PAGE - 07 4 MUST-HAVE CYBERSECURITY SKILLS FOR YOUTH TO COMBAT CYBER THREATS Authored by Sunil Sharma, Managing Director- Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos www. d i g italt erminal.in
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COVER STORY
TECH BRANDS ARE VERY MUCH OPTIMISTIC QUALITYABOUT & AFFORDABILITY DRIVING TECH TRENDS UPCOMING TWS MARKET GROWTH IN INDIA Publisher & Editor : Rajeev Ranjan Executive Editor : Jyoti Janda Assistant Content Manager : Jai Prakash Content Coordinator : Suraj Rawat Office Coordinator : Raju Thapa Consulting Art Direction : Vikas Sharma
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Visualiser : Shubham Tomar / Akriti Arora Production Head : Rajiv Singh
NEWS IN BRIEF
CES 2021
LAPPY CORNER
Marketing Executive : Balvinder Singh
PAGE NO - 06 Lenovo Unveils Two New Yoga Laptops, Backed By Intel 11th Gen Processor
PAGE NO - 10 -15 Despite Pandemic Challenge, CES 2021 Witnessed Ground-breaking Tech Innovations in Virtual Expo
PAGE NO - 16 GIGABYTE Z490 Motherboards Will Support 11th Gen. IntelŽ Core™ Processors
SPOTLIGHT
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VAIO Makes Comeback in India with Launch of E15 and SE14 Laptops
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LAPPY CORNER
LENOVO UNVEILS TWO NEW YOGA LAPTOPS, BACKED BY INTEL 11TH GEN PROCESSOR Lenovo expands its Yoga lineup with the launch of two new laptops, Yoga 7i and Yoga 9i. These laptops are powered by intel’s latest and powerful 11th generation Tiger Lake processor. Both the laptops boasts ground-breaking features that enhance the user experience. Lenovo announced the launch of Lenovo Yoga 7i and Yoga 9i laptops, powered by Intel’s latest 11th generation Tiger Lake processor which is currently one of the best processors for thin-and-light laptops across Windows. With the latest generation of processing power, the new Yoga laptops are built and designed to empower consumers to leap into smart, productive activities with AI-powered and uncompromised performance. Lenovo earlier also launched the IdeaPad Slim 5i powered by the same 11th generation Tiger Lake processor. Yoga 7i: This laptop is equipped with 11th Generation Intel Core processors and Intel Iris Xe graphics. It is built for comfort and boundary-breaking performance with its rounded edges, four-side narrow bezel design that offers 88% active area ratio, a 360-degree hinge for stability while transitioning from tablet to laptop mode, Rapid Charge Express, and Intelligent Cooling for optimising the performance with up to 16 hours of battery life. The Yoga 7i also features Dolby Atmos Speaker System, and Lenovo Smart Assist combined with a fingerprint reader for biometric authentication and TrueBlock privacy shutter. It is available in Slate Grey colour. Yoga 9i: It is thoughtfully designed, stylish 2-in-1 laptop with aerospacegrade aluminium and has been tested to withstand the everyday wear and tear under several conditions, including UV light exposure and tension. The Yoga 9i is equipped with an Ultrasonic Fingerprint Reader for a more accurate login, Smart Sensor TouchPad with up to 50% more clickable active surface area that vibrates when clicked, and a redesigned TrueStrike keyboard for all-day typing comfort. Other thoughtful details in this device include a webcam privacy shutter, a garaged pen with elastometer nib, AIpowered attention-sensing software – Glance by Mirametrix, Lenovo’s Connected Home Security, Lenovo
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Intelligent Thermal System 4.0, and Lenovo Q-Control. The laptop is also equipped with a 4K touchscreen IPS VESA DisplayHDR, an improved Rotating Sound Bar for immersive audio, and Super Resolution 2.0 that automatically upscales videos to higher resolution. Shailendra Katyal – Executive Director, Consumer PCSD, Lenovo India said, “In the post-COVID scenario of PC usage and time spent per day on the device increasing dramatically, we see consumers wanting the best usage experience from their laptops. With this is mind, we are announcing our latest lifestyle laptop range under our flagship Yoga brand. Lenovo Yoga has always stood for innovation, style and performance with many first-to-market features to its credit and we are happy to share that the current range does full justice to the premium innovation positioning of Yoga. The current series is powered by the latest 11th Gen Intel tiger Lake processors, has premium aesthetics and styling and has a host of AI enabled features. We are confident that these will ensure the best usage experience for consumers in this period of high usage of devices.” IdeaPad Slim 5i: Lenovo also recently launched its IdeaPad Slim 5i, equipped with up to 14’’ & 15.6” FHD (1920x1080) IPS and up to 300nits anti-glare 45% colour gamut display that provides edgy visuals, and a larger, theater-like viewing experience. With an in-built physical privacy webcam shutter and an integrated fingerprint reader like all recent Lenovo devices, the IdeaPad Slim 5i has been designed with privacy and security in mind. The laptop is soft and comfortable to the touch, with a durable paint that creates a fabric-like feel on the surface. Its one-hand-open feature lets users directly open the laptop to 135 degrees and thanks to the Lenovo Rapid Charge, this laptop offers upto 3-hour long battery life with a 15-minute charge.
Yoga 7i
Yoga 9i
IdeaPad Slim 5i
The laptop comes in Graphite Grey colour. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i has a starting price of INR 63,990 and is now available on Lenovo.com, online partner platform - Amazon.in, and Lenovo exclusive offline stores. Yoga 7i and Yoga 9i will be available starting INR 99,000 and INR 1,69,990 respectively. www.digitalterminal.in
OPINION
4 MUST-HAVE CYBERSECURITY SKILLS FOR YOUTH TO COMBAT CYBER THREATS Authored by Sunil Sharma, Managing Director- Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented increase in cyberattacks all around the world, highlighting the crucial need to increase cybersecurity awareness among both businesses and people. While IT security has become a vital aspect of an enterprise framework, businesses are today facing a lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals in India.
leverage a firewall to prevent unauthorized access to the network and filter its traffic. A strong knowledge of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), and its co-relation with firewalls, will also a long way in helping to stop an attack before it can happen.
According to a recent survey done by Sophos - More than one third (35%) of ransomware victims said that recruiting and retaining skilled IT security professionals was their single biggest challenge when it comes to cybersecurity, compared with just 19% of those who hadn’t been hit.
Additionally, being certified in all these technologies can fetch one a high paying job, in addition to becoming a valuable resource to the cybersecurity universe at large.
Over 80% Indian engineers are unemployable and hence, it is no surprise that cybersecurity industry also faces similar talent gap. Highly skilled people are required for managing next-gen cybersecurity solutions and carrying out 24x7 threat hunting, detection and response to combat next-gen cyber threats, which are advancing as we speak. Hence, it is imperative for youth to hone key cybersecurity skills to catch up with the ongoing technology disruption. Some of these include -
While seemingly obvious, it is important to note that the key to being a cybersecurity practitioner is having a critical thought process. Foresight, analytical thinking, and a strong understanding of how hackers exploit a system is a musthave skill, to thrive in the industry. And while it can take years to hone, even a little intuition on the part of the resource can go a long way.
Intrusion detection/Firewall /IPS/ IDS skills Backdoor codes and powerful Trojans will always be looking to steal confidential data by breaching authentication layers. In this case, having not only a strong intrusion detection software but also a technologically savvy resource can potentially save a company millions. A next-generation firewall is a must security solution to have. However, one also needs skills that help to www.digitalterminal.in
CRITICAL THINKING
Application security development As cyberattacks become more brazen, there’s never been a better time to build on application security development skills. One must be able to enhance the security of any given application by identifying, fixing, and preventing its vulnerabilities from being exposed. Additionally, as an expert in this space, testing, and validation of software during its development lifecycle is crucial to be completed before an application can be deployed.
Black hat thinking They say if you want to make a home
or office burglar-proof, hire the bestknown thief. Similarly, when working in the cybersecurity space, it is important to think like a hacker. With the number of cyberattacks increasing day by day, being able to anticipate an attack is often more useful than working on damage control afterward. Penetration thinking is a great skill to master, towards taking a proactive approach in the cybersecurity space. With cyber threats coming from supply chain attacks, phishing emails, software exploits, vulnerabilities, insecure wireless networks, and much more, it has caught the attention of the Government of India. In the Union Budget 2020, the setting up of a specialized cyber forensic university was proposed, along with plans to set up 150 higher education institutes that would cater to the skills gap in the cybersecurity sector. Will government initiatives, along with heightened awareness, and potential of cybersecurity as a career bridge this gap? Only time will tell, but India is certainly on the right track. JANUARY 2021
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MARKET OPPORTUNITY
STORAGE PARTNERS BETTING BIG ON BOOMING INDIAN SSD MARKET
Image Source : https://www.itpro.co.uk/
The storage partners in India see huge growth potentials in the SSD business as the demand for reliable storage has increased due to the new normal of distance learning and remote working. Partners say that SSDs are increasingly becoming popular in both consumer and enterprise segments due to its host of benefits and advantages over the conventional storage solutions. Solid State Drives are the next big wave in the storage industry because of its performance, speed and reliability. While HDDs are cheaper and can offer more storage space, SSDs are faster, lighter, durable, and use less energy. SSDs have already witnessed large scale adoption in the enterprise and SMB sectors due to low TCO. Though HDDs dominate the consumer segment, SSDs are slowly creating its mark in this space as well. According to CMR’s India Hard Drive Market Review for H1 CY2020, the India Consumer Internal SSD market (SATA & PCIe) shipments recorded 6% YoY growth in H1 2020. The WFH, LFH and online content consumption were the key drivers for this growth. The 6Wresearch suggest that Indian Solid State Drive Market will record $128 million by 2022. “The storage demand of users has increased exponentially due to low-cost broadband and PC and smartphones penetration. The WFH and LFH have further fuelled the demand for internal storage. Though the demand for SSDs is rising steadily, many consumers still prefer HDDs due to low cost and more storage space. Whereas SSDs
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are more preferred in the enterprise space due to its low TCO. We fulfil the demand according to consumers’ preference”, said Mr. Mohinder Singh Mutneja, Proprietor of Genuine Computer. SSDs are built on NAND flash memory, which deliver superior performance, efficiency and durability and hence make it expensive than HDDs. However, a little extra expense on SSD storage can save future upgrade expenditure. “Due to the introduction of WFH and LFH and usage of greater internet usage demand for SSDs are drastically increased. SSD’s are much faster, quieter, not susceptible to shock, low power consuming and reliability while comparing to SATA HDDs. Consumers should see these advantages as well while making a choice for storage solution for their needs”, said Mr. Jess Joseph, AGM, Star One IT. Partners say that with increasing consumption, the price gap between HDDs and SSDs will narrow down soon. Mr. Shijo. K. Thomas - CEO of M/s Oxygen - The Digital Shop said, “Demand for storage solutions have only increased in the last one year. Laptops and desktops have become more relevant due to the social distancing norms. Consumers now want high storage capacities along with speed and hence, inclination towards SSDs is rising. At present, a high storage capacity (1TB) SSDs are expensive. However, this price is likely to come down due to increased demand and higher production.” RP tech India is the # No 1 SSD distributor in the country with a market share of around
30-40 per cent. The Company has been instrumental in growing penetration of SSDs in the market. RP tech India recently launched the ‘SSD Upgrade Offer’ for end customers aimed at creating a buzz around its latest SSDs portfolio. The company offers value added support along with product availability that makes it easy for partners to push SSD storage solutions. Appreciating the support from team RP tech, Mr. Anand Dalvi, proprietor of Kumar Systems said, “RP tech inventory supply was excellent during the lockdown and also they supported partner to create a market of storage as value addition.” Endorsing similar views, Mr. Joseph said, “Support from RP Tech India is highly recommendable. The key differentiator is the number of branches and availability of products experts in each branch.” RP tech India is bullish over the business and encourages partners to tap the potentials in the SSD segment. Highlighting the prospects of SSD business in India, Mr. Rajesh Goenka, Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India said, “As the demand grows, the SSD prices are falling rapidly making it more affordable. Today SSD penetration is almost 50 per cent and the business segment has huge potentials to grow in the next 3-5 years. It is a time partners take this business opportunity and educate their customers about upgrading SSDs for higher storage capacity and speed.”
