The Data Driver

XOLO launched XOLO One HD - for perfect pictures even in low light conditions. The 8MP Rear camera with a bigger pixel size of 1.4µm and 5MP front camera with flash helps you capture great quality pictures and selfies in all lighting conditions.

During the celebration of Good Governance Week, Minister of Communication and IT, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad kicked off “Rural Information and Communication Technology” Project on 28th December by handing over the first lot of “Solar Powered”, Bio Metric Enabled Hand Held Devices to Branch Post Masters of 3 pilot states.

Increasing use of banking apps on smartphone are set to cause nightmare to consumers and financial institution as per the predictions for 2016 by Trend Micro. Reports say that 3 in 4 apps in India are malicious. Irrespective of the slow adoption rate of mobile payment apps, the introduction of next generation mobile payment systems will inspire a renewed interest for threat actors to carry out real-world testing to steal information from new payment processing technologies like EMV credit cards, contactless RFID credit cards, and mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that it will focus its efforts and dedicate resources to growing its market share in Jordan, where the Information and communications technology (ICT) industry is increasing at a rapid pace. This growth is credited to strong demand for technology solutions from government, financial services, utilities such as water desalination, railways and liberalized telecom sectors.

Zopper has once again delighted the Indian consumers by rolling out its ‘36 hours of DEALS’. The year-ending sale will see Zopper offer goods across all top categories such as Mobiles and Tablets, Kitchen Appliances, Home Appliances and TV & Home Entertainment at heavily discounted prices.

In a major announcement, nexGTV, India's subscription-driven video entertainment App, recently bolstered its leadership by appointing Abhesh Verma as its Chief Operating Officer (COO). Abhesh joins nexGTV with over 16 years of experience across several industries such as entertainment, e-commerce, SEO, advertisement, Venture Capital and Real Estate. He was previously associated with the digital entertainment portal Saavn and Saavn Interactive as its Chief Growth Officer and CEO. In his new role at nexGTV, he will be spearheading executive decision-making and long-term strategic planning for the organisation.

Enterprises have been constantly challenged by the rapidly evolving technology curve. While being prepared for new-age business goals, they are also battling decisions regarding adoption of capital-intensive technology that may soon become outdated.

DailyObjects, India’s largest seller of designer smartphone cases and laptop sleeves, recently announced its official association with Turner International India Pvt. Ltd. to sell over 80 authorized artworks of Batman-Arkham. As per the tie-up, DailyObjects obtains national rights to manufacture a collection of smartphone cases and laptop sleeves for the action-adventure video game series based on the DC Comics character Batman.

By: Surinder Batra, Dean Academics and Professor at IMT Ghaziabad
The world of business in India is being increasingly characterized by technology-led competition, emergence of techno-entrepreneurs and rapid offering of new products and services in almost all sectors of economy.

Air pollution is a growing problem in many Indian cities, leading to multiple health concerns. As often your family is impacted by the negative effects of this pollution, Philips understands that you seek a solution to enjoy fresh and healthy air, not only at home, but also while driving. GoPure Compact 110 by Philips Automative, a division of Royal Philips combats the issue of air pollution and preserves the health of drivers and passengers in India.

ADATA Technology announced a new partnership  with leading IT distributor Compuage Infocom Ltd., pertaining to the complete ADATA power bank portfolio. The move extends ADATA distribution range by adding Compuage as a product provider, offering Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certified mobile power banks to customers across India. ADATA and Compuage have been successfully cooperating in the DRAM segment for several years.

The year 2016 brings good news for job seekers, with hiring activity expected to increase by a considerable 7% across sectors. The latest TimesJobs.com Job Outlook 2016 survey of over 1,614 employers across India reports positive hiring plans by nearly 60% of the surveyed organizations.

As businesses become increasingly reliant on IT to deliver products and services and to interact with their stakeholders, a simple, reliable, responsive and secure document management becomes essential to an enterprise. Organizations today are adopting document management solutions at a rapid rate to increase productivity and efficiency, differentiate competitively and enhance customer experience.

