Mumbai: Reliance Jio hosted the first ever India Digital Open Summit in partnership with Linux Foundation and supported by Cisco Systems at its campus in Navi Mumbai. More than 500 invited technology and open source delegates including industry leaders, policy makers, global technology leaders, members from academia and developer communities working through open source platforms participated in this summit. The main agenda was to deliberate on how open source networking systems and platforms would transform and foster innovation and leadership across the entire digital ecosystem.

The summit featured discussions on various aspects of the Open Source framework for policy, technology and security that accelerate the expansion of the Digital India initiative across domains. Distinguished speakers including Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission & Secretary (Telecom), Dept of Telecommunications, Dr. Gulshan Rai, Chief Security Coordinator & Advisor, PMO, NCSC, Mr. Akash Ambani, Director, Reliance Jio and other global technology leaders addressed the gathering.

In her keynote address at the summit, Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission & Secretary (Telecom), Dept of Telecommunications said, “The future looks extremely promising and exciting, because of the fact that India is at the cusp of the world’s largest digital opportunity. I say this as somebody who is aware of the extent of digitally unserved and underserved Indians. And it is precisely this set of Indians that define the scope of Digital India.” She added, “This open source networking summit really has a very ambitious agenda because it speaks about setting the roadmap for defining the future of an open source and open platform enabled digital India. It would also foster and support continuous innovation, security and entrepreneurialism that will drive the creation of India’s new generation digital platforms.”

Akash Ambani, Director, Reliance Jio delivered a special address at the summit highlighting the role of Open Source in realising the vision of Digital India “We are fortunate to be living in India, where we have a vision of Digital India, and the open source community will enable solutions for key verticals of digital India – agriculture, education, medicine, and financial technology, just to name a few,” he said. “I believe that these technologies can impact every Indian in a profound way in improving their lives. Jio is committed to improve the lives of a billion Indians in a positive way and to get these technologies to every customer out there. At Jio, we are committed to contribute and use open source technologies to better our consumer experience.” he added.

Appreciating the upsurge in technological adoption in India, Dr Gulshan Rai said “There have been a mind-boggling number of technological developments and innovations in the last 30 years. Technologies like social media, search engine, mobile telephony, augmented reality and virtual reality have transformed the cyber scenario.”

Highlighting the innovations and transformations that marked 2017 in his opening address, Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio, remarked “Welcome to India, it’s destination and disruption 2017. It is indeed the age of disruptive digital transformation. Disruption leads to change, one leads the change, few adopt it, others get disrupted.” He added, “We are fortunate and privileged as a nation to have high caliber and diverse and experienced leaders to harness this change driven by open source systems and platforms.”

The participants discussed the blueprint for India’s leadership in the Open Source ecosystem. Some of the key topics discussed were ‘Transformation in Big Data and Analytics’, ‘Leveraging open source’, ‘Unlocking India’s Telco Ecosystem value’ and ‘How Open Source and Big Data are driving big changes in network services, policy and security transformation’. The one-day event was held at the Reliance Corporate Park campus in Navi Mumbai.

– DeshGujarat