Share to lead the transformation

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

Chandresh Dedhia, Head – IT, Ascent Health

Chandresh Dedhia, Head – IT, Ascent Health

In Focus

Chandresh Dedhia

Head of Information Technology
Ascent Health

There is a strong emphasis on touchless behavior and hence on AI-based touchless technologies.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has persisted, businesses have responded with due precautionary measures, while making a swift transition from the traditional physical work environment to an virtual work ecosystem as much as possible. For a majority of enterprises, the remote-working model was implemented almost overnight and turned out to be a massive experiment during the first phase of lockdown. 

In India, the work-from-home (WFH), was earlier mostly limited to privileged users. However, the pandemic introduced a significant and extraordinary change. Now, many companies have extended the complete WFH policy for their employees until June 2021. Today, all eyes are on the technology leaders who have assumed an enormous responsibility to devise and execute a differentiated tech strategy to embrace this new normal as part of a process.

In a recent interaction with Jatinder Singh of Better World, Chandresh Dedhia, Head of Information Technology, Ascent Health, outlines the top technology trends and challenges that the businesses are facing in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. He also shares some of the best practices and technology implementations that could lead enterprises to deliver an exceptional customer experience with minimal disruption. Excerpts.

On the new normal and learnings
In today’s highly fluid situation, the business and IT landscapes are becoming more and more complex. Traditional models and architectures have lost their sheen. The longer the pandemic stays, the stronger the chances are that we will not go back to the pre-COVID normal. The last few months have helped us learn and unlearn many things, and these learnings will pave the way for the new model. Things have changed, people have transformed, and mindsets have changed. There is an indelible impact on almost everyone.

Moreover, because of the new operational dynamics, organizations have altered their policies. They are now focusing more on innovation and agility. Digital transformation is high on the agenda. The current crisis has given a growing sense of belief and visibility to enterprises on the best ways to tackle any future disruptions.

On technology trends and business order post COVID-19
I feel that there is a natural push towards the implementation of new-age technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, business analytics, and robotic process automation (RPA). Until now, the adoption was happening at an unhurried pace. Now, digital transformation is no longer an option but a competitive advantage. The new normal is here to stay for a very long time, and no organization will like to be stuck because of its traditional ways of working. Enterprises have understood that they will need to explore ideas and means to ensure that the business continuity remains intact. Of course, given the fact that businesses have managed to stay afloat in the last four months, most of them are well equipped to plan their working models for the future.

There is a strong emphasis on contactless behavior, and this is likely to remain in place for an unspecified time. The pandemic has compelled us to keep focusing on social distancing, and hence enterprises will have stringent policies around contactless behaviors. Much focus will be on AI-based touchless and remote monitoring technologies implementation. So, the traditional model of working will be replaced by new working ways. Technologies like video and web-conferencing will continue to witness tremendous traction.

It is also expected that most of the organizations will invest a significant amount in multiple cloud environments to keep disruption at bay. The hybrid cloud model is likely to gain substantial traction businesses across sectors.

Going forward, companies will evaluate if they can save costs by reducing real-estate, and heavily relying on the new-age technologies for scaling-up. Technology is a great enabler, and ultimately all these benefits will be passed on to the employees. Organization can enhance the existing CCTV setups to accommodate social distancing, face masks, and hand gloves algorithms.

On balancing the short-term revenue requirements against long-term technology investment: 
It is natural for any organization to rationalize its investments. We are no exception either. Every technology investment is being seen in the long-term horizon of, say, three to five years. Anything less than that is technically not a tech investment. For instance, there might be days when manufacturing costs may outweigh any tech-implementation decision. However, that doesn’t mean that the company won’t invest in the required technology. Yes, at times, you’ve to face such tests, but tech investments always have their significance, and decisions are taken based on the value that the technology provides. For instance, let’s say an organization needs to invest in a face-scanning or a retina-based attendance system. Probably before the pandemic, there was no urgency to implement this technology. But in the current environment, everyone understands the long-term benefits of such contactless technologies.

On challenges related to security threats
Remote working has become a new reality, and in a way, the new normal. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a concept of work from anywhere. Not just thousands but lakhs of people have shifted to WFH almost instantaneously. Hackers are always game to take advantage of such unparalleled situations. And for enterprises, it has become challenging to monitor and analyze the behaviors of employees who are accessing corporate data and networks remotely. 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. There will be growing pressure on implementing a very sophisticated information security policy. Even SMEs will move away from free security tools and focus on robust and advanced information security solutions.

