Akamai forms strategic partnership with Sify Technologies

Akamai Technologies announced a strategic partnership with Sify Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: SIFY), a leader in Managed Enterprise, Network, IT and Software services in India with global delivery capabilities. This partnership will enable Sify Technologies to offer Akamai’s global expertise and solutions in Web acceleration and applications delivery to its Enterprise customers across India.

The collaboration is intended to help Enterprises, especially those in the BFSI, ITeS and manufacturing verticals to enhance cloud adoption for their business and functional applications. By mitigating the complexities of Internet, Enterprises will be able to enhance user experience for their global employee, customer and partner bases while providing a comprehensive and highly secure platform for their online applications.

R&M; to Exhibit Latest Data Centers Solutions at BICSI Middle East Conference 2014

Reichle & De-Massari (R&M), a Swiss structured cabling specialist, is set to participate at the BICSI Middle East Conference and Exhibition being held at the Habtoor Grand Resort & Spa in Dubai from the 8th to the 10th of April 2014. R&M is also a silver sponsor of the event and will demonstrate its latest solutions for data centers. In addition, through a presentation titled 'Modern Data Center Needs' and delivered by the company's Head of Technical Support & Training- Mr. Andrew Sedman- R&M will educate businesses on how to manage the now vital migration of their data centers to 40GbE and 100GbE networking technologies and inform them of cabling advancements such as automated infrastructure management (AIM) systems.

“Large organizations in the Middle East are well on the path to building massive data centers. At the same time, they are faced with the need to upgrade their data center networking infrastructure to match growing demands. The significant upfront costs involved means that businesses must get these deployments right on the very first try. 40GbE and even 100GbE migrations are absolutely essential and achievable if companies partner with the right solution vendors. This is a point we intend to emphasize during our participation at BICSI,” said Jean-Pierre Labry, Executive Vice-President of R&M Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

RCOM Offers International Roaming Bonanza

Reliance Communications announced the launch of two International Roaming Packs—‘Unique UK’ and ‘Fabulous Five’—for its post-paid GSM customers. Fabulous Five will allow Reliance customers to save up to 92% on voice calls across 42 destinations. At the same time, Unique UK offers 96% on data charges and up to 82% for voice calls while roaming in UK for just Rs 849/month. Awesome America launched earlier is revised and now offers calls and data at just Rs 10/-

Every year, over  a million Indian tourists travel to different destinations outside India and, in keeping with its stated intent of providing differentiated products and services to its customers, RCOM has introduced the innovative International Roaming Pack to empower its customers to stay connected on their India mobile number at all times. Data charges have been slashed considerably and Reliance Communication customers who opt for the ‘Awesome America will pay just Rs 10/-for 1 MB of data usage while roaming across USA.

Gionee launches World’s Slimmest Smartphone ELIFE S5.5 in India

Gionee launched the World’s Slimmest Smartphone - ELIFE S5.5 in India. Named after its biggest feature a 5.55mm slim body, the launch was announced at a grand event in Grand Hyatt, Goa. The path breaking innovative smartphone ELIFE S5.5 is going to hit India market by mid April 2014.

The ELIFE S series is a new product category developed through Gionee’s deep understanding of customers’ desire for a slim and powerful smartphone to also act as a fashionable accessory. The ELIFE S series products will incorporate an emphasis on design without compromising the hardware and software of a smartphone to create a whole new user experience.

Arvind.R.Vohra, India Head - Gionee Smartphones said, "Gionee has witnessed rapid increase in popularity within a year of operations in India and experienced an unprecedented success with the ELIFE series. The new ELIFE S series brings to the consumer an element of style, design and substance. Apart from being the World Slimmest smartphone the ELIFE S5.5 is powered by a lightning fast processor and has impressive hardware specification to offer great consumer experience. It’s our belief that the S5.5 will not only be a big success for Gionee in the Smart phone category but will create yet another benchmark for the industry" 

Young Bangalore Dominated by Workaholics: Zinnov Study

Zinnov, a Market Expansion and Globalization Advisory firm, today released findings of a Bangalore based study, revealing Tablet purchase and usage patterns of individuals. Surveying over 850 consumers who currently use, or have used tablet devices in the past, the study offers a detailed analysis of drivers and enablers of the market in the city. This study was conducted amongst individuals across ages, gender, marital status and professions.

According to the released Zinnov report, 49% of all respondents between ages 21-30 use their tablets for work, strongly signifying that the younger generation is leaning towards workaholism. This is further reiterated by the fact that 60% of all men and women use their tablets to access emails, with more percentage of men than women using tablets for work. This shows that the line between professional and personal lives of individuals is slowly fading and the young workforce is keen on being able to work round-the-clock.

Infor Announces Industry Application Suites in the Cloud

Infor announced Infor CloudSuiteTM, the first group of industry-specific application suites available on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud. Infor CloudSuite provides beautiful software with deep industry functionality and a flexible, subscription-based delivery model that significantly reduces upfront IT expenditure.

Each industry suite within Infor CloudSuite is built by unifying multiple applications that historically were deployed independently to holistically support core business functions by industry. This core, along with fast and simple provisioning and a SaaS pricing model will enable Infor CloudSuite to change the way enterprise software is delivered to and consumed by customers. 

Netmagic expands data center footprint in India

Netmagic, an NTT Communications company and Data center Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (DILM) service provider, announced the launch of its new data center in Electronic City, Bangalore. This 100,000 sq. ft. data center is the first time Netmagic and NTT Communications have collaborated in building an entire facility from the ground up, and thereby, draws from their combined engineering and operations expertise.

“This is a moment of pride for us, as this new data center will give Indian and multi-national enterprises an opportunity to experience the state-of-the-art data centers that NTT Communications operates across the world. The added advantage of Netmagic’s excellence in IT infrastructure management and service delivery in the Indian enterprise space, gives this data center the capability of becoming the new benchmark for data centers in India, said Akira Arima, President and CEO, NTT Communications at the unveiling of the data center. He added, “This facility is part of our Global Cloud Vision to become a genuine global ICT partner for enterprises, providing seamless  ICT solutions such as networks, data centers and applications, thereby capitalizing on the trend of enterprises’ migrating their on-premise systems to the cloud.”

The paper printer will be dead in four years, says IEEE

Paper Printers will soon become a thing of the past due to the rising popularity of tablets that have more accessible price points, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has said.

Speaking with the group's technical expert Kevin Curran, he told us that within four years, no one will need to print anything on inkjet or laserjet printers anymore, as we will instead access and review documents and images digitally. "The printer will be a thing of the past and there'll be no need for hard copies," Curran said. "The more time you spend online, the more at home you feel reading on tablets instead where everything can now be done virtually."

European Union’s General Secretariat chooses Steria to secure its internal communications networks

Steria, a leading provider of IT-enabled business services, announced the signature of a framework contract with the Secretariat General of the Council of the European Union to modernise its PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), thus streamlining all the resources used to share information internally and between EU Member States. Worth an estimated €6 million, the contract is for a period of four years and renewable twice for an additional period of one year.

Under the terms of the contract, Steria is to standardise the existing PKI and make it more forward-compatible, as well as increasing its robustness and reliability. These developments will boost interoperability between the Council’s systems and those of Member States. This major transformation in security infrastructure will also include the simplification and automation of all related procedures.

90% organisations plan to engage their retiring workforce: TimesJobs.com study

Close to 90 per cent of the organisations plan to engage their retiring workforce, revealed a TimesJobs.com study. Nearly 45 per cent of these organisations plan to offer them mentorship roles, 30 per cent are planning to employee them as consultants and 15 per cent are offering part-time/contractual jobs to this segment.

Retired but not tired

Randy Pausch in his book “The Last Lecture” said “Experience is the most important thing that anyone has to offer”, quotes Samit Jain, director, Pluss Polymers. He adds, “The retiring work force brings to the table a lot of wisdom which simply comes from experience. They can be great trainers and can mentor the younger generation to leap frog into higher roles, much earlier and with ease.”

Tech Mahindra Announces Global Alliance with Box

 Tech Mahindra announced a global alliance with Box as a premier member of the “Box Services Partner Program”. This alliance enables enterprise customers to leverage Box’s cloud based content collaboration solution as part of Tech Mahindra’s Digital Enterprise Platform (DEP) for handling document centric processes.

 

There is an emerging new normal in enterprise IT as companies embrace the business benefits of Mobile, Cloud, Social & Bigdata technologies. Customers have embarked on their digitalization journey by implementing new solutions which combine superior user experience combined with enterprise grade security addressing the need for secure access anytime, anywhere.

