SIITF 2022: Digital transformation is creating opportunities for innovation across industries

Consumer preferences continue to change, straining already tight margins and stranding companies that have not shifted effectively to digital and omnichannel. Supply chain problems and geopolitical turbulence are spurring regionalization, testing even the nimblest company’s ability to respond quickly. Persistent inflation and rising interest rates are increasing the cost of capital, forcing companies to restructure their balance sheets. The fear of a global downturn is growing and a recent survey of CEOs found that 81 percent expect a recession. On this backdrop, the 11th edition of Southern India Information Technology Fair 2022 was organized in Bengaluru, which was attended by industry stalwarts comprising CIOS, corporates and VARs of the Indian ICT industry.

Themed Digital Transformation to Accelerate Business Performance, the event was attended by some of the most valued dignitaries which included Santanu Ghosh, Director Sales- APJC- AMD Pensando; Rakshit Bhatt, Head of Cloud and Senior Vice President- Redington Limited; Gaurav Chawla, Business Development Manager - APAC; Amit Deskmukh, Head of India Chanel and Distribution- Cohesity; Aren Naidoo, Country Manager- Engenius Technologies; Sandip Panda, CEO & Co-founder-Instasafe; Raman Pillai, Technology Strategy Head- VerSe Innovation; Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security- J P Morgan Chase & Co.; Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO- in-Mobi; Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO- 10kInfo Data Solutions Pvt Ltd; Harsha Thennarasu, CISO- HKIT Security Solutions; Mohan Kumar T L, Director- Netpoleon Solutions India; Sathish K S, CTO- Zeotap; G N Mahesha, President – FITDAK; Sunil Kukreja, President- AIT and Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA.

While addressing the audience on how Pensando brings opportunity to the country and the corporates, Santanu Ghosh, Director Sales- APJC- AMD Pensando spoke about the opportunities in the country. Rakshit Bhatt, Head of Cloud and Senior Vice President, Redington Limited gave the next presentation on how the company is driving and adding value to its business in the country. Gaurav Chawla, Business Development APAC- VMRAY introduced the company while also talking about sandboxing.

Next in the programme was the Fire-side chat session that saw Sandip Panda, CEO & Co-founder-Instasafe speaking to Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA about various aspects of security.

The panel discussion on the topic ‘Digital Transformation To Accelerate Business Performance’ was attended by panellists Raman Pillai, Technology Strategy Head- VerSe Innovation; Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security- Ex-J P Morgan Chase & Co; Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO- in-Mobi; Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO- 10kInfo Data Solutions Pvt Ltd; and Arvind Singh, CTO & Executive V.P-IT - Puravankara Ltd. The panel was moderated by Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA.

( Pictures from Left to Right: Mr. Mohan Kumar T L, Director- Netpoleon Solutions India, Mr. Gaurav Chawla, Business Development Manager -APAC, Mr. Amit Deskmukh, Head of India Chanel and Distribution- Cohesity, Mr. Rakshit Bhatt, Head of Cloud and Senior Vice President- Redington Limited, Mr. Santanu Ghosh, Director Sales- APJC- AMD Pensando, Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu,Editor-in-Chief-VARINDIA, Ms. Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security- Ex-J P Morgan Chase & Co, Mr. Sandip Panda, CEO & Co-founder-Instasafe, Mr. Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO- in-Mobi, Mr. Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO- 10kInfo Data Solutions Pvt Ltd, Mr. G N Mahesha, President – FITDAK and Mr. Sunil Kukreja, President- AIT

Speaking about how the rural fintech ecosystem is going to be the game changer in 2023, Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA said, “India has come a long way in its digital journey with over 70% of the total population residing in rural areas now getting access to banking and financial services with the help of more than 30 lakh rural banking outlets across the country. As we step into 2023, it will pave the way for a rural fintech revolution that will focus on cashless transactions, embedded finance, and open banking for hyper-personalization, leading to increased digital adoption thereby driving financial inclusion for the last mile.”

