Reliance Jio may acquire wireless infrastructure assets from RCOM

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (“RJIL”) has signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition of specified assets of Reliance Communications Limited (“RCOM”) and its affiliates.

The acquisition is subject to receipt of requisite approvals from the Governmental and regulatory authorities, consents from all lenders, release of all encumbrances on the said assets and other conditions precedent. The consideration is payable on completion and is subject to adjustments as specified in the agreement.

An asset monetization process for RCOM assets was mandated by the lenders of RCOM, who appointed SBI Capital Markets Limited to run the process. The process is supervised by an independent group of distinguished industry experts. RJIL emerged as the successful bidder in the two-stage bidding process…..Read More

Bitcoin Vs Blockchain: How year 2018 will be…Is it worth investing???

Bitcoin or virtual currencies (VC) has grown to 20-fold rise to reach new high to 3000% this year. It is like the elephant in the room, a lot of people don’t want to talk about it because they have invested in it. Bitcoin does not have a legal status as a currency in most of the world, and authorities usually do not know how best to approach thefts. Some larger exchanges have replaced customer funds after a theft from the exchange itself, but at this stage they are not legally obliged to do so.

The entire process works with blockchain, which is a record of all transactions on a decentralised network of computers across the world.

Bitcoin going Mainstream…

Bitcoin has provoked gambling. Bitcoin is a decentralized global digital currency that runs on a peer-to-peer network called the blockchain. It was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency obeys its own internal logic. Bitcoin has hit a tipping point of mainstream popularity. One of the biggest U.S. Bitcoin exchanges, Coinbase, had signed up some 12 million customers and is the world’s largest bitcoin broker and is available in the United States, UK, Canada, Singapore, and most of Europe. Bitfinex has dominated the world’s Bitcoin trade on exchanges, with a 41.72% market share over the last few days, with the next biggest player is the US-based exchange being Coinbase with 25.78% market share….Read More

Huawei India announces job cut, brings its workforce down by 30%

In the wake of the current consolidation in the telecom industry, while also the Vodafone-Idea merger and sector-wide financial stress, Huawei Technologies has brought down its direct workforce in India by almost a third.

The economic stress caused in the sector after the disruption caused by billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio’s entry, and the amalgamation between Vodafone and Idea have proved to be a double setback for the network vendor’s workforce.

A company source said, on the condition of anonymity said, that there has been a job cut since early this year with nearly 30% of the employees having now gone out of the company, while some of them who were in the field teams have been rehired on a contractual basis. The employees were asked to leave on the basis of performance, network shutdowns and declining telco business, the source added….Read More

Morpho and Telit come together to contribute to IoT-based Emergency Response Project

Morpho (Safran) and Telit have announced that the specialized embedded SIM developed by Morpho has been successfully tested with Telit’s high-performance 2G, 3G and 4G cellular IoT modules for deployment in an Emergency Road Assistance project in Russia.

The ERA GLONASS (Emergency Road Assistance based on Global Navigation Satellite) project has been launched to introduce a sensor-based in-vehicle emergency call system that in case of an accident automatically dials an emergency number linked to the nearest emergency center. Basic data – including the location – is sent to the local emergency services, meaning that the response can be faster, the size and scope of an incident can be assessed early and time can be saved in critical life-and-death situations…Read more

Schneider Electric leverages IoT Solutions to transform businesses

Schneider Electric (SE) is seeking to leverage its Internet of Things (IoT)-driven competencies to bring about process efficiency across businesses in India. IoT is an emerging industry in India and is expected to cross $15 billion by 2020. To support this industry, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has come out with a draft IoT policy that aims at building an entire ecosystem around IoT and to incentivize the players in the ecosystem. Home and building, manufacturing, consumer electronics, retail, power, transportation and healthcare are some of the key sectors which are likely to see major spendings on IoT…Read more

MSDE and DoT sign MoU

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to make India the skill capital of the world, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to develop and implement National Action Plan for Skill Development in the telecom sector, utilizing PSUs under DoT with a common objective of fulfilling skilled manpower requirement of the telecom sector and at the same time providing quality opportunities for employment / entrepreneurship…Show full article

Trend Micro ropes in NNR IT Solutions as its National Distributor

Trend Micro has appointed Pune-based NNR IT Solutions L.L.P. as the exclusive national distributor for its consumer products line. NNR IT will distribute TrendMicro’s PC Antivirus, Internet Security, Maximum Security and Mobile security products and services to channel partners and customers across the subcontinent.

In this agreement, the later will assist the former in bolster its business growth and consolidate its leadership position in the Indian IT consumer security market. NNR IT Solutions is present in 15 states with 50+ locations and a reach of over 3,000+ channel partners…Read more

India x86 server market declines in Q2 2016

The x86 server market in India declined by 16.9 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q2 2016, with 33,662 units shipped in Q2 2016 as against 40,488 units in Q1 2016 according to IDC.

In terms of revenue, there was a 16.5 percent quarter-on-quarter decline registered in Q2 2016. Periodic investments from cloud service providers, home-grown hosting providers and continued spending towards 4G deployments predominantly contributed to this quarter’s server demand. Digitization across the banking sector, piece-meal demand from e-commerce and payment banks further fuelled into Q2’s compute demand. Overall spending on server has normalized back to its usual average, and the trend is expected to continue in the coming quarter as well.

The non x86 server market declined by 25.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter in terms of unit shipments and 3.7 per cent in terms of revenue in Q2 2016….For more information, visit

http://www.varindia.com/india-x86-server-market-declines-in-q2-2016/

India to be a $1 trillion digital economy in 4 years: Ravi Shankar Prasad

A high level meeting was organised in the national capital to understand on how to achieve a US $1 trillion digital economy within four years by creating affordable technology and an inclusive environment. Besides the Union Minister of Law and Justice of India, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad and Union Minister of State, Ministry of Law and Justice, Shri P P Choudhary, the meeting on building India’s digital economy saw the presence of Indian technology giants and leaders.

There were industry experts like R Chandrashekhar President – Nasscom; Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director – Google India; Rishad Premji, Chief Strategy Officer – Wipro; C P Gurnani, MD and CEO- Tech Mahindra; A P Hota, Managing Director & CEO of National Payments Corporation of India; Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman & Co-Founder – NIIT Group, Subho Ray, President – Internet and Mobile Association of India and Kavin Bharti Mittal, CEO – Hike Messenger, among others.

The minister spoke on how the government is committed for deform and perform, by using digital delivery and services like the AADHAR and 2.5 lakh Common Services Centres (CSC) spread across the country. Nearly Rs 1200 crore income has been generated by CSCs. “With this we can definitely achieve the said target, where there is a multi-billion dollar opportunity that exists in areas like IT and IT enabled services, e-commerce, electronics manufacturing, digital payments and cyber security.

While giving a brief of the progress that has been made in the Digital India initiative from the period of May 2014 to June 2017, the Minister said that India became the second largest market for smartphones in the world, with smartphone users rising to 40 crores, mobile phone users to 108 crores and Internet users to 50 crores in 2017. India has also emerged as the 3rd largest start-up eco-system with IT/Technology start-ups dominating the start-up scenario in the country. Nearly 400 new start-ups are coming up every year. The e-commerce market has also seen nearly 100% growth with the figure showing 2.11 Lakh Crore customers shopping online in December 2016. The growth in e-governance transactions has also gone up, with the latest figure from April pointing to 3.5 crore. The growth in Digital Payments has been drastic after demonetization, with Mobile wallet, UPI-based payment, Debit Card, IMPS and Aadhaar enabled Payment System being the top digital payment modes.

He further said that in the last 3 years, six lakhs employment have been generated in the country. The Indian IT sector has crossed Rs 10 lakh crore in revenue and exports have crossed Rs 7.5 lakh crore.

“I don’t have any doubt that India will become a US $1 trillion economy in 7 years. My humble request is why to wait for 7 years. Can we do it in 3-4 years?” the Minister said in his keynote address, while still adding that the country needs to develop its own model for digital development that is inclusive. “Create a technology which is affordable, create infrastructure which is developmental, create an environment which is inclusive. Companies can also make India a hub of low-cost technology for cyber security,” he said.

Minister PP Chaudhary in his speech said that cyber security is of immense importance and companies should look at storing all data within Indian boundaries in a secured manner.

WAY FORWARD

* Accelerating broadband connectivity to rural areas

* Strengthening Legal Framework for Data Security

* Building momentum for electronic manufacturing

* Attracting investments in Data Centres/Cloud

* Expanding BPO/BPM industry

* Promoting Software industry

* Leveraging crowd sourcing for innovative solutions

* Strengthening Cyber Security

See more at: http://www.varindia.com/news/india-to-be-a-1-trillion-digital-economy-in-4-years-ravi-shankar-prasad

Petya – the new ransomware to take the cyber world by storm

Petya – the new ransomware to take the cyber world by storm

While 2016 was marked by extraordinary attacks, including multi-million dollar virtual bank heists, 2017 is no less. Just a month after WannaCry locked up thousands of computers, a new wave of ransomware attacks are targeting users across the world, including India and Europe. It’s the second major global ransomware attack in the last two months. Consumer, shipping, aviation and oil & gas companies were hit on Tuesday in the UK, Russia, France, Spain and elsewhere.

Petwrap, believed to be an advanced version of an old ransomware known as Petya, locked the computer screens of as many as 20 companies globally with $300 being demanded to be paid in Bitcoin to free them up.

Advertsising company WPP, food company Mondelez, legal firm DLA Piper, French construction materials company Saint-Gobain and Russian steel and oil firms Evraz and Rosneft Maersk and Danish shipping and transport firm Maersk are some of the companies targeted by the ransomware on Tuesday, causing serious disruptions according to people aware of the matter. Indian subsidiaries of UK and Russia-based oil and gas, energy and aviation companies were also hit….Read  more