India has always been the country with state-of-the-art research and development centres focusing on chip design–but never one that produces chips locally. The government however plans to change this with a US$10 billion incentive scheme intended to boost the country’s semiconductor and display manufacturing. So far, the announcement has managed to lure American chipset giant Intel Corp to set up its first semiconductor manufacturing unit in India.

Currently, India relies on overseas manufactures for almost all of its semiconductor requirements. Since the world is fighting a severe chip shortage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is even offering about US$30 billion in incentives to woo some of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers to set up shop in India and give the domestic industry a fillip.

Overall, India is looking to push electronics manufacturing to be worth US$300 billion in the next six years from the current US$75 billion now. The bigger dream though, is to turn India into a global electronics production hub.

What does the plan entail?

Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told a news briefing the plan would help develop “the complete semiconductor ecosystem – from the design of semiconductor chips to their fabrication, packing and testing in the country”. 

Additionally, as the government statement reads, the program will usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing by providing a globally competitive incentive package to companies in semiconductors and display manufacturing as well as design.”

Currently, under the plan, the government will extend fiscal support of up to 50% of a project’s cost to eligible display and semiconductor fabricators, the government’s statement shows. The country’s administration expects the scheme to create about 35,000 high-quality positions, 100,000 indirect jobs and attract investment worth 1.67 trillion rupees (US$8.8 billion).

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According to Ashwini, the government is looking at least two greenfield semiconductor fabs and two display fabs in the country, while at least 15 units of Compound Semiconductors and Semiconductor Packaging are expected to be established with government support under this scheme.

Under the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme, support will be provided to 100 domestic companies of semiconductor design for Integrated Circuits (ICs), Chipsets, System on Chips (SoCs), Systems & IP Cores and semiconductor linked design. It is under the DLI scheme that an incentive of up to 50% will be offered to eligible expenditure. Besides that, product deployment linked incentives of four to six percent will be provided on net sales for five years.

An independent ‘India Semiconductor Mission (ISM)’ will also be set up to drive the long-term strategies for developing a sustainable semiconductors and display ecosystem in the country. According to reports, it will be led by global experts in the semiconductor and display industry, and will act as the nodal agency for efficient and smooth implementation of the scheme.

So far, as per reports by local media, guidelines will be issued in early January 2022 on modalities of applying for semiconductor incentives, and that players will be given about 45-90 days to respond.

Intel joins the semiconductor league in India

Just days after the government announced the scheme promoting semiconductor manufacturing in India, Ashwini welcomed Intel to India in a response tweet to Intel’s India SVP and the president of Intel Foundry Services.

Intel – welcome to India. https://t.co/1Wy90HfAjy

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) December 28, 2021

Intel, however, told Business Today that it has no new plans to announce at this time. “Intel India is Intel’s largest design centre outside of the US and we have been investing towards accelerating innovation and design engineering in India over the last two decades. However, we have no new plans to announce at this time,” a company spokesperson said.

The post India to allocate US$10b to boost semiconductor sector appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

For years, there has been a state-led drive to achieve semiconductor independence in China. Then came the pandemic and almost every other month there is news on Chinese tech giants venturing into their own chip side-gig.

The most recent, though, is Chinese phone maker Oppo, who launched its first self-developed chip last week, known as the MariSilicon X.

As more companies in China strive to achieve semiconductor supply autonomy amid a global chip shortage, Oppo aims to continue increasing investment in developing chips in-house.

At the two-day Oppo Inno Day 2021 last week, founder and CEO Chen Mingyong said the name of Oppo’s chip is inspired by the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the sea in the world, reflecting the difficulties of developing a chip.

“The birth of MariSilicon X signals that Oppo has entered the ‘deep waters’ of R&D. Technology companies must solve key problems with breakthroughs in key technologies. Without core technology there can be no future,” Chen said.

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The chip is being manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) using its 6-nanometer process technology. 

It is the first NPU (neural processing unit) chip designed for imaging at the mobile terminal. It will be featured on the latest series of Oppo’s high-end flagship Find X devices in the first quarter of 2022.

The chip is almost 20 times faster and halves energy consumption for some tasks relative to Oppo’s previous top-of-the-line smartphone, the company said in a statement.

To top it off, Oppo said the MariSilicon X can produce AI-assisted 4K night videos with a high dynamic range, applying image enhancements typically seen on still images to moving pictures.

