Guest Lectures : Academic : SITM

Global Telecom scenario and Placement profiles

Guest lecture on Global Telecom scenario and Placement profiles in telecom sector
By Mr. Aniruddha Harne (Business process consultant – Tech Mahindra)

Mr. Aniruddha Harne, an alumnus of SITM 2004 batch interacted and shared his insights on the topics Global Telecom scenario and Placement profiles in telecom sector for the junior and senior batches of SITM respectively.

Mr. Harne discussed about the global telecom scenario with first year students where he explained layers of the four logical layers of telecom network management model.

		Business Management: Includes the functions related to business aspects, trend analysis and quality issues.
		Service Management: Handles services in the network which include definition, administration and charging of services.
		Network Management: Distributes network resources, performs tasks of configuration, control and supervision of the network.
		Element Management: Handles individual network elements including alarm management, handling of information etc.

He also clarified the telecom value chain with the help of a lot of examples.

Mr. Harne further provided a very interesting preview of the placement profiles to the second year students which can be offered in the various verticals in different companies of telecom value chain and how they can select the profile according to their own interests such as OSS/BSS, Communication Service provider, consultant, Risk Analyst, Revenue Assurance etc.

He then explained the career roadmap of a MBA student and the key points to keep in mind while opting for an organization which are brand, salary and profile offered.

Mr. Harne made both the sessions very interactive which proved to be a great learning experience for all and also provided exposure to the students about the expectations of an MBA student from the industry.

Valuation of Indian Telecom Operators for Financial & Investment perspective

Introduction :

Mr. Beram S. Gazdar
Director, Research
MAPE Advisory Group,
Former VP – Telecom, Morgan Stanley

Topic : Valuation of Indian Telecom Operators for Financial & Investment perspective.

Context : The GL covered all the basics of stock valuation of Indian Telecom Operators and the evaluation of expenses and revenues in context with various business units. It focused on the investment strategies adopted by various telecom operators and the session concluded with few of the case studies elaborating different business revenue models.

People Centric Communication

Mr.Ramanujan Kashi (Sr. Research Scientist, Avaya Labs Research)

Mr.Ramanujan Kashi
(Sr. Research Scientist,
AVAYA India Pvt. Ltd.)

The presentation focused on the various market trends prevalent in the telecom industry at present. It covered the market trends which are driving innovations in communication. The term ‘people centric communication’ was defined & explained how traditional communication transformed to sessions based communication.

Telecom Business Domain Ecosystem

Mr. Tridib Bhattacharjee (Astramind Consulting)

Mr. Tridib Bhattacharjee
Astramind Consulting

The presentation covered all the components of a telecom business domain ecosystem & how the term ‘QoS: Quality of service’ has evolved to a rather more effective term ‘QoE: Quality of experience’.

Telecom Industry- task specific roles & technology track management

Mr. Tridib Bhattacharjee (Astramind Consulting)
The topic interested all the budding managers as it involved a clear discussion on what all fields the students can enter into once they pass out as graduates from SITM. Additionally it focused on the various skills required to be a manager in the telecom domain.

Information Security and Compliance

Mr. Ruchir Sharma (IBM)
The discussion was about the security threats to information that exist in the present and the various compliance requirements i.e. the regulations that the organizations follow to protect information, for instance HIPPA, Sarbanes Oxley Act, etc

Cloud Computing - The past, present and the future

Cloud Computing- the past, present and the future
Mr. Bhavesh Adhia (Netmagic Solutions)

Mr. Bhavesh Adhia
Netmagic Solutions

The discussion started with how the computing evolved from the pre 1970s era of the Mainframes to the present technology of cloud computing. The discussion continued with characteristics of cloud computing, it’s various delivery models & CAPIS- the 5 layers of cloud computing.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment & Revenue Assurance
Mr. Siva Krishnan (ED, PriceWaterhouse Coopers)
The lecture began with defining what risk is & how risks can be identified as an opportunity. The discussion also identified substitutes and regulations as a risk that threatens the existence of any organization in the telecom domain. The lecture concluded with a discussion on what revenue assurance is & what it focuses on.

Evolution of Telecom Services

Mr. Sunzay Passari (Executive VP-VAS & Devices, Essar Telecom Business Group)
The speaker designed the platform for VAS for telecom operators such as Reliance-the RWorld and talked about how the telecom technologies are evolving globally & where India stands in terms of telecom advancements, the technologies-3G & 4G, etc.

