by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, SMEs, Technology
New Delhi : Expanding its portfolio of mobile computers, Zebra Technologies, a global leader in providing solutions and services to enterprises, on Thursday introduced “TC20” mobile computer and “TC25” rugged smartphone in India.
“TC20” will cost $500-$600 while and “TC25” will be available for $530-$600 depending on the specifications, the company said.
“Until now, Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) had options like struggling with the risk and frustration of using consumer devices or running their operations manually with pen and paper. ‘TC20’ and ‘TC25’ give SMBs a better choice,” Deep Agarwal, Regional Sales Director-India, Zebra Technologies, said in a statement.
Both the devices feature 4.3-inch screens and run Android Nougat Operating System (OS).
Zebra’s “TC20” is a lightweight and durable mobile device developed for indoor use by sectors such as retail and hospitality while “TC25” would allow real-time operational visibility on the field for SMBs in logistics or services industries, the company added.
The devices also support voice communications over wireless LAN while “TC25” supports 4G/LTE connectivity too.
“TC20” and “TC25” have been designed for 1D and 2D barcode scanning and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reading.
The TC2-series devices can capture barcodes substantially quicker than the cameras on consumer smartphones, thus saving time, the company said.
Designed as an enterprise line of business smartphone, both the devices are powered by software such as Datawedge, StageNow and Mobility Extensions (Mx).
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, SMEs, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : Several Indian enterprises have chosen Google Cloud to grow their businesses in the past few years. With the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region now live in the country, the behemoth is one step closer to helping more local firms embrace Cloud.
The Cloud region in Mumbai — that uses Google’s core infrastructure, data analytics and machine learning — offers several services, including compute, Big Data, storage and networking.
“The launch of the Cloud region opens up new opportunities for several new partners who will benefit from building their services on Google Cloud,” Mohit Pande, Country Manager-India, Google Cloud, told IANS.
Google is bullish on India when it comes to Cloud adoption.
Hike Messenger — the first homegrown messaging platform — has migrated its entire messaging application and network as well as all front-end traffic on to Google Cloud.
Since the migration to Google Cloud, Hike has seen a 25-30 per cent reduction in latency, improving the overall user experience on its platform. Google Cloud is also allowing Hike to scale with efficiency and reduce its go-to-market time and effort.
Big enterprises and emerging businesses like Ashok Leyland, Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), Dainik Bhaskar Corp, Reliance Entertainment-Digital, Dalmia Cement, DTDC, Delhivery.com, GoIbibo, Royal Enfield, Air Vistara, Tata Sky and Walnut have chosen Google Cloud as their technology platform.
“The new GCP region will help more customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area,” Pande added.
The Mumbai region joins Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in the Asia-Pacific, making it easier for customers to build highly available, “performant” applications using resources across those geographies.
The GCP region has three zones. Developers and network admins can distribute apps and storage across multiple zones to protect against service disruptions.
Hosting applications in the new region, said the Google executive, can improve latency from 20 to up to 90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region which is Singapore.
With over 50 million SMBs, India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. “We have an incredible local team of seasoned enterprise and developer experts connecting with start-ups, SMBs and large corporations to understand their needs and offer solutions accordingly,” Pande told IANS.
According to Manish Verma, Chief Technology Officer at Hungama, they wanted to have a low latency and secure cloud platform to create their active-active, high-availability and load-balanced multi-Cloud set-up.
“Google Cloud Platform gave us a low latency network, better than expected SSL [Secure Sockets Layer] performance, and the ability to optimise costs further with custom machine types,” said Verma.
For Sandeep Kalidindi, Head of Technology at one of India’s largest education networks PaGaLGuy, once the company was exposed to GCP and understood the superiority of the platform, its mindset changed from “let us do everything on our own” to “let us do what we do best” and delegate the rest.
“We are always eager to see what new services are being launched and are extremely excited about what GCP can provide as part of its roadmap,” Kalidindi added.
“We really appreciate the stability and scalability of the GCP platform. As a fast-growing start-up, we can scale our platform up and down in minutes without any worries,” Gaurav Tripathi, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder at Innoplexus AG, wrote on the GCP Mumbai webpage.
Innoplexus caters to the life sciences industry, offering Data as a Service (DaaS) and Continuous Analytics as Service (CaaS) products.
Google recently announced a partnership with Cisco to help its customers improve agility and security in a hybrid world with a fully-supported, open solution for developing and managing applications on-premises and on Google Cloud.
To meet the growing demand for industry-ready workforce in cloud computing, data analytics and machine learning, Google has also collaborated with Coursera, a leading US-based global online education platform, to launch a series of on-demand GCP training courses.