The MariSilicon project in China is being headed by Qualcomm veteran Jiang Bo.

However, he told reporters that the ongoing global semiconductor chip shortage, even in China, will not affect the production of MariSilicon X. The Chinese phone maker isn’t the first one to have plans on developing in-house chips. 

In fact, other domestic phone makers like Xiaomi and VIVO have also released their self-developed imaging chips, the Xiaomi Surge C1 and VIVO V1 respectively.

Analysts reckon that in-house development of critical chips could also strengthen supply chain controls and potentially ease widespread shortages and disruptions.

Overall, the pandemic, if anything, has fueled a huge need for self-sufficiency, especially among technology giants that are often stuck in between the supply and demand conundrum. 

The post Oppo joins China semiconductor race with self-built chipset appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Almost 50 years ago, in 1972, US-based Intel Corporation expanded with its first ‘offshore’ location in Malaysia. An initial investment of US$378,000 (RM1.6 million) has grown to over US$5.9 billion (RM25 billion) with the memory chip assembly plant growing gradually to be one of Intel’s most complex sites. 

Now, the US chip giant wants to double down on its manufacturing network in Malaysia — a crucial leg of the company’s supply chain. Intel announced that it will be pouring in US$7 billion (RM30 billion) to build a new chip packaging facility in Penang.

Malaysia has been holding a key role in supporting Intel’s customer needs while increasing supply to meet the growing demand. Currently, Penang is home to Intel’s first factory that now delivers multi-functional operations including assembly test manufacturing, design and development competencies, global shared services capabilities, as well as regional sales and marketing.

In a job posting on the company’s website, it is stated that Intel Malaysia has grown from a workforce of just 100 to about 12,000 today, and 2022 will mark 50 years of operation in the country. “As part of Intel’s recently announced IDM 2.0 strategy and building on its strong foundation laid close to five decades ago, Intel is continuing to invest in and expand its existing facilities in Malaysia,” it added.

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The substantial role of Malaysia in the semiconductor supply chain was made apparent over the last two years since the global shortage started. In fact, Malaysia has been the hub for semiconductor packaging but having suffered a series of Covid-induced factory shutdowns has impacted the overall supply chain.

Even Taiwan, the world’s major chip producer, has said that it cannot sort out the global shortage alone and needs Malaysia to do its part to help ease the stress on the chip shortage. For context, Malaysia is currently one of the top ten countries in the semiconductor industry, accounting for about seven percent of the global semiconductor trade and about 13% of the global capacity in terms of back-end assembly tests and packaging.

Recent reports indicated that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is planning to visit Taiwan and Malaysia in the coming week to meet his company’s arch-rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, among others. This would be Gelsinger’s first trip to Asia since taking over in February, according to the report by Bloomberg. Just recently, during the Fortune Brainstorm Tech summit in California, Gelsinger reiterated his long-held stance against chipmaking dependency on Asia. 

To be fair, Asia Pacific is the world’s biggest market for semiconductors, accounting for 60% of global semiconductor sales, with China alone accounting for over 30%. Whether Gelsinger likes it or now, within the Asia Pacific region alone, China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan together have become the “Big 4” semiconductor players, holding four of the top six spots by overall semiconductor revenue and each has several global semiconductor giants. 

The post Intel to invest US$7b on a new chip packaging factory in Malaysia appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

About two months ago, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a new server chip that’s based on advanced 5-nanometer technology. It was dubbed as China’s most advanced chip, a milestone in the country’s pursuit of semiconductor self-sufficiency. The tech giant did not stop there. Adding on to its in-house chip collection, Alibaba apparently has just developed the world’s first, DRAM-based 3D chip that merges logic and memory.

According to Chinese news outlet Pandaily, through a now-deleted post on Chinese social networking site Weibo, Alibaba through its DAMO (Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook) Academy has successfully developed a 3D stacked in-memory computing (IMC) chip that can help overcome the von Neumann bottleneck, a limitation in chip speed resulting from the CPU needing to wait for data to be delivered from memory.

The new chip apparently also meets the needs of artificial intelligence (AI) and other scenarios for large bandwidth, high capacity memory, and extreme computing power. In one specific AI test,  the chip improved regular performance by over 10 times.

Clarifying on the chip since the post was deleted shortly after it was posted on Weibo, Alibaba told The Register that the breakthrough chip exists but they declined to provide additional details.

