Microsoft Announces Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux in Indian Market

Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Azure Hybrid Benefit solution for Linux customers across India. It helps customers seamlessly migrate to on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft Azure. The solution enables significant reduction in cost of running workloads on-the-cloud by converting existing PAYG (pay-as-you-go) virtual machines (VMs) to bring-your-own-subscription (BYOS) billing.

In the new normal, it is challenging for businesses to adjust their strategies to maintain productive operations and processes. Businesses face challenges in migrating workload to public cloud due to regulatory and data sovereignty related issues. This is common in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and government. Also, some workloads, especially those related to edge, require low latency. Additionally, many organizations have significant on-premises investments that they want to maximize so they choose to modernize on-location datacenters and traditional apps. This includes in on-premises licenses and subscriptions, and the inability to migrate them to cloud often affects the ROI and total cost of ownership. Azure solves this by acknowledging this investment and not charging for subscriptions or licenses again when customers move to the cloud. 

Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit is a licensing benefit that helps businesses remove migration friction, save software subscription costs at scale, and reduce redeployment and reboot time. Globally, over 1,500 Linux virtual machines were migrated during the preview period to Azure using the new Azure Hybrid Benefit capabilities, enabling significant cost reduction for enterprise running Linux workloads in Azure.

Using Azure Hybrid Benefit businesses can achieve lowest cost of ownership by combining reservations savings and extended security updates. By adopting Microsoft Azure for their cloud journeys, businesses can meet their on-the-cloud requirements, build new expertise, and successfully achieve more business value. Organizations can also effectively plan their cloud roadmap by optimizing Azure environment as per their workload for scale, security, governance, networking, and identity.

While previous BYOS cloud migration options allowed customers to use pre-existing subscriptions in the cloud, Azure Hybrid Benefit improves upon this with several capabilities that are unique to Microsoft Azure:

Applicable to all Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Enterprise Server pay-as-you-go images available in the Azure Marketplace or Azure Portal. Businesses don’t need to provide their own image.

Saves time with seamless post-deployment conversions as there’s no need for production redeployment. Businesses can simply convert pay-as-you-go images used during proof of concept testing to bring-your-own-subscription billing.

Lowers ongoing operational costs with automatic image maintenance, updates, and patches. Microsoft maintains the converted RHEL and SLES images for customers. Organizations can save up to 85% compared to standard pay-as-you-go rates.

Enables user interface integration with Azure command line interface (CLI), providing the same UI as other Azure virtual machines, as well as scalable batch conversions.

Businesses get co-located technical support from Azure, Red Hat, and SUSE with just one ticket.

The solution combined with recently announced Red Hat and SUSE support for Azure shares disks to lift-and-shift failover clusters and parallel file systems—like Global File System.

It is fully compatible with Azure Arc, providing end-to-end hybrid cloud operations management for Windows, RHEL, and SLES servers in one solution.

Through Azure Hybrid Benefit, Microsoft is enabling organizations bring existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance or subscriptions to Azure. Azure Hybrid Benefit is applicable to SQL on Azure and Azure Dedicated Host. Additionally, it provides 180 days of dual-use rights so businesses can maintain on-premises operation while migrating to Azure.

ITC’s Mangaldeep Agarbattis Brand Launches 2 New Fragrances, “Mangaldeep Classic Chandan“ & “Mangaldeep Rose Chandan”

 Mangaldeep, ITC’s leading Agarbatti brand announces the launch of its brand new TVC campaign, “The Tradition of Sandal”. The new campaign will reinforce Mangaldeep sandal variant’s strong preference with consumers that exemplifies tradition and uniqueness of the product. 

The TV commercial stars Mangaldeep’s brand ambassador, the popular star Bhumika Chawla, as the protagonist, passes-on the tradition and legacy of Mangaldeep Sandal. Bhumika has been associated with Mangaldeep for over 2 years now and has won hearts of many with her role as a caring mother. 

Mangaldeep’s New TVC, for its flagship variant ‘Mangaldeep Sandal’ is a warm and heart-rending film which revolves around tradition, nostalgia and legacy associated with the variant.

