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In Focus

Rajeev Papneja, Chief Growth Officer

ESDS Software Solution

With cloud at the foundation, AI is the de facto emerging tech.

With the COVID-19 pandemic continue to govern the global economic situation and forcing businesses to adopt digital ways to achieve greater resilience, enterprises are swiftly moving to cloud services, resulting in a stratospheric demand for data center space.

In a recent interaction with Jatinder Singh of Better World, Rajeev Papneja, Chief Growth Officer of ESDS Software Solution, a Nashik-based managed service provider and data center company, outlines the latest data center trends, the company’s focus areas, and new opportunities presented by digital transformation acceleration.

Excerpts of the interview:

Better World: The last twelve months of enforced shutdowns and social distancing measures have silenced digital transformation critics. With a few exceptions, digital transformation is the only way for most businesses to get successful.  In this context, what are the new opportunities that you see in this digital-only environment?

Rajeev Papneja: ESDS is a cloud company, which is now evolving into a digital transformation catalyst. When we say digital transformation, what is happening is that it is no more just a cloud. Cloud is just one essential part of digital transformation. The emerging technologies at the top (such as artificial intelligence) and new business models create a new business way in these challenging times.

During the pandemic, we saw that people want to work more with Indian companies. There is a change in mindset, mainly because India could better navigate the crisis than many countries. Many Indian companies were dependent upon Europe for their data centers and China for manufacturing. As the COVID-19 situation worsened, they witnessed massive upheaval in their supply chains.  When the supply chain got troubled, they realized it is better to work with Indian companies because, from a supply chain standpoint, our country is better shaped now as the government started promoting indigenous manufacturing setups.

While COVID-19 presented numerous challenges for organizations of all scales, they also unboxed an era of new opportunities for many new-age thinking companies willing to experiment and refresh themselves to meet new-age consumer demands.

Many startups are emerging, and customers are now willing to work with them because of this mindset shift. SaaS and IaaS are picking big time, and many of the companies are moving to the cloud for the first time to support their growing digital businesses. This has created new opportunities for us.

Like many other modern companies, ESDS has transformed itself to meet the new-age demands and help its customers win in these challenging times.

Today, we have more than 35 to 40 software offerings for our customers in different sectors. They will keep on growing as we are seeing more demand for SaaS now. Of course, the Infrastructure will keep growing because people have realized that all these big companies who have their own data centers went into so much trouble during the lockdown. People are not going to the offices, data centers and need to adhere to the social distancing guidelines for an indefinite period.  This has made enterprises realize that it is better to be with commercial data centers in India.

Better World: How do you see the role of AI and machine learning evolving in smartening up data centers?

Rajeev Papneja: Artificial intelligence is becoming the de facto emerging technology while cloud computing forms the basis. If you look at machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and quantum computing, you will see that they are powered by cloud technology. So, fortunately, we were in that space, and our foundation has been solid. At present, the enterprise ecosystem is moving into a very different environment, where a standalone data center cannot provide everything. So, for example, you might want to have, let’s say, vertical auto-scaling for a specific workload and Microsoft 365 for your productivity needs. That is not something that we offer directly. So, you are directly or indirectly working with multiple technology partners for their unique offerings. Similarly, for specific workloads, we are working with Google Cloud or Amazon cloud. 

Rajeev Papneja, Chief Growth Officer, ESDS Software Solution

Rajeev brings to the table vision, purpose, relentless passion for technology, and life of spirituality. He has over 24 years of extensive technology, systems, and software experience on an international scale, including more than a decade of senior management experience in the United States.

He has worked as a senior consultant at major corporations like United Parcel Services, Ernst & Young, Dun & Bradstreet, to name a few, before becoming an entrepreneur.

His longest tenure was with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the largest drug manufacturer in the world with its current headquarters in New York, where he spent more than eight years providing enterprise class technology solutions and setting up financial processes.

Awards

  • GEM of India
  • Bharat Gaurav
  • Bharat Ratna Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Excellence Award

Education

  • Doctorate in Business Administration, Frederick Taylor International University, Arizona, USA, 2001 – 2004
  • Masters in Computer Science, KTHM College, Nashik, 1994-96

So, we have entered a different era, where you will see that it will not be about just working with one data center.

