OITF 2019 highlights the growth areas that is transforming the state

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Soubhagya Routray, Past President, ITAO; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA; S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha; Ayashkant Mohanty, MD - Tatwa Technologies; Cmdr (Dr) J Jena, Dy. Director General - COAI; Debabrata Panigrahi, MD - Institute of Quality and Environment Management Services; Ashok K Mohapatra, Chairman - Organising Committee, VARINDIA IT Cup 

Bhubaneswar, Odisha recently played host to the VARINDIA 11th edition of Odisha Information Technology Fair - OITF 2019that provided a platform to the IT industry to converge and discuss some of the key vital issues concerning the state. The invitees to the event included IT & Telecom honchos, senior Government officials, industry leaders, VARs and SIs. 

The evening commenced with the ceremonial lamp lighting ceremony in the presence of high profile guests that included Chandra Sarathi Behera, Minister of Electronics & Information Technology, Sports & Youth Services, Government of Odisha; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; Priyadarshi Mishra, MLA-Bhubaneswar (North), Govt. of Odisha; CJ Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha and Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAIand Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA.

Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani 
Member of Parliament, Govt. of India 

While talking about the growth of start-ups that are emerging in cities such as Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Pune and Ahmedabad in his opening speech, Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA said that as per the survey done by VARINDIA, there are around 15,000 start-ups in the country that is slowly moving towards 20,000. “India continues to rank third in the global pecking order of start-ups ecosystem, after the US and Israel,” he said. “These start-ups are rapidly embracing the smaller cities over the bigger metros by targeting the growth of key industries such as fintech, health tech, SaaS, agritech, Taxi aggregators, B2B enterprise products (e-commerce) and deep technologies etc. Now the start-ups are really growing to solve the regional specific issues with deep learning and special designed AI techniques. It’s really an amazing experience.During our survey, we visited a few start-ups and found out that they are aiming at solving immediate issues that are affecting people at the grass root level.”

The evening saw the government officials, as well as top industry executives present speak on topics concerning technology in the state. C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha enlightened the audience on the opportunities in Bhubaneswar and it could be turned into a smart city. He said, “We have a very good ICT policy which brings very good incentives for the ICT sector. We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha. We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state.”

Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI spoke about the telecom and digital landscape in the country, while also giving the roadmap for 5G in 2019. “If we look at the industry today, it has invested 15 lakh crore rupees in terms of spectrum and network investments. Odisha has around 17,000 cell towers and Rs 5,000 crore has been invested already, while looking further for growing the network.”

In the corporate presentations, IT Corporates, Sophos and NetApp shared their vision for the state and how to make it smarter. Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos presented his company’s views by co-relating security to the physical world. Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp spoke on how NetApp is committed to bringing the state-of-the-art technology to bring secure and scalable storage technology to the state of Odisha. 

C J Venugopal
Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha

“We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha. We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state very robust and vibrant. I request everyone to participate in this eco-system whenever it is required. Recently we had a meeting with all the ISPs from the communication infrastructure and had a detailed discussion. In the course of the discussion, we understood that out of the 40,000 villages in the country that have no mobile connectivity, close to 10,000 of them are in Odisha. This is extremely poorer state of affairs as far as the communication infrastructure is concerned. It is a matter of deep concern for all of us which we have taken up as a mission to see that every place is connected. The new National Digital Communications Policy talks of a huge 100 billion investments and how data is growing at a pace of 30 times on a year and year basis.”

Rajan S Mathews
Director General, COAI

“In October of 2016, Reliance Jio has brought a significant transformation in the industry in terms of it moving to 4G. Previous to Reliance rolling out its network, there were 3 principal technologies in play – 2G, 3G and 4G. But once Reliance started its network operations, it became very clear that 4G is now the dominant technology. All of the operators are busy implementing 4G roll-outs in almost all the states. So we expect 4G coverage to happen very soon. Reliance has committed that 95% of the country will be covered by 4G in the next 8-9 months, which will be followed closely by Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, etc. When we look at the networks of today, what 4G does is also to prepare the country for 5G. Globally people are already talking about 6G and 5G is already becoming a part of yesterday’s story. The Govt. of India has put together a high level committee to ensure that India does not miss the bus in terms of developing IP, the royalty that is attached to the development of IP, developing manufacturing, training the people for the 5G environment and so on.”

Tausif Siddiqui
Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp

“We power up our customers to change the world with data. The world of technology is changing and we need to achieve a lot. There are a lot many things that need to be done. Technology is being viewed as the backbone and is changing our everyday lives. Every business needs to go through the stage of digital transformation. A lot of organizations nowadays have traditional IT from which they would like to deliver IT services but they cannot reach agility till the time they transform their business. And this is what we precisely do. As a data management company, we help the organizations to digitally transform their IT operations. According to the IDC report that came out in 2017 says that digital transformation spending of companies is going to hit $1.7 trillion. That is a huge budget if seen from an IT perspective and is a 22% increase from 2017. If you see 10 years back, the top organizations used to be in areas of Gas, manufacturing etc. But nowadays if you see, the top organizations are companies like Twitter, Facebook that have completely invested into digital.”

Rishi Sharma
Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos

“Everyone is award of the term ‘virus’. The full form of virus is Vital Information resource under seize. If we co-relate the security to the physical world, the latter has been in existence for the past thousands of years while digitization and computerization have been there for only past 15 years, not more than that. The crime in the physical world has been there for thousands of years and the crime that is happening in the digital world is inspired from the physical world. For instance Ransomware, which is nothing but the kidnapping of the data. The kidnapping used to happen in the real world as well but now that has started taking place in the digital world too. Sophos has been there in the industry for the last 33 years. Over these years our complete focus and forte has been cyber security, starting from endpoint security, scaling to network security and cloud security. Our complete focus is only on security. The tagline of Sophos is – Cyber security made simple.”

