www.ciolook.

com November 2019

Companies Leading Cloud Technology

Revolution, 2019
Editor’s Desk Secure Vision Preksha Kaparwan
Role of Businesses in Should Businesses Adopt The Fuss about AI
Climate Change Blockchain Technology?
EDITOR’S NOTE

Future of Digitization!

W
e live in a digital era, where technology is not
only an industrial aspect but a part of every
human life. Look around you, we are all
surrounded by immense transitions of transmitted
frequencies which are no visible to naked eye. Thus, we
collectively can phrase that, we are more integrated into
technology instead, it been integrated in our lives.

One of the greatest invention-cum-discovery, ever

extracted from this ever-evolving technology is “Cloud
Computing”. Prior to its inception, none ever imagined
that such an advancement would implicate to increase
the efficiency in various industries as well as in to daily
human lives. For the past decade, cloud computing has
evolved from an advanced innovation to technological
lifeblood that runs through most modern enterprises.

Still, there is a lot of fuss about cloud computing and a

critical question always arises, why do we need cloud
computing? And the answer is the technology is not just
concerned with businesses, it is also useful for the
human mankind as well. Cloud computing has seen the
fastest adoption into the mainstream than any other
technology in the domain and this adoption has been
charged by the ever-increasing number of smart devices
that can access the internet. For businesses, cloud
computing offers access of applications and data from
any remote location and from any device with an
internet connection. Accessibility is just one form of its
benefits, while the other pros include cost savings,
security, efficiency, and disaster recovery.
 Companies Leading the

Cloud
Technology Revoloution
2019

Cloud computing is a 21st-century technological wonder that holds its importance in almost
every field one can think of. Every emerging new technology will be supported by cloud
computing whether it be autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, digital first infrastructure
or using robots in manufacturing.

With an intent to emphasize advancement of cloud technology and its never ending utility,
CIO Look has enlisted some potential companies in the issue, “Companies Leading the Cloud
Technology Revolution 2019”. These leading companies are taking cloud technology to the
next level with their exemplary cloud solutions, business competencies, and technical know-
how.

Let’s unveil such alike, inspiring interviews and stories of many such significant organizations
in this special edition and spread a word about their contribution in making this world a better
place. Also, flip through the CXO standpoints presented by some of the leading industry
experts to taste the glimpse of industrial revolutions.

Enjoy the read…!

Bhushan Ghate
10
20 20
12

18
20 26
20

20
30 34
20

20
36 20
40
10 Muggie van Staden: Open Source
Trends To Watch For 2019 IN
Big Bang: Integrating Tech for the
THIS
12 Better Good

ISSUE
IT-CNP, Inc.: A Prominent Cloud
18 Service Provider
Articles
Nippon Data Systems Ltd.: The Go to
26 Partner for All IT Business Solutions
16
Editor’s Desk
Role of Businesses
in Climate Change
SoftClouds LLC: Predicting the Future
30 of CRM!

34 Preksha Kaparwan: The Fuss about AI

24
Secure Vision
Should Businesses
Adopt Blockchain
ViBiCloud (PT. Awan Integrasi
Technology?
Sandidata): Your Trusted Technology
36 Partner to Accelerate Your Cloud
Economics Journey

ZeroLight: Pioneering a New Era in the

40 Digitisation of Customer Experiences
 K. Roy
Editor-in-Chief

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10
| November2018 |

F
ollowing several mergers and acquisition this
year, 2019 will see open source investments
starting to pay even more dividends. Given how it
has become the driving force behind much of the
world’s cloud-based systems, companies need to keep a
close eye on the open source trends that could impact
their strategies for the months to come.
With deals such as Microsoft and Github as well IBM
and Red Hat, this open source-driven environment will
see organizations in a position to take the best aspects
of these businesses and come up with something truly
great. Thanks to the growth of the Internet of Things
(IoT) and the resultant explosion in data points,
companies understand that they need the resources of
cloud-based systems to extract the most relevant
insights.
The days of relying exclusively on proprietary solutions
to do this are long gone. Open standards have become
part of the approach many organizations take towards
implementing technology innovation. And those that
have not done so yet, will soon follow as they seek to
find relevance in an increasingly digital (and connected)
world.
This will also likely impact the cost of solutions. Using
open standards is resulting in products being developed
faster as data is analyzed in virtually real-time.
Understand what customers want and providing the
customization to do so, have become integral to the
operating environment today. And the secret to this
must be the open source foundation on which this is
built.
Local changes
The imminent arrival of several international data
centers in South Africa (two from Microsoft and one
from Amazon Web Services) will have a significant
positive impact on the local market. This not only shows
those skeptical of the cloud that investments are being
made, but, more importantly, South Africa is viewed as
a platform for growth into the rest of the continent
when it comes to the cloud (and open source).
The evolving landscape is seeing business requirements
also shifting. Next year will see a veritable land rush for
position in the cloud environment. More C-suite
decision-makers are open to going, well, open, and
vendors and service providers are clamoring for market
position.
11
Muggie van Staden
Providing even more impetus for this is the recent
launch of what many consider to be South Africa’s first
truly digital bank. Focusing on ‘behavioral’ banking, all
its systems are cloud-based highlighting the security,
availability, and redundancy of going this route.
Moreover, it is built on open standards all but giving the
death knell to those who think proprietary is still the
preferred method of doing business.
Next year will be an intriguing one to see where the
cloud and the open standards approach will be heading.
Strap in and enjoy the ride.
About Obsidian Systems
Obsidian Systems is an established
supplier of Open Source software
solutions. The company was started in
1995 as a services provider targeting
businesses and organizations looking to
integrate and leverage off Linux
infrastructure. Obsidian Systems has
expanded its knowledge base in
partnership with subsidiaries Cape Town
based Autumn Leaf and GuruHut.
The expansion of skills is now a
formidable team with Java™ expertise
aligning our Enterprise Open Source
solution for retail, supporting technology
and consulting services across enterprise-
ready open source infrastructure, big data,
collaboration and agile IT strategies for
your business. Obsidian Systems and its
subsidiaries strive to bring three legs to
the South African market: the first being
vendor-certified products, the second
bein g local skills providing consulting,
development and support and the third
being vendor-certified training and
certification. With these three elements,
any organization can trust the enterprise
open source solution provided.
| November2018 |
12
| November2018 |