These courses range in skill levels from beginner to advanced and include topics like cloud fundamentals, operations, security, data analytics and machine learning.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, Markets, Technology
Anant Maheshwari
By Nishant Arora,
Gurugram (Haryana) : As over 50 million Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in India look to move to a secure Cloud, Microsoft — with its end-to-end offerings with New-Age capabilities — is set to help them evolve and adopt an “intelligent” Cloud, says Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari.
Maheshwari, who believes that almost every company will eventually become a software one at some point of time with the fourth industrial revolution, an “intelligent” Cloud will chart their digital journey.
There are large enterprises that will have a dedicated infrastructure, teams and resources for Cloud adoption.
“And then, there is a large number of SMBs and in India, these SMBs could even tend to include many of our listed companies on our stock exchanges. A study summarises that it is upwards of 50 million. I am not going to debate that number. Whether it is 45 or 55 million, I don’t think the strategies will change in terms of what you do to move on to Cloud,” Maheshwari told IANS during a free-wheeling chat at Microsoft’s office here.
Microsoft globally, including in India, has been uniquely positioned and has done a lot of work over the last 40 years to build a massive partner eco-system that is serving SMBs.
“Microsoft has 64,000 Cloud partners globally and, just as a matter of perspective, that is more than the total number of partners the next three companies combined have. So that is the kind of strength that Microsoft has in terms of just partner collaboration,” Maheshwari said.
“In India, we have 9,000 partners and through them, we get to more than 250 cities,” he added.
According to a recent ASSOCHAM-Deloitte joint study, adoption of advanced business digital technologies can lead to increase in revenues by up to 27 per cent, increase in employment by up to 84 per cent, and enhanced access to international markets by up to 65 per cent for SMBs in India.
A big believer in entrepreneurship that exists in India, Maheshwari said with that kind of entrepreneurship partnering with 9,000 different companies is a huge asset that Microsoft has built over four decades in the country.
“You can’t do this overnight. This has to happen very consistently because these are the people who are making entrepreneurial calls, they are very good at choosing who their partner is and they have chosen Microsoft to be a partner for their own good and their own business,” Maheshwari told IANS.
To make the SMBs’ digital journey easier, Microsoft on Thursday flagged off “Future Decoded on Wheels” from Delhi — a coach that will traverse 25 cities and 80 key clusters and help the SMBs get in-depth knowledge of latest solutions, New-Age devices and access to business experts.
“We are targeting 25 cities where we will go and provide real-time experience to the SMBs. I am sure we will touch a single digit percentage of those SMBs over the 13,000 kms that we will cover,” Maheshwari informed, adding that this, in turn, will create opportunities for partners and customers.
According to the apex IT industry body Nasscom, India’s growing SMB segment is set to spend big to upgrade their digital infrastructure in the next few years.
“The Cloud capability is opening up new revenue opportunities for the SMBs. Think about it in many ways: The access the SMBs can have with these offerings which multiply in terms of what they can do and the kind of services they can provide,” stated the Microsoft India head.
Finally, the overall operations and efficiencies for these SMBs would change for better.
For Maheshwari, Microsoft Cloud services are helping the SMBs in three broad ways.
“Firstly, we are all moving to a modern workplace. India is a mobile-first, and in many cases, mobile-only country, especially for the growing SMB community. They are in a hurry to get the work done no matter where they are. That means a modern workplace with the combination of security and mobility,” Maheshwari stated.
Towards a modern workplace, Microsoft has brought together Office 365, Windows 10, Enterprise Mobility and Security — all packaged into a single offering.
“Now that I got my modern workplace going, I want to build business apps. I want my entire vendor ecosystem channelled so I have end-to-end capability for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and I also want it to link to my modern workplace,” Maheshwari said.
Thirdly, the SMBs have to put their data to work. That is where Azure Cloud capability with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) comes in.
“If you just think about Cloud as hosting, it is not an ‘intelligent’ Cloud. When you start making that cloud ‘intelligent’ with AI and ML, that is when you think continuously about new capabilities. That is where Azure is focused,” Maheshwari told IANS.
With a modern workplace, business apps, the AI infrastructure and Cloud coming together, it becomes an end-to-end play for SMBs to become truly software firms of the future.
Next on Maheshwari’s mind is to nurture the partner eco-system and start-ups.
“We are training, teaching, providing inputs and support, showing demonstrations, helping them show it to their customers and help them grow. ‘Future Decoded on Wheels’ is one way of making it easier for them,” Maheshwari said.
“Microsoft ‘Accelerator’ is among the best corporate accelerators that you see in the country. We have had many successes,” he added.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
