Xerox Holds Innovative XRCI Open 2014 Symposium

Xerox Research Centre India (XRCI), Xerox’s latest global research location that captures innovation opportunities for Xerox in emerging markets to advance Xerox’s position as the leading global provider of document and business process services conducted XRCI Open 2014 - Xerox India’s 1^st Open Innovation Symposium in Bangalore. The event saw the participation of eminent institutes namely IISc, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IIIT Hyderabad, IIIT Delhi, IIM Indore, Singapore Management University among others as a part of panel discussions, keynotes, and poster presentations. 

Traditionally, Xerox has been actively engaged in productive collaborations with academia through a number of initiatives such as research grants and open innovation projects. The goal of XRCI Open was to further strengthen ties with the academic research community in India and to encourage researchers to work on key problems across different technical domains, such as data analytics, machine learning and optimizations, mobile and distributed computing, human computation, game theory, ethnography and design.

“We are proud of our rich history of innovations, and the same innovative spirit and passion continues to drive us”, said Manish Gupta, Vice President, Xerox Corp and Director of Xerox Research Centre in India during his welcome address. Manish spoke about innovations from Xerox Innovation Group in industry verticals like transportation, healthcare, education and banking, and referred to exciting opportunities to leverage technology to make a difference in the world at large, and especially, emerging markets like India.

Highlights of the events included keynote talks, poster presentation from students and panel discussions on two emerging technology topics.  The first keynote address was by Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director and Professor of Strategic Management at the Indian Institute of Management Indore that centered on a study of corporate innovation centers in India, addressing issues from a strategic perspective as well as from the perspective of an individual contributor working at these centers. In order to create successful products, Prof. Krishnan stressed that it is very important to first immerse oneself into the lives of the concerned people and know what their real needs are.

The first panel discussion addressed ‘’Smart Cities” movement emphasis on the nature, scope and challenges of the concept.  Eminent panelists Prof. T. G. Sitharam (IISc), Mr. Prashanth Bachu (EMBARQ India), Prof. Vinayak S. Naik (IIIT Delhi), Prof. Niloy Ganguly (IIT Kharagpur) and Prof. Archan Misra (Singapore Management University), shared their opinions and perspectives about how mobile technologies, crowd-sensing and big data analytics will play an active role in new developments in this realm for emerging markets such as India. A key conclusion of the panel was that smart city applications associated with retail, transportation, logistics, location-based services, sustainability and social networking are here to stay. 

The second panel discussion was on “Data Science”, a terminology introduced off late, to refer to different data mining, high performance computing, machine learning and statistical techniques that are used to enable sophisticated analytics over Big Data.  The distinguished panelists Prof Umesh Bellur (IIT Bombay), Prof. B. Ravindran (IIT Madras), Prof. P. Krishna Reddy (IIIT-Hyderabad) and Dr. Ashish Mahabal (Caltech) shared their perspectives on role and significance of analyzing Big Data in astronomy, smart grid and agriculture domains and laid out interesting research challenges that need to be addressed.

The afternoon session began with another enthralling keynote address by Pramod Varma, Chief Architect at UIDAI (Aadhaar project). During the talk, Dr. Varma shared his experiences with building the technology system that powers the Aadhaar project. Aadhaar, India's Unique Identity Project, has become the largest biometric identity system in the world, already covering more than 580 million people. Its strength lies in the simplicity of its design, sound strategy, and technology backbone issuing one million Aadhaar numbers and doing 600 trillion biometric matches every day. 

The essence of the symposium was to encourage students and researchers from industry and academia to discover opportunities to collaborate and develop pioneering solutions that matter to the world. The event also showcased a gallery of posters presented by research scholars. The posters were selected through a peer-review process, and awards were given for the top two posters based on technical merit and presentation style.

Mindtree Is Platinum Sponsor At STAREAST 2014

Mindtree, a global technology services company, will unveil its latest innovations for testing in a connected world as a Platinum Sponsor of STAREAST, the premier event for software testers and quality assurance professionals. Mindtree’s Rajeevan Velayudhan will conduct a technical presentation entitled “Is Your Test Strategy Ready for a Connected World?” on Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 9:45am.