Chandresh is an IT business transformation leader with experience in digital, IT infrastructure, enterprise applications, information security, and IT governance and compliance. He has won numerous awards for his wide-ranging work in the domains of IT infrastructure and security.

An eloquent speaker and writer, Chandresh is also a marathon runner, environmentalist, and fundraiser. He has been associated with the Umeed Foundation for last three years and has raised more than Rs 6 lakh for education of needy children.

Expertise

  • Warehouse management and automation
  • Data virtualization on Denodo
  • Robotic process automation (RPA)
  • Software-defined WAN (SDWAN)
  • Mobile application development (Low Code)
  • Information security management
  • Cloud-based services on Amazon AWS and Google GCP
  • Enterprise applications and integrations
  • ERP implementation and support
  • B2B application support
  • DevOps and data engineering

Education

  • Global CIO Programme, Digital Innovation, Indian School of Business
  • MBA in Business Management, Marketing and Related Services from ITM and Southern New Hampshire University
Crypsis buy will augment Palo Alto’s AI-driven offerings

Crypsis buy will augment Palo Alto’s AI-driven offerings

Global cyber security major Palo Alto Networks has signed a deal to acquire The Crypsis Group, a consulting firm that operates in incident response, risk management, and digital forensics. Palo Alto will pay $265 million in cash for the purchase. The acquisition process is likely to finish during the quarter ending 31 October 2020.

Palo Alto Networks already has the capability to provides prevention, detection, and response capabilities through Cortex XDR, its ambitious artificial intelligence (AI)-based cyber security solution that natively integrates network, endpoint, and cloud data. Launched in 2019, XDR is an open-standard solution that harnesses technologies such as AI and machine learning (ML) to rapidly detect and respond to threats across an enterprise and its network.

Post Crypsis acquisition, Palo Alto plans to incorporate the Crypsis Group’s processes and technology into Cortex XDR. This integration will help Palo Alto strengthen its security consulting and forensics capabilities to collect rich security telemetry and to analyze, manage breaches, and initiate rapid response actions.

“The proposed acquisition of The Crypsis Group will significantly enhance our position as the cybersecurity partner of choice while expanding our capabilities and strengthening our Cortex strategy. By joining forces, we will be able to help customers not only predict and prevent cyberattacks but also mitigate the impact of any breach they may face,” said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks in a company statement.

The Crypsis Group boasts of managing some of the most complex and significant cyber security incidents and manages over 1,300 security engagements every year, serving organizations across the healthcare, financial services, retail, e-commerce, and energy. As part of the agreement, post-acquisition, all of Crypsis Group employees and the CEO, Bret Padres, will join Palo Alto Networks.

Big opportunity

The COVID-19 pandemic has put enterprises under severe stress, and they are continuously redefining their business continuity plans for enabling their remote workforce to deliver exceptional results for clients. In such a scenario, their IT assets, cloud systems, departmental servers, and data centers have become all the more critical. (See: What it takes to secure IT in the COVID-19 era)

With a remote working environment becoming the new normal, there has been a growing risk for businesses to face new and advanced threats while they focus on agility and manage the scale. (See: Combating threats in the new normal)

“As threat actors continue to professionalize and grow in sophistication, the risk of revenue and the reputational impact of a security breach increases dramatically. To focus on the health and growth of their business, organizations need trusted partners to not only quickly and efficiently respond to and contain attacks but also leverage their learning and insight to prevent future attacks,” said Palo Alto in its release mentioning the Crypsis Group buy.

The current uncertain environment has given cybercriminals a lucrative opportunity to invent novel attacks for data theft. Given the fact that enterprises have accelerated their digital transformation plans and all operations are expected to move into a virtual environment, businesses cannot afford to take risks and are hence expected to invest massively in cyber security solutions in the next few years.

IT security players like Palo Alto are making full use of this opportunity and fast-tracking their capabilities to capture a significant share in the growing market. Since its debut in 2005, the company has expanded its horizons significantly and is offering a diverse set of solutions such as next-generation firewall, endpoint protection, and malware prevention to enterprises. Its acquisition spree in the last two years includes CloudGenix for $420 million in March 2020; micro-segmentation company Aporeto in December 2019; and cloud security companies PureSec (June 2019) and Twistlock (July 2019).

