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LG commences India’s first optical drive plant at Pune
MUMBAI: LG Electronics India has commenced operations of its Greenfield facility for ODD products at Ranjangaon, Pune.
LG has begun manufacturing DVD Writers thus becoming the first company to manufacture the same in India. The DVD writer plant in Ranjangaon is the second largest DVD Writer plant in Asia. The facility presently has a capacity of producing 600,000 units of DVD players per month .
The facility will also have an additional product range to the existing line up. LG Electronics has already begun manufacturing of GSM mobile phones early last year making it the first mobile phone manufacturing company in India. The Pune plant in addition to its current manufacturing facility at Greater Noida will enable the company to expand its consumer reach.
The plant aims to reach up to 1500 manpower base and an investment of Rs. 300 crores till 2010 for ODD plant . With this unit LG India has become the export hub for LG DVD writers catering predominantly to the European markets. The company aims to touch an export turnover of USD 450 million by 2008.
The Ranjangaon plant already caters to manufacturing of refrigerators, colour television sets, microwave ovens and GSM handsets.
LG India MD KR Kim said, “It gives us great pleasure and encouragement to be the only company in India to have a first of its type ODD plant. The Greenfield facility manufactures premium end models of the product which are primarily for exports. The disk drives manufactured in Ranjangaon will cater mainly to the European markets.”
LG adds that the encouraging optimism that the Indian consumer durables market has to offer to LG has driven it to invest Rs. 9 billion for the manufacturing facilities at the Pune plant, out of which Rs 3 billion would be invested in DVD writers. The firm hopes that the move will give it an edge over other players in terms of production and subsequent market share.
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Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