The presentation will highlight how QA organizations need to re-think the protection of entire customer experiences while ensuring high quality individual applications. Velayudhan will illustrate how building a map of end-to-end business processes and their interactions with each other is no longer just a domain of individual application teams. This new approach is ‘user centric’ whereby teams move from testing applications to testing customer experiences over multi-channel platforms in distributed locations and networks.  The benefit of this approach is improvements in quality, cost and agility while ensuring QA gets its rightful seat at portfolio strategy discussions and becomes more than just a project activity. 

Dominique Raviart, analyst at NelsonHall states that “Mindtree is developing an end-user approach to the software testing work it conducts. This end-user approach is of course found in usability testing engagements and expands towards Mindtree training its testing practice personnel to consider the end-user side of a testing project. Mindtree is therefore not offering a distinct service offering but a dual approach to testing, both as a technical service and an end-user perspective. This is a nice differentiator in an IT market that is gradually leaning towards consumerization and putting end-users back at its center.”

“At Mindtree, we ensure that our clients deliver the best value to their customers while maximizing efficiencies and collaboration,” said Manas Chakraborty, Global Head of QA at Mindtree. “Our innovative approach is based on deploying scalable frameworks & models that examine entire business processes and focus on customer centricity.”

Mindtree experts will be at the conference to discuss the approach and components that will help client organizations adopt this transformational approach to Quality Assurance.

Now Follow Superstar Rajinikanth On Twitter

One of India’s most prolific and influential superstars, the inimitable Rajinikanth, makes his much awaited debut on Twitter today. This also marks the superstar’s debut in the digital space. CA Media Digital’s first venture, Fluence - India’s leading celebrity digital network, will manage Rajinikanth’s digital interests, to further create and leverage the Thalaivar’s social presence. Twitter users around the world can follow and converse live with India’s original superhero, superstar Rajinikanth by visiting Twitter.com/SuperStarRajini or @SuperStarRajini on their Twitter app.

Fans can also follow the actor's Twitter account by simply dialling, or giving a missed call at 080 6700 6666 to access their idol’s Tweets, which is possible due to a global integration between Twitter India and ZipDial.

One of India’s most influential and bankable movie stars, Rajinikanth's mass popularity and appeal is largely drawn from his mannerisms and stylized dialogue delivery. He has received India's third highest honour, the Padma Bhushan, for his contribution to Indian cinema.

A cultural icon, the normally reticent superstar is looking forward to interacting with his fans on the platform. “I have always believed that my career graph is a miracle I owe my fans. I have been contemplating joining the social media platform for a while to connect with them, hear what they have to say and share my thoughts.  Unfortunately I never got around to it until now. By partnering with Fluence I am confident that I have the best team and the best guides who will help me connect with my audience” said the Superstar. "I decided to start with Twitter because I felt that the platform is abuzz with all the news and the trends that happen across the globe and I'm told that this is where all the best Rajini one liners are!” he added.

Excited about the association, Ashish Joshi, VP Digital & Business Head – Fluence said “We are thrilled to partner with the enigmatic Rajinikanth. The digital landscape is exploding and when you work with Thalaivar the possibilities are endless. Twitter is the first step in building and growing his online presence and getting all the fans out there to directly engage with the phenomenon that is Rajinikanth. We will work closely with him to broaden the horizons of the digital landscape to create interesting and entertaining consumer facing properties that will engage the fans in a way that only Rajini sir can.”

Said Twitter's India Market Director, Rishi Jaitly, "Twitter is the world's leading real-time information network where users discover and converse with the people, organizations and media that interest them. This is truly an "only-on-Twitter" moment as Superstar Rajinikanth’s debut on Twitter also marks his debut in the digital space more generally. We welcome Rajinikanth to Twitter, are happy to support his launch on the platform and look forward to watching him use our mobile service to engage in live, public conversations with fans and other icons around the world."

To make Superstar Rajinikanth’s debut on Twitter more exciting; fans from all over the world, who follow him on twitter @SuperStarRajini in the first week, will receive a ‘WelcomeGraph’, a personalized welcome picture from the icon.

‘Infrastructure Key Focus For The BJP Government’

A BJP-led government will take speedy decisions, focus on reviving economic growth, give priority to infrastructure and manufacturing, and protect the interest of farmers in land acquisition, the party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has said.

