Capillary Technologies, one of Asia’s leading consumer engagement and commerce product companies, announced today that it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Retail Competencystatus.

AWS Retail Competency Partners have demonstrated success in offering end-to-end solutions across Customer Engagement, Supply Chain and Distribution, Physical, Digital, and Virtual Store, Advanced Retail Data Science, Core Retail Business Applications, and Consulting Practices for Retail on AWS. 

AWS Retail Competency Partners undergo rigorous validation by AWS to ensure alignment to AWS best practices for building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructure for industry applications – to give customers an increased confidence when making decisions. 

Achieving the AWS Retail Competency differentiates Capillary Technologies as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that delivers highly specialized technical proficiency for Retail. To receive the AWS Competency designation, APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS

Capillary Technologies, has completed 10 years with AWS and has grown 50% year over year since then. The company was launched on AWS and over the years has invested in R&D by building AI-powered Omnichannel Customer Engagement and enterprise-ready eCommerce solutions for connected experience. 

Talking about the AWS Retail Competency, Capillary Technologies’ Chief Technology Officer, Pravanjan Choudhury, said, “Capillary has driven growth through two primary strategies; continuous innovation and geographical expansion. AWS has been a pillar of support in achieving these results. Their constant updates and presence across the globe have helped our customers to implement our solutions globally easier and faster. Today, Capillary Technologies can stand out as an innovative company and offer innovative solutions to our clients such as integration of behavioral events on CRM, Offline clickstreams with data from offline retail stores, and more, and we are happy to share this success with AWS.” 

“Many retailers are reinventing their operations and brand experience with new innovations in the cloud,” said Tom Litchford, Head of Retail Business Development, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are delighted to welcome Capillary Technologies to the AWS Retail Competency Program. Their solutions for retail operations, powered and vetted by AWS, can help our customers to accelerate their transformation, modernization, and customer engagement efforts.”

In their journey to become a SaaS leader, Capillary Technologies believes the vast capabilities of AWS have pushed them to explore deeper and come up with innovative products. Some of the key benefits that they have been able to power through AWS in the last few years are:

•                Simplifies expansion to global markets: AWS’s global presence has allowed Capillary to offer our solutions in 30 countries in a short span of 10 years. 

•                Scaling while controlling costs: During peak shopping seasons or campaign periods, the traffic can be up to 50 times higher than usual fo retailers. Capillary has leveraged AWS solutions to stay resilient to this demand and be scale-ready for some of the largest retailers. The company has formed an AI/ML innovation lab dedicated to adding more AI capabilities to its products to enhance ROIs for their customers. Capillary has maintained an availability rate up to 99.97 percent despite a soaring customer base. 

•                Boosting Innovation: Capillary has also used Amazon Rekognition to drive an effective customer engagement solution powered by smart IoT sensors deployed in the stores. The technology captures information about visitors such as how much time they spend in a store or if they are a returning customer with products – VisitorMetrix and VisitorSense. Capillary is also experimenting with Amazon SageMaker to simplify the development and deployment of ML algorithms across its product portfolio. Leveraging the power of AWS has also reduced time to market for new products.

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Programto help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.

Marco Pozzoni, Country Manager, NetApp Italia

 

By Shereen Shabnam

 

When it comes to races, every second counts and gaining full control and having a winning edge using technology is becoming more common than ever.

Recently we ventured into Italy to look at NetApp’s new solutions and services that allows racers to adopt and consume cloud on their terms. Automotive and racing professionals are currently embracing and adopting the seamless hybrid multi–cloud experience in particular. During our visit, we meet with Marco Pozzoni, Country Manager of NetApp in Bologna to find out more.

The NetApp® Cloud Data Services on NetApp HCI, has the ability to expand storage across the biggest public clouds and customers to manage, use, and pay for cloud services the way they want to. How does this work?

The first step is to move from a pure storage company to a hybrid cloud provider. The storage side on the flash market and it is the cloud data services side that is more popular. The trend today is to do more on cloud so that everything goes under an umbrella of data fabric and multi cloud.

What are the advantages of the multi–cloud experience for industries?

If you think of an enterprise with different suppliers, most of them have embraced cloud as they realise they can’t put alltheir information in one place as there are risks involved. From an economical perspective, multi–cloud is becoming a trend.