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CES 2021
DESPITE PANDEMIC CHALLENGE, CES 2021 WITNESSED GROUND-BREAKING TECH INNOVATIONS IN VIRTUAL EXPO
CES 2021 successfully concluded at Las Vega on 14th January 2021. The prominent tech show was hosted digitally for the first time ever due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This virtual show witnessed game-changing futuristic technology innovations from all leading tech brands. CES always remains big attractions for tech people around the globe who wait for this show every year. Even though, Covid impacted all industry, Tech brands have held their nerves in such huge crisis to show the way of hope for all of us. As the year 2021 will have almost same challenge, technology solutions will pave the way for business continuity in year 2021. Check out this exclusive story from DT on key announcements from tech brands at CES 2021. 10
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CES 2021
CES 2021 successfully concluded at Las Vegas on 10th January 2021. The event witnessed the launch of next gen products and solutions which will drive the IT industry’s growth over next few years. The products launched with Artificial Intelligence and backbone of networking ‘5G Technology’ were the key attraction points at CES. This event was truly an outstanding platform for tech players to showcase their innovations for a better digital future. The first-ever, all-digital CES® 2021 made history as the largest digital tech event. Almost 2000 companies unveiled next-gen innovation for a better future. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, the all-digital CES 2021 featured product launches from startups to tech giants, keynotes from global industry leaders, live entertainment from Hollywood and more than 100 hours of conference programming. “The all-digital CES 2021 engaged the global tech community to experience innovation, make connections and conduct business,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CTA. “CES showed how the pandemic accelerated the arc of innovation and illustrated the resilience and innovative spirit of our industry. From the latest innovations for the home and entertainment, and advances in 5G, vehicle technology, AI and digital health, the technologies at CES 2021 will pave the way for a brighter tomorrow.” CES 2021 kicked off Jan. 11 with Media Day, featuring 19 press conferences with companies including Bosch, Canon, Caterpillar, Hisense, Intel, LG Electronics, MercedesBenz, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics and Sony breaking news and launching products. Trends from Media Day focused on “the home” with innovation that personalizes work, health and entertainment at home, as well as advancements in transportation and mobility. Almost 2000 companies launched products during the all-digital CES 2021, including almost 700 startups from 37 countries. Exhibiting companies included tech giants,
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such as Intel, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics and Sony, as well as non-traditional tech companies, from AARP to Bridgestone, Caterpillar, Indy Autonomous Challenge, John Deere, L’Oréal, Moen and Procter & Gamble. New companies exhibiting at CES 2021 included ASUS, BioIntelliSense, Bose, Sono Motors and Volvo Penta. “The industry came together digitally at CES 2021. This was a medium for companies to make announcements, launch products and connect with their audiences,” said Karen Chupka, executive vice president, CES. “The all-digital format brought new voices to the tech conversation.”
KEYNOTE ANNOUNCEMENTS Industry leaders took to the all-digital CES keynote stage to make major announcements, including: Verizon: Hans Vestberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon, demonstrated the immersive 5G experience across sports, education, connected communities and live music, and announced partnerships with the NFL, UPS, Live Nation Clubs and Theaters, The Met and the Smithsonian. General Motors: Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors (GM), launched new product lines from GM, including the Cadillac eVTOL, a concept air taxi; and a new business unit devoted to electrifying the goods delivery market. AMD: Dr. Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD, revealed the new Ryzen 5000 series mobile processors with two categories – the H-series, for laptops intended for gaming and content creation and the U-series, for ultraportable notebooks.
of Mastercard, and Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, predicted tech trends they expect to see over the next decade. Walmart: Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, discussed ways 5G, AI and robotics will change the business; how Walmart pivoted to keep employees healthy and customers satisfied; and the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Microsoft: Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, gave his vision on ensuring cyber security and customer privacy protection, and discussed the tech industry’s responsibility to exercise our conscience. Entertainment Transformed: Michael Kassan, chairman and CEO of MediaLink, and Ann Sarnoff, chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, described the ever-evolving entertainment industry and what the industry will look like in a post-pandemic world. Maverick Carter, CEO of The Springhill Co.; Adrienne Lofton, VP, North America Marketing, NIKE; and Deborah Wahl, Global CMO of General Motors, discussed how marketers and brands are adjusting and creating in today’s landscape.
KEY THEMES AT CES 2021 The all-digital CES 2021 featured groundbreaking innovation that will improve our world, from health to safety, sustainability and accessibility. Tech Innovation Accelerated by COVID-19 Tech companies innovated during the pandemic, with companies at CES 2021 featuring smart masks, disinfecting robots, body sensors that detect COVID-19 symptoms and smart air filtration systems. Consumer Privacy and Trust
Best Buy: Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy, shared how the company shifted during the pandemic and put the customer in control of buying, whether from home, curbside or in person.
The heads of privacy at Amazon, Google and Twitter discussed new privacy regulations and the need to increase consumer trust, stating that tech companies must give users more control over their data.
Future Reimagined: Michael Miebach, CEO
Global Tech Challenge
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CES 2021
The Global Tech Challenge, launched at CES 2020, in partnership with the World Bank and CTA, rewards tech solutions in three areas: digital health in East Africa, resilience in India and gender equality around the world. The selected winners were announced this week from more than 1000 applications, with three winners selected for gender equality, 10 for resilience and 17 for digital health. Space Tech NASA was joined by leaders from Lockheed Martin and Space Tango to discuss technology’s role in accelerating space research and breakthroughs that will benefit all of humanity. Global Reach of CES 2021 CES 2021 was truly a global event, with attendees joining from over 150 countries and over 1300 exhibitors coming from outside the United States, including more than 530 international startups. Country Group Organizers brought large delegations of exhibitors included Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Japan and South Korea. CES 2021 featured startups from Nigeria and Russia for the first time.
in the things that matter most. Lenovo is announcing 4 new models in its acclaimed Legion line-up: Lenovo Legion 7 (16” AMD) Lenovo Legion Slim 7 (15” AMD) Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16” AMD) Lenovo Legion 5 (15” and 17” AMD) Available from February 2021, the new Lenovo Legion line-up is packed with features to push the boundaries of laptop gaming: AMD Ryzen™ 5000 H-series Mobile Processors Lenovo Legion’s new 2021 laptops are amongst the first to feature the next-gen AMD Ryzen™ 5000 H-series Mobile Processors. With elite gaming performance on a notebook with great battery life, you will never need to compromise on your gaming laptop again. NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 3000 Series GPUs
LEADING TECH BRANDS UNVEILED THEIR REVOLUTIONARY PRODUCTS AT CES 2021
Experience the ultimate gaming performance with the latest NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3000 Series Laptop GPUs for gamers and creators. Supercharged with Ray Tracing Cores, Tensor Cores and streaming multiprocessors, the new Legion lineup delivers the most realistic ray-traced graphics ever, cutting-edge new features, and the power of artificial intelligence.
LENOVO SHOWCASED ITS POWERFUL LINEUP OF LEGION GAMING PRODUCTS AT CES 2021
ACER UNVEILED NEW ASPIRE AND NITRO NOTEBOOKS, POWERED BY AMD RYZEN PROCESSORS
True gamers live for the thrill of levelling up their gaming performance. Lenovo Legion is going all out to deliver what gamers want this CES® with the latest in AMD and NVIDIA processors, high-resolution 16” displays, AI-driven frame rates and exciting upgrades
Acer announced new Nitro 5 gaming notebooks, plus new Aspire 5 and 7 notebooks, powered by AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Mobile Processors. The powerful new AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors deliver fast and efficient performance for laptops. With up to 8 cores of processing power, they combine low-power high-bandwidth memory with low power consumption and up to double the data rates achieved by the previous generation of RAM, making them ideal for the new Nitro and Aspire notebooks. NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 30 Series Laptop GPUs, powered by the NVIDIA Ampere architecture, increase energy efficiency by up
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to 2x, accelerate performance dramatically and introduce third-generation Max-Q technologies for thin and lightweight designs. GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs deliver stunning ray-traced gaming experiences in Cyberpunk 2077 and other top titles, and enable creators to produce incredible content using hundreds of GPU-accelerated apps. The Acer Nitro 5 is line of a beautifully balanced notebooks aimed at casual gamers who are ready for something better. These devices have been painstakingly designed in order to cater to the needs of any PC enthusiast, whether that’s exploring the world’s ever growing catalogue of game titles or editing montages of gameplay.
The Acer Aspire 5 and Aspire 7 lines are powerful, well rounded notebooks with understated designs, ideal for more conventional users who particularly care about performance, display quality, weight and battery life. The Aspire series is all about providing users with everything necessary to express themselves and their passions.
ASUS LAUNCHED Z590 MOTHERBOARD LINEUP AT CES 2021 Following the launch of the Intel® Z590 desktop platform at CES 2021, ASUS announced its new Z590 series motherboard lineup which spans the entire spectrum of top-end ROG Maximus XIII, high-performance ROG Strix, durable TUF Gaming, and steadfast Prime motherboards. These motherboards are designed to maximize the full potential of the 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and feature beefed-up VRMs for responsive and reliable power delivery, along with enhanced VRM and M.2 thermal solutions. Comprehensive connectivity options include onboard USB www.digitalterminal.in
CES 2021
3.2 Gen 2X2 Type-C®, up to 10 Gb Ethernet and future-proof Intel WiFi 6E. In addition, a host of AI-powered technologies — AI Overclocking, AI Cooling, AI Networking and Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation — allow users to optimize their system with minimal effort. A full reveal of each series will be held in the coming weeks. entertaining ways to stay connected with friends and family,” said HyperX. “HyperX’s new product lineup reflects our ongoing commitment to the ever growing gaming community to deliver best in class products for whenever or however one plays.”
ASUS will also be releasing a wide range of Intel 500-series boards based on the H570, B560 and H510 chipsets. For more information on these products, please refer to the ASUS Edge Up content hub and the dedicated Intel 500-series information center. Upcoming firmware updates will also enable ASUS 400-series motherboards to support the latest 11th Gen Core processors. These updates will be announced on the Intel 400-series family information page.