In an e-mail interview with this agency, Modi outlined his economic vision and said a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government will seek to clear projects in fast-track mode, push for single-window clearance system, make procedures swift, ensure time-bound delivery and better coordination with the states for faster project clearances.

He said the "present state of policy paralysis" cannot be permitted to continue.

"We have to clear projects in a fast track mode. If there are environment related concerns, they need to be suitably addressed, but all decisions must be taken in a time frame. We cannot permit the present state of policy paralysis and indecisiveness to continue for long," said Modi.

"Whatever little growth we are having that can also be called as a jobless growth. This is because the UPA government has never given adequate emphasis on the manufacturing sector," Modi said.

The Gujarat chief minister said an NDA government will "focus on reviving the economy and growth".

"Our focus is going to be clearly on infrastructure and the manufacturing sector. It will not only encourage investment, but will also produce the required employment opportunities," he said.

He said there was a need to revive investor sentiment and the NDA government will move towards a policy of faster and time-bound project clearances to give a fillip to manufacturing.

On land acquisition policy, he said the first priority has to be on protecting the interest of farmers whose land was being acquired.

"They have to be adequately compensated as per the market rates. As far as possible, we should go through the private purchase route rather than compulsory acquisition. Even where compulsory acquisition is resorted to, the compensation should be decided as consent between the farmer and the acquiring authority," Modi told this media agency.

He said a "win-win situation" was possible and farmers should benefit "from development that comes".

Answering a query about priorities in infrastructure, Modi said there was need to focus on areas such as highways, railways, ports and power. He said a BJP-led government will revive the National Highway Development programme.

"It is unfortunate that the very good beginning made by the (earlier) NDA government (of Atal Bihari Vajpayee) was not continued by the UPA in right earnest. We will bring back the focus by connecting the country through a network of good quality highways," he said.

Modi said the government will start work on a high speed rail network.

"The railways have been ignored by successive Congress governments. We plan to begin a journey of transformation to take the railways at par with the most modern rail networks in the world."

Affirming the party's opposition to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multibrand retail, Modi said the party was in favour of FDI which leads to growth, employment opportunities and sharing of new technology.

"I would reiterate our party's commitment to encouraging FDI in various sectors to boost economic growth and to create employment opportunities for our youth," said Modi.

Source: Agencies

Indian UC Market Down 2.3% In 2013: IDC

One of the key business priorities for most enterprises is to remove the communication bottle necks; Unified Communication (UC) solutions adoption would help with   this. However, there are few adoption challenges like cost, resistance to change, and lack of awareness on the benefits derived by UC adoption. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the overall Unified Communications market in India has seen a marginal decline of 2.3% in 1H13 as compared to 1H12. 10% decline in Enterprise Telephony market has pulled down the overall UC revenues in 1H13, whereas other markets like Enterprise Collaborations and Contact Center have seen a decent growth of 4-6% as compared to 1H12.

Enterprise Telephony market is suffering due to a combination of market factors: Firstly, IP-PBX solutions are eating into the TDM-PBX solutions revenues as the former gives better ROI for end customers. Secondly, all the major vendors have started offering Software-based IP-PBX solutions, which is cutting their hardware revenues. On top of these, IP-PBX solutions are no longer considered as business transformational tools. All these are driving the Enterprise telephony market down and pushing customers to adopt alternative solutions like Web Conferencing. 

IDC has seen a huge traction in Video Conferencing market as this generates a clear ROI by reducing the travel cost for organizations. However, economic downturn is limiting this market to grow further as organizations are taking a cautious approach towards overall IT spending. But IDC believes this impact is just cyclical and desktop-based VC solutions will witness a growing demand in the future. Web & Voice Conferencing, Team Collaboration and Enterprise Social Networking are the next high growth areas, as these solutions will help reduce the number of emails and lower the bandwidth requirement which in turn will reduce the cost and improve productivity.

Contact Center market is undergoing modernization and transformation with Multi-channel/platform solutions which integrates voice, IVR, social media, email, web chat, SMS, fax etc. It helped the India Contact Center market to achieve a 4% Year-on-Year (YoY) growth in 1H13, despite the continued threat from the Philippines which is famous for their low cost of resources as compared to India. In India, Outcome-based model, though still being nascent, is garnering interest. Some key vendors are proposing for a solution where they will only charge customers based on the outcomes achieved but not on the applications/technology deployed.

