has always evolved with the industry and consistently expanded into new growth areas. Today, the company operates three major solution categories: hybrid cloud security, network defense, and endpoint security. At the same time, Trend Micro keeps a close pulse on emerging threats with the help of its threat research teams located across the world. For the next ten years, the company’s mission is to secure the connected world, giving enterprises the agility and freedom for adopting new technologies.

India’s Youngest IAS Officer and Author, Launches his Book, “Once Upon an Exam”

Young bureaucrat and author, Dr.K.Vijayakarthikeyan IAS, released his latest novel “Once Upon an Exam” in an event held at Sapna Book House in Bangalore. He currently serves as the corporation commissioner of Coimbatore and this is his fourth book.

The book,”Once upon an IAS exam” is the first fiction work of the author in English. The book talks about the journey of a young IAS aspirant who is struggling between his failure in the UPSC exam and his love life. The book deals with the confusions and dilemma which every youth would face in their career deciding phase. The humour and simple language makes the book a treat to every book reader.

“This book is for all people and does not target only IAS aspirants. The positive feedback that I have been receiving so far for the book in all online platforms ensures this fact once again. I am happy to have introduced this book to the book reading population of Bengaluru. Expecting positive response and encouragement from this beautiful city” says the young author

The book is available in all leading outlets in Bengaluru and also in online platforms like Thinkink.in, amazon.in, flipkart.com and sapnaonline.com 

Tata Motors ‘Ghar Lao Gold’ Contest Winners Felicitated by Actor Akshay Kumar

Encouraging self-employment and entrepreneurship in India, Tata Motors is excited to announce the winners of the ‘Ghar Lao Gold’ contest – a competition aimed to discover entrepreneurs with the most creative ideas, comprising the Tata Ace Gold. The five winners have each won a brand-new Tata Ace Gold worth Rs. 3.78 lakhs handed over by the superstar and brand ambassador of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles, Akshay Kumar. The winners and the budding entrepreneurs, with the legendary Tata Ace Gold will look to implement their innovative ideas and turn it into a reality.

Congratulating the winners on their entrepreneurial outlook, UT Ramprasad, Head – Marketing and Brand Communications, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors said, “A winner is someone who recognizes his talents, works towards developing them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals. Our Ghar Lao Gold campaign was aimed at fostering entrepreneurship, across the country. Through this campaign, we realized that India has a huge talent pool with unconventional ideas, but because of limited resources not everyone is able to showcase their creativity. We sincerely hope Tata Motors Ace Gold can catalyse their ideas into something brilliant for themselves and the society at large. We would like to congratulate the budding entrepreneurs for their creative ideas and look forward to assisting them in achieving their goals.”

The #GharLaoGoldContest received an overwhelming response with over 25,600 entries in just a span of two months. All the top 19 finalists were mentored by a group of esteemed judges and the top 5 winning business ideas were adjudged as the champions. Extending its sincere thanks to all the applicants, Tata Motors will be assisting each of them as they expand their creative ideas.

Here is a brief introduction of the 5 budding entrepreneurs, who participate and emerged victorious in the Ghar Lao Gold contest. Out of 25,600 participants, this outstanding bunch proved their mettle.

1. Anish Kumar – A well-qualified Mechanical Engineer who belongs to Patna, Bihar. He wants to pursue his dream while serving the society at large. His idea is to start a road repairing business where he aims to repair potholes. According to Anish, these potholes on the road cause numerous accidents every year. He envisions becoming India’s largest ‘quality’ road repairing contractor in the coming years.
2. Rahul Tak – He hails from Ajmer, Rajasthan and is an expert in servicing the heart of electrical transformers, which is called OLTC (On Load and No Load Tap Changer). The OLTC requires servicing and small quantity of transformer oil periodically. Rahul’s business idea is to install a small servicing unit in Tata Ace Gold and service transformers across the length and breadth of his district and expand it further over the years.
3. Roma Roy – The wife of an NTPC employee based in Korba, Chhatisgarh, and this homemaker’s dream is to start a mobile theme-based restaurant. Her business venture will be one of a kind in the remote are where she lives with over 300 other families.
4. Gurinder Singh – A 51 year old automobile spare parts marketing professional from Delhi, who left his job of 20 years to venture on his own. His idea with Tata Ace Gold is to establish his own automobile spare parts logistics business from scratch.
5. Aniketh Roy – A local boy from a small village in Silchar, Assam known as Saidpur. The area has poor infrastructure with almost non-existent roads. His great vision is to help all the farmers in his village by transporting their agricultural produce to the nearest town. They are currently managing this with great difficulty. A lot of produce gets wasted because it is not transported in time. He wishes to expand his venture to the farmers in nearby villages in the future.