Santanu Ghosh 
Director Sales- APJC- AMD Pensando

VARs transforming into micro transformational units to develop their own hardware and software

System Integration continues to be a challenge. It is easier said than done because we don’t have one overriding protocol which helps you to connect. It is always trial and error, it has a cost impact, it has a customer experience issue, and it continues to be a problem. Speed of business is also a big issue. At the same time, security cannot be compromised and they are in conflict with each other. It is a task, which the partners grapple with every day. The second thing is, how do I make everything that’s happening within the data center or within the periphery of information technology that’s running the business visible, whether it’s network, data movement or security. If you have visibility, you can arrest attacks, transform and can get insights from that. Next is automation. Automation, again, is easier said than done. For automation, the first thing in need is APIs which you can leverage. It needs simplicity whether it’s a chip manufacturer, the server manufacturer, the storage manufacturer, or a network service person or the VARs. My understanding is VARs in India especially and worldwide, will soon transform into micro transformational units where they will be devising their own hardware and software. They will start creating values by themselves. Now, we’ll talk about DPUs. DPUs are field programmable offload units, which channel your CPU. DPUs are becoming important because of silicon architecture changes. If the partners can leverage this issue, they can start developing their own solutions targeted at their own customers. The second thing is there is a huge change that is happening on how businesses will implement security, how they will draft that data policy and how they will leverage data because data privacy, as various governments are implying, is becoming very important. The main challenge will be in spite of data privacy how would you handle data, get insights and get more productivity from the data. There is a concept called confidential computing and this can be heard a lot now because with the data governance policies, every company will have data privacy, where while the data is processing you should not see it or the administrator or the VMs should not be able to see what data is processing.

Rakshit Bhatt
Head of Cloud and Senior Vice President- Redington Limited

Subscription-led cloud adoption achieving more momentum

From the future of IT perspective, there are a lot of things that are going to happen. What we see and we hear out is that there will be software driven strategies, models that will change, there will be a lot of advancements in edge computing, as we hear day in day out. We’re talking about a blend of technologies which are creating new functionalities. IT is no longer an enabler of uptime of a hardware or a server. It is a real business enabler in the industry today, so IT really works with the Chief Business Officers in the corporates. Soon, it is moving towards SMB and SMC space as well in India. India is all about scale and we see that in future scaling will happen both vertically and horizontally. While we do so, it’s really important that why we scale, how do we do it securely, and how do we automate. We have to have simplification while we do that and all automation will come into play. Lastly, we see that while in the enterprise sector, it’s all driven by enterprise agreements. As Redington, we see that the subscription-led cloud adoption plus the implementations and solutions around it will gain more momentum and the trends are already talking about it. Hence, we strongly feel that our partner ecosystem and our customer ecosystem will really thrive and grow as we move on to the model of cloud. Today partners work with us on the subscription model as well as on the consumption and adoption model. But, here for the partners and customers, we are also talking about how we enable you from a services and solutions model. There are a lot of use cases available in the market but the real problem can only be understood after the discussion. So, can we come and meet and have a discussion with you, understand your problems and then build on it as a solid partnership and from a cloud perspective it means that we will talk about assessments, security assessments or ideal infrastructure assessments.

Gaurav Chawla
Business Development APAC- VMRAY 

Sandboxing is frequently used to inspect untested or untrusted code

“We are a ten-year-old company based out of Germany. We help our customers detect zero-day attacks. Today a lot of ransomware attacks are taking place, the most recent one that took place in AIIMS. Why are these kinds of attacks still happening? Almost every business has good cybersecurity infra and they have deployed all the good tools and measures, but these attacks are taking place. These attacks are happening more so because of the deployment models. So, what is sandboxing? Sandboxing is designed to prevent threats from getting on the network and is frequently used to inspect untested or untrusted code. It has become very important that sandboxes should be designed in such a way that malwares is not able to detect whether it is the real environment or sandboxing environment. Almost all known consulting firms are customers of VMRay to provide consulting services to their customers or helping them for the Incident Response. We have financial institutions and large government organizations globally using VMRay.  We have a 100% retention rate among our customers and that shows the confidence customers have on us for fighting zero day attacks. One of the biggest challenges that customers face is that they sometimes don’t understand the threat to counter it. It becomes very difficult for organizations to have such kinds of resources with them. Hackers are nowadays creating new malwares making it even more difficult for organizations to counter.”   

Pictures from left to right: Mr. Arvind Singh, CTO & Executive V.P-IT - Puravankara Ltd.; Mr. Raman Pillai, Technology Strategy Head- VerSe Innovation; Ms. Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security- Ex-J P Morgan Chase & Co; Mr. Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO- 10kInfo Data Solutions Pvt Ltd and Mr. Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO- in-Mobi

The panel discussion session was attended by Raman Pillai, Technology Strategy Head, VerSe Innovation; Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security, Ex-J P Morgan Chase & Co; Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO, InMobi; Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO, 10kInfo Data Solutions and Arvind Singh, CTO & Executive V.P-IT, Puravankara. The panel was moderated by Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA on the topic “Digital transformation to explain business performance”.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA 

opened the discussion by highlighting how technology continues to disrupt the market every year. “Technology has always kept the tech leaders on the tip of their toes to see what is coming next and how they can be the first to embrace it. Even old technologies are getting transformed, computing has ejaculated at back next speed, platforms have been transformed to the SAS model, privacy and security tech have pivoted from pins to face detection and motion sensors. This will continue to enhance and improve as you move forward.”