IDC India Forecasts:

Dileep Nadimpalli, Senior Market Analyst, Unified Communications, IDC India says,  “IDC expects a recovery for India’s Unified Communications market in 2H13 and it will close 2013 with a marginal growth. Growth will be majorly driven by Enterprise Collaboration applications like Team Collaboration, Social Networking, Unified Messaging, Video Conferencing, and Web & Voice Conferencing solutions. However, we expect Enterprise Telephony market to continue to go through a declining journey."  

Nadimpalli further adds, “Most organizations are using Unified Communication offerings stand-alone, without considering the whole picture of UC solutions. UC vendors need to go through the challenges of communication silos to increase the adoption of Unified communication solutions.”  

Are Indian Enterprises Target For Cybercriminals?

Symantec Corp's Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) Volume 19, shows a significant shift in cybercriminal behavior, revealing the bad guys are plotting for months before pulling off huge heists – instead of executing quick hits with smaller rewards. Attackers are unrelenting in their focus on large enterprises with over 69 percent or more than 2/3rds of the targeted attacks in India carried out on them.

New Era of ‘Mega Breaches’

“One mega breach can be worth 50 smaller attacks,” said Tarun Kaura, Director, Technology Sales at Symantec India. “While the level of sophistication continues to grow among attackers, what was surprising last year was their willingness to be a lot more patient – waiting to strike until the reward is bigger and better.”

Globally, there was a 62 percent increase in the number of data breaches from the previous year, resulting in more than 552 million identities exposed – proving cybercrime remains a real and damaging threat to consumers and businesses alike. The size and scope of breaches is exploding, putting the trust and reputation of businesses at risk, and increasingly compromising consumers’ personal information – from credit card numbers and medical records to passwords and bank account details. Each of the eight top data breaches in 2013 resulted in the loss of tens of millions of data records. By comparison, 2012 only had a single data breach reach that threshold. 

“Nothing breeds success like success – especially if you’re a cybercriminal,” added Kaura. “The potential for huge paydays means large-scale attacks are here to stay. Companies of all sizes need to re-examine, re-think and possibly re-architect their security posture.”

Defense is Harder than Offense

Globally targeted attacks were up 91 percent and lasted an average of three times longer compared to 2012.  In India, cyber criminals are unrelenting in their focus on large enterprises with a staggering 69 percent targeted attacks carried out against them. Despite stepping up their information security measures, businesses in India continue to be an attractive target for cybercriminals. 

Furthermore, within organizations, support functions with access to critical data emerged as the strongest target for attackers globally. Personal assistants and those working in public relations were the two most targeted professions – cybercriminals use them as a stepping stone toward higher-profile targets like celebrities or business executives.

Small Businesses are Pawns in a Larger Plot 

Small and medium-sized businesses often have less adequate security practices and resources.  Attackers are increasingly targeting smaller businesses that have a relationship with a larger company.  Not surprisingly, in India, small businesses received the highest number of phishing and virus-bearing emails - almost three times as much as the larger targets.  

Newer Industries are Low-hanging Fruits for Cybercriminals

In India, nearly four in 10 attacks were carried out on non-traditional services industries like hospitality, business and personal services. This was followed by attacks on manufacturing, finance and insurance. 

On the other hand, globally, the top data targeted during a breach had moved from just financial information to basic information like names, addresses, email addresses and government ID proofs etc. Interestingly, while non-traditional, service- centric organizations handle such information in large numbers, they may often lack adequate security practices and infrastructure making them easy targets for such attacks.   

India: A Key Threat Frontier 

India emerged as a key threat frontier, ranking as the third highest source of overall malicious activity. While it continued to hold its position as the spam capital of the world with 9.8 percent of spam zombies; it was also the highest source of botnet spam, with 6.6 percent or close to 1.45 billion spams originating from its borders every day. India ranked especially high in the number of top botnets like Cutwail, Kelihos, GRUM and GHEG. Large botnets like Cutwail and Kelihos have made their presence felt in the threat landscape this year by sending out malicious attachments. According to the report, Cutwail which is the spam-sending botnet for the malware Pandex sends 8.06 billion spam messages every day, out of which the highest are sent from India (over 620 million).