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For context, computers have been designed according to the von Neumann architecture for the past 70 years. Through this architecture, programs and data are held in a memory unit, while the CPU works as a separate unit. Because the memory and processor are separated, data needs to be moved back and forth between the two, making latency unavoidable.

Now,  given the development of advanced processors that can operate much faster than data can be fed to them, the von Neumann model can get quite challenging. At this point, the computing power of processors is increasing at a rate of about 3.1 times every two years. Memory performance however is only rising at a rate of about 1.4 times during the same period.

Reports indicated Alibaba Cloud believes that IMC is the best way to solve these problems. In fact, Alibaba believes this new architecture could be used in virtual/augmented reality, astronomical data calculation, unmanned driving, remote sensing data analysis, and other scenarios in the future.

Alibaba has been part of a growing cohort of technology companies in China venturing further into semiconductors, partly spurred by President Xi Jinping’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in high-tech sectors. 

To recall, search-engine operator Baidu in August announced it has begun mass production of its artificial intelligence chips, while handset maker Xiaomi is pushing into similar ventures. In the West, tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla are all shunning established chip firms and bringing certain aspects of chip development in-house, based on company announcements and media reports.

The post The newest chip by Alibaba is the world’s first – here’s why appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Companies like IBM that aren’t afraid to shift and pivot that respond to changing conditions in their market and in the world at large are the successful ones. A similar more local case is Interactive, the Australian company we featured on the Tech Means Business podcast.

Interactive has always been the go-to player for technology solutions, including business continuity, APRA-compliant services, and disaster recovery for many thousands of companies in the APAC. But it was the COVID pandemic that led to the company’s recent move into secure, serviced office provision. It’s not a common-or-garden variety commercial landlord, renting meeting rooms and draughty communal spaces to roving freelancers. Instead, it’s offering facilities directly related to its APRA compliant data centre capabilities, giving financial services companies (or any security-conscious organisation) the capability to split their staff into more localised locations while retaining the cast-iron security and best standards necessary in this highly regulated vertical.

We spoke to Brett Wilson, Chief Operating Officer Infrastructure & Risk at Interactive, about the company’s new take on providing for its customers. He told us: “Being a business continuity solutions provider means that we’ve got a unique lens on the delivery of [IT] services. We reduce risk effectively which is very much complemented by the data centre service we offer.”

Ask most serviced office providers if they can host fault-resilient, highly encrypted servers on-site, and blank looks is likely all you’ll get. But Interactive’s customers have always used the company for its expertise in technology, and the provision of physical space equipped to specialist standards is the next logical step. That includes dedicated data feeds, encryption capabilities, physical security, and data centre quality provisioning. The quality extends to the basics, too: “Every single desktop in our facility sits behind a UPS [uninterruptible power supply] and diesel generator, so that power resiliency of the site comes in addition to the security,” Brett said.

Most companies now go out of their way to ensure data security, continuity, and resilience, but the government mandates these in the financial sector. Companies in the vertical operate under APRA strictures, which, for non-Aussie readers, refers to the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority. The quango regulates financial, deposit-taking institutions – that is, any company that’s a custodian of the public’s money.

In practical terms, APRA compliance translates to a whole list of obligations regarding information and physical security, system redundancy, and resilience in the IT systems used to do business. Non-compliance ends up with financial institutions losing their license to trade.

While Interactive can’t coach companies through their individual compliance application procedures, they can lend considerable experience to key personnel to ensure internal procedures and operations are on course. “Moreover, we end up helping our customers. [The] less experienced risk managers really do lean on Interactive’s expertise from having done this thousands of times with many, many customers,” Brett said.

Without getting into the weeds of acronyms, companies must aim for APRA’s accepted level of ‘sound practice’. With regards to digital information, CPS 232 and CPS 234 [PDFs] (Business Continuity Management and Information Security, respectively).

Brett told us that Interactive’s aim is “to be a part of our customers’ accreditation process. So, it’s about our facilities being a compliant part of their complete solution.”

For general ease of use of its data centre facilities, remote office provisioning, secure IT, and governance adherence, and what are actually very specialist requirements and services, Interactive offers simplicity. Brett told us, “It’s about aggregating all the aspects required to stand up a second office for staff. That relates to leases, to our furniture, […] to the technology, to power cabling and all the niceties of video conferencing and meeting rooms and breakout areas and facilities and amenities. We turn all that complexity into a single monthly service fee that has flexibility.”

