VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

According to industry reports, Tapzo has been in advanced talks with Amazon for its acquisition by the latter. It is said that both Amazon and Tapzo have been in talks for over four months. Sequoia Capital-backed Tapzo began talks with Amazon in April this year. Both the companies have given the green signal for the deal. If nothing goes wrong from here then the acquisition could be announced by the next month. However, the initial discussion didn’t take off owing to the valuation offered by Amazon to Tapzo, with fresh discussions starting only in July. Tapzo is a super app which allows users to access more than 35 apps, such as Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber, and others. As a part of its new business line, users can recharge mobile, DTH and data card, make bill payments, order cabs and food, book flight and bus tickets amongst many other things on a new technology layer that it is offering.... Read More

Universal Acceptance for Indic Languages for Internet in India To create a truly inclusive digital economy, Internet has to treat all domain names equally across scripts / languages. Addressing the opportunities of Universal Acceptance and the scope for adopting UA for Indic Languages, The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) supported by ICANN organized a seminar here today. Universal acceptance is the concept that all domain names and email addresses are accepted, validated, stored, processed and displayed in a consistent and effective manner. UASG and ICANN have been actively working on realizing the importance of increasing linguistic presence on the web and encouraging developers to support all domain names and email addresses in multiple languages across the world.... Read More

Dell EMC announced Enterprise Preferred Channel Program in association with Dell EMC enterprise sales organisation. The program is leveraging joint sales and partner planning to provide a joint approach to the market, simplifying sales engagement and specifying how sales teams and partners work tougher. The program includes dedicated channel team members to support sales engagement in Enterprise Preferred accounts, collaboration between teams to create joint account plans, leveraging strategic partner relationships, competitive pricing as part of a new acquisition deal registration, compensation uplift for Dell EMC sales teams – protecting their commission, partner protection through an ‘earned partner or record’ model.... Read More

THE SDWAN market is experiencing explosive growth. Strong enterprise and communications service provider demand is dramatically disrupting the traditional branch-office router market and it comes with advantages by, simplify network operations. It’s adoption is easy, quick and reliable. It is absolutely fact that, without virtualization in the network, virtualization in the cloud or data center will never be fully realized or effective. SD-WAN can help service providers increase profitability while accommodating WAN market trends. As the SD-WAN is fast moving, incorporating it into a managed service offering is particularly challenging as customer requirements and needs are changing all the time. The growth of SD-WAN is attributed to the increasing popularity of modern telecommunications networks and datacenter infrastructure concepts such as software-defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). These technology concepts have enabled SD-WAN to provi...

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Foxconn Technology Group, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company, headquartered in Tucheng. Popularly known as Foxconn has agreed to buy Los Angeles-based Belkin International for $866 million in cash. With this FIT is a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the parent company behind the Foxconn brand. Belkin is known for having a broad range of device connectivity and power products under the Belkin, Linksys, Wemo and Phyn brands. With this we expect to enrich our portfolio of premium consumer products and accelerate our penetration into the smart home by leveraging Belkin’s research and development capabilities and consumer insights operations. The deal is also a continuation of Foxconn’s movement away from being primarily a contract manufacturer for companies like Apple and towards one that has brands of its own.... Read More

Digitization and urbanisation brings change in the life of a common citizen and definitely it impacts the lifestyles of the netizens. It is also fact that technology teaches everyone to have better user experience, it resulted growing demand amongst Indians for Privacy and protection of the Information they share, specifically on digital platforms. There has been an alarming rise in cybercrimes on a global scale. With India also moving towards a digital economy with the adoption of Aadhaar and an ever-increasing dependency on information, the concerns over cyber security, data protection and privacy are the most talkative agenda. To address the growing concerns, the Government of India had set up a Committee of Experts, headed by Justice B. N. Srikrishna, to study the challenges surrounding data protection in India and provide their valuable suggestions and principles on which to base the data privacy legislative framework. The objective is to ‘ensure growth of the digi...

With the recent visit of Chris Daniels, CEO-Whats App  chose himself to visit the country on a five-day tour. The rising dispute and forced the top leadership ,to visit first ever by any WhatsApp chief executive to the country , where there is a huge pull of subscribers and it is over 250 million monthly active users. Ever since WhatsApp payments started to pilot in India, the instant messenger has been facing a tough time in the country. Right from the issues of fake news to lynching and setting up local operations for its UPI-based payments, the company has left no stone unturned to settle the issues with the Indian government. Daniel, recently met Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is now looking to set up a local office in the IT city Hyderabad by meeting Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao to discuss all the possible aspects in this regard. Whereas, its parent company Facebook has the largest presence in the city as it’s India office since 2010.... Read More ...