AMD demonstrates Full Support for New DirectX 12 at Game Developer Conference

AMD announced support for Microsoft® and its revamped graphics application programming interface, DirectX® 12, a new “console-like” version of the graphics API that has inspired PC gaming for nearly two decades.  During the Microsoft®-sponsored panel, DirectX: Evolving Microsoft's Graphics Platform, AMD revealed that it will support DirectX® 12 on all AMD Radeon™ GPUs that feature the  Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.

 

AMD will support and collaborate with Microsoft® on the development of the generational advancement of the API, to continue to improve the experience for both developers and end users.

“AMD strongly believes in the benefits gamers and game developers can realize from lower-overhead API development,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. “With the Mantle API, AMD has shown the world our commitment to incredible performance, and we look forward to enabling the same performance gains by supporting the industry-standard DirectX® 12.”

Thirty-Fold Increase in Internet-Connected Physical Devices by 2020 Will Significantly Alter How the Supply Chain Operates

The future explosion in the number of intelligent devices will create a network rich with information that allows supply chains to assemble and communicate in new ways. Gartner, Inc. forecasts that a 30-fold increase in Internet-connected physical devices by 2020 will significantly alter supply chain leader information access and cyber-risk exposure.

 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach 26 billion installed units by 2020, up from 0.9 billion just five years ago, and will impact the information available to supply chain leaders and how the supply chain operates, depending on industry.

 

"It's important to put IoT maturity into perspective, because of the fast pace at which it is emerging, so supply chain strategists need to be looking at its potential now," said Michael Burkett, managing vice president at Gartner. "Some IoT devices are more mature, such as commercial telematics now used in trucking fleets to improve logistics efficiency. Some, such as smart fabrics that use sensors within clothing and industrial fabrics to monitor human health or manufacturing processes, are just emerging."

Axis signs distributi​on agreement with Inflow technologi​es

Axis Communications announced that it has expanded its distribution in India by signing on Inflow technologies, a leading distributor in the security space as their VAD distributor. With this association, customers in India will now have an easier access to complete range of Axis products, accessories and solutions along with an augmented expertise and service from Inflow Technologies.

 

“Axis is a 100 percent channel driven organisation, and we are aggressively building our channel network in India to meet the evolving needs of our customers across industries,” said Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India. “Through this association, we are confident that we will be able to address the demand of innovative use of the video surveillance solutions. We believe that Inflow Technologies has high competence and expertise to drive the growth of surveillance solutions in the Indian market and will be an important addition to our distributor channel.”

Coud Dynamics selects Contrail to orchest5rate its cloud data center solution

Juniper Networks announced that Cloud Dynamics, a leader in software-defined cloud data centers, will deploy Juniper Networks® Contrail as the virtual network solution powering Cloud Dynamics CloudDCTM, a complete, end-to-end converged cloud infrastructure solution. By using Contrail, an important element of Juniper Networks MetaFabric architecture, to orchestrate its cloud data center solution, Cloud Dynamics will be able to quickly and securely deploy an open and best-in-class cloud environment, offering its customers cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) as a virtual enterprise or hybrid cloud.

With a razor sharp focus on providing organizations faster service delivery, greater IT agility and significant cost savings, Cloud Dynamics wanted to further extend the automation and orchestration capabilities within its CloudDCTM solution to include multi-vendor virtual and physical infrastructures in multi-cloud environments.

Nokia Lumia 1520 inspires Rina Dhaka at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week 2014

Smartphones play an increasingly integral role within fashion, and more specifically on the front row of global fashion week shows, with designs online before they hit the end of the runway. The leading functionality, design and imaging capabilities of the Nokia Lumia 1520 make it a perfect tool for the fashion world.

Nokia, an official partner at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week 2014, has tied up with leading fashion designer Rina Dhaka, to create her exclusive Fashion Week collection. Inspired by the latest and biggest of the Nokia Lumia series- the Nokia Lumia 1520, the collection will be showcased at the fashion week on 26th March. This partnership was facilitated by Mahesh Bhupati’s company Globosportworld.

Perpetuuiti appoints Ajay Wani as Senior Vice President, Engineering

 Perpetuuiti has announced the appointment of strategic thinker and seasoned product engineering leader Ajay Wani as Senior Vice President, Engineering to build and manage highly energetic and collaborative teams to produce exceptional results in demanding environments.

Ajay brings more than 21 years of hands-on experience in Product Development, Project Management and quality delivery of it to Perpetuuiti.  Previously, he has served as a Senior Director - Engineering, Netbackup Product, Information Management Group at Symantec Software, where he was managing the NetBackup engineering team in India and directly accountable for and held complete global responsibility of entire NetBackup UI, Backup Search functionality and Bare Metal Restore capabilities.

Global 2000 organizations could save $6.8 billion through improved ASM

Research released by HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL), a global IT services provider, has highlighted how global 2000 organizations could realize savings of $6.8 billion through improved Application Support & Maintenance. The survey of 300 CIOs from the UK and US revealed that ASM now accounts for 38% of large organizations’ overall IT budget each year.  Based on the IT expenditure of Fortune 2000 companies this equates to $11.3 million per organization annually. Furthermore, 83% of respondents stated that the cost of maintaining and supporting these applications was increasing year on year, while over the last 12 months organizations have on average seen a 29% increase in support tickets for ASM.

Against this backdrop it is unsurprising that IT departments are also finding it increasingly difficult to prioritize application problems and/or service requests.  Indeed 88% of the large enterprises surveyed admitted they found prioritization a challenge. At the same time, with IT underpinning a number of business functions, 90% of respondents said that resource and skills restraints were making it difficult to align business and IT objectives.  Only a small percentage (14%) of organizations stated they have mapped business benefit from IT.

Kores Introduces Save&Go; In India

Kores India has just introduced Save&Go, a 360-degree mobile solution that enables complete content transfer and phone/tablet personalization in India that allows mobile phone users to walk out working with their new phones from their nearest phone retailer. Save & Go safely and automatically transfers data from an old device to a new one in a zap, regardless of the differences of producer, model or operating system between the old and new device.

Widely available in Europe, Save&Go will now be accessible available across mobile retail stores in India. Save & Go supports a large number of mobile phones and tablets and comes with easy to use software, which installs in minutes.

ZTE9 Releases FunBox - a Home Entertainment Console

ZTE9 Limited released the FunBox, the world’s fastest home entertainment console, bringing consumers and families a unique high-performance all-in-one gaming, video-chatting and online video experience.

The FunBox combines the world-leading engineering of ZTE and the video game development expertise of The9 to deliver genuine innovation to the consumer electronics industry, shaking up the home entertainment market in China. ZTE9 is a joint venture between ZTE Corporation, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of mobile devices, and The9 Limited, one of China’s foremost video game companies. Online sales for the FunBox will start on JD.com next month, and consumers can choose between 12 different colors.

The FunBox is powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra4 processor, based on the new A15 architecture, and the superior graphics performance is delivered by a 72-core GeForce graphics processor with 2GB DDR3L memory and 8GB of Flash memory. The specifications make the FunBox the highest performance home entertainment console currently available globally.

Amazon.in opens Sports, Fitness and Outdoors equipment store

Amazon.in (www.amazon.in) announced the launch of the Sports, Fitness and Outdoors store -- a single easy-to-use destination offering vast selection of over 8,500 genuine products across several sports, fitness and outdoor activities, from cricket to badminton to hiking to cycling to fitness, and everything in-between. Customers can choose from extensive product lines of popular Indian and international brands including Slazenger, Yonex, Cosco, SG, Puma, Coleman, Adidas, Stag, Wilson and many more.

“In this fast paced life, consumers in India are increasingly looking to make sports, fitness regimes or outdoor activities as an integral part of their lifestyles. Our goal is to offer customers   easy access with great prices to the widest range of sports and fitness gear  and support the interests of everyone from weekend warriors to sports enthusiasts by providing  them with a convenient, reliable and trustworthy shopping experience anytime, anywhere,” said Amit Agarwal, Vice President and Country Manager, Amazon India.

India’s First Cloud Based Outbound Calling Application

Intelliverse Telecom, a cloud-based communication solutions provider for businesses, announced the launch of IntelliConnection, a cloud-based platform that connects sales representatives to their targeted prospects, leading to increased conversion and retention. The application helps organizations enhance sales automation solution and maximizes the productivity, increased sales opportunities and profitability of their sales organizations - by eliminating dialing - and dramatically increasing the volume of connections and live conversations made.