Artificial intelligence or machine learning, or all these newer technologies, have forced themselves into the system of any enterprise ecosystem that you look at today. The only way for enterprises to survive today is by transforming their business models, understanding their customers’ needs, and providing exceptional experiences. These technologies are enabling enterprises to make that change.

As we advance and AI and ML, robotics will play a crucial role because of companies’ continuous pressure to strengthen processes and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Better World: Who are your major clients in India?

Rajeev Papneja: Today, ESDS is serving more than 225 governmental PSU customers, the most significant initiatives of the prime minister, and our governments, for example, the Ministry of road transport, right. All the tools we are paying for today across the new range are different from our data center. If we talk about the world’s largest smart meter project, Energy Efficiency Services Limited is replacing 250 million smart meters, all running from our data center.

The banking sector is a big focus area for us. We are working with over 400 banks, many of which are small cooperative banks. We are constantly launching new SaaS and PaaS offerings for government and banking clients. We are integrating technologies such as AI and ML in our data center offerings. None of our customer’s security is ever compromised.

Better World: That’s an exciting statement from you that none of your customers, especially in banking, have ever witnessed a data security breach. How have you been able to secure your customer’s sensitive data consistently?

Rajeev Papneja: Most of the time, you see the security compromises happening in banks. They are on-premise databases. We need to understand security because it is challenging to attack something you don’t know. And that is what cloud technology gives you. You don’t know where your data when you don’t know where your information is; how will you attack something?

Second, the most significant vulnerability today is an insider threat. Most of the threats you would have seen, or the data leaks that have happened are their sheer size.  For us, it is only zero and one. We don’t know what is there. It doesn’t make sense to us.

All these big government customers are utilizing our security operation center (SoC) as a service (SoC), all the cooperative banks are using our SoC as a service. We also have our tools that are used by many of the nationalized banks. For example, our VTMScan tool, which is a complete web scanning tool. It scans all forms of online threats and vulnerabilities.

With ransomware attacks happening with zero-day attacks happening, we use advanced AI-ML based science to deliver actionable intelligence to ensure speedy mitigation for security incidents. Another offering is eNlight WAF, a specially engineered intelligent cloud hosted web application firewall helping businesses filter incoming and outgoing internet traffic and block threats such as injection, cross site scripting and other attacks.

We’ve also launched SPOCHUB, which is a plug-and-play platform providing industry-specific offerings On Click. It enables the ISVs to display their offerings across the Globe with an “Omni Channel Proposition.”

Overall, we’ve at least 10 to 12 integrated tools that are combined. And of course, human intelligence, as I saw, is how we run our security operations. All the services offered within SoC are a service and subscription-based model. They follow an OPEX model rather than CAPEX by cutting down unsolicited costs.

Better World: Which are some of the most significant trends that you foresee, both from a data center perspective and an overall technology perspective, in the post-Covid environment?

Rajeev Papneja: One thing is for sure that people have embraced the cloud entirely. As we progress, software as a service is going to be very, very big. Going by the various market reports, in the next four years, the market for Infrastructure as a service will be $5 billion.

The market for multi-cloud management services is $10 billion. This, this is I’m only talking about India. If you look at security services, that is also around $2 to $3 billion. The digital transformation industry itself is $700 billion. It encompasses all the different applications that will help these industries evolve their business models to make their processes better, such as collaboration tools. We are currently seeing that people immediately flocked to VDI technologies, to web VPN, to CRM applications to Enterprise Resource Planning, and collaboration tools in digital transformation. These are widely accepted. And people have started moving to the cloud. As we advance, you will see that people will start exploring how we can make our business models, something like, you know, they call it everything as a service takes a so I’ll give you a small example, that there is this company, right? It’s from it’s changing the mindset from selling a product to selling a service.

Whatever mindset or analytics on historical data you could do before COVID does not work in the post COVID era. It has an entirely different perspective. But the good news is, all businesses have the same starting point today. No matter where they were in their journey, they are forced to have an identical starting point. Now whoever takes benefit of this digital transformation they are going to be successful.

Better World: What are your outside India expansion plans for 2021 and beyond?