Driven by the work-from-home requirements, Palo Alto reported robust fourth-quarter 2020 financial results. Palo Alto’s non-GAAP net income for the period was $144.9 million, with revenue growth of 18% year-on-year at $950.4 million.

Palo Alto competitors in the market include FireEye, Fortinet, Check Point Software, CrowdStrike, Juniper Networks, and Cisco, among others.

Tech majors extend work-from-home to keep pandemic at bay

Tech majors extend work-from-home to keep pandemic at bay

Cloud software major Salesforce has joined the list of companies who’ve extended their work-from-home policies. Salesforce has announced an extension until July 31, 2021. Top technology companies such as Google and Facebook have already extended their work-from-home policies for employees till mid-2021. Other tech majors, such as Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, have announced remote working until January 2021.

“Over the past few months, we have been working diligently to support our employees as they navigate this difficult time. The safety of our employees and communities remains paramount. And while we continue to work on plans to re-open our offices safely, the timing of when we bring employees back will be unique to each office — and we will continue to make those decisions in a way that’s consistent with local government guidelines and the advice of our medical experts and local leadership team,” said Brent Hyder, Chief People Officer of Salesforce in the company’s blog.

The San Francisco headquartered tech-major has also announced to give an additional $250 financial support to each of its employees for buying office supplies. The company had provided similar assistance to its employees earlier this year as well. Earlier this month, consulting major EY had also announced similar financial support of US$200 to each of its employees.

Besides, Salesforce employees who are parents will be entitled to take six additional weeks of paid leave. “In all situations where schools have been closed, and students are learning remotely, parents and guardians will be allowed to work from home, even if that date extends beyond our offices re-opening,” Hyder added.

The last six months have been challenging for a majority of companies and leaders. The uncertainty brought in by the COVID-19 pandemic has made it extremely hard for both employees and employers to focus on work solely. People are dealing with issues such as social distancing, remote working, job-loss, elderly care, and ambiguity around almost everything.

As such, enterprises are finding several ways to motivate their talent and prevent burnout. Financial assistance, work-flexibility, and paid leave are some of the measures that companies are offering to support and attract employees.

The new normal is here to stay

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of the companies would offer work-from-home to a very particular set of people on a rotational basis. At that time, In India, the remote-working model was mostly viewed as pointless, with much suspicion from employers. Companies were reluctant to experiment, and employees too were not attuned to an entirely virtual work-environment. However, things changed in a short time. The pandemic has suddenly pushed people to transform their behaviors and compelled them to adopt the new normal quickly.

See also Work-from-home even after Covid-19?

Most of the enterprises and employees have successfully navigated this transition and are looking forward to remote ways of working even after the pandemic subsides. For employers, the new normal is a significant opportunity to save substantial real-estate costs and translate the cost benefits to their employees. For employees, it’s a way to be more productive by reducing travel time while staying connected with their families.

According to a recent study, Technology and the Evolving World of Work by Lenovo, the majority of those surveyed (72 percent) confirmed a shift in their daily work dynamic in the last three months. Employees feel more connected and more productive than ever before as they work from home, but the data shows financial, physical, and emotional downsides for the global workforce.

There is no doubt that the experience of the physical work environment is vital to develop strong teaming and diverse skillsets and hence cannot be completely evaded. To balance that, companies could be mulling to rotate days or weeks of in-office presence for their employees in future, especially in the services sectors.

Can OnwardMobility make Blackberry bloom again?

Can OnwardMobility make Blackberry bloom again?

After a massive downslide in the last decade, the erstwhile dominant enterprise smartphone maker is eyeing an ambitious comeback in 2021. Will Blackberry bloom again?

The enterprise smartphone maker has collaborated with OnwardMobility, a US-based company in the mobile security space, and Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn to design and develop a new 5G Blackberry Android smartphone with a physical keyboard. According to an announcement by OnwardMobility, BlackBerry has given OnwardMobility the right to create, engineer, and bring to market a BlackBerry 5G mobile device. The new phone is likely to arrive in the first half of 2021.

“BlackBerry is thrilled OnwardMobility will deliver a BlackBerry 5G smartphone device with a physical keyboard leveraging our high standards of trust and security synonymous with our brand. We are excited that customers will experience the enterprise and government level security and mobile productivity the new BlackBerry 5G smartphone will offer,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry in a statement released to analysts and media.

John Chen, who is widely credited as having earlier saved Sybase from the verge of a bankruptcy, was brought at the helm in 2013 and has since then stayed put.

