VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

Yes! You have heard it right. Cisco is planning to sell its set-top business to Technicolor. On closing, Cisco will receive approximately €413 million in cash and approximately €137 million in newly issued Technicolor shares, subject to certain adjustments. The acquisition will give Technicolor an estimated 15% share of the global CPE market, with 60 million devices shipped each year and an installed base of 290 million set-tops and 185 million gateway devices across 100 countries. Technicolor and Cisco have also entered into a strategic partnership to develop video and broadband technologies, including cooperating on Internet of Things solutions and services. The pair have have signed a long-term patent cross-licensing agreement that covers specific intellectual property and patents from both companies. As part of the strategic agreement Hilton Romanski, senior vice-president and chief strategy officer of Cisco, will join Technicolor’s Board of Directors, after the transaction ha...

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it is establishing a research effort on Intelligent Systems at IIIT Hyderabad named after Shri FC Kohli. The FC Kohli Center on Intelligent Systems (KCIS) will be based in the IIIT Hyderabad campus and will act as an umbrella organization at the institute to both strengthen the existing groups and facilitate new activities in related areas. The new center will also act as a force multiplier in attracting projects and funding from other entities in the government and industry sectors, coordinate research in related domains across different centers of IIIT Hyderabad, as well as in the institute’s research collaboration with other academic institutions in the country. “The Kohli Center on Intelligent Systems will play an important role to coordinate and energize education and research in this critical area at the institute. This will be by intensifying the research done at the institute in these areas and through joint activities i...

Oracle has updated its Oracle Identity Management that enables organizations to securely manage access to mobile, cloud and on-premise applications through a single, easy to use interface. As the enterprise IT landscape becomes more complex and security risks increase, organizations are under ever increasing pressure to provide seamless and secure access to a wide variety of applications from a growing number of devices. The latest version of Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 Patchset 3 helps simplify and streamline this process by integrating Enterprise Mobility Management into the Oracle Identity Management stack. The integration unifies mobile security, identity management and compliance into one consolidated platform. Jim Taylor senior director product management Oracle. 300x300 Oracle enhances its Identity Management platform with Mobile Security “To help organization efficiently address these challenges, the latest release of Oracle Identity Management integrates our mo...

BlackBerry has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AtHoc. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. AtHoc is a leading provider of secure, networked crisis communications. Its software platform enables people, devices and organizations to exchange critical information in real time during business continuity and life safety operations. The AtHoc platform will integrate with BlackBerry’s enterprise portfolio and trusted global network to offer customers new capabilities for safety, security and mission-critical business communication. The acquisition will enable AtHoc to expand globally and increase scale, as well as deliver new applications on a secure platform for mass communication. AtHoc’s networked crisis communications platform alerts any device – including iOS, Android, PC and Mac desktops, digital displays, radios, IP phones, and endpoints such as sirens, fire panels and speakers – helping organizations and people to connect and share information in times...

Qualcomm Incorporated has initiated a Strategic Realignment Plan designed to improve execution, enhance financial performance and drive profitable growth as the Company works to create sustainable long-term value for stockholders. The Company also announced that it has entered into an agreement with JANA Partners pursuant to which Mark McLaughlin and Tony Vinciquerra have been added to the Board of Directors and a third director to be selected by the Company and consented to by JANA will be added promptly. qualcomm logo 150x150 Qualcomm declares Strategic Realignment PlanThe core elements of the new plan include:     Aggressively right-sizing the cost structure by eliminating approximately $1.4 billion in spending, including an approximately $300 million reduction in annual share-based compensation grants; Company expects to achieve this run-rate by the end of fiscal year 2016     Reviewing alternatives to the Company’s corporate and financial structure... Re...

In my position as Chief Data Officer for Ness Software Engineering Services, I talk with many companies about their Big Data challenges and needs. Some of these companies have chosen to analyze their Big Data to enable use cases such as online personalization or creating a 360-degree view of their users. Others have been forced into this area by one of their competitors, who announced that, thanks to their successful Big Data initiative, they now possess a competitive advantage over all their competitors; e.g., their products require significantly fewer service calls because they can monitor the performance of the equipment remotely. If there is one common thread that links 95% of these customers, it is FUD – fear, uncertainty, doubt. The field is full of competing or overlapping products, each of which claims to be the right solution for Big Data. The Big Boys (Oracle, IBM, SAP, Teradata, etc.) all want to steer you towards their (sometimes costly) offering. The upstarts (Clouder...

Telit has announced the introduction of Pan-European coverage with enhanced performance, one roaming price for all operators. Features include seamless roaming across Europe as well as Russia and Turkey; In addition, value-added services that allow customers to remotely manage and troubleshoot their deployment (e.g. roaming steering control by the end customer) are offered, thereby improving serviceability and transparency to their end customers. M2M/IoT deployment faces different challenges than consumer subscribers. Connectivity offering is often not suitable for the life cycle of a M2M/IoT solution. telit logo Telit Introduces Connectivity Solution for the Internet of Things“Many IoT projects have failed because operators could not provide the right business solution,” said Sammy Yahiaoui, Services Sales Manager EMEA at Telit. “Now connectivity comes out-of-the box for a fixed, comprehensive and affordable price. It’s tightly integrated with the hardware, the modules, and a p...