Rajeev Papneja: Right now, we are already present in the UK. We have two web hosting companies in the UK. We are serving more than 20,000 web hosting customers in the UK. We have a small presence in the US which we never focused on earlier. We will be focusing on the US, also started in the Middle East. We have an office in Dubai we have in Bahrain. We are working on specific opportunities in Bahrain, Dubai, Oman, Egypt, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Utopia. So, there are around 17 countries that we are focusing on. We have already built a data center for unique customer needs. So, what we are seeing is that you know, these countries are where India used to be eight years back. So, for example, if you look at Dubai, they have just started their cloud journey.

Still, companies prefer to use on-premise IT infrastructure. Now, we want to leverage our expertise, whatever we have done in the last eight years for India. We want to make sure that these upcoming countries starting with technology can feel empowered with our unique offerings and technology.

MORE FROM BETTER WORLD

Twitter hires Rinki Sethi as CISO to keep hackers at bay

Twitter hires Rinki Sethi as CISO to keep hackers at bay

Micro-blogging giant, Twitter, hires Rinki Sethi, an ex-IBM executive, as its new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).  The San Francisco-based executive has last worked with Rubrik, a cloud data management company in the capacity of VP and CISO.

Sethi has extensive experience in leading and developing online infrastructure for tech majors such as IBM and Palo Alto Networks. Sethi will manage enterprise risk, security risk, application security, and detection & response efforts in her new office.

Sethi has also served on the advisory council for SecureWorld, one of North America’s major cybersecurity conferences, for over six years.

What makes this announcement significant?

The announcement of Twitter’s new CISO has come at a time when most of the social media platforms are facing substantial scrutiny because of the amplified security breaches and user abuse.

In July this year, the micro-blogging major received severe criticism from many countries because of its inability to preclude a major cyber hack. The company reported a breach when cyber criminals gained unauthorized access to its systems to hack the high-profile Twitter accounts of many famous people, leaders, and influential personalities.

The hacked accounts were used to trap many naïve followers who were tricked into transferring Bitcoins to specific wallets by offering massive returns.

The list of compromised accounts included former US President Barack Obama, media personality Kim Kardashian, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Early this month, a similar incident repeated when cybercriminals hacked the twitter account of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India.

Skills shortage a big concern

The IT industry has unanimous concerns about the scarcity of trained cybersecurity professionals in the marketplace.

A recent report commissioned by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) professionals, reveals that over 70% of governing bodies are putting their operations at risk due to lack of robust cybersecurity talent at the administration. 

The severe shortage in cybersecurity talent is a global problem. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken Twitter over nine months to fill the position of CISO leadership role, which had been lying vacant after Mike Convertino, who left the high-profile job in December 2019 to begin his venture.

In the growing work-from-home environment scenario, enterprises need to take speedy steps to beef-up their security policies and infrastructure to fit the growing work-from-home environment. However, if the shortage of trained information security professionals continues to persist for a longer time, it can derail enterprises’ digital transformation efforts, eventually blocking agility and business resiliency. 

CIOs to focus on network transformation for business continuity

CIOs to focus on network transformation for business continuity

The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically shattered many perceptions. Focus on network transformation for business has suddenly become crucial for many companies to mitigate the impact of the epidemic and stay relevant.

The lockdowns and stay-at-home advisories have further stressed the importance of agile and secure information networks. With a massive uptake of collaboration solutions and burgeoning remote workforce, there has been a pressing need to provide a seamless connectivity experience to every stakeholder and employee.

The digital-first approach has given severe headaches to many CIOs, and IT heads who are consistently evaluating customized solutions to track their extensive network ecosystem.

In the absence of the right network monitoring metrics, IT may feel confronted with identifying the network problem and offer a solution. It ultimately hampers the positive experiences of clients and users. In such a scenario, many technology leaders emphasize deploying tools and technologies to monitor potential vulnerabilities or deficiencies in an organizational network and accelerate their digital network transformation initiatives.

Enabling a more effective remote monitoring

With 5G deployments at the doorway, there’s an exceptional opportunity for enterprises to drive digital innovations at an unprecedented scale. Nevertheless, many of them still struggle to obtain total visibility into varied applications, networks, devices, cloud platforms, and other elements of their IT ecosystem.

Collaboration tools, cloud storage, messaging, and web-conferencing are just a few examples of technologies that enable remote work. Soon, there will be several technologies, such as the internet of things (IoT) and robotic process automation (RPA), which will take on a pivotal part in the enterprise ecosystem and consume additional bandwidth and network capability. These new-age network transformation technologies will also open the pandora box of increased cybersecurity attacks.