See: CEO John Chen has pressed the BlackBerry restart button, actually!

Also read: With selloff shelved, BlackBerry hinges even more by Watsa

Return of the Motion?

The iconic Canadian smartphone maker once ruled the mobile market, with over 50% of the US and 20% of the global smartphone market share. However, it started losing the grip after the arrival of the iPhone4 in 2010 and its inability to foresee the rapid shifts in the market and the reluctance to transform swiftly. Today, the company is struggling with a share of less than 0.5% of the total smartphone market.

One of the biggest letdowns for Blackberry enterprise users was the company’s failure to develop a robust app store like Android and iOS. Besides, a delayed approach in introducing modern-day features such as dual camera and dual SIM also paved the way for its accelerated collapse.

In 2016, when Blackberry finally lost all hopes to reclaim its market share, it decided to move away from designing smartphones and awarded the development contract to TCL Communication. The not-so-fruitful association with TCL came to an end early this year, and the new covenant has now been given to OnwardMobility. The last flagship Android-based Blackberry phone launched by TCL was KEY2 LE, which received a lackluster response from the market. It would be interesting to see if OnwardMobility can make Blackberry bloom again.

Banking on the new normal

Due to the recent COVID-19 situation, a significant part of the population is working from home today. This trend is likely to remain in place even after the pandemic subsides. Most of the enterprise technology leaders are beefing up their network security architectures to support end customers and employees efficiently.

Despite losing its numero uno position in the enterprise mobility market, Blackberry continues to attract a specific set of users because of its classy physical keyboard and focused approach on privacy and security. As such, the new normal can present a unique opportunity for Blackberry to explore a wild-card entry in the smartphone market.

“With the increasing number of employees working remotely with critical data and applications, coupled with the constant threat of cyberattacks, there is an absolute need for a secure, feature-rich 5G-ready phone that enhances productivity. Employees are demanding better workplace technology experiences, and organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges in selecting, deploying, securing, and managing devices to meet expectations and maximize employee productivity,” says the joint statement from Blackberry and Onwardmobility.

The announcement may be surprising for many industry onlookers who wrote the obituaries for Blackberry Mobiles early this year after the termination of Blackberry-TCL collaboration. The move, however, is pleasing for the loyal Blackberry enterprise customers who have trusted its capabilities time and again.

“Enterprise professionals are eager to secure 5G devices that enable productivity without sacrificing user experience. BlackBerry smartphones are known for protecting communications, privacy, and data. This is an incredible opportunity for OnwardMobility to bring next-generation 5G devices to market with the backing of BlackBerry and FIH Mobile,” adds Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility.

It would be interesting to see if Franklin’s confidence can  translate into a renaissance for Blackberry in the post-COVID world.

For other articles related to telecom/smartphones, click here.

Facebook entices creators as it eyes the online events market

Facebook entices creators as it eyes the online events market

Social media conglomerate, Facebook, has recently launched a new paid event feature that will enable Facebook page owners and event managers to create, set up, and collect payments for virtual events. While there are many platforms available to host online business events today, Facebook’s new feature is a first of its kind, which is completely free and doesn’t charge a commission, at least for now. Better World is of the view that with this launch, Facebook entices creators in a very emphatic way.

“With social distancing mandates still in place, many businesses and creators are bringing their events and services online to connect with existing customers and reach new ones,” said Facebook in a blog statement.

“By combining marketing, payment and live video, paid online events meet the end-to-end needs of businesses. Pages can host events on Facebook Live to reach broad audiences, and we’re testing paid events with Messenger Rooms for more personal and interactive gatherings,” it added.

The feature comes free to all web and android users. iOS users, however, will have to pay a 30% app store tax as part of Apple’s tax policy. All apps on Apple’s platform have to use its payment system for the in-app payments and required to pay 30 percent tax for the same.

“We asked Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue,” Facebook clarified in the blog post.

A tactical strategy

Facebook says users in 20 countries, including India, will be able to take advantage of this new paid event feature initially. What makes this announcement exciting is that businesses and professionals can launch, promote, accept payments, and build their user base through a single Facebook page. Event promotions can be done online by targeting specific users on the Facebook platform itself, who can pay and watch the event online.

This means that all kinds of events, from Yoga and dance classes to insightful knowledge sessions, can be hosted on Facebook for free.

