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Helping Companies Stay Relevant In An Ever-Changing Digital Landscape

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We are living in an era of digital transformation today, where the use of digital technologies to transform business is having a dramatic impact across every sector and industry. Sasken provides digital transformation and product engineering services to companies across industries. In an interaction with CXOToday, Raman Sapra, Executive Vice President and General Manager – Digital, Sasken Technologies explains how organizations can stay relevant in an ever-changing digital landscape. He also throws light on how Sasken is helping businesses grow and innovate with its digital offerings.

CXOToday: Given today’s accelerated pace at which the industry is moving, what are your thoughts on the current digital technology landscape?

The Digital technology landscape is rapidly evolving with IoT, AI, and Augmented Reality (AR) becoming mainstream. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to optimize production and maintenance and enhance user experience. IoT is enabling manufacturers to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and offering the possibility to create new connected products and build service-based business models around the products. AR solutions are enhancing user productivity and optimizing field service management with simplified adoption processes and tools, increased first-time fix ratio, etc.

With technology stabilizing and the ecosystem of standardized tools and support evolving, it is easier for service providers to launch connected products and hitch them up with existing services and systems, there by accelerating the adoption of digital. At Sasken, our Digital Strategy rests on IoT, Platforms and Analytics.

We have been enabling customers across the value chain to realize more with digital. For example, we offer AR-based solutions for evaluating and improving product design, enabling customer to reduce development cycle time, or IoT Platform-based Connected Car platform for delivering engaged user experience as well as machine Learning-based advanced data modelling to determine the remaining useful life of wind turbines.

Through our digital services, we have made machines and products intelligent, capable of collaborating and communicating utilizing IoT based technologies. We have created an ecosystem of self-evolving and collaborating business systems built and interconnected through microservices and APIs. We have enabled actionable insights for customers to run their businesses effectively and increase revenue.

CXOToday: Can you tell us more about Sasken’s capabilities in the digital platforms space?

Digital Platforms enable rapid delivery of services aiding business outcomes allowing for synergies of standardized tech and re-usability. Sasken believes that a platform can enable extensive automation of business processes and quicker release cycles,  increased addressability of common functional concerns, etc. At the core, platform-based solution approaches are moving away from monolithic systems to modular, self-evolving, scalable frameworks leveraging the power of microservices, APIs and server-less computing. With a predominant B2B customer base, Sasken’s Digital Platform strategy is geared towards helping businesses leverage platforms for internal consumption, as well as for providing value-added services to end users. We design solutions leveraging COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) platform services and custom application development to address the niche needs of our customers. We are constantly strengthening competencies and capabilities in digital platform. To ensure completeness in terms of competency, we work with leading IoT platforms such as Microsoft Azure, PTC ThingWorx, AWS IoT, and GE Predix.

CXOToday: Can you tell us about how you as a company leveraging IoT and Artificial Intelligence across your digital offerings.

Manufacturers around the world are rapidly investing in the IoT to create new products and services, while optimizing production costs. To realise the full potential of IoT, they need to combine the data collected from connected devices with rapidly advancing AI to enable ‘smart machines’. This is where AI is seen as the next breakthrough in productivity improvement, real-time monitoring of performance of assets and in enhancing field service.

The transportation industry is beginning to apply AI to address the challenges like capacity problems, safety, and reliability. AI solutions are being applied in resolving control and optimization problems, prediction and detection of traffic accidents, and conditions etc.

Our digital offerings are underpinned by IoT and AI to help customers create new value by improving operational efficiency and worker productivity, driving aftermarket revenue, and innovating new business models. Our offerings for the Industrial segment leverage IoT and AI/ML technologies for providing field connectivity and edge engineering to IoTize assets and enable real-time decision making, cloud-based IoT platform for high volume, real-time data ingestions and event processing and dvanced ML-based statistical modelling for asset performance management.

For example, we helped a leading Industrial OEM to extend customer lifetime value, generate customer stickiness, and monetize data by building a SaaS-based IoT platform. We are also working with leading automotive OEMs in providing ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and vision-based solutions such as Driver Drowsiness Detection, Forward Collision Warning, and Traffic Sign Recognition.

CXOToday: How are Sasken’s digital offerings and solutions different from those currently in the market? Can you tell us more about the current projects that Sasken is pursuing in the digital solutions space?

With a strong pedigree in product engineering and deep expertise across hardware, embedded & communication, and digital services, Sasken differentiates itself as a Chip to Cognition enabler. We have delivered numerous solutions involving connectivity and communication technologies, which are the foundational elements of digital. With strong focus on IoT, Platforms and Analytics capabilities, we are well poised to help customers transform by providing end-to-end solutions.

At Sasken, we are constantly working on ensuring that we are future-ready with the latest technologies. C-V2X is one such area which synergizes and maximizes the business value for the automotive/transportation/mobility domain. Sasken sees V2X cutting across as an enabler for Smart Cities, Auto OEM & Manufacturers, Telecommunication service providers, and Fleet operating/managing companies. We are partnering with global semiconductor players for defining the OBUs and RSUs of the future and their interaction at scale. Also, we are in discussions with various public and private Transport operators/Civic bodies to pilot the future of movement by way of localized implementations.

CXOToday:  What do you think would be most the opportune areas that companies should look out for in the coming years?

At Sasken, we believe following technology shifts have substantial disruptive potential and will impact most organizations soon:

Intelligent & Autonomous things with AI: The ability to use AI to enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and enhance the customer experience will drive the payoff for digital initiatives.

Real-time monitoring & optimization with Digital Twin: Digital twins – digital representation of a real-world entity – have the potential to significantly improve enterprise decision making. These digital twins are used to understand the state of the asset, respond to changes, improve operations, and add value.

 Instantaneous value realization with the Edge: Connectivity and latency challenges, bandwidth constraints, and greater functionality embedded at the edge favour distributed processing. Enterprises are beginning to explore edge-based data processing to realise value instantaneously

Enhanced productivity and service efficiency with AR: VR and AR are changing the way people perceive and interact with the digital world. Enterprises are examining scenarios where VR and AR can be applied to make employees more productive and enhance the design, training and visualization processes.

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Sohini Bagchi
Sohini Bagchi is Editor at CXOToday, a published author and a storyteller. She can be reached at [email protected]