PR Newswire | 17 Nov, 2014
BENGALURU: Open Source India, Asia's biggest convention on open source technology, proved its mettle yet again in its 11th edition, which was held in Bengaluru from 7-8 November, 2014. The craze of the event was such that it was sold out completely on the first day itself. Taking the power of open source technology to an all-new level, Open Source India 2014 has been able to set a benchmark for IT events happening in India and abroad. The two-day event witnessed a lot of fruitful discussions, interactions, workshops, that aimed to bridge the gap in between the industry head-honchos and the community.
Popularly known as OSI Days, Open Source India this year provided an apt platform for the real business to happen in the world of open source technology, while keeping its original spirit intact. Appreciating the event, one of the key sponsors, Tushar Deshpande, director - sales (India, SAARC & ANZ), Zimbra (community & collaboration), said, "The event was very well organised and it is great to see the open source community and the consumers of the technology come together. There is an equivalent or a better open source product for almost every proprietary product and the users are making use of them in the true sense. With the increasing adoption of open source technology even in the enterprises, the world has clearly realised the benefits of open source technology and this event projects them in the best possible way. It is a good platform to create awareness about open source technology, both at the community and the industry level. In fact, we at Zimbra were able to generate some quality business leads at the event, which made our association with OSI Days even more special. OSI Days 2014 has been better from that of 2013 and I would expect more enterprise contribution in the next one."
The exhibitors at the event had a gala time not only because they had a house full of their prospective audience, but also because they could get some real business opportunities. Balaji Kesavaraj, director - platform strategy & marketing, Microsoft Corporation-India, said, "Microsoft is fond of open source technology, and hence we love events like OSI where we get to interact with the community. At OSI Days, we make the audience experience the interoperability between open source technology and Microsoft's products. This year we had offered some real hands-on experience showing how interoperability works and we are glad that we were well received at Open Source India."
The two-day event witnessed a full-house with over 1,500 unique visitors. The registration booth saw long queues, where attendees had lined up for their registrations almost an hour before the scheduled time. Looking at the content and learning experiences being offered by over 40 speakers during nine tracks including 45+ sessions and eight workshops, the attendees chose to upgrade their passes to get maximum access of the event. Not only did OSI 2014 have a decent presence of international speakers, the event witnessed some international attendees too. Ahmad, who had specially come to India to attend Open Source India, all the way from Bangladesh, shared his experience at OSI: "I like attending conferences like these that are specifically focused on open source technology. I loved the workshops at OSI, and have learnt a lot of latest technologies. I have completely enjoyed the event, the content was also very good, the organisers are also very helpful but it will be great if you could arrange some practical sessions at the workshops."
With talk sessions like FOSS for everyone, cloud, mobile app development, kernel development, OpenStack mini Conf, IT infrastructure: management and database day and IT implementation success stories track, the event had a lot to offer to the quality audience. Commenting on the show, Rajiv Pandey, distinguished technologist, HP Cloud, shared, "I think the event is great and it is amazing to see what's going on with open source here in India. I have been interacting with the attendees coming at the HP booth at OSI and I am happy to share that they know so much about the new technologies and they are very up to date. It is very gratifying to interact with such a knowledgeable audience. I think there can be more tracks with more specialities coming in and sharing there knowledge. The 11th edition of the event shows the kind of work that has gone into making it a success. I would love to be a part of it next year too."
Speaking about the grand success of Open Source India 2014, Rahul Chopra, editor, Open Source For You magazine, said, "With each edition of Open Source India, we aim to take the levels of awareness and implementation of open source technology a notch higher. This year, we aimed to showcase how open source technology has made a mark for itself in all kinds of businesses and how the biggest CIOs have implemented open source technology in their respective set-ups. In this effort, we witnessed great participation from the industry as well as the community. In its 11th year, OSI Days has grown from just being a community event to an event that bridges the gap in between the community and the industry. We hope to grow it even further in the coming years."
Major highlights of the event
- Record breaking attendance for the keynotes and workshops: All the four keynote sessions witnessed a major turnout of the attendees and the audiences appreciated the content and level of interaction with the speakers during the sessions. Workshops like "Big Data: What, Why, How!" and "Cross Platform Mobile Application Development: Consumer & Enterprise Application" were completely sold out.
- IT Implementation success stories track: Going by the adage that seeing is believing, OSI invited CIOs and CTOs of prominent companies like Rediff.com, Goibobo, Bookmyshow.com, Justdial, Patterbuzz, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, and Karunya University who shared their experience, journey and success of implementing open source in their respective organisations.
- HP and Microsoft Tech challenges: The two IT majors conducted hands-on sessions for the audiences present there to give them a hands-on experience on their technologies.
- Wipro Talent Hunt: OSI Days 2014 served as a recruitment ground for IT giant Wipro Technologies. Wipro had conducted a recruitment drive at Open Source India 2014 for diverse profiles and had short-listed candidates too.
About Open Source India
Open Source India (formerly Linux Asia) started in 2003 with the mission to accelerate open source adoption in Asia, and that has remained its mission even today. A key attribute of Open Source India is that it tries to bridge the gap between the community and the industry. OSI Days is organised by EFY Group - publishers of Open Source For You magazine. For more information visit http://www.osidays.com.
About the EFY Group
Over the last four decades, the EFY Group has become synonymous with information on cutting-edge technology. Starting with its flagship publication, Electronics For You, which is South Asia's most popular electronics magazine, the group now offers a bouquet of specialised publications like Open Source For You, Electronics Bazaar, and Facts For You, as well as web portals such as electronicsforu.com, efytimes.com, opensourceforu.com, electronicsb2b.com and eleb2b.com.
The group also publishes directories and books, and organises several leading technology events like Open Source India and the EFY Expo. The EFY Group has offices in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai, besides representatives in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune. It also has distributors in the South East Asian countries. For more information, visit http://www.efy.in.
Media Contact: Diksha P Gupta, diksha.gupta@efy.in, +91-9717854520, Senior Assistant Editor, EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd
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