OITF 2023 lays stress on how the Digital Workplace trends are getting redefined

Technology is an enabler. It provides the means to create and make a difference, which ultimately brings lasting progress and radical transformation. With this idea in the backdrop, the 14th edition of the Odisha Information Technology Fair (OITF) was organized on 14th January at Hotel Vivanta, Bhubaneswar.

L-R: Mr. Pranav Bhayani, Head of Presales, iValue InfoSolution, Dr. Deepak KUmar Sahu, Editor-in-Chief- VARINDIA,  and Group Publications., Mr. Suryanarayan CS, Country Manager - Aruba India, Dr. Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament-Rajya Sabha, Padmashree Prof. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Chancellor- Centurion University, Prof. Arun Kumar Rath, IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur, Padma Bhushan Awardee Jatin Das, Artist & Chairman, J D Centre of Art and Mr. Ashok Mohapatra, Chairman Organizing Committee- VARINDIA IT Cup

The theme of the event was "Redefining Digital Workplace & Roadmap Of 2023” and was dedicated to the CIOs and VARS of the ICT Industry in Odisha. The event was supported by the Department of E&IT, Government of Odisha, STPI, ITAO, Aruba - a company of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hitachi Vantara, Inflow Technology, iValue and OCF.

The event was inaugurated by Padmashree Prof. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Chancellor- Centurion University; Padma Bhushan Awardee Jatin Das, artist & chairman, J D centre of art; Dr. Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament-Rajya Sabha; Prof. Arun Kumar Rath, IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur; Mr. Manoj Kumar Pattnaik, IAS, CEO, OCAC; Mr. Pankaj Sahoo – President Award winner filigree artist; Mr. Suryanarayan CS, Country Manager- Aruba India; Mr. Pranav Bhayani, Head of Presales, iValue InfoSolutions; Mr. Sunil Kumar Mohapatra- Chief Revenue Officer- VerSe Innovation; Mr. Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, Founder & CEO - CSM Technologies; Mr. Brahma Mishra, President - UCCIL; Mr. A.K. Mohanty, MD -Tatwa Technologies; Mr. Dhiru Khandelwal, MD- Esquare System & Technologies Pvt. Ltd and Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher - VARINDIA.

In his welcome speech, Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher - VARINDIA spoke about today’s growth in technological capabilities, accessibility, and how an inclination to adapt is changing the way employees and businesses conduct business. “Automation, AI, and ChatGPT are among some of the (not-so-new) shiny tools that are allowing us to evolve.I have been seeing the continuous transformation for the last 10 years. Today, we can proudly say that Odisha is marching ahead with renewed confidence towards a new Odisha by adopting new ideas, innovation and entrepreneurship. Odisha is now fast emerging as a technology resource hub of India,” he said.

This event witnessed the soft launch of a book “JEWELS OF ODISHA” - the coffee table Book on ODISHA. It speaks about the famous people from Odisha whose contributions have made the State proud!

The event also recognized the winners of the 13th edition of the VARINDIA IT Cup, which was held among 16 Corporates in Odisha and the participating companies were - Software Technology Parks Of India (Bhubaneswar), E&IT Dept. Govt of Odisha, World Skill Center, TCS, Wipro, ESSPL, Bhubaneswar Smart City, ABSyS IT, Custom Software Development Company, IN2IT Technologies, IBM, BPO Convergence, Esquare, Inovaare Clouds Solutions, Tatwa Technologies and Tech Mahindra.

Prof. Arun Kumar Rath, 
IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur 

“I must congratulate VARINDIA for continuing with their service towards the nation. The quality of their work and publication has gone up in the last few years and I must compliment the Group for that. As a Team, VARINDIA has a great commitment and a cause towards IT revolution in the country and also in the Odisha state also. But we need a lot of support in Odisha. With the coming of 5G and Industrial Revolution 4.0 coming to an end, have we really got the benefits of IT revolution or not? Being myself in the government sector and then into academics, I see a lot of deficiencies in the penetration of these technologies into Odisha. I think there is much to be done to support these initiatives. As I see this shift, I notice some dichotomies and contradictions which we must understand. Science is progressing and technology is advancing, but are we keeping in tune with the developments? We have to ponder ourselves and take corrective steps.”