Through effective automation enabled network monitoring solutions, organizations can identify demand-supply gaps and vulnerability gaps at regular intervals, thereby getting continuous end-to-end performance visibility across their networks. It will give organizations much-needed speed and nimbleness to augment their value creation flows.

 

Sunit Vakharia : Enterprises are swiftly turning to automation and analytics to make smarter decisions

“In the current scenario, technology leaders will continue to evaluate infrastructure, applications, and security for supporting their employees, partners, and customers. Many technology spending priorities are being rationalized from the perspective of the new normal. Focus on digital transformation has been amplified, and enterprises are swiftly turning to automation and analytics to make smarter decisions,” said Sunit Vakharia, Chief Technology Officer, U GRO Capital in an earlier interaction with Better World (See: Sunit Vakharia, Chief Technology Officer, U GRO Capital).

Future scenario

The network monitoring market is witnessing a massive growth worldwide due to the sudden acceleration of digital transformation initiatives by many organizations. Players such as Accedian, Ixia, Juniper Networks, and LiveAction are among the top players ruling the market.

Chandresh Dedhia : Much focus will soon be on combining detection tools with machine-based cyber threat intelligence

Several industry reports project the market to grow at 12% year-on-year to reach over US $3bn by 2022. The decisive element that will ride the growth stays on business continuity and exceptional customer experience.

“Much focus will soon be on combining detection tools with machine-based cyber threat intelligence. Organizations will strengthen their capabilities to monitor behaviors and applications accessed by employees. Enterprises will continue to revisit their security policies and solutions to reduce risks to IT infrastructure. It is the need of the hour for businesses to consistently evaluate their readiness for supporting remote working as they scale up,” says Chandresh Dedhia, Head of Information Technology, Ascent Health.

The complex and rapidly evolving IT landscape will drive businesses to track network discrepancies and the unique workflow of their scattered workforce. They will be testing and building several network monitoring capabilities to ensure employees can perform their tasks effectively and meet rapidly changing customer expectations.

Anshuman Tiwari, Global Head of Delivery Excellence, DXC Technology

Anshuman Tiwari, Global Head of Delivery Excellence, DXC Technology

In Focus

Anshuman Tiwari

Global Head of Delivery Excellence
DXC Technology

A process-excellence lens could enable businesses to get better every day and come back faster in the game.

Globally, the last few months have been tough for most of the organizations and their employees. During the lockdown, people’s movements were limited by various governments, and many were confined to their homes. Even though the stay-at-home guidelines are no longer active, many people are still apprehensive about venturing out. Age-old habits and operating models are getting changed because of measures such as social distancing that are in place to contain the spread of the crisis.

Today, enterprises are faced with the task to navigate the business challenges in the wake of the crisis and stay put in the market marred with subdued economic sentiments.

Technology and business leaders are in search for the best ways to address issues such as sluggish customer demand, changing behavioral patterns of consumers, and raw material supply challenges.

One such way is to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies, amidst a rising focus on reimagining the business models and adopting a multi-pronged approach.

In a recent interaction with Jatinder Singh of Better World, Anshuman Tiwari, Global Head of Delivery Excellence, DXC Technology, elucidates the critical role of process excellence services in helping enterprises fast-track their digital transformation journey, improve customer experiences, and achieve better returns on investment.

Excerpts of the interview:

Better World: As economies try to get back to normal, many businesses are gasping for survival. In such a scenario, how critical is the role of process improvement to outsmart the uncertainty?

Anshuman Tiwari: Before we go into the criticality of process excellence for the industry, let’s take a step backward and examine how continuous improvement works out in our daily lives.  For over six months, we have been living with stay-at-home guidelines. Many habits and operating models have been transformed because of social distancing measures that are in place to contain the spread of the crisis. We call it the new normal where businesses are often functioning by enabling every part of their process digitally.

Despite disruption during the lockdown, most of us were able to receive essential services such as groceries, milk, and fruits, mainly because of a set of processes. There may have been delays or interruptions initially, but digital services helped us collaborate and get all the necessities delivered at our doorsteps. This success is a prime example of process refinement or process excellence. Processes are nothing but a set of activities repeated multiple times for an excellent outcome. So, the process techniques are essentially developed to operate better every week and every month, leveraging whatever opportunity we get from time to time.