Raman Pillai, Technology Strategy Head, VerSe Innovation said, “Digital transformation is a must have and most of the IT companies are up to date. Digital transformation is not just about digitalization but it is more about how we use the data effectively. Technology is a waste if we cannot feel the technology. Technology is actually valuable when it becomes seamless and can be used to your requirements. Previously, we used to have cables to cast something on the TV but now that technology is so seamless that you can just click on mobile. You can see the presentation on the screen. So the technology has become invisible in this case. That is digitalization and we are moving on.”

Lopa Mudraa Basuu, VP ISM Cyber Security, Ex-J P Morgan Chase & Co said, “Digital transformation is the need to sustain today. During the pandemic the entire wheel of revenue was moving due to digital transformation. Today digitalization is helping organizations to expand their business boundaries. Without expanding geographically and reaching out to the newer customers in any field to provide good customer experience much more effectively is only possible due to the digital transformation. This is the need of the hour and every company knowingly or unknowingly is on that journey. There is no risk-free technology in this world, so it is important to understand the risks associated with the technology and we need to manage them effectively and integrate as part of the entire digital journey.”

Satish Kumar Dwibhashi, SVP & CISO, InMobi said, “Today digital transformation has become a necessity. Whether it is a small, medium or big enterprise, every enterprise is embracing technology adoption. While many companies are taking this digital transformation journey, Covid has fastened the whole process of adopting new technologies. Every enterprise is embracing technologies like cloud, IoT etc. There are some enterprises which are cloud born. They are also embracing these new technologies because it has become a must for them to scale up and compete with the global players. It is not just technology, it is more of a business driver to go to the next level.”

Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO, 10kInfo Data Solutions, said, “Being a data privacy coach, when we talk about digital transformation, I first see who wants to use that. Then it can be classified whether they need on-prem or on cloud or any cool location. That is one yardstick which I typically mentor my companies or the starter companies. You need to be very clear what has to be given access and to where during this journey or evolution of digital transformation. This is the key to everybody who is on the journey of digital transformation. Everyone has talked about data as the new oil but I will talk about ‘data graveyards’, as we have to ensure that the unwanted data has to be destroyed.”

Arvind Singh, CTO & Executive V.P-IT, Puravankara said, “Digital transformation is not a choice, everyone has to get in. You get delayed, you become a sufferer. If we see, in any industry you can start late but you have to run the race. Every industry has to go from 2.0 to 3.0. There are some pillars like supply chain efficiency, operational efficiency and employee experience which are so important. Earlier it was a customer-first approach but now it is an employee-first approach. With hybrid cloud and hybrid workspace everything is more complicated now. Security is taking the front seat.”

Understanding and evaluating cyber investments till date is a concern

Sandip Panda, CEO & Co-founder, Instasafe

“In 2022, maturity around cybersecurity is at an all-time high. Gone are those days when CISOs used to believe that security budgets will only happen when there will be a breach in the organization. Earlier the budget used to be for purchase of anti-virus or firewall or the minimal compliance required for the respective industry. But it is not the CIO or a CISO that will interest us here. The more interesting story is of how investors look at cybersecurity investments. 

We are the first company in India that raised money from CIO Angel Network. In the current environment of selective funding, especially in the B2B space, we stand out as one of the few startups successfully raising funds and providing exits to its early-stage angel investors. Everyone is excited that cyber is an evergreen space.  And the probability for this industry to go down is probably very low. 

Having said that, understanding and evaluating cyber investments till date is a concern and that poses a big challenge for any promising brands for getting the capital at the right time. That kind of makes us second best to none. Investors want to see what they will get in return. I am not only talking about financial investors but also the board members who would like to understand more before going about any big investments. So while talking about cyber budgets is hard, we should know a few things that the board understands the cyber well, of the nuts and bolts, but they would not understand the nitty gritties. The moment the CISO will talk about firewall, perimeter, the network or SOC, the interest seems to wane away. So it is up to us cyber professionals of how simplified we can present our things before the board, of how cybersecurity is not a problem but a risk that needs to be mitigated.”