“IntelliConnection helps organizations maximize investment and accelerate revenue gains without hiring additional resources and offers the best intelligent follow-up management after initial outreach to the customer”, said Mr. Ajay Alur, Director, Intelliverse Telecom. Affordably priced the flexible application streamlines sales prospecting, payment collections and insurance renewals, so that the salespeople stay on track to achieve accurate sales matrix, ensuring complete transparency and monitoring - including detailed reports and activity levels for each salesperson, he added.

Persistent Systems creates Accelerite to focus on Products

Persistent Systems announced the creation of Accelerite to take a portfolio of products and related solutions to market. Accelerite will be a business unit of Persistent Systems, headquartered in Silicon Valley and led by Nara Rajagopalan.

The formation of Accelerite will bring product-centric alignment to business models, strategies, sales, and operations. Persistent Systems will continue to focus on product development and technology services where it is a well-respected market leader.

Nikon launches Nikon D4S and the Nikon D3300 in India

In a constant endeavor to augment D-SLR market in India, Nikon India, 100% subsidiary of Nikon Corporation Tokyo, rolled out its latest offerings - Nikon D4S and the Nikon D3300 at an event. The new models are the culmination of leading technology that brings innovation to both photo imaging culture and the evolution of cameras.

With the introduction of latest D-SLR cameras, Nikon continues to push the boundaries of professional image quality, speed and features. Nikon’s Flagship D-SLRs symbolizes the evolution of a masterpiece, reinforcing Nikon as the choice for amateurs, photo enthusiasts and professional photographers.

Commenting at the launch, Hiroshi Takashina, Managing Director, Nikon India said, “Today’s announcement reiterates our commitment to offer products that exhibit exceptional performance and image quality in challenging environments. Our D-SLR camera business has become more successful than ever with over 20% growth over the last year. With these latest offerings in the D-SLR range, our aim is to enliven the basic principles of trustworthiness and creativity that Nikon as a brand stands for.”

Motorola Introduces Moto X in India through Flipkart

Meet Moto X by Motorola: the ultimate wingman, because your smartphone should work for you — not the other way around. Moto X represents the best of Motorola and Google, and it’s coming to Indian customers exclusively through Flipkart.com from 19th March, 2014.

Moto X has a unique curved back, designed to fit your hand. With Google Now, Moto X tells you what you need to know when you need to know it. With two flicks of your wrist, Moto X becomes your camera and captures the shots you used to miss. It’s ready when you are.

Magnus Ahlqvist, GM of EMEA and Asia Pacific, Motorola Mobility commented. “We are very excited about Motorola in the Indian market and we want to bring strong propositions that completely change mobile experience for the buyers. Moto X has been very well received across markets and would continue to add to Motorola’s momentum in India.”

Garuda Indonesia Airlines Goes Live with TCS SWIFT MRO Solution

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced the go-live of a new Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) application programme with PT Garuda Indonesia (Persero) Tbk. (Garuda Indonesia Airlines), Indonesia’s national airline, via its aircraft maintenance subsidiary GMF Aeroasia.

Garuda’s relationship with TCS began in 2012 when the airline sought a solution to upgrade, consolidate and enhance its MRO technology infrastructure which was spread across numerous applications from multiple vendors. The programme to implement the TCS SWIFT MRO platform moved from blueprint phase to go-live in 13 months, much faster than the typical MRO project that can take three to five years to complete. With the TCS SWIFT MRO solution, Garuda replaced over 50 legacy applications, implemented over 300 business processes, and migrated over 3 million records of data for 140 aircrafts and fitted parts into a unified solution. The first phase of the project, now live, comprises the SAP-based End-to-End Pre-Configured SWIFT MRO solution for MRO, supply chain processes, finance and human resources modules.

dunnhumby to host hackathon in Gurgaon on March 22

dunnhumby, the world’s leading customer science company, is going to hold a one-day hackathon on Saturday, March 22, in Gurgaon, for anyone with a passion for data science, data modelling, and statistics. The event, with a cash prize of Rs 250,000, is meant to help identify the data scientists of tomorrow by spotting youngsters who enjoy crunching numbers to generate unique insights.

“This is a great opportunity for us to bring together the best data science minds in the Delhi-NCR region and see what they can achieve in a time-pressured environment. We look forward to seeing how the greatest minds and students in the region creatively resolve complex data science challenges. This also represents a great way to discover great prospective talent for dunnhumby." said Yael Cosset, Chief Information Officer, dunnhumby.

Leading academics and business leaders unite to reassess leadership styles in today’s digital world

Tata Communications and ABIS highlight the need for C-level executives to reassess their approach to leadership in light of global trends in Unified Communications (UC), social media and globalisation. Bringing together leading academics and business leaders from ABIS and C-level executives from Tata Communications and its customers,  a recent industry roundtable highlighted the need for leaders to be aware of the challenges around managing global teams, or run the risk of alienating today’s digital and globally dispersed workforce. With the emergence of UC, technology was identified as a key enabler for collaboration, as well as providing a platform for sustainable business practices.    

Meeting over Telepresence, a fully immersive video conferencing technology, across the UK, France, Brussels, Singapore, China, South Africa and India, the roundtable discussed the traditional role of the CEO and how technologies, particularly Unified Communications, were transforming that role, as leaders manage a global and always-on workforce. Professors from leading international business schools including Nottingham Business School (UK), ESCP (Paris, France), EDHEC (Lille, France), TSM (Netherlands), Ashridge and Royal Holloway (UK), and GIBS (South Africa) discussed the future opportunities facing this space, with a number of senior executives from Tata Communications and its customers. Future social and economic development, made possible by video conferencing, and its role in bringing needed expertise into developing nations, especially in the areas of education and medicine, were also key topics on the table. For these opportunities to be fully realised, business leaders face some very specific challenges.

HP Expands Testing for Mobile and Cloud-based Application Delivery

HP announced new offerings to accelerate mobile and cloud-based testing and improve user experience while increasing cost savings and quality for the delivery of business-critical applications and services.

To help organizations drive quality, performance and velocity into their mobile, cloud, hybrid and traditional applications, HP is unveiling new versions of the products within its HP Application Lifecycle Management portfolio. The new software offerings help enterprises improve planning and development, shrink testing costs and speed the delivery of applications while continuously reducing potential business disruptions.

Ease of use, quality and performance are at the forefront of today’s global enterprise applications since poor user experience can quickly and directly impact brand perception and the financial bottom line. HP’s enhanced offerings are the foundation for delivering quality digital content, innovative applications and reliable services to the “anywhere, anytime” world.

FirstRain to Significantly Expand Development Team in India

FirstRain, the leader in Personal Business for enterprise sales and marketing teams announced today it plans to grow its operations in India by over 100% in the next two years in order to continue to drive rapid technology innovation, deliver breakthrough mobile apps, and support the requirements of its Fortune 500 customers. Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, FirstRain continues to strenghten its Gurgaon office as an R&D hub and views its investment in its India facility and employees as a critical element to further its leadership in the personalbusiness market.

Announcing the plans, Penny Herscher, President & CEO, FirstRain said on her visit to India, "The rapid growth of the India market is leading to an expansion of the talent pool by over 30-40% each year. The FirstRain India team is a core part of developing, enhancing and maintaining our Personal Business T platform and gives us a vital competitive advantage. Many of FirstRain's technology patents are co-authored by engineers in our Gurgaon R&D center and in our headquarters at San Mateo, California and it illustrates the incredible collaborative ethos of the two offices. While so many firms are simply outsourcing their development to India, FirstRain continues to leverage the technical expertise of our R&D leaders located in India to help create optimal personal business solutions for our global Fortune 500 customers.""We are excited and prepared for this next phase of growth in India"Aparna Gupta, Managing Director, FirstRain India added.

Pacnet Introduces Customer Experience Initiatives

Following on recently launched innovations such as its Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN), 100G network upgrade and a growing data center footprint, Pacnet today announced a series of strategic initiatives focused on customer service excellence. Continued investments in training, refining key operational processes, deploying new customer-aligned tools, and the unveiling of an enhanced Customer Experience and Network Operations Center (CxNOC), are all designed to give Pacnet personnel the tools to provide enhanced service to customers.

“An innovative and ever-evolving product portfolio calls for equally advanced customer service capabilities,” said Andy Lumsden, Chief Technology Officer of Pacnet. “These fundamental enhancements of our customer support enable Pacnet to center our processes and tools around customer needs, driving customer-enabled innovations such as Pacnet Enabled Network while delivering the higher availability and priority restoration capabilities of initiatives like our 100G network upgrade.”

