VARINDIA has recently conducted its annual Tech Summit in Bengaluru (Silicon Valley of India) - Southern India Information Technology Fair 2016, on 23rd September 2016 at The Hotel Chancery Pavilion, Bengaluru. The Summit discussed various emerging technologies that has hit the Industry in the recent past

(From L to R): Mr. Murali Krishnan, CEO – NJ Dataprint; Mr. Vishal Dhupar, MD South Asia – NVIDIA; Mr. Kuldeep Raina, Senior Vice Prsident – Sales, Inspira Enterprise; Mr. Deepak Sahu, Chief Editor – VARINDIA; Mr. Arvind KS, Associate Vice President, Business Development – Tally Solutions; Mr. K K Shetty, VP – Enterprise Sales, India - COMMSCOPE; Mr. Sriram Gopalaswami, Head, Commercial and DCG Marketing- Lenovo India and Mr. Jatin Christopher, Director- JCSS global Consulting

The theme for the summit this year was “Innovative Platform to support Digital India”. A special team was invited to deliberate on the topic of Impact of GST on the ICT Industry, which was attended by experts from the Finance and Taxation domain, Consultant, CIO, VARs and the Industry leaders. Finally there was the award function that felicitated the business partners from Southern India in addition to the technology showcase that displayed the stellar leadership and outstanding IT implementations. VARs are the pillar of success in their respective regions representing the most innovative IT leaders in Southern India.

The event focused on digital disruptions surrounding today’s world and its implications on Design & Engineering domain, given the need to leverage innovations to ring about a paradigm shift. It was a unique platform for SMEs and VARs to understand the scope of digitization that will open up big opportunities for them in due course of time. With a distinguished list of speakers including K K Shetty, V.P- Enterprise sales-India – COMMSCOPE; Vishal Dhupar, MD South Asia- NVIDIA India; Jatin Christopher, Director- JCSS global Consulting; Syam Madnapalli, Global IOT Delivery - DELL Digital Business Services; Kuldeep Raina, Senior Vice President – Sales, Inspira Enterprise India; Arvind KS, Associate Vice President, Business development- Tally Solutions, the summit promises to be an event full of stimulating conversations and innovative solutions. The summit brings the Strategists, Practitioners, consumers on to a one platform to discuss the strategy for adoption of digital solutions for enhanced design and engineering.

Talking about the day’s agenda, Deepak Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor – VARINDIA spoke about how the future is cloud and the market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that there is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and "born in the cloud" providers. “The ‘Cloud Shift’ will affect more than $1 tn in IT spending and Digital technologies are playing a key role in enhancing SMB competitiveness and their growth agenda. As SMBs and their workforce embark on their digital journeys, they need to protect themselves against cyber-attacks. This would contribute to two strategic programmes of the country that are ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’,” he said in his speech.

K K Shetty, V.P- Enterprise sales – India, COMMSCOPE spoke about the Reforms & Opportunities in India, focusing on strong Indian economic indicators, expected to gain a double digit growth in medium to long term, resulting in India emerging as the fastest growing major economy in the world. His speech ended with a quote, “If you are optimistic you can build an Aeroplane! If you are pessimistic you can build a parachute!” Adding to his thoughts, Vishal Dhupar, M.D (South Asia) - NVIDIA India, said how the cloud brings huge potential for the growth and it is very supportive to the success of the Digital India. The summit always tried to bring conversations around how to ensure engineering and innovations in alignment to the requirements of world.

Addressing the gathering, Jatin Christopher, Director- JCSS global Consulting spoke on what is the impact of GST on IT trade and how it will turn India into one common market, leading to greater ease of doing business and big savings in logistics. Some companies will gain more as the GST rate will be lower than the current tax rates they pay; others will lose as the rate will be higher than the present effective rate. There is no doubt that Digital Business Transformation is disrupting businesses in every industry by breaking down barriers between people, businesses and things. By breaking these barriers, they are able to create new products, services and find more efficient ways of doing business. To address this segment, Kuldeep Raina, Senior Vice President, Inspira Enterprise spoke on the importance of cyber security and INSPIRA’s initiative towards Centre of excellence in the cloud as the Infrastructure and platform as service and Software as service. Kuldeep spoke about how things would be with value addition to the cloud and turning Capex to Opex with the help of automation, which will bring value to the customer and lastly gave some example of certain recent cyber and malware attacks.

Arvind KS, Vice President, Business development- Tally Solutions spoke on the Impact of GST on IT trade and how GST is a business opportunity for us. This will bring a new opportunity for every company into development, since there is no software available in India, which is fully compatible or is GST complaint.

Lastly there was the panel discussion, based on the theme for the day and moderated by Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor – VARINDIA. The panellists who joined on the dais were Sriram Gopalaswami, Head, Commercial and DCG Marketing- Lenovo India; Syam Madnapalli, Global IOT Delivery - DELL Digital Business Services; Sridharan, President- AIT; Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director-Sales (India & SAARC) - HID Global and K K Shetty, VP - Enterprise sales-India - COMMSCOPE.

Discussion on Digital India, which is an initiative of the central government to integrate the government departments and the people of India and the innovation challenge, was to find solutions which can enable public to avail government services easily. Digital India in its vision is a disruptive social equalizer in it that empowers the citizens. It is targeted at addressing local needs with the vision to build an ecosystem for pervasive technology adoption.

Technology provides a great platform for social equality and paves the way for opportunities enabling citizens to grow. India Inc enables the realization of the Digital dream by partnering with the Government in building Tools such as -
• Last mile Connectivity • Citizen services delivered over web and more importantly mobile
• Cyber security Solutions • Healthcare powered by Cloud, Mobility, Analytics, IoT, Wearables, M2M tech
• Education powered by Cloud and Contextual Awareness
• Product & Service Aggregation Platforms
• Modern Agriculture powered by IT Framework
• Smart Cities

Building the infrastructure, getting various public sector departments online, providing a bouquet of desired services to citizens, all hold out significant potential for technology companies to work closely with the Government in realizing the Digital India Vision.

Further, Internet of Things has altered traditional designing and the industry is pushing the envelope to ensure that demands are met and new standards are set in this domain. We are still lagging behind in broadband penetration as low as 6%. Also there is less information and education of people in terms of what is data stealing and privacy breach. Driven by several factors - technological advances, changes in competitive landscape and consumer preferences. IoT (Internet of Things) will describe a system where Internet is connected to the physical world via ubiquitous sensors will talk about the various facets of the IoT and how it is an imperative for the world today. The summit also displayed the latest technology showcase from Canon, Tally and Inspira and how their solutions are well fitted to complement Digital India and the Future.

The summit also witnessed a mix of CIO/CTO/System Integrators and Solution Partners from across the Southern India with 150 attendees from the ICT sector who is embracing digital solutions. A pantheon of industry veterans and innovators had conversations around themes and issues of critical importance to the growth of Security and social media. SIITF served as a unique platform for the IT professionals from across the country which helped them to find solutions to help their companies evolve with changing requirements.