Wipro bags over $1.5 billion deal from US-based Alight Solutions

Under the 10-year deal, Wipro will provide a comprehensive suite of solutions and services to the Illinois-based Alight Solutions that provides technology-enabled health, wealth, HR and finance solutions.

IT services major Wipro on Sunday said that it has won an over USD 1.5 billion engagement from Alight Solutions LLC, its biggest deal till date. Under the 10-year deal, Wipro will provide a comprehensive suite of solutions and services to the Illinois-based Alight Solutions that provides technology-enabled health, wealth, HR and finance solutions.

"This deal will result in revenues of USD 1.5 to 1.6 billion for Wipro over the tenure. This is Wipro's largest win to date," Wipro said in a statement.

This engagement will enable the digital transformation of Alight's offerings and enhance the employee experience of Alight's clients by leveraging Wipro's strengths in digital technologies, cognitive automation and data analytics, it added.

"Our industry-leading partnership with Wipro will enhance our client experience by drawing on Wipro's leading position in automation and innovation, while allowing Alight to invest in its health, wealth and cloud-based solutions to meet the needs of our clients," Alight Solutions Chief Executive Officer Chris Michalak said.

Wipro's larger peer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has bagged three large multi-year deals totalling over USD 5 billion in revenue since December 2017.

The current deal will come as a shot in the arm for the Bengaluru-based firm, which saw its first quarter profits this fiscal grow over 2 per cent to Rs 2,120 crore and revenue rising 4.72 per cent to Rs 14,307 crore as compared to the previous year.

Wipro CEO and Executive Director Abidali Z Neemuchwala said the deal reflects the capabilities the company has built through strategic investments in Wipro Digital, cloud platforms and cognitive platform Wipro HOLMES.

"We will leverage this expertise to digitalise and modernise Alight's core across platforms, technologies and operations," he added.

In July this year, Wipro had partnered Alight Solutions to take over the latter's captive operations in India - Alight HR Services India - for a consideration of USD 117 million.

In a separate BSE filing today, Wipro said "the transaction has been completed on August 31, 2018".

Alight HR Services India (formerly known as Aon HR Services India) was set up in September 2016. It has about 9,000 employees and registered revenue of Rs 1,132 crore in 2017-18. It has centres in Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai and Chennai.


   -GoITWay

Hackers now executing low-profile attacks to steal money: Trend Micro

Cybercriminals are moving away from attention-grabbing ransomware attacks to more covert methods intended to steal money and valuable computing resources globally including in India, cyber security leader Trend Micro said on Thursday.

Crypto-jacking -- where a hacker steals cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin from digital wallets -- attempts are making the biggest impact so far this year, said the report titled "Midyear Security Roundup 2018."

Trend Micro recorded a 96 per cent increase in cryptocurrency mining detections in the first half of 2018 compared to all of 2017, and a massive 956 per cent increase in detections versus the first half of 2017.

This indicates that cybercriminals are shifting away from the quick payout of ransomware in favour of the slower, behind-the-scenes approach of stealing computing power to mine digital currency.

"In the wake of several breaches over the last few years, the country is reeling under the spate of attacks that have compromised databases belonging to banking institutions, government email servers, and Indian enterprises at large," said Nilesh Jain, Vice President-South East Asia and India, Trend Micro.

"We have also seen few Public Cloud providers getting compromised this year. Next year, the customers who don't take adequate measures to their applications or data which are hosted in Public Cloud, might even get compromised," he added.

Another shift in the first half of the year is toward unusual malware types, such as fileless, macro and small file malware.

Trend Micro recorded a 250 per cent increase in detections of one particular small file malware "TinyPOS" compared to the second half of 2017.

"The recent change in the threat landscape mirrors what we've seen for years that cybercriminals will constantly shift their tools, tactics and procedures (TTPs) to improve their infection rates," said Jon Clay, Director of Global Threat Communications for Trend Micro.

-GoITWay

AMD says India has become its biggest PC chip market

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices is seeing a resurgence in the semiconductor market and India is playing a major role in its turnaround.

“India has become the No. 1market for AMD in the commercial PC segment,” Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer of AMD, told ETin an interview. “This is because of a combination of two things-—winning government tenders and working with large corporations in India.”