ODCA members scaling cloud usage

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the global organization where members work together to advance the deployment of enterprise cloud solutions and services that are interoperable, secure and free of vendor lock-in, today unveiled its third annual membership survey. The survey highlights continued growth in adoption of cloud computing by Alliance members,  ahead of broad market trends including broad use of ODCA usage model requirements to guide cloud purchases.

The 2013 annual ODCA membership survey, which collected information from 124 members, found that 31 percent of respondents are running at least 40 percent of their IT operations in an internal cloud. This number is expected to grow to 70 percent of respondents by 2016.

60% Of The Workforce is looking For New Jobs: TimesJobs.com Study

Nearly, 60 per cent of the workforce is looking to change jobs in the next 6 months and about 58 per cent of them are seeking growth from the new job. Moving up the corporate ladder and holding a leadership position matters to them more than a hefty paycheck, revealed a recent TimesJobs.com study.

According to R P Yadav, Chairman & Managing Director, Genius Consultants Ltd, “As soon as a professional gains around 3-4 years work experience, their priorities change. He/she is to get married or is already married. Owing to this there is social and self generated pressure to be a team leader or manager. Thus, the professional looks for change, more for leadership positions than compensation.”

This is substantiated by various TimesJobs.com surveys, polls and discussions that indicate that the workforce today seeks a good job profile/designation more than monetary benefits.

HR Professionals expect Video Conferencing to be Their Preferred Communications Tool in 2016

New analysis of a recent global survey conducted by Redshift Research on behalf of Polycom has found that HR executives who use video at work today say they will prefer video collaboration over email as their top method of business communication within three years. The majority of those respondents (56 per cent) indicated video would be their most preferred method of business communication, surpassing email (49 per cent) and voice conference calls (32 per cent).

Proving that the benefits of video for HR functions are well understood, the survey of business decision makers in 12 countries revealed that almost all (98 per cent) of the HR executives participating in the survey believe video conferencing removes distance barriers and improves productivity between teams in different cities and countries.

Regalix's State of Product Marketing Report 2014

Regalix announced the release of its latest study “State of Product Marketing Report 2014”. The survey demonstrated that the digitization of purchase decisions has now forced product marketers to re-think and revisit their customer acquisition and relationship-building techniques. Marketers can no longer afford to use only one or two channels to market their products, they have to use the right combination of assets (both digital and physical) during the right stage of the product life-cycle to drive conversions.

R&M; Grows 22% YoY Propelled by Wins in Manufacturing, IT/ITeS and Telecom

Swiss cabling specialist R&M announced that it has achieved 22% growth YoY in 2013. Manufacturing, IT/ITeS and telecom verticals have been the major contributors to the growth during 2013. BFSI, healthcare,  education, automotive, pharmaceuticals and hospitality verticals are the other industry verticals addressed by R&M, which have contributed around 15% increase in the clientele compared to 2012.

R&M scored its strengths in a tough and competitive market place by its end-to-end cabling solutions portfolio, strong customer relationships and unique selling approach. R&M has generated 60% of their business from IT/ITeS alone. R&M with its feature rich products and solutions provides a reliable and high-performance physical layer to next generation networks.

How to stay ‘agile’: key learnings from Festival of Media Asia-Pacific 2014

Some of the world’s largest brands, agencies and media owners, gathered over two days at the Festival of Media Asia Pacific (FOMAP) to discuss the future of the media industry from 16-18 March 2014. This year’s festival was held at the Capella Singapore, bringing together over 600 delegates and 50+ luminary speakers from across the region and the world, to trade ideas and discuss some of the most interesting and pressing issues affecting the media industry.

Commenting, Charlie Crowe, Founder of Festival of Media and Chairman of C Squared said, “Asia-Pacific continues to be a global hub for media innovation and excellence, and this year’s event has been a great success, welcoming some of the region’s most pioneering media leaders to the stand to share their own unique perspectives on the challenges and opportunities faced by businesses in the region. Once again the event has proved a hit with delegates, offering up the latest research, fascinating industry case-studies and educated commentary on the industry issues making the headlines, to provide an educational and above all else, enjoyable event.”

Tales of the Outcome Economy

Hold down costs. Increase efficiency and productivity. Optimize cash flow. Drive innovation. It’s a tall order. But as an increasing number of companies is finding, business networks are an effective way to fill it. On March 18, leading organizations will take to the stage at Ariba LIVE 2014, the premier business commerce event of the year hosted by Ariba, an SAP Company, and share the stories of their success leveraging the connectivity and insights of networks to take their business to new heights.

“The pressure to drive ever-increasing productivity and achieve outcomes has never been greater.” said Rachel Spasser, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Ariba. “With business networks, companies can extend their processes and insights to customers, suppliers, and other partners outside the enterprise and engage in completely new ways that drive innovation and results across their business.”

Dell ramps up its Distribution network in India

Dell announced that it will bet big on the distribution business to provide customers the latest and most relevant technology solutions. The distribution led business will be a significant growth driver for Dell in its commercial business. Dell partners will now be able to meet customer demands for the best-of-breed enterprise products and solutions without any wait period.  This will result in extending coverage across Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities.

Reiterating the message, Ravi Bharadwaj, Executive Director- Marketing, Dell India, said, “Dell is excited with this new foray of working together with the commercial distribution fraternity, as we see ourselves winning and growing with channel partners. Our comprehensive array of solutions and robust infrastructure will pave the path to success for us and our customers”

Infosys Signs Five Year Deal with Sweden’s Länsförsäkringar AB

Infosys announced that it has signed a five-year agreement with Länsförsäkringar AB (LFAB) to provide application development and management support for its life and non-life insurance business.

The new agreement with Infosys will see Länsförsäkringar AB, owned by Länsförsäkringar Alliance, a mutual organization of 23 regional insurance companies with a strong local brand, improve the quality of service and time to market for its alliance members at a reduced cost.

Five Port USB Charging Station Launched

Continuing its surge in providing innovative solutions for a better managed lifestyle, Portronics proudly presents its revolutionary 5 Port USB Charging Station. Whether you are at home or flying around the world, the Portronics 5 Port USB Charging Station is the perfect solution to instantly add high speed 5 USB charging ports to any standard AC outlet without having to solely depend on your computer.

Multitudes of gadgets have become our daily survival need, but managing their cables and connectors is a nightmare of its own kind! The 5 Port USB Charging Station is an amazing stride towards giving you a single platform to charge up to five devices simultaneously and that too with a single cable connect to any standard AC output. This charging port allows you to charge 2 Tablets and 3 other devices like Smartphone, Bluetooth headset, Mp3 player etc. at the same time. The 5 Port USB Charging Station provided charging at a great speed since it supports maximum 6A of total output.

Steria to reinforce its Cloud Computing consultancy expertise with the acquisition of Beamap

Steria, a provider of IT-enabled business services, has further strengthened its positioning as an expert in transformation by acquiring Cloud Computing consultants Beamap. As the world undergoes a digital revolution, Steria once again demonstrates its ability to work with its clients - from design right through to implementation of large-scale Cloud projects. The buyout forms part of the Group’s investment strategy for the Cloud.

As a pioneering consulting firm in the field, Beamap works with major organisations to ensure successful transitions to Cloud Computing. Alstom, Axa, BNP Paribas, GDF Suez, SNCF, Société Générale, Thalès and Total are just some of the firms which have been able to leverage the Cloud for transformation, through creating value by adopting new uses, cutting costs and acquiring greater agility. As a wholly-owned subsidiary, Beamap will take on a whole new dimension, whilst preserving its own identity.

Internet influence on Insurance sales to grow 20x by 2020

The exploding popularity of smart phones and Internet has become a core part of life for many consumers across the globe and in India. This megatrend, which has already disrupted several sectors, is set to have a huge impact on Insurance sector in India. It is estimated that three in every four insurance policies sold by 2020 would be influenced by digital channels during either the pre-purchase stage, purchase or renewal stages, according to a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google India. This report, titled Digital@Insurance-20X By 2020, asserts that not only will insurance sales from online channels grow 20x from today by 2020, but overall Internet influenced sales would be INR 300-400k crore. Digital disruption is expected to impact insurance significantly and, whether considered an opportunity or a threat, insurers need to be creative to leverage this opportunity immediately.