In highly regulated industries, every aspect of digital interaction is considered a potential place to compromise security and resilience. That situation isn’t particularly compatible with home working, where professionals have to share networks with – for instance – teenagers’ BitTorrent-ing, kids downloading pirated games and bandwidth needed by VPNs eaten up by streaming media.

“You have staff performing regulated functions and these aren’t jobs that can be done around the kitchen table with children running around,” Brett told us. “We’re talking about institutions transferring billion dollars of superannuation fees in a single transaction and that type of requirement necessitates a regulated and controlled environment, [one] with secure access and identity management so that we know we can report on and track who was literally in the room at the time of the transaction.”

Helping companies transition from home or remote working back to offices that may be closer, smaller, cheaper, yet still compliant is all in a day’s work.

“Over the years of providing business continuity services to this customer base [the financial services industry], you go through thousands and thousands of audits and each time there’s a new audit and a new auditor, they identify opportunities for improvement. Our service just hones and improves over time.”

The list of adjectives describing Interactive’s office spaces also includes luxurious. One client allegedly told Brett that his new office space is “like being at a resort, except I have to work.”

For some commercial landlords, luxury is the sole USP. In Interactive’s spaces, it’s an add-on. The real core of the offering is APRA-compliant levels of security, connectivity, and resilience. Although those features are in the background, they need to be at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds as the company begins to get back into the workplace.

To learn more about Interactive’s unique offerings, get in touch with a representative from the company to talk through your options.

The post APRA Compliance Just Step One for Returning Workforces, with Interactive appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

It’s portable, sleek, fast and secure as heck. The KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is the latest solid-state drive series from the innovators who brought flash memory to the world.

Designed for gamers, content creators and those on the go, the EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is easy on the eyes and easy on the move, with its smooth, rounded and shock-proof aluminium housing that fits in your palm.

Sleek and Stylish Metallic Body

Its metallic body is easy-to-grip and pocket-sized. Not only does this elegant portable SSD series offer compact, handy storage for users who seek out timeless design in their mobile lifestyle, but it also packs up to 2TB of data in its BiCS FLASH™ 3D memory technology.

That’s the technology KIOXIA invented to store large amounts of digital data in ultra-thin products thanks to its vertically stacked cell structure. The EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD weighs 76 grammes and has no moving parts, making it light, durable, and able to handle high-density storage.

The aluminium casing isn’t just pretty to look at – it enables effective heat dissipation during heavy workloads. It is the latest invention in technology, and it is the new and best external hard disk to store your giant data in.

Source: KIOXIA

Design meets performance

Windows, Mac, iPad, Android, PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S – whether it’s current or legacy system – the EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD comes with both Type-C to A and Type-C to C cables for universal compatibility.

For example, transferring 4K videos and high-res photos to and from an Android phone is a breeze with its USB 3.2 Gen2 interface delivering a read speed of up to 1,050MB/s.

There are three storage capacities to choose from – 500GB, 1TB or 2TB – each inclusive with a three-year manufacturer’s warranty. Each EXCERIA SSD is built with BiCS FLASH™ and a vertically stacked cell structure, delivering a cutting-edge storage experience.

KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD redefines high-performance storage for enthusiasts and hardcore gamers feeling held back by commodity storage hardware. It is suitable for on-the-go users and content creators seeking high-speed transfer of large data files.

Source: KIOXIA

Data security with password protection

That’s data storage and transfer speeds taken care of, but how about data security? No problem. The elegant EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD comes with password protection courtesy of KIOXIA’s SSD Utility management software for your peace of mind.

KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is where design meets performance for everyday users on the go. Capture and transfer data with low latency to desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and game consoles wherever you are quickly, safely and in style. This portable SSD lives up to its name by exceeding all expectations, giving your workstation and gaming life a definite boost in performance. Check it out for yourself!

The post KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

For years, Apple has been using Qualcomm modems in its iPhones before shifting to Intel’s when its relationship with the former started to sour. Following that, news began to surface that the iPhone maker may just create its own modems to cut reliance on Qualcomm.

However, things might take a different turn now as Apple is said to have selected Taiwanese chip giant TSMC to make its 5G iPhone modems instead.

According to Nikkei Asia, quoting people familiar with the matter,  Apple plans to adopt Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s 4-nanometer chip production technology to mass-produce its first in-house 5G modem chip from 2023 onwards.

Additionally, Apple is also apparently working on its own radio frequency (RF) and millimeter wave components to pair with the modem.