2015 had its fair share of incidents potentially carried out by the stereotypical “hacker in the basement.” However, the year also saw campaigns from state-enabled actors, including the groups responsible for gaining unauthorized access to health care organizations and stealing personal information on millions of customers and employees.

ScanRobot an Automatic Book Scanner, which can scan 2500 pages per Hour of an Old Book without unbinding or damaging has been released. A company from Austria - Treventus Mechantronics will be displaying its scanner - ScanRobot at the Digitisation Expo in New Delhi to be held at Constitution Club of India, Rafi Marg - behind Reserve Bank of India, New Delhi on Friday and Saturday 8 - 9 January 2016.

Joybynature.com, an online natural products store housing Organic and Ayurvedic Products for Natural Beauty, Home Care, Foods and Baby Care has launched a range of its own branded healthcare products for retail from its online store. The products, which would be sold primarily through the online platform of Joybynature.com, will also be distributed across prominent online and offline channels. The company envisions growing its private label business by expanding its product portfolio and aims to add 100 health and wellness products by March 2016.

The Year 2015 has seen organizations disrupting their markets with the digital transformation of their businesses as they embrace 3rd Platform computing and New IP networking strategies that have helped them become leaders in new markets. Moving into 2016, more businesses are expected to leverage smart machines and transformative technologies to give them a clear competitive advantage.

To reach out to the remotest corners of India, Surpluss.in,fastest growing Recommerce brand in India, has partnered with India Post, the government operated postal network. India Post is a name well-known for its wider reach in India’s interiors and access pin codes that no courier service can.

By: Paul J. Kostek, Senior Member, IEEE
When Star Wars first burst on to movie screens back in 1977 I was in the middle of college and my engineering studies. Now 38 years later we're waiting and anticipating the next chapter.  What new characters and technologies will be introduced?  Looking back at the early chapters the Death Star has fascinated many sci fi fans and left others wondering if one could be built.  Several years ago the Obama Administration provided the ability for citizens to petition on any topic as long as they had sufficient signatures.

Manufacturers' Associationfor Information Technology (MAIT), the apex body representing IT manufacturers, conducted a sensitization workshop on 'Good Procurement Practices for Information Technology' in association with the Department of Information and Technology, Government of Kerala. The workshop laid emphasis on the need for adoption of best practices for IT Procurement by government and semi-government organizations. More than 150 officers from different government departments attended the event and gained insights on IT Procurement Procedures being followed in the IT industry.

By: Anshuman Singh, Director, Product Management of Application Security, Barracuda Networks

Spam is big business all year long, and it never goes out of season.  Unfortunately, spammers do kick things into high gear during the fall.  This is when people are buying gifts, thinking about how to get money to buy gifts, or opening holiday E-Cards that aren’t really from friendly people.  Spam tends to increase during this time, just because there’s more opportunity when people are in the holiday spirit.

Wipro announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Viteos Group, a BPaaS provider for the Alternative Investment Management Industry for a purchase consideration of USD 130 million.

TP-LINK announced the launch of new brand line Neffos (pronounced "nef'-os"), and thus making an entry in the mobile devices market to expand the scope of business. The brand name, taken from Greek language, means "clouds" and has an additional meaning that is "very exciting" when understood in  the context.

SpiceMudra, a prepaid payment wallet developed by Spice Digital - subsidiary of SpiceConnect, has recorded transactions worth Rs. 200 Crore in a span of only 3 months. The wallet service with a strong focus on domestic remittances and enterprise payments has recorded transactions worth Rs.50 Crore in the month of October 2015.

The ixigo cabs app available on Google Play Store & Apple’s app store has emerged as the fastest growing player in the category with over 200K app downloads in just over six months of launch.

Micromax announced the launch of India’s first smartphone based native payments solution in a strategic partnership with leading mobile payments company TranServ. Under the partnership, the companies will be rolling out a series of payment solutions specifically designed to meet the varied demands of the mobile-first Indian consumer.

Snapdeal announced that it organised a two-day Hackathon in collaboration with Microsoft India. The collaboration saw engineers from both Snapdeal and Microsoft jointly develop technology concepts and solutions aiming to provide an enhanced seller experience on the online marketplace.