The scent of Mangaldeep’s Original Sandal Agarbatti takes her back to her childhood, to the tradition of making sandal paste with her grandmother for daily puja. Now Bhumika and her children, continue the legacy of sandal with Mangaldeep Original Sandal Agarbatti.

The new commercial eloquently captures the devotee’s strong association of the fragrance of Mangaldeep Sandal with the tradition of real sandalwood used in daily puja.

Mangaldeep further expands the offerings in its sandal portfolio with the launch of two new fragrances, “Mangaldeep Classic Chandan“ and “Mangaldeep Rose Chandan”. Mangaldeep Classic Chandan is a new sandal fragrance with a calming and soothing aroma, with distinct brown battis, specially crafted for consumers looking for a rich sandal fragrance. Mangaldeep Rose Chandan is an innovative new fragrance, inspired by age-old custom of mixing rose water with sandal paste. It is a perfect blend of rose and sandal fragrance, curated to provide an exceptional sensorial experience to consumers. 

Speaking about the new campaign, Mr. Ravi Rayavaram, Chief Executive, Agarbatti & Safety Matches Business, ITC Limited, said “Devotion is the ethos of Indian culture, and when we talk about devotion, agarbattis inevitably become of immense significance. Our flagship variant Mangaldeep Sandal is one of the best products in this category and has long been loved and trusted by devotees across the country. Our new communication celebrates the tradition of original sandal and its close association with the fragrance of Mangaldeep Sandal agarbattis. It also announces the launch of our 2 new variants, Mangaldeep Classic Chandan and Rose Chandan in the sandal fragrance space.”

Mr. Rajesh Mani, Group Creative Director, Ogilvy, said“Sandalwood has a huge legacy in India; right from the ancient times to the modern. And now times are such that people are actively seeking solace in familiarity and nostalgia. The scent of real sandalwood never fails to evoke a sense of nostalgia in people. Creatively it’s a trip down the memory lane for our brand ambassador Bhumika Chawla when she lights up a Mangaldeep Sandal agarbatti. The fragrance of real sandal transports Bhumika to her childhood. In short, Mangaldeep Sandal evokes the fragrance of real sandal.” 

Available across the country and in various formats and price points, Mangaldeep Sandal has a nation-wide appeal and is currently one of the leading variants in this fragrance segment. 

Now, with a range of three different sandal fragrances, Mangaldeep is catering to the evolving preferences of its consumers.

VMware and AWS: Unlocking the Potential of the Cloud for Businesses

By Roger Fortier, VMware

This week at AWS re:Invent 2020, VMware is showing how the company’s partnership with AWS, and the jointly-engineered solution VMware Cloud on AWS, help organizations survive and thrive in today’s dynamic and uncertain times. Together the companies are providing customers such as AECOM, Firstsource, OSRAM Continental, and Thermo Fisher Scientific a fast and seamless path to unlocking the innovation and economic value of the public cloud.

The momentum we are seeing for VMware Cloud on AWS has continued throughout the year.

VMware Cloud on AWS host and VM counts are up 100% year-over-year (November 2020)

Customers can take advantage of more than 175 native AWS services.

Nearly 600 channel partners have achieved a VMware Cloud on AWS service competency.

There are more than 300 certified or validated technology solutions available customers.

The collaboration between VMware and AWS runs deep. AWS is VMware’s preferred public cloud partner for all VMware vSphere-based workloads, and VMware Cloud on AWS is the preferred AWS solution for vSphere workloads. Hundreds of AWS and VMware engineers, support, and sales teams work together to develop and offer these joint solutions, and each company has created dedicated sales, solution architects, and customer success teams to help customers maximize the benefits of VMware Cloud on AWS.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Expedites Cloud Migration at Critical Time

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is a world leader in serving science, with annual revenue exceeding $25 billion. The company’s mission is to enable customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.

The company decided to go to the public cloud and, following a successful pilot, determined VMware Cloud on AWS could help them accelerate their migration to the cloud without having to refactor or re-platform their applications. The Thermo Fisher team validated the capabilities of VMware HCX for cold and live bulk migrations, as well as rollbacks. They planned to move almost a thousand workloads to the cloud over the course of six months, but circumstances changed suddenly that required Thermo Fisher to accelerate plans.