That is on top of an in-house power management chip that Apple is producing specifically for the modem. For context, all of the components in the latest iPhone series are provided by Qualcomm.

This isn’t an isolated move by Apple, however. The company has been attempting to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm for several years and the latter has also recently confirmed that its share of iPhone modem orders will drop to about 20% in 2023.

Both companies finally settled a lengthy legal battle over patent royalties in 2019. To be fair, the modem chips segment has long been dominated by Qualcomm, which has built a large patent wall around the technology, as well as Taiwan’s MediaTek and China’s Huawei Technologies.

Intel, which supplied modem chips to Apple alongside Qualcomm since 2016, dropped out of smartphone modem chip development and sold the business to Apple in 2019.

“In addition to saving money on fees it currently pays to Qualcomm, developing its own modem would pave the way for Apple to integrate TSMC’s chip with its in-house mobile processor, multiple sources said,” according to the report by Nikkei.

Apple’s relationship with TSMC isn’t a new one. In fact, the Taiwanese chip titan has been a vital partner for Apple in its strategy of designing more of its own components, and is the sole producer of iPhone processors and M1 Mac processors. 

The move would eventually give the US tech giant more control over its hardware integration capability as well as boost the chips’ efficiency.

“Currently, most mobile chip developers integrate 5G modem systems onto the processor chip,” added the Nikkei report.

Here’s what TSMC is providing Apple with

Modems in smartphones such as Apple’s connect to cellular networks and let devices browse the web, download apps, and make phone calls.

It requires more layers of engineering than some other types of processors. Apple began in-house work on modems about three years ago, and the part typically takes at least two years to build and another year and a half to test.

Basically, for the new 5G iPhone modem, sources told Nikkei that Apple is using TSMC’s 5-nm chip production to design and test-produce the chip.

It will then use the even more-advanced 4-nm technology for mass production. For a phone to go on sale globally, it must be qualified to work on many local networks, a process that requires rigorous field testing by expert engineers.

So with these in mind, it seems that it will take some time after 2023 for the commercialization of Apple’s own 5G modem.

The post Apple: Bye Qualcomm, hello TSMC? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

As remote and hybrid working appears to continue through 2022, one of the biggest problems workers face is how to go about with the recovery of deleted data — especially when it’s accidental.

Indeed, accidental deletion of data can and will happen when working on various devices.

And thus, a key question on the minds of a lot of people is — how can you recover accidentally deleted data?

In fact, the need for recovery of accidental data deletion is so great that a global study from Veritas Technologies showed that 57% of office workers have accidentally deleted vital data from cloud apps such as Office 365, with 14% doing so multiple times per week.

What’s more concerning is that almost all respondents (92%) incorrectly assume that their cloud provider would be able to restore deleted files for them. Also, 44% incorrectly think data in the cloud is safe from ransomware.

Accidental data deletion has also caused strong emotional distress among employees, especially when they realize their lost data is gone forever. The stress is made worse by a culture of punishment incorporating shame and fear.

As such, almost one-third of employees lied to cover up the fact they had accidentally deleted office data and 26% said they kept quiet because they were ashamed. Another 25% said they would either do nothing or pretend nothing had happened in a ransomware incident—making it difficult for businesses to limit the impact of the breach.

In today’s fast-paced environment, speed is essential, especially when it comes to data. Any delays to data access or recovery, be it by accidental deletion, or being locked out by ransomware, can lead to huge problems for an organization. Backup service providers continue to advocate the importance of having sufficient backup and recovery tools for such incidences.

To understand better about deleted data recovery, Tech Wire Asia spoke to Andy Ng, Vice President and Managing Director for Asia South and Pacific Region at Veritas Technologies. Andy explains how accidentally deleting data may not be the end of the world for employees, provided they have the right data recovery programs in place.

(source – Shutterstock)

Is it possible to recover deleted work data?

Most cloud storage services will allow users to recover deleted files within a certain time window, for example, 30 days. However, recovery is not guaranteed and varies across different cloud service providers. In general, cloud storage services will automatically clear your trash after a stipulated period to free up space. Depending on how much storage has been used up, some files might be deleted sooner than expected. Additionally, the deleted files will also be erased from the cloud the next time your system syncs.

Not all backup and recovery solutions are created equal, so organizations need to identify what they actually need. For organizations that are looking at enterprise-grade backup and recovery capabilities beyond the built-in cloud protection, they would require a comprehensive toolset that provides full-coverage backup with flexible recovery options, plus a high level of performance and scalability.

