Jio set to disrupt cloud business; US court refuses to reopen racial bias case against TCS

A US court has refused to hold a fresh trial in the TCS discrimination case. After telecom, Jio is set to disrupt cloud business for SMEs.

Jio to disrupt cloud business: BoA-ML

Mumbai-based telecommunications company Reliance Jio Infocomm will spark a price disruption in the cloud-based solutions space, according to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, The Economic Times reported.

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Jio’s holding company Reliance Industries, had said recently the company would offer a combination of Microsoft cloud solutions to small and medium enterprises for prices starting Rs 1,500 per month. 

Jio will disrupt the cloud space by increasing affordability of enterprise solutions for the SME sector and encouraging the adoption of data services, the report said. 

US court refuses to reopen racial bias case against TCS

The Northern District of California district court has refused to hold a fresh trial in the case where it had cleared Mumbai-based information technology services provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of discriminating against American employees, The Economic Times reported.

In November 2018, the jury had rejected claims that alleged TCS preferred to staff its offices in the US with Indians instead of Americans. 

Last week, three former TCS employees had filed a motion to revisit the case. They had questioned the verdict of the California jury.

During the trial, TCS had said it fired employees of non-South Asian origin because of their refusal to relocate, among other reasons. The IT company had said its recruitments were made irrespective of background and national origin.

TCS had made efforts to try to get the case dismissed. However, a federal judge denied the request, leading to a court trial at the Northern California District Court. 

MeitY, NITI Aayog squabble over AI plans

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) and government think-tank NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog are squabbling over the artificial intelligence (AI) roadmap for the country, The Economic Times reported.

In an inter-ministerial meeting conducted earlier this month, several officials of the MeitY had raised objections over NITI Aayog’s Rs 7,000 crore roadmap for AI, the report said.

NITI Aayog’s AI roadmap includes plans for setting up five centres of excellence for conducting research, 20 institutional centres for transformational AI and AIRAWAT, an in-house cloud platform for Big Data.

MeitY, on the other hand, has drafted a Rs 400 crore plan, the approval of which is pending. The ministry’s plan involves setting up a national AI programme and an AI portal among other initiatives.