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Biz Wiz

When sky’s the limit

Technology has peaked from the planet EARTH to the CLOUD, literally. India Global Cloud Xchange and Reliance Communication recently in Mumbai connected the emerging markets corridor by putting around 3,00,000 enterprises and about 1.75 billion potential users in the Cloud through its CloudX Fusion being deployed in India. As many as 3210 Indian Enterprises, 14,505 global enterprises and 231 Fortune 500 companies in Mumbai were seamlessly connected through the RCOM/GCX network, where users can now multiply their corporate computer power by 9 to 15X, and their storage capabilities by over 100X plus access to 2M enterprise applications, besides enjoying expanded Data Centre footprint in India alongside boosting their corporate cloud ecosystem.
“We believe the outsourcing and driving of CLOUDs will nestle itself in India over the next decade like software development, call Centres and BPOs did in the last decade, and it will also help India much, especially during the spread of Smart Cities,” noted Bill Barney, CEO, Reliance Communications (Enterprise) and Global Cloud Xchange. “The average bank spends between $65 million to $500 million on IT hardware yearly and Cloud-enabled banks have reduced these hardware costs by 25 per cent to 40 per cent. If the top 30 banks globally were completely in the Cloud, it would create 
$13 billion in net profits yearly.
“This Cloud experience will help towards lowering the cost of the economy and will witness 30 per cent savings in the back office real estate market. There is a very high concentration of Data Centres in USA & Europe – but very few in India and neighbouring countries, due to lack of Cloud. But India – while being today one of smallest Data Centres globally – is the fastest-growing market (along with China) over the years that will drive a huge growth in the Cloud and Data Centre markets. Now 1,600 towns and cities in India are connected on a single global network with 39,000 customers and 110 million mobile users on Net.”

“Today, as the 2nd largest Data Centre in India, we have plans to add four new Centres in the next few months as Cloud requires Data Centres for its working. We have 1.1 million buildings connected and our own network providing security to customers – who also have their own security – where connectivity safety is concerned,” Barney added.

In another event, NTT Communications subsidiary Netmagic recently launched its largest DATA Centre in Mumbai – 3,00,000 sq feet hosting 2,700 racks and entire suite of services – to facilitate India and multinational enterprises in experiencing state-of-the-art data Centres that it has globally. Noting that businesses today required a robust, reliable and resilient IT infrastructure backbone, Sharad Sanghi, MD & CEO, Netmagic, said this new Data Centre would make Mumbai a promising destination for its IT infrastructure requirements as one that can abundantly address concerns of scalability, high availability and resilience in performance of hosted assets with unprecedented ease.

“Given Mumbai’s business importance, Netmagic’s Data Centre 5 is poised to soon become the very heart of India’s IT Infrastructure needs in offering the right platform for enterprises and startups alike,” he said, adding that with this launch, Netmagic now has nine Data Centres across India with the Mumbai facility having four diverse fibre paths for reliable network levels, 28 MVA facility power and Dual Power feed through PDU with isolation transformer.

Describing India as a very important market for Japan and that global IT players like even Microsoft were led by Indian talent, Tetsuya Shoji, President and CEO, NTT Communications, noted that India is now the centre of global attention and Netmagic’s operational excellence in Managed Services gave this Data Centre the capability of becoming the new benchmark for Data Centres in India. “This facility is part of our NextCentre brand of Global Data Centre Services for seamless ICT solutions including networks, cloud computing, data Centres security and applications, thereby capitalising on the trend of enterprises migrating their on-premise systems to the cloud,” he said, adding “Since we acquired Netmagic in 2012, we have invested 20 billion yen and are committed toexpanding/investing long-term in India.”

Technology’s continued sweep of the global industry environment witnessed one such business brushing away competition ensuring a cleaner, greener world. India’s tourism and travel sector witnessed Goa’s Paulo Holiday Makers making history by bagging the Award for Excellence in Environment Initiatives under the private category at the “India Bus Awards” programme organised for the first time in the country recently. The country’s “first-of-its-kind” awards to honour bus operators and bus manufacturers were bestowed upon private and State Transport Undertakings in 16 different categories. Commenting on the awards, Biju Mathews COO Abhibus.com said, “This year’s awards were for three business categories – State Road Transport Corporations, Private Fleet Operators and Bus Manufacturers – to recognise the entire bus travel eco system while also boosting the industry and encouraging stakeholders to perform better while striving for excellence.”