This would enable organizations to protect, recover and archive their data, including deleted work data. For example, a backup and archive solution that uses immutable storage would help to protect data against unwanted deletion and modification.

What are the biggest concerns around the recovery of deleted data?

It is disturbing that nearly all the Singapore employees (92%) polled in the Veritas study thought their cloud provider would be able to restore their files for them. This false confidence in cloud data protection is causing businesses to lose critical data.

Unknown to some, a bad deletion – either accidental or malicious – could go unnoticed past the prescribed expiry date. There is no backup copy available for these expired items. Similarly, there is no option for recovery for items that have been deleted permanently.

The challenge is further compounded by the accelerated adoption of the cloud, which leaves organizations exposed to ransomware vulnerabilities as more cybercriminals are looking to exploit proprietary data stored in cloud services due to the integral role they play in today’s business environment.

According to the latest Veritas research, many employees are not forthcoming with ransomware incidents, with just 31% in Singapore saying they would immediately admit introducing ransomware into their organizations, and another 25% saying they would either do nothing or pretend nothing had happened.

As such, without knowing the full details of a ransomware attack, it is harder for businesses to take swift remedial action to limit its impact. With the surge in ransomware attacks, this is a security gap that companies must quickly address or risk disruption and downtime for their businesses.

How can businesses ensure employees take responsibility?

Businesses should set clear retention policies to determine how long data should be retained for operational and compliance needs, who has access to the data, and classify data storage according to tiers.

Employees should be fully trained on the policies and tools that are being deployed – this will help to reduce accidental policy breaches including data deletion, and ensure employees know how to access and retrieve data that is lost or corrupted promptly.

Companies should also eliminate the culture of shame and punishment, and instead foster one where employees are encouraged, rather than blamed, for coming forward when they report data loss incidents.

Changing the dynamics of incident reporting would also help to empower businesses to take prompt remedial action in the event of data loss or ransomware incidents.

Some programs can autosave files or warn users before a file or data is deleted. Should this process be enhanced so employees understand it better?

Such features can be beneficial, but human error or malicious deletion and system downtime would still lead to data loss. Employees could potentially be the weakest link and it pays for organizations to educate employees on the importance of adopting sound data hygiene habits.

It is also important to realize that cloud service providers operate on a shared responsibility model – they provide the applications, but it is up to businesses to protect their application data. It is every business’s responsibility to protect their own data, whether in the cloud or stored on their own devices. If businesses can get that right and make it easy for workers to restore lost files, then they can take the pressure off their employees.

What does help, therefore, is deploying comprehensive SaaS data protection tools to back up data across all cloud applications. This allows businesses to recover from all data loss scenarios while also eliminating threats such as ransomware and accidental or malicious data deletion.

The post Singaporean workers distressed by accidentally deleted cloud data appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Now, for the first time, you can join the APAC-specific NGINX virtual conference, SPRINT 2.1, an extension of the NGINX Global SPRINT 2.0 (also available on-demand here). Selected content for SPRINT 2.1 is in English, Japanese, and Chinese, and so will give the broadest range of engineers, SR specialists, DevOps, and infrastructure specialists opportunities to deepen their knowledge about the full capabilities of NGINX in its OSS (open source) and PLUS guises. Join your fellow IT professional attendees to hear keynotes, take part (or just listen) in to technical breakouts, and get hands-on training — with plenty of content available in local languages.

From the outset, you’ll hear first-hand case studies about using NGINX to replace legacy hardware, how NGINX Plus aids massive and elastic scalability, the key differences between the OSS and NGINX Plus  offerings, and — of critical importance to many enterprise users — why NGINX is continuing and increasing its ongoing support to the open-source community with a re-emphasised commitment to upstreaming innovation and several other community-focused practices.

NGINX has always been about speed, openness, configurability, and security, and the ethos of the platform continues across its expanded (and expanding) range of capabilities. Whether you use a single NGINX instance as a reverse proxy in your home lab, or have deployed it at a huge scale in enterprise settings, the APAC-centric SPRINT 2.1 is your opportunity to expand your knowledge, increase your skills, and learn about the value-adds of NGINX Plus.

You can learn about best practice, NGINX Service Mesh, the best ways to deploy container fleets with NGINX, and plenty more besides. Join your fellow professionals online for this all-virtual half-day conference-come-training opportunity, December 7 and 8, 2021: register here.