Processes are integral to every industry and even more to an IT industry where most customers are global and have already been exposed to robust techniques. Moreover, in the IT industry, margins are always under pressure, and end-users want to get the same thing at a cheaper cost. However, one cannot compromise with quality to reduce the cost. It would be best to discover a way to operate efficiently to save costs. Process excellence techniques such as Lean, Six Sigma, and automation come handy to enable businesses to improve cash flows without impacting the customer experience.

The current economic environment has compelled organizations to revisit their business models and include the digitization aspect in every part of their business. Enhancing processes is a critical aspect of digital transformation. Due to slow market demand and wafer-thin margins, organizations require massive efforts to strengthen their operations, improve supply chains, and reach out to their customers in new ways.

There have been growing technological advances in helping enterprises automate specific parts of their operations. An in-depth process lens can enable businesses to get better every day. It allows companies to break down and analyze processes that can be automated to deliver the same or better quality at a lesser cost. For instance, process improvement techniques can help an organization to take the robotic process automation (RPA) route to accomplish the same job with fewer people.

Across industries, efforts are being made to eliminate inadequacies and deliver exceptional services to clients.

Better World: You mentioned that process excellence is a stepping stone to digital transformation. Could you please elaborate how these two are correlated?

Anshuman Tiwari: I would like to answer this question in two parts. First, digital transformation is a fancy name. Many organizations have already stopped using the word digital transformation because they feel that every organizational shift is in some or the other way connected with digital technologies. Digital transformation is all about bringing new and advanced technologies to help you perform better, faster, and more effectively. Second, it’s not a new concept; technological change is happening all the time. For instance, fifteen to twenty years ago, we were not ready for full-scale web conferencing. Most of the collaboration tools were still emerging or were primarily limited to text chat. Internet speed was limited. Today, we are getting high-quality education and medical consulting through various web meeting and conferencing tools.

Thus, you are bringing technologies to improve a process, which is resulting in rendering the earlier process primitive. The erstwhile snail mail or even telegram services, for example, may look archaic to various instant communication services such as WhatsApp.

Anshuman Tiwari

Global Head of Delivery Excellence, DXC Technology

Anshuman is a process transformation professional with experience across multiple industries, including banking, professional services, information technology, manufacturing, and consulting. He specializes in setting up and scaling world-class operations excellence programs. In the last few years, he has also managed large RPA and digital initiatives.

Before DXC Technology, he had worked for global multinationals such as EY, HSBC, and Infosys. He is also a fellow member of American Society for Quality (ASQ), formerly the American Society for Quality Control, a knowledge-based global community of quality professionals.

Besides work, Anshuman is a fitness fanatic and has participated in several marathons across India.

Top skills

  • Process improvement
  • Digital transformation initiatives
  • Six Sigma, Lean, automation, robotics process automation (RPA) and maturity frameworks
  • Agile project management

Education

  • Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) in Operations Management, K.J. Somaiya Institute Of Management Studies and Research
  • B.E. Industrial Engineering, Nagpur University

Now, let’s understand how a process or service excellence enables organizations to drive continuous change. It is imperative to know what we want to improve and why we wish to invest in making that improvement? Is it service delivery, resource optimization, customer experience, or all three? Any process enhancement may involve some investment or technology implementation. However, for any organization or entity, financial resources are limited. Process excellence teams help businesses determine the problem, suggest a solution, and showcase how the solution will help. Through process enhancement initiatives, organizations identify an opportunity and attain the final state of operational excellence through continuous improvement. This entire effort makes a process more effective and intelligent to deliver positive outcomes consistently, with minimal waste.

While there may be several ways to transform operations digitally, process testing can help accomplish which method is best and more suited to achieve a definitive outcome. Many transformation journeys end in suboptimal benefits, i.e., they don’t give the results they promise. That’s why you need a ‘method’ to transformation. Process excellence efforts give you a holistic outlook for your transformation efforts.

Better World: How do you engage with different business leaders for a service-excellence initiative? What are some of the best practices that you adhere to while proposing a given solution?