On an average, in every 3 minutes, an Ace has created a new business, generated employment and inspired entrepreneurship opportunities, thus transforming lives in the remotest areas in India. Strategically designed to perform all tasks for the last mile movement, the Ace continues to remain the preferred choice of Indian entrepreneurs and small businesses in the country. Through the ‘Ghar Lao Gold’ contest, Tata Motors continues to inspire the new generation of up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

NetRack Hosted SI Partners Meet in Bengaluru; Organized Product Training Program for Partners

NetRack, a leading solution provider for data centers and end-to-end IT server racks, recently organized an exclusive partners meet for all its East India Partners at Windflower Prakruthi Resort, Bengaluru. The partner's meet cum training program was conducted for 2 days which included the visit to NetRack's 'State-of-the-art' production facility.

NetRack's partners associated with various verticals like government BFSI, IT/ITES, Hospitals & Hospitalities made their presence at the meet. The spirit of two days meet was to exchange thoughts, ideas, challenges and opportunities in the market. The sole agenda of the meet was to educate the partners on the latest trends in the datacenter space and how NetRack's products and solutions can make their way addressing the requirements of customers.

Partners grabbed the opportunity to interact directly with Ravi Raj, Brand Head, Director, Sales & Support at NetRack and shared the feedback/ concerns received from the customers. Interacting with the partners, Ravi Raj said, "It feels great to connect with the partners who help NetRack to penetrate into untapped regions in the Indian market. Indeed! This is an eminent opportunity created to catch up with people who drive us to journey of success." Thanking the partners at the event Mr Ravi added "We would like to thank all the SI partners who joined us for the meet. It's an honor to host a partner's meet for business associates. We are looking forward to many more successes in the business together, forever."

The meet also had the fun part organised for the partners at the resort with few games and delicious food.

Apollo Hospitals Selects Medvarsity Online Ltd. for Simulation Training for Resident Doctors

Medvarsity, a pioneer in online medical training has been chosen by Apollo Hospitals to support the online simulation training for resident doctors. The training aims to augment medical education for healthcare professionals through the utilization of state of art technology with the goal of improving overall clinical outcomes. This simulation environment would allow doctors to learn, practice and repeat procedures as often as necessary in order to correct mistakes, fine-tune their skills, and optimize clinical outcomes.

“With passing time we are observing critical challenges in healthcare, a dearth in skilled junior doctors and lack of access to simulation tools for training. With Medvarsity’s simulation training program for resident doctors we are looking at bridging the gap in skills and also use the training program as a capacity builder. This will be a great program for young doctors to acquire good clinical skills that will help them in managing their patients better"  said  Dr. K Hari Prasad, President Apollo Hospitals Division.

India, along with the rest of the world is seeing a scarcity of skilled doctors, according to a study by PwC, there are 1.7 doctors to 1,000 population. The state of Indian healthcare is worrisome on the whole and more so because of number of less skilled professionals. Owing to the situation, there is a great demand for upskilled healthcare practitioners who can understand the dynamics of growing challenges that the industry is facing, on the whole. With the outlook to provide better patient care and career opportunities for the doctors, a strategic approach is necessary. Medvarsity, with its varied range of clinical and non clinical courses have been specially designed by doctors, for the doctors.

“We are proud to support Apollo Hospitals in the key area of upskilling their residents on critical clinical skills. Apollo’s need to have the best talent is critical to their success and our simulation training tools are best suited to bridge the skill gap.” said Gerald Jaideep, CEO, Medvarsity Online Ltd. 

Even with information overload of today’s times, a busy doctor still struggles to be well versed with the latest developments in the industry and that is where Medvarsity aims to bridge the gap.