The market for used and refurbished mobile phones has skyrocketed in the last couple of years with technology becoming a necessity with each passing day as the population as well as the penetration of phones is extensively high. The expansion of e-commerce and retail chains has made the availability of used and refurbished mobile phones easy and the easy accessibility has triggered strong growth in India too. Experts and analysts expect the market for refurbished phones to rise by a compounded 27% over 2019 and 2020 as new players join existing online marketplaces Amazon, Cashify, Shopclues and Togofogo. In India, millions of mobile phone users still purchase second-hand phones as they prefer buying refurbished or used phones with the features they need in less price than settling for a new phone at a comparatively higher price with lower specifications. Refurbished mobile phones category is growing at 400% year-on-year and its contribution in overall mobile phone sales has a...

Now that the justice BN Srikrishna committee has submitted a draft Data Protection as well as the Personal Data Protection bill, 2018 (pdf) to the Narendra Modi government, the wait for comprehensive data protection rights may soon be over.Though it is not devoid of loopholes, this bill will form the framework for India’s data protection laws, prescribing how organisations should collect, process, and store citizens’ data. The committee’s report recommends that the law should be applicable to processing of personal data if such data has been used, shared, disclosed, collected or otherwise processed in India. However, it asserts that in respect of processing by fiduciariesthat are not present in India, the law shall apply to those carrying on business in India or other activities such as profiling which could cause privacy harms to data principals in India. Additionally, personal data collected, used, shared, disclosed or otherwise processed by companies incorporated...

The Government’s focus towards digitization, financial inclusion, fintech, Aadhaar-based identification and GST-based simplified taxation are going to be some of the key drivers of growth. Investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, in a recent report, predicts that India’s e-commerce market for gross merchandise value (GMV) will reach $200 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 30%. This growth, if it happens, the firm says, will help grow the overall market penetration to 12% in the next nine years, as against 2% today. The phenomenal growth of internet users, the firm says, is primarily driving the e-commerce market. The other factors that are contributing to this growth are growth in digital payments, ease of making a purchase, CoDs and e-commerce mobile apps. Market Trends According to an Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Kantar IMRB study, the number of internet users in India is expected to reach 500 million by June 2018. The number of Internet us...

NetApp considers India as an important market as the country holds a lot of opportunities with the ongoing digital transformation. So the company looks forward to grow with its partners as they play a critical role in NetApp’s go-to-market strategy. In a chat with VARINDIA , Wendy Koh, Vice-President, Pathways, Alliances and Strategy, Asia-Pacific, NetApp discusses about digital transformation as an opportunity, focus on channel partners and importance of a channel program For NetApp, India is a critical market in the Asia-Pacific region. The company is growing in India at a faster pace and this indicates that channel partners will continue to play an important role in its go-to-market strategy. The company also makes sure about the profitability of its partners so that they continue their alliance with NetApp.   “India is certainly the fastest-growing market and it is very important for us in Asia-Pacific. Across the organization, we are growing. In India, we ar...

Hyderabad hosted India’s first-ever International Blockchain Congress in collaboration with NITI Aayog, Goa government and Nucleus Vision from August 3 to 4. The conference then moved to Goa where the rest of the deliberations took place on August 5.  The speakers at the event were KT Rama Rao, Minister of IT - Government of Telangana; Rohan Khaunte, Minister of IT - Government of Goa; Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog; Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary -Government of Telangana; Ameya Abhyankar, IT Director, Government Of Goa; Arun Seth, Chairman - NASSCOM Foundation; CP Gurnani, CEO - Tech Mahindra; Mohandas Pai, Chairman - Manipal Global Education; among a few notable ones. India has the potential to be the global blockchain leader. With an abundance of young, talented, tech-savvy population, India is rapidly developing and consequently overtaking other technology markets. India boasts of the second largest online market in the world.... Read More

If e-commerce is a barometer to measure the penetration of internet in a country, one can assume that India is in its fast pace towards a fully-wired and online society. E-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds. Whether it is real or hyped-up is something that analysts can foretell. A few illustrative descriptions may be relevant in this regard. The foremost is about the war between two American e-commerce companies – Amazon India and Walmart for supremacy in the Indian market. Amazon might have established its Indian subsidiary before Walmart. But the latter’s takeover of the homespun online distribution company – Flipkart – has changed the profile and reach of the U.S. online giant. Close to US$17-billion takeover deal, which will be hopefully completed by the end of this year, has created flutter in the corporate circles across the world. E-commerce companies have realized the potential of India as a future market for online business. Does it mean that the brick-and...

India is undergoing a digital revolution which is helping the country in its renaissance. Adoption of technology is at its peak in recent days which is being triggered by better connectivity, rapid smartphone adaptation, increasing usage of mobile internet etc. Adoption of innovative technologies makes work easy and fast, increases efficiency of the workforce, takes less time in completing a task etc. Technology has always made human life smooth and easy.     In this wake of time, a ground breaking technology, Robotics Process Automation better known as RPA is emerging and touching almost every vertical. Though in a nascent state, it has already started spreading its effects in segments like banking, manufacturing, automation, micro finance, healthcare etc. The Institute for Robotics Process Automation describes RPA as an application of technology that allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a "robot" to capture and understand the exist...