Big Bang
Integrating Tech for the Better Good
I
n this era of digitalization, we have witnessed
unimaginable technological disruptions in various
business sectors. We, as humans, have unfolded
many technological facets including cloud tech which
has brought a revolutionary change in the customary
way businesses operate. One of the flag-bearer in
leveraging cloud technology to its fullest is Big Bang.
CIO LOOK admires such organizations and appreciates
Big Bang’s contribution to the evolution of the
technological sector. It is proud to feature Big Bang in
its special edition "Companies Leading the Cloud
Technology Revolution, 2019."
Here is the story behind the inception of Big Bang: .
Big Bang is an IT cloud solution consulting firm that
helps implement and integrate cloud system(s) from its
vast portfolio of products to optimize the efficiency of
businesses and provide clarity on their performance.
Services range from business systems advisory (BSA),
to implementation, to integration along with providing
support and training for cloud solutions including:
NetSuite (polyvalent financial system), Salesforce CRM
(customer relationship management solution),
Rootstock ERP (manufacturing oriented financial
system), Mavenlink (employee time management
system), ServiceNow (for IT companies) and
FinancialForce ERP (professional services oriented).
13
Big Bang
Big Bang’s CEO recognizes the importance of adapting
to change, especially when it comes to the technology
industry, which is why his approach is, first and
foremost, to embrace change. Being able to work in an
organized chaos and generate results despite the
constant disruptiveness is the reason behind Big Bang’s
success. The company’s values, teamwork,
responsiveness and staying grounded, also play a big
role in the CEO’s approach over the industry. These
values are reinforced through the company purpose to
create tangible value. Big Bang is able to serve
customers in several industries because of their goal-
oriented, results-driven strategy to provide an
exceptional service, even if it means having to fail a few
times. As Gabriel often says "Try often, fail quickly and
when you do, fail forward".
Big Bang’s constant search for best-in-class solutions to
offer its customers makes up the biggest part of its
contribution in the evolving cloud consulting sector. In
fact, Big Bang’s vision is to become the most trusted
independent consultant team specializing in business
management, collaboration and automation solutions
and doing so by proposing and implementing business
solutions composed of best of breed products. By
centralizing the different business needs and being able
to tend to them, Big Bang aims to serve all customers, in
all industries, as a one stop shop for all functional and
technical needs. Rather than going to see a specialist in
one product, who will never be accountable for the
| November2018 |
global solution, Big Bang takes on the responsibility to
ensure the scope of work is delivered and the systems
recommended can work together to achieve (or
surpass) the mandate and growing needs of a
business.
Every new company will go through several types of
experiences before understanding the true success
factor behind its growth. At Big Bang, the real success
factor that shaped the journey of the company and
revolutionized the business is the clear definition of
roles and career paths along with the addition of
departments. At the beginning, even in the organized
chaos, it was relatively difficult to deliver the way the
company wanted to. There comes a moment in each
business leader’s life where they realize they are
growing faster than expected and what used to work in
the past, does not necessarily work as well today. At Big
Bang, the roles are defined as the company grows. A
good indicator of where Big Bang is in the company
success journey is the organizational structure along
with a good understanding of each role within the
company, how it aligns with the overall goals, and what
responsibilities come with the position. It is also a great
way to get the right resources to do the right job and
increase the quality of delivery and service based on
client requirements.
As a service-based company, Big Bang copes with the
volatile technological changes in the market by relying
on its greatest asset: their resources (i.e. the
experienced brains of their consultants)! The training
and knowledge sharing at Big Bang differs from other
companies. At Big Bang, people are trained to adapt to
change and to understand how different systems work.
Their versatility in terms of skills, education, expertise
and multiple product knowledge allows the company to
quickly cope with the constant changes in the industry.
Big Bang does not only "cope" with change, it embraces
it and relies on it.
Big Bang differentiates itself from competitors in 3 ways:
Ÿ Brand agnostic: at Big Bang, focus is on being able to
provide professional services related to cloud
systems and make sure customers are benefiting
from the solution. The client is the company’s
number one priority. Because of the focus on
14
services, it is able to offer clients multiple products
while staying brand agnostic and only focusing on
the business needs and how to solve them,
regardless of the brand.
Ÿ One-stop-shop: Big Bang is constantly looking for
ways to improve and grow its product portfolio to be
able to offer solutions to its clients for all business
needs. In doing so, it aims to become a one-stop
shop to make its clients’ lives easier and allow them
to have accountability on all their system needs.
Ÿ Being a trusted business advisor, a true partner: Big
Bang, acts as an extension of your organization, not
as a third party. It is there to find solutions to your
business needs and takes care of providing all the
services related to them- including training its
clients so they are able to run their systems
autonomously. Whatever the need is, a BPR, a full
implementation, etc., Big Bang will accompany its
clients throughout the entire journey, from start to
finish.
Ÿ The company benefits from the volatile
technological changes by being ahead of the trend. It
is trained to expect and adapt to change which is
already a big advantage in the cloud consulting
business. By embracing change and sharing high
adaptability with its clients, the company is able to
create tangible value. Moreover, Big Bang’s efforts
at keeping up with recent technological trends
allows it to offer its customers more specialized
tools as they emerge in the market. Ensuring long
lasting relationships with customers is one of Big
Bang’s main priorities which is also how helping
their clients grow contributes to Big Bang’s success.
| November2018 |
 Role of Businesses
in Climate Change
W e all are passionate about the goal that we
have to achieve in our lives. And we face
challenges in our path, but we fight to
overcome those challenges to achieve that goal. But,
what about the environmental challenge? This is the
biggest challenge our species has ever seen. Some of us
are aware of it, while others are not. Nonetheless,
climate change is true and it is happening too quickly
for many species to adapt.
The impact of climate change has become a national
security threat. You might have seen or felt the global
average rise in temperature affecting seasons. These
changes are also called shifting seasons. The effects of
climate change are so devastating that it is likely to be
the greatest cause of species extinction this century.
According to world reports like the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), (OECD), (WRI), etc.
provide us information on the impacts of climate
change. A recent report by IPCC shows Global
Warming of 1.5 Degree Celsius. In fact, this is enough to
put 20-30% of species at risk of extinction all over the
planet. So, for humanitarian and planetary crisis
companies of all sizes have to act with urgency to plan
to slow down or reverse it.
Companies all around the world have been responsible
for 71% of carbon emissions that cause global warming.
This comes from energy sector companies who are
dedicated to the extraction of fossil fuels. So if, the
companies continue to extract fossil fuels at the rate
they have been doing it is estimated by the scientists
that the global average temperature will rise by 4
Degree Celsius. Here the question arises. Can global
companies be a part of the solution? Rather than part of
the problem?
Companies can take a stand by reducing carbon
emissions, making a climate action plan, and supporting
policies that advance climate change severity. While
some international organizations and companies are
coming together to form treaties to combat climate
16
change & are setting a positive example. For example,
The International treaty like the Kyto Protocol is
allowing energy service companies to confirm that their
carbon offsets are having an impact.
Let us see some companies which are leading the fight
against climate change and taking action seriously.
Unilever- In contrast, most of us might be using
Unilever products. The Dutch-British consumer goods
company has a multi-faceted approach to combat
climate change. By 2030, their goal is 100% use of
renewable energy across all its operations. They have
already made great headway and their current progress
follows:
Packaging: Unilever products are packed in eco packs,
which opt 70% less plastic and help to reduce
greenhouse gases
Agriculture: This promoted Unilever to develop an
initiative on sustainable agriculture. They are among
the world’s largest users of agriculture raw materials
such as tea, vegetables, and vegetable oils.
Water: They have made significant reductions in the
water used for manufacturing. It has reduced the water
abstraction by 44% per ton of production as compared
to 2008.
Energy: Unilever had achieved their 2020 target of
reducing carbon emissions from factories by the end of
2016, four years ahead of the schedule. This means that
their manufacturing sites have no net impact on carbon
levels in the atmosphere.
Waste: They have achieved the target of sending zero
non-hazardous waste to landfill from factories in 2014,
six years ahead of schedule.
Formed partnerships: Currently partnered
organizations with World Business Council for
Sustainable Development, World Economic Forum,
Consumer Goods Forum, United Nations Global
Impact, Global Commission on the Economy and
| November2018 |

Climate, Corporate Leaders Group on Climate and
Business for Innovation Climate and Energy Policy.
Apart from this, they also make consumers aware of the
effects of climate change and guide ways to reduce
carbon footprint.
Tesla- The electric car making company tops the list
when it comes to zero carbon emissions from its
products. The owner Elon Musk proposes to accelerate
the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Yet, unlike
other companies, Telsa’s management in terms of
climate change is opaque. Because, there is other
electric cars company which gives a very clear approach
to climate change. Other companies like Dailmer, Fiat-
Chrysler, Renault, Toyota, and Volkswagen have also
performed well and achieved ’A’ list in CDP climate
change program.
Ikea- the Swedish-based world’s largest furniture
retailer has shown a positive impact on the world’s
climate. It aims to reduce more greenhouse gases and
the company’s goal is to purchase 100% renewable
energy by 2020. It plans to use only renewable and
recycled materials in its products by the same year. In
fact, the furniture giant has invested 1.7 billion into
renewable energy projects. And, have already installed
750,000 solar panels on Ikea buildings. Ikea has also
said that it will ban single-use plastic products from its
shops and restaurants and making it’s home deliveries
zero emission by 2025.
Nestle- Deforestation accounts for 20% of all
greenhouse gas emissions. It means every minute
rainforest of the size of 50 football fields is destroyed.
17
Editor’s Desk
And, the biggest drivers are the cultivation of soya and
palm oil.
The Swiss-based company is the largest food producer
on the planet, address challenges to deforestation. In
2010, the mega food company already made a
commitment of ’no deforestation’ by 2020. Rising
consumer demand for palm oil products results in
clearing forests. To combat this situation, they have
started by understanding where the palm oil comes
from and how it is produced. And, to provide a clear,
real-time view of emerging issues they have pioneered
with satellite-based service. The satellites will monitor
100% of global palm oil supply chains from 2019. The
program will be to ensure no deforestation is taking
place in its supply chain. The level of commitment is
seen by blacklisting supply chain companies which do
not follow its policies.
Patagonia- Patagonia is an outdoor apparel company
and is in the business to save our planet. It was started
by a band of climbers and surfers in California. They
make clothes with organic cotton, hemp, and recycled
nylon & polyester. Their goal is to reduce adverse and
environmental impact by the materials used to make
the products.
Overall, companies can surely be a part of the solution
to reduce carbon footprint. They have to take a pro-
active stance against climate change. Their goal should
be to make life better and more sustainable by
converting to 100% renewable in their production.
After all, it is about the future of our planet where
people live.
| November2018 |
 ‘‘
We are proud to be part of
the cloud technology
evolution while fulfilling an
important role in protecting
the critical cloud
infrastructure of the Federal
government.

Dana Taylor
Director

18
| November2018 |

M
igration to the cloud, and the underlying
security issues surrounding it, has long been a
difficult process for federal agencies,
contributing to a slow-moving cloud migration process.
Government systems, in particular, face new persistent
threats from malicious attackers and hackers,
interconnectivity issues, hardware hang-ups, natural
disasters, and basic human errors. Protecting
government systems in the cloud is a tough task,
requiring assurance that cloud providers are adept in
handling sensitive government data, new budgetary
constraints and evolving waves of new regulatory
changes.
Every government agency can use some degree of help
directly from government cloud service providers that
specialize in government network and data protection.
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management
Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program
that provides a standardized approach to security
assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring
for cloud products and services. FedRAMP is making
cloud adoption more appealing, boosting confidence
among government stakeholders that their sensitive
information is protected in the cloud.
Since its foundation in 2001, IT-CNP, Inc. has been
delivering secure network infrastructure, hosting and
cyber security services exclusively for federal agencies.
An expert in advanced enterprise network security, IT-
CNP’s solution architects have been providing on-site
support for federal agencies through 2004 when IT-
CNP’s GovDataHosting division was formed to offer
off-site datacenter hosting and managed security
services for federal agencies.
Leading the Innovation
Since 2004, GovDataHosting has been a part of the
leading edge of technology innovations including the
19
IT-CNP, Inc.
transition from physical to virtual servers,
implementation of government-specific cloud models,
and adoption of artificial intelligence as part of daily
technical and security service delivery.
GovDataHosting received its initial FedRAMP
Moderate Impact authorization in 2015, and recently
upgraded to a FedRAMP High Impact authorization.
According to the Federal Information Processing
Standard (FIPS) Publication 199, sensitive data is
categorized as “High Impact” when its potential
unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized modification, or
disruption could cause severe or catastrophic adverse
effects or damage to organizational assets,
organizational operations, or to individuals.
Comprehensive Services
The key to GovDataHosting success is comprised of its
FedRAMP High Impact authorized Infrastructure-as-a-
Service offering, combined with a comprehensive
selection of cloud support services. GovDataHosting’s
full-service cloud management bundles include the
following four main components:
Ÿ FedRAMP Cloud IaaS - FedRAMP High Impact
authorized cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
enables lower computing infrastructure costs.
Ÿ SECaaS - Full spectrum Security-as-a-Service
(SECaaS) compliance results in expedited system
Authorization to Operate (ATO) and continuous
monitoring.
Ÿ DRaaS - Robust Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service
(DRaaS) delivered across 3 cloud zones with flexible
Recovery Time Objective/Recovery Point Objective
(RTO/RPO) options provide protection in case a
disaster strikes.
Ÿ ASaaS - U.S. based Application-Support-as-a-
Service (ASaaS) team provides comprehensive
| November2018 |