HYPERX INTRODUCED POWERFUL GAMING PRODUCTS AT CES 2021 HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, unveiled new additions to its award-winning product line at CES 2021. Participating in the digital version of CES this year, HyperX continues to support the gaming community by expanding its professional-grade products used by gaming pros and HyperX fans. The new products revealed during the virtual show include the company’s first 60 percent keyboard, the HyperX Alloy Origins™ 60 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard; a new charging accessory, the ChargePlay Duo™ Controller Charging Station for Xbox Series X/S and expanded availability1 of the Pulsefire Haste Gaming Mouse, Cloud II Wireless Gaming Headset and Cloud Revolver™ Gaming Headset + 7.1. “Gaming became an even more go-to activity this year as people searched for safe, www.digitalterminal.in
HyperX Alloy Origins 60 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard: The Alloy Origins 60 keyboard features an ultra-compact 60 percent form factor with a space-saving layout to maximize desktop real estate for ultimate mouse movement. The keyboard uses HyperX red linear mechanical switches designed with a shorter actuation point and shorter travel time for more responsive switch action. HyperX Alloy Origins 60 utilizes exposed LED designs of HyperX Red switches and PBT double-shot keycaps with secondary functions printed on the sides for quick recognition. HyperX NGENUITY software allows users to personalize lighting, Game Mode and macro settings, offering up to three profiles with on-board memory. HyperX ChargePlay Duo Controller Charging Station for Xbox: The Official Xbox licensed HyperX ChargePlay Duo is designed for Xbox and compatible with Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One wireless controllers. Two additional battery doors will be included to fit onto Xbox Series X/S wireless controllers. The product features a quick docking design on the weighted base and LED indicators that display charging status for each controller. Each ChargePlay Duo also includes two 1400mAH rechargeable battery packs.
ASUS ROG LAUNCHED ITS LATEST GAMING INNOVATIONS AT CES 2021
ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) announced its first interactive experience and an exciting lineup of gaming weaponry and technologies at the CES 2021 ROG For Those Who Dare virtual launch event. The event marked the debut of the ROG Flow X13 gaming laptop with the XG Mobile external GPU, the dual-screen ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE gaming laptop, Strix SCAR 17 gaming laptop, the 32-inch ROG Swift PG32UQ 4K 144 Hz gaming monitor with HDMI 2.1 for console and PC gaming, as well as the ROG Claymore II gaming keyboard and the ROG Gladius III Wireless gaming mouse. These latest products and more are available to explore in ROG Citadel XV, a boundary-breaking interactive experience introduced during the ROG For Those Who Dare virtual event livestream and available to download for free on Steam.
ROG Citadel XV extends ROG’s reach from hardware and software to gaming content to enrich the gaming ecosystem and overall gaming experience. The experience takes gamers through the ROG Citadel underground fortress, where they’ll experience the latest cutting-edge ROG products and technologies being developed. They will be taken to several futuristic Cyberpunk-inspired laboratories to view the new ROG offerings. The lab designs reflect the ROG design language based around the themes of Vanguard, Fusion and Rebel. Once through the fortress, an arcade-inspired first-person shooter mini-game is then unlocked, where participants can test their aim and reflexes by taking down 3D targets moving across the screen. ASUS ROG announced six new additions to its innovative product portfolio: - ROG Flow X13 Gaming Laptop - ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE Laptop - ROG Strix SCAR 17 Laptop - ROG Swift PG32UQ Gaming Monitor - ROG Claymore II Mechanical RGB Gaming Keyboard - ROG Gladius III Wireless Gaming Mouse
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CES 2021
INTEL LAUNCHED NEW PROCESSORS FOR AN ENRICHED PC EXPERIENCE In a world where computing is pervasive and intelligence is distributed across every surface – from the cloud to the network to the intelligent edge –Intel at highlighted how it is driving technology leadership to define the future of computing for people, business and society. To help people navigate through this extraordinary time, Intel introduced new processors for business, education, mobile and gaming computing platforms – all designed to offer the premium PC experiences people deserve, with the most choices and no limits.
designed on Intel’s 10nm architecture, delivering up to 35% better overall application performance and up to 78% better graphics performance gen on gen. This enables smooth application performance and browsing while multitasking, plus advanced camera and connectivity features for an enriched video conferencing and viewing experience. 11th Gen Intel® Core™ H-series Mobile Processors Intel launched a new line of 11th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors for gaming that extends the 11th Gen mobile family of products and pushes the limits of what’s possible for enthusiast-level gaming in laptops as thin as 16 millimeters. Led by the Intel® Core™ i7 Special Edition 4-core processor with up to 5 gigahertz (GHz) Turbo, these H35 processors are specifically targeted for ultraportable gaming. They feature new Gen 4 PCIE architecture for connecting to latest discrete graphics and deliver amazingly low latency and immersive game play on the go. For mobile enthusiasts who want desktop-caliber gaming and creation performance, Intel also announced an 8-core processor that will start shipping later this quarter. This platform is unique in the industry with features that would normally only be found in high-end desktop systems – including up to 5GHz, Gen 4 PCIE x20 architecture for fastest storage and discrete graphics, and Intel® Killer™ Wi-fi 6E (Gig+).
Introducing 11th Gen Intel® Core™ vPro®: The Best Platform for Business For business, Intel introduced the 11th Gen Intel vPro platform, an unrivaled business platform delivering the industry’s highest performance and world’s most comprehensive hardware-based security. The new 11th Gen Intel Core vPro processors unveiled today are based on the world’s best business processor for thin-and-light laptops. Intel also launched the Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform, the best laptop experience for business users. Laptop designs are verified on the Intel Evo vPro platform are stylish, thin and light and provide an amazing immersive visual experience. They also offer remarkable responsiveness, instant wake and real-world battery life. New Processors and Partnerships for Best Education Platform Use of the PC as an essential education tool has accelerated greatly worldwide over the past year. To meet the growing needs of students, Intel introduced new N-series Intel® Pentium® Silver and Celeron® processors with an unmatched balance of performance, media and collaboration for education systems. The processors are 14
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KINGSTON SHOWCASED ITS LATEST NVME SSD LINEUP AT CES 2021 Kingston Technology announced the launch of its upcoming NVMe SSD roadmap along with Kingston’s Workflow Station and Readers at the all-digital CES® 2021. Despite of adopting a new format this year, Kingston will bring its industry leading SSDs to the forefront for attendees to experience the best-in-class technology virtually.
customize a file offload setup that fits their needs allowing them to transfer video, photos, and audio from multiple sources at once1. Whether on a 4K/8K multi-cam shoot with portable audio recorders or filming B-Roll with drones and GoPros, with the customizable Workflow Station Dock you can simultaneously connect the USB miniHub, SD or microSD readers that the shoot requires to transfer footage quickly. Workflow Readers can also be used standalone by connecting to a laptop via the included USB-C® cable giving users the flexibility to have their workflow on-the-go. Whether shooting on location or working back at your desk, Kingston Is With You.
Kingston is poised to continue its SSD market leadership position with both new client and data center U.2 NVMe drives this year. The new offerings include its first PCIe NVMe Gen 4.0 SSDs as well as an external USB 3.2 SSD: Ghost Tree: Our upcoming High-Performance Gen 4.0 drive is perfect for the content creator and power user. Codenamed “Ghost Tree,” Kingston is targeting speeds of 7000MB/s read and write, stretching PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 8-channel to the limit with capacities ranging from 1TB-4TB. NV Series: The latest Gen 3.0 x4 SSD is the ideal entry-level drive for first-time NVMe users with capacities up to 2TB. XS2000: Kingston’s all-new USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 external drive with 500GB - 2TB capacities is perfect as additional storage for photos, videos and other files. The USB Type-C®1 interface allows for super-fast data transfers up to 2,000MB/s. DC1500M: The Data Center 1500M is an update to the DC1000M adding support for multi-namespaces. The U.2 NVMe SSD is designed to support a wide range of data-intensive workloads including cloud computing, web hosting and virtual infrastructures.
Kingston’s Workflow Station and Readers give users the freedom to create and www.digitalterminal.in
CES 2021
ECS INTRODUCED LIVA Q1A / Q1A PLUS MULTI-FUNCTIONAL MINI PC Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is proud to present the latest ultra-small and power efficient mini PC – LIVA Q1A/ Q1A Plus. The size is only 74 x 74x 34.6 mm, just as light as a mouse yet with desktop performance. LIVA Q1A features quad core Rockchip SoC and Q1A Plus features quad and dual core Rockchip SoC. It can save 15% of power consumption but increase 50% of performance. Designed by ARM-based CPU and the aluminum CPU heat sink, LIVA Q1A series can keep cool without fan. The fanless design makes it silent and energy-saving. LIVA Q1A series supports up to 4K resolution, HDMI CEC remote control function, Android system and open SDK. LIVA Q1A series is tiny enough to mount in any limited space and suitable for variety of digital signage application such as shopping mall, smart classroom, transportation, hotels and healthcare center.
the perfect fit for retail sales promotion, healthcare information board. Better Usability with HDMI CEC The latest LIVA mini PC Q1A/Q1A Plus support HDMI CEC function via HDMI cable to remote controller. It allows users to switch on and off screens with remote controller, which is suitable for digital signage application. Hotels, hospitals and public transportation can use it as guide board. Flexible platform for Varies Applications LIVA Q1A/Q1A Plus support Android 8.1 operation system and open SDK, enterprises and companies are able to customize their demands. Retails can use as interactive digital signage board, digital map guide and self-checkout while public transportation system are suitable for self- check-in kiosk or schedule board.
NEXSTGO LAUNCHED ADMIROR II LAPTOP WITH CUTTING-EDGE FEATURES AT CES 2021
4K Visual Experiences
Nexstgo AVITA joins the technology industry’s standout worldwide attraction in 2021 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES2021), as its digital-only edition brings together leaders and innovators from across the sector’s ecosystem. “Do What The Giants Can’t” has been the mantra of Nexstgo whilst walking a path of innovation. From upstart in 2016 to CES Awards Honoree last year for its ADMIROR series in the ‘Computer Hardware & Components category, Nexstgo’s “The Next Visionary” product release philosophy is designed to harmonize new ways of succeeding into the lives of people, as they evolve their work, leisure and content production around the changing demands of tomorrow.
LIVA Q1A series equipped with multiple ports. Q1A features 1 Micro USB, 3 USB 2.0, 1 HDMI 2.0 and 1 Gigabit Lan. LIVA Q1A Plus equipped with 2 USB Gen1 x 1, 1 HDMI 2.0 and 1 DisplayPort 1.2, supports dual display up to 4K resolution for high quality of visual experience, which is
For CES 2021, Nexstgo is showcasing the most complete brand experience of the Tech-Fashion AVITA brand. It introduces ADMIROR II, the next generation of the CES 2020 Innovation Awards Honoree AVITA ADMIROR, which follows the legacy of ADMIROR to draw inspiration from architec-
Multiple High Performances CPU LIVA Q1A is powered by Rockchip RK3288 up to 1.6GHz quad-core Cortex A17 while LIVA Q1A Plus integrated with two kinds of Rockchip RK3399. One is dual-core Cortex-A72, which is up to 1.8GHz and the other is quad-core Cortex-A53. The CPU will run A53 for low power consumption. If the application needs more computing power, A72 CPU will increase performance by 50%, which can decrease power consumption.
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ture and high fashion, boasting an aesthetic beauty to captivate users. AVITA’s brand character exhibits modernism and sharp, colorful design, a response to demand from fashion-conscious users who “wear” their laptops as part of everyday life, whilst also requiring high-performance processing power. AVITA plans to add 11th Gen Intel® Core™ Tiger Lake Processors and AMD RyzenTM 5000 Series Mobile processors to AVITA model ranges in 2021, in addition to its latest range of accessories by AVITA UBIQUE.
The Creator PC - AVITA ADMIROR II: Overcome all limitations in creating the self-media masterworks of tomorrow AVITA ADMIROR II builds on the accolades of the previous CES Award-winning ADMIROR, and is designed with a raft of firstin-class features that energize your quest for content that thrills, engages, inspires interaction, and drives those all-essential channel metrics. Master exceptional video production/live streaming that people love to follow, and social media photo enablement & curation that drives your peers to seek you out. The form factor, software and hardware of ADMIROR II was hewn to address all of these self-production considerations. With 3-Camera Mode comprising Close-up, Medium Close-up and Wider Shot lenses, ADMIROR II delivers exactly what modern creators need, enabling broadcasters to record action in full, vibrant detail. A ring light housed in the bezel helps to generate consistent, gently diffused lighting which bring scenes to life and your live-casting events directly to eager fans. ADMIROR II liberates users from hassle-ridden, troublesome setup issues. Just fire up and create; you’re good to go immediately and make a success of your channel. Coupled with dynamic audio performance and integrated subwoofer system, you can now tailor your content experience to the most demanding of viewers and listeners.