New capabilities like AI, Analytics and Search Highlight power the flagship suite One year after its launch, Zoho has announced major updates to its flagship suite of applications, Zoho One, designed to put businesses completely in the cloud. Zoho One is enabling a new set of capabilities that bridge the gap between different departments and roles within an organization. In the first year itself more than 12,000 business worldwide have become Zoho One customers, out of which 36% of Zoho One users are from India. The average Zoho One customer enables 16 applications for their business, often replacing software from different vendors, preferring instead to run their business from a single cloud platform. The company has added five new apps to Zoho One in the past year Cliq, Zoho Sprints, Zoho PageSense, Zoho Flow and Zoho Backstage at no additional cost..... Read More

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Kazutada Kobayashi President & CEO, Canon India Customer service has been an important aspect of any company’s sustained and long term growth. Canon India works in collaboration and for the upliftment of our customers, partners, employees and the community at large. Two core ingredients of the company’s success are ‘Innovation’ and ‘Customer Delight’. Owing to these, Canon leads the helm of innovation, with its expansive portfolio catering to the imaging industry. The company is renowned amongst the top patent holders, across the world. Innovation has always been core to its DNA, which is explicit from the two decades of its legacy in the country. If we look back, unlike most of the other companies in Asia, Canon India started its journey with B2B and then built B2C over it, which now constitutes as much of a significant share to its business. Customer delight being the foremost objective for Canon India, the c...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Infosys has confirmed that its Chief Financial Officer, M D Ranganath has resigned from the post. The Board of Directors has accepted the resignation and is going to search for the next CFO. Ranganath will continue as Chief Financial Officer till November 16, 2018. During his tenure of 18 years at Infosys, Ranga has been a part of the Infosys Leadership team and has played several leadership roles in the areas of consulting, finance, strategy, risk management and M&A and has worked closely with the Board and its committees in formulating and executing strategic priorities for the company. After a successful career in Infosys including as CFO for the last 3 crucial years, Ranganath plans to pursue professional opportunities in new areas. Over the last 3 years, during a critical phase of the company, Ranganath had delivered strong and consistent financial outcomes, maintained high standards of financial reporting, bu...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE According to a report, a Melbourne private schoolboy has repeatedly broken into Apple’s secure computer systems from his suburban home on multiple occasions for over a year because he was a fan of the company. The Children’s Court has heard that he had downloaded 90gb of secure files and also accessed customer accounts. From the age of 16 he developed computerised tunnels and online bypassing systems to hide his identity until a raid on his family home uncovered a litany of hacking files and instructions all saved in a folder titled “hacky hack hack”. Two Apple laptops were seized and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems of the company. The major international investigation was sparked when Apple contacted the FBI, who passed the allegations on to the AFP. The AFP found the software that had enabled the hacking had been installed on the teen’s laptop. Further analysis f...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE As per the order dated 16th August, 2016, it has been acknowledged by the Board of Directors of Ricoh India to SEBI that there has been no siphoning of funds in the company. Does this mean that the much widely publicised mis-information regarding fraud happening in Ricoh India was a mere strategy to get funds infusion from the parent company by by-passing the law and thereby targeting a team of senior management? Seven individuals have been punished for the last six months even when the complainant itself admits that no funds have been siphoned of the company, is it natural justice? However their misery is not going to end before 30th September, 2018 or even later, on prima facie basis. In its order dated 16th August, 2018, SEBI has given strict instructions to Ricoh India Limited and its directors to extend co-operation to the forensic auditors in making available the required documents and clarifications strictly within the ...

It is not necessary to know who are the software companies is stealing your data. It is not fair to blame only facebook, Twitter and WhatApp for stealing your data for business continuity or to give better service by understanding the user’s behaviour. The fact is they would require to understand your behaviour then only they can suggest the best. Like through machine learning, machine is learning us on our behaviour and attitude. Today’s every software company is developing their products based on artificial Intelligence(AI) including Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon etc. Secondly, another interesting thing is by see the power of a simple, antivirus software , which is a software program that spreads from one computer to another and interferes with computer operation. The computer virus could corrupt or delete data on a computer, use an email program to spread the virus to other computers, or even delete everything on the hard disk. Internet of things(IoT) and arti...