Quintype announced its partnership with Swarajya, a 59 year old independent magazine. Relaunched in 2014, Swarajya’s digital publishing foray intends to publish content in a manner that appeals to the youth. Swarajya will use Quintype’s publishing platform in building a fully responsive & adaptive web presence, with rich media content, and a robust personalization engine with a view to engage and manage its readers.

By: Siddhesh Naik, Director of Enterprise Business Group, Lenovo India
As the volume of data generated goes up drastically, enterprises are facing new challenges when it comes to storage and processing of this data in a secure and easily retrievable manner. The ever-burgeoning datacenter and storage requirements have meant that companies are increasingly expecting their existing infrastructure to scale up seamlessly, preferably without demanding too many investments in terms of cost, energy and space. On the positive side, the quantum of data available means that companies are able to utilize it for analysis to gain valuable insights into the functioning of their businesses.

By: Cássio Vaquero Regional Director, Information Management Division, for Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
Businesses today are adopting document management solutions at a rapid rate. With business evolving the demand for more accessibility to information continues to accelerate. This coming year enterprises that are best equipped to handle requests that are instant will be the one that will thrive the competition. The document management sector that is ever-changing will see lots of great opportunity for technology to play a major role in improving efficiency and increasing the bottom line and will shy away from traditional paper files. In the coming years, we will witness trends catching up as organizations will want to synergize   effectiveness and efficiency of supporting services across the company by applying multiple service delivery models including elements of shared services, outsourcing, off-shoring and IT solutions.

Here are top five apps for those who are mostly running against time: 
Medicines - Pluss: Pluss is an on-demand medicine, healthcare and wellness products delivery app which standardizes your experience irrespective of your location and the store from where your medicines come. Users can upload a photo of their prescription, and then the app lets them select and order individual medicines from their prescription. Orders are delivered to a user within 60 minutes of them receiving an order confirmation SMS.

Practo, Asia’s leading healthcare platform today released its annual healthcare findings - The Practo Healthcare Map of India 2015 which aims to highlight the key consumer healthcare concerns. The report also highlights the fastest growing concerns to enable the healthcare industry focus on the illness types that ail the population today as well as pro-actively address those that could become the next set of challenges.

Christmas is right around the corner and Acer, one of the largest PC vendors in the country, today announced exciting offers for PC buyers in India during this festive season. Acer will be celebrating Christmas and New Year with its consumers, for whom the offers have already been made available and will be valid for purchases made till December 26th, 2015. The offers are valid on all Acer Aspire series notebooks and All-In-One PCs. The Christmas offer promises a gamut of exciting gifts and benefits for consumers.

A10 Networks announced that global electronics manufacturer Casio Computer Co., Ltd., is using the A10 Thunder ADC solution to consolidate networking resources, improve application performance and enhance overall user experience. The A10 Thunder ADC not only offers Casio scalable cloud-networking services, but real-time health monitoring systems to maximize application uptime.

Red Hat announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2016 ended November 30, 2015.

The Digital Finance Imperative, new global research from Chartered Global Management Accountant® (CGMA), found that CFOs need to rethink how they measure the health of their corporations in the digital age.  According to the study, while the majority of a corporation’s value derives from intangible assets such as customer sentiment and brand, few finance professionals surveyed say they can access the right data to measure and monitor these critical elements of their business - just 25% in the case of customer sentiment.

Christmas brings with it the joyous fervor to splurge and make merry. GoPaisa.com, India's highest paying cash back and coupon site is here to truly spoil its customers by introducing cashback offers on Dominos, Foodpanda and BookMyShow from 21st to 27th December. Users can eat, shop and heighten the revelryby saving bigon their festive buys from their favorite online destinations. GoPaisais the first cashback portal to offer instant cashback for all the savings you end up making!

If you are not happy with the output of the current speaker system on your computer and are looking for a little boost, Frontech, one of the major players in the IT Peripherals and consumer durables introduces the rich stereo sound in a compact wood design with its latest addition 2.1 Multimedia Speakers -JIL 3925.