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NEWS IN BRIEF
Acer Launches AI Computing Platform ACER announced the launch of “aiWorks solution” in India, an Artificial Intelligence Computing Platform. It provides the best streamlined and cost-effective integrated solutions on servers, workstations, networks,
and storage. Acer aiWorks is an amalgamation of Altos BrainSphere™ series of computing system products (including servers, PC workstations, etc.), and Acer Altos Accelerator Resource Manager (AARM) smart accelerator computing resource management system. Besides, aiWorks solution also, provide customers and developers with different artificial intelligence computing system choices, rapid deployment of a development environment, and optimization of artificial intelligence accelerator resource allocation. Based on excellent software and hardware solution “Acer aiWorks”, supports NVIDIA A100 Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) technology. MIG allows each A100 GPU to be divided into up to seven instances. Whether it is high-bandwidth memory, cache, and computing core, they are all independent; GPUs have multiple cutting forms, which can not only withstand workloads of any scale, but also ensure the quality of work services (QoS ), which can also accelerate the scalability of computing resources, and maximize utilization rate.
GIGABYTE Z490 Motherboards Will Support 11th Gen. Intel® Core™ Processors
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, announced that all Z490 motherboards featuring PCIe 4.0 hardware design can support the 11th Gen. Intel® Core™ processors perfectly by update to the latest F20 BIOS, and provide the extreme bandwidth and performance for PCIe 4.0 graphics cards and SSDs. With a snap update of the latest BIOS from GIGBAYTE’s official site, users can enjoy the full pack of advantages and unlock the Resizable BAR function on GIGABYTE Z490 and H470 motherboards. The latest 11th Gen. Intel® Core™ processors will be launched on March 2021. The new processors keep the same architecture as the previous generation but they enable the PCIe 4.0 support, which meet a range of needs for users who expect broad bandwidth and super high transfer speed of PCIe 4.0 on the Intel platform. For those who own one of the current generation motherboards, it would be a great deal to enjoy the performance uplift on Z490 motherboards with PCIe 4.0 function and 11th Gen. Intel® Core™ processors support.
DIGISOL Names Fazal Tabraze as Its Regional Sales Manager For South Region DIGISOL Systems Ltd has announced the appointment of Mr. Fazal Tabraze as Regional Sales Manager for South Region. He will be responsible for developing sales strategies in line with business goals in South Region and will be based out of Chennai. Mr. Fazal Tabraze, Regional Sale ManagerSouth said, “I am excited to be part of DIGISOL Systems and contribute to the company’s growth in this new role. It’s a privilege to work with an organization 16
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Kingston Technology Empowers Hardwareluxx.Com with Its DC500M SSDs
Kingston Technology empowered Hardwareluxx.com, one of the largest IT websites, with the best-in-class Kingston DC500M SSDs. Hardwareluxx. com operates under the domain www. hardwareluxx.de with news, test reports and an integrated discussion forum. The website experienced heavy traffic due to the 2.4 million monthly visitors and the 270,000 forum members on the website. The workload was to be divided by having web server and MySQL servers run separately on different hardware. After switching to new software, it was possible to use Elastic search as a new option for post search functions, which was otherwise very resource intensive. Attempts to run Elasticsearch VMs sensibly with due to the size of the database with an HDD Raid Federation array caused search delays. With heavy load on the search function, an overload was to be expected. In the absence of free capacities since other free volumes were already based on SSDs’ the HDD array had to be replaced, and hence eight 1 TB hard drives were set to eight correspondingly large SSDs.
that has been digitally empowering the business through its IT networking solution in India since 3 decades. I am looking forward to work closely with the team and create opportunities to grow the business in South.” Mr. Tabraze has over 20 years of experience in the Networking & Telecommunications Industry. In his last stint, he was associated with OST Electronics Pvt. Ltd as a Regional Manager. Mr. Fazal completed his graduation in Commerce from the University of Madras in Vellore and holds certification in Systimax SCS Design and Engineering. www.digitalterminal.in
SPOTLIGHT
VAIO MAKES COMEBACK IN INDIA WITH LAUNCH OF E15 AND SE14 LAPTOPS VAIO launched its brand NEW laptop series on Flipkart. Bringing an incomparable yet seamless computing experience to the country, its futuristic approach blended with technological advancements is prepping to illuminate users’ spirit of innovation in each of their levels of desire to achieve. Japan-based VAIO Corporation is retracing its way into tech-enthusiasts’ hearts with Hong Kong-based Nexstgo Company Limited. The license agreement between both companies includes manufacturing, sales and marketing as well as servicing of VAIO laptops under the VAIO trademark in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Middle East markets and now in India. The latest launch which is taking the tech-lovers for a ride includes two Mid-Range budget-friendly variants making it to the market; VAIO® E15 and SE14. The laptops will be available on Flipkart as they excite the tech-buffs of the country. With the excellence of Japanese craftsmanship, the brand intends to create an upward spiral of progress in the technological sector. Speaking on the launch, Mr. Alex Chung, CEO, Nexstgo Company Limited, said, “VAIO in collaboration with Nexstgo intends to reach out to the people of India once again, and with this latest launch of VAIO® E15 and SE14, we are taking our first step in catering to the customers of the country. Providing them with highlyadvanced, future-forward technologywe aim to deliver their tech-savvy dreams in a gadget, and these new models will help us do just that. Catering to the gadget-buffs as we bring our A-Game with VAIO® E15 and SE14, Nexstgo allying with VAIO and Flipkart is looking forward to serving the customers to the best of our ability. This launch will also help in making India globally competitive by embracing new-age technology.”
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Ms. Seema Bhatnagar, Regional Business Director (South Asia), Nexstgo Company Limited said “This collaboration will help us in contributing to the current market and changing its face for better. With this association, we are creating values for users that will surpass their expectations. With a promise to deliver them with the best in the domain, this allegiance will make sure that the customers are being catered to with the best of the abilities while simultaneously strengthening the foothold of the brands in the market. The partnership will add value to VAIO, accelerating its market penetration and growth trajectory towards becoming the go-to tech brand for the young target audience. India is a significant nation to tap and this alliance will help us cement our leadership position here as we form a durable, symbiotic relationship to benefit the customers.”
VAIO® E15 Powered by AMD Ryzen™ 5 and AMD Ryzen™ 7 mobile processors, VAIO® E15 model offer an uncompromised performance, as well as an ergonomic form factor and lightweight design. Smaller and lighter, VAIO® E15 is designed from the ground up to be light and slim, starts from 1.77kg and 19.9mmD respectively, and with a 15.6” FHD IPS screen featuring narrow bezel, a larger visual display area is encased within the same-sized device. Improved RAM performance is achieved by leveraging DDR4 memory technology ensuring VAIO® E15 is always ready to provide fast application switching, elegant multiprocessing and reliable performance under demanding use conditions. Running alongside Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics or Radeon™ RX Vega 10 Graphics, VAIO’s beautiful FHD IPS screen is served with razorsharp, high-resolution and smoothly animated video playback and online gaming performance. This ultra-sleek, light-weighted laptop is also available in a diversity of colors, and starts at Rs. 66,990.
VAIO® SE14 The New VAIO® SE14 is well-known for its minimalist design and powerful performance, which is available in Red Copper and Dark Gray color with Island Style Keyboard and an optional backlit too with spill resistance. This budget friendly laptop is equipped with a FHD IPS 14 inch anti-glare display, and power packed with long battery life backup (up to 13 hours) and quick charging capability (to recharge 70% of the battery under 1 hour). Connection options are also very comprehensive, with two USB Type-CTM ports, two USB 3.0 ports and a HDMI port. It weighs approx. 1.35kgs with 4-Speaker design (Top-firing dual speakers, Downfiring dual speakers), Microphone optimized for Cortana and HD 720p, FHD 1080p webcam, which makes it the best option as a mobile conference and business center. Moreover, the laptop comes with Windows 10 packed with Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD. This modern-gen laptop starts at Rs. 84,690.
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CHANNEL FOCUS
SAVEX TECHNOLOGIES ENTERS INTO PARTNERSHIP WITH AVAYA Savex Technologies Private Limited announced its partnership with Avaya, a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration. This alliance gives Savex technologies’ partner community access to Avaya’s broad portfolio of products and services ranging from workstream collaboration and customer and employee experience solutions and gives Avaya India & SAARC access to Savex’s extensive network of over 10,000 reseller partners. With this agreement, Savex
Technologies will also set foot in the customer experience and workstream collaboration industry. At the heart of Avaya’s value is Avaya OneCloudTM, a comprehensive portfolio of contact center, unified communications, collaboration and more. With a unique hybrid delivery architecture that protects investments and enables a wide range of organizations to get the benefits of cloud. This multicloud application ecosystem delivers effortless, seamless, and context-driven experiences across all touchpoints for customers and the employees who serve them.
Raunak Jagasia, Director Enterprise Business and Alliance at Savex Technologies Pvt Ltd said, “We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Avaya and leverage its evolving portfolio. We appreciate Avaya’s customer focus and believe that our strategic relationship will enable us to help digitally transform India and create effortless multi experiences with technology for organizations and customers.”
INGRAM MICRO APPOINTED AS DISTRIBUTION PARTNER OF AIWA INDIA Ingram Micro India has announced a strategic distribution agreement with Aiwa India Regional Headquarters for its range of audio products. Aiwa is a Japanese technology-based firm and is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products in the consumer electronics and entertainment industry. As a part of this distribution agreement, Ingram Micro India will work closely with Aiwa India Regional Headquarters to bring to the market unique products
including the SBX series of speakers that are fast creating a new standard in sound, Noise Cancelling TWS and many more innovative audio solutions. Mr. Navdeep Narula, Executive Director, Mobility & Compute at Ingram Micro India, said, “We are keenly looking forward to working with Aiwa
India, using our unique position to be able to leverage our strong presence in the General Trade, Online, and Large Format Retail for the Aiwa Audio Experience.”
RAH INFOTECH SIGNS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH CELLEBRITE RAH Infotech announced that it has entered an agreement with Cellebrite, the global leader of Digital Intelligence (DI) solutions for the public and private sectors, to sell their solutions to Indian customers including law enforcement agencies and enterprises. “This partnership could not have come at a better time. The pandemic has accelerated digitally mediated crimes, which means that agencies are tackling 18
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exponentially growing volumes of digital data that must be managed and analyzed in order to lawfully solve and prosecute crimes,” said Ashok Kumar, Managing Director, RAH Infotech. “Agencies need to have the right technology in place to create actionable insights and accelerate their investigations. This agreement with Cellebrite will allow
us to support agencies with advanced Digital Intelligence technology that can help them address these critical issues and identify evidence hidden in our digital world.”
