Meeting with Consul General Robert Burgess and Mr. Manoj Desai, Principal Commercial Officer, U.S. Consulate General Chennai – 8th December 2019

AMCHAM’s Karnataka Chapter had a meeting with Consul General Robert Burgess and Mr. Manoj Desai, Principal Commercial Officer, U.S. Consulate General Chennai, on December 18th. The meeting covered the activities of the chapter in 2019 and potential areas of association in 2020. The meeting was attended by Mr. Iqbal Sait, National Executive Board Member, AMCHAM and Head EMEA & Managing Director, Saggezza India and Ms. Payal Satish, Regional Director – Karnataka Chapter, AMCHAM.

Defense Committee Meeting – 12 December 2019

AMCHAM’s Defense Committee met on December 12th, 2019 in New Delhi. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Michael Koch, Chairman – Defense Committee, AMCHAM and Vice President – India, Boeing Defense, Space & Security and co-chaired by Mr. Nik Khanna, Co-Chairman – Defense Committee, AMCHAM and Managing Director, India, BAE Systems and Mr. Gaurav Mehndiratta, Co-Chairman – Defense Committee, AMCHAM and Partner and Head – North India, Corporate & International Tax, KPMG India. From the U.S. Embassy, CAPT Daniel Fillion, Honorary USG Chair – Defense Committee, AMCHAM and Chief, Office of Defense Cooperation, U.S. Embassy, chaired the meeting. AMCHAM welcomed new members, Mr. Guruprasad Mysore, President – India, Honeywell Aerospace and Mr. Monal Shesh, Senior Director – Business Development, GE Aviation. The deliberations began with a brief on recent AMCHAM submissions to the Government of India, upcoming meetings with both governments and future AMCHAM events at DefExpo 2020.

Karnataka Chapter CEO Breakfast Morning – SD WAN Security Options in a Multi Cloud Architecture – 10th December 2019

AMCHAM’s Karnataka Chapter hosted the monthly edition of the CEO breakfast mornings where Mr. Deepak Kumar, Senior Vice President and Mr. Vidyaranya Maddi Vice President Service Delivery & Support, Aryaka Networks, spoke to the audience on the topic of ‘SD WAN Security Options in a Multi Cloud Architecture.’ The topic focussed on the enterprise WAN architecture that is undergoing a massive change driven by cloud and digital transformation. In the client-server era, it was easy to secure the network as the ingress and egress points were centralized at the data centre but with the increasing adoption of SaaS and IaaS, branch locations have direct connectivity. Securing these branches requires a new approach that combines SD-WAN functionality with robust security. The session was attended by companies like MOOG, Synopsys, Sprint, DELL, Grant Thornton, KPMG and others.

ICT Committee Meeting – 9th December 2019

The 2nd meeting for AMCHAM’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Committee was commenced on December 9th in New Delhi. It was chaired by Mr. Rob Garverick, Honorary USG Chair – ICT Committee, AMCHAM and Minister Counselor for Economic, Environment, Science and Technology Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Mr. Naveen Tandon, Co-Chairman – ICT Committee, AMCHAM and Mr. Vivek Vasishtha, Co-Chair – ICT Committee, AMCHAM. Members unanimously decided to write a letter to the PMO for the upcoming Personal Data protection bill asking the government to make the draft available to industry and a stakeholder consultation.

To get views on the same it was decided a letter to Additional Secretary of PMO, Mr. Arvind Kumar Sharma, be submitted. It was also decided that the Government of India meeting with Meity should be fast tracked for issues wrt National Digital Communications Policy, TRAI Guidelines, digital taxation, intermediary guidelines etc. AMCHAM’s ICT Conclave scheduled for March was discussed where HPE showed keen interest to support AMCHAM. The secretariat would work, along with the members, to finalize topic and areas of deliberation.