<ul><li>Faiz Shakir, MD - Sales, Nutanix India &amp; SAARC, Nutanix speaks to Business Insider India on why a ‘public-cloud only’ approach is not the way forward for banks and large enterprises. </li><li>Long-term cost implications of public cloud have emerged as a predominant discussion in the industry.</li></ul> The banking sector recognises the need to be digitalized so it can achieve sustained growth in a market where the consumer demands everything-as-a-service. Cloud adoption is a critical factor enabling the transformation for banks. However, regulatory constraints, increasing costs and management complexities are compelling banks to reassess their cloud strategies. Faiz Shakir, MD - Sales, India &amp; SAARC at Nutanix, a cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions provider, talks to Business Insider India in detail about emerging cloud models. Tell us how regulated industries, especially the banking sector players, are taking a relook at their cloud journeys? Banks are certainly evolving in their cloud adoption journey. More specifically, cloud adoption today among banks is truly a hybrid multi-cloud model, where they are trying to get the best out of both worlds. Banks realise the need to be extremely agile, as fintechs and NBFCs ensure that the banks cater to the Gen- Z requirements. A recent <a href="https://www.nutanix.com/enterprise-cloud-index">Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI)</a> report has revealed that 84% of enterprises in India prefer hybrid multi cloud as their ideal operating model, and that 58% are expecting to implement such environments within three years. From a Nutanix perspective, this is one market we have done particularly well in. Eight out of 10 banks in India use Nutanix for their hybrid cloud journey. In the last 12 months, our partnership with players like AWS, Azure and Redhat has made us an integral part of organisations’ cloud adoption journey. In addition to addressing regulatory requirements, how are hybrid cloud models enabling banks with agility? Elasticity is a key outcome that banks are certainly expecting, especially to address big variations in resource demands. Many banks that we work with now have the capacity and the ability to move applications and resources to the public cloud in case of an elastic need and pull it back in when they don’t need that elasticity. This enables banks with agility and ease of operations. This level of agility is something banks could not have achieved if they were operating on legacy infra. For example, a bank that runs a home loan mela for a couple of weeks will observe a massive shoot up in resource and workload demand. We work with banks to help them dynamically move certain workloads to a public cloud during these peaks in demand and bring them back to their data centers when elasticity is not required – all of this in a seamless manner. Could you talk more about some of the Indian banks that Nutanix works with and how they are leveraging hybrid multi cloud for digital transformation? Our work with RBL Bank, one of the fastest growing banks in India, is an apt case in point. RBL, being a new age bank, caters to the Gen-Z crowd with a rapidly growing credit card base. They also need to ensure that business continuity is in place at all times. But their legacy systems were not built to address the growing digital needs. As part of their IT transformation program, the bank partnered with Nutanix in 2018 to leverage hybrid cloud models. At the end of the program, the bank was able to reduce its time to market to a few hours from a few days. It also saw a significant increase in credit card sales and call center efficiency. The bank’s IT downtime is virtually eliminated while ensuring that costs are under tight control. You brought out the key aspect of controlling cost, which in a way is the elephant in the room. How are banks relooking at the public cloud from a cost point of view? Are organisations unable to achieve economic benefits as they mature in their public cloud adoption journey? Cloud repatriation – shifting away from public cloud to on-premise infrastructure - is a reality. Nutanix has been talking about it at a very early stage – that cloud repatriation is going to happen. In the last few years, the largest companies were made to believe that they could only be agile if they were ‘public cloud-first’ or ‘public cloud-only’. So, a lot of companies moved in that direction and a lot of those companies have come back and rethought through that journey. I am not implying that public cloud is not the way forward. I think public clouds are fantastic. But “public cloud only” is certainly not the way forward. Several of the banks that we work with have gone the repatriation route after having moved lock, stock and barrel to the public cloud initially. Cost is the biggest driver of cloud repatriation and hybrid cloud is becoming the de-facto choice for organisations in that context. Repatriation across verticals, and more so in banks, is massive. At Nutanix, we deal with these queries on a daily basis. Even the new-age, digital-native companies – for example, the fintechs, NBFCs etc – who are ‘born in the cloud’ are going to move to hybrid cloud. With the mounting costs and the prevailing economic conditions globally, they would be compelled to re-look at these factors. It's such an anomaly if you look at it. What is going so terribly wrong with public cloud costing? Long-term cost implications of public cloud have emerged as a predominant discussion in the industry. As organisations scale their cloud adoption and advance to matured usage, the initial benefits start to fade. As companies start consuming more public cloud services, it starts to have a major impact on their cost of revenue, according to studies. Unfortunately, there is no way to regulate this. Then there is also a massive reality of shadow IT. Cloud usage is typically not controlled by the CIO’s (chief information officer) office. So managing and controlling the entire thing is a challenge. Public cloud is great as long as you have those guardrails, you can manage it well and you know exactly what you need. But leveraging public cloud for a longer duration, particularly for predictable applications, does not seem to be cost effective. For example, organisations on the public cloud end up paying the same cost for their test and dev (development) applications as they do for their highly-critical production applications. Nutanix have had customers who have saved up to 2.7X over three years by choosing a hybrid cloud model as opposed to a public cloud model only. How has Nutanix evolved from being an HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) company to a hybrid multi-cloud enabler. We pioneered the concept of HCI and have been steadily evolving over the years to stay relevant in a hybrid multi-cloud world – which to me is the ‘hyperconvergence of clouds’. Today, we provide the bridge to enable organisations to seamlessly leverage any cloud, any applications, any hardware, any hypervisor and on any platform. Our partnership with players like AWS, Microsoft and Red Hat has been a massive driving force for Nutanix adoption. Today we are using the ecosystem to be that much more critical to our customers as opposed to being a one-trick pony in HCI a few years ago. While HCI is still a critical factor for our business, I would say we are equally relevant in the cloud space with our alliance partnerships. Our subscription model, for example, has seen significant uptake and we believe it is the way forward. SEE ALSO : <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/cryptocurrency/news/binance-ceases-off-chain-fund-transfer-with-wazirx-after-ed-raids/articleshow/93445472.cms">Binance ceases off-chain fund transfer with WazirX after ED raids</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/how-russia-ukraine-war-helped-this-thane-based-company-become-a-multibagger/articleshow/93439898.cms">How Russia-Ukraine war helped this Thane-based company become a multibagger</a> <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Mounting public cloud cost is driving cloud repatriation in the industry