application support for
Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle,
Drupal open source and other
custom-built applications with
robust SLAs.
A Proficient Leader
Dana Taylor has extensive
experience in leadership, strategic
planning and management
consulting. She arrived as Director
of Cloud and Compliance Solutions
at GovDataHosting in 2018.
According to Ms. Taylor, “IT-CNP’s
GovDataHosting Cloud Platform is
currently one of only five FedRAMP
High Impact authorized cloud IaaS
providers serving the government
market. We are very proud of this
accomplishment.” She added,“Due to
shrinking budgets, government officials
are always looking for opportunities to
reduce their operational costs.
GovDataHosting bundled solutions
achieve that goal for them. Acquiring
cloud infrastructure, security
compliance, disaster recovery and
technical support together, from a
single provider, allows for tremendous
service delivery efficiency and
therefore results in cost reduction. We
pass this on to our government
customers.” Ms. Taylor believes the
concept of acquiring government
cloud infrastructure, and associated
security compliance services in a
bundle, resonates well with many
CNP’s GovDataHosting division
provided the requisite security
compliance services to ensure
adherence to rigorous HHS FISMA
and HIPAA security standards
during their transition to the
GovDataHosting Cloud Platform
environment. Personally Identifiable
Information (PII) and Protected
Health Information (PHI) were
subsequently documented, assessed
and protected in accordance with
government stakeholders that
HHS agency standards to obtain an
require continuous focus and
Authorization To Operate (ATO).
attention on their primary mission.
HHS headquarters also recently
The GovDataHosting team prevents
awarded a contract to IT-CNP to
these executives from diluting their
provide cloud capabilities with
resources and time trying to put
associated technical and
together the right pieces in the
information assurance support
cloud migration and system security
services.
compliance puzzle on their own.
To help the federal government
vendor community,
Unified Security Offerings
GovDataHosting offers a
GovDataHosting has a solution for
comprehensive FedRAMP SaaS
every government cloud hosting
Connect program that enables a
requirement independent of system
cost-effective path to obtain a
size or purpose. The
FedRAMP Software-as-a-Service
GovDataHosting Community Cloud
(SaaS) certification for government
offering serves as a federal
software application providers.
government-dedicated multi-tenant
With services available on a number
community reserved for federal
of government contract vehicles,
agencies and government
including GSA Schedule 70, HHS
contractors to access virtualized
NGITS Application Hosting BPA and
cloud computing resources.
the DoD ACCENT program, IT-CNP
Agencies with higher level security
has carved out a niche in the
requirements are setup into private
government cloud industry by
cloud environments that ensure
offering a 100% infrastructure
dedicated virtualized cloud
availability SLA and outstanding
infrastructure supporting highly
customer satisfaction.
intensive or sensitive workloads.
GovDataHosting services are
GovDataHosting’s service design
currently utilized by multiple federal
team is always working on new ways
agencies across the government,
to introduce automation and
including DoD, DHS, VA, HHS, GSA
artificial intelligence decision
and others.
making capabilities into its services,
constantly improving performance
Recently while transitioning a major
and finding new ways to lower
Department of Health and Human
customer costs.
Services (HHS) data warehouse, IT-
20
| November2018 |
Should
Businesses
Adopt
Blockchain
Technology?
C
entralized systems have treated us well for many
years, but if we see the vulnerabilities: money
and data is stored in one spot, this makes easy
target for malicious activity. What if central banks shut
downs or goes through software upgrade for whatever
reason? It may halt the entire system and nobody will
be able to access the information it possesses.
Companies are starting to work with Blockchain
technology; some of them are using it in the financial
sector while others are trying to improve their
bureaucratic systems.
Countries like Singapore, China, Canada, etc. are trying
to offer a national digital currency based on Blockchain
technology and supporting the initiative. The intention
24
is to provide decentralized solution and distributed
ledger technology for financial market infrastructures.
Although this does not mean that these countries will
opt for full-fledged Blockchain, further analysis of the
safety and efficiency of this technology is needed.
One of the most interesting and misunderstood
concepts in Blockchain technology is transparency,
some say it gives you privacy while according to few it is
transparent. However, this leads to some confusion
about how privacy and transparency can effectively
coexist. In this article we will clear how Blockchain
balances the two concepts.
The identity of a user is concealed behind powerful
cryptography (encrypting and decrypting), meaning
that linking public addresses to private users is difficult
to achieve. Transparency of Blockchain comes from the
fact that the holdings and transactions of each public
address are open for viewing. It is possible through
Explorer, an online block chain browser which displays
the content of individual Bitcoin blocks, transactions
and balances of addresses.
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain are still relatively new
technology; companies are likely to pick up the right
Blockchain technology for the business. Blockchain
companies: Steem is like YouTube on Blockchain and
has attracted over 920,000 users who publish more
than 1.5 million posts each month. Steem has also paid
over $40 million in its digital asset via (cryptocurrency
rewards) to content creators. Ripple, Intellectsoft, and
Celsius Network, are some of the companies today,
assured for success and will be popular soon.
With the emergence of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin,
| November2018 |

Blockchain technology is disrupting
almost all markets, changing the way
we do our day to day business.
Bitcoins are digital coins you can
send through the internet, its
software is completely open source
and you can trade your currency
exchanges with dollars, euros and
more. It’s very much still an
experimental currency and a high
risk for consumers and investors,
but the Bitcoin design has been the
inspiration for various other
applications.
Effectiveness of Blockchain
technology in the following areas in
future:
Smart Contracts- The most critical
area where Blockchain helps is to
guarantee the validity of a
transaction through secure
validation mechanism. Contract is
where consent of the parties is
involved to agree and interact with
each other. Industries and
institutions are heavily reliant on
contracts, such as insurance,
financial institutions, real estate,
construction, entertainment and
law. A smart contract can formalize
the relationships between people,
institutions and the assets they own.
They eliminate the need for trusted
third parties and are self-verifying,
self-executing and Tamper resistant.
A smart contract is like a
cryptographic box that contains
value and only unlocks if certain
conditions are met. Once involved
authorities and companies are on a
Blockchain, a smart contract could
be used to define the rules of a valid
deal.
Supply chain management- A
Blockchain is a digitalized,
decentralized and incorruptible
public ledger that can transform
supply chains, industries and
ecosystems. The following
applications are now in use or can be
implemented in supply chain using
Blockchain technology:
Automotive supplier payments- It is
exciting to see cryptocurrency in the
automotive industry. There are also
suppliers and websites available for
buying and selling cars with Bitcoin,
which allows transfer of funds
anywhere in the world without the
need for traditional banking
transactions, as transactions are
made directly between payer and
payee. It is also secure and rapid,
transfers also incur lower fees.
However, buying a car from a
random individual is considered a bit
risky.
Food Traceability- Satoshi
Nakamoto, inventor of Blockchain
technology aimed in creating
decentralized ledger leaving behind
open source software that the users
would be able to update and
improve. Companies can use
distributed ledger systems to record
product status at each stage of
production. As the records are
permanent and immutable, they
make it possible to trace each
product to its source.
Food volumes such as coffee, tea,
oils, sugar and beans are almost
impossible to track. Blockchain
technology enables the tracking of
food packages, by a unique identifier
such as barcode, QR code or RFID
transmitter. The benefit from using
Blockchain is that no central party
needs to be trusted in order to
overlook the data, while still
allowing volumes to be transparent
for everyone in the chain. An area of
concern within the food industry is
that many food products are small
and inexpensive; there is a risk that
tracking of every package and seed
can become expensive. Blockchain
enables integration of simple
hardware and cheap software and is
ideally suited for managing the
process.
Supply chains have already started
using Blockchain in some areas of
their operations like electric power
25
Secure Vision
micro grids and cold chain
monitoring. However,
transformation of supply chains will
not happen overnight, new doors
may open to faster more intelligent
and more secure process
throughout the entire supply chain.
Criticisms and challenges:
Huge electricity required-
Remember all the power required to
verify transactions demand
electricity. In order to unleash the
power of Blockchain technology,
computer scientists need to solve
this big problem.
Security about the private key-
Private Key must remain secret at
all times because revealing it to the
third parties is same as giving them
controls over Bitcoins secured by
that key. Also the key must be
backed up and protected from
accidental loss, because if it is lost it
cannot be recovered and the funds
secured by it are forever lost, too.
Extremely volatile- Decentralized
Blockchain technology and virtual
currencies are extremely new to the
market. Fluctuating prices of Bitcoin
vary from day to day because
companies, investors, and
governments adopting or not
adopting them greatly affect the
volatility.
Blockchain will be an important part
of our financial and technological
digital future. It is one of the
incredibly creative inventions that
technology has ever seen. So how
we use it is up to us. Some
companies such as Overstock.com
and Telsa have already started
accepting virtual currencies.
However, it is still not apparent
what the retail leaders like Amazon
and eBay would do with the
cryptocurrency acceptance. But if
they start accepting then it could
indeed transform the global
scenario.
| November2018 |
 The Go to Partner for All IT
Business Solutions
S
ince the time, Nippon Data Systems Ltd was
established in 1994, the company has built a solid
foundation of success on which it continues to
grow. The organisation specializes in solving business
problems by harnessing technology and applying them
for developing and implementing customized and
standard information systems. Under the Nippon
Data's resource umbrella is a team of highly skilled IT
professionals with expertise in Software Development,
Domain, Business Process re-engineering, Strategy
Planning, Downsizing, Rapid Application Development,
Object Oriented Approach, Business Intelligence
Internet and Mobile Technologies, Infrastructure
Management and more. Over the years, its team of
professionals have encountered and conquered
complex problems relating to various business needs.
Nippon Data has invested several thousands of man
years of effort in bring NEWTON Enterprise Resource
Planning suite of software applications.
Pack of Advance Technologies
Nippon Data is a provider of IT enabled business
solutions which provide its clients competitive business
advantage. The company partners with its customers to
deliver business solutions to their satisfaction and help
them ‘Live Your Enterprise Potential. We take pride in
conducting business with the highest degree of ethics
and treat each transaction with fairness and honesty
Client satisfaction is our ONLY measure of success.
Following are Some of its Industry Specific Solutions
which include
Ÿ Newton ERP
Ÿ Newton CRM
Ÿ Newton BPM
Ÿ Newton SCM
26
Ÿ Newton Case & Compliance Management
Ÿ Fintech Solutions
Ÿ SIMPPLIFY (Complete Vendor Network
Management System)
Ÿ Licensing (Eg: Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, Etc).
Ÿ Cloud Solutions (Eg: IAAS, PAAS, SAAS)
Nippon Data with the most professional and advanced
resources, bring the most satisfactory outcomes for
their client’s business. They make sure that through
their solutions; customers can get one-stop industry
solution effortlessly and are capable of tackling IT
related issues in the best possible manner. Its R&D
section transforms the product onto latest
technologies which are modular in nature, faster and
easy to maintain.
Proficient Leaders
Harish Saraf, CEO & Founder of Nippon Data, has more
than 25 years of experience in consulting is a B. Tech in
Computer Science and is a gold medal holder for his
efficiency in his academia. He came back to India from
the US to establish Nippon Data Systems with an
objective to provide Business Software solutions and IT
Consulting to its customers and serve as a one-stop
shop for all their IT requirements. “Being an ERP
company, Nippon Data Systems understands its customers’
needs from a much larger perspective which has endowed
us with a distinct competitive advantage,” affirms Harish
Saraf, CEO, Nippon Data Systems.
Ashish Saraf, Director of Nippon Data, is an MBA
Finance has over 20 years of experience in consulting.
He has been a part of leading client’s implementation.
He envisioned the corporation as a high-tech
performer. He has the vision to make Nippon the
| November2018 |
 Nippon Data Systems Ltd.

Every customer is
unique and they all
should include IT in
their journey and beat
the competition with
technology.

Harish Saraf
Founder & CEO

27
| November2018 |
 Ashish Saraf
Director
leading solutions provider. Implemented an energetic
and innovative approach in conducting the business.
Ashish asserts, “We have the best technical, marketing
and process teams that are balanced and also work
together to deliver best and complete solutions in all
aspects and perspectives such as functionality, business
process and technology as well”.
Serving with Excellency
As an evolving company in the same sector, Nippon
Data’s first contribution/priority is providing the
customer one-stop shop for all their IT requirements
and make them aware about the real good and services
provided by an IT company. The Management and team
together have built up a platform for common people
who can’t afford to have infra in their premises and
looking for a quick and easy pay as per use model. In
this model Nippon Data will provide infra on cloud and
will manage it with support and maintenance.
Additionally, customers in the market are so price
conscious that their main focus is pricing without
actually understanding the stability of the vendor,
depth of the product, post- sales support, product
roadmap etc. The competition quotes any prices to take
the business and this is one of the biggest challenges
faced while providing services.
28
Despite of cut-throat competition, Nippon Data is
doing very well in India and now expanding to other
parts of the world.
Ÿ It is handling largest Govt. project for Skilling India.
Ÿ Auto mobile company with more than 120 locations
running live on the company’s ERP Software.
Ÿ It has also implemented University Management
Software for Africa’s largest university.
Achieving New Heights Everyday
The company also listed in 25 Most Trusted ERP & CRM
solution providers in India, The 10 best Enterprise CRM
Solution providers, Award for Asia’s Pacific’s 25 most
promising ERP Solution Providers, The 10 Most Innovative
Tech Companies to watch and The 10 Fastest Growing ERP
Solution Providers.
Value Added Services
Today’s technology is constantly changing, forcing
businesses to seek versatile employees with specialized
skills, experience, and certifications Nippon Data can fill
almost any requirement, including the following areas:
Engineering, Research & Development, Design, drafting
& CAD Technicians etc. According to the company “With
considerable experience of delivering services and
industry specific expertise, our value-added
consultations help you find the right answer to your
business challenge”. It possesses deep seated
capabilities to scale up services in accordance with
changing requirements, ensuring the continuity and on-
time completion of Services.
Unique Approach
The unique footsteps of Nippon Data are use in
technical expertise and partner with their customers to
deliver business solutions to their satisfaction and
assist them in realizing their full potential. It shall strive
to conduct business with the highest degree of ethics
and treat each transaction with fairness and honesty
and be among the top five preferred solution providers
in the market.
Nippon Data also wants to create an amicable working
environment which respects and encourages
innovation and helps employees look at Nippon Data
systems as a long-term employer.
| November2018 |
 SoftClouds LLC
Predicting the Future of CRM!
C
ustomer Experience (CX) is a very important
aspect in almost every business. As
maintaining a comprehensive relationship
with customers has often become a need
rather than just a want, many businesses prefer to lean
towards reliable CRM Solution Providers.
Meet SoftClouds, a leading technology solutions and
digital transformation company that thrives in delivering
exceptional and successful CX enterprise and global level
solutions. Its modern solutions perfectly blend Oracle
Technologies and Specialist Expertise to deliver
sophisticated innovation. Its expertise, global alliances
and end-to-end services have helped the company in
redefining business models for various clients.
The Story Behind SoftClouds
Being a leader in technology solutions for digital
transformation—SoftClouds is at the forefront of
Innovation and Customer Experience transformation in
the evolving world of technology. Its solutions are
designed to make your company’s products, experiences
and interactions personalized to the needs and lives of
your customers. Teams at SoftClouds focus on
understanding what you and your customers need and
then align the needs with the right solutions to fulfil
them.
The company claims, since its inception in 2005, it has
grown as one of the Most Successful Companies in
America. It has marked its space in the Inc. 5000 list of the
Fastest Growing Private Companies in the US, three
times in a row. The company has expertise in various
industry verticals and provides a broad coverage of
solutions that cater towards specific industries.
Moreover, it has deployed technology solutions across a
wide spectrum of industries from Transportation to
30
HealthCare; Manufacturing to Automotive. Its experts
thrive on invention and deliver next generation solutions
that optimize your customer experiences. This has made
SoftClouds to become a trusted business advisor and
recommend CRM/CX solutions that best fit your
business.
"With over 14 years of experience providing customized
architectural solutions and our status as an Oracle Platinum
Partner, we know how to take your CX to the next level!" says
t h e Fo u n d e r a n d C E O o f S o f t C l o u d s , B a l a j i
Ramachandran.
We Fall Together; We Win Together
SoftClouds cannot be defined with any one management
style. Through quoting—"We preach innovation,
empowerment, and aspiration at SoftClouds", the company
states that it has created an environment of continual
learning that lets its teams learn & grow. Their
employees, a.k.a SoftCloudians are empowered to take
risks even if it means to take a fall, believing that there is
no single fall and single win; rather it’s a collective
approach.
’Employee first’ mantra is the big drive for SoftClouds to
attain success. With this cultural pillar, its employees are
always addressed and considered in every decision of the
company. The company’s work-life balance and personal
life means more than the commitments made to
themselves.
As a team, SoftClouds addresses their contribution made
to the IT & Cloud sector by simply stating, "Customer
experience is quickly moving towards personalization and
customer delight. Newer trends and technologies like CRM,
IoT, AI and cloud-based solutions are shaping up the future of
things to come. Our Innovation teams are ready for being a
part of this significant change and contributing to the
growing IT sector."
| November2018 |
 So Clouds LLC

