India’s Big Opportunity In SaaS

It was clear to me way back in the nineties that India’s journey forward as a center of excellence in software would not gain legitimacy without some home grown product companies. Amidst the outsourcing boom, however, it was impossible to gain traction for the idea. Since March 2007, I have often orchestrated discussions on my blog on why India was still lacking in product companies. In June 2007, I interviewed Sridhar Vembu, the now famous founder of Zoho. Soon after, in my Forbes column, I introduced him as the smartest unknown Indian entrepreneur.

>>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2011: FreshDesk, Chennai, India

A finalist in the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge, Freshdesk is a SaaS company that provides small and medium businesses with on-demand customer support software that offers multi-channel social support. Freshdesk introduces itself as a kind of Salesforce.com for customer support so to speak. Small- and medium-business owners can set up online customer support platforms that combine the backend help desk system used by agents (ticketing, knowledge management) with an online customer portal (self service, forums, idea management, voting, etc.) on the front end. >>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2011: Bizosys, Bangalore, India

Bizosys Technologies, a Bangalore, India based software engineering company was founded in 2009. The founders, Sunil Guttula and Abinasha Karana are experienced IT professional with 15 years’ experience between them solving various enterprise IT problems. Guttula, Bizosys’ CEO, and Karana founded the company with the goal to “simplify software development.”

Toward that end, they have created two products. The first is HSearch, a NoSQL technology based search engine for big data that aims to break the barrier of scale of growing information and accessing it across information silos. The second product is 10Screens, a tool to visualize business requirements critical to software development, which tend to be hampered by poor communication among various stakeholders. 10Screens is currently a finalist in the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: If you look more closely that problem [of proving you are who you say you are], yes, I think that is a problem that is unsolved and open. But it is also a very big problem, and architecturally how do you see that evolving? Because, on the one hand we have major players who are trying to be the identity that people use to log into various [services]. They have become the single sign-on for identity solutions for the various services out there, Facebook being one of them. So, when you say it is an open problem, what parts of the problem domain are you trying because, it is not a good idea for a startup to go in and say, I am going to become the single sign-on for the entire cloud. That is not a reasonable position to take. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: I think in general, the security holes around the world are much larger right now because, for one reason, there is a lot more distributed, federated technology being used, and as a result there are a lot more holes. And you just gave us the use case of Dropbox, which should be encrypted but is not, and most of our laptops are not encrypted! >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: How can the [data owner have the obligation]? I mean, unless Salesforce.com is involved in the process of securing the data, a customer of Salesforce.com cannot possibly secure that data without Salesforce.com’s being involved in the process. It is just not architecturally viable. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and Siddarth Garg

Sramana Mitra: I get your point from an adaption point of view, but today we are at a somewhat more mature stage of adoption in the cloud world, right? We are a good five to six years into serious cloud deployments, so we have a lot of very large deployments where IT does get involved and they do scrutinize the security issues; there is a lot of integration happening. There are a lot of analytics happening in CRM systems, for instance, maybe a hybrid configuration of private and public cloud and all sorts of things. So, IT is involved and the CIO is paying attention, the CIO’s office is paying attention, and security is an issue. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and Siddarth Garg

Sramana Mitra: So, you already have a solution, and you are just applying it to a cloud environment because you encountered a problem that your customers were asking for solutions for.

Chris Burchett: That is right, and there are additional functionalities that we are building into the product in the future that will be unique to the cloud. For example, if you are running in a public cloud, is it possible that somebody else launches your virtual machine image without your knowledge? Yes, it’s possible. Now, if you control the account for the log into that image, this greatly mitigates your risk. But you can further mitigate your risk by ensuring that the encryption keys cannot open unless you are aware of it. So, one of the things we will be providing is the ability for the agent that enforces encryption in that machine to “phone home,” if you will, and request that it be able to unlock the key. >>>