<ul><li>Business Insider India spoke to Sachin Chawla, Vice President – India &amp; APAC, MongoDB, who shared interesting insights from a MongoDB study of 2,000 developers and IT decision makers. </li><li>The report revealed that a majority of the respondents (63%) describe their organisation’s data architecture as complex and 86% believe this complexity is a limiting factor when it comes to innovation. </li><li>In India, the need to meet regulatory constraints, and pressure to create new products and features were listed as the biggest contributors to data complexity, which has knock-on effects on application development.</li></ul>MongoDB, the modern, general purpose database platform, recently conducted a survey of 2,000 developers and IT decision makers (ITDMs) across Asia. The study analysed why software-driven innovation, despite being a key priority, continues to be a challenging goal for many organisations. The survey points to a number of factors, including how off-the-shelf software or a blind leap to cloud does not guarantee innovation. Business Insider India spoke to Sachin Chawla, Vice President – India &amp; APAC, MongoDB, about key insights from the study. He also discussed why data complexity and innovation tax have become key challenges for enterprises in India. The historical statement - “Software is eating the world” came out over a decade ago. 10 years down the line, despite being predominantly software-driven, why are organisations still struggling with software-based innovation? Recently at MongoDB World, I heard an amazing statistic. By 2025, analytics firm IDC believes that over 750 million digital apps and services will be developed and deployed – three times what has been developed in the past 40 years. That’s a huge number, and there are millions of developers, complex webs of software and, of course, ever growing data to make this happen. Building these applications, while minimising complexity and successfully harnessing that data, are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities we see for businesses in India. But we know the future is not distributed evenly. Some companies are succeeding and thriving in this new world, and some are not. Why is that? Well, one important, and surprising reason is that for many businesses, the foundational infrastructure they use to power these applications has not really changed in a long time. In our recent survey of 2,000 technology professionals across geographies including India, 86% of technologists reported that working with data is still the hardest part of building and evolving applications. The report also brought to the fore that the majority of the respondents (63%) describe their organisation’s data architecture as complex and 86% believe this complexity is a limiting factor when it comes to innovation. Could you give us an example to elucidate this better? The relational data model was invented more than 40 years ago. It’s an amazing piece of technology, but it simply wasn’t designed for modern, globally distributed use cases or the huge volume and variety of data that modern applications need. So, developers are often forced to spend considerable time and effort patching legacy technologies, along with modern tech, to deliver what the customer wants. Needless to say, it is hard and expensive. Add to this the complexity introduced by niche solutions and the multiple database options offered by cloud players. All these factors lead customers into an architecture that is an integration and a management nightmare. Some of the key consequences of this failure to innovate, according to the technologist we spoke to, include, the inability to respond to competitors, to enter new markets, and to use data-driven insights to compete. 57% percent of respondents in your survey reported that use of the cloud had helped them innovate, but 26% said the cloud made innovation harder. That’s an interesting finding. Could you elaborate on this? Cloud is often approached as an innovation accelerator. There is no doubt that migrating to the cloud offers massive advantages to businesses of all sizes, but these advantages become apparent only when done right. What I mean by that is when you move an existing application to the cloud, in most cases, the benefit is only realised if you re-factor, re-architect or redesign your app fully and not just lift and shift. Our research found that cloud migration and digital transformations don’t always help overcome innovation blockers, in fact for many companies they make it harder – we believe lift and shift is one reason for that. I see a lot of organisations falling into this trap. But deep-rooted legacy architectural problems on prem (on premise) are still problems in the cloud. For example, if your application and the underlying database are not designed to scale horizontally, moving it to the cloud won't solve the scalability problem. Add to that the complexity organisations introduce in their architecture by having multiple databases for different use cases. It creates a massive management and skill problem and blocks agility. No wonder, 60% of the respondents said that digital transformation efforts increased the complexity of working with data. The very nature of digital transformation almost always mandates a move to the cloud, where it’s simple to develop and deploy new software – which can be a boon or a curse, because it also makes it easy to inadvertently create a massively complex architecture for the reasons mentioned above. These findings argue for increased attention to the migration and management of data during digital transformation initiatives. How best can ‘Innovation tax’ be defined and some of the biggest challenges that are stopping organisations to innovate? Simply put, innovation tax is the drag on the speed of innovation, which is caused by an inability to manage the data complexity in an organisation. How quickly a company can develop and deploy new solutions and applications is often a key factor in determining its success in the digital era. This has increased the strategic importance of developers, who have become the driving force for innovation. However, our research found that, today, many developers are being held back from driving this innovation because of an environment that is riddled with technical debt, needlessly complex data architectures, and wildly different frameworks, toolchains, and programming languages. Tell us about other findings in the report that are unique to India. We found that most regions across APAC (Asia-Pacific) are in broad agreement about the key themes – data is difficult to work with, innovation is incredibly important and complexity is getting in the way. However, interestingly, we found that the India market seems to have the most intense response. For example, in India, the largest percentage of respondents (86%) agreed that working with data is the most difficult element of their job owing to the sheer complexity of the data architecture. We also saw that Indian respondents were the most likely to say that developing new, innovative applications and features is critical to innovation (96%). This echoes what I’ve seen on the ground – the teams here are laser-focused on the massive opportunity that software and innovation can deliver and they’re very attuned to the challenges that will get in the way. Interestingly, in India the biggest contributor to data complexity (which as we've seen has knock-on effects to application development) were listed as the need to meet regulatory constraints and pressure to create new products and features. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/payment-solutions-company-twid-raises-12-million-in-series-a-funding-from-rakuten-capital-google-and-others/articleshow/93319069.cms" style="">Payment solutions company Twid raises $12 million in series A funding from Rakuten Capital, Google and others</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/inflation-weather-and-more-push-july-services-sector-growth-to-a-4-month-low/articleshow/93315248.cms" style="">Inflation, weather and more push July services sector growth to a 4-month low</a><meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

‘Cloud migration, digital transformation don’t always help with innovation blockers’