The influence of Digital is already 'big' and is getting 'bigger', exponentially in terms of user growth and time taken. This connected online population of over two billion users forms a brand new market that cuts across borders. India is no different, and has one of the largest digital user populations. Technology adoption curves are also becoming highly accelerated, and Internet influence can no longer be ignored, it is now at the very core and is a necessity.

Dual Usage of Mobile in Banks- For Customers, For Employees !

In this technologically sophisticated era, many banks have been embracing technology rapidly to engage with their consumers who are constantly on the go. From offering unique initiatives such missed call banking, tab banking to mobile banking for offering various services, mobility has impacted the banking sector in different ways. Consumers can easily check balances, transfer funds and perform transactions through their smart devices.

With this proliferation of smartphone, availability of affordable internet and ease of banking on the go, the use of mobile in the BFSI sector is growing speedily.

Tesco HSC appoints Glen Attewell as Chief Executive Officer

Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (Tesco HSC), the global technology and operations centre for Tesco, appointed Glen Attewell as Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds Sandeep Dhar, who spent over five years as CEO and is leaving the business.

In this role, Glen will work closely with the leadership team to continue the journey of Tesco HSC in becoming a fully integrated part of Tesco’s multichannel strategy. He will report to Alison Horner, Group Personnel Director, who serves on the Tesco Executive Committee.

Polaris announces demerger of Products Business

Polaris Financial Technology announced the demerger of its Products (Intellect) business into an independent entity.

The company will be filing the Scheme of Demerger with the Stock Exchanges, SEBI and High Court as per extant regulations. After demerger and subject to approval from regulatory authorities and shareholders, the Product Company will be known as Intellect Design Arena Ltd (Intellect) and comprise of four distinct businesses : Global Universal Banking; Risk and Treasury Management; Global Transaction Banking and Insurance. Polaris Financial Technology Ltd (Polaris) will continue to run the Services Business with a strong vertical and solution focus.

Beacons - coming to an airport near you?

Beacon technology has been hailed as a game-changer in retail. It uses Bluetooth to trigger the display of information on phones and tablets that is relevant to the specific location and context of the user. But will Beacons be used at the world’s airports? SITA Lab, the technology research team of the air transport industry’s IT provider SITA, has conducted the earliest trials of beacon technology at airports and has today issued its findings in its paper “Connecting to your passenger - are beacons the breakthrough?”

Connecting and communicating efficiently with passengers throughout their journey is a widely-held goal in the air transport industry and SITA Lab’s research has investigated the potential of using beacon technology in today’s airports. The benefits being touted for the technology, such as low cost and wide range, have a strong appeal for anyone wanting to connect directly with customers. But SITA Lab investigated if the technology works as advertized in the real world. Trials with a leading international airline and airport have produced results which are both promising and cautionary.

Zensar signs significant deals of near 100 crores

Zensar Technologies has reported significant new multimillion dollar wins in the United States and Europe.
 

Ganesh Natarajan, Vice Chairman and CEO, Zensar Technologies said, “Zensar’s business in our key markets of USA, UK, Europe and Africa continues to be robust with new wins in these territories in both our core businesses, enterprise application services and  infrastructure management.”

The Company has signed a major deal with a large multibillion dollar American enterprise that designs and builds specialty trucks and military vehicles, and that operates as a leader in every market in which it competes. The company is a Fortune 500 organization with manufacturing operations in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. This large deal with the client involves a full-featured team in select areas, to scale with demand over a two-year period. The strategic nature of this project positions Zensar well with the client and also has the company poised for additional opportunities in the near future.  Currently, Zensar is building critical enterprise wide systems for the client’s supplier network.

Gartner: the Internet of Things Will Transform the Data Center

The Internet of Things (IoT) has a potential transformational effect on the data center market, its customers, technology providers, technologies, and sales and marketing models, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner estimates that the IoT will include 26 billion units installed by 2020, and by that time, IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion, mostly in services.

"IoT deployments will generate large quantities of data that need to be processed and analyzed in real time," said Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner. "Processing large quantities of IoT data in real time will increase as a proportion of workloads of data centers, leaving providers facing new security, capacity and challenges."

GajShield Conducts Training Program for Partners in New Delhi

GajShield conducted training program for partners in New Delhi. 40 plus partners benefit from the training sessions. The main objective of this training program was to provide deeper insights to GajShield's new partners and technical engineers on GajShield's products and solutions. The training also covered how the products can be implemented under various scenarios across a customer's network. The partners were also explained on the unique features offered by GajShield UTM in comparison with normal UTMs.
 

Mithilesh Pandey trained the partners on the basics concept of security, followed by a session on internet security and finally he empowered partners with more knowledge on installation and deployment of the GajShield device at the customer's place. They were also trained on cloud security and how it secures data even when the employee is outside the perimeter of an organization's network. Partners got a better understanding on how GajShield's Data Leak Prevention (DLP) help customer to secure their network against data leakages. His presentation also stressed on how partners can suggest customers on the model of network that they can avail based on the services and the concurrent users.

SEWA Project awarded Best Mobile Product/Service/Initiative in Emerging markets

The RUDI Sandesh Vyavhar project, a collaborative effort between Vodafone Foundation, SEWA and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women was honoured at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for The Best Mobile Product, Initiative or Service in Emerging Markets category. On behalf of the project, the award was received by Vodafone India MD & CEO Marten Pieters and Cherie Blair in Barcelona, Spain.

The award presented in a glittering ceremony in Barcelona offers organisations across the global mobile eco-system (including all converging vertical sectors) the opportunity to showcase the latest and best mobile products, apps, services and initiatives to the world. The global mobile award for SEWA gives the project credit on a global platform and is the highest in its category of recognition.

Gartner: Worldwide External Controller-Based Disk Storage Market Grew 5% in 4th Quarter of 2013

Worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage vendor revenue totaled $6.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, a five percent increase from revenue of $6.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Following an abysmal third quarter, the fourth quarter of 2013 returned to growth. Driven by pent-up demand and the year-end budget flush phenomenon, the market overcame a fragile global economy and grew a strong five percent over the same period in 2012" said Roger Cox, research vice president at Gartner.

While Fujitsu and NetApp had year over year revenue gains, only two vendors - EMC and HP - beat the year-over-year market growth rate in the fourth quarter (see Table 1). Propelled by broad acceptance of the HP 3PAR StoreServ and the StoreOnce disk-based backup platforms, HP led all surveyed vendors in year-over-year revenue growth. Beyond its broad ECB disk storage portfolio, EMC benefited from the success of its VNX and Data Domain product refresh offerings. The increasing traction of NetApp's Clustered Data ONTAP operating system within its installed base, as well as an alternative to competing solutions, is enabling NetApp to achieve above-market results. Fujitsu continues to make gains in the EMEA region and has a strong showing in its home country, Japan.

Snapdeal.com exclusively partners with GOQii Inc

GOQii and Snapdeal.com announced an exclusive collaboration for the newly launched GOQii Life, the first ecosystem product where advanced wearable technology meets the world’s best experts and coaches in addition to a unique social giving opportunity.

Snapdeal.com will be the only marketplace on which GOQii users can pre-book their subscription plans; users can also book on goqii.com.  The Snapdeal/GOQii agreement is the first of a kind in Indian ecommerce, in that users can pre-book their order for a product-based service directly from an ecommerce marketplace.

Its corporate mission drives GOQii: a passion for healthy and meaningful living. Coupled with a wearable device that tracks daily fitness activity, the GOQii system provides its users an holistic system of personalized coaching via world class experts, plus a way to embrace social philanthropy by converting “steps” into Karma Points, GOQii’s virtual currency to support the user’s social cause of choice.

Administrator of Domain Name System Launches Global Multi-stakeholder Accountability Process

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched a process to transition the role of the United States Government relating to the Internet’s unique identifiers system.

ICANN’s announcement comes on the heels of an historic announcement on March 14, 2014 by the U.S. Government stating that it is ready to transfer its stewardship of the important Internet technical functions to the global Internet community. The U.S. Government’s current responsibilities to be transitioned include the procedural role of administering changes to the Domain Name System’s (DNS) to the authoritative root zone file - the database containing the lists of names and addresses of all top-level domains - as well as serving as the historic steward of the unique identifiers registries for Domain names, IP addresses, and protocol parameters.

In doing so, the U.S. recognized ICANN’s maturation in becoming an effective multistakeholder organization and requested that ICANN convene the global community to develop the transition process from the U.S. stewardship to a global community consensus-driven mechanism.