“Volatility is inevitable but

staying ahead is the key.”
— Balaji Ramachandran

31
| November2018 |
It also states that the teams are passionate about
building innovative products and solutions that can

“
transform businesses. SoftClouds recently launched a
product—Qupplet, a natural language-based search
engine for Siebel. "Currently being deployed at one of the
biggest automotive companies, it is a dream come true for us
and their Siebel users," mentions SoftCloudians. Great companies
I n a d d i t i o n , i t h a s a l s o d e l i ve r e d m a ny m o r e might not build great
transformative solutions that have helped businesses
find the best and most intelligent ways to achieve their
goals.

Through Experiences one Evolves

"It has been an incredible journey so far and since we are

will always build a
great company.
“
culture, but great culture

forward looking, we think of everyday as a new lesson to be

learnt and experienced," states SoftClouds.

Customer Feedback has been a guiding light for the

company right from the time when it was a 5-person
company to a 150 people company, today. Its
achievements and success have provided it with the
confidence to build more and more solutions and
innovation in products/architectures. The company
always took its learnings and failures as direction
towards betterment and improved quality experiences.
Although it is important to focus on targets, but company
believes that it is much more important to understand
the customers and end users. Their teams always make
sure that their customers are happy with CRM/CX and
user feedback and the quality of the solution. This has
helped them in getting repeat business wherever they
go.
SoftClouds was founded with the aim of "Redefining
C u s t o m e r E x p e r i e n c e" a n d by f a r, e a c h o f i t s
implementation speaks of the same. Its team strives to
always go the extra mile to make the life of its customers
and end users easier and simpler. The company also
makes sure to provide technologically advanced
solutions to its customers with optimal efficiency and
future-proof to remain ahead of the curve.
Glimpse of SoftClouds’s Future

Embracing Tech for Optimal Efficiency
At SoftClouds, employees acknowledge technological
changes and try to stay ahead of the curve. They are
always ready for moulding the upcoming future
dilemmas and changes in their benefit. While
competition is unaware and incapable of tackling the
technology and industry changes/challenges, the
company invests its time and resources in learning latest
technologies, in other words, offering best out of best
solutions. It specializes in catering to the needs of the
customers and the end users.
"We have a passionate team of people, we believe in
continuous improvement, and with our experts, we are ready
for the future," the company conveys. There are many elite
players in the market who might offer technological
solutions as needed, however, SoftClouds has the blend
of technology and innovation that brings its customers to
best of both worlds for its clients.
The products and solutions delivered by SoftClouds has
always received excellent reviews from clients from a
wide spectrum of industries.

32
| November2018 |
 The Fuss
about AI
I
have been a strong advocate of conversational
technology (VoiceTech/NLP) and AI and have pitched
for it in various conferences, Guest Lectures at leading
business institutes and to corporates and I am often being
asked what will happen to our jobs? So this is true that
Artificial intelligence seems like a big untameable
monsters to most, and everyone is little anxious about
future.
And that could be true sitting in 2010, but past few years
new old research and young progressive companies and
devision of enterprises are willing to make it their sole
purpose that the infuse digital transformation in their
company and provide assistance to others. But, with the
prevailing reputation that comes at a cost of educating
everyone, really everyone.
They see it as a risk and any have burnt their hands trying
to tame novice early stage AI models. But thats fine, thats
how we grow. I believe that we are intellectual beings with
curious minds, why would we want to do repeatable jobs
which machines can do with greater efficiency. We can
delegate these chores and teach the machines to help us
better and imitate human decision making, innovate at
personal level and “Democratise Artificial Intelligence”.
Democratising AI through platforms for like voice
technology - Natural Language processing so the technical
algorithms can stay with specific user base while use of the
AI algorithms can be made as simple as conversing with
machines. Thats a sure shot way to upskilling resources for
example: Team of Analysts can train dashboards and
Business Intelligence tools to map business KPIs and
generate Compelling Business Stories and Insights in
natural language for everyone in the organisation to
benefit from, and then keep building the training over it
through machine learning. We are personally running
trials with Fortune 50 companies on this, so when I say you
34
need to start looking at ways to incorporate new
technologies I mean it.
For enterprises there are certain imminent crisis that
demand that they change rapidly and market is not at all as
forgiving as it was a few decades back, someone is
constantly rooting for you to make a mistake.This is
leading enterprise to transform under the integrated
environment of Digital Transformation
Voice Technology has lately become a stable AI process
and would completely change the way we interact with
technology in the future. Visualization will remain at the
heart of it however with conversational technology, we
can expect a shift to more verbal ads, like radio, but more
personalized and actionable, but still to make a decision on
which product to buy you would want to see it visually.
Also search will become more specific and hyperlocal,
where we will be prompted to give verbal feedbacks, that
would amount to popularity of products and places, how it
happens with mobile applications today.
Siri, Cortana, Alexa have brought conversation technology
to people for some time now. They come bundled up with
smart phones and can be used to do basic searches, to look
up certain things, cue up songs etc. Speech technology has
come much further than that. With its advancement we
can now control our oven, tv and other house hold devices,
can search complex data from cloud or can make phone
calls for ourselves. It can change the way we function in
our daily lives, our time with our family, services we
receive and the jobs we do. It can eliminate learning curve
of devices, repeatable chores, and compiling excel sheets.
And it will not happen eventually, it’s happening now.
Developers will innovate to create more audio centric user
interface, there will be discovery period for them to find
out how to minimally prompt user to give inputs and
implement voice modulated visual commands. We can see
| November2018 |
 Preksha Kaparwan