The speaker and session-leader roll call read like a who’s who in IT today: systems designers, CTOs, product leads from NGINX, security experts, and, of course, Tech Wire Asia‘s very own Joe Green (in a fireside-style chat with Rob Whitely [NGINX], Sumit Malhorta [Times Internet] and Burzin Engineer [PhonePe]).

Sign up to reserve your place, and block out your calendar for the duration, December 7 and 8, 2021.

REGISTER HERE

The post The APAC’s NGINX SPRINT 2.1 (virtual): Reserve Your Place Now appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Yet even during worldwide popularity, there was one area the company says it found particularly challenging.

The Situation

At a time when consumers were increasingly turning to e-commerce to meet their shopping needs, Razer reports that the company responded by listing its products on marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Catch. However, shortly after expanding to these new channels, the online team told ChannelAdvisor that it realised just how challenging it would be to maintain a strong marketplace presence. There were product listings to optimise, inventory to manage and stock levels to track. According to Razer, with each new marketplace launch, the process became more complex.

“It was incredibly difficult to manage so many marketplaces at once,” says Senior Manager of Online Sales Operations Ain Karel Areola.

“Without a solution to meet the different requirements of each channel, we were struggling.” “With the fan and customer base growing at an astronomical pace, we had to look for a reliable e-commerce platform,” adds Digital Specialist Hueyming Koh.

So, the team set out in search of a solution that would allow the brand to expand to marketplaces more strategically.

The Solution

It didn’t take long for Razer to decide which solution would be the best fit for the brand’s needs.

“ChannelAdvisor makes it easier to scale and is ideal for brands that want to expand quickly to global marketplaces in North America, Europe and APAC,” says Areola.

By enlisting the help of ChannelAdvisor Managed Services for Marketplaces, the Razer team reports that they were able to successfully list on 11 global marketplaces including Target, Newegg, Walmart, and more. After establishing a strong presence in the US and Europe, the team says they were able to focus on reaching additional audiences in the APAC region by expanding to Catch.

“ChannelAdvisor keeps us connected to each marketplace and frees our team to devote more time to high-value initiatives,” says Koh. “Whether it’s automation or optimising product listings, the platform makes everything so much easier.”

“The whole experience has been very progressive, and any time we face issues the Managed Services team is quick to respond and help resolve them,” Areola says.

Most notably, having e-commerce specialists on their side has helped ensure the online team doesn’t miss out on emerging opportunities.

“The ChannelAdvisor Managed Services team has become an extension of our internal team,” notes Koh. “They keep us up to date on opportunities among the individual marketplaces, and ahead of changing laws and regulations — such as the value-added tax (VAT) changes resulting from Brexit.”

The Results

Razer says its online selling journey is proof that even the biggest, most established brands still have plenty of room for growth. After finding the right mix of e-commerce expertise and technology, the online team says the brand was able to double the number of marketplaces where it sells. And within a year of that expansion, marketplaces GMV had increased 10x, according to Razer.

Between the brand’s increased visibility and a surge in demand — a record increase in gaming activity during the global pandemic led 82% of gamers to spend more money — Razer confirms it was able to boost sales and revenue by being in the right place at the right time. With ChannelAdvisor’s robust reports and intuitive dashboards, Koh says, the process became remarkably easy.

One particularly successful experience occurred on eBay. With help from the ChannelAdvisor Managed Services Team, Razer reports that it was able to identify the opportunity for an exclusive partnership for the marketplace’s Certified Refurbished Program.

“Refurbished products sell very well, and account for 25% of marketplaces sales,” says Koh.

And none of those achievements involved extra work, according to Koh. In fact, Razer told ChannelAdvisor that the online team has reduced the amount of time devoted to online selling activities.

“Efficiency in work has gone up by about 50%,” Areola says. “We can easily list products with a universal template for all marketplaces, and we can gather insights quickly with the ChannelAdvisor dashboard. Inputting stock quantities, for example, is fast and easy.”

From monitoring stock levels to creating strong product listings to launching promotions during peak seasons, Koh says automation and expertise have been critical to success.

“Without ChannelAdvisor, our jobs would be much more difficult all around,” she explains. “The global ChannelAdvisor team is well-connected and well-versed on everything from marketplace policies to e-commerce best practices. That level of proficiency is a must for any brand that wants to expand quickly, seamlessly and profitably.”

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