It’s a wrap: News this week (Sept 28 – Oct 4)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From 20 years of Google in India to Persistent Systems’ acquisition, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

Juniper launches cloud instance in India

Networking company Juniper Networks launched a local cloud instance in India on Thursday. A cloud instance is a virtual server that runs on a cloud computing platform. Juniper’s local cloud instance will support wireless and wired access, indoor location services, and SD-WAN solutions. All these solutions are driven by the company’s enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platform Mist AI.

Juniper has made this announcement amid its growing business in India market with increasing adoption of its AI-Native Networking solutions across key sectors including Government, Public Sector, and Financial Services Institutions (FSI). Further, the decision also aligns with the country’s data protection laws that restrict the transfer of sensitive data, making it possible for customers to store in the local cloud instance securely within India.

PwC India, Meta partner up

PwC India on Thursday said that it has collaborated with Meta, to expand and scale its open-source AI solutions to enterprises and citizen services on the latter’s Llama models.

This collaboration will promote the adoption of the Llama open-source platform across industries and help PwC develop innovative solutions powered by Generative AI (GenAI) on a global scale.

That said, this collaboration will help PwC India and Meta to democratise GenAI and make it more accessible to businesses by jointly building and deploying enterprise-grade and citizen-service GenAI solutions. It also aims to create an ecosystem of GenAI solutions that will be built on Meta’s technical expertise and powerful Llama open-source platform along with PwC India’s domain expertise, PwC said in a statement.

Persistent Systems to acquire Arrka

Persistent Systems has announced to acquire Pune-based data privacy solutions provider Arrka. The acquisition aims to bolster Persistent’s AI-led, platform-driven services while expanding its capabilities in digital governance, data privacy, AI governance, and cybersecurity. With this acquisition, Persistent plans to help clients accelerate their digital transformation journeys while maintaining ethical, responsible, and compliant AI systems.

Web Werks – Iron Mountain Data Centers, Lightstorm announce partnership

Web Werks – Iron Mousntain Data Centers, a data center services provider, has joined hands with Lightstorm, a hyperscale networking services company. The collaboration aims to enhance digital infrastructure for Indian enterprises and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), offering scalable, secure, and cost-effective solutions to meet the growing demands of the digital landscape.

The partnership combines Web Werks' data center footprint and Lightstorm's networking capabilities. Together, they will deliver cloud and networking solutions, designed to streamline resource utilisation and reduce the total cost of IT infrastructure ownership for Indian businesses. 

Google in India turns 20

This week, tech giant Google commemorated the completion of 20 years in India. The company also unveiled the tenth edition of Google for India, laying out its plans for the country. Google will be expanding its AI capabilities in local languages, introducing AI upskilling, and setting up a Google Safety Engineering Centre in India. The new Google Safety Engineering Centre (GSEC) will be launched in India in 2025, focused on developing security and online safety products for Indian users.

Google said that its AI model Gemini will be introduced in all its offerings. The generative AI capabilities in Search will available in more Indian languages beyond Hindi, including Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil.