15th INFOTECH FORUM 2017-Making a Digital-ready Future possible

The VARINDIA INFOTECH FORUM entered its 15th year by bringing together the who’s who of the ICT industry, IT consultants and senior government officials and PSUs and setting up a platform for a day-long event consisting of power-packed sessions of technical presentations, panel discussions and discourses on issues impacting the technology landscape and, most importantly, business networking. The theme of the 15th INFOTECH FORUM was – “Digitization and Role of IoT for Next-Generation Enterprise”.

Shri P. P. Choudhury, Minister of State of Law, Justice and Electronics & IT, Government of India, graced the occasion as Chief Guest. The presence of other high-profile guests from the Government and ICT Industry includes Shri Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, Government of India; Shri S. N. Tripathy, IAS, Additional Secretary & Development Commissioner, MSME, Government of India; Shri Rajesh Aggarwal, IAS, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India; Shri M Akhaya, CVO, Department of Telecom- Government of India; Shri B. K. Murthy, Senior Director (Scientist-G), Department of Electronics & IT, Government of India; Mr Raman Roy, Chairman-NASSCOM and CMD- Quatrro; Mr Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, South Asia, NVIDIA; Shri Rajesh Kumar, Sr General Manager (NB), BSNL; Shri Prashant Gupta, Partner, Risk Advisory, BDO; Dr. Avik Sarkar, Head of Data Architect Cell, Niti Aayog; Mr Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India (Cyber law Expert); Mr Yog Raj, General Manager, MTP- Railtel Corporation of India; Dr Alok Bharadwaj, Founder & MD, CreoVate Transformations & Consulting; Mr Srikanth Doranadula, Sr Director, Alliances & Channel, Oracle; Mr Sandeep Sehgal, Director and Head Government and Defence, VMware India; Mr Subroto Panda, CIO, Anand and Anand; and Mr Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry Advisor, WIPRO, raised the scale and grandeur of the event to a new high.

Mr Deepak Sahu, Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media, started off the session by throwing some light on the recent ransomware attack that has hit the developing and the developed economies really hard and how India been able to shield itself better than several other countries. “Industry experts peg the number of infected computers at more than 50,000 desktops and laptops running on the Windows operating system across industries, including banking, retail and manufacturing. It is also true that most of the people are ill-equipped to deal with ransomware,” he said. He also commended the job done by the GST Council by having reduced the impact of GST on the common man and maintaining the status quo on GST rates on the items largely consumed by the upper middle class.

Shri P. P. Choudhury, Minister of State of Law, Justice and Electronics & IT, Government of India, set the stage open with his keynote address, followed by Dr B. K. Murthy, Senior Director (Scientist-G), Department of Electronics & IT, GoI, who spoke at length on digitization. Thereafter, Shri Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, GoI, shared his perspective on Digital India and its scope in e-governance.

There were also many deliberations and presentations lined up where the top technocrats and subject-matter experts participated to discuss technology and its impact on today’s business at length. Mr Prashant Gupta, Partner Risk Advisory - BDO in his presentation shared his vision towards the adoption of IoT in the country. Mr Raman Roy, CMD, Quatrro and Chairman, NASSCOM, who is deeply involved in shaping the future of the BPO industry in India, also gave a detailed study about the industry.

Mr Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India (Cyber Law Expert), enlightened the audience on the present cybersecurity situation in the country. Mr Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, South Asia, NVIDIA, on his part addressed the audience on Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning and how digitization could take the country to the next level. Mr Rajesh Kumar, Sr General Manager (NB), BSNL, being the champion in the conceptualization of getting new business opportunities in BSNL, shared his perspective with everyone.

Dr Alok Bharadwaj, Founder & MD, CreoVate Transformations & Consulting, spoke on the entrepreneurship challenges in the country, while Mr G. B. Shaikh, Vice-President – Security, CtrlS Datacenters Ltd, spoke on the impact of cyber terrorism on IoT-enabled infrastructure.

In the partner presentation, Mr Vishweshara Shankar, Presales Team Lead India and SAARC, Veeam Software, spoke on how Veeam is driving the concept of the “always-on” Enterprise and Mr Kumar Anand, Sr Consultant, INSPIRA Enterprises, gave his presentation on how the company is influencing important decisions with the help of its products and solutions.

The much-awaited part of the event was, however, the launching of the 6th Brand Book Carving a niche of its own, the annual Brand Book has attracted attention of thousands of technology brands which have used it as a reference book to understand the ecosystem.

But the launch of the Brand Book was not the only attraction of the evening, as the 15th IT Forum also had recognised Top companies in Indian ICT Industry and received the award as the Most-Trusted Company Awards and the Most- Admired Company Awards. While 25 top companies (VAR Top 25) have been chosen in the category of the Most-Trusted Company, a total of 80 companies have been named as the Most-Admired Companies by VARINDIA. The awards were based on the votes cast on the VARINDIA website where respondents voted for their favourite companies.

For the first time ever, VARINDIA also took the opportunity to felicitate and recognize the CIOs/CTOs of the industry for their significant contribution to Information Technology and towards Digital Growth in the country. Altogether 15 CIOs were honoured and the awards were given away by the Chief Guest and Hon’ble Minister of State for Law, Justice and Electronics & IT, Shri P. P. Choudhury.

The website for the Brand Book, www.mybrandbook.co.in, was also relaunched at the event in the presence of the revered Chief Guest.

A panel discussion modelled around “Digitization and Role of IoT for Next-Generation Enterprise” was moderated by Mr Pravin Prashant, Consulting Editor, VARINDIA, and the panellists who joined him in the discussion were – Virender Kumar Bansal, Group CIO- SAR Group; Mr Damodar Sahu, Partner & Industry advisor- WIPRO; Shri B K Murthy, Senior Director (Scientist-G), Department of Electronics & IT, GoI; Mr Anuj Aggarwal, Founder, Computer Society of India, Noida Chapter; Mr Sandeep Sehgal, Director and Head Government and Defence, VMware India; Mr Subroto Panda, CIO, Anand and Anand; Mr Deepak Maheshwari, Head of Govt. Affairs- Symantec Corporation; Mr G B Shaikh, VP-Security- CtrlS Datacenters Limited and Mr Prashant Gupta, Partner Risk Advisory-BDO.

Mr Sunil Sharma, Vice-President – Sales, Sophos (India & SAARC), became a Motivational Guru for the event and conducted a knowledge session for the guests. He spoke on Decode Your Mind Power Today by citing examples from the Gita and encouraged everyone to realize how powerful the mind is and that anything impossible can be made possible by using the mind power.

The Lucky Draw contests organized by VARINDIA are another sought-after part of its events. To keep the interest of its audience glued to the sessions, VARINDIA conducted several lucky draws sponsored by Seagate when the guests walked away with 1TB hard drives.

There was also a round table session held with the CIO/CTO/CISOs of the Industry where 25 CIOs participated and gave their insights on the current technology landscape in the country.

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