Past Events

SA Digital Week India 2022

If there’s one thing that the last two years have taught us, it’s that data never stops and the demand for data will continue to evolve. An entity that kept a sane balance in the event of a massive spike in network usage, user demand, and the need for larger and secure infrastructure, is our data centre. As per reports by JLL, the data centre landscape continues to evolve and is expected to grow exponentially to reach 1,007 MW by 2023 from its existing capacity of 447 MW.

The emergence of cloud computing has also led businesses to transition to public and private cloud environments with multi-cloud and hybrid architectures; giving birth to ‘Nex-Gen Data Centres’! With the projected growth curve and intensifying, law and policies will bring in large investment opportunities to India. India already accounts for 1-2 % of the global data centre market and these positive disruptions will make the industry reach $4.5 billion by fiscal 2025.

India’s ambition, however, of a secure and speedier digital adoption will remain a distant dream till the time India faces regular and major cyber crimes and data breaches. The major hurdle to India’s digital growth remains to be the lack of robust and resilient cyber security infrastructure, cyber awareness, stringent policies, etc. rendering India and its industry pockets, particularly, and increasingly exposed to cyber vulnerabilities.

As per IBM analysis, the attackers benefited from the socio-economic challenges brought about by Covid-19 and targeted businesses that were at the forefront of the COVID-19 response team. ₹16.5 Crores is the cost, on average, that data breaches cost Indian companies as per reports by IBM Security. The alarming part is there has been a 17.85% increase from the ₹14 Crores reported in 2020. With an average of ₹ 5,900/stolen records in 2021, approximately 27,966 average records were breached between May 2020 and March 2021.

Join us together at the W.Media’s Digital Week – India Edition where we discuss the way ahead in building resilient, sustainable, efficient, and adaptive in nature – data centres amidst the new ‘Digital’ World Order! We also, simultaneously discuss the way ahead in this new ‘Cyber World Order’ and how India’s cyber defence mechanisms will create an ecosystem for us to be more powerful resilient all the while enjoying digital liberties.

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Our Conference Agenda:

Time(IST)	Topics
10:00 AM	Welcome Address By W.Media
10:05 AM	Power Panel Session How the Indian Data Center market will look by 2025 – Challenges & Outlook The data center growth in India is currently exceeding the annual growth rate of American and European data center market. There are yet many cloud computing companies who have not yet made their entry in India, so this says that the data center market in India is bright. However the question is how do we reach there and what would the data center market in India by 2025 look like. Moderator: – Jabez Tan, Head of Research, Structure Research Panelists: – Pankaj Agrawal, Partner, Capitel Alex Perkins, Chief Development Officer, Stratus DC Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies Darren Hawkins, CEO & Founder, SPACE DC Sanjay Bhutani, Senior Vice President , AdaniConnneX
10:45 AM	Keynote Address from the Gov of India 5G and Edge – India’s next trillion dollar opportunity India’s next trillion dollar digital opportunity is 5G and Edge computing. Currently 5G & Edge are thought to be trends to benefit connectivity for mobile technologies. However it is more than that, 5G and Edge is the technology that can change the way enterprises in India can operate mission critical functions with zero latency data processing, efficiency and computing power. This keynote will deliver insights on how 5G and Edge can affect technology investments as well industry infrastructure, manufacturing units, smart cities and harbors, automation, government and public infrastructure. Speaker: – Atul Bist, Senior Assistant Vice President, Invest India
11:00 AM	Power Panel Session What is driving demand of data centers in India – Internal or outsourcing The data center growth in India is expected to grow by 4% during the 2019- 2015 cycle. While business in India is adopting hybrid cloud systems at a growing rate. The main question is whether internal growth in business or outsourcing of IT systems in India is growing the demand for data centers. Moderator: – NK Singh, Founder & CEO, Data Center Guru Panelists: – Vinod Nair, Service Head of Data Centre Ops, HDFC Ergo Dhaval Pandya, Corporate CIO, Piramal Enterprises Limited Suppan Saravanamuthu, Director of Operations – APAC, Iron Mountain Data Centers
11:40 AM	Presentation Session Data Center Of The Future Today’s world are complex, uncertain and data center is the heard to drive all the digitation across the world. This need a holistic approach when we look out for Data Center Design not only looking at our current requirement but how it will be sustainable in the future. Schneider Electric’s Data center of the future vision has four vectors: Sustainability to meet business needs responsibly; Efficiency to optimize cost, speed, space, and capital; Adaptability to be designed for new technologies; and Resiliency to reduce vulnerability to unplanned downtime. Please attend our session to know more about it. Speaker: – Ankesh Kumar, GM – Marketing, Schneider Electric
11:50 AM	Presentation Session Optimizing floor space Floor space usage in the data center is an important consideration, whether planning a retrofit or a greenfield build. With the ever-growing demands for computing power, more data centers are beginning to become capacity constrained. Floor space can be full, whilst, ironically, compute capacity is under-utilized, a phenomenon caused by a fragmented, siloed approach to the procurement of new capacity, often sized for peak loads. How can we improve the utilization of available floor space, optimize the floor space for maximum output and overcome the challenges of over-procurement and increased operational management? Watch us answer this question and more. Speaker: – Sanjay Motwani, Business Head, Legrand Data Center Solutions
12:00 PM	Power Panel Session Cloud Computing priorities & outlook for new decade The IT environments for organizations in India are becoming more complex with multiple public clouds, private clouds, and traditional systems needing to be interconnected, integrated, and collectively managed. Most of Indian organizations are clustered around early stages of cloud maturity and find it challenging to move ahead in the adoption curve. As Indian organizations move towards a cloud-first strategy, enterprises will now have to decide on the cloud priorities and how they see the use of cloud for challenges of the next decade. Moderator: – Gaurav Khera, Director – Digital and Technology Advisor, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Panelists: – Mohit Kapoor, Group CTO, Mahindra Group Mayuresh Purandare, Head – IT Infra & Cyber Sec, Marico Ltd Rohit Chatter, CTO, Inmobi Dave McCrory, VP of Growth, Global Head of Insights & Analytics, Digital Realty Manish Gaur, Head of IT, Patanjali Ayurved
12:45 PM	12:45 PM Power Panel Session Accelerating Data Center sustainability to the forefront with new age power & cooling Technologies In the dynamic, fast-paced data center industry, a passion for change is essential. Enhanced data center cooling system reliability, with best-in-class cooling control technology is now demand of the hour and this session will share insights on recent trends, mechanisms and how to overcome challenges. Moderator: – Venkatesh G, Deputy Editor, W.media Panelists: – Kevin Kant, CEO, Critical Facilities Efficiency Solutions Marcel Jacobs, Managing Director, Circl8 N.K.Jain, Founder, N.K. Jain Consulting Engineers Sudhanshu Datt, Sector Lead – DC & Mission Critical Infra, AECOM Venkataraman Swaminathan, VP & Country GM Secure Power Division INDIA & SAARC, Schneider Electric
01:30 PM	Networking Break
02:00 PM	Power Panel Session How digital transformation in the right way can refresh your business If your organization is busier than ever “digitizing,” you’re not alone. Digital efforts have been proliferating for years as companies strive to catch up with technological innovation. However, this accelerated wave must not be confused with the real business transformation needed for success in the digital age. The former is mostly about enabling business as usual and “staying in the game,” while the latter is about building real, long-term competitive advantage to succeed and that’s what this session is all about. Moderator: – Shalil Gupta, Chief Business Officer, Mosaic Digital Panelists: – Eric Vas, President – Electric Vehicles, Bajaj Auto Ltd Anindya Karmakar, Head – Digital Transformation, Aditya Birla Capital Rajat Teotia, CTO, Junglee Games Ankur Arora, Director & Head – Digital & Innovation, Sodexo India Arvind Sekar, Lead- Partner Sales Engineer, Freshworks
02:40 PM	Power Panel Session Creating a highly efficient Data center for the future with 5G, Edge Computing and Next gen Infrastructure Management In a hyper connected world no enterprise would like to use a Data Center with efficiency & infrastructure issues. The demand is growing for an enterprise Data Center which can push network and data center processing to the edge. This session will discuss how organizations can overcome Data Center Infrastructure, efficiency issues in a hyper connected world where speed is the new demand with the help of next gen Infrastructure & technology so that Data Center & Operation heads can stay ahead in the race. Moderator: – Mahesh Trivedi, SVP, NTT Panelists: – Kamlesh Harchandani, Head – DC Designs and Development, CapitaLand Vikram Tiwathia, Deputy Director General, COAI Sanjay Bhutani, Senior Vice President , AdaniConnneX Manish Israni, EVP & CIO, Yotta Infrastructure Sreejith G, AVP – Data Center Operations, STT GDC
03:20 PM	Power Panel Session Dealing with cloud migration challenges Cloud migration can be an extremely daunting task for enterprises especially with vendor lock – in issues, migration of critical workloads or legacy applications. This session will bring together experts to discuss their experiences and how they went about successfully migrating their business applications from on-prem to cloud, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them. Moderator: – Arun Gupta, Technology Advisor, Shalby Hospitals Panelists: – Shobhana Lele, CIO, The Bombay Dyeing Manufacturing Company Limited Atanu Pramanic, CIO, Hindalco Industries Arivuvel Ramu, CTO, Tonik Bank Ajay Meher, Group CIO, Ampersand Group
04:00 PM	Dialogue Session How cloud will decide the future of India’s banking & financial sector for 2021 The earlier reluctance to move core activities to the cloud has softened. Many banks are putting strategies in place to migrate their core services such as consumer payments, credit scoring, wealth management, and risk analysis to the cloud. However the role of cloud in enhancing the financial services sector is not over yet. Join us for our dialogue session and learn the future of cloud for India’s BFSI sector. Moderator: – Sanjeev Assudani, Senior Architect – Cloud, Wipro Limited Panelists: – Anil Sinha, CTO, Early Salary Pinkes Ambvat, CIO & IT Director, CRIF India
04:30 PM	Closing Remarks

Data Center, Cloud and Digital Transformation

Cybersecurity/Tech Strategy

Data Center, Cloud and Digital Transformation

TIME (IST)	TOPICS
09:55 AM	Welcome Address by W.Media
10:00 AM	Keynote Address by Government of India India’s upcoming Data Protection Law & its impact on adoption of Next Gen Data Centres Keynote Speaker Golok Kumar Simli, CTO, Passport Seva Programme, Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India
10:15 AM	Power Panel: Leaders Talk Data Centre – Backbone Of The New World Order COVID-19 has given rise to a 360-degree digital transformation to India’s data centres and next-gen consumer needs! The movers and shakers of the data centre industry, knowing the market conditions well, are leaving no stones unturned with their new launches, innovative offerings, and solutions on advanced technologies. This power-packed panel of thought leaders who have been experiential learners of managing mission-critical data centres would throw definite light on how the data centre can now be perceived as the backbone of the New ‘Online’ World Order. Moderator Jabez Tan, Head of Research, Structure Research Panelists Michael Goh, Vice President & General Manager- APAC, IRON Mountain Data Centers Mayank Srivastava, Chief Development Officer, BDx Data Centres Vipin Shirsat, Managing Director, India, Princeton Digital Group (PDG)
10:45 AM	Panel Discussion Green Data Centres: Sustainability For The Decade & Beyond While India is setting the stage for data centers to play a pivotal role in the rapidly evolving digital economy, grave concerns are looming in the background and brought to the forefront by environmentalists, policymakers, and regulators, about the contributory role, the established and upcoming data centers play in the onset of climate change. While we must translate India’s vision of ‘Digital India’, it is also vital to be more transparent about the type and amount of power, data centers use; curb them to build and grow sustainably and reduce their carbon footprint, all the while optimising the building systems’ energy efficiency. The sustainability of ‘Digital India’ depends on the sustainability of ‘Green India.’ Moderator Ashish Dandekar, Council Member,Gerson Lehrman Group Panelists Sreejith G, Vice President – Data Centre, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (India) Unmesh Desphande, Founder & Principal Technology Advisor, CTO as Service Sudhanshu Datt, Director – DC & Mission Critical Infra, AECOM Kamlesh Harchandani, Head – Data Center Design & development,CapitaLand India
11:30 AM	Presentation Accelerating Your Imagination Through Cloud Speaker Madhusudan Shekar, Head of Solution Engineering, APAC & Japan, Google
11:45 AM	Panel Discussion Edge Data Centres – Pushing Towards the Edge For Accuracy A shift towards advanced IT structures like IoT and AI has resulted in the emergence of edge data centres, shaping up India’s outlook towards data centres. This discussion would give an insight into the emergence of edge computing in addition to cloud deployments to support mission-critical activities that require minimal latency. We will be having enterprise leaders talk about increasingly investing in edge data centres in the upcoming years to speed up their applications and how extended reality technologies like IoT, AR, VR RPA will give a makeover to edge data centres. Moderator Venkatesh Ganesh, Chief Editor, W.Media Panelists Rajesh Dangi, Chief Digital Officer, NxtGen Data Centre & Cloud Technologies Chandra Kishore Prasad, Director IT, IRISET- Ministry of Railways Ajay Ajmera, Head Digital & SAP, Shree Cement Sampath Manickam, Senior Vice President – Information Technology, National Stock Exchange of India Gulshan Khurana, Executive Vice President, Vodafone Idea Limited
12:30 PM	Panel Session Enterprise & Data Centre: A Collaborative Governance There is an urgency that has spread across all the organisations, big and small, to rapidly adapt themselves into the digitisation-led times. Businesses are realising the dynamism of their data, and are moving on from their supplementary storage facility to well-equipped cloud storage solutions to aid better data management and protection. With accelerated demand for flexibilities in cloud computing, data centers are also moving towards a multi-cloud or hybrid data centre model to speed up digital transformation for these enterprises. The session will briefly take you through how India’s top enterprises make the mammoth decision with due diligence of choosing an enterprise level of infrastructure provided by a potential data centre service for their organisations’ critical data infrastructure. The panelists will discuss how a united leadership, centralised management, and an uniform governance strategy will improve a businesses’ decision-making for the company’s overall benefit. Moderator Namrita Mahindro, Chief Digital Officer, Aditya Birla Group Panelists Sanjay Bhutani, Senior Vice President, AdaniConneX Abhijit Mazumder, Chief Information Officer & Global Head Sales Enablement, Tata Consultancy Services Sharad Kumar Agarwal, CDIO, JK Tyre & Industries Ltd. Mayuresh Purandare, Head IT – Infrastructure & Cyber Security, Marico Limited Debashish Roy, Director & Head, Pfizer Digital Utkarsh B., Chief Architect, Flipkart
01:15PM	Panel Session Migrating From Captive To Cloud and Beyond! Companies are moving from captive data centres to cloud computing. Rapid digital transformation has led businesses to turn to third-party suppliers rather than to deal with the difficulties of on-premise and owned data centres. Enterprises were able to access, manage, and process their data from afar thanks to data centre networks that were running at full speed, to the point that data centre services were categorised as one of the essential services. This panel discussion will give an insight into how enterprises are discovering, planning, executing, and optimising the data migration process. Moderator Shweta Srivastava, Chief Technology Officer, Paul Merchants Ltd. Panelists Gopi Thangavel, VP & Head of Enterprise Infrastructure, Reliance Industries Limited Kirti Patil, Joint President & Chief Technology Officer, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd. Sunil Sonare, Head of IT & Systems, ITD Cementation India Limited Varundeep Kaur, Chief Information Officer, Spice Money Limited Dheepak Rajoo, SVP, Head of IT PMO, RBL Bank
2:00 PM	Closing Remarks By W.Media

Cybersecurity/Tech Strategy

TIME (IST)	TOPICS
09:55 AM	Welcome Address By W.Media
10:00 AM	Keynote Address by Government of India Unblurring the lines : Building India’s Cyber Security Capacity Buildup! Both the cyber community, academia, and policymakers have documented the need to incorporate cyber capacity building and development programmes. The success rate of other government policy efforts is heavily influenced by the how secure India’s cyberspace is. However, there is a definite need for a more in-depth conversation between developed cyber communities and recipient nations to put cyber capabilities into reality in order to achieve the goal of having safe, secure and open use of the digital environment. In this key note address, we will be focusing on the norms and the government’s strategic initiatives and confident building measures for building a comprehensive guiding gospel for traditional and digital organisations, policy makers and other stakeholders. Keynote Speaker Colonel (Dr.) Inderjeet Singh, Director General, Cyber Security Association of India (CSAI)
10:15 AM	Power Panel: Leaders Talk Building Effective & Resilience Security Paradigms In Indian Industries Amidst being a part of cashless economy, valuable information are all around us. A bank storing information or client account credentials may not be the only target for a financially motivated crime. Any data can be valuable: personal information, sensitive IP, ransomware-encrypted data, data that affects stock prices, distributed DOS failures, and even political mischief. Anything can be monetised or played around by a cyber criminal or used to gain an economic advantage. So, in this panel discussion we bring on board the torch-bearers of the India’s leading industries. These leaders who are at the forefront of India’s economy discuss how they are tackling the increasing cyber security woes and investing in a robust data security infrastructure, especially in this digitally vulnerable post COVID-19 era. Moderator Lalit Kalra, Cybersecurity Partner, EY Panelists Pawan Chawla, Chief Information Security Officer, Future Generali India Life Insurance Company Ambarish Singh, CISO, Godrej & Boyce Shashank Bajpai, CISO, ECGC LTD. Dr. Yask, CISO, Oil And Gas Major Mansi Thapar, Cyber Security Expert
11:00 AM	Panel Discussion Decoupling IT/OT Convergence And Cyber Threats In their quest to optimise operations, many companies in recent years have begun discovering the value of operational technology (OT) data coupled with IT, which gets translated into information or data buckled up with IIOT technologies – inviting new cybersecurity concerns. Though industrial organisations view IT and OT cybersecurity concerns as unique issues to address, yet the need for this convergence has never been more important for the new digital world. This panel discussion will explore the threat landscape where the attackers are able to exploit the security gaps between IT and OT technologies, how to defend IIOT assets and overcome the IT/ OT convergence roadblocks, architect a detection paradigm that exhibits active probing instead of remaining passive. Moderator Rohit Rane, Cyber Security Leader & Strategist Panelists Mel Migriño, VP & Group CIO, Meralco Mona Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited Brijesh Kumar, General Manager & Head of Global IT Services, KSB Tech Pvt. Ltd. Pune Centre Dr. Lopa Mudra Basuu, Advisor Cloud Security Alliance APAC Research Council
11:45 AM	Presentation BharatGas Enables Digital Payment Without Internet Speaker Mona Srivastava, CDO, BPCL
12:00 PM	Panel Discussion Guiding SMEs Through Enhanced High-Level Cyber Security Actions There is a clear need for SMEs/MSMEs, to be vigilant to avoid potentially large losses or reputational damage. To distill lessons of enhancing the cybersecurity of less cyber-mature and smaller institutions/organisations, the presentation will take you through an action-oriented, practical guide detailing how SMEs can enhance their own security as well as that of their customers and third parties, the biggest cyber security threats that small businesses face, and how one can protect oneself against them. This panel discussion would also open doors to a plethora of opportunities to the security software developers to produce technical, administrative, and procedural measures to protect the SME systems. Moderator Vinit Sinha, Director – Cybersecurity, MasterCard Panelists Sanil Nadkarni, CISO, BYJU’s Future School Bharat Panchal, Chief Industry Relations & Regulatory Officer – India, Discover Financial Services Swati Anuj Arya, Leader, CISO Office Singapore, MENA & Emerging Markets Amazon Shijo Joseph, Group CIO, East-West Seed Nivedita Newar, Head of Cyber Security Governance, University of New South Wales
12:45 PM	Panel Discussion Cybersecurity Audit: An Urgent Call To Action For National Security As a developing country, India is still unravelling from the vulnerabilities of past cyber attacks and exploitations and is still under process of segmenting and segregating internal networks from unwanted and harmful outside traffic. The organisations are, thus expected to conduct cybersecurity risk assessments, exploring their IT security protections and its ability to remediate vulnerabilities. However, apart from implementing and validating cyber risk management practices, Indian companies need to enroll for cybersecurity audits that act as a checklist that to validate their security policies and procedures at a more authentic and security governance level. This panel discussion speaks on the line of determining how effective an organisation is supposed to be in its cybersecurity practices, and should mandatorily conduct regular cybersecurity audits for creating a multi-year cybersecurity internal audit plan. Moderator Saravanakumar Krishnamurthy, Senior Vice President,Yes Bank Panelists Mahendra Joshi, VP -System Audit, ReBIT Bharat Anand, Vice President – Group Technology & IT Head, EC – Council Vijay Devnath, General Manager (Infrastructure & Security) & CISO, Center for Railway Information Systems Neha Agarwal, Vice President Technology Audit, Citi Bank
01:30 PM	Panel Discussion Report, Plan, and Build A Fortified Response Every cyber crime committed gives birth to new set of cyber criminals or different way of hacking their way through! Cyber incident response strategies may differ from one business to another, depending on the nature and the extent of the cybersecurity incident and the sensitivity of the sector. However, what could separate a well-prepared company from the rest could be their ability to predict the impact of an incident, after it is discovered and how quick they get back on their feet with a strategic response plan. This panel discussion will give you an insight into the the importance of creating a robust cyber incidence response mechanism to better equip Indian organisations in combatting cyber-attacks in a more streamlined manner and the lessons learned. Moderator Izzat Aziz, Director- Technology, Risk and Cybersecurity, KPMG Panelists Mathan Babu Kasilingam, CISO, Vodafone Idea Ltd. Pradipita Patro, CISO, RPG Group Shilpa Sawant, Assistant Vice President – Cyber Security, Reliance Industries Limited Prateek Agrawal, Head – New Initiatives IT, Century Plyboards India Limited A Shiju Rawther, Head Information Technology, SBI Mutual Fund
2:15 PM	Closing Remarks by W.Media