<ul><li>Shailendra Katyal, MD, Lenovo India, talks about post-COVID trends in digital adoption and how front-end edge devices are driving a big shift in technology consumption patterns in India Inc. </li><li>Despite challenges, we're at the beginning of a great era of really using the transformative power of technology driving digitization in the country that will benefit across the length and breadth of our population. </li></ul>Lenovo, one of the largest personal technology companies in the world, is all set to capitalise on the growing opportunities that digitization brings in the post-covid world. With its growing retail presence of more than 10,000+ stores in India, the brand works closely with consumers in leading sectors such as education, healthcare, retail and BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance). Business Insider India caught up with Lenovo India’s Managing Director Shailendra Katyal to talk about the growing digital adoption trends and the opportunities in the ‘PC+era’. How has the Covid-induced remote working and distant learning contributed to India’s digital adoption? How are Lenovo and its technologies contributing to this growth? One of the most vivid examples of how technology has really helped us to be resilient in the last couple of years is in education. We have seen how it acted as a lifeline for students and educators–just basic connectivity and a reliable device were the fundamental elements that allowed learning to continue even during all the lockdowns and the requirements of the pandemic. Remote working also contributed to the nation’s digital adoption as companies and employees were compelled to adjust to the virtual way. This flexibility has encouraged companies to continue with a hybrid model. Many companies are offering ‘work from anywhere’ options to their employees or a hybrid arrangement. This has indeed been a great driver to accelerate technology adoption during the pandemic. Lenovo’s collaboration with grassroot organisations like Meghshala Trust and Agastya International Foundation focuses on promoting e-learning and mobile education for a large number of students. These partnerships engage Lenovo’s technology expertise in supporting quality education for students, capacity building and training of teachers. Another example is our partnership with Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, to provide a tailored solution that constitutes ready-to-use devices, convertible notebooks, and periodic health checks for devices. What are the opportunities that Lenovo sees in the whole ‘edge’ devices revolution? There are front-end edge devices that collect the data–it could be a phone, a PC or an edge. Data from these edge devices are collected, brought to the cloud and analysed further by running machine learning models that translate that data into information that is then used to drive the transformation. At Lenovo, our endeavour is to provide the services and solutions that make this ‘pocket-to-cloud architecture’ possible. We realise that modern times are not restricted to gadgets, but it depends on how companies are tying together the entire range of services and solutions with these devices. Our goal is to offer ‘everything-as-a-service’– from devices in your pocket to the cloud, via one contract. The ‘pocket-to-cloud architecture’ implies that Lenovo is not just a hardware vendor of smartphones, computers, workstations, servers or storage, but has also expanded to provide end-to-end solutions and services which fulfil the IT transformational needs of customers–starting from asset management, planning and deployment to managing the customers’ IT infrastructure migration to hybrid cloud, enterprise security management and managed services. We believe that edge computing and high-performance computing have significant value in enriching the lives of the citizens and the society. A recent example is our collaboration with CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), to expedite cancer research by digging deeper into the genetic roots of disease using the country’s largest Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool (GOAST) architecture installation. How are factors like environmental sustainability impacting customers’ buying decisions and choices? We see technology being used as a force for (the) good. Customers are now becoming more environmentally conscious and are inching towards a sustainable way of life by opting for more eco-friendly products with lower carbon footprint. The role of the IT provider will continue to transform as we build in services and solutions that help customers offset the environmental impact of their technology and support them in reaching their own sustainability goals. Companies are now moving closer to close the loop on product lifecycle, by using more sustainable materials. The rise in sustainable materials is also minimising the need for chemicals in the manufacturing process and helping bring manufacturers closer to carbon neutral. Lenovo, for example, has set a series of ambitious sustainability targets and outlined its vision to become net-zero by 2050. Since 2005, Lenovo’s R&amp;D (research and development) teams have been working with suppliers to include post-consumer content (PCC) in the manufacturing of new Lenovo products. Today, Lenovo uses closed-loop post-consumer recycled content in 200+ products. Talk to us about the challenges that the technology community must address to digitally transform India in its true sense. In our country, one of the biggest challenges is the diversity in our population and the ability to reach remote locations. We believe that technology plays an important role in its ability to deliver benefits to this diverse population. Technology solutions such as speech to text and auto-captioning can actually help overcome some of the challenges related to diverse languages and dialects in the country. This can create new opportunities for employment for this workforce. In early 2020, Lenovo launched the Product Diversity Office (PDO) at a worldwide level to ensure more inclusivity and diversity. Lenovo Voice was the first product to complete the PDO process and entered the global market as a “diversity approved” solution in 2020, and it started coming as a pre-loaded feature in Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold devices. Lenovo Voice offers real-time translation assistance, subtitle assistance, voice input and voice assistant capabilities, making the PC more intelligent, convenient and efficient. Despite several other challenges, we're at the beginning of a great era of really using the transformative power of technology driving digitization in the country that will benefit across the length and breadth of our population. For this we will need a lot of innovation and it needs to come from us, from India. Who better than us to innovate and deliver solutions that will address the needs of the country? SEE ALSO : <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/cryptocurrency/news/indian-sports-buffs-can-now-vote-for-their-favourite-teams-jersey-using-blockchain/articleshow/93183286.cms">Indian sports buffs can now vote for their favourite team’s jersey using blockchain</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/gta-6-may-get-a-female-protagonist-launch-date-and-everything-we-know-so-far/articleshow/93182862.cms">GTA 6 may get a female protagonist – launch date and everything we know so far</a> <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Lenovo aims to empower the ‘pocket-to-cloud architecture’ to fulfil IT transformational needs, says Shailendra Katyal

<ul><li>Nagaraj Bhat, VP &amp; MD of Cardinal Health International India, talks about what’s fuelling digital transformation in the healthcare sector. </li><li>The market for global augmented reality in healthcare is expected to grow to $1.9 billion in 2022, from $1.4 billion last year. </li><li>By 2050, one in every four individuals in Europe and North America will be beyond the age of 65, putting more patients with complicated requirements on the healthcare system's plate. </li></ul>Cardinal Health, the $165-billion global healthcare distributor and manufacturer, opened its global tech hub in Bengaluru in April this year. The launch of Cardinal Health International India (CHII) as a new global capability centre, according to the company, is a step towards providing more innovative healthcare solutions and enabling digital transformation. Cardinal Health has invested $8 million in CHII, which plans to acquire local talent and function as a global hub for digital skills and delivery. The firm currently has around 400 employees and plans to expand to over 600 by the end of this year. CHII will also support enterprise-level digital transformation initiatives across Cardinal Health. With its core focus on technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and analytics, CHII has been instrumental in helping Cardinal Health develop robust healthcare systems in terms of delivery, outcomes and reduced costs. Business Insider India caught up with Nagaraj Bhat, VP &amp; MD, CHII, to talk about digital transformation in the healthcare sector, how the industry can address the digital talent gap and the potential of AI in healthcare. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Is there a talent supply and demand gap that impedes digital transformation and innovation in the healthcare sector? How can we address this?" comment="subhead" text="Is there a talent supply and demand gap that impedes digital transformation and innovation in the healthcare sector? How can we address this?">Is there a talent supply and demand gap that impedes digital transformation and innovation in the healthcare sector? How can we address this?</cmsannotation> Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of digital transformation has increased rapidly in every sector, and it is expected to continue long after it is over. As companies seek to embrace more digital ways of doing business, there is a swelling need for employees with digital and technology skill sets. Certainly, the demand for talent is higher than the supply. And the only way to work around this is by reskilling and upskilling your current employees. If we take Cardinal Health as an example, we provide our employees access to learning programmes anytime and anywhere. We believe that easy access to learning modules helps improve employee efficiency significantly. We have used gamification methods to drive greater engagement in learning modules. The game mechanics to reward learners with points and badges, coupled with publishing leaderboards, have made learning very competitive and engaging. At CHII, we continually assess skill gaps through surveys and expressions of interest in various areas. This data has helped us proactively address skill gaps, hence encouraging a culture of continuous learning. The disruptive challenges created during the pandemic must be converted into opportunities that require organisations to equip the existing workforce to solve. CHII’s focus here is on the 3A’s - artificial intelligence, automation and analytics. Tells us how augmented intelligence will shape the healthcare sector globally. What are some of the immediate use cases of the technology? According to reportlinker.com and their report on "Augmented Reality In Health Care Global Market Report 2022," the global augmented reality in healthcare market is expected to grow from $1,415.23 million in 2021 to $1,862.37 million in 2022. This growth is driven largely due to the demand that grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. The market is expected to reach $5,503.95 million in 2026. With a large ageing population and increased strain from the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems face increasing demand, rising expenses and a staff that is straining to meet the needs of their patients. Population ageing, changing patient expectations, a shift in lifestyle choices and the never-ending cycle of innovation are just a few of the relentless forces driving demand. The ramifications of an ageing population stand out among these. By 2050, one in every four individuals in Europe and North America will be beyond the age of 65, putting more patients with complicated requirements on the healthcare system's plate. Managing such patients is costly, and it necessitates a change in thinking – away from episodic treatment toward one that is more proactive and focused on long-term care management. Imagine having an automated way to predict the surges in healthcare and inform the providers to be prepared for those surges in terms of when and what to purchase. That is just a fraction of what AI can offer. Artificial intelligence (AI), which is based on automation, has the potential to change healthcare and help address some of the issues mentioned above. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="The pandemic had caused great disruptions in healthcare supply chains globally. How are digital technologies and innovations helping firms modernise supply chains?" comment="subhead" text="The pandemic had caused great disruptions in healthcare supply chains globally. How are digital technologies and innovations helping firms modernise supply chains?">The pandemic had caused great disruptions in healthcare supply chains globally. How are digital technologies and innovations helping firms modernise supply chains?</cmsannotation> Digital technology is playing a vital role in helping supply chains to operate more efficiently, which is critical given the lack of supply and the need to move items quickly in a global marketplace. From predicting where inventory is most needed to plotting the most efficient route from manufacturer to patient, digital technologies are helping healthcare deliver (the) needed medicines and products to those who need them most. We have expanded our warehouse footprint that optimises our distribution network and enhances our customer service levels, while positioning us for sustained growth in an area of patient care. We recently launched the tenth US distribution centre for Cardinal Health at-Home Solutions. The new facility will integrate logistics technology, including robotic storage capabilities, conveyance and an AI-driven platform to optimise digital supply chain planning. <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