Dr. Amar Patnaik
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha  

“We are in a world where technology is driving our lives. But the most important thing is if the human mind and intelligence will always lag behind the technological logical intelligence, or if we can regulate the technology, whether we would be able to be ahead of the technological evolutions that are taking place. These are some of the crucial questions that have been agitating the minds of all of us, particularly people like us who are in the parliament legislature. Generally there are three levels of the impact of technology, one is the product; how it changes the product making it more beneficial to the people who are going to use the product, how it is going to deliver more with less cost and faster making it more efficient and impactful. The second level at which technology is affecting other processes depends on how reliable and resilient they are. The last and the most important is the people; how technology is impacting the people. Technology affects society as much as society affects technology." 

 CORPORATE PRESENTATIONS

Surya Narayan CS
Country Manager - Product Category and Channel, Aruba- a HPE company

When we talk about Artificial Intelligence without connecting it to Machine learning, it is called Telemetry data in the industry. If someone talks about AI without Telemetry data, it is useless. This is where AI turns to be on its own. AI can only work with Telemetry data. If someone is talking about AI, his/her organization should be doing telemetry data as well.

In the cybersecurity arena it is relevant not to be reactive. The point is how we make security predictive, proactive and autonomous. AI is going to be on all machines and we are going to be dependent on machines. We are talking about a network from Aruba which will be an autonomous network - where management will move towards machine. If someone is not able to connect to the WiFi network of Aruba, it will predict it and will rectify the problem without human interference.

These are the advanced things which we talk about from an industry standpoint. When we speak about connectivity, the 4G or 5G revolution comes to our mind. This kind of revolution is happening with radio frequency. In this radio frequency, there is an important technology called MIMO (multiple input multiple output), which is leveraged in GSM network as well as wireless network. The power of this technology ensures that we power 300 out of 500 Fortune companies, including Google and Microsoft. We look at security as a paramount factor.

In the recent past security was ahead of time. We look at how we leverage tools which we have i.e., the clear past policy manager, how do we coordinate our security attack practice, ensuring that we coordinate with the perimeter security, ant-viruses, and predict and protect before the attack happens. These are the great differences which we are bringing with Aruba.

The culmination is happening where 4.0 industry revolutions are taking place. Today I may say that if we do not bring a machine to my manufacturing driver then we will be in 1947. Industry 4.0 revolutions have to happen, if I don’t bring speed to my country then my country will stay back. To bring speed I don’t have any other option but to bring an IT revolution."

Pranav Bhayani, 
Head of Presales, iValue InfoSolutions

“I heard the term Yellow fever vaccination when I was travelling long back to some country and they asked to take the vaccination. And then if you come back to the country they will check the certificate if you have been vaccinated before and if not then they will put you in a quarantine zone and observe the behaviour. Those people who are in the cyber security industry can relate the term quarantine. When the machine is connected to a foreign network and goes back to my own network it is similar to getting scanned and showing a certificate, this is how I will relate cyber security. Things have become a little bit nasty in the last few years with the advent of Cloud. The issue with cloud computing is where you are putting the data. 

These days we are listening to the term custodian of the sovereignty of the data. If you want to exchange data between two countries then there are repositories out there. When you exchange data between two repositories, how well is the data covered, are the parties also of same interest, are they also having the same seriousness in maintaining your data. So today, cyber security gives us a couple of solutions which are data diodes, the data can be only sent in one direction. If someone wants to pull back the data it is not allowed. It is in an immutable format.