Do we have the camera with a button for ON / OFF including a Black Cover on It.....!!! In this digitally transformed era, imaging technology giving a whole new meaning to the idea of painting by digits, and it is used to capture photo or video and much more. It is advised you to better cover the webcam /microphone with a cover/ black tape.Smartphone cameras are possibly the most frequently-used technology of today. Most of the mobile phone brands they promote the product as the powerful cameras , camera phone to take beter pictures but surprisingly now one educates on this vulnerabilities effect. Most smartphone makers now claim that the cameras on their premium devices are a good as professional cameras. Considering how many top smartphones are now priced around or above $1,000, it can be considered a plus that they include increasingly more powerful and quality driven cameras that are simple enough for the average user to master. Some smartphone camera features come s...

WhatsApp is one of the most commonly used messenger service across the world. This service has critical administrative issues, where in miscreants can take advantage and create law and order problem. Mobile is a hand held device and hence should be used single handedly. Device going into an unauthorised hand can create havoc and confidential, sensitive & personal details can be brought into a public domain thereby misunderstandings could be crept along with the added incentive of misuse of the social networking platform. The user should perform utmost due diligence in ensuring that he shall not part with his device to any unknown person and also by not downloading apps from Internet which can take remote control of the device, perform snooping and misuse of information. The IMEI number of the device plays a very pivotal role during investigation by law enforcement agencies and hence user should not part with the IMEI in the public domain, as this may lead to cloning...

The State Police department of Telengana has geared with the latest technology based system to do the facial recognisation and become the first police force in the country to leverage the technology, that too by bringing it to the fingertips of its officers by incorporating in TSCOP mobile application. The facility will allow Investigation Officers (IOs) to identify potential offenders by comparing person’s face with several lakhs of digital photographs stored in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) . FRS is an integrated feature of TSCOP mobile app for assisting investigation officers and efficient services to citizens and therby improving responsiveness, state Director General of Police M Mahendar Reddy said. This will aid investigating officers (IOs) in identifying criminals and suspects across the State in real time and at lightning speed. The tools allows police to identify potential offenders by comparing a suspect’s face with lakhs of digital...

Apple's valuation has crossed $1 trillion, thus becoming the first American public company to achieve it. The stock of Apple passed $207.04 a share and is at an all-time high of $208.38. Apple is now up more than 20% this year. Apple on Wednesday reported earnings that topped forecasts, following which its shares surged. Apple has rallied past the trillion level thanks to solid sales of the iPhone 8 and X - particularly in China and Japan - and surging services revenue from the App Store. Wall Street thinks Apple could go even higher. Thirteen analysts have a price target of above $225 per share for Apple. The most bullish, Brian White of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., has a price target of $275 a share. That would value Apple at $1.3 trillion. There has been a speculation in the market however that the iPhone maker should come up with a new product in order to keep up with sales and profits in a competitive market.... Read More

Jio and SBI are deepening their partnership to bring next-generation bilateral frictionless experience with exclusive digital Banking, Payments and Commerce journeys for their customers.  Jio and SBI are entering into a digital partnership aimed to increase SBI’s digital customer base multifold. SBI YONO is a revolutionary omni-channel platform offering digital banking, commerce and financial superstore services to customers. YONO’s digital banking features and solutions will be enabled through the MyJio platform for a seamless, integrated and superior customer experience. MyJio, one of India’s largest over-the-top (OTT) mobile applications, will now bring in financial services capabilities of SBI and Jio Payments Bank.  Jio and SBI customers will benefit from Jio Prime, a consumer engagement and commerce platform from Reliance. Jio Prime will offer exclusive deals from Reliance Retail, Jio, partner brands and merchants. In addition, with an integration between SBI...

Sophos has released an in-depth investigative white paper on the SamSam ransomware attacks that first appeared in December 2015. Titled “SamSam: The (Almost) Six Million Dollar Ransomware”, this white paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of this unique ransomware attack by summarizing key findings about attacker’s tools, techniques, and protocols. SamSam is a thorough encryption tool, rendering not only work data files unusable but any program that is not essential to the operation of a Windows computer, most of which are not routinely backed up. SamSam’s attacking method unique as it is manual and as a result, attackers can employ countermeasures (if needed) to evade many security tools. If the process of encrypting data is interrupted, the malware is capable of comprehensively erasing all trace of itself immediately, hindering any investigation. Furthermore, recovery from the attack may require reimaging and/or reinstalling software as well as restoring backu...

In an attempt to make inroads into the Chinese market, which it had been unable to past several years, Google is reportedly launching a censored version of its search engine in the country. Code-named ‘Dragonfly’, the product has been secretly planned by the tech giant for almost a year. China has blocked Google's search engine, Gmail and YouTube since 2010, when federal regulators, often referred to as China's 'Great Firewall,' shut down more than 1.3 million websites. Development of the search engine sped up after Google CEO Sundar Pichai met with a top Chinese government official in December 2017, as revealed by sources. Several versions of an Android app, called 'Maotai' and 'Longfei' have been created by Programmers and engineers Google and presented to the Chinese government for review. The app would have to comply with China's rigid censorship laws, which would mean restricting access to content that government officials ...