‘Artificial intelligence has the potential to change healthcare’

<ul><li>Tata CLiQ aimed to improve resolution time by enabling service advisors with a 360-degree unified view of the customer. </li><li>With Salesforce CRM, Tata CLiQ’s advisor experience improved by 30% while average handle time went down by 8%.</li></ul>Customer experience for retail players is often a moving target. It’s not always easy to define or comprehend CX, let alone achieve it in one shot. That said, each brand has its own perception on what they consider as optimal CX for their customers. For Tata CLiQ, the flagship digital commerce initiative of the Tata Group, that definition is quite unique. “At Tata CLiQ, our objective is to deliver contextual, proactive and personalized experiences to customers through a combination of self-serve and empathy-led advisors,” says Shweta Srivastava, director - CS and customer experience, Tata CLiQ and a visionary customer experience exec with over two decades of experience. Quite self-evidently, one sure-shot way to deliver better customer experience is to ensure better customer service competencies. It means that your customer service agents have the right data and the right tools to do their job better, consistently. This is exactly what Shweta went after. Navigating disconnected systems Tata CLiQ runs a unique omnichannel marketplace model, which provides customers the convenience of quicker delivery, easy pick-up, exchange, and returns across over 1,200 brands and 1000 stores in over 100 Indian cities and towns. As the frontline for the brand, customer service advisors play a central role in enabling personalized and contextual experience for Tata CLiQ’s customers across channels. But these advisors struggled to get a unified view of customer data. Siloed systems led to agents spending a significant amount of time browsing for the relevant data. They had to switch between multiple systems and didn't have enough context about the customer — such as purchase history, order status journey, and so on before initiating the interactions. “The time and effort required for each interaction increased as advisors had to navigate between multiple systems and screens to gather information about customers' requirements. Additionally, there were no recommended workflows to help the advisors, thereby compromising on resolution capability,” says Shweta. She realized that the scenario may soon lead to considerable quality trade-offs in the company’s ambitious customer experience strategy. Getting a unified view of customer journeys was a critical step in ensuring that the service agents are equipped with relevant data and insights to serve the customers. They needed a solution that would help advisors leverage the vast amount of data Tata CLiQ generated to provide more personalized and connected customer service across various touch points. The goal was to solve maximum customer requests in the first attempt and improve the advisor experience. Enabling data-driven decision making After careful consideration, Shweta and her team zeroed in on Salesforce Service Cloud – an AI-powered CRM platform for customer service and support. The company partnered with PwC for the implementation process enabling end-to-end deployment that was aimed at transforming the service experience for Tata CLiQ. Shweta says that the implementation of Salesforce CRM has helped the team to have a 360-degree unified view of the customer. It has also delivered efficiency with intelligent dashboards and reports, assisting teams with data-driven decision making. The solution has now helped teams in reducing the time and effort required for each interaction and improved the average handling time and advisor experience. The guided workflows support the advisors and enhance first touchpoint resolution. The end results have been evident since then. “The advisor experience has improved by 30% with the single source of truth. There has been an 8% reduction in average handling time by the resolutions team, thus improving the first-time resolution rate by 15%. As a result of this, it has improved the customer experience as well,” adds Shweta. Along with the CRM solution, Tata CLiQ also implemented the visual remote assistant (VRA) - a browser based solution that aids employees to seamlessly connect with customers on a live remote support to capture correct images for the return scenarios. This has empowered the company to deliver the same exceptional support they would deliver in-person, with visual guidance, often in real-time. “With a unified view of the customer, our aim is to deliver an omni-channel service experience through one unified CRM. With all channels like email, chat, and voice integrated and converging into salesforce, it assists us to deliver ‘right experience’ across ‘right channel’ at ‘right stage’ of the evolving customer journey,” sums up Shweta. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/reliance-reports-a-46-increase-in-profit-in-q1-fy23-fueled-by-its-oil-business-strongest-quarter-ever/articleshow/93059317.cms">Reliance reports a 46% increase in profit in Q1 FY23, fueled by its oil business’ strongest quarter ever</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/reliance-retail-reports-a-second-consecutive-quarter-of-declining-profits/articleshow/93059096.cms">Reliance Retail reports a second consecutive quarter of declining profits</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/thrifting-is-the-latest-trend-on-indian-instagram-and-it-is-a-great-one-for-the-environment/articleshow/93052751.cms">Thrifting is the latest trend on Indian Instagram, and it is a great one for the environment</a> <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Here’s how Tata CLiQ transformed service advisor experience and improved first-time resolution rate by 15%