8 Things You Should Know About the New Microsoft Office

Microsoft India recently moved into a spanking new office on the 10^th floor of the Epitome Building in DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon. Spanning an area of 71,000 sq. ft., the new office is designed to seamlessly integrate people, places and technology while reflecting Microsoft values. Built in accordance with the Microsoft Work Place Advantage (WPA) program, the office melds factors such as light, color, organic materials, furniture, views, sound, and social presence.

Synerzip Deploys WatchGuard Technologies' Solutions to Secure Worldwide Network

WatchGuard Technologies announced that Synerzip, a global, software-development company, has deployed its Unified Threat Management (UTM) platform featuring the company's new real-time, security-intelligence- visualization solution, WatchGuard Dimension. Synerzip, which is headquartered in Dallas, TX, with a development center in India, and with customers around the world, needed both to secure its extensive network and quickly identify usage trends and security threats.

"At any given time, we have more than 1,200 devices connecting to the Internet, including 600+ mobile devices used for applications testing on Android, iOS and Windows platforms. This testing requires the constant sharing of sensitive development information, so it's imperative that we have UTM solutions in place to secure our network and communications," said Kiran Ratnakar, IT Manager at Synerzip. "The XTM product, along with the new Dimension solution, not only enable us to maintain a high-performance network, but also gives us an innovative visibility tool that eliminates the need to review hours of log data when managing the network and identifying trends."

Survey Highlights Changing Role of the CIO

It is no surprise that businesses are being transformed by new technologies, especially those that bring more intelligence and mobility to their operations and products. Some companies - known as “Innovation Accelerators”- are driving this transformation by pursuing IT-enabled business innovation as a core strategy throughout their organization, according to the results of the “Business Transformation and the CIO Role” survey announced today by Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions.

The survey of 420 global business leaders, commissioned by Red Hat through Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, found that these Innovation Accelerators (32 percent of survey respondents) are anticipating significant change over the next three years, particularly in how they engage with and learn about customers, as well as in their business models, products and services, and end user processes.

CommVault Enables Network of 200+ Service Providers Globally

CommVault announced that the Simpana 10 software platform has become the data protection platform of choice for more than 200 certified service providers, which provide cloud solutions to millions of client systems worldwide and protect hundreds of petabytes of data. 

The company also unveiled a three-pronged cloud business strategy that builds on its leadership in software innovation and, through strategic relationships with service provider partners, delivers solutions to simplify and secure the transition of these services providers and their customers to cloud computing. To achieve this, CommVault utilizes its single software platform to power the most efficient cloud infrastructures, is expanding market reach through a broad cloud ecosystem and further investing in its cloud solutions group. This vision is underpinned by CommVault’s early investments in cloud technologies in anticipation of the paradigm shift now taking place in IT consumption and IaaS.  

SecurEnvoy facilitates remote working for staff at city councils and municipal authorities

From law enforcement officials to highway surveyors - staff at public authorities often work away from the office. As a result, they need to access city or municipal networks remotely in order to document their assignments. Employees at many such authorities log in via two-factor authentication and identify themselves using dedicated hardware tokens. However, with this approach, the procurement and maintenance costs relating to the tokens can rapidly escalate. An alternative is offered by the manufacturer SecurEnvoy, which has developed a tokenless two-factor authentication method. With this, staff working remotely can easily and efficiently log into networks using devices such as smartphones.

Traditional tokens, such as smart cards, are used in addition to login details in order to provide access authorisation in many companies and organisations. However, the implementation of such methods is often lengthy and replacing defective tokens can become expensive. SecurEnvoy enables companies and organisations to make use of smartphones, laptops or tablets as authentication devices. One of the methods from the SecurAccess solution is to send a dynamically generated password to the mobile devices of employees via SMS or e-mail. The password received is then combined with the user’s login information to enable tokenless two-factor authentication. Staff of public authorities can thus quickly and conveniently access IT networks. Examples such as the London Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea illustrate the advantages of tokenless two-factor authentication.

SAP Launches New Program to Support Student Entrepreneurs

SAP announced a new global program that aims to provide comprehensive support for students who want to start businesses that develop real-time solutions and Big Data applications. 

Participants in the entrepreneurship program will receive support in developing new applications on the SAP HANA platform. The students will be able to use SAP software free of charge to develop applications and will be assisted by SAP experts. A comprehensive training program will provide the necessary technical background on SAP HANA as well as SAP® Mobile Platform. Students will also be trained in design thinking methodology to help them along the process from an idea through to the finished product. 

Once students have set up their business, they can participate in the SAP Startup Focus program and receive free-of-charge technical support, consulting and marketing services from SAP. The company will also assist with the market launch, provide access to the SAP partner network and offer opportunities to participate or hold presentations at events organized by SAP or other manufacturers. To open up new sources of funding, young entrepreneurs will receive access to SAP Ventures, the independent venture capital firm affiliated with SAP, and other venture capital companies. 

Infosys Signs Multi-Year Agreement with Volvo Car Corporation

Infosys has been selected by Volvo Cars as a strategic supplier to provide application development services for its global operations. This agreement builds on the long-standing relationship as Infosys has been supporting Volvo Cars since 2010 to rationalize and integrate its enterprise systems.

As part of the new agreement, Infosys will:

·         Bring its proven global service delivery experience and ability to drive innovation and transformation - efficiently and effectively

·         Develop applications to support multiple domains, including marketing and sales, customer service, manufacturing, product development, and corporate functions

·         Deploy best practices specifically related to business process harmonization and delivery excellence, across transformation projects

Pegasystems Expands Commitment to Enablement of its Ecosystem in India

Pegasystems announced PegaDAY, a new initiative aimed at growing the number of Pega certified professionals.

Pegasystems is working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a global platinum partner, to launch the first PegaDAY program.  TCS will be conducting sessions at their centres in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar and Chennai, India on the 18th, 21st and 25th of March. These sessions will enable TCS associates on the latest Pega solutions which they can use to help transform client businesses into digital enterprises. 

Pegasystems currently has a network/ecosystem of more than 12,000 certified professionals in India. Additional PegaDAY programs will benefit the entire alliance ecosystem by accelerating the number of new certified Pega professionals. The programs cover all available Pega solutions, including the Pega 7 Build for Change platform, Pega CRM solutions, Pega Next-Best-Action, Pega Sales Force Automation, as well as the latest in cloud and mobile solutions. 

OSX/CoinMalware Disguised as Angry Birds and other Popular Apps

ESET, a provider of security solutions for businesses and consumers, warned Mac users not to download pirated software from file-sharing peer-to-peer networks, as ESET researchers have discovered Bitcoin-stealing malware OSX/Coin being spread via cracked apps.

The malware, OSX/Coin thief, was first discovered in February 2014 by researchers at SecureMac, and was found to steal login credentials related to various Bitcoin-related exchanges and wallet sites via malicious browser add-ons.  There is clearly strong evidence that the trojan was specifically designed to profit from the current Bitcoin craze and fluctuating exchange rates.

Their researchers found that the malware had been disguised as trojanised versions of Bitcoin Ticker TTM (To The Moon), BitVanity, StealthBit and Litecoin Ticker, and distributed through popular download sites including Download.com and MacUpdate.com.

A10 Networks and AMTRON to help businesses build their next-generation networks

A10 Networks announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with AMTRON to help organizations to transform their data center and IPv6 migration projects. AMTRON is the IT arm of the state government of Assam in India, and plays an integral part as a technical advisor for many state agencies. This agreement allows AMTRON to position A10's solution portfolio for network optimization, security and IPv6 migration as the platform to build next-generation network services.

With over 24 years of experience, AMTRON has executed turnkey projects in the field of telecommunications and IT.

As part of the agreement, A10 Networks will help establish an A10 technical competency center within AMTRON where workshops can be conducted onsite. Leading the charter for major data center transformation, network upgrade and migration of major IT assets onto IPv6 platform, AMTRON will standardize on using A10's application networking solutions for their internal data center and IPv6 migration projects.

Lava launches ‘Hunt for the SMARTIST’ contest

The long awaited Bollywood craze at the IIFA is about to begin and LAVA Mobiles, a ‘powered by’ sponsor of the IIFA Weekend and Awards 2014 has announced a contest on its website and Facebook page. The contest titled, ‘Hunt for the SMARTIST’ will start from March 15th 2014 and continue till March 25th 2014.

There are three contests which will be running simultaneously on the Facebook page and website of LAVA Mobiles. People are invited to participate in any of the 3 contests. Each contest will have one winner who gets a chance to fly to Florida to be a part of the IIFA awards this year.