We are giving the customer the ability to be able to consume Nettapp technology themselves if they want. A subscription model allows them to commit to a year for technology they choose, select the type of services and decide who manages it. 

How can NetApp help organisations in general?

To be successful, organizations should fuel data-driven innovation by leveraging the cloud and modernizing their ITin all parts of their business through a seamless hybrid multi–cloud experience. 

Using NetApp and its data fabric strategy, customers need to build a unique data fabric designed for their business to enable them to seamlessly manage data across a multitude of IT infrastructures.

Which industries have used NetApp services the most?

Any industry or organization that sees data as a strategic asset. NetApp’s new multi-platform offering can empower them with flexibility and maximize the value potential of their data. 

How does the speed and flexibility between on-premises and cloud environments help Ducati?

Ducati link app allows motorbikes to be connected and gives them an edge. The core is the data centre of Ducati and then to the cloud which is an ecosystem that collects data. Ducati’s data informs everything from strategy on the racetrack to how to design products and engage with customers. NetApp helpsDucati transform on and off the racetrack. 

By Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet.

Why a Healthcare Agency in the Middle East Chose Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN Solution to Connect Nearly 150 Clinics to their Private Cloud

Organizations increasingly rely on new business applications to deliver valuable resources and services, and nowhere is this more critical than in the healthcare industry. This is especially true for remote clinics and offices where access to data, resources, and time-sensitive information is essential for patient care. However, because so many applications in use are latency-sensitive – such as video conferencing tools used for consulting, or bandwidth intensive – such as those used for reviewing test or lab results where large files need to be accessed and reviewed, performance is a growing concern.

Recently, Fortinet had the opportunity to work with a major government agency tasked with providing and overseeing health services in the Middle East, provided through nearly 150 branch offices connected to their private cloud by MPLS. These MPLS connections were designed to provide 50Mbps of connectivity, but as the organization adopted new business applications and services over CitrixXenApp, their links had become saturated. However, replacing them with 1Gbps connections was cost-prohibitive.

They also required direct internet access at each branch office, which required the addition of NGFW solutions to secure connections and data. And at the same time, they needed high-speed connectivity to their private cloud for their SaaS applications and other resources, which meant that an optimized experience was required when accessing their datacenters.

Designed to Meet Current and Evolving Requirements

One of our first concerns was making sure that any proposed solution was designed to meet current and evolving requirements. The Fortinet team interviewed doctors and nurses at one of their clinics and then designed an SD-WAN proof of concept which provided direct internet connectivity as well as a high-performance connection back to headquarters and their private cloud. This solution was built around the new FortiGate 100-F, which includes the industry’s first SD-WAN ASIC, a purpose-built processor designed to enhance application steering and performance.

Optimizing the connection between end users and cloud applications requires an application-centric routing system that can support things like link classification. When a user wants to use Office365, for example, the SD-WAN solution needs to be able to automatically recognize and classify the first packet with the proper application information to ensure that all subsequent traffic is dynamically steered to the right link. The resulting link and application performance optimization can produce speeds multiple times faster than non-optimized connections, while also better enabling end-to-end security.

After a short trial, the staff reported that application experience and performance had increased exponentially, and were very happy with the results. The IT director not only liked the increased performance and security, but was also pleased with the seamless management and orchestration system that tied security and network functionality into a single interface.

Why Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

In spite of deep discounts offered by their incumbent vendor, Cisco Systems, Fortinet won this opportunity around three basic advantages: 

• 91% WAN cost savings/year: First, the customer realized that the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution would save them 91% of their WAN costs when compared to upgrading their MPLS connections using other SD-WAN solutions.
• Faster Application Steering & High Performance: With Fortinet’s industry-first SD-WAN ASIC, we demonstrated our ability to support and enhance their connections to over 3,000 applications to improve productivity and user experience.
• Secure Local Breakouts at the Branch: The customer also liked the ability to increase the security posture at their nearly 150 clinics, especially given their Direct-Internet-Access use-case. The integrated NGFW capabilities built into the FortiGate 100-F appliance helped them avoid product sprawl, while the integrated single-pane-of-glass management solution reduced management overhead for both network connectivity and security functions.

Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution brings connectivity, performance, and security together in a highly optimized package. As a result, organizations are able to not only enjoy unparalleled price/performance advantages, but ongoing cost of ownership savings due to its unique integrated security and networking framework combined with a powerful unified management interface.