Nataraj Nagaratnam is an IBM Fellow–the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. He is also an IBM Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Cloud Security. He oversees the technical architecture for key components of IBM Cloud for Financial Services and the IBM Confidential Computing roadmap. He has about 100 patents to his name, and has made sustained security contributions across IBM’s cloud, security and middleware offerings.

As companies increasingly rely on public and hybrid cloud services, data privacy in the cloud has become critical. Confidential computing primarily aims to provide greater assurance to companies that their data in the cloud is protected and confidential. It encourages companies to move more of their sensitive data and computing workloads to public cloud services. IBM has been investing in confidential computing technologies for over a decade.

In this video interview with Leslie D’Monte, Nataraj explains what confidential computing means for enterprises. He also speaks about the synergy of other cutting-edge technologies, like quantum safe cryptography and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), with confidential computing–the idea being to give customers total control over their data.

Ramnath Venkataraman is an Accenture veteran. He joined the company in 1995 and became a managing director in 2005. Ramnath now heads Accenture’s Integrated Global Services, and is responsible for Technology sales, and the company’s Advanced Technology Centers around the world. He is also a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee–one of the few Indians to do so. Speaking with Publishing Director of Trivone, Leslie D’Monte, from his office in the Greater New York area, Ramnath explained why companies need the so-called ‘Systems Resilience’; how technology has helped Leaders grow exponentially during the pandemic as opposed to Laggards, even as a category of Leapfroggers break away from the lower ranks on the back of swift technology adoption; and why companies need to focus more on business outcomes rather than the next shiny technology. Here are edited excerpts:

Dear friends, welcome to the 'Weekly High with LSD' show. This week, we have with us an IBM veteran, Gargi B. Dasgupta, who took charge of IBM Research in India more than two years ago. As Director for IBM Research in India and CTO for IBM India/South Asia, she serves as a strategist for IBM Research, working closely with IBM’s Hybrid Cloud business and global services businesses. Prior to being director, she was a senior manager at IBM Research-India, leading the work in AI for Automation. Among Gargi's accomplishments, she was recognized as an IBM Distinguished Engineer for her exemplary technological achievements in 2019. In this interview, we asked her about her leadership style, her view on cutting edge technologies like AI, NLP and automation, and her thoughts on how to have more women in tech leadership positions. Edited excerpts:

In the latest episode of the ‘Weekly High with LSD show’ with Leslie D’Monte and L Subramanyan, we hosted Ajeet Khurana--a bitcoin and blockchain expert. He is currently a Partner and Global Expert with the Blockchain Founders Fund, and Mentor at MOX (Mobile Only Accelerator)--a global accelerator for cross-border mobile internet, which is operated by the US$855M VC firm SOSV. Among his many other earlier roles, he was also CEO of bitcoin exchange Zebpay in Singapore and Head, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Committee of IAMAI.

We discussed the state of cybersecurity and the on-premise vs public cloud debate in the context of the Solarwinds episode. We also spoke about blockchain and security; the Bitcoin scenario in India; and the newfound craze over Nonfungible Tokens (NFTs) as an investment option.

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In the latest episode of the ‘Weekly High with LSD show’ with Leslie D’Monte and L Subramanyan, we hosted Venkatesh Hariharan–a veteran tech journalist and India Representative of the Open Invention Network–and Jayanth Kolla–Founder of deep tech research and advisory firm Convergence Catalyst. We discussed why RBI is introducing New Umbrella Entities (NUEs) when India already has NPCI’s UPI interface doing well. We also spoke about the latest spectrum auctions, and their impact on the quality of service and mobile phone bills. Last, but not the least, we spoke about the importance of having more women in tech–and not just as a token to mark International Women’s Day @sohinibagchi. Do like and subscribe to our channel and do not hesitate to drop us a line if you want to be part of the show as an industry expert.

In the latest episode of the ‘Weekly High with LSD’ show, we discussed the week’s biggest technology development in India wherein the government announced it will implement the Digital Media Ethics Code relating to digital media and OTT platforms. We discussed what this means for social media apps like Whatsapp, Signal And Telegram since India’s new social media regulations wants all social media apps to identify the ‘first originator’. We also hosted Kumaar Bagrodia–Founder of Neuroleap–an applied neuroscience company that uses brain computer interface (BCI) technology to understand the human brain better and recommend ways to enhance its abilities. A BCI interface is a non-invasive direct communications pathway between the brain and a human. Electrodes read brain signals and communicate these to a computer. But does this device read your mind? What does it mean to tinker with the brain? What does Neuroleap do with all the data it collects? How much does it cost? Kumaar answers all these questions and more. Do like and subscribe to this channel, and do not hesitate to drop us a line if you want to be a part of this show as an industry expert.