Perpetuuiti TechnoSoft has launched its latest software product Av3ar, the next generation artificial intelligence (AI) system. The product can address the pain points of CIOs and IT managers across verticals like manufacturing, BFSI, retail, telecom and government institutions. Av3ar delivers end-to-end automated IT solutions that can dramatically improve productivity and enhance operational efficiencies to drastically reduce the cost of downtime. It is platform agnostic and compatible with multiple devices including PC, tablets and mobiles. Rohil Sharma, CEO at Perpetuuiti commented, “We are thrilled to announce the launch of Av3ar, the first software product developed at our Chennai R&D facility for AI. The product gets plugged into the IT infrastructure and absorbs data to learn the patterns of the IT environment. Av3ar automates the steps required to execute daily tasks and solve simple problems.” He further added, “Av3ar has been designed with a built-in analytics engine c...

LINE has announced the release of LINE Lite, a lightweight version of the LINE app that utilizes less storage space and data. LINE is used by over 205 million users monthly in 230 countries and regions around the world (as of April 2015). At less than 1MB in size, LINE Lite is a lightweight version of the app that promises to make rich communication accessible even to users in areas where network infrastructure is less developed or lower-end smartphones are more widely used. line logo1 LINE Lite Officially Released in 11 CountriesLINE Lite installs in 1/20 the time of the standard version and retains LINE’s core features of text, sticker, and image-based communication. Users can sign up for new accounts on LINE Lite, or carry over their existing LINE accounts. While audio and video calls and features such as the Timeline are not included in this initial release, LINE plans to actively introduce new features in the future... See more 

Infor has announced it has hired Wall Street veteran Jeff Laborde as Chief Financial Officer. Laborde, who reports to Infor CEO Charles Phillips, joins as Infor is experiencing high growth, particularly in bookings of its cloud applications, up more than 300% year-over-year in its most recent fiscal year, which ended April 30, 2015. Jeff Laborde infor 150x150 Infor Hires Wall Street Veteran Jeff Laborde as CFO“After investing heavily in R&D to deliver the first set of industry suites delivered in the cloud, Infor is heading into a period of high growth,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. “Jeff Laborde, with his extensive background in technology finance, is a perfect fit to help guide Infor through this next phase in the evolution .” See more

The report, Connected Small Business: Unlocking India’s Digital Potential, unveiled by Google and Deloitte states that SMBs in India that use cloud and mobile tools are reaping huge dividends.  The Report further reveals that moving from offline to an advanced digital engagement could mean revenue growth up to 27 per cent more than those who have not begun their digital adoption journey. Based on a national survey of 500 businesses, the report analyses the digital engagement of Indian SMBs to understand how digital technology could help them, and what that would mean for India as a whole. The report states that digitally advanced SMBs can help India achieve its national objectives of higher economic growth, creating jobs and more exports. Compared with offline SMBs, those with higher digital engagement are more likely to increase employment by up to 84 per cent, increase access to international markets by up to 65 per cent, and likely to offer new products up to 4.5 times. C ...

Going one step ahead and integrating technological advance with its marketing strategy, D-Link (India) has announced the launch of ‘D-LINK – CONNECT Mobile APP’ for its channel partners/ re-sellers & retailers across the country. Tushar Sighat dlink 150x150 D Link Empowers its Partners & Retailers with a Mobile App Talking about the novel initiative, Tushar Sighat, Executive Director & CEO – D-Link (India) Ltd. said, “Channel community has evolved over the year, today they have an increased appetite for information. With partner/ reseller engagement being at the core of our strategy and as an organization promoting technology excellence, we are constantly looking at ways to stay connected & engage with our target audiences. D-LINK – CONNECT Mobile APP is a platform to connect with our partners/ re-sellers through social network in a faster & easier way.” Read more

Hitachi Data Systems has announced support and community validation of Kubernetes on Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) converged infrastructure systems, providing a proven enterprise-class private cloud infrastructure for developers and customers to orchestrate and run container-based applications with full microservices architecture. Hitachi has introduced the first UCP solutions in 2010, with enterprise support and end-to-end integration with industry-leading software from VMware, SAP and Microsoft. Kubernetes now joins the list of solutions validated to run on our enterprise UCP platform. hitachi logo Hitachi Announces Availability of Kubernetes on Hitachi UCPWith this announcement Hitachi has validated Kubernetes and VMware running side-by-side on the UCP platform, providing an enterprise solution for container-based applications and traditional virtualized workloads. UCP provides the ideal platform to leverage the power of Kubernetes to orchestrate container-based work...