Anshuman Tiwari: There are two parts of the spectrum. On one end, nobody wants to improve. Some leaders wish for a status quo. They don’t desire to change or iterate a set of technological processes for getting satisfactory results. On the other extreme, some executives look to continuously change everything. Both approaches are detrimental.

If you don’t want to change and respond to the transitions happening around you, you will not grow or begin losing market share. Many erstwhile leaders failed because they did not respond to market needs or transformed their products and processes to improve their market positions. In the end, it resulted in their ruin.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are executives who wish to change everything all the time. It can be very costly and confusing for people. By the time people get to know about the new process, it would have already got changed. The probabilities are high that in such a condition, there will be a lot of unhappy employees and dissatisfied customers.

Then some people and executives who are in the middle of the spectrum. I believe that most of them are either in this category or are slowly moving toward it. There is a growing awareness around the worth of testing different processes that can impact the end customer. But it would be best if you demonstrate the inefficiency and merits of enhancing a process.

Let me give you an example. A few years ago, in an insurance process review meeting in Hong Kong, we discovered that one of our insurance-sector clients was taking one to two weeks in delivering an insurance policy. In that market, we found several other leading insurance players were taking a maximum of one week in issuing insurance policies. We examined their case and gave them an overview of how this delay could hamper their prospects. They were initially reluctant to accept, but when we explicated that their process was broken and had too much inefficiency compared to three other banks and insurance providers, they bought our idea and immediately sanctioned the process enhancement project.

So, even if your processes are working all right but failing to give you market competitive results, it’s time to evaluate. It may happen that your customers do not see it because of your past success or goodwill, but you should invest in it for long-term market advantage to scale down your error rates. Continuous improvement of a process improves not only the lives of employees but also customers. On top of that, organizations get the benefits of cost savings. You would not want to utilize the efficiency of your quality employees by giving them a task to reconcile and match data. This kind of job can be performed with the help of some software programs quite quickly.

So, in a nutshell, evaluating a process is critical to ensure that a company performs well. And all process-efficiency projects are either related to customer benefits or your people’s benefits or both.

Better World: Given the growing focus of enterprises on digital transformation, how do you see the year 2021 evolving from a process-excellence lens?

Anshuman Tiwari: Nobody knows for how long the current situation will last. The impact of the current crisis is likely to be felt for a long time, according to many experts. If there is any evidence, the last similar event (Spanish flu) occurred in 1918, which was more than a hundred years ago. It lasted for three to five years in different geographies. Of course, the situation is different in that the medical science has progressed and there are various forms of connectivity today. However, it is also true that there were no large cities back then, and population density was not that high. So, while there has been progress on some fronts, there also are counterbalancing factors that tend to neutralize those improvements. Today, we are transforming and changing fast due to this sudden disruption. Like every other practice, process excellence will also change. Priorities for large businesses will be very different for some time. Enterprises will look for rebuilding businesses. There will be a strategic focus on renewing processes in such a way that companies can come back faster.

While it is difficult to predict things, given the unprecedented nature of change, I believe there will be a reasonable investment in technologies such as RPA and internet of things (IoT). Customer centricity will continue to push organizations to innovate and develop new products and services. That’s where most of the processes will be built.

Organizations that follow a smart approach to transformation by leveraging their people, diverse processes, and technologies will be way ahead. Like any other area, process excellence will need to adapt to newer developments and focus on innovation so that as the opportunities arise, we can take advantage of those.

Vodafone wins tax battle against India

Vodafone wins tax battle against India

British Telecom giant Vodafone Group Plc has won an international arbitration case against the Indian government in Rs. 22,100 crore tax dispute.

An international arbitration tribunal ordered that India’s penalty of tax liability on Vodafone was a breach of fair treatment under a bilateral investment protection treaty.

The telecom company entered a tax controversy in India over Hutchison Essar Telecom services buy in April 2007. The Indian government levied a Rs 7,990 crore in capital gains taxes (Rs 22,100 crore post interest and penalty) on Vodafone, citing that the transaction involved purchasing assets in an Indian company, which Vodafone contested.

It is worth recalling that the Supreme Court, India’s apex court body, had also quelled the government’s tax demand from Vodafone in 2012. Later, the Indian government made amendments in the law, making Vodafone liable again for the taxes.

Post the center’s decision to impose a tax liability on it, Vodafone filed an International Arbitration in Singapore. In India, Vodafone amalgamated its operations with Idea Cellular a couple of years back, but the joint entity VI is fronting a $7.8 billion bill in past statutory dues.