“A major system outage placed immediate and significant strains on the performance of our applications. There was no time to procure and deploy extensive new hardware on premises,” said Steve Bassen, senior staff engineer, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “We had already proven the capabilities of VMware Cloud on AWS and HCX, so it was clear our only path was to leverage VMware Cloud to free up capacity. In the end, we successfully migrated 830 workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS in three weeks, rather than six months. The service worked as advertised, proving out not only the ability to support cloud migrations at scale beyond any reasonable expectations, but also to act as a datacenter extension when it mattered the most.”

To read more about how VMware and AWS are helping customers meet their most pressing needs, check out these stories: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/resources#customer-case-studies.

VMware, vSphere, and HCX are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions.

PayPoint India Launches “e-Gold for the Under-Served Rural Families”

* Individuals can start investing in 22 Carat e-Gold for as low as Rs. 500, without opening a Demat account  

* Tech-unsavvy customers can easily invest in e-Gold with guided assistance from retail or Kirana stores associated with PayPoint India 

While there are multiple ways to purchase gold, one that has become increasingly popular in urban India is e-Gold or Digital Gold. However, in the rural market, the demand for e-Gold remains sluggish due to low digital literacy and awareness.  

In light of these gaps, PayPoint has launched an “e-Gold facility” on its platform – a network of more than 48,000 last-mile physical stores - to make the investment process simpler and safer for rural families. The initiative is for tech-unsavvy customers to conveniently buy and sell e-gold with guided assistance from PayPoint store staff. Individuals can invest in 22-Carat gold for as low as Rs. 500.  

E-gold enables the purchase of non-physical or digital gold in small quantities, that too, without opening a Demat account. Hence, customers can avoid the downsides of buying physical gold – such as identifying physical gold's legitimacy & purity, high-ticket size, safekeeping, storage problems and others.  

On the other hand, once an individual buys e-Gold from nearby retail or Kirana stores associated with PayPoint, an equivalent amount of physical gold is purchased and stored in government-approved secured vaults on behalf of the customer. Additionally, Axis bank is the trustee of these vaults. These are the measures put in place to safeguard the interests of the customers. 

Commenting on the development, Ketan Doshi, Managing Director of PayPoint India, said, "The cost of owning physical gold in the form of bars, coins or jewelry is high, as gold is trading at around 5,100 per gram currently. Thus, we aim to take the concept of e-Gold to the last-mile with small denomination investment, thereby encourage lower-income households to opt for regular micro-savings. 

"In today's unprecedented times, when COVID-19 is ravaging the world, the need for security has come to the fore. With e-Gold SIPs, individuals can gradually build their assets even with limited income and achieve a degree of financial security in the challenging times", he added.  

During a pilot run with some retailers, PayPoint witnessed strong adoption from the customers opting for daily, weekly and monthly investments. Such a response has reinforced PayPoint's commitment to take financial products to the last mile.  

PayPoint facilitates transparent pricing by allocating or redeeming investments at real-time bullion rates.  With outstanding features of flexibility in buying, high liquidity, long-term horizon and safety, investment in e-Gold is indeed one of the best investment avenues for the customers at the bottom of the pyramid. 

About PayPoint India Network Pvt. Ltd. 

PayPoint is a technology-enabled Distribution network of Financial Services. The company's digitally connected network of 48000+ offline stores offers various Financial services like Banking (PMJDY accounts), micro ATM services, Wallets (Paypointz), Remittances, Bill payments, insurance, Merchant QR, and many more. Apart from Financial services, PayPoint also offers consumer services to the underserved like Travel booking, Recharges, Amazon assisted shopping, Gift Cards, etc. through its strong network of retail stores spread across the country. The company's retailer-driven assisted model helps customers make an informed decision for availing services from their trained partners and its digital platform.  

PayPoint offers a bouquet of services through its plug-and-play platform. More than 100 Services providers are plugged into the company's system and interact with them on a real-time basis catering to more than 4 million customers month on month. The primary objective is to bridge the financial inclusion gap between developed urban India and under-served rural India. 