Nokia Lumia 1520 inspires Shantanu & Nikhil at the Lakme Fashion Week

Smartphones play an increasingly integral role within fashion, and more specifically on the front row of global fashion week shows, with designs online before they hit the end of the runway. The leading functionality, design and imaging capabilities of the Nokia Lumia 1520 make it a perfect tool for the fashion world.

Nokia, an official partner at the Lakme Fashion Week Summer Resort 2014 in Mumbai, has tied up with leading design duo Shantanu & Nikhil, to create their exclusive Fashion Week collection. Inspired by the latest and biggest of the Nokia Lumia series- the Nokia Lumia 1520, the collection will be showcased at the fashion week on March 15, 2014, 7.30pm onwards.

CA Technologies Opens New Technology Center in Bangalore

CA Technologies announced the opening of CA Bangalore Technology Center, establishing a technology hub in India’s “Silicon Valley”. The new facility complements the CA India Technology Center in Hyderabad. The center plans to tap into the world-class talent base in Bangalore to further the development of differentiated, next generation solutions in emerging technologies.

The focus of the new center is on organic innovation in emerging technologies, including Mobility, Digital Payments, Big Data, Data Science/Advanced , DevOps and Security.
 

NetIQ rolls out NetIQ MobileAccess

 NetIQ announced availability of NetIQ MobileAccess, a virtual appliance that enables convenient, secure access via a single touch from iOS or Android mobile devices to business-critical corporate services and data that employees need to remain productive. By leveraging existing employee identities and extending pre-determined policies to support today’s BYOD initiatives, NetIQ MobileAccess allows secure access from the personal mobile devices upon which today’s workforce thrives.

IT organisations can struggle with the conflicting need to tightly control access to sensitive data while staying in step with business demands for mobility solutions as well as SaaS, Web and legacy applications underpinning business processes.

DCB Bank achieves ISO 27001:2005 Certification

DCB Bank Limited (Formerly Development Credit Bank Ltd.) announced in its press note that its Information Security Management System (ISMS) has been successfully certified against ISO 27001:2005 standard. This internationally recognized security standard demonstrates DCB Bank’s commitment towards providing the highest level of control for risk management and customer data protection.

Speaking on the occasion, Murali M. Natrajan, Managing Director & CEO, DCB Bank, said, "This is an important milestone for the organization and reinforces our commitment towards building a highly secured information security for our customers. We are extremely proud to receive this prestigious recognition and will continue to upgrade our security policies for the safety of our customers.”

Haier Joins Hands with Oracle and Capgemini

Haier Group Overseas Customer Service, a leading company in global white home appliance, has recently adopted Oracle Service Cloud to build a new overseas service managing platform, with an aim to improve Haier’s overseas service and achieve multi-channel interaction with customers.
 

As the first home appliance company to start using RightNow in APAC, the first phase of this project went live at the end of 2013 in India. Capgemini China facilitates Haier to improve the customer experience and reputation with a multi-channel consolidation including social network monitor and customer care communication as well as crisis management for emergencies with Capegmini India devoting.
 

With the popularization and development of social media and the internet, over the past several years, there are great changes in how customers are getting information and how they purchase goods, which requires enterprises to establish fast interaction system based on users’ needs.

Techfactory Introduces Infinity SMS - Unlimited Group Messaging

Techfactory, a software products distributor, launched Infinity SMS through which customers can send unlimited group messaging. Infinity SMS allows to bridge the USB GSM dongle and mobiles PC, and lets user to send SMSs to thousands of numbers quickly. Using this software the unlimited bulk texting through mobile phone can be eased.

Users will be ensured that they can unrestrictedly send SMS to huge number of people at a single click. Product is equipped with effective technical support team ensuring glitch free use for users. It can be activated anywhere in the world. Techfactory, are moving with a mission to safeguard customer's PC without hampering its potency. Techfactory will continuously work towards developing innovative, secure and reliable products for different market segments.

Sony LIV’s Digital Pichkari for Holi Celebrations!

Sony LIV announced its special programming line up for this weekend’s Holi festivities. With Sony LIV, you no longer have to worry about missing Holi special shows on TV, while you are away with your friends and family, celebrating the festival of colours. Sony LIVallows you to catch up on all the episodes and videos from your favorite show,Jab Aap Chahein.

Sony LIV will also host a “Digital Pichkari - Holi Special”series where hit Holi-themed episodes from popular serials will be featured. Some of these popular shows include FIR, Kya Huaa Tera Vaada, Mai Kab Saas Banungi, Chidiya Ghar, Kahani Comedy Circus ki, Taarak Mehta and The Rasoi Show.

Transcend releases DDR3 RDIMM Modules, to Maximize Mac Pro Memory up to 128GB

Transcend Information is proud to announce its launch of 16GB and 32GB DDR3.

“The new Mac Pro 2013 is advertised to support up to 64GB of memory, and we understand that pro users running applications that place high demands on RAM have a need to meet and most likely exceed this threshold,” said Angus Wu, Director of Research and Development at Transcend. “For this reason, we have developed and fully tested higher density modules to give users the option of raising their Mac Pro system memory to the advertised 64GB right up to 128GB.”

While the memory that comes pre-installed on the Mac Pro may be enough for common processing tasks, adding more memory is one of the easiest ways to enhance performance during 2D graphic design, HD video editing, and photo retouching. However, the Mac Pro is designed for more serious tasks including 3D graphic design, 4K video editing, and gaming. 

eScan implemented by Bajaj Electricals since last 7 years

eScan has been successfully securing the end-points of Bajaj Electricals Limited (BEL), since last 7 years. BEL is the leading electrical equipment manufacturing company that has diversified interests in lighting, luminaries, appliances, fans, and engineering projects. The area of concern for Bajaj Electricals was manageability of its endpoints from central location. After implementing eScan Corporate Edition, BEL has been able to achieve minimum outbreaks and save 90% of the time of their employees.

An expert in consumer electrical equipments, BEL wanted a solution for their end-points which could be managed from central location, as several data leaks were found due to weaker system structure that led to latency in manageability and support. They were even looking for central location utility for updating functional aspects.

IBM Study: to Personalise the Retail Banking is Primary Driver Behind Customer Loyalty

IBM unveiled a banking study conducted by IDC and commissioned by IBM to understand the evolving banking landscape in India. The study helps in analyzing the changes in investment behavior of domestic retail customers.

The study titled ‘Understanding the Indian Retail Banking Customer’ is based on findings from over 5000 customers spanning across 10 banks (5 public and 5 private sector banks) which highlights the banking landscape in the country as well as evolving change in customer behavior and preferences. According to the findings, there is great opportunity for the sector to deploy new age technologies which can help innovate, grow, connect and sustain customers.

Wipro Helps Westfield Achieve Future Readiness with a Scalable People Platform

Wipro Ltd announced that it has helped Westfield, one of the world’s largest shopping centre portfolios with 90 centres in Australia, New Zealand, USA and UK, to achieve its strategic vision of creating a future ready Human Resources (HR) platform. 

Westfield began its journey to upgrade its Oracle PeopleSoft Human Capital Management platform and partnered with Wipro for this process. Wipro has successfully implemented the latest version of Oracle PeopleSoft HCM v9.2 platform, ensuring that Westfield leverages the benefits of the latest version of PeopleSoft HCM & reaffirms its leadership position within the real estate industry.

ICICI ’ PAY@TABLE Handheld Terminals Make Card Payments Easier

With the RBI mandate requiring PIN verification of chip-based cards now in place, ICICI Merchant Services, one of India’s leading payment processing companies, plans to replace more than 25,000 traditional Point-of-Sale (POS) machines with portable handheld POS terminals. Most of these terminals are being deployed in restaurants, hotels and the broader hospitality sector.

Currently, ICICI Merchant Services manages more than 2 lac POS terminals in the country. In accordance with the RBI notification, post 1st December 2013, domestic debit as well as chip- and PIN-based credit cards holders must enter a PIN in order to successfully and securely complete a transaction with a merchant. With ICICI Merchant Services’ move to introduce portable handheld POS terminals, card users now have the ease of authorizing card transactions when the terminal is presented to them.

Prior to installing the handheld POS terminals, most restaurants asked customers to pay at the POS terminal, often located far from their table. Hotels also are embracing the portable POS terminals as a more convenient way to accept payments from their customers.