At this juncture, this ruling ended the decade-long tax clash between India and the Vodafone Group. The details of the arbitral award are yet to be made public.

What is the matter?

The issue goes back to February 2007, when the Dutch associate of the Vodafone Group, Vodafone International Holdings (VIH) B.V, acquired a controlling 67% stake in the Indian telecom firm Hutchison Essar Limited (HEL) for $11 bn. The transaction transpired through CGP Investments (Holding) Ltd (CGP Ltd.), a Cayman Islands Company, whose 100% shares were purchased by VIH.

At that time,  the Indian authorities slapped a capital gains tax on Vodafone, including a penalty, saying that the indirect transfer of HEL shares, an Indian company, was a fixed arrangement to evade taxes. Vodafone, on the other hand, contested the demand by replying that the transaction between HTIL and VIH did not include the transfer of any capital asset. 

The matter arrived at the Supreme Court of India, which ruled in favor of Vodafone. Quite surprisingly, soon after the verdict, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed an amendment bill in India’s upper house, introducing retrospective revisions that went back to 1962.

It would be exciting to see if the Indian government accepts the ruling or avail the options of approaching the High Court of Singapore to contest the judgment. The Singapore tribunal, though, has not accepted Vodafone’s claim of award of damages.

A big boost to VI India ambitions

The arbitration win has strengthened Vodafone-Idea’s( VI) India growth plans. Soon after the win, the shares of VI saw a nearly 15 percent jump at National Stock Exchange (NSE).

The joint entity has recently refreshed its brand identity to invigorate its prospects in the domestic market. (Vodafone Idea Ltd: Could rebranding change the future?)

It appears like 2020 has been quite blessed for VI as far as its India’s ambitions are concerned. Many industry onlookers projected VI’s downfall in India at the beginning of this year due to cutthroat competition with Airtel and RJIO and Vodafone’s growing debt. However, Vodafone-Idea rejuvenated itself after getting a respite from India’s Supreme Court, which provided Vodafone a stretched time frame of 10 years to pay Rs.25000 crores AGR dues it owes to the Indian government.

The company is now looking forward to beef-up its 4G technology and strengthen network coverage and capacity to improve its market share in India.

 

AT&T and Microsoft join forces to develop secure IoT solutions

AT&T and Microsoft join forces to develop secure IoT solutions

AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunication company, and tech major Microsoft have extended the scope of their partnership to enable enterprises to deliver secure and seamless connectivity of IoT devices. As AT&T and Microsoft join forces, the technology convergence of both these companies is likely to spearhead futuristic IoT deployments for organizations of diverse nature.

As part of the partnership, AT&T will continue to use Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure and work together to launch integrated IoT solutions with Azure Sphere. Unveiled in 2018, Azure Sphere is a secured, high-level application platform with built-in communication and tailored design to support internet-connected device and edge applications. Azure is the first fully open source-based product designed by Microsoft.

This announcement is part of the AT&T-Microsoft multi-year pact signed by the two companies last year. The deal was reportedly valued at $2 billion and gave exclusive rights to Microsoft as AT&T’s non-network applications preferred cloud provider. The agreement also encompasses collaboration on developing new 5G, cloud, and edge computing solutions to drive enterprise capabilities for diverse companies worldwide.

Addressing IoT security issues with the new solution

Leveraging each other’s capabilities, AT&T has unveiled a cellular technology-based enterprise device, branded as a guardian device. Guardian will run on Microsoft’s Azure Sphere and AT&T’s multi-layered secure core network to deliver a secure cloud connection that evades the public internet.

“The solution provides fast and highly secure activation right out of the box. It enables enterprises to easily connect existing equipment to the cloud and Azure IoT Central. With this, a wide variety of industries can rapidly deploy IoT applications relying on the combined security benefits of the AT&T cellular network with Azure Sphere device security,” says the joint company statement.

The device, designed to be self-installed and self-provisioned, aims to help businesses scale internet of things (IoT) deployments to transform their operations quickly.