You have heard the term phishing, it is like someone is impersonating you etc. How to skip it? The first thing one needs to do is control emotions, we need to give a completely different response to the fraud. When you do that to those kinds of attack factors they will be in the friend zone as they did not expect this. This we do in a decoy mode. We create decoy in a network for those who pretend to be vulnerable and by that we understand attack vectors so that we are prepared one step ahead of what cyber criminals are doing. In digital life we put those kinds of new IDs, servers which are not real life servers, this way the attack comes in. You must have heard the term Honeypots, where they will collect the traffic that would be ready to be attacked. This is how you create network decoys.”

Fire Side Chat With  Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, CEO - CSM Technologies And Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-chief - Varindia & Group Publications

“The biggest learning from the pandemic regarding the workplace is the paradigm shift that we have worked is physical and digital has become Phygital. It is a new word that has come into place. So the Phygital world has completely changed the way we probably used to work. If I had to go back to a time probably 100 years back when work, workers and the workplace had to be in the same place, it all started probably after World War II. So we have been following it for many years and when we started our industry we never thought that people could work from home and anywhere. All these things actually started with the pandemic.

The other part of the change that we have seen is the gig workforce which is coming in place. We all know that the gig economy is growing very rapidly. That is the shift in the way things happened in the past. NITI Ayog has come up with an astonishing number in India where everybody wants to have a secured job wherein many people are actually cropping out and becoming freelancers. Today, we have 10 million people who are from the freelancing community and NITI Ayog predicts that by 2027 it will become around 50 million people who will be working in this gig economy. So we all need to embrace and keep up with the time. I think this Phygital has completely changed the way we work.

In Phygital environment, technology comes first. Apart from technology, another important area is the channel of communication because we are not meeting people in person and there are a lot of challenges that we need to overcome. So technology and channels of communication are important for Phygital environment. Within technology there are few things that need to be addressed. Many people are working from different places and as per Gartner, 45% of the companies by 2025 will be attacked by cyber frauds and they have to protect themselves. Second, the cloud adoption since the last 10 years has surged. As per market statistics at present the size of the market is $500 billion and by 2027 it is going to touch $1500 billion. That is the kind of change the Phygital world is going to do. We know about the co-working space culture, it will grow really fast. Third is the people because culture will continue with it.”  

Unveiling of "Jewels of Odisha"

L-R: Mr. Priyadarshi Nanu Pany, Founder & CEO - CSM Technologies, Mr. Dhiru Khandelwal- MD- Esquare System & Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Mr. Brahmananda Mishra,President-UCCI, Padmashree Prof. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Chancellor- Centurion University, Mr. Pranav Bhayani, Head of Presales, iValue InfoSolution, Mr. Pankaj Sahoo - President Award winner filigree artist, Padma Bhushan Awardee Jatin Das, artist & chairman, J D centre of art, Prof. Arun Kumar Rath, IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur, Mr. A. K. Mohanty, MD- Tatwa Technologies and Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-Chief- VARINDIA and Group Publications.

Padmashree Prof. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak
Chancellor, Centurion University

“It is very kind to invite us for this event and a lot of discussion is going on about technology, IT. There is an inseparable relation between Art and Science. The whole education system has been much volunteered in nature, physics and chemistry cannot separate that. Today hundreds of artists bring computer generated paintings.”

Padma Bhushan Awardee Jatin Das
Artist & Chairman, J D centre of art  

“‘Jewels of Odisha’ is the beginning, not the end as it covers only 50 jewels of the state. I want to congratulate those who are responsible for printing out this book. As the subject of today’s discussion we must put national interest before artificial intelligence.”

Prof. Arun Kumar Rath 
IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur

“I must compliment again to the organizers for bringing out this publication. Bringing out top 50 persons must be very laborious and risky as you should do a lot of research. A lot of opinions are needed to complete the job. Odisha became the first languished state in India in 1936; Odia language has been recognized as a great language.”

Odisha is growing and transforming by leaps and bounds, moving beyond the conventional steel and petrochemicals sectors. Today, Odisha is the richest state in the country with a clear focus on transformation in all sectors. Stable governance is the cornerstone of peace, prosperity and progress , which we are witnessing under the leadership of Chief Minister Shri. Naveen Patnaik.