Ricoh India unveiled a bold new cloud strategy for small and medium businesses, school and other organisations lower costs and improve productivity by turning their multifunction products (MFP’s) into portals that deliver internet based services.

Teradata announced that a large, diverse ecosystem of alliance partners have tested their solutions for compatibility and will support Teradata Database 15.10.Now being shipped worldwide, the Teradata Database delivers up to 22 percent better performance overall, with a 56 percent improvement for some individual queries compared to the previous version. The Teradata Database performance enables organizations to respond to business challenges with greater agility.

Intex Aqua Star 4G, the latest smartphone from Intex Technologies, will sport a new iData Saver feature. This feature is able to reduce data consumption by up to 50% on images, webpages and streaming, especially with image-heavy audio & video apps, such as Instagram, YouTube, Gaana and Saavn.

Enkay Technologies, a Unified Communications solutions provider in India, announced the expansion of its partnership with Avaya, a global leader in business communications software, systems and services, to sell Avaya’s end-to-end solutions for voice, video, data networking, and Wi-Fi and services to its customers in India. Enkay Technologies increased revenue by 60% in 2015, primarily by delivering Avaya solutions to the country’s small and medium enterprises.

Social norms are flying out of the window in India as increased number of young urban professionals are now taking all the charges. International Dating App Tinder is realising this and are now realigning with what was Woo launched with.

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and oneM2M announced that they are partnering to present a seminar in San Diego, California on January 21, 2016 to explore the technical and operational gaps between Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) and developers of products and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). The seminar will take place from 5:00 to 8:00 PM at the DoubleTree by Hilton San Diego-Mission Valley at 7450 Hazard Center Drive, San Diego, California, 92108, USA.

Radisson Blu Hotel, in Al Sufouh at Dubai Media City has recently deployed wireless infrastructure from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, to deliver secure, seamless, high-speed, wireless internet connectivity across its hotel rooms, suites and public areas. The implementation has resulted in improvement in rating of Wi-Fi services and drastic reduction in volume of IT help desk calls, besides the fact that the design of the Access Points (APs) blends seamlessly with the hotel aesthetics and AP management, monitoring and troubleshooting has become centralized and simplified.

Commvault believes that India is a key market where resides a lot of business opportunity. Commvault is a leading provider of data protection and information management solutions, helping companies worldwide activate their data to drive more value and business insight and to transform modern data environments. With solutions and services delivered directly and through a worldwide network of partners and service providers, Commvault solutions comprise one of the industry's leading portfolios in data protection and recovery, cloud, virtualization, archive, file sync and share. To get more insights, TheDataDriver.com had a quality time with Ramesh Mamgain, Area Vice President - India & SAARC at Commvault. Ramesh divulged about the company's India strategy and long term goals.

Consolidating its leadership in the low cost internet connectivity and web access device segment, DataWind, maker of UbiSlate Tablets and Pocket Surfer Smartphones have expanded their portfolio by launching new tablet to its range 7SC. At a retail price of only Rs. 2,999 inclusive of all taxes,the tablet offers free internet browsing for one year under a tie-up with RComand Telenor network on a prepaid GSM sim card.Datawind has signed an exclusive agreement with Den Snapdeal TV-Shop for selling these tablets through the latter’s 24X7 TV-commerce channel.

Ovum is delighted to announce that David Bannister, one of the most respected commentators in the financial technology industry, will be joining its Financial Services practice in January to develop and grow its research across the wholesale payments and corporate banking areas.

Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat CloudForms 4, the latest version of its award-winning hybrid cloud management solution. Built on an open platform, Red Hat CloudForms 4 goes beyond self-service, offering a consistent experience and comprehensive lifecycle management across platforms spanning virtualization, private cloud, public cloud and containers.

Cornerstone OnDemand announced that leading global manufacturer Hitachi has implemented Cornerstone’s cloud-based talent management software solution to deliver a best-in-class learning and development experience to more than 350,000 Hitachi employees across nearly 1,000 group companies.