Reliance Jio India Open Summit 2018
L-R: Mr. Mathew Oommen, Reliance Jio, Mr. Brian Bronson, Radisys, Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, DoT, Mr. Adrian Ionel, Mirantis, Mr. Akash Ambani, Reliance Jio, Mr. Manoj Modi, Reliance Jio at India Open Digital Summit 2018 held in Mumbai today on Friday,19th January.Press handout

Reliance Jio has partnered with the Linux Foundation and Cisco Systems to host first-ever India Digital Open Summit to put India on the global map of open source networking. The event was hosted at the Reliance Corporate Park campus in Mumbai on January 19, where more than 400 attendees had gathered.

The India Digital Open Summit brought together leaders from the tech world along with startups, academia and technologists to focus on transforming and fostering innovation in the digital ecosystem using open source networking systems. At the event, discussions about blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-scale networking, open compute, AR/VR, real-time analytics and more open source digital transformation topics engaged attendees.

"Reliance Jio is proud to host the first ever India Digital Open Summit. For the first time in India, we are bringing together eminent thought leaders and innovators from across the globe for the purpose of evolving India's digital ecosystem as creators and developers of open source platforms and systems and not just consumers. This enables us to deliver on both business and technology leadership by establishing the key levers for sustainable IPR creation," Mathew Oommen, president of Reliance Jio, said in a statement.

The summit gathered big names from the tech industry, including Samsung, Google, Facebook, and Intel. The main goal of the event was to leverage open source systems for India's digital leadership. And the event's turnout seems to be the first step in the right direction.

"Open source software is an essential part of Samsung's software strategy. As an early adopter of open source and initiator of leading open source projects, we are really excited to see that so many global leaders are converging to accelerate Open Source Systems, and we look forward to collaborating with and building upon the open source expertise in India," Youngky Kim, president at Samsung, said in a statement.

Akash Ambani also noted that the hype around Bitcoin is only a part of what Blockchain truly is and its uses can be found in various cases such as banking, healthcare, real estate and education.

"At Jio we are committed to contribute and use open source technologies to better our consumer experience. Our chairman believes that India is on the path to be a technology innovation leader and a technology superpower, and open source community will be a driving force of this," Ambani said in his speech.

Other tech leaders from Cisco, The Linux Foundation, Intel, TechMahindra, Facebook, Flipkart, Google, Hortonworks, Mirantis, Radisys, and Samsung shared their support and encouragement for Jio's open source push. The event also welcomed dignitaries like Dr Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Prime Minister Office, GoI, and Aruna Sundarajan, Chairman, