Cloud computing has emerged as a leading IT service in response to the pandemic and the resulting lockdown. Since then, we have witnessed significant advancements in this technology. In addition to public and private cloud services, we have been introduced to hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and the latest entrant, ‘SuperCloud’.”
What is ‘Supercloud’?
The Cornell University researchers have defined Supercloud as a cloud architecture that enables application migration as a service across different availability zones or cloud providers. It provides interfaces to allocate, migrate, and terminate resources such as virtual machines and storage, and presents a homogeneous network to tie these resources together.
How it is different from Multi-cloud?
Multi-cloud refers to an approach in which an organization uses multiple cloud computing services from different cloud providers to meet their computing and storage needs. The main benefit of multi-cloud is its ability to provide greater flexibility, allowing businesses to choose the cloud providers that best meet their needs. This strategy also helps to reduce vendor lock-in and provides redundancy in case of service outages. However, this type of cloud environment can be tiresome to manage.
Here are some of the major challenges of a multi-cloud environment:
Complexity – Managing a multi-cloud environment can be complex, as it involves coordinating and integrating multiple cloud providers, each with its own set of tools, interfaces, and APIs. This means that businesses need to get familiar with each provider’s platform and invest time and resources into managing multiple environments simultaneously.
Security – A multi-cloud environment can create security challenges due to the distributed nature of data and workloads.
Data management – It is difficult to manage data across multiple cloud providers as it can create data consistency, accessibility, and security issues.
Cost management – With multiple cloud providers, it can get difficult to manage costs, as each provider may have its own pricing model and billing practices.
This is where ‘Supercloud’ is gaining prominence as it offers the benefits of multi-cloud environment while also adding a layer of intelligence to seamlessly manage multiple vendors without incurring the additional costs.
The Benefits of Supercloud:
Supercloud provides several benefits over traditional cloud computing environments:
Simplified Management – It automates the deployment and management of infrastructure, thereby reducing complexity and simplifying management.
Greater Flexibility – With simplified management, supercloud provides more flexibility and agility in responding to changing business needs.
Increased Reliability – It integrates different cloud environments into a single platform, which in turn facilitates a unified view of all the cloud resources and services. This eliminates the need for organizations to manage multiple cloud environments separately, thereby increasing reliability.
Cost Optimization – It provides an automated optimization routine across all the compute and providers which means the application will run and consume resources only at the right place and scale.
Conclusion:
As business landscape forges ahead on its digital transformation journey and expands its digital presence, there is a heightened need to deploy diverse workloads across the globe in real-time. Hence, when it comes to IT infrastructure, decentralization is the way to go. Whether we call it ‘Supercloud’ or distributed cloud, it serves the same need – simplifying the reality of operating in a multi-cloud world and making it possible to realize the aspirational capabilities of cloud.
Aurionpro Solutions Limited (BSE: 532668) (NSE: AURIONPRO), announced its unaudited financial results for the quarter and year ending 31st March, 2023.The Company has posted strong YoY performance and these results demonstrate the strong growth momentum in the business.
Consolidated Financial Performance for Q4FY23 v/s Q4FY22 (Corresponding Year)
Revenue for the quarter stood at INR 191 Cr, a significant growth of 39% on a YoY basis and 13% on a QoQ basis.
EBITDA for Q4FY23 stood at INR 40 Cr as compared to INR 30 Cr in Q4FY22, a growth of 33% on a YoY basis and 9% on a QoQ basis. EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 21%
PAT for Q4FY23 stood at INR 27 Cr, which is a growth of 23% on a YoY basis and 2% on a QoQ basis
In FY23, the company achieved it’s revenue target of INR 659 Cr with a growth of 31% YoY
EBITDA & PAT for FY23 was higher by 30% & 35% respectively on a YoY basis
EPS for Q4FY23 stood at INR 11 and for FY23 it stood at INR 42.69, which was an increase of 38% on a YoY basis
Operational Highlights:
Banking & Fintech
Aurionpro’s subsidiary Integro signs partnership with Finastra, a global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, to offer Integro’s SmartLender Trade Limits solution alongside its own Trade Innovation solution.
A leading bank in the Middle-East selects Auro-Digi, our latest product offering, becoming first customer for this newly launched product.
Aurionpro Payment Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary received an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to set up Payment Aggregator business.
Technology Innovation Group
Aurionpro partners with Webwerks to successfully operartionalise Tier 3 data centres (DC) in Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Aurionpro is supporting Webwerks with DC Design, Consultancy, Master Planning and also DC turnkey build, in these projects.
Successful go-live of “IoT based Integrated Bus ticketing System” for the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC)
SME Chamber of India recognizes Aurionpro withBEST ENTERPRISE OF THE YEAR AWARD IN IT SECTOR, for Aurobees, its innovative platform focused on SMEs.
Management Commentary
Mr. Ashish Rai, Vice-Chairman & Director said
“We are delighted to announce these results which underline continuing strong growth momentum across all our key businesses. Q4 growth meaningfully exceeded our guidance of 25 to 30% yoy growth and we delivered full-year results at the high end of our guided range. Our strategy to build highly differentiated global products and platforms continues to gain traction and FY23 was a landmark year in demonstrating the ability of our chosen playbook to drive industry leading growth and margins. Both of our core divisions exceeded their operational targets for the year, which points to an exceptional execution from Aurionpro teams across the world.
What makes this performance truly special is that the businesses have delivered this performance while also meeting our long-term objectives of accelerating R&D to create next generation platforms as well as creating a best-in-class global sales channel to fuel our next leg of expansion. We have also made great progress in adding capacity across the enterprise. Taken together, these achievements allow us to be ready for a phase of rapid, sustained growth powered by increasing market share in our home markets as well as expansion in identified growth markets.
Our execution focus for the next year will be to step up our R&D investments to capitalize on the immense growth opportunities for our products that come with planned market expansion as well as offering expansions. Many of our key offerings and platforms are fast approaching inflection point where they go from being regional leaders in Asia to credible global leaders in their chosen segments. This reinforces our strong conviction that the best way to expand long term intrinsic value of Aurionpro is by creating highly valuable, market leading IP that drives long term value for our clients as well as drives sticky, high margin revenue streams for us.
We enter the current year with a strong combination of favorable factors that should allow us to accelerate further and continue to lead the industry in terms of both growth and margins. We have started FY24 with a growing pipeline, a strong order book, a slate of market leading products and an execution machine that has now delivered two consecutive years of high growth since we revamped our strategic framework. We believe we are in a great position to continue our strong growth trajectory and we expect FY 24 growth to be in the range of 30 to 35%. As we navigate the tremendous growth opportunities in front of us, our capital allocation strategy will continue to get more stringent, setting a high bar for expected ROI on all reinvested capital. This will ensure we stay focused on initiatives that capitalize on the most rewarding growth opportunities and continue to create enduring, long term value for all our stakeholders.”
TE Connectivity (TE), a world leader in connectivity and sensors, has collaborated with the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) Start-up Hubto launch its first accelerator program in India. The program is designed to promote and accelerate start-ups initially in the energy and electrification, smart cities and IoT domains, by providing them with mentorship support, access to resources and a global network.
The program was launched at a recent event conducted by TE and BCIC with the support of TiE Bangalore (Indus Ventures) on “Future of Mobility and Emerging Opportunities.” Attendees were addressed byRalf Klädtke, vice president and chief technology officer at TE and Dr. S. Devarajan, senior vice president, BCIC, and senior vice president, TVS Motors Company Limited, and Ravikiran Annaswamy, CEO & co-founder of Numocity, who shared their insights on the future of mobility and best manufacturing practices.
Rahul Mathur, director at TE, said, “We look at India as an opportunity to not just innovate in India for India but also for the globe. We are excited to continue building our capabilities at our innovation hubs in Bangalore and Pune, where we currently have more than 1,200 product engineers, co-located at state-of-the-art labs and working on some of the most exciting technologies. We believe launching an accelerator in Bangalore’s entrepreneurial ecosystem will help develop capabilities and drive innovation. In collaboration with BCIC Start-up Hub, the program includes specific models to provide guidance and mentorship support for the start-ups and will also help them to discover possible support for global exposure through our network. We aim to share our experience and success with the start-ups, helping to fuel the next stage of their entrepreneur journey.”
“The future of mobility will create a completely new ecosystem of electrified mobility with autonomous shuttles/trucks, software-defined vehicles, autonomous safety, seamless vehicle to everything, V2X communication, mobility pods, electrified air taxis, micro-mobility and many others,” Klädtke said. “The speed of technological change is very high and electric vehicles were just the first of many technology disruptions. For one to thrive in this new normal, innovation and speed are essential. As a result, growing our collaboration with start-ups and developing win-win partnerships is a top focus for us at TE.”
“Mobility is life,” Devarajan said. “India is taking a multi-focus approach on net zero through the Panchamrit principle. A combined co-opted approach toward net zero by manufacturers, suppliers and start-ups that involves improving product and process technologies like light weighting will enable our next steps. We must draw out strategies and action plans for the coming years to ensure a better environment for our next generation.”
TE Connectivity India will offer innovative solutions to help start-ups to optimize designs, reduce costs, improve performance, and enhance the user experience. TE’s technical mentors will provide guidance to design new components to meet customer needs. BCIC Start-up Hub will be fostering collaboration between start-ups, subject-matter experts, technology firms and research institutions to overcome market challenges faced by entrepreneurs. They will be facilitating collaboration with research institutions to leverage innovative research in creating market-ready products.
NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), a global, cloud-led, data-centric software company, today announced several innovative products and programs including a new modern block storage offering and a guarantee highlighting NetApp’s best-in-class ability to recover from ransomware attacks.
This announcement addresses critical customer challenges including increasing IT complexity, restricted IT budgets, increased urgency around sustainability, and the continued exponential growth of cyberthreats. NetApp’s new ASA (All-Flash SAN Array) A-Series family simplifies the deployment of modern SAN infrastructure, while providing guaranteed availability and guaranteed efficiency with accompanying cost savings and leading sustainability. NetApp is also announcing a Ransomware Recovery Guarantee at a time when ransomware costs to global organisations are expected to rise from $20 billion in 2021 to $265 billion by 2031.
“In an increasingly complex world, organisations are looking for simplicity and security as a baseline,” said Puneet Gupta, Vice President, and Managing Director at NetApp India/SAARC. . “NetApp’s leadership in storage technology helps customers solve data storage challenges with operational simplicity at scale, built-in security to manage and recover from ransomware threats, and Flash storage backed by guaranteed efficiencies to meet or exceed sustainability and savings goals.”
Building upon NetApp’s history of excellence and innovation in storage, today’s enhancements to NetApp’s portfolio include:
NetApp ASA – Increased Simplicity for Modern Block Storage
Leveraging more than two decades of data storage expertise and more than 20,000 SAN workload customers, NetApp is extending its leadership in NAS and Unified storage with a dedicated block storage line of products, enabling customers to collapse infrastructure silos and simplify their structured and unstructured data environments on-prem and in the cloud.
The NetApp ASA A-Series is a new line of SAN-specific flash storage systems that delivers superior performance, scalability, data availability, efficiency, and hybrid cloud connectivity for business-critical applications and databases. Additional features include:
6 Nines data availability guarantee (99.9999%)*
NetApp ASA delivers industry-leading effective capacity with industry-leading usable capacity combined with NetApp’s 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee*
Building on NetApp’s commitment to sustainability, NetApp ASA delivers up to 50% lower power consumption and associated carbon emissions than competitive offerings
Modern data storage built on all-NVMe performance flash with NVMe/FC, NVMe/TCP, FC, and iSCSI protocols
Continuous data access to all ASA arrays with symmetric active-active architecture typically found only on the most cost-prohibitive high-end arrays
Storage Lifecycle Program, which offers customers non-disruptive upgrades to the latest storage controller technology every three, four, or five years at no additional cost
Integrated data protection and hybrid cloud connectivity to ensure data is secure and can extend to AWS, Azure and GCP
“NetApp’s latest ASA enhancements provide more flexibility to our existing mission-critical databases and adds data efficiency at a lower price,” said Reinoud Reynders, IT Manager Infrastructure & Operations at UZ Leuven. “The new data availability and efficiency guarantees gives us added confidence that NetApp is also the right partner for UZ Leuven as we scale.”
NetApp Ransomware Recovery Guarantee
The NetApp Ransomware Recovery Guarantee leverages the NetApp ONTAP unique and industry-only combination of key built-in security and ransomware protection features. ONTAP can automatically block known malicious file types, block rogue admins and malicious users with multi-admin verification, and provide tamper-proof snapshots that can’t be deleted – even by the storage administrator. With ONTAP’s industry-leading autonomous ransomware protection, attacks can be detected, additional snapshots are taken immediately, and recovery can occur in a matter of minutes. Given this unparalleled combination of technologies, NetApp will now warrant snapshot data recovery in the event of a ransomware attack. In the event that data copies can’t be recovered with help from NetApp or partner assistance, NetApp will offer compensation*.
In addition to the new NetApp ASA family and the NetApp Ransomware Recovery Guarantee, this launch is accompanied by:
ONTAP One, the most comprehensive all-inclusive and built-in storage software, is now available for all AFF, ASA, and FAS systems. NetApp is also making the capabilities built into ONTAP One available to existing deployed systems under support.
ONTAP May 2023 Release, which improves ransomware protection and management of consolidated workloads.
StorageGRID 11.7 & StorageGRID SGF6112, a new version of the StorageGRID software with advanced capabilities for disaster recovery, updates for security and compliance, simplified user experience and more, plus a next-generation all-Flash object storage appliance with improved performance and density to support rapidly growing performance-hungry object workloads with large amounts of data, including AI, analytics, and data lakes.
NetApp Advance has expanded, growing NetApp’s portfolio of simplified buyer programs and guarantees, which continually evolve customer’s storage environments with confidence.
“This announcement is strategic for NetApp, but also aligns to what ESG is finding within our research, which is that the data center isn’t going away,” said Scott Sinclair, Practice Director at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Data demands are growing every day, players like NetApp recognise this and see the need for innovation everywhere. It’s great to see more storage options from NetApp, the leaders in File, who pioneered the Unified movement.”
Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a ‘Born Digital . Born Agile’, Mindful IT Company, today announced that it has been conferred with the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Exports & Excellence Special Jury Award Promising Debutant Indian Category. The award is presented in recognition of contributions made by the STP/IT units in exports, employment generation, innovation, and boosting the overall economy and prosperity of the State of Odisha. The award ceremony was organized by STPI, part of Transforming Odisha Conclave 2023, the Economic Times & co-hosted by the E & IT Department, Government of Odisha, on May 11, 2023, at Hotel Taj Vivanta, Bhubaneswar.
STPI, an autonomous society under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. of India, has been set up with a distinct focus on boosting Software export from the country. STPI-Bhubaneswar has played a seminal role in promoting IT/ITeS exports from the region by boosting tech entrepreneurship and creating employment opportunities for the local youth. STPI-Bhubaneswar was set up in 1990 and has operational centers at Berhampur, Rourkela, Patna, Ranchi, and Deoghar.
Mr. Venkatraman Narayanan, MD & CFO, Happiest Minds Technologies, said, “We are excited to receive the STPI Exports & Excellence Awards within the first year of starting operations in the State. Odisha is a regional tech hub with a large talent pool, supported by a business-friendly Government, making it a preferred location for us.”
In 2022, Happiest Minds announced its expansion plans in Odisha with a new software Development Centre at Fortune Towers in Bhubaneswar, taking forward its long-term investment plans for further expansion in the state in alignment with the Make in Odisha focus of the state government.
Designed for perpetuity, Happiest Minds is recognized among India’s Top 10 ‘India’s Best Workplaces™ in Health and Wellness 2022, and Top 50 India’s Best Workplaces for Building a Culture of Innovation by All™ 2023 by the Great Place to Work® Institute. The company has also won the prestigious Golden Peacock Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance 2022.
Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, today announced that it had uncovered multiple apps masquerading as legitimate, ChatGPT-based chatbots to overcharge users and bring in thousands of dollars a month. As detailed in Sophos X-Ops’ latest report, “’FleeceGPT’ Mobile Apps Target AI-Curious to Rake in Cash,” these apps have popped up in both the Google Play and Apple App Store, and, because the free versions have near-zero functionality and constant ads, they coerce unsuspecting users into signing up for a subscription that can cost hundreds of dollars a year.
“Scammers have and always will use the latest trends or technology to line their pockets. ChatGPT is no exception. With interest in AI and chatbots arguably at an all-time high, users are turning to the Apple App and Google Play Stores to download anything that resembles ChatGPT. These types of scam apps—what Sophos has dubbed ‘fleeceware’—often bombard users with ads until they sign up for a subscription. They’re banking on the fact that users won’t pay attention to the cost or simply forget that they have this subscription. They’re specifically designed so that they may not get much use after the free trial ends, so users delete the app without realizing they’re still on the hook for a monthly or weekly payment,” said Sean Gallagher, principal threat researcher, Sophos.
In total, Sophos X-Ops investigated five of these ChatGPT fleeceware apps, all of which claimed to be based on ChatGPT’s algorithm. In some cases, as with the app “Chat GBT,” the developers played off the ChatGPT name to improve their app’s ranking in the Google Play or App Store. While OpenAI offers the basic functionality of ChatGPT to users for free online, these apps were charging anything from $10 a month to $70.00 a year. The iOS version of “Chat GBT,” called Ask AI Assistant, charges $6 a week—or $312 a year—after the three-day free trial; it netted the developers $10,000 in March alone. Another fleeceware-like app, called Genie, which encourages users to sign up for a $7 weekly or $70 annual subscription, brought in $1 million over the past month.
The key characteristics of so-called fleeceware apps, first discovered by Sophos in 2019, are overcharging users for functionality that is already free elsewhere, as well as using social engineering and coercive tactics to convince users to sign up for a recurring subscription payment. Usually, the apps offer a free trial but with so many ads and restrictions, they’re barely useable until a subscription is paid. These apps are often poorly written and implemented, meaning app function is often less than ideal even after users switch to the paid version. They also inflate their ratings in the app stores through fake reviews and persistent requests of users to rate the app before it’s even been used or the free trial ends.
“Fleeceware apps are specifically designed to stay on the edge of what’s allowed by Google and Apple in terms of service, and they don’t flout the security or privacy rules, so they are hardly ever rejected by these stores during review. While Google and Apple have implemented new guidelines to curb fleeceware since we reported on such apps in 2019, developers are finding ways around these policies, such as severely limiting app usage and functionality unless users pay up. While some of the ChatGPT fleeceware apps included in this report have already been taken down, more continue to pop up—and it’s likely more will appear. The best protection is education. Users need to be aware that these apps exist and always be sure to read the fine print whenever hitting ‘subscribe.’ Users can also report apps to Apple and Google if they think the developers are using unethical means to profit,” said Gallagher.
All apps included in the report have been reported to Apple and Google. For users who have already downloaded these apps, they should follow the App or Google Play store’s guidelines on how to “unsubscribe.” Simply deleting the fleeceware app will not void the subscription.