The theme for the panel discussion was Unlocking the Potential of Odisha and was moderated by Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA. In Bhubaneswar, almost 90% of the smart city budget is allocated towards Area Based Development, which entails retrofitting, renewal and extensions in 985 acres of the city. This includes projects related to infrastructure engineering and building development, slum housing, green and park areas, road development and accessibility. The discussion delved into how it has become important for a robust infrastructure to be there in Bhubaneswar in order for it to become a smart city. The panelists at the discussion were – Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India, and A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies.

The event also witnessed the award ceremony that felicitated two vendors, Cisco and Sophos and the Regionals VARs from the state of Odisha. While Cisco was awarded in the category of Best Converged Infrastructure, the award for Best Security Services Company went to Sophos Technologies. Five Regional VARs were awarded in the categories of The Best VAR, Odisha; The Best Software Distributor, Odisha; The Best Reseller, Odisha; Best Technology Services, Odisha; and The Best Software Services Company. The names of the winners respectively are - Nigama Comptech, Tristar Software and Solutions, Info care Solutions, Tatwa Technologies, and Suyog Computech.

The event also took the opportunity to felicitate the winners of the 9th VARINDIA IT Cup 2018 Cricket Tournament, which was played by 20 teams representing different companies. The cricket matches were played at Kishore Club Ground, Bhubaneswar and was supported by STPI and Electronics & IT Department, Govt. of Odisha. 

The first semi-final match was played between Esquare and SPARC, where Esquare won the match by 8 wickets. In the second semi-final match played between TCS and Luminous Infoway, the latter (Luminous) won the match by 10 runs. The final match was played between Luminous Infoway and Esquare, in which Luminous Infoway clinched the title, while Esquare emerged as the Runner-up of the 9th VAR INDIA IT CUP 2019. 

The Man of the Final Match award went to Soumya fromLuminous Infoway and S K Mustqul Ali of Luminous Infoway won the Man of the Tournament award. 

Panel Discussion: Unlocking the Potential of Odisha 

(From L to R): Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA (Moderator); Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India; A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies

The theme for the panel discussion was Unlocking the Potential of Odisha and was moderated by Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA.
Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI said that developing the eco-system through scaled manpower and start-ups can become the starting point for large industries to come into the state. These become the main criteria for any industry to come and set up in Odisha.

Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos highlighted the shared responsibility concept. “For an OEM the product has been supplied but the main thing lies with the implementation. So the product will be implemented along with the advice from the OEM by understanding exactly for which purpose that product has been bought for and then transferring that knowledge further to the SI, who will be deploying that particular solution. These are the key points that need to be taken care of so that the implementation does not become a bottleneck for that particular product.”

Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India said that it is not just about selling a product in a particular place but it is also about localized services by working with local partners, who understand the interests and preferences of the local customers better. “The customer is more open to the local partner and then the latter is able to add more value to the eco-system. We have been a partner-led organization and we always look forward to working with local partners and that has always been our priority.”  

Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India said that for augmenting agriculture and farming in terms of their productivity through various government initiatives, a lot of technology research needs to be done in the background so that the right process could be understood.

On how technology has been a big enabler for developing the state of Odisha, A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies said that the way things are moving now, technology is very much required for putting all the things together. “To make cities smarter and citizens more smart, technology is an important enabler whether it is to obtain, retrieve or transfer data.” He further said that Odisha has a very ambitious policy to give impetus to the SME ecosystem in the state, but there are several hiccups and it will take time to come up at par with other states. 

The 9th edition of VARINDIA IT Cup 

VARINDIA organised the 9th edition of VARINDIA IT Cup as the Annual Cricket Tournament, where 20 major SME IT/ITeS companies participated. This year the IT cup was played among 20 teams representing different companies. The cricket matches were played at Kishore Club Ground, Bhubaneswar and was supported by STPI and Electronics & IT Department, Govt. of Odisha.

The true vision to start this VARINDIA IT Cup Cricket, an IT Corporate Cricket League with the Tennis ball, is to bring the hidden talent of every hard working employee of Corporate/PSUs/Govts across the IT and Telecom fraternity in Bhubaneswar, who spends maximum hours working and sitting in 4 x 4 cubicles 24x7. The ultimate mission to start this sport is to bring the Corporate in touch, where they can know each other and experience the real spirit of the game.

The first semi-final match was played between Esquare and SPARC, where Esquare won the match by 8 wickets. In the second semi-final match played between TCS and Luminous Infoway, the latter (Luminous) won the match by 10 runs. The final match was played between Luminous Infoway and Esquare, in which Luminous Infoway clinched the title, while Esquare emerged as the Runner-up of the 9th VAR INDIA IT CUP 2019.

The Man of the Final Match award went to Soumya from Luminous Infoway and S K Mustqul Ali of Luminous Infoway won the Man of the Series award.

AWARD  WINNERS 

Nigama Computech Receives the award FOR the Best VAR,Odisha		Tatwa Technologies receives the award FOR the Best Technology Services Company,Odisha		SOPHOS  Receives the award FOR the Best Security Services Company
Infocare  receives the award FOR the Best Reseller,Odisha		Suyog Computech  receives THE award FOR the Best Software Servics Company,Odisha		Infocare  receives the award FOR the Best Reseller,Odisha

Lucky Draw at the event