AMD is targeting the commercial PC market with its Ryzen Pro chipsets where customers can buy commercial PCs from vendors such as HP, Dell and Lenovo. Papermaster said the company has been successful in government tenders in India.

While vendors like Dell or HP bid for government projects, AMD offers solutions for the compute power they get with the PC and helps manage their IT facility.

Analysts say AMD has a historical record of focusing on government business. “We can’t see them reporting the types of wins they are gaining. Historically, however, they have focussed on winning government deals and working with vendors bidding on government contracts,” said Alan Priestley, research director in semiconductors and electronics research team at Gartner.

-GoITWay

TCS to open up AI platform Ignio to third-party players

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is running controlled experiments on how to open up Ignio, its artificial intelligence platform, to third party developers including rivals to build applications on, as India’s largest IT services firm attempts to establish a software brand.

The plan for Ignio, launched commercially three years ago, looks a lot like General Electric’s strategy around its internet-of-things platform Predix. Companies can use applications built by other IT services firms on the Predix platform. But TCS is working on Ignio’s business model, sales and branding strategy to differentiate it from its traditional services model.

“Right now, it is a stage where we are doing controlled experiments on how to open it up to everybody. Who can build on it? It is friends and family right now. We will open it up, but we have to learn how to crawl before we start running,” said Harrick Vin, global head of Digitate. Digitate is the unit that houses Ignio.

Ignio helps clients cut operational costs by automating repetitive tasks — IT operations, batch processing and running business software systems such as SAP. Ignio is sold as a standalone product with additional services through a separate unit called Digitate

-GoITWay

When we build for India, we build for the world: Google

NEW DELHI: Google unveiled a host of ‘Made-for-India’ products including a bulked-up payments app as it steps up focus on building technology for users in one of its largest markets that it can also take to other geographies. 

The US internet giant introduced a facility for customers to access loans from banks through its Google Tez app, now rebranded Google Pay; a stripped down version of its latest operating system Andriod Pie; and a platform called Navlekha that will enable regional languages content firms to publish online quickly. 

It also launched a bilingual version of Google Assistant that can seamlessly switch between Hindi and English, as well as a Marathi version of its artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant. 

Caesar Sengupta, vice-president, Next Billion Users initiative and Payments, at Google, said when Google builds for India, it builds for the world. “Many governments across the world are asking us to bring digital payments in their country. So rebranding Tez as Google Pay will act as a unifying experience,” he said at the company’s flagship ‘Google for India’ event in New Delhi on Tuesday. 

Google, which in January 2016 launched its ambitious project to offer free Wi-Fi in 400 railway stations in India, announced the next leg of the Google Station project for around 10 million people in over 12,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh. The Google Station project since has been launched in Mexico, Nigeria, Thailand and Indonesia. 

The company also said Samsung has joined phonemakers including Micromax, Lava and Nokia that are building devices compatible with Google’s Andriod Go operating system meant for low-end handsets. 

As for Google Pay, the company said it would focus on onboarding more online and offline merchants to drive use of the UPI-linked platform. About 22 million users have conducted 750 million transactions worth about $30 billion on Tez since it was launched in India in Sept last year, according to the company. 

Google is working on integrating companies such as Uber, Redbus and Bookmyshow on its payments platform. It is also partnering with Pine Labs, which deploys credit and debit card readers at stores, to have a presence at big retail chains such as Big Bazaar and FBB. The company said it is targeting 15,000 retail touch points by Diwali in November. 

Advertisers on various Google platforms as well as consumers using its Play Store will be able to transact using Google Pay. 

Calling out “voice, video and vernacular” as the next big trends, Rajan Anandan, vice president, India and Southeast Asia, at Google, said India has witnessed a 270% yearon-year increase in voice searches. “There will be over 500 million Indian language users over the next two years,” he said. 

Google’s Navlekha project will provide a handy online publishing tool for local language newspapers and content companies—90% of which do not have a website, the company said. Among its other new initiatives for driving internet use in local languages, Google will start offering its feed bilingually. Its audio page feature will be available in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, while Google Assistant will be available in seven more Indian languages apart from Hindi and Marathi. 

-GoITWay