Facebook is tactically marketing this new initiative as SMB-focused. The company is well aware that SMBs are the growth engines in many developing and emerging economies. By offering an exclusive and highly specialized service, it can create a vast market for itself in the post-COVID work environment. Simultaneously, by providing the services for free, it will be able to test the waters with less noise.

“In our most recent State of Small Business Report with OECD and World Bank, we found that access to cash continues to be the most common ongoing challenge for SMBs. Only 19% of surveyed businesses were getting any financial help (down from earlier in a pandemic). Many businesses are struggling, and every cent matters. Shifting in-person events to online is costly enough that companies shouldn’t have to worry about fees charged by platforms,” Facebook said.

Early this year, Facebook had also announced the launch of Facebook Shops. This initiative was to enable businesses to display and sell their products directly to Facebook users across its ecosystem, including Instagram. (See: Facebook Shops shake-up marketplaces)

A low-hanging events opportunity

The online events industry has suddenly become more lucrative due to a burst in demand, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 scenario. With work-from-home and physical distancing measures likely to remain in place for an unspecified time, businesses will continue to focus on digital avenues for meetings, conferences, and customer interactions.

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft, among others, are already putting more research and development efforts to enrich their solutions and increase their share of a lucrative online events market with good upside potential. Various studies pegged the current market size of online events at around $100 billion, slated for a five-fold increase in the next six to eight years.

Facebook, with its vast network and community of over 2.7 billion users, stands a unique chance to create a niche in the online events space. Additionally, Facebook’s Oculus division, which it acquired in March 2014 for US$2.3 billion, specializes in virtual reality hardware and software products. In future, the social giant could very much leverage the Oculus base for creating an ecosystem around virtual-reality conferences, aka events 2.0.

Tech M to use AI-based upskilling to build a ‘Fit for Future’ workforce

Tech M to use AI-based upskilling to build a ‘Fit for Future’ workforce

Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business re-engineering services and solutions, said it would leverage artificial intelligence (AI)-based learning platform to create a ‘Fit for Future’ workforce. The initiative aims to accelerate new-age skill development for over 60,000 employees globally.

Powered by New Age Delivery (NAD), this upskilling-as-a-service (UaaS) program is aimed at enhancing employee competencies across emerging technologies like 5G, cloud, big data, and robotic process automation. The learning platform leverages AI to provide interactive, on-demand, contextual, and hyper-personalized upskilling to employees in self-service mode to make them fit for future. UaaS enables employees to access world-class content and assessments from across 30+ partners along with cloud-based practice platforms and deployment avenues. The platform empowers employees for seamless transition to digital jobs. The platform is also helping Tech Mahindra tide over the Covid pandemic by facilitating more learning interventions accelerating skill development as per changing business landscape.

Harshvendra Soin, Global Chief People Officer and Head of Marketing, Tech Mahindra, said, “As a global digital transformation leader, we continue to leverage digital technologies to enhance human experiences and talent development to meet changing business and market requirements. Upskilling as a Service platform is empowering our associates to identify and pursue their career aspirations at a speed of their preference, while also giving the tools to work with renewed passion and confidence to create future-ready workforce ‘today’.”

UaaS deploys Skill Knowledge Unit (SKU), a set of related skills cutting across various roles, aimed at providing holistic learning for employees across multiple technical as well as functional (domain), behavioral, and professional skills, thus grooming well-rounded professionals with entrepreneurial and solution-oriented mindset. The platform further recommends relevant career paths and SKUs to the employees based on their current skillset, time to upskill and opportunities available.

Vaishali Phatak, Head – Technical Learning Services & Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) said, “UaaS (upskilling as a service) is enabling our employees to continuously upskill and take charge of their growth and relevance to business throughout their journey with Tech Mahindra. The platform is helping us deliver value to our customers by grooming employees in full stack/ end to end professionals for current projects as well as future assignments. We plan to extend the platform to academia, thereby helping college students become future ready by the time they graduate.”

Tech Mahindra developed this upskilling platform in-house to create an ecosystem for higher scale and speed of skill development and fulfil people supply chain needs of the organization amidst dynamic business environment. As part of its TechMNxt charter, Tech Mahindra is betting big on next gen technologies to solve real business problems of the customers by delivering innovative solutions and services. The organization plan to leverage Upskilling as a Service platform along with aggressive industry-academia partnerships, Fit for Future re-skilling and research programs to develop digital capabilities like AI, IoT, AR/VR, and cloud to create workforce of the future.

(To read more industry news, click here.)

0 Comments