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CHANNEL FOCUS
RX INFOTECH STRENGTHENS LEADERSHIP WITH APPOINTMENT OF ROHIT AGARWAL AS VP-SALES Rx Infotech Pvt Ltd has appointed Rohit Agarwal as Vice President-Sales. Rohit Agarwal has over 20 years of experience in industries like IT, Electronics and Technology. With such valuable industry experience, he is all set to fuel Rx Infotech’s journey in the Indian market. He will be responsible for driving sustainable and profitable sales operations across all the channels and platforms. This is a strategic appointment from Rx Infotech for bolstering the growth. Moreover, with this appointment, Rx Infotech is emphasizing reinforcing the company’s growth momentum. Rohit Agarwal brings a rich industry experience and will be very instrumental for Rx Infotech in creating the growth roadmap and utilizing the company’s resources in a better way for improved performance. Commenting on the new appointment, Atul Gupta, CEO/Chairman (Rx Infotech Pvt Ltd) says, “Lapcare is going through a major upgrade in terms of growth, strategies and portfolio extension. While company is
already breaking its’s own records every month in terms of sales figures, Rohit would be a huge value addition to company’s behavioural and functional growth.” Apart from this appointment, Mr. Atul Gupta shares a message to IT fraternity. He says, “We have always believed that darkness never overcomes positive thinkers and we have always strived to execute good things in a brilliant manner. 2020 has been a unique year in terms of learning new ways to connect, care and collaborate. It’s been a roller coaster ride; a year of ups and downs, success and failures. As a member and Chairperson of Lapcare, I’m thankful to each one of you, with whatever responsibilities; however big or small, front-end or backend and I am sure that we all share a respect, love, commitment for this organization. I’m also happy to announce that we have achieved our targets of 40 CR business per month, in this tough year. I also pay my gratitude to our customers, for making our vision come true.”
let’s hope that the year 2021 brings in more prosperous time for us. Now it’s time to pull up socks bit more and start putting in a little more effort to reach our next milestone of 50 cr. business per month in the year 2021. Let’s together work and walk towards our new destination and look up to a brighter future for all of us.”
He further added, “With a renewed zeal,
OSS INFOCOM APPOINTED AS AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTOR OF COROS GPS WATCHES OSS Infocom has partnered with COROS Wearables, a leading GPS sports watch company from the USA. OSS has been appointed as the exclusive importer and authorized distributor of COROS GPS watches and accessories nationwide. With this partnership, OSS Infocom will represent the brand in India. Recently, COROS watches have received a number of awards including Gear of the Year from Runner’s World 2020.
and complete integration with Stryd running power meters.
The COROS GPS watch line-up includes the COROS PACE 2 – the lightest GPS watch ever made, 2019 Runner’s World Gear of the Year award winner COROS APEX, and the flagship COROS VERTIX GPS Adventure watch all of which include wrist based optical Heart Rate sensors. COROS Wearables is the first brand of GPS watches to include native
COROS boasts an incredible group of professional athletes including World Marathon Record Holder Eliud Kipchoge. In addition to the individual sponsorship of Kipchoge, COROS is also the official GPS Watch partner of the NN Running team which includes some of the top track and road runners in the world.
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The COROS App and training platform extension includes full daily / weekly / monthly training plans, including verified training programs and workouts from elite athletes and coaches which can be downloaded from coros.com and synced to your COROS GPS watch.
“We are extremely happy and delighted to bring COROS premium GPS sports watches to the adventure and sports enthusiasts of India. With this exclusive partnership, COROS is now able to provide its line-up of award winning GPS watches to users throughout India. With the addition of COROS smart watches, OSS Infocom will reinforce its commitment to helping its active customers accurately monitor their running, cycling, track and swimming workouts as well as many more outdoor adventure sports” said Mr. Amit Sinsinwal, Director of OSS Infocom.
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TECH PREDICTIONS
DELL TECHNOLOGIES SHARES KEY DATA PROTECTION TRENDS FOR 2021 The current situation has made us realize that Digital Transformation has become a buzz word across industries and in recent times has transformed into a key element of business strategy. It has even become an indicator of an organization’s growth and success. We have witnessed a growth of digital transformation in our country but at the same time, it has made it inevitable for organizations to miss out on agile data privacy and security infrastructure. According to Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) report, India saw a 37 % increase in cyberattacks in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020, as compared to the fourth quarter (Q4) of last year. Therefore, as organizations aggressively embrace digital transformation in the future, it will become imperative for them to better protect and manage their critical data by deploying robust data protection solutions. It will also be a necessity for CTOs and CIOs and not a choice to protect and secure the data of their customers. Few trends, which we believe would set the course for the data protection landscape in the coming year are: Security automation – The increasing cyber-attacks in the year 2020 has made organisations rethink their security measures, especially in terms of enterprise data security, to safeguard their valuable data. Security automation is the answer for organisations looking to secure their critical data in the future. Security automation is the machine-based execution of security actions with the power to programmatically detect, investigate, and remediate cyber threats without human intervention. The system will identify incoming threats from both external and internal stakeholders, and would alert the DBAs as per the priority and level of threat. Cybersecurity will have to become more flexible as many businesses are changing the way they operate. Automating security processing using AI tools will help companies to achieve this flexibility level. Endpoint security – As organizations are expanding more work from home 20
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Image Source: www.freepik.com
and remote working solutions for their employees, the number of vulnerable endpoints manifolds itself. The current operating model nowadays has increased the amount of data being generated on a day-to-day basis, which is the lifeblood of business, and protecting it is paramount to organizational success. In such a situation, centralized security systems prove ineffective because of the disrupted landscape. Hence, endpoint security will become a necessity to manage multiple open points and help regulate data traffic through data loss prevention and monitor the incoming and outgoing connection of sensitive and mission-critical data. Increased Investment in Cybersecurity and privacy solutions - Today, data protection has transformed itself into a priority for CIOs and organizations are investing heavily to safeguard their IT architecture against any kind of cyber threat or malware attack. In the year 2021, about 42% of the organizations in India and globally, will continue to invest in cybersecurity and privacy solutions to steer away from the rising cyber-attacks in the era of remote working. As we are on the verge of entering the New Year, it will be important for solutions providers to see that their data
protection and cybersecurity offerings are available to customers as per their consumption needs. The pandemic has forced several organizations to relook into their IT budgets. Hence, customers will be more keen to invest in specific solutions like data protection for endpoints or against malwares, rather than investing heavily on the entire suite. To stay competitive and continue with their growth trajectory amid the current situation, organizations need to digitally transform their IT infrastructure. They need to accelerate their data mining and extract maximum insights available from the collected data sets. However, at the same time, they even need to diligently focus on security and privacy concerns. It has been noted that more than 90% of the organizations in India and globally have fast-tracked their digital transformation journey and with most of the organizations adopting the work from home model, data generated will multiply itself like never before. Hence, organizations need to prepare themselves for any future contingencies by offering innovative and holistic data protection solutions beyond traditional data centres, across the edge to core to cloud. It will be interesting to see how organizations move ahead with both digital transformation and cyber-security at the same time and win over the challenge posed in the current times. www.digitalterminal.in
TECH PREDICTIONS
KASPERSKY ANNOUNCES THE KEY IT SECURITY TRENDS FOR 2021
Image source: www.kaspersky.com/blog
Remote work will catalyze a shift from the corporate perimeter concept to micro-office security certification. Outsourcing of IT and cybersecurity functions will be crucial to solve expertise shortages and save budgets. To coordinate managed service providers along with using multiple cloud services, cloud security and management skills will become a ‘must have’. These and other cybersecurity challenges and trends will be among those that businesses will have to manage this year, according to a new Kaspersky report. A shift to remote work, financial constraints due to economic recession and the growth of cyberthreats due to the global pandemic will affect the day to day role of cybersecurity professionals in 2021. Understanding the challenges but also perceiving opportunities in IT and IT security management is key for companies to maintain their protection. The recent Kaspersky report, “Plugging the gaps: 2021 corporate IT security predictions” suggests advice for each role related to cybersecurity, including CEOs or business owners, CISOs, SOC team leads and IT managers. Here are some of the main trends to monitor: Protecting the perimeter is no longer enough – home office assessment and certification will be needed. There should be tools to scan the level of security in a workplace – from the presence of software vulnerabilities to connecting
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to an unreliable or unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot. It will also require wider adoption of VPN, privileged access management, multifactor authentication systems, the implementation of stricter monitoring, and the updating of existing contingency and emergency plans. Transition to a service model will enable required levels of IT and IT security with lower investments. According to Kaspersky’s survey, seven-in-10 (79%) businesses said they already plan to use a managed service provider (MSP) or managed security service provider (MSSP) in the next 12 months. This is for good reason as the service model helps to minimize capital investments and transition business costs from CapEx to OpEx. Training for internal IT security specialists should incorporate management skills. Cybersecurity professions split into very narrow specializations, meaning that hiring staff for each specific role may be too expensive. This is where outsourcing can help plug the gap. However, businesses that outsource key cybersecurity components still need to focus on developing management skills for their in-house teams to handle those outsourced functions. There will be an increased reliance on cloud services, making dedicated management and protection measures necessary. The survey showed that in
2020, employees in 95% of enterprises and 94% of SMBs used non-corporate software and cloud services such as social networks, messengers or other applications. This is unlikely to change when staff return to the office. To ensure that any corporate data is kept under control, better visibility over cloud access will be necessary. IT security managers will need to align themselves with this cloud paradigm and develop skills for cloud management and protection. Along with the introduction of new cybersecurity practices, the quality of tools that enable these changes will be equally important. Quality of protection and seamless manageability are key when choosing cybersecurity solutions. “We have seen two important changes in what customers expect from corporate cybersecurity offerings. Firstly, the quality of protection is no longer up for discussion - now it’s a ‘must have’. Another major trend is that deep integration between various components of corporate security, ideally from a single vendor, now plays a bigger role. For instance, there was a long-held belief in the industry that various specialized solutions from various vendors can help create the best combination for protection. Now, organizations are looking for a more unified approach with maximum integration between different security technologies,” says Alexander Moiseev, Chief Business Officer at Kaspersky.
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TECH PREDICTIONS
2021 TECH PREDICTIONS: KING CLOUD, IOT AND THE TECHNOLOGIES OF THE NEW NORMAL By Mr. Srinivasan CR, Chief Digital Officer, Tata Communications offerings. Cloud will also grow in popularity as the ideal execution venue for new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, and edge computing. Thus, making it integral to the digital transformation journey many more businesses are now on.
Intelligent networks are the new normal
Cloud’s reign continues Even before the events of 2020, cloud had already established its value for many businesses by providing improved agility, scalability, and cost efficiencies across industries. This year however, the technology is helping add a layer of resilience to many organisations by making the sudden shifts in working habits less disruptive. This has sealed cloud’s place as an essential piece of enterprise tech. In the next 5 years, the cloud computing industry is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5%. Next year specifically, businesses will focus more on managing their cloud costs better and look to unify their different cloud environments. In the face of increased competition due to greater prevalence, cloud providers will need to focus on enhancing and integrating security, compliance, and privacy into their 22
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The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing businesses to innovate reactively and creatively in order to make work pattern shifts that they thought would take years, happen in mere weeks. This new normal will put new pressures on companies, as there will be increasing need for networks capable of supporting hybrid architectures – be it cloud, on premises, or edge computing. While it might’ve been necessity that got them there, the results of this mass experiment have been eye-opening. Despite many preconceptions, remote working has largely been a success. Some 77% of remote workers say their productivity has increased this year which is great for employers. According to one study in the US, 75% of those surveyed said they would like to continue to work from home in at least a partial capacity, while 40% of respondents said they feel strongly that their employer should give employees the choice to opt-in to remote work. This new normal will put new pressures on companies, as there will be increasing need for networks capable of supporting hybrid architectures – be it cloud, on premises, or edge computing. As a result, I predict more organisations will start seeking intelligent and intent-based networks that offer integrated security – such as SDWAN for the WAN with SASE and Zero Trust security or virtual networks for multicloud – to deal with the increased cybersecurity threat of their new perimeter-less ecosystem. Similarly, the need to also improve customer experience (CX) will accompany the increased digitsation of businesses.