Nutanix Appoints Rajiv Ramaswami as Chief Executive Officer From December 14, 2020

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in private cloud, hybrid, and multicloud computing, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Rajiv Ramaswami as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective Wednesday, December 9, 2020, and as a member of the Board of Directors, effective Monday, December 14, 2020. Ramaswami will succeed co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who previously announced his plans to retire as CEO of Nutanix upon the appointment of a successor.

Ramaswami is a seasoned technology industry executive who has held senior executive roles at industry leaders including VMware, Broadcom, Cisco, and Nortel, after having begun his career at IBM. Ramaswami has an impressive, 30+ year track record of building and scaling businesses in cloud services, software, and network infrastructure. In his most recent role as Chief Operating Officer, Products and Cloud Services at VMware, Ramaswami co-managed VMware’s portfolio of products and services. During his tenure, Ramaswami led several important acquisitions and was playing a key role in transitioning VMware toward a subscription and SaaS model.

“Rajiv is an accomplished leader with a track record of delivering a high-growth portfolio of products and services,” said Sohaib Abbasi, Lead Independent Director of Nutanix. “Rajiv distinguished himself among the CEO candidates with his rare combination of operational discipline, business acumen, technology vision and inclusive leadership skills. The talented Nutanix team, under Rajiv’s leadership, is well-positioned to drive sustained growth, to improve efficiency and to advance leadership in the emerging hybrid cloud infrastructure category.”

“I’m thrilled to be joining Nutanix at this transformative time for the company and the industry,” said Ramaswami. “I have long admired Nutanix as a formidable competitor, a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions and a leader in cloud software. Working closely with the Board, the management team, and the more than 6,000 talented Nutanix employees around the world, we will build on Nutanix’s strong foundation of continuous innovation, collaboration and customer delight. Together, we will capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead and deliver on the company’s next phase of growth and value creation.”

“Rajiv is the right leader at the right time,” said Nutanix Co-founder Dheeraj Pandey. “With a future-proof business model, a loyal and expanding customer base, and a strong technology portfolio, I look forward to seeing Rajiv take the helm to lead this incredible team. This is the decade to watch for a company that so values simple, secure, and seamless. On a personal note, it has been a privilege to serve our customers and partners, working closely alongside Nutanix employees.” Dheeraj Pandey will step down from the Board effective Monday, December 14, 2020, to ensure continuity through Nutanix's upcoming Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

About Rajiv Ramaswami

Before joining Nutanix, Ramaswami served as Chief Operating Officer of Products and Cloud Services at VMware. Prior to this role, Ramaswami led VMware’s Networking and Security business, one of the fastest-growing units in the company, as Executive Vice President and General Manager. Before joining VMware, Ramaswami served as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure and Networking at Broadcom, where he established Broadcom as a leader in data center, enterprise and carrier networking. In his prior General Manager roles at Cisco, he led multibillion dollar product lines in switching, data center and storage and optical networking. Earlier in his career, he held various leadership positions at Nortel, Tellabs and IBM.

Ramaswami earned his B. Tech in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and his Master’s Degree and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow and holds 36 patents, primarily in optical networking.

About Nutanix

Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making computing invisible anywhere. Organizations around the world use Nutanix software to leverage a single platform to manage any app at any location for their private, hybrid and multicloud environments.

ToneTag Introduces ‘Voice Commerce’ to Ease the Offline Shopping Experience!

ToneTag, a proximity communication company and the largest sound network introduces “Voice Commerce” - potentially a game-changing idea for Businesses that can seamlessly implement customer interactions and create purchase opportunities into natural environments and surroundings. With Voice Commerce people can buy anything, anytime, anywhere, just with their Voice.

ToneTag’s Voice-based solution brings the ease, convenience, and customization of online shopping into the offline retail space. The unique functionalities of this solution will enable seamless and convenient offline shopping experiences for the customers as well as for the merchants.

Voice Commerce will address:

Order Ahead: Customers can now order and pay ahead in Café and QSR just by speaking to their mobile device and get their order once they reach the outlet without waiting in the queue.

Cashier-less shopping: The introduction of voice-based commerce would enable customers to order to any voice-activated devices like Echo Buds or Air Pods, thus experiencing a queue less shopping experience, omitting the trauma of lengthy check-out process at outlets.