How to Maintain Cyber Resiliency

While the increasing flow of data from smart devices, apps and other online services is tantalizing to cybercriminals, there are steps businesses and consumers can take to better protect themselves – whether it be from a mega data breach, targeted attack or common spam. Symantec recommends the following best practices:

For Businesses: 

Know your data: Protection must focus on the information – not the device or data center. Understand where your sensitive data resides and where it is flowing to help identify the best policies and procedures to protect it.  

Educate employees: Provide guidance on information protection, including company policies and procedures for protecting sensitive data on personal and corporate devices.

Implement a strong security posture: Strengthen your security infrastructure with data loss prevention, network security, endpoint security, encryption, strong authentication and defensive measures, including reputation-based technologies.

For Consumers: 

Be security savvy: Passwords are the keys to your kingdom. Use password management software to create strong, unique passwords for each site you visit and keep your devices – including smartphones – updated with the latest security software.

Be vigilant: Review bank and credit card statements for irregularities, be cautious when handling unsolicited or unexpected emails and be wary of online offers that seem too good to be true – they usually are.

Know who you work with: Familiarize yourself with policies from retailers and online services that may request your banking or personal information. As a best practice, visit the company’s official website directly (as opposed to clicking on an emailed link) if you must share sensitive information. 

Massive Changes To Data Center Ecosystem In 2025

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today released “Data Center 2025: Exploring the Possibilities” a forward-thinking report summarizing four months of global research designed to identify the industry’s vision of the data center in the year 2025. The results range from the expected—increased utilization of the cloud—to the ambitious—largely solar-powered data centers with power densities exceeding 50 kW per rack. One thing was clear: Most experts believe the data center as we know it will undergo massive changes over the next decade.

More than 800 data center professionals from around the world responded to the Data Center 2025 survey, with dozens of others contributing their thoughts via interviews, email and video. The feedback, viewed collectively, indicates most in the field remain bullish on the data center industry and on continued innovation in the IT space and beyond. For example, on average, experts predict density in 2025 will climb to 52 kW per rack. According to the Data Center Users’ Group sponsored by Emerson Network Power, average density has remained relatively flat since peaking around 6 kW nearly a decade ago, but experts are anticipating a dramatic upswing in density that could radically change the physical environment of the data center.

“We started the Data Center 2025 initiative with a sincere desire to discover what our customers, collaborators, colleagues and others in the data center community believe the future holds for this industry,” said Steve Hassell, president, data center solutions, Emerson Network Power. “We approached the research with an open mind, no expectations and no preconceived notions of what we would find. The results reflect a level of sophisticated understanding, visionary thinking and genuine optimism that I find inspiring. I believe the true impact of this report lies not only in its measurement of current opinion, but in its ability to spark future innovation .”

Other notable survey results and forecasts from the report :

*  Big changes in how data centers are powered: The experts believe a mix of sources will be used to provide electrical power to data centers. Solar will lead, followed by a nearly equal mix of nuclear, natural gas and wind. Sixty-five percent believe it is likely hyperscale facilities will be powered by private power generation.

*  Cloud forecasts are somewhat conservative: Industry experts predict two-thirds of data center computing will be done in the cloud in 2025. That’s actually a fairly conservative estimate. According to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index, cloud workloads represent around 46 percent of current total data center workloads, and will reach 63 percent by 2017.

* DCIM will play a prominent role: Twenty-nine percent of experts anticipate comprehensive visibility across all systems and layers, while 43 percent expect data centers to be self-healing and self optimizing. Taken together, that would indicate 72 percent of the experts believe some level of DCIM will be deployed in 2025—significantly higher than most current estimates of DCIM adoption.

*  Utilization rates will be higher: That increased visibility is expected to lead to more efficient performance overall, as 72 percent of industry experts expect IT resource utilization rates to be at least 60 percent in 2025. The average projection is 70 percent. That compares to estimated averages today as low as 6-12 percent, with best practices somewhere between 30-50 percent.

“The data center of 2025 certainly won’t be one data center. The analogy I like to use is to transport,” said Andy Lawrence, vice president of Datacenter Technologies and Eco-efficient IT at 451 Research. “On the road, we see sports cars and family cars; we see buses and we see trucks. They have different kinds of engines, different types of seating and different characteristics in terms of energy consumption and reliability. We are going to see something similar to that in the data center world. In fact that is already happening, and I expect it to continue.”