<ul><li>Digitalisation and automation have been game-changers for manufacturers in achieving post-pandemic business goals. </li><li>Over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT would have deployed at least one digital twin in production by 2022. </li><li>Digitalisation will help Indian manufacturers to compete in local and global markets.</li></ul>What does manufacturing look like in the post-COVID world? While the sector faced unforeseen challenges in the last two years, the pandemic has been a watershed event for technology in the sector. Suprakash Chaudhuri, Head- Digital Industries, Siemens India, believes that the need to converge the digital and the real worlds was felt most strongly during this time. In an exclusive chat with Business Insider India, Chaudhuri spoke in great detail about how the manufacturing sector is digitally transforming itself with the use of technologies like digital twin, industrial internet of things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and a lot more. Here are excerpts from an interview. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Manufacturing has propelled into a completely new era post the pandemic. What do you consider as the biggest changes that transformed the industry during this period?" comment="subhead" text="Manufacturing has propelled into a completely new era post the pandemic. What do you consider as the biggest changes that transformed the industry during this period?">Manufacturing has propelled into a completely new era post the pandemic. What do you consider as the biggest changes that transformed the industry during this period?</cmsannotation> The COVID-19 pandemic was a revelation for the industry at large. It exposed the entire world, irrespective of their technology adoption, to deal with – rapidly-changing market conditions, a soaring global population requiring dependable supplies, and simultaneously, an increasingly urgent need for greater sustainability. With the global pandemic now in its third year, most business leaders continue to face significant challenges, but also unprecedented opportunities if fully realised. Digitalisation came forward as the clear gamechanger to tackle these challenges. The need to combine the real and digital worlds, including the entire value chains, became evident. Unlocking the full potential of digitalisation and automation with innovative solutions ensures lower costs, shorter production cycles, increase in resilience and makes carbon costs more transparent. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="While players have been rapidly adopting digitalisation and automation, what do you see as the most critical gaps of industrial digital transformation at this stage? How is Siemens collaborating with companies to help accelerate this goal?" comment="subhead" text="While players have been rapidly adopting digitalisation and automation, what do you see as the most critical gaps of industrial digital transformation at this stage? How is Siemens collaborating with companies to help accelerate this goal?">While players have been rapidly adopting digitalisation and automation, what do you see as the most critical gaps of industrial digital transformation at this stage? How is Siemens collaborating with companies to help accelerate this goal?</cmsannotation> All industries are feeling the pressure of digital transformation. We are addressing the challenges our customers face through deep, process-centric solutions. Siemens is delivering next-generation solutions to help manufacturers transform their operations through our concept of Digital Thread – which is a distinct, linked, traceable sequence of activities in the product or production lifecycle, that is digitised and automated. There are two dimensions to this digital integration. One is horizontal integration. It is the integration of the digital flow from the digital twin of the product through the digital twin of production, then to the real production and the digital twin of performance. And then we have the second one, the so-called vertical integration between OT (Operational Technology) and IT (Information Technology). Secure communication, resulting in a secure exchange of data between OT and IT, is the backbone of digitalisation. With our deep domain know-how and vertical experience, we are helping our customers create a blueprint for their digital transformation across these vertical and horizontal dimensions and co-create solutions. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the industry often find it challenging to work with legacy systems and siloed approaches in a manufacturing environment. How is Siemens helping change this? Can you give us some examples?" comment="subhead" text="Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the industry often find it challenging to work with legacy systems and siloed approaches in a manufacturing environment. How is Siemens helping change this? Can you give us some examples?">Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the industry often find it challenging to work with legacy systems and siloed approaches in a manufacturing environment. How is Siemens helping change this? Can you give us some examples?</cmsannotation> With consumers wanting more customised products and markets being shorter-lived than ever, companies must plan for shorter innovation cycles than in the past. Production facilities need to be designed with enough resilience and flexibility to scale up, then scale down—often in record time. Brownfield optimization of existing facilities using adaptable technology is as important as repairing and retrofitting services, as well as data analysis and predictive services solutions. Software and software-enabled hardware are increasingly becoming key competitive factors in plants with limited resources and legacy equipment. Our Digital Enterprise offerings address this across the entire value chain. The Digital Enterprise brings together processes that were previously separate. It breaks down traditional silos and helps bridge the gaps between software and hardware, IT and OT, shop floor and top floor. Recently, Siemens and BioNTech expanded our collaboration for rapid expansion and creation of production capacity for global COVID-19 vaccine production with our latest automation and digitalisation technology. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="What were the key focus areas of Hannover Messe 2022, where future technologies are showcased?" comment="subhead" text="What were the key focus areas of Hannover Messe 2022, where future technologies are showcased?">What were the key focus areas of Hannover Messe 2022, where future technologies are showcased?</cmsannotation> This year we addressed the most persistent question of driving sustainable growth. Under the motto: “Let’s combine real and digital worlds for a sustainable tomorrow,” we showcased examples of how to achieve these goals and become a true Digital Enterprise. We demonstrated successful cases of using data more intelligently to combine the real and virtual worlds with the support of various technology highlights in the field of additive manufacturing, energy efficiency, digital twin, OT/IT convergence, artificial intelligence and data analytics, cybersecurity, electrification, industrial 5G, and industrial IoT from Edge to cloud. As the highlight, we demonstrated how an electric car manufacturer is achieving performance and driving range goals, while also meeting sustainability and profitability targets using our solutions. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="How do you see digital twin as a technology and its adoption evolving in the coming days, especially, outside the manufacturing arena?" comment="subhead" text="How do you see digital twin as a technology and its adoption evolving in the coming days, especially, outside the manufacturing arena?">How do you see digital twin as a technology and its adoption evolving in the coming days, especially, outside the manufacturing arena?</cmsannotation> We see digital twin adoption in all kinds of organisations. However, its adoption in the manufacturing space is the most exciting. For example, Gartner expects over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT would have deployed at least one digital twin in production by 2022, to increase their effectiveness. Digital twin is simple and yet an immensely powerful interpretation of Industry 4.0. As a virtual representation of a product, production process, or performance, it enables the individual process stages to be seamlessly linked. This creates a consistent improvement in efficiency, minimises failure rates, shortens development cycles, and opens up new business opportunities. In other words, it creates a lasting competitive edge. Over the years, Siemens has shown the benefits of combining the real and digital worlds and how it works in practice. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="India is evolving as a global manufacturing hub. What does Siemens’ roadmap look like?" comment="subhead" text="India is evolving as a global manufacturing hub. What does Siemens’ roadmap look like?">India is evolving as a global manufacturing hub. What does Siemens’ roadmap look like?</cmsannotation> The Indian manufacturers have the aptitude and attitude to meet the growing needs. Adopting the right technology can make India self-reliant. With digitalisation, Indian Industry, especially SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) can achieve constant technical progress as well as the competence to meet the changing requirements of both local and global markets. The openness to adopt the latest technologies like AI, Edge and other IIoT solutions will be critical to India’s desire to maintain pace with global best practices and technologies. Using our efficient, digital workflows, innovative technologies and our rich domain expertise, we are enabling our customers to react quickly to changing market requirements and increase productivity, efficiency, and quality - sustainably. <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

'Digital thread & digital twin tech will be game changers for manufacturing'