The 14th Odisha Information Technology fair ( OITF) witnessed the unveiling of a dedicated book on Odisha by the title: JEWELS OF ODISHA. The book speaks about the prominent people from Odisha who made the State proud! These personalities have helped Odisha to reach the next height by making it what it is today. The book contains the 50 famous personalities from Odisha who have made significant contributions towards making the India of today and also speaks about how the Enterprises in Odisha are working towards Sustainability. Apart from the contributions from these individuals as an Odia, there is a great contribution from the Government/PSUs and the Corporate houses towards Sustainability development through their initiatives.    

Cricket and Technology rocking the IT industry

To keep the ICT industry rocking, the 13th VARINDIA IT Cup was organized in association with STPI, E&IT Dept., Govt of Odisha in two different play grounds - Centurion University Cricket Ground, Jatni, Khordha and IIMT Ground, Acharya Vihar, Bhubaneswar. 

16 Corporates participated in the Cricket tournament including World Skill Center, Bhubaneswar smart city, IBM, TCS, WIPRO, Tech Mahindra, ESSPL, AABSyS IT, Custom Software Development Company, IN2IT Technologies, BPO Convergence, ESQUARE, STPI, E&IT Dept,INOVAARE Clouds Solutions and TATWA Technologies.

The 14th edition of Odisha Information Technology Fair (OITF) was organised in Hotel Vivanta, Bhubaneswar was attended by the dignitaries including   Honourable Padma Shree Prof. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Chancellor- Centurion University, Mr. Pranav Bhayani, Head of Presales, iValue InfoSolution, Mr. Pankaj Sahoo - President Award winner filigree artist, Padma Bhushan Awardee Jatin Das, Artist & Chairman, J D Centre of Art ,  Dr. Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament-Rajya Sabha, Prof. Arun Kumar Rath, IAS- Chairman Centre of Corporate Governance & CSR - IIM Nagpur, Mr. Brahmananda Mishra, President-UCCI, Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Editor-in-Chief- VARINDIA and Group Publications. 

Mr. Subrat Kr Behera, CEO, Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) and Mr. Sourajit Mohapatra, Ex Captain of Team Odisha and Mr. Ashok Mohapatra, Chairman Organising Committee, VARINDIA IT Cup were present to honour the  winners of the tournament.

The invitees to the event included IT & Telecom honchos, senior Government officials, industry leaders, VARs and SIs. The event was supported by various corporates including STPI, Department of E&IT, Government of Odisha, Aruba - a HPE Enterprise, Inflow Technologies, Hitachi Vantara, i-Value and eSquare Technology.

The world of sports is continually changing over the years, and the use of technology is just one of those areas that has made an impact on many sports in the modern day. Sports have varied in their take up of modern technology. Fortunately, cricket has not ignored the possibilities of using technology to aid the game, for the players, umpires and spectators.

The true vision to start the VARINDIA IT Cup Cricket, an IT Corporate Cricket League, is to bring out the hidden talent of every hard working employee of Corporate/PSUs/Govt. across the IT and Telecom fraternity in Bhubaneswar. The cricket matches were played with Tennis ball.

VARINDIA organised the 13th edition of VARINDIA IT Cup as the Annual Cricket Tournament, which is a part of the regular Odisha Information and Technology Fair. 

The Sixteen participating corporates were placed in Four different Groups. The enthusiasm and energy of the players was overwhelming. The Final match was played between ‘TATA Consultancy Services’ and ‘BPO Convergence’  and the Champions Trophy of the 13th VARINDIA IT Cup Cricket Tournament 2023 was bagged by team ‘BPO Convergence’.

The Cricket Tournament awards were felicitated by: Mr. Subrat Kr Behera, CEO, Odisha Cricket Association (OCA), Mr. Sourajit Mohapatra, Ex Captain of Team Odisha,  Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Editor-in-chief, VARINDIA and Mr. Ashok Mohapatra, The Chairman – Organising committee, VARINDIA Sports & Events.