Driven by creating high-quality, easy-to-use collaboration experiences for organisations of any size, Polycom has announced two new affordable, entry-level desktop phones as part of its market-leading voice solutions portfolio. The new Polycom VVX 101 business media phone is a low cost solution for small and home offices, lobby areas and shared workspaces—anywhere people need access to a simple phone with a single line. The Polycom VVX 201 business media phone is designed for organisations of all sizes looking for a cost effective telephony solution and features two line support and a wide-range of enterprise telephony features. Both offer life-like conversations with Polycom’s industry-leading HD voice, Polycom Acoustic Clarity and Polycom Acoustic Fence technology to deliver excellent sound quality and noise-free, echo-free conversations that are as natural as being there. Ashan Willy Senior Vice President 300x300 Polycom Makes Available Business Media Phones Ashan Willy, Sen...

NTT Com Security and Fortinet have entered into a formal partnership to provide expert security advice and security solutions to organizations worldwide. The partnership includes incorporating a broad range of Fortinet security solutions into NTT Com Security solutions to help protect customers across the globe, irrespective of size or sector. The new global security partnership is another step in the long-term business and technological relationship between the two companies. Fortinet and NTT Com Security will now collaborate across a number of technology deployments, uniquely positioned to offer support, consultancy advice and the delivery of solutions powered by Fortinet’s technology under NTT Com Security’s WideAngle portfolio. These include cloud security, firewall and network risk management, SIEM systems integration and SDN (software defined networking) and virtualization. Through this partnership, NTT Com Security will also benefit from Fortinet’s experienced technical con...

MAIT, the apex body representing India’s IT hardware, training and R&D service sectors, has announced the  appointment of its new President, Debjani Ghosh, Vice-President Sales and Marketing Group, Managing Director South Asia, Intel Corporation, during its 32nd Annual General Meeting for the term of 2014-15. Amar Babu, outgoing President of MAIT, said, “It is great to have Debjani Ghosh as the next President of MAIT. I have worked extensively with Debjani and have the utmost respect for her experience and accomplishments. Debjani has demonstrated her ability to drive innovation and growth and deliver results, and it goes without saying that she will infuse new energy to the MAIT agenda.” Debjani Ghosh Vice President Sales and Marketing Group and Managing Director Intel South Asia 300x300 Debjani Ghosh appointed as MAIT PresidentDebjani Ghosh, while taking charge as the new President, said, “It is a privilege for me to assume office as President of MAIT at this exciting ...

Reliance Communications has announced the deployment of Cloud Xchange (Cloud X) nodes in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. “We will achieve full deployment of our Next-Generation content and Cloud Delivery Network by the end of this year, with – what is a first in India – five fully-operational Cloud Xchange points. These Cloud Xchange nodes can help government departments access 240 times the amount of compute power currently available in Government data centers, and over six times the high-speed storage currently available in India,” said Reliance Group Chairman Anil Dhirubhai Ambani. Over the past year, one key endeavour of RCOM, and its subsidiary Global Cloud Xchange, has been a strategic realignment of its capabilities to support cloud networking requirements, including self-provisioning of network resources and bandwidth-on-demand. The company’s unique strength in Cloud orchestration stems from its unrivalled national and global network reach, which enable ...

To further encourage the colour printing market in India and aiming to capture SMEs, corporate and government sectors, Canon has announced the launch of a new range of A3 and A4 colour Multi- function devices (MFDs). The products launched in the A3 segment are ImageRUNNER ADVANCE (iR-ADV) C3300 series comprising of iR-ADV C3320/C3325/C3330 and ImageRUNNER ADVANCE C350i in the A4 segment, deliver high-quality output, low-maintenance cost and enhanced media handling up to 300gsm paper with A3 plus paper size. With this launch, Canon is poised to expand horizons into commercial sector (particularly copy shops). Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO, Canon India Private Ltd, said, “Our newly-launched products shall add value to SME’s and government sector’s demand for cost-efficient, secure and high-quality printing solutions.” See more  

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has announced that its technology will help to improve operations for China’s long-distance Guangxi liquefied natural gas (LNG) high-pressure pipeline.  A key strategic project of Sinopec Limited and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the Guangxi LNG pipeline will play a critical role in optimizing China’s energy structure and meeting the demand for natural gas in Guangxi. The project will use HPS gas measurement and equipment and software to measure the flow and pressure in the pipeline. honeywell logo Honeywell to boost operations for Chinas natural gas pipeline “We are able to draw upon our experience in long-distance, natural gas high-pressure pipelines to provide expertise to this essential clean energy project. Pipelines have challenges that are very different from processing plants since you have to manage an operation that is hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles long. Measurements such as flow and pressure must be accurate and imm...

Intel Security, formerly McAfee has been awarded the 33rd place in the prestigious 2015 India’s Best Companies to Work For; a study by The Economic Times and Great Place to Work Institute India. As a first time participant in the survey, for Intel Security, formerly McAfee to be seen in the company of India’s top corporates is a testament to the organization’s continuous pursuit of creating not just a good but great work environment. India’s Best Companies to Work For is part of the world’s largest and most respectable study of workplace excellence and people management practices. The study is conducted by The Economic Times and Great Place To Work Institute India. The company was selected for the award on the basis of responses from both employees and management... Read more