<ul><li>The tech giant states that its OCI Dedicated Region enables enterprises to gain the full functionality of Oracle’s public cloud in the locations of their choice, including their own data centers. </li><li>Our aim is to provide a plug-and-play public cloud experience, on a pay-as-you-use model that allows customers to innovate faster, reduce time-to-market and stay agile, says Srikanth Doranadula, VP- Hybrid Cloud Systems, Oracle India.</li></ul> End-user spending on public cloud services in India is expected to reach $7.3 billion this year, according to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-11-03-india-public-cloud-spending-forecast-2022">Gartner</a>, notching an impressive 30 percent growth over last year. Cloud adoption, including hybrid and multi-cloud models, has been expanding fast among all kinds of companies globally. The pandemic further strengthened the case for cloud adoption with a large majority of <a href="https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/state-of-cloud-native-security">organizations moving quickly to cloud</a> to respond to the crisis. Agility, elasticity and digital transformation imperatives are just some of the many reasons why businesses move to cloud. For many regulated industries and public sector companies, the story has been slightly different. Stringent compliance requirements, data sovereignty demands, latency concerns and a host of unique requirements has meant that these organizations take a measured approach to cloud – specifically to public cloud. “Regulated industries such as banking have moved an increasing number of periphery applications and workloads to the public cloud, but the core systems still remain on premises. And it’s going to remain so as they want complete control over their critical data due to reasons varying from data security to data sovereignty to latency,” says Srikanth Doranadula, Vice President, Hybrid Cloud Systems, Oracle India. While regulated industries have migrated several of their non-core systems of engagement (SOE) to the public cloud, their systems of record (SORs) remain on-premise, in their own data centers, according to Doranadula. Nevertheless, Oracle sees a unique market opportunity here – to bring the experience of public cloud to these organisations’ on-premise data centers, and provide them with the benefits of a public cloud while placing it behind their firewall for better security and control. The company’s recent announcement around Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Dedicated Region underpins this strategy. With OCI Dedicated Region, claims the company, enterprise customers can gain the full functionality of Oracle’s public cloud in the locations of their choice, including their own data centers. “Imagine if a bank that relies largely on its on-premise data center were to launch a major blockchain initiative. It would require them to deploy and provision specialised hardware and software in their dedicated data centers, leading to a significant amount of investment, effort and resources,” Doranadula said. “Our aim is to provide a plug-and-play public cloud experience, on a pay-as-you-use model that allows customers to innovate faster, reduce time-to-market and stay agile while leveraging the power of cloud elasticity.” By 2024, 60 percent<a href="https://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=US47241821"> of organisations</a> are predicted to implement dedicated cloud services either on premises or in a service provider facility in response to performance, security, and compliance requirements. Many organisations are therefore taking a <a href="https://resources.flexera.com/web/pdf/Flexera-State-of-the-Cloud-Report-2022.pdf?elqTrackId=f3bb660986704d2980404386aa003141&amp;elqaid=6925&amp;elqat=2">hybrid multi-cloud</a> approach. This is one trend that Oracle believes will impact organisations’ cloud consumption strategies in the coming days. Doranadula reiterated that the hybrid cloud model was here to stay and would be a larger part of the market. And this is not true of regulated industries alone. Several organisations in unregulated industries – telecom companies, conglomerates, systems integrators etc. – with unique computing needs are opting for hybrid models, he said. These shifting models are parallelly driving up the need for distributed cloud computing in the industry, especially with the advent of 5G and edge computing. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, for example, offers distributed cloud options with hybrid cloud services and multi-cloud capabilities across 38 public cloud regions worldwide. “We believe that distributed cloud is the next evolution of cloud computing, and it provides customers with much more flexibility and control in how they deploy cloud resources. The emerging hybrid and distributed cloud models such as ours removes cloud adoption barriers like data sovereignty, data residency, or latency for enterprises,” said Doranadula. <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Interview: How Oracle plans to bring the public cloud to companies’ on-premise data centers

<ul><li>By the end of 2025, 75% of all the data generated will be collected, analyzed, and acted on at the Edge. </li><li>Hybrid cloud models that extend from corporate data centers (or public or private clouds) to the edge are critical to unlock new connected experiences. </li><li>Physical security of edge devices, continuous power availability at the edge are major barriers for adoption.</li></ul>‘Edge’ has become the most preferred destination for today’s digital-first enterprises. The need for high availability and ultra-low latency has been tempting organizations to extend computing capabilities outside their core data centers and public cloud infrastructures. Worldwide spending on edge computing is expected to touch $176 billion by the end of this year, an increase of 14.8% over 2021, according to <a href="https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS48772522">IDC data</a>. IBM sees this as a tremendous opportunity. Last year, the company launched IBM Cloud Satellite that enables clients to deliver cloud securely in any environment including at the edge. Viswanath Ramaswamy, VP, Technology, IBM Technology Sales, IBM India/ South Asia, spoke to Business Insider India about how edge computing is evolving, its key growth drivers and why hybrid cloud is here to stay. What do you see as the key drivers of edge computing adoption in India? Which industries do you consider frontrunners? Edge computing will impact all industries and force IT teams to adapt to new architectures, deployment models and business models. According to Gartner, by the end of 2025, 75% of all the data generated will be collected, analyzed, and acted on at the edge, which presents a huge opportunity. To have a resilient long-term business strategy, organizations in India should leverage the benefits edge computing has to offer. The key drivers for edge adoption will continue to be – better control over data and costs, faster insights and actions and continuous operations. In addition to that, factory automation to increase productivity, driving predictive maintenance through visual insights, reducing operational costs, and 5G implementation are other key drivers for edge computing. At present, we see that the industrial manufacturing and telecom sectors are frontrunners when it comes to adopting edge computing, but the healthcare industry is also making a lot of progress. What are the challenges that organizations are facing while scaling up the edge infrastructure and capabilities to meet their dynamic goals? Are edges equipped to handle the growing computing power and storage needs? Organizations need to figure out the right edge computing strategy that will solve their business challenges. This is however easier said than done, and hence having the right technology partner is crucial to leveraging their expertise in building a robust strategy. Another challenge to keep in mind is that we are still at a stage where there are very few use cases and their relevant edge applications. Hence it is important for organizations to think innovatively to create new use cases. Edge computing generates a lot of data and modelling the data to find the right one while not missing relevant ones is also a major challenge. IBM is working with multiple independent software vendors (ISVs) to solve customer challenges and develop new use cases of edge and distributed cloud. We are investing heavily in AI to find the right data and then make sense out of it. Physical security of edge devices and availability of continuous power at the edge are major barriers for adoption. How do organizations ensure that their edge and centralized cloud capabilities work together to create integrated outcomes? Are there any barriers in this area? To create integrated outcomes from edge and centralized cloud capabilities require having a uniform and seamless platform across multiple destinations that allows a single administrator to autonomously manage the scale and variability across tens and thousands of endpoints. Whether you use public cloud, private cloud or edge, having a single platform for all of them helps to move workloads across, as well as having a holistic security and operations framework. This helps with saving cost and reduces time to market. Tell us how IBM Satellite fits into the edge equation? IBM Cloud Satellite is a distributed cloud offering that enables you to consume cloud services anywhere you need them and to deploy, manage, and control workloads across on-premises environments, edge computing and public cloud environments from any cloud vendor. It brings cloud-native services like AI &amp; ML, platform services, toolchains to the edge location as well as customers chosen data center/public cloud. With IBM’s cloud satellite you can run your workloads in the location of your choice to better meet legal requirements, compliance standards, data speeds and network latency requirements. Other potential use cases for IBM Cloud Satellite include remote work and study, or healthcare services, where it can offer improved efficiency. Workloads can be run securely and more efficiently. As workloads are increasingly run with edge computing, IBM Cloud Satellite allows companies to benefit from reduced latency while maintaining a level of information security, privacy, and compatibility similar to that in hybrid cloud environments. How do you see 5G changing the dynamics of edge computing for Indian enterprises? The convergence of 5G, edge computing and hybrid cloud will revolutionize how Indian enterprises operate. As more businesses embrace 5G and edge, the ability to modernize networks to take advantage of the edge opportunity is critical. For example, by moving to a hybrid cloud model, telcos can process data at the core and network edge across multiple clouds, perform cognitive operations and make it easier to introduce and manage the differentiated digital services. As 5G matures it will become the network technology that underpins the delivery of these services. For enterprises on the other hand, adopting a hybrid cloud model that extends from corporate data centers (or public or private clouds) to the edge is critical to unlock new connected experiences. By extending cloud computing to the edge, they can run AI/analytics that make actions faster, run enterprise apps to reduce impacts from intermittent connectivity and minimize data transport to central hubs for cost efficiency. How is IBM collaborating with ecosystem partners to advance the adoption of edge computing in India? IBM is committed to delivering open standards-based edge computing to a comprehensive ecosystem of value-add partners, so that together we can deliver edge solutions to our joint clients at a global scale. Hence, we are collaborating with multiple ISVs, manufacturing companies and telecom operators to build, test and pilot use cases. We’re validating these edge use cases with IBM Cloud Satellite, so that it not only saves time for customers but also helps in a seamless adoption. We are expecting to see a lot of these partners developing readily built use cases with defined deployment frameworks. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/news/hyundai-elite-i20-grand-i10-and-maruti-suzuki-baleno-are-the-most-popular-second-hand-cars/slidelist/92854152.cms">Hyundai Elite i20, Grand i10 and Maruti Suzuki Baleno are the most popular second-hand cars</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/how-to-get-a-refund-for-your-nothing-phone-1-pre-order/articleshow/92852895.cms">How to get a refund for your Nothing phone (1) pre-order</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/oppo-comes-under-dri-scanner-for-alleged-customs-duty-evasion-of-4389-crore/articleshow/92848544.cms">Oppo comes under DRI scanner for alleged customs duty evasion of ₹4,389 crore</a><meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