IoT will play a greater role in securing and analysing data There has been a spike in the amount of data organisations have had to contend with this year due to a combination of all the digital transformation that has happened this year and the increased online activity due to lockdowns, With more 5G rollouts expected in 2021, along with further growth in LP-WANbased services, the amount of data created and handled by businesses is set to skyrocket. So, to differentiate themselves from the competition, more companies will start focusing on data analytics technology capable of securely handling information as well as analysing and deriving greater insights from their mostly unused operational data. For instance, many of the COVID-19 restrictions are expected to be lifted by mid-2021, meaning hard-hit industries, such as travel, may start to see some growth again. However, the ability to offer enhanced experiences by using data better will likely still be a strong deciding factor for many customers. So, in all of this, I expect IoT to play a pivotal role – helping to automate processes and make more information readily available to enterprises.
Automation – a business imperative The pandemic is significantly increasing investments in automated solutions this year, such as AI, ML, and robotic process automation (RPA). So, in the new year, I predict more businesses will become platform-driven digital business and use of these technologies will continue to rise. This will help them automate routine, repetitive, predictable tasks and unlock tactical benefits. These innovations will strengthen operational efficiency, increase accuracy of platforms, and improve user experiences across ecosystems. This will also drive cost efficiencies and realignments, by helping businesses intelligently repurpose these savings in the right innovations.
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TECH PREDICTIONS
MANAGEENGINE ANNOUNCES TOP 5 TECH PREDICTIONS FOR 2021 Faced with perhaps the most disruptive circumstances of their existence, organisations worldwide realised that they had no greater ally than technology in their quest to ensure some sort of work continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic. ”The coronavirus vaccines now entering the market are expected to bring relief to businesses soon by paving the way to normalcy,” said Rajesh Ganesan, Vice President at ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation. “But the past year has shown that technology resilience is fundamental to business resilience and that it’s better to take steps in that direction now rather than later.” In the spirit of resilience, here’s a list of five top tech predictions for 2021 by ManageEngine, compiled after discussions with relevant stakeholders, including business and tech leaders. 1. Local regulations and cloud infrastructure With the accelerated cloud adoption, it is inevitable that governments across the world will bring in region-specific regulations to uphold aspects of sovereignty, user privacy, security, culture, policies, and other issues; and this will call for cloud infrastructure to be hosted in every such region to comply with those regulations. Also, specific states within big countries could have their own regulations, and hence businesses should be aware of this factor while choosing cloud providers. When it comes to their data as well as their customers’ data, it is imperative for businesses to operate with clarity of regulations and how they apply. 2. More focus on a seamless digital experience A seamless digital experience will be an important differentiator for businesses, especially in the post-pandemic era. Hence, they will increasingly invest in digital experience monitoring to relieve bottlenecks, such as the inability to track employee devices, besides issues in their home network and other cloud-based productivity tools. Organisations will also strive towards effectively engineering AIOps to contextually monitor and remewww.digitalterminal.in
diate their IT and business logic in order to provide an intuitive user experience. Furthermore, AI-powered and data-informed monitoring tools will be sought out to analyze security risks and increase operational efficiency. 3. Zero Trust security model will be the new norm Before COVID-19, Zero Trust was being driven by a need to modernize the information security stack. With the shift to remote work, the traditional perimeter-based security model was rendered obsolete. Digital identity is now a single control point across users, devices, and networks. Zero Trust security models, however, operate with the principle that all network users—internal or exRajesh Ganesan, Vice President, ManageEngine ternal—are considered hostile until proven otherwise. Trust is established through strong authentication public cloud, it may not be the immediate to users upon verifying who is requesting choice for most businesses, making 2021 access, the context of the request, and the year for HCI. And due to its simplified sensitivity of the access environment; and flexible framework, HCI is ideal for and each user’s behavior is continuously the cloud-era. assessed for risk. It addresses the agile needs of modern organizations and 5. Increasing utilization of analytics by eventually it will become the way any non-IT departments security framework is architected. From a business option to a business imperative, Now that organisations realize the efevery one of us is on a Zero Trust jourfectiveness of analytics platforms, ney— whether we know it, or not. their usage is expected to penetrate 4. Hyper converged infrastructure is ideal not just IT but other departments that have traditionally not relied on analytics for the cloud-era applications. For example, data from HR applications combined with employHaving a strong IT framework is a critical ee performance metrics can be used factor for businesses to achieve infrato measure the influence of employee structure efficiency. Hyper converged inwelfare initiatives on employee producfrastructure (HCI) consolidates traditional tivity. This focus on analytics brings an hardware-based infrastructure (compute interesting dynamic to the way organservers, networking and storage) into virisations work and also introduces a set tualised, software-defined environments. of challenges in data governance and This approach is not only a cost-efficient maintenance. IT will play a pivotal role option but also helps simplify the manin facilitating fine-grained access levels agement of these virtualised resources before moving to a higher trust model from a single, unified interface. Conwhere individual teams have complete sidering the impact of the pandemic, access to all relevant data that is necesmany organisations are looking to adopt technologies that can support their digital sary for their efficient functioning. workspace. Keeping in mind the cost and security related issues associated with
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TRANSFORM YOUR DESKTOP TO A BATTLEREADY GAMING RIG Authored by Mr. Tejashwar Singh, India Sales Head, Kingston Technology competitive prices by various companies that would help to give you the seamless experience. If one is able to make the correct match, choose the right peripherals—a quick and responsive mouse, a mechanical keyboard, and a good headset—a gaming PC can transform any desk and help you see through the most swear breaking moments of your game.
Over the past ten months of lockdown, with the practice of social distancing, reducing consumer and business activity to a bare minimum, gaming has emerged as an engaging distraction for youth who have been locked at home. It cannot be denied that PC is considered as the pinnacle of gaming. Despite the allure and simplicity of handheld devices, PC gaming is still very alive. It is often believed that the best PC games are expensive and can be extremely expensive, with extremely high-end systems. However, this is not the case nowadays. PC gaming is not an expensive proposition, if one knows how to assemble the right accessories. Selecting the apt components for the PC build could be a daunting process initially, but once you look at it closely, it is astonishingly simple and a lot of fun. Gaming peripherals are offered at 24
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Storage is the most pivotable part of the gaming PC. It can amp-up your performance manifold. It is remarkable that NVMe SSDs help the games to boot two to three times faster the installation on a traditional hard drive. The games will not only load faster; there will be no wastage of time on loading screens from the game’s menu to the game itself. Hence, go for Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD meant for unmatched performance and KC2500 SSD for its extremely efficient performance. The A2000 SSD can attain read/write speeds over 2200/2000 MB/s and is ideal for Ultra-books and small form factors. At the same time, the KC2500 SSD can reach input/output speeds over 3500/2900 MB/s using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 controller, which could transport the gamer to an altogether new level of gaming. PCs with excellent memory sticks, enables computers to access files easily and run multiple tasks seamlessly without a lag. Using high-capacity RAM, can help you to enhance your gaming experience. HyperX® FURY DDR4 RGB1 delivers a boost of performance and style with speeds of up to 3733MHz2, aggressive styling, and RGB lighting that runs the length of the module for smooth and stunning effects. This dazzling, cost-effective upgrade is available in 2400MHz–3733MHz speeds, CL15–19 latencies, single module capacities of 4GB–32GB, and kit capacities of 16GB–128GB.
Apart from this, central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processing unit (GPU) has the most impact on a gaming PC’s performance. The GPU consists of an additional processor that takes data from the CPU and translates it into images that can be rendered on your display. GPUs are exceptionally good at processing large amounts of image information and performing parallel tasks, making them incredibly fast at not only displaying text but also graphics- making it perfect for an amazing gaming experience. Gigabyte GV-RX560OC-4GD REV2.0 Radeon RX 560 OC Graphics card s truly a powerful GPU that gives great 1080p gaming experience and is a great GPU to pair with budget processors. Without an apt display, gaming could lack the thrill. There are excellent gaming monitors available at affordable price points that guarantee to deliver an incredibly immersive and pleasurable gaming experience. Specifically designed to give you the gaming advantage, the best gaming monitors boast gamingcentric features, deliver colours that are just as vibrant as they are accurate, and offer the highest resolutions. A gamer would always have a mouse as the priority while building a gaming rig. A gaming mouse is like a gamer’s virtual hand which enables them to steer through the game without any hassle. In order to give precision to a gamer, it is sensitive to a minutest of inputs or actions. The HyperX Pulsefire Surge HXMC002B gives gamers the best of both style and substance, providing pinpoint accuracy thanks to its state-of-the-art Pixart 3389 sensor and spectacular 360° RGB lighting effects with its unique light ring. Pulsefire Surge has native DPI settings as high as 16,000 DPI for precision that will satisfy even the most demanding digital snipers.
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NEW ARRIVALS TENDA 4G WIFI ROUTERS
Tenda launched 2 new Wi-Fi routers i.e. 4G06 and 4G03 to facilitate data connectivity on the 4G/4G + LTE network. Tenda 4G06 speaks to the ideal gadget as it supports VoLTE (voice over LTE), its go for device for the individuals who need the Internet part and the voice part, which facilitate you to associate a cordless telephone to the router through a dedicated RJ11 port and build up voice approaches LTE (4G) network of preferable quality over in the past likewise because of the more extensive range of band. Speaking on Tenda 4G03 N300 WiFi 4G router delivers maximum speeds of LTE CAT4 150 Mbps, you can enjoy uninterrupted HD movies, rapid file downloads, and smooth video chats. Thanks to a powerful 880MHz and 28nm processor, it shares the Wi-Fi up to 32 devices base on dependable network. Tenda 4G06 and 4G03 4G WiFi routers are available at INR 12000/- and INR 10000/- with 3 years warranty.
DAIWA SMART TV
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Daiwa launched its Alexa Voice command enabled (Alexa built-in) new generation of Smart TVs. Daiwa has introduced the Amazon Alexa Built-in Smart TV with 43-inch Model. Daiwa 43-inch D43QFS Full HD Smart TV with Alexa Built-in goes beyond the traditional Smart TVs. Enhancing the viewing experience, with a resolution of 1920*1020, the Full HD Smart TV, comes with Quantum Luminit Technology that brings unmatched picture quality with gamut of 1.07 billion colors that are fine tuned to deliver a naturally crisp and vivid picture. Transform the Smart TV to an entertainment powerhouse, with 20W Stereo Box speakers and surround sound enabled technology. The TV is backed by power-packed A53 Quad core processor and works on Android 8.0 along with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB ROM. The 43-inch Smart TV D43QFS is available at the introductory price of Rs. 24,490/-. The Smart TV would be available in retail stores across India.
ACER TWS EARBUDS
ACER has unveiled a series of True Wireless earphones for a truly unplugged but connected life at home or the outdoors for students, professionals, trekkers and adventure enthusiasts amongst others. These new headsets are designed to offer prolonged use with IPX4 water resistance and a host of convenience features for the user. Enabled with features like fast charging, long battery life, high standby time, and more importantly easy connectivity, noise cancellation and great sound ensure that these headsets offer a superior experience. Besides, the touch/tap control makes the using it a breeze along with one tap to summon the
voice assistant for a true handsfree use. The Gateway True Wireless earbuds (GAHR012) is priced at Rs. 4,499. The Acer True Wireless Audio earbuds (GAHR 010) and (GAHR 011) is priced at Rs. 2,999. The latest Acer True Wireless Audio earbuds (GAHR 010) and (GAHR 011) are available to purchase from Acer online store.