About the Author

Preksha Kaparwan is the Co-founder, CMO, V.UX Designer of Realbox.AI .
The versatile IHM Pusa graduate initially served as the chef but got inclined
towards technology and business analytics and founded RealBox in 2015.
Within three years of its inception, they have raised $300k for Realbox and,
their customers include fortune 50 and big 4 enterprises. As a thought leader
she has been part of TEDTalk talk shows. She was awarded 'The sparks 2018'
by your story for tech services for her exceptional contribution
as a Tech Evangelist.

speech approaching a point where it would

become so reliable that we can just use it,
like how we do it with other humans, and not
Preksha Kaparwan
Co-Founder & CMO
even think about it.
RealBox Data
I am personally inspired to bring acceptance Analytics Private Limited
for conversational technology globally and I
believe that the real success for this would
not be when big corporations and industries
would be using it but when every small and
medium business and every household
would be using it and help us to get a hold of
our receding grip on reality from visually
attractive and distracting screens on our tv,
on out laptops and our smart phones.

We have seen this kind of a shift with

automated technologies and processes
which has led to reduced laborious work,
efficiency increased and averted accidents.
Smart phones brought technologies closer
to the end user. So, I took side with Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning
technologies, that will aid seamlessly while
co-existing in our realities. And impact is not
just on us in our personal capacity but for
businesses too and professionals who spend
endless nights collating data and make
pretty ppts to show to the bosses.
I believe that spreading the word on
changing technological demography is not
our responsibility or our burden. But you
know why I make it my purpose??

Because it is a major step in evolution of

technology and I know we need to harness
it, shape it now, before someone else does it
for you.

35
| November2018 |
 Alfonsus Bram
Founder & CEO

ViBiCloud
Your Trusted Technology Partner to Accelerate
Your Cloud Economics Journey

36
| November2018 |
 ViBiCloud (PT. Awan Integrasi Sandidata)

‘‘ A hundred of
clients choose
us, because
TRUST is our
ACTION.

37
| November2018 |
E
ver since the digitization came into the picture,
the integration of new technological
advancements in the businesses has substantially
rose. Though, various organizations are gaining benefits
from such upgradations yet, many are still striving to
attain a successful stature. Markets are filled with
various IT solution providers, but only few proved to be
trustworthy and reliable to dwell on.
Meet ViBiCloud—a IT service company, that offers
impeccable Cloud Computing solutions to businesses to
help them run well and bloom with time. It is the single
Cloud Service Provider in Indonesia which uses
Microsoft Azure Platform. It’s more than just a
company rather it is a set of future tech plan, values to
serves, positive attributes and powerful brands that
beautifully reflects the spirit of the company.
Driven by the passion to help business simplify and
strengthen their works, it believes in its core values
which guides customers’ business and deliver the best
solutions. CIO LOOK appreciates such organization’s
contribution and feels pride in featuring ViBiCloud in
its special edition, “Companies Leading the Cloud
Technology Revolution, 2019.”
Below is its story:
ViBiCloud is an IT service company which is driven by
the passion to help businesses to simplify and
strengthen their works. As a Cloud Solution Provider in
Indonesia, it reinforce its passion and commitment in
providing end-to-end solutions and whole services in
the purpose of making the business work efficient and
have great growth. The company exploit the agility of
cloud services, ensure business continuity with BCDR
services, managed cloud services, managed security
services, and everything as a service.
ViBiCloud was founded in 2014, and has doubled its
clients growth every year. In 2017, it got 25 Most
Promising CSP from APAC CIO Outlook and launched
hybrid cloud using Microsoft technology, Azure Stack.
With a great strategy, it can achieve 1375% growth
public cloud and became 2019 Microsoft Country
Partner of The Year in Indonesia.
Its management change the focus in ViBiCloud from
Cloud Service Provider to Cloud Solution Provider.
And, helps customers using agile method, so not just
give a lift and shift or hit and run business model rather it
creates and offers CLOUD ECONOMIC JOURNEY
38
MODEL. It help its customer based on how it can bring
the business impact to them. It does assessment,
discussion, join planning session, and create the IT
blueprint together.
Being a leading Cloud Solution Provider in Indonesia, it
has so many experiences in various industries
especially in Financial Industries. Together with
Microsoft and HPE Pointnext, it delivers an “end to end
solutions”. At ViBiCloud, the team has an expertise not
just in Cloud, but also have an expertise in network.
Also it has a dedicated team for helping customers who
need legal and security consultation to make sure the
solution is secure and comply with regulations. With
such experiences, the company believes with its
solution it can help so many industries to comply with
the Government Regulation No.82 and expand their
business in Indonesia.
ViBiCloud is a company of young people who have a
motivation, vision and mission to bring the latest
technology to the customers. Like its CEO said before,
flexibility is the key, so the company is too hungry to
learn in new technology and analyse what market’s
need. Now, it has a basic solution like IaaS in its
datacentre, and add features such as monitoring and
security tools to the customer, so they can see the
report about their application or server.
While exemplifying its strategy, the company states
that two basic principles it follows to stand out of the
competition, which are;
CLOUD ECONOMIC JOURNEY: It helps its customer with
this approaching model, so they can have a journey
start from assessment to a fast growing. The point is, it
always suggest to its customer to pay only what they
need and use. So it’s a good experience for customers.
Flexibility is the key: Customers in Indonesia somehow
have very unique requirements based on their
condition. So what the company does is to have a basic
solution, and does some customization to make sure
this is the best solution for its customers.
| November2018 |
 Francois de Bodinat
CMO
ZeroLight

Pioneering a New Era in the Digitisation

of Customer Experiences
40
| November2018 |
E ven though the automotive retail sector has been using
real-time visualization solutions for several years, OEMs
still struggle to balance performance, quality, and
scalability. In identifying this gap in the market, ZeroLight has
worked to provide high end solutions that do not compromise
on any front. Established in Newcastle in 2014, ZeroLight
provides cloud-based solutions that enhance every stage of the
automotive sales and marketing visualization experience. Its
offering consists of real-time configurators for online and retail
as well as an easy-to-use production platform for the creation
of pictures, videos and interactive media. Designed for scale
and efficiency, its solutions are cloud-based, agile tools that
enable OEMs to increase speed to market whilst driving user
engagement, higher specification sales and lower content
production costs.