‘Edge computing will impact all industries and force IT to adapt to new architectures’

Technology is helping enterprises meet their sustainability goals In March, in Antarctica, an ice shelf the size of New York City collapsed due to record high temperatures. It is just one of the symptoms of the climate crisis that affects all of us. Already, millions of people have had their homes or businesses damaged and some are losing their lives in fires, floods, droughts, and storms. Climate crisis is here, and we need to act with urgency because the future of climate change is in our hands. The global pandemic has been a wake-up call for enterprises to consider environmental sustainability as a business imperative. Business Insider India caught up with Dr. Tanya Morton, the worldwide director of customer success engineering for MathWorks, to understand how organizations are leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to achieve their environmental sustainability goals. Tanya has worked at the forefront of innovation, engineering, and science for over 26 years. She is passionate about sustainability and leads an initiative to support MathWorks customers in understanding and tackling climate change. Edited excerpts: The ongoing global climate crisis is a serious cause for concern for individuals and businesses alike. Quite reasonably, sustainability is a core priority for enterprises in post-pandemic recovery. What do you think is the impact of this crisis on companies’ sustainability goals today? The impact is significant. It is great to see how many companies are starting to take action to address the climate crisis. Stakeholder capitalism imagines corporations as being responsible not only to their shareholders but to their employees, suppliers, communities, and the environment. For example, over 5,000 businesses have signed up for the Race to Zero global campaign and have committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It is part of a growing movement to re-examine how companies operate—and for whom. To ensure a sustainable future, all companies need to increase their actions to address climate change. That is why MathWorks is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2023. Tell us about how AI is helping organizations accelerate global sustainability efforts? AI and Cloud technologies accelerate climate research and help us fully understand the scale and extent of the climate crisis. An example I recently covered in my talk at MathWorks’ flagship event, MATLAB EXPO, was about drought. Drought is devastating to crop harvests and can make local communities vulnerable, both from a health perspective and economically. Researchers studied a river basin in Ethiopia and used AI to better predict when drought may occur. This allows communities to be better supported through difficult times. AI also plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For example, AI applied in food systems can help better monitor crop yields, reduce the need for chemicals and excess water through precision agriculture, and minimize food waste through forecasting demand and identifying spoiled produce. AI also supports the megatrend called the electrification of everything that is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The electrification of everything refers to the twin pair of generating electricity from renewable sources, then using electricity as the primary energy source. AI supports renewable energy generation, for example, via the design of more efficient and reliable offshore wind farms. It supports the efficient usage of electricity too, for example, machine learning is being used to match energy generation and demand in real-time, realizing more fully the potential of smart grids. MathWorks’ MATLAB and Simulink are used by millions of engineers and scientists to analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models. How do these products help companies meet their sustainability goals? Researchers and developers worldwide are analyzing trends and designing solutions in response to climate change with MATLAB and Simulink. You can view their work, including clean energy products, scientific papers, and financial models on MathWorks climate research and development webpage. With MathWorks tools you can computationally model energy generators and storage devices such as wind turbines, batteries, and solar panels. It can be dangerous and expensive to do research and testing with the real system - you don't want battery fires or snapping turbine blades. Modelling and simulation can help plug this gap. Can you give us some examples of that? An example of MathWorks helping bring green technologies to market is through our work with Ather, an electric two-wheeler company from Bangalore. When the company began, they did not have the time, money, or people to build prototypes for each vehicle. This problem was solved by using MATLAB and Simulink to scale up the speed of testing. Ather scooters come equipped with a touchscreen GPS, remote diagnostics based on data patterns of other users, and an intelligent battery that can autonomously change modes to ensure the highest efficiency. With MATLAB, Simulink, and Model-Based Design, the company identified and validated the best ideas through simulation, making it possible to deliver a more full-featured scooter in less time. Another startup, Boston Metal, introduced groundbreaking technology aimed at producing steel in a more sustainable and cheaper way. The patented technology, Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE), replaces traditional processes through the use of direct electric current to separate chemical compounds. Boston Metal’s method produces liquid iron with a byproduct of oxygen instead of carbon, a cleaner and simpler process. You spoke about electrification earlier. Could you give us insights into MathWorks’ electrification efforts for climate change issues across sectors such as automotive, energy, healthcare, etc.? There is a growing demand for engineers to meet the worldwide demand for electric vehicles (EVs). To address this, MathWorks along with Bosch and NIT Calicut jointly created and delivered a new final-year undergraduate course, Electric Vehicle System Engineering. This is a good example of collaboration between academia and industry to address the talent shortage. We work with various industry associations to deliver professional development programmes for working professionals to help build skills around electrification. Many incubators and accelerators across the world have been partnering with us through the MathWorks Accelerator Program. We have signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with governmental organizations like Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) to extend this to hundreds of accelerators across the country. We are seeing several start-ups, including those in areas like two-wheeler electric vehicles, healthcare, and sustainable engineering, accelerating their product development through the benefits offered through this programme. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/tech-architecture-is-becoming-business-architecture-enterprises-recognize-that/articleshow/92561395.cms">‘Tech architecture is becoming business architecture, enterprises recognize that’ </a><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/indian-credit-card-users-spend-40x-more-than-debit-card-users-online/articleshow/92543305.cms">Indian credit card users spend 40x more than debit card users online</a> <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