AMAZFIT GTS 2 MINI SMARTWATCH
Amazfit has launched the muchawaited Amazfit GTS 2 mini in India. The Amazfit GTS 2 mini has an Always-on 1.55-inch AMOLED Display which has high 301 ppi resolution and a smoothly curved borderless 2.5D glass display. The GTS 2 mini’s thin 8.95mm body is made from light but tough aluminum alloy so your powerful fitness companion weighs in at just 19.5g. There are more than 50 specially designed watch faces to change to suit your mood or look. The GTS 2 mini can track your heart rate, blood-oxygen saturation, sleep quality, stress levels and female cycles, and an array of other health and fitness metrics. The Amazfit GTS 2 mini features over 70 built-in sports modes including running, cycling, swimming and the most popular indoor and outdoor sports. The GTS 2 mini is also water-resistant to 5ATM. GTS 2 mini will come in two variants: Midnight Black and Flamingo Pink, for INR 6,999/-.
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COVER STORY
TECH BRANDS ARE VERY MUCH OPTIMISTIC ABOUT UPCOMING TECH TRENDS
Image Source: www.freepik.com
The year 2020 was a very challenging year and it forced the organizations to adopt new ways of working mode. The businesses have adopted several cutting-edge technologies to corner the challenges and run the business operations smoothly. Moreover, the advent of new technologies is on the verge to dominate the IT industry in the year 2021. Every market, whether it is networking, IT security, printing, gaming, PC or storage, will see shift and adoption of new technologies. With the evolving technology trends, new opportunities will also flourish for the market players. They would be thriving on the growth opportunities to plan their roadmap for the new calendar year. DT has interacted with key industry players to know technology trends that will dominate the Indian technology industry. DELL TECHNOLOGIES Last year has been difficult for organizations as well as individuals due to the massive disruption across all sectors. “These challenging times have made us realize that digital transformation is no more an option, but a necessity, with most of the businesses transforming their operating
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models and opting for a remote working environment. It is encouraging to witness businesses transforming rapidly and adopting a digital strategy which would have otherwise taken months. However, simultaneously they need to ensure data security amidst the rising cyber threats that are hovering around their data storage 24*7,” said, Ripu Bajwa, Director & General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell Technologies, India. “As we enter the New Year, organizations will not only need to manage their extensive workloads, but equally ensure that data flow is secured, without any security bug. Similarly, solution providers need to establish a channel to
provide enhanced security to regulate the data traffic across multiple end points and offer the solutions as per customer’ consumption needs and IT budget. Additionally, due to increased conversations around data privacy, organizations need to be extremely careful while managing the data of their customers and ensure that it’s not exposed to any malicious attack or breach.”
SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY In 2020, many organizations changed their approach to data storage and management. As businesses step into the next normal, their focus will
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be on fortifying business resilience by accelerating adoption of hybrid storage and cloud, restructuring storage operations, and strengthening data security. Sameer Bhatia, Director Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group and Country Manager SAARC & India, Seagate Technology said, With explosion of useful data, object storage will become the standard for mass capacity offering advantages such as prescriptive metadata, and scalability. To secure the massive surge in data, hierarchical security will become a priority for businesses to mitigate internal and external security threats.” “Organizations will infuse composability, powered by open source architecture, to build applications by separating systems into independent units and combining with other independent component parts. It will become easier for data centers to deploy and redeploy resources without requiring complex memory, and storage configurations. Data centers will also implement hierarchical tiering — in which hot data will reside on highcost, high-performance media and less frequently accessed data will be stored on affordable, mass capacity media. Lastly, enterprises will use formative AI and machine learning to store more data than ever to train models and to mine of critical information. This will enable them to undertake future analysis for unprecedented events, such as COVID-19,” concluded SAMEER BHATIA.
SOPHOS The Sophos 2021 Threat Report, flags how ransomware and fastchanging attacker behaviors from advanced to entry level, will shape the threat landscape and IT security in 2021. www.digitalterminal.in
According to Sunil Sharma, MD – Sales, Sophos India & SAARC, below are the three key trends to watch on: 1. The gap between ransomware operators at different ends of the skills and resource spectrum will increase 2. Everyday threats such as commodity malware, including loaders and botnets, or human-operated Initial Access Brokers, will demand serious security attention 3. All ranks of adversaries will increasingly abuse legitimate tools, well known utilities and common network destinations to evade detection and security measures and thwart analysis and attribution “As Ransomware and other attacks will continue to become more sophisticated, the trends for security solutions will be towards Machine Learning enabled cybersecurity system that provides layered security. New age threats will continue to circumvent preventive cybersecurity solutions like firewall and endpoints, and IT leaders will need to add proactive threat hunting component in their cybersecurity defenses along with preventive security solutions. This will give rise to the adoption of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. MDR services are outsourced security operations delivered by a team of specialists. MDR services act as an extension of organizations’ security team, combining human-led investigations, threat hunting, real-time monitoring, and incident response with a technology stack to gather and analyze intelligence.” “As businesses look at continuing the new normal functioning this year, there are some challenges which needs to be addressed such as online data threat, supply chain vulnerabilities, phishing, unauthorized access to devices and more. While these challenges continue to impact businesses, there is an opportunity for security solution providers to leverage powerful and intuitive next-generation cybersecurity products and services that prevent threats and unwanted malwares from infecting networks and devices” concluded Sunil Sharma, Sophos India & SAARC.
WESTERN DIGITAL 2020, digitally disrupted the world! From just talking about transformation, everyone has adapted to a digital lifestyle quickly. “Trends such as work-from-home, e-learning, gaming, uptake in smart videos, and video security, backed by internet proliferation, have contributed to a massive data surge. IDC estimates that the amount of data created by endpoints, the edge, and at the core will reach 143 zettabytes by 2024, which means 143 trillion GigaByte (GB) of data. We expect the need for a more dynamic environment for the data storage market in 2021 as unleashing the real value of data in the future requires advanced data storage infrastructures,” said Khalid Wani, Director- Sales, India, Western Digital. “Digital transformation among enterprises has also led to robust growth in the Indian data center market, and CXOs are looking forward to technology upgrades that will reduce cost and increase efficiency dramatically by better performance and less risk of loss of data. The use of storage technologies like ArcticFlow, and IsoVibe will offer better TCO replace an aging data center infrastructure. The next-gen data infrastructure with NVMe powered SSDs and NVMe over Fabrics are starting to drive significant shifts in data speed and efficiency. The end-user spending on global data center infrastructure will climb to $200 billion in 2021, 6pc up from 2020, per Gartner. Datacenter managers in the future will realize that one size doesn’t fit all with context to general-purpose architectures, which are inefficient and carry resource and cost overhead, and, therefore, will move towards softwaredefined storage to overcome these barriers,” concluded Khalid Wani.
ESET Data security has become more important than ever given the influx of remote working due to the pandemic. “This JANUARY 2021
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applies to India too and the country is expected to refocus on data security as the final draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 will be tabled in parliament this year,” said Pamela Ong, Sales Director – APAC, ESET. “Businesses are also set to place greater emphasis on cybersecurity as remote working has exposed vulnerabilities which cyberhackers can take advantage of. India’s National Cyber Coordination Centre reported that the country experienced 375 cyberattacks daily last year. 2021 will see both MSMEs and large enterprises focusing on long term investment in digitalisation including cloud and cybersecurity as we continually transition to the new normal. Notably, IT spending in India is projected to increase by 6% and hit USD$ 81.9 billion in 2021 with the highest growth coming from enterprise software, according to Gartner. This gives rise to the demand for cybersecurity solutions such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), encryption software and endpoint protection platform with cloud-based management console as business leaders and CIOs work towards building a secure workforce.” Pamela Ong, further added, “India has always been a priority market for ESET. We believe we are well positioned to expand and grow our market share as we deepen our partnerships with customers and partners. As the market evolves in this trying period, we see that businesses are looking to leverage different level and types of services to ease the capital expenditure and improve bottom line. With this in mind, ESET has put in place monthly subscription options for our products and are working with partners to enable MSMEs and large enterprises to focus on the cloud and data security with our revamped offerings which will better suit the market requirements in India.”
LENOVO According to Ashish Sikka , Director – SMB, Lenovo, Major trends in the year 2021 for PC market in India are: 30
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The new normal will be the golden era of employee experience, with a hybrid mode — a combination of remote and officebased work — that can meet varied needs of both employees and employers. Remote work has increased the need for high quality devices, security and collaboration platforms and the new normal will require companies to customise their offerings accordingly. SMBs moved quickly to take advantage of new technology business models to survive today’s challenges, but also lay down the foundation for a more successful post-pandemic future. One of the most successful technology adaptations for SMBs would be the outsourcing of IT Managed Services to a trusted service provider. Through this model, the most time-consuming IT operations and functions will be outsourced to a service provider, using an IT environment with cloud-based resources that facilitate remote working. Organizational security and consumer privacy are here to stay: With the traditional network suddenly moving away from the corporate environment, the perimeter has now expanded to all devices connected remotely to the cloud or other work devices – where even smart home devices may add risk to corporate networks as employees log on from home Technology will improve the education quality through immersive learning, personalized learning, new forms of assessment, and collaboration. Hybrid learning which was unthinkable earlier could become the norm and quality education can break the distance barriers and reach to many more Connected devices are now essential for everyone: There will be a demand for always-on and always-connected PCs, offering freedom from dependence on WiFi alone. Further, connected smart home assistants will also grow in popularity.
“The pandemic has triggered unprecedented disruptions in work, school, social connections, and many industries from healthcare to entertainment. It has also accelerated digital transformation into warp speed in 2020, creating radical shifts in the new “everything-from-home” environment. The year 2020 was all about transitioning to the ‘Work from Home’ scenario. While remote working existed in parts even before the pandemic, the last few months have taught us that it’s possible to work remotely. In a white-collar work environment, the productivity question will always be up for debate, but we have seen that it can be efficient if you have the right IT infrastructure and collaboration tools,” concluded by Ashish Sikka.
TP-LINK Networking business saw huge demand from common customers due to adoption of WFH & LFH model. Bijoy Alaylo, Vice President – Channel Sales, TPLink India Pvt. Ltd believes that WFH model will be here to stay longer in 2021 as well. He Said, “WFH still is going to be the normal for the year 2021. So the newer WiFi 6 and the Whole Home Wifi Mesh systems will be the ongoing major trends in the networking market. Opportunities coming are from the Tier-2 Tier-3 cities where the penetration of internet before Covid-19 was not much but now it has grown exponentially. Biggest opportunity comes from the growing bandwidth of internet usage required at home due to the trends like OTT platforms / online education/WFH. Challenges in terms of the actual back to work schedule and in person meeting clients still stands this year. Reaching out to the clients and closures of cases is difficult on virtual meetings as compared to an in-person meet.”