Brocade hires Christine Heckart as Chief Marketing Officer

Brocade announced the appointment of Christine Heckart to the position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).  In this role, Ms. Heckart will be responsible for the strategic direction of Brocade’s global marketing organization, helping to position the company as the network provider of choice to the world’s data centers.  Ms. Heckart will report directly to Brocade’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Lloyd Carney.

In her new role, Ms. Heckart will be instrumental in driving the strategy to generate brand awareness and to develop and execute demand generation programs across the globe. These Marketing initiatives will align and support the company’s business strategy for growth built on leading the industry in data center fabrics and driving market penetration in the emerging Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) arenas.

Mahindra Comviva Launches Digital Wallet Solution

Mahindra Comviva announced the launch of its mobiquity Wallet, a cutting-edge digital wallet platform. This is amongst the first of its kind fully integrated digital wallet platform that supports NFC, QR codes and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It will offer security, ease of use and rich features to the customers of banks, telecom operators and retailers across the globe. The platform will bring in agility to develop an ecosystem and increase revenues from existing customers and simultaneously boost customer acquisitions.

Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity Wallet is a secure, easy to use and feature-rich digital wallet solution that works on multiple connected devices. It offers support for personalization, multiple value-added services and payment methods to enrich consumers’ path to purchase. To the wallet provider and their partners, it offers a robust and flexible platform, combining innovations in payments with attention to human factor, behavior-centered experience design and cutting edge digital technology.

Celebrate the festival of colours with Aqua Protect Wammy Passion ‘X’

With Holi, the festival of colours just around the corner, Wickedleak, the emerging smartphone and tablet maker has decided to slash the price of their new launched smart phone  Wammy Passion ‘X’ to  build a stronger relationship between Wickedleak and its customers . Now, Wammy Passion ‘X’ is available at Rs. 18,500 instead of Rs. 22,500.It is the world’s first Super Hydrophobic phone and first OCTA Core phone by WickedLeak.

Explaining the hydrophobic phone concept, “Wammy Passion X” is protected by AquaProtect technology which provides protection against 80% of all liquid damage scenarios without the use of a case. Thus, accidental spills, splashes and brief shallow submersion is no longer a threat to one`s electronic devices. Consequently, the cell phone becomes an asset to hold especially during the Holi festival as one can freely enjoy the occasion without worrying much about the phone.

NVIDIA woos gamers with exciting New GeForce Game bundles

Tired of shoveling snow? Want to beat the winter blahs? How about ushering in the start of spring with two new exciting game bundles from NVIDIA? Starting today, gamers who purchase select NVIDIA GeForce GTX desktop GPUs and GeForce GTX-powered notebooks can take advantage of two new bundle offerings, a redeemable code for DAYLIGHT or $150 of in-game currency for Heroes of Newerth, Path of Exile, and Warface.

DAYLIGHT, a procedurally-generated psychological thriller from Zombie Studios, is also the world’s first game built on Unreal Engine 4. Featuring NVIDIA PhysX® technology for an interactive, immersive nightmare, DAYLIGHT will scare the pants off you as you explore an abandoned hospital with only your cell phone for illumination. Purchasers of GeForce GTX TITAN graphics cards, as well as GTX 780 Ti, 780, 770, 760, 690, 680, 670, 660 Ti and 660, will receive a redemption code for DAYLIGHT, which will be activated on April 11, 2014, the day the game launches.

Lava International recognized as ‘Emerging Company of the Year 2013’

LAVA International has been selected as the “Emerging Company of the year 2013” at the Voice & Data Telecom Leadership Forum Awards ceremony held at The Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi.

Telecom Leadership Forum is an annual meeting of the Indian telecom leaders and other key stakeholders. It is a platform to meet, discuss, and explore new and emerging business models, technology options, revenue streams and changing customer expectations. The objective is to help Telco leaders grow business with better and newer services.

At the ceremony Hari Om Rai, Chairman & Managing Director was honored with the award in recognition of Lava’s continuous effort in creating greater value for all stakeholders in the value chain which ensured that Lava recorded one of the fastest growth rates in the industry in terms of revenue.

Wipro Partners with SGI for Rapid Growth in India

Wipro and SGI announced a strategic partnership to expand market presence in India. SGI has appointed Wipro as its master Authorised Service Provider (ASP). This partnership will enable SGI customers and partners based in India to access enhanced support and maintenance services.

“We are happy to be appointed as the exclusive authorised service provider for SGI” said Anuj Bhalla, Vice President & Global BU Head Products, System Integration and Maintenance Service, Wipro Ltd., “This partnership will enable Wipro to provide SGI’s customers and partners with new solutions, services and support.”

SnapDeal.com declares the ‘Summer Electronics Sale’

Ahead of the upcoming summer season, when people tend to buy household electronics, Snapdeal.com, India’s largest online marketplace has launched a new campaign focusing on the Summer Electronics Sale on the site.

The Summer Electronics Sale on Snapdeal.com has been designed to offer customers exciting offers on a wide range of appliances and electronics including refrigerators, air conditioners, video game consoles, televisions, washing machines etc.

The new TVC showcases the above. Set in a humorous context, the commercial captures the angst of a housemaid on how the family she works for has got into the habit of saving while shopping for electronic products on Snapdeal.com.

Verint Partners with Servion Global Solutions

Verint Systems announced that Servion Global Solutions, a provider of Customer Interaction Management (CIM) solutions and applications for contact centers, will provide its enterprise solutions—including the award-winning Impact 360®Workforce Optimization™suite and Voice of the Customer ®solutions—to the Indian market.  

Servion Global Solutions specializes in CIM solutions that help organizations deliver high-caliber customer experiences at the point of interaction. Servion, which became a Verint partner in October 2013, takes a consulting approach to optimizing customer interactions for its clients, drawing from a proven combination of deep business acumen and broad contact center technology knowledge. This approach has resulted in a business of over 600 customers and 1,000 installations in more than 60 countries. 

IIT Madras Establishes Centre for Technology and Policy

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras announced the establishment of the Centre for Technology and Policy (CTaP) at its campus. CTaP has been established to explore the interaction between technology and public policy to better address India’s pressing development problems.

CTaP will play a significant role in the design, promotion/advocacy and assessment of public policies impinged by technological and scientific innovations, and identification of key technology gaps in meeting development goals in the identified areas.

CTaP, established as an action-oriented centre, will support research to improve our understanding of the way that policy affects technology innovation and scale. The research here will focus on building this understanding in order to identify key policy initiatives that can encourage innovations and technology interventions to meet public goals. CTaP’s objective is also to provide feedback to technology innovators on how their work could be made more effective in a given policy setting. CTaP will draw on IIT Madras faculty expertise as well as Centre’s research staff. In addition, it will enable extensive consultation and networking with policy makers, industry, investors and other stakeholders.

Mitsuba Doubles Bandwidth Capacity With Verizon’s Global Wide Area Network

When Japan’s Mitsuba Corporation needed to ensure that its global communications infrastructure would support the company’s ongoing expansion, it turned to Verizon for help. With Verizon’s global Wide Area Network Acceleration solution, Mitsuba was able to reduce its network traffic by more than 49 percent, resulting in significant cost savings and a near doubling of bandwidth capacity over the company’s existing networks.

Mitsuba, together with its worldwide subsidiaries, manufactures transportation equipment and information services, primarily for the automotive industry, as well as industrial automation systems.Headquartered in Japan, and with 17,000 employees around the globe,Mitsuba’s growth strategy is founded on expansion in emerging economies, while also responding to eco-car needs. The company’s key challenge was to harness the capabilities of its global team to achieve these goals while retaining its leadership position in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

NZXT H440 Increases Cable Management Space up to 80%

NZXT, a designer & manufacturer of chassis, launched NZXT H440 mid tower case through their National Distributor - Prime ABGB. The sleek, modern design of the H440 series saves the space of up to 80% inside the cabinet for other components. The new H features which include door-less, ODD-free front panel made entirely of steel and the full-view window which reveals interiors, specially engineered to make any build seamless and beautiful.

 By removing the traditional and often unused 5.25" optical bays, NZXT has taken a bold step to make room for a host of chassis improvements and innovations. The H440's massive full-view window will disclose an interior specially engineered to make any build flawless and attractive.

Newly designed four of NZXT's FN V2 case fans, 3 x 120mm fans in front and 1 x 140mm fan in rear provides effective cooling solution. Kraken™ ready- fitting radiators up to 360mm in size supporting both 120mm and 140mm fans offers a comprehensive water cooling performance in a smooth and modest package.