Focus on digital transformation capabilities

In the wake of COVID-19 and the new work environment, organizations worldwide have accelerated their digital transformation initiatives. Most of the telecom service providers and tech majors are taking M&A or the partnership route to develop edge computing capabilities. (See: Infosys buys GuideVision to boost Dx capabilities)

With the coming of 5G mobile connectivity, a whole new set of possibilities have emerged, allowing businesses to deliver live, immersive, and real-time experiences from a remote location.

As such, the fight for gaining a competitive edge over others for rising new-age technologies such as IoT and automation is getting more fierce.

Microsoft and AT&T, too, have set their sights on the growing digital transformation solutions market. In April this year, both these companies also announced that they were partnering to bring ultra-low-latency edge computing for many enterprise customers.

 

How is digital transformation shaping the new future?

How is digital transformation shaping the new future?

Six months into the pandemic, and we all have seen how critical is the robust connectivity for us to remain relevant and work effectively. As stringent social distancing measures continue to prevail across the country, enterprises are beefing-up their digital transformation strategy to implement solutions that can strengthen their operational efficiency, enable their employees and users to collaborate, and uncap innovation smoothly.

Before the COVID-19 became a pandemic, concepts such as digital transformation were primarily confined to the IT industry. However, a lot has been changed in the last few months, prompting organizations to rethink their digital strategy. Digital transformation is now mainstream and has paved the way for new ways of living across all sectors and industries. Virtual town hall meetings and webinars are no longer considered exclusive. Almost every establishment is now leveraging cloud computing and digital technologies to develop new or alter existing enterprise processes and culture to align with the changing customer requirements.

Technology assisting in the new normal

Enterprises worldwide are innovating their business processes with digital transformation strategies and identifying novel ways of empowering their people and customers to improve business risk resiliency. The healthcare industry, for instance, is pondering the concepts of virtual ICUs with patients being at home and the treatment being managed remotely. There is also a massive rise in tele-consulting. Many senior citizens who had limited or no knowledge about mobile applications are receiving treatment through web-conferencing tools such as Zoom or Meet.

The banking sector has leveraged technologies such as data science, robotics, and automation for convenient virtual customer engagement and secure banking experience. (See: ICICI Prudential extends coverage of conversational AI Ligo and AI in banking now geared for a takeoff)

Similarly, automotive retail barriers will be transformed through augmented reality, video, and other technologies. Consumers may not be needed to visit retail showrooms to do a test drive and purchase an automotive vehicle.

In India, manufacturing is one of the most adversely affected sectors that could not escape the wrath of coronavirus. This is primarily because of their sluggish approach toward the adoption of digital technologies.

From now on, as manufacturers gradually open-up their plants, they would be highly dependent upon digitization and related technologies such as cloud, IoT, automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence for the business revival and growth. Nevertheless, like all organizations, the safety of employees will be of paramount importance, and technology will continue to play a significant role in that aspect.

Technology transformation lighting the way toward a new era

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has catalyzed a new tech revolution. For most global organizations, the stay-at-home mandate likely to remain in place for an unforeseeable future. And hence, there has been a greater acceptance of working remotely across enterprises.

Many technology leaders with whom we interacted recently feel that despite the disruption, the impact would be a lot more positive in the longer run. (See: Sunit Vakharia, Chief Technology Officer, U GRO Capital, and Chandresh Dedhia, Head of Information Technology, Ascent Health)

IT heads are busy evaluating their networks and implementing network monitoring tools and technologies, identity management, data encryption, and governance and compliance solutions to make their systems secure and efficient. These tools can equip IT teams to maintain the overall organizational IT infrastructure for a disbursed remote workforce, and diagnose the problems promptly.

Analytics and AI would continue to play a more significant role in driving enriching experience for employees and customers. The next twelve months will see faster adoption of transformative technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), Blockchain, and robotic process automation (RPA). These technologies will be used to build contactless solutions and strengthen process efficiencies. Customer Organizations will be seen ramping-up their research and development initiatives to kick-start the economy.

Across all sectors, new technological developments and innovations will form the basis of all boardroom discussions. By the time the impact of the pandemic will subside, most of the enterprises would be transitioned into a different era altogether. There will be greater adoption of online ways of functioning. Networks will be transformed, and the connectivity landscape will be strengthened. This will fundamentally change how organizations operate and deliver, ultimately drive unique revenue streams for businesses. Overall, these changes will help us prepare better for a crisis like this in the time to come.

 

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