DIGISOL SYSTEMS Sarvesh Mishra, Head of sales & Marketing, Digisol Systems said, “Yearwww.digitalterminal.in
COVER STORY
over-year technology has impacted our lives in many ways and has revolutionized how we function. This year I believe below trends will gain prominence in 2021: 5G The fifth generation of mobile wireless communications promises to bring opportunities to businesses across all industries with greater ability to connect many more devices at once and move more data with its faster speed. 5G is the technology that will extend wireless connectivity beyond Smartphones, and enhance machineto-machine connections. Increased speed and network capacity will support new applications and connect more devices; including IoT applications used in industries like manufacturing, healthcare, energy, etc. SD-WAN SD-WAN not just offers security, performance, flexibility & scalability but also comes with enhanced tools for enterprises to track their WAN performance with real-time insights into their network. SD-WAN has a long way to go before it deliver the promise of fully automated, intent-based WANs, however, in 2021, SD-WAN will help IT enterprises identify the cause of application-performance slowdowns or outages and help them reap greater long-term benefits while they grow their businesses and deliver more value than simply cost-cutting. Talking about market opportunities, the year 2020 opened up opportunities for digital transformation and circumstances have cemented the value of our solutions, now more than ever. As majority of people logged on to work from home last year, it was captured that data demand from residences rose as compared to commercial areas which further opened doors for Fiber to the Home products and solutions. Rather demand for high www.digitalterminal.in
bandwidth connectivity has increased across all sectors which in turn will increase the demand for FTTH products.
KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY India has been the fastest growth drivers for the data storage market. It is one of the most dataconsuming countries, and hence the market has immense potential in 2021 as well. According to Tejashwar Singh, India Sales Head, Kingston Technology, “There has been a paradigm shift in the consumption patterns of the consumer during the ongoing pandemic. With workfrom-home and education-from-home becoming the new normal, everyone is highly dependent on technology and are looking for a seamless experience. They are looking for a best-in-class PC for their increased usage and are vying for affordable options for an upgrade, in order to improve their PC’s performance. Replacing the hard drive with a solidstate drive (SSD) is one of the easiest and quickest ways to enhance PC’s performance to the next level. Managing and storing data today is redefining the way we work and play today. Consumers looking for faster solutions are also wanting to explore more. Hence, NVMes (non-volatile memory express) has become the newest tech promising faster speeds in the SSD segment. It is new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation solid-state drives (SSDs) that delivers the highest and fastest speed for all types of workloads. It ensures faster speed almost four times as normal SSDs. With boosted internal speeds, this brings a better overall computing experience for multitaskers and resource-heavy application users who want a fast and responsive system to tackle tough workloads. NVMe SSDs are becoming pertinent, especially for the gaming sector, and we expect a faster growth of the segment in 2021 as well.” “As frontrunners and leaders in the segment, we have always endeavoured to
grow the category by creating awareness around the compelling use case scenarios of our products across the segments. Not just this, we have been continuously coming up with innovations at budgetfriendly price points. Our SSD numbers are growing on a month on month basis. Kingston is the most preferred brand in the Indian market and well poised in the market due to extensive SSD product portfolio and aggressive pricing. We are the dominating brand in the industry currently,” added by Tejashwar Singh.
MSI 2020 was a year of unprecedented crisis and anxiety but with the dawn of 2021, MSI wish to look at new horizons and opportunities for the brand and their users. According to Shivangi Bhadauria, PR & Marketing Executive, MSI, “The importance of virtual connectivity has been reiterated to the human race, therefore MSI introduces the latest Wi-Fi 6E on laptop, which is the first in the industry, to help take advantage of the additional connectivity & bring our loved ones closer than ever. As we try to emerge out of the pandemic situation, online space evidently made the marketers understand the gravity of shift from Brick & Motor to Brick and Click model for survival & expansion. MSI has always been a staunch supporter of digitalisation & has seen growth over the years on the etailer platform. The launch of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series created a big buzz in the market. Little did our fans know, MSI is the first to bring its new gaming series laptops equip with GeForce RTX™ 30 Series, providing significant performance enhancement. However, new opportunities come with its fair share of challenges. Despite some difficulties in international shipping or product certification process, MSI has always been determined to bring out the latest technology & products for our users.”
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TENDA
channel incentive schemes/offers to boost the channel business.”
2021 is going to a year of revival for the industry as market will be opening after post covid-19 lockdown. “Networking solution market witnessed a huge surge during the pandemic lockdown as demand for
home networking devices like Wifi routers, 4G Wifi dongles and USB Conference cameras increases due to the “Work from Home” Factor. In 2021, we will witness new technology advancement in the field of video conferencing, adaptation of Wifi6, implementation of 5G and introduction of 6G in India. The focus will be on how to better the work from home experience for people,” said Alok Verma, Marketing Manager, Tenda India. “There are both opportunities and challenges in the sector as demand for networking products will increase but only those products will be succeed in the market which can have new technological innovations in them. For us in Tenda, our focus in on introducing new technology for our networking products such as new generation Wifi routers, range extenders and dongles etc while also ensuring quality and demand for these products to our customer remain intact and provide satisfactory customer support to them,” concluded by Alok Verma.
RP TECH INDIA Distribution players always play key role in succeeding and adoption of any tech trends. According to Rajesh Goenka, Director, Sales & Marketing, RP tech India, “RP tech India will continue to maintain our growth momentum in 2021. We will focus on strengthening our existing business, controlling & consolidating cost and seeking newer business opportunities. We expect the brands to come up with cost effective technology solutions that will address the issues of customers in the new normal of distance engagement. Similarly, we expect the brands to launch 32
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BD SOFTWARE Zakir Hussain, Director, BD Software reveals, “We have tied up with good solutions in the last year or so and we will look to grow their sales in India. There is a huge demand for the technology and we feel that we have the solutions to cater to the needs. Our vision is to grow in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India and we have a goal to reach and make our solutions available in atleast 100 cities of India. We are in the process of identifying correct manpower and the regions to reach and grow. Our vendors have been supporting us for many years and we have assurance of the support in future too. Our vendors have given us good support in terms of pricing and in technical support. Rest all marketing activities, partner welfare schemes are taken care of by us and we strongly believe that our growth lies in growing our channel network and their growth.”
TECHNOBIND 2021 will be a game changer for the Distribution business and in general the IT sales as a whole. Sharing more on distribution business in India, Prashanth GJ, CEO, TechnoBind said, “Customers are coming out of the pandemic and investments will pick up. But what is also critical is the fact that IT Sales community who have been primarily engaging with the customers in a remote fashion which is so different from the way they had engaged over the years. What becomes important now is that along with the relationship sales guys used to leverage, they need to also focus on show casing true value to their customers – they have been doing it, but they need to do it with remote engagement. Our top priority is to enhance our engagement with the partner sales
community and help them appreciate the market opportunity with the view of they being able to articulate how their technology is solving customers’ business problems. We also look forward to our brands that we engage with to help us with this endeavour to better enable the partner sales community and hence build that better traction that will be required in these changing times. Our focus will continue to be on technologies in the area of Data and our approach will be to help customer solve his specific business challenges.”
SUPERTRON ELECTRONICS “2020 has been a year full of terms like “unprecedented” and “unanticipated.” Every industry has been affected in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic fallout and social unrest around the globe. Strategic and business model change has translated, and continues to translate, into new challenges and priorities for function” said Vipul Bhandari, Executive Director, Supertron Electronics. “For IT organization, 2021 brings with it the imperative to generate more business value using innovative technologies and approaches to information. IT channel is all set to kick start the year 2021 with hope and optimism. Year 2020 was instrumental in redefining business strategies to adapt to the New Normal. IT hardware business will maintain the growth momentum in 2021 as virtual and contactless engagement gain prominence and segments such as Storage, Server, Networking and Gaming PC (All-in-one) will stimulate the industry growth. Our priorities for 2021 is to expand business portfolio in the technology offering to our partners which would give newer growth avenues for our partners along with growth in existing product lines. Digitalization is another area which would be our focus to empower our team with wide information on the finger tips which eventually help our team to enhance productivity. Our association with Brands are very supportive & encouraging. Brands have really stood by us during challenging times & given opportunities to fuel growth basis the market opportunities. add value to our brand association basis the market. www.digitalterminal.in
PRODUCT REVIEW : INFINIX ZERO 8i IN-BOX ACCESSORIES The box contains an 18W charger which can charge your phone very quickly. Even though the charger is of 18W but the phone supports 33W fast charging. You are getting Type-C USB cable, some documents like user manual and warranty card, a SIM ejector tool, a transparent back cover and a screen protector film in this box. Here also you are not getting earphone so you need to purchase on your own. DESIGN AND FIRST IMPRESSION Infinix Zero 8i is such an impressive smartphone as it amazes you with its overall design. The design is quite decent and gives an outstanding inhand feel. The phone comes in Diamond Glass and the matte finish at rear side makes it very smooth to grip. ZERO 8i also features a multifunctional sidemounted fingerprint sensor. In the first look, it impresses you with its classy design. However, the phone is slightly heavy as it’s total weight is 210.5 gms. DISPLAY Infinix Zero 8i boasts 6.85” FHD+ Dual pin-hole display. Display has very nano edges and we are getting 90.1% screento-body ratio in this phone. The phone has 90Hz refresh rate which is quite common in all the smartphones under this budget. Also, it has a 180Hz touch sampling rate so it will provide a faster screen response and a smooth usage experience. You are also getting 480 NITS brightness in the display which is good for outdoor display. CAMERA First of all the camera is designed in diamond shape which truly intensifies its looks. The Infinix Zero 8i comes equipped with a 48MP AI Quad rear camera with an 8MP Ultra-Wide angle lens, a 2MP depth sensor and an AI lens. The rear camera quality is quite impressive so it will be a perfect treat for photography lovers. We were very happy to see the super slow motion and 4K videos feature in this phone. There are some other modes as well like Eye Tracking mode, Macro Mode, Document Mode and Pro mode. Usually when you www.digitalterminal.in
zoom into the picture, the pixels get distorted and picture quality degrades further. But in this phone, picture quality & it’s complete detailing remains intact. On the either side, the selfie camera looks promising as it is a 16MP + 8MP Dual selfie camera. The quality of selfie camera is good. The brightness and depth of the selfies is quite good. The best thing about Zero 8i’s selfie camera is wide angle shot. PERFORMANCE Infinix Zero 8i is equipped with MediaTek Helio G90T 64 bit Octa-core processor. The processor is indeed very powerful and we expect such kind of processor under this budget. Moreover, the smartphone is backed by ARM Mali – G70 GPU, which is super clocked at 800GHz and MediaTek HyperEngine game technology. The specifications are good to allow gaming enthusiasts to play heavy games like Call Of Duty, Free Fire or Asphalt Legends etc without excessive power consumption. We played some of the games like Call of Duty and some racing games to evaluate its overall performance. The gameplay was very smooth and uninterrupted. Also phone doesn’t heat much as the smartphone has MultiDimensional Liquid Cooling Technology. Zero 8i operates on Android 10 with the latest XOS 7 skin. It has a 4,500 mAh battery backed by an ultra-Power Marathon technology that optimises the power used by the apps and thereby increases 25% battery backup. PRICE Infinix Zero 8i comes only in the 8GB+128GB storage variant and priced at Rs. 14,999/-. The storage is expandable upto 256GB with the help of microSD card. Comes with two color options, black diamond and silver diamond and available on Flipkart. DT REVIEW Infinix Zero 8i has all the features that make it an ideal phone under 15K. During our review, we tested this phone on several parameters and then evaluated whether it is worth buying
or not. Its camera quality seems to be perfect and gaming is upto the mark. Infinix has given it a powerful hardware for smooth gaming so it doesn’t disappoint the gaming enthusiasts. We find this phone one of the best smartphone under this budget.
Pros • Good design • Good built-quality • Excellent performance • Best camera quality • Ultimate gaming
Cons • Slightly Heavy
Rating out of 5 • Design: 3.5 • Battery: 3 • Camera: 4 • Performance: 3.5 • Overall: 3.5
JANUARY 2021
I
33
AORUS
GEFORCE
RTX
TM
30
SERIES
RNI No - DELENG/2010/31992