AI aids the megatrend of electrification of everything which can reduce GHGs

The future of digital enterprise in the post-pandemic era Sharath Srinivasamurthy, Research Director, Enterprise Solutions and ICT Practices Team, IDC, brings nearly two decades of experience in mapping Indian enterprises’ technology and digital transformation journeys. In this extensive conversation with Business Insider India, he talks about how Indian organizations will accelerate their digital agendas, what their key priorities are and how the industry’s growing skills shortage can be addressed. Edited excerpts: Over two years into the massive shift to being ‘digital-first’, how are Indian enterprises reassessing the long-term impacts of their digital initiatives? Indian enterprises have shown tremendous resilience in the last two years, adapting well to the changing market dynamics. They have invested in large-scale reskilling of existing employees on digital technologies, hired new talent from the market, established strategic partnerships with various digital ecosystem players, developed solutions/IPs, set up innovation labs, and executed multiple acquisitions to develop new capabilities. The IDC Future Enterprise Resiliency Survey (FERS), October 2021 shows that 92% of Indian enterprises realize the positive impact of digital transformation (DX) on the top and/or bottom line by 10% to 20%. Enterprises recognize that technology architecture is becoming business architecture and want to use technology to drive more revenue-generating activities. Indian enterprises will look to better position themselves against short-term volatility while staying on course toward long-term outcomes such as digital revenue growth. With the adoption of the ‘digital-first’ mentality, along with the ongoing pandemic, Indian enterprises are focusing on investments in technologies that drive automation of IT resources and business processes. In the post-pandemic era, if we may call it that, do you see this digital momentum continuing or will organizations take a pause to strategize further? The coming years will witness an acceleration in the adoption of digital technologies. In fact, IDC estimates emphasize that digital transformation (DX) spending in India is growing at a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.90% from 2020 to 2025 and is expected to approach $99 billion as companies build on existing strategies and investments, becoming digital-at-scale future enterprises. By 2023, a whopping 75% of Indian enterprises will have comprehensive digital transformation (DX) implementation roadmaps, up from 27% today, resulting in true transformation across all facets of business and society. What will be the key areas of focus for enterprises’ digital investments in this context? While the momentum will continue, Indian enterprises will focus on a few key areas to derive benefits out of their digital investments. <ul><li>Having the right KPIs to measure and convert them to business outcomes: Indian enterprises will relook at how they measure the effectiveness of their IT teams and investments. They need to tie IT initiatives to business outcomes. </li><li>Keeping pace with changing technology and being innovative: It is always difficult to keep pace with ever-changing technology. However, it is critical to experiment with new technologies. The mindset of innovation will be the focus of Indian enterprises. Innovation need not be something big, something pathbreaking. It can be incremental small changes, but they will add in the long run.</li><li>Developing a culture of agility: Indian enterprises will focus on agility in trying new products and services to keep improvising. Since there is an accelerated demand for digital technologies, the war for digital talent will continue in 2022 as well. Indian enterprises will continue to focus on reskilling existing employees with digital technologies</li><li>Harnessing data: It is critical to breaking the functional and data silos. Indian enterprises will focus on analyzing the data on an ongoing basis. They will leverage AI to manage their IT operations efficiency and reduce the cost of operations.</li></ul>Skill shortage is coming across as a major roadblock for organizations in achieving their innovation goals, especially around digital/cloud technologies, and AI. How is this affecting their digital transformation roadmaps? Transformation projects that would otherwise take ages to get approvals were given the green light due to the pandemic, as it became a necessity for Indian enterprises for continued operations and product delivery. With this acceleration came a realization that a lack of skills was creating a bottleneck in the transformation. DX-related IT skill shortages will affect 90% of global enterprises by 2025, costing over $6.5 trillion globally through 2025 due to delayed product releases, reduced customer satisfaction, and loss of business according to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Work 2022 Predictions. When Indian enterprises are ‘underskilled, as opposed to understaffed, the consequences are similar, but the remediation is more complicated. The lack of skills has an adverse influence on the key business metrics including the profit line. Though a majority of the demand for skilled personnel is among IT professionals to implement and manage the technology underpinning the business transformation, there is also an increasing demand for digital skills in the business. These include leadership, analytics, coding, and managing projects in agile environments. Employees who have those skills can help take their businesses to the next level. How can Indian enterprises continue their DX journey against the growing skill shortage? Indian enterprises have several choices to address the challenge of underskilled employees —focus on addressing skills shortages through training, engage third-party support, and automation of processes, while gig workers are also being utilized. According to IDCs Digital Transformation survey, India 2022, Indian enterprises report that poor resource skills or the availability of the right skill set for digital transformation or infrastructure modernization is among the top three challenges that Indian enterprises encounter. Indian enterprises invested in online training to reskill employees on digital skills and be prepared for expansion plans once the crisis ends. Some are collaborating with third parties such as IT service providers to invest in reskilling existing employees to bridge the skill gap. Indian enterprises are also looking to automate processes to reduce the impact of skill shortages. The demand for gig workers has also risen as they are reliable in accomplishing a business plan within a limited time frame. There is an increased urgency to adopt AI in business processes to allow employees to focus on strategic and core functions instead of performing repetitive tasks in a traditional setup. So, Indian enterprises should take a hybrid approach of having skills in-house and partners who can bring the right skills to the table. Indian enterprises have built capabilities through reskilling and partnerships in the areas of digital technologies, customer experience, automation, cloud (migration and modernization) , next-gen security, AI, IoT, etc. Solving the skills equation has become a C-suite issue, and Indian enterprises are moving to create a culture of continuous learning and collaboration that will support their digital resiliency efforts in the future. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/india/news/maha-crisis-fadvanis-shinde-to-decide-the-next-course-of-action/articleshow/92543340.cms">Maha crisis: Fadvanis, Shinde to decide the next course of action</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/india/news/uddhav-thackeray-the-accidental-chief-minister/articleshow/92559485.cms">Uddhav Thackeray: The accidental chief minister</a> <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Radhika Nallayam

Latest Stories from Radhika Nallayam

Mounting public cloud cost is driving cloud repatriation in the industry

Radhika Nallayam

‘Cloud migration, digital transformation don’t always help with innovation blockers’

Radhika Nallayam

Lenovo aims to empower the ‘pocket-to-cloud architecture’ to fulfil IT transformational needs, says Shailendra Katyal

Radhika Nallayam

‘Artificial intelligence has the potential to change healthcare’

Radhika Nallayam

Here’s how Tata CLiQ transformed service advisor experience and improved first-time resolution rate by 15%

Radhika Nallayam

'Digital thread & digital twin tech will be game changers for manufacturing'

Radhika Nallayam

Interview: How Oracle plans to bring the public cloud to companies’ on-premise data centers

Radhika Nallayam

‘Edge computing will impact all industries and force IT to adapt to new architectures’

Radhika Nallayam

AI aids the megatrend of electrification of everything which can reduce GHGs

Radhika Nallayam

‘Tech architecture is becoming business architecture, enterprises recognize that’

Radhika Nallayam