Mario S. Pereira, managing director, Paulo Holiday Makers, attributed this award win to use of bio-diesel in the Paulo fleet traversing length and breadth of India in ferrying passengers and cargo. The company’s bio-diesel initiative had begun in February 2015 (following the cabinet approval on January 16, 2015 for manufacturers to supply biodiesel in bulk to consumers.) “Vehicles using this fuel have 80 per cent reduction in carbon emission, no sulphur or particulate matter in the atmosphere and less chance of fire hazards, due to high flashpoint,” he said, adding “We followed all factory norms pertaining to pollution where all waste oil and water from our buses are treated in our own “Effluent Treatment Plant” (ETP). After treatment, this water is used for watering plants and washing vehicles. The waste oil, battery, coolant, etc. are being sold to government-authorised scrap dealers. Rainwater harvesting too is part of our company’s green efforts.”

Pointing out that Paulo Travels is the only bus operator in Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat recognised by the Central government as a Tourist Transport Operator, Pereira said the company’s 85-year-old-history in the erstwhile Portuguese State of Goa witnessed usage of quaint vehicles like the Camiao (from 1930 to 1960). Pereira took  over the business from his father – Goa’s only living first Ex-MLA Teotonio Pereira who in the late 1940s had succeeded his father late Paulo Pereira after whom the company was named – 42 years ago to build it into a major transport corporate with a turnover of over Rs 50 crores and employing over 250 workers.“On February 20, 1930, we bought our first Camiao (that cost around Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 in Portuguese currency) and then over the years this fleet had grown to 40 vehicles.” 

Meanwhile, aspiring and other SME entrepreneurs globally recently had to take to their electronic “notebooks” in a somewhat unique Back-2-School challenge to highlight their entrepreneural talent in writing through the Altina Awards 2015 “The Power of Modern Technology.” This unique contest focused on recognising and celebrating entrepreneurship, especially those in the SME sector, for their outstanding contribution in their respective fields. 

Clifton Desilva, Director, Altina Securities, said the awards in two categories – General and Special (special category for minority community – especially those having built their businesses without outside funding – and Women) aimed at identifying and nurturing young entrepreneur talent and potential entrepreneurs through this competition. “We then help them start up and scale up through our mentoring programs,” he stated at the function in the presence of Dr Chandrasekhar Prabhu, (Ex-Secretary, SAARC) and Ajay Thakur (Head; BSE, SME). 

Ratika Agarwal (Mumbai) bagged first prize, Danish Zahoor of Pune (Second), Karina Dsouza from New Jersey, USA (third) and Natasha Vadekadath from Doha, Qatar (Special Prize). Around 40 consolation prizes went to participants across India, while the Altina Entrepreneur Excellence awards went to Furtados Music Pvt. Ltd, Alf Engineering Pvt. Ltd, Rossari Biotech Ltd. Express Pesticides Pvt. Ltd. and SJIMR. 

Desilva told Millennium Post that Altina Securities’ CSR activity highlighted promoting entrepreneurship and financial literacy. “Entrepreneurship is promoted at both start-up and scale-up level, where start-up level aspiring entrepreneurs are mentored and groomed. One method of identifying aspiring entrepreneurs is through an annual essay contest on subjects pertaining to entrepreneurship and, over the last few years, several aspiring entrepreneurs have been mentored and groomed. The aspiring entrepreneurs are then exposed to the corporate world – through full-day workshops on mentoring and industrial tours to companies in different verticals like Siemens (Nasik), Tata Motors (Pune), Piaggio (Vespa) at Baramati, Flamingo Pharma (Taloja), among others.”

“At the scale-up level, companies are being guided on how to unlock value and this is achieved thorough listing the shares on the SME Platform. Altina Securities has already aided a few companies in listing their shares on the SME Platform and unlocked value while many more are in the pipeline. Incidentally, all these initiatives are free of cost to the participants,” Desilva added.

While “Make in India” has become the new mantra for progress, businesses and knowledge leaders are making a beeline for India. One of them is a top Human Resources leader – Richard Cowley, Founder, WorkAmmo – who overcame lack of formal academic qualifications and dyslexia to catapult himself on the global stage for turning around governments, companies, businesses, NGOs and even charities into improved successes.

“H R is only one part of a jigsaw puzzle and everybody is a leader – be it business, or government – though we need more leaders (who carry out transformation) and less of managers (who only manage change). Countries, companies including multinationals and SMEs, organisations – all are in business but need clarity to deliver positive results. On the economic level, Make In India is a great opportunity that can deliver through clarity. 
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