ZeroLight has expanded to become a multi-award winning,

international company, with offices in the UK, China, the US,
and Germany. This global mindset is reflected in its work as it
has undertaken numerous projects with many of the biggest
companies in the automotive industry such as Audi,
Lamborghini, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Porsche, Pagani and
Cadillac and its solutions are currently being used by millions
of car buyers around the world.

ZeroLight’s DNA evolved three years ago when the company

launched its first real-time, cloud-based configurator on Audi’s
website. The success of this project confirmed that cloud
visualisation is the future of sales and marketing experiences.
The company is pioneering a new era in the digitisation of
customer experiences within the automotive industry and
beyond. Its DNA has moved from "visualisation for marketing
and sales" to "cloud-based visualisation for marketing and
sales". This is a unique and very scalable value proposition that
opens the door to delivering content and experiences that

41
“
Our core mission is to move
the marketing and sales
visualisation experience and
content production from a
traditional PC-based industry
to a more scalable, agile, and
efficient worldwide cloud
platform.
| November2018 |
positively impacts upon sales figures
throughout the entire customer
journey, from advertising to retail.
With this approach, it is becoming a
revenue centre rather than a cost
centre in the eyes of its customers.
Once again, technology with purpose.

ZeroLight’s vital contribution to the

automotive industry lies in the use of
the cloud to reinvent and personalize
at scale the automotive buying
journey.

The company’s solutions have a

proven track record of performance
at the highest possible quality,
regardless of the medium. Whether
it’s virtual reality, ultra-high-
resolution screens, or other
dealership-specific sensorial
experiences, its technology has
consistently increased engagement,
upsells and conversions for brands
including Audi, Pagani, Toyota, BMW,
Nissan and Cadillac.

It is important to note that the

current point-of-sale experiences still
relies on physical PCs to deliver real-
time content to each medium. This
constraint not only brings complexity
to the retail world in terms of
deployment and maintenance, but
also increases the total cost of
ownership of the solution, whilst
reaching only a limited number of
customers. The traditional method of
delivering a configuration experience
online is to pre-produce a huge
number of images that customers can
browse on their device. This reduces
speed to market and brings a
significant compromise in customer
interactivity and engagement
compared to the dealership
experiences. To address this,
ZeroLight has developed a unique
way to use realtime cloud-based
rendering to replicate and deliver its
award-winning dealership
experiences to any customer, on any
device, anywhere. After successful
rollouts with both Audi and
Lamborghini, it is the only company
to have deployed this technology

42
| November2018 |

worldwide, in partnership with Amazon Web Services.
"Results of its online Audi configurator have shown a
66% increase in user engagement, a 9% increase in
feature selection and a €1,200 average upsell when
compared to the traditional method.”
Its cloud-based platform also enables the company to
overcome the point-of-sale hardware hurdle. ZeroLight
is now streaming high-end real-time configurators into
Lamborghini dealerships directly from the cloud, thus
avoiding the pain point of hardware installation and
maintenance. It is also working with leading network
companies to bring fully cloud based wireless virtual
reality experiences to the retail world, making the
dealership much less dependent upon high-end
hardware.
Finally, its cloud technology is at the heart of its
SpotLight™ platform which democratises the creation
and production of digital content and media for use
across advertising, digital signage, and any other
customer-related social channels. This opens the door
to a new type of interactive and ultra-personalised
advertising content that would have otherwise been
too expensive to produce with traditional agency-like
approaches.
When it comes to technology volatility, the company’s
priority is to hire and retain the best possible people. It
has a great team of highly skilled engineers and artists
who not only keep up with advancements in technology,
but are also capable of identifying, early on, those that
will actually benefit it as a company. Navigating through
the maze of constant advancements in software,
services, and hardware requires the ability to steer in
one clear direction and understand if and how each
new piece could either benefit or distract the company.
ZeroLight’s expert team is pivotal for it to do this
successfully.
One of the driving forces behind ZeroLight is its CMO,
Francois de Bodinat. The cross functional and diverse
experiences afforded to him through his roles as
software engineer to sales director, and from start-up
founder to blue-chip companies’ such as Amazon, has
enabled him to gain invaluable insights into the
commonly challenges that many young tech companies
face. This expertise is crucial to fulfil his current mission
as Chief Marketing Officer, which involves productizing
ZeroLight’s technologies, services and concepts into a
competitive and scalable portfolio to solve key market
issues.
Secondly, the company maintains a close relationship
with its partners. It became an Advanced Technology
Partner with AWS, for instance, which gives the
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ZeroLight
company exclusive access and support to their new or
upcoming cloud services. ZeroLight also works closely
with many hardware manufacturers to receive
development kit models of VR and AR headsets and
pre-release graphics cards. This allows it to remain the
preferred contact for partners when they need to test
or deliver a world-class automotive solution on their
new piece of hardware or software.
Strategically, the volatility of technology also creates
great opportunities for the company. The way it
structures its value proposition to its customers is more
and more technology agnostic; it focusses instead on
end-to-end solutions. For instance, ZeroLight’s cloud-
based platform, SpotLight™, allows OEMs to produce a
massive amount of media content like pictures or
videos of their cars. The underlying technology behind
SpotLight is constantly evolving, but it does so in a way
that benefits its overarching platform, making it more
robust, faster, cheaper and, overall, better.
ZeroLight’s dialogue with its customers remains
focused on the challenges they are facing, on the
content they need to produce and the context in which
they need it, rather than the specific methods and
technologies at stake. A software analogy for this could
be that its solutions are like APIs that deliver a
dedicated service or product. The code that
implements those APIs – the technology – keeps on
evolving, but the customer always sees the same APIs,
so they benefit from every advancement without
worrying about code changes.
ZeroLight stays true to its ethos and remain prepared
to challenge the status quo or existing business models
in order to constantly innovate with new and
purposeful solutions. It is not afraid to dare. For
instance, when it deployed its new, cloud-based
solution with Audi, it put in place an analytics platform
to track the user from their website to purchasing a car
in a dealership. This allowed the company to tie its
revenue to the measurable financial success of its
solution. Its competitive advantage also resides in its
customer centricity. For example, whenever the
company is approached to help a customer go paperless
with its product brochures, not only does it work to
deliver the best digital assets, but it also strives to bring
unique features of a cloud-based solution such as
increased interactivity and on-demand personalisation.
This creates a win-win dynamic with its customers who
understand that ZeroLight will always provide a
scalable and robust solution that is, above all,
innovative.
| November2018 |