VAR Press

Automation is the Need of the Hour: 10th VARINDIA EIITF

by VARINDIA 2019-07-23

It is true that disruption brings technology innovation and advancement. Digital transformation has been adopted by most of the organizations to harmonize business processes. Organizations are empowering its employees with updated technologies to work quicker, easier and more in-sync. Automation has become an imperative technology for organizations to make things easier for employees, increase productivity, cost savings, improve customer experiences etc. On the other hand, it is also a fact that it'll affect the job industry. On this backdrop, the 10th edition of Eastern India Information Technology Fair (EIITF) took place at Hotel The Park in Kolkata. This year the topic centered around “Transforming businesses through Automation”.

The session has witnessed with the presence of industry celebrated names Prodip Mukhopadhyay , MD, WEBEL, Government of West Bengal, Manjit Nayak, Additional Director- STPI, Kolkata, Man Mohan Goyal, Advisor IT, Tide Water Oil Co, Sandeep Pradhan, CIO, Exide Industries and Saradindu Paul,  V.P & Group CIO - Electrosteel Castings.

The event kick started with the key note of Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA. While delivering his speech he said, “Transforming Business Through Automation, it is on the top of the mind of the CXOs for 2019. Disruption is an inevitable result of technological innovation and advancement. It is also a fact that newer technologies are bringing newer opportunities in business and investment into certain emerging technologies, offering both quantitative and qualitative insights.”

He further adds, “Our recent Union Budget reflects as a platform for announcing major policy pronouncement of the Modi 2.0 government. To be fair to the finance minister, the Budget speech had a decent component of information technology; the need for India to move in technology value chain; digital transformation that are taking place and many other initiatives. These are welcome and redeeming features of the Budget. Yet, I feel that the nation has to introspect whether technology and information technology have been assigned their due importance in the Budget.”

The evening followed the auspicious lighting of lamp ceremony in the presence of Manjit Nayak, Additional Director - STPI, Prodip Mukhopadhyay, MD, WEBEL, Man Mohan Goyal, Advisor IT, Tide Water Oil Co, Sandeep Pradhan, CIO, Exide Industries, Saradindu Paul, V.P & Group CIO - Electro steel Castings, Sameer Bhatia, Director & Country Head ( South Asia)- Seagate Technology, Ramachandran Ramamoorthy, Head India- Logistics & Customs- Foxconn, Sanjeev Sinha, President IT- India Power Corp. Ltd., Arjit Das Gupta, Head IT- Rupa & Co. Ltd., Bibek Maity, CIO- Lux Industries Ltd., Jitendra Trikha, General Manager (Operations) - Aditya Infotech, Viloo Williams, CIO & Head Digital Transformation - C.K. Birla Hospitals, Gopal Rangaraj, President & CIO- Emami Cement & Agrotech and Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA.

Man Mohan Goyal, Advisor IT- Tide Water Oil Company: “Today, the trend is there is a little bit of Digital in our lives and I would say little is a misnomer, there is a lot of digital in our lives. From a CIO point of view it is important to understand what we mean by digital transformation. Digital transformation is a deep transformation of organization and business activities, processes, competencies and business models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a whole lot of new technologies which are available to everybody now days and the accelerating impact across all sections of society in a very strategic manner and in a prioritized way, so it is the essence of Digital Transformation.”

Sandeep Pradhan, CIO- Exide Industries: “If you see the world’s largest taxi company - Uber, they do not have any taxi, world’s largest valuable retailer – Alibaba, they do not have any stock, all are IT tools, software. It will drive you. Within a few years, traditional business models will disappear from the market. We have to be ready for digitization. What are the impact on people and organizations due to digitization? Today we are spending 70% time for the mundane job activities. We are spending only 30% time for strategy and growth. By 2020, it will be reversed. This is only because of automation and digitization. By 2035 due to the cutting-edge technology, 94% of accountant jobs will be automated, 89% of security guards will be replaced by drone technology, 75% call centers will be replaced by Chatbot. 71% service technicians, 66% legal associates, 48% programmers, all jobs will be automated only because of the digital disruption Automation. But we will lose only 5% of job as new market and dimension will be created. It will kill the traditional market.”

Hemant Chhabria, CEO, Just Video: “Branding, Reputation, Social (digital/physical), Funnels are the four combinations needed to have your prospects thinking about you 24/7. To survive in business, you have to be the brand in the industry. There is a concept called funnel hacking where we reverse engineer someone’s business model, then we apply it in our processes and then we innovate. Most of the success business models here work similarly and they are successful.”

Prodip Mukhopadhyay, M.D. WEBEL, Government. Of West Bengal: To avoid repetitive jobs, enhance productivity and reduce errors we basically adopt Automation. Since time immemorial, the need for automation is there but it has largely got the importance during 2nd World War. Initially automation used to happen by means of mechanical components and parts. The software has come subsequently. Software and hardware is now working jointly for automation. People want to enhance performance, productivity, reduce error and free human being for a better kind of job, considering these, the current value of Automation market in India is around $ 2 billion. By another three to four years of time it (industrial automation) will get double folded.

Vivek Upman, Enterprise Lead (South Asia), Seagate Technology: We have been manufacturing hardware and this is our 40th year. We started off with a small disc kit to 16TB hard drive that we have recently launched. The global R&D support center of Seagate is in India in Pune, that is a kindly of focus Seagate has on Indian infrastructure, brains or technology to help go further. This becomes the center of technological hub, the innovation, automation, machine learning etc. We are in the middle of the technological shift. For last 40 years Seagate has done something like data maping. At present we are at IT 4.0 which is basically stepping into the zone of 5G and it is going to change fundamentally how data moves across, it will be data creating data.”

Talking on Enterprise storage and security, Subhasish Gupta, Regional Director (India & SAARC)-Extreme Networks said, “Couple of years back we have been talking about securing the core but today the edge is going to be the most susceptible point because all IoT devices are getting connected on a wireless platform. 75% of IoT devices are on wireless network. So today the entire network security threats starts at the end point which is where you need to look at how do you secure the end point.”

Heramb Thuse, Head Cloud Solutions & Presales- Crayon Software: “You can look at Crayon as technology consultant for various kinds of need, may it be at the beginning or middle of digital transformation, also may it be you want to understand how you use cloud, IoT etc. We are present in 22 countries and growing at 30% year on year CAGR. We help our customers in complex technologies.

Autmation is a need and it is no more a want. If you apply automate an efficient process it will give you multiple effects but if you automate an inefficient system it will add inefficiency. So it is very important that the automation piece where do we apply in our business is important.”

VARINDIA also recognized the VARS of the Eastern India in the event. The list is below:

Best VAR - Lalani Infotech Ltd.

10th EIITF 2019