Expectations of the industry from Telecom Professionals

Expectations of the industry from Telecom Professionals/ Placement profile in Telecom
Mr.Sohag Sarkar (Senior Consultant, KPMG)
The discussion involved the various profiles & domains of the telecom industry. The various domains discussed were Telecom Service Providers, Enterprise Services, Network Equipment Manufacturers, Telecom Software Suppliers, Passive Equipment Providers, Handset Companies and Customer Premise Equipment and VAS Ecosystem.

DTH (Direct-to-Home) & Broadband

Mr. Kiran Sangoram (Sales Director, Hughes Communication India Ltd.)
The discussion started with the essentials of Broadband communication and its impact in India, the challenges broadband technology faces in our country and ways to overcome them. The lecture ended with a discussion on the basics of DTH technology and HITS (Head End in The Sky).

Transformational Mobile Financial Services

Mr. B. Ravi Teja- Senior Associate Vice President, Country Manager - India & Head - Enterprise Transformation Group

Date: 27^th January 2011

The guest lecture was conducted by Mr B. Ravi Teja, Senior Associate Vice President, Country Manager - India & Head - Enterprise Transformation Group at Nihilent Technology.

The session began with Mr Ravi talking about his past consulting experience at TATA Consultancy Services and his move thereon to Nihilent Technology. He spoke about the banking sector in India while driving the point about the unbanked India. There was a short two way discussion about the reasons for the existence of an unbanked population and as to why majority of financial transactions still take place in cash, in India.

Mr Ravi laid emphasis on the large section of population that does not have bank access and compared it with the number of Mobile Phone users in India and discussed the prospects of these two factors put together. He introduced the audience to the novel concept of Mobile Wallet as a Transformational Mobile Financial Service. "Fundamo" is an enterprise mobile financial service platform that can be deployed by Mobile Network Operators (MNO) and Financial Organisations. Through this application MNOs can provide their customers with an efficient value added service meanwhile improving their own ARPU and reducing churn. The Financial institutions can tap the unbanked consumers and hence increase their market share.

Mr Ravi discussed the success of this application in South Africa and its prospects in India. India already has many mobile applications that act as support tools for carrying out banking transactions. The innovative feature of this Mobile wallet is that it is not just an additive to the financial service but it provides an actual bank account on the mobile phone itself that can be used for all purposes on the go.

Nihilent Technologies is looking forward to launch the Mobile wallet in India and hoping to establish their operations in India.

Interactive web based solution by using Mobile platform

	Ashwin Jaiswal, Head - TME Practice & Business Consulting, Rcom
		Ice breaking session for the Batch 2010-12
		The Knowledge imparted broadened the arena of contemplation for the students as he diversified topics ranging from Grameen phone, GIS, Unified licensing to role of social networking were discussed.

Managed Services

Panel Discussion: Driving the cost out of services
Avnish Datt Orange Business	Sharad Ghaine Ness Technologies
DD Mishra Vodafone	Siddhartha TechM
Shilpa Phadke (GTL)

		The focus of the discussion revolved around the appealing benefits of Managed services, the prime one being cost reduction
		There was also an analytical discussion regarding the CIO concerns that is strongly based on the dependency, complex change management within the organization and Vendor specialization. Therefore this panel discussion was very fruitful as it successfully delivered a 360 overview of this Business Model.

Cloud Computing

Panel Discussion : Improving Service Delivery in Cloud, Conquering Network Bottleneck
Mr.Venkatesh K. Iyer Head- India and SAARC, VCE Initiative EMC2	Mr. Girish Majumdar Manager, R & D VMWare
Mr. Rajesh Awasthi Director Telecom & Cloud Service Provider NetApp	Mr. Vikram Murdeshwar Head-Product Marketing Akamai
Mr. Satish Joshi Executive Vice President Patni Computer Systems Ltd.	Mr. Brijesh Shah Senior Consultant, Cisco

		Cloud computing offers real alternatives to IT departments for improved flexibility and lower cost. Markets are developing for the delivery of software applications, platforms, and infrastructure as a service to IT departments over the “Cloud”.
		These services are readily accessible on a pay-per-use basis and offer great alternatives to businesses that need the flexibility to rent infrastructure on a temporary basis or to reduce capital costs.

Using an architectural framework will help architects evaluate these trade-offs within the context of the business architecture and design a system that accomplishes the business goal.