Voice can make Bharat digital: ToneTag’s voice-based payments solution utilizes Sound Waves to generate Audio QR as a medium for the merchant or seller and payment information to complete the transactions. Customers can do tap and pay transactions or do queue less/cashier-less payments from anywhere in the store.

For small payments under Rs.500, customers can simply say “Pay the bill" or “Payment kar dijiye" and payment process completes in two seconds. Customers can interact in their native language too. This personalized offline retail experience will mark a new era in interactive voice commerce.

Introducing an exclusive Voice Commerce technology, Kumar Abhishek, CEO, ToneTag said, “We look forward to providing customers with a highly differentiated offline shopping experience that is easier and faster than regular shopping. Although, technology innovation in e-commerce has made the online shopping experience seamless and smooth as compared to the physical retail shopping experience whereas physical retail accounts for approximately 86% of all retail sales globally. It was a need of the hour to bring –in a breakthrough technology in offline shopping too. ToneTag’s Voice Commerce feature is surely the solution to make the offline shopping easier and faster and without much physical proximity.”

He further says , “By 2022, with over 18 billion IoT (Internet of Things) devices like connected cars, appliances, wearable and other consumer electronics , the potential for leveraging Voice is massive. In fact, with conversational commerce steadily becoming the norm, it is believed that Voice command will be the key. ToneTag has harnessed the audio signal into payment gateway and made the process simpler and smoother”.

All the audio-based solutions of ToneTag are scale ready and supports major payment instruments like Amazon Pay, UPI and Card networks enabling customers to have an interactive, customized, and seamless experience in offline commerce.

About ToneTag

ToneTag harnesses sound energy to create powerful & intuitive experiences between people & devices. Company has developed a proprietary and patented software that encodes data into sound waves enabling ‘data over sound’ technology for engagement. This technology enables contactless payments and proximity customer engagement services, independent of existing infrastructure. ToneTag today operates the world’s largest sound based payment acceptance network with ~50 million users & 314,000+ merchants. In addition to its payments, ToneTag has built customer engagement solutions for merchants fully digitalizing offline retail experience.

DCB Bank Launches DCB Health Plus Fixed Deposit with Free Medical Services, Healthcare Benefits

* Depositors can earn 6.90% interest per annum on 700 days fixed deposit

* No medical tests or hospitalisation required to avail of health benefits

DCB Bank, a new-generation private sector bank, has announced a unique multi-benefit fixed deposit product – DCB Health Plus FD that offers attractive returns 6.90% interest per annum on a 700-day fixed deposit along with free medical services and healthcare benefits.

The ‘Health Plus’ services offered in a graded scale and matched with the Fixed Deposit amount, are provided by ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company.

Health Plus benefits include:

Teleconsultation and face-to-face appointments with empaneled general physicians, specialists and emergency services.

Moreover, the customer can avail special pricing for prescribed pharmacy expenses. During challenging times such as the pandemic, contactless (over the phone or video) teleconsultation proves to be a boon as many individuals are skeptical to visit out-patient department (OPD) at hospitals due to health and safety concerns.

Now-a-days, not many policies extend a wide range of health benefits for senior citizens. ‘Health Plus’ services prove to be a smart choice. No medical tests or  hospitalisation are required to avail of the benefits, which are available for resident Indians between the ages of 18 and 70 years (or not yet completed 71 years).

DCB Health Plus Fixed Deposit customer can utlise these services by simply downloading the ICICI Lombard ILTakeCare app from Apple Store or Google Playstore. These benefits are available for a year and, if left unused, it does not carry forward to the next year. However, similar benefits would still be available to deposit holders in the following year as well, until the duration of DCB Health Plus FD.

DCB Bank Head of Retail and SME Banking, Mr. Praveen Kutty said, "DCB Fixed Deposits never go out of style! Customers have a need and DCB Bank creates Fixed Deposits that provide real value.  Teleconsultation and online interaction have surged during the lockdown. DCB Bank offers new-age solutions with the traditional FD. The new DCB Health Plus FD is smart and practical that will help deposit holders grow their wealth and preserve their health at the same time. Health Plus FD is testimony to DCB Bank's strategy to launch innovative products that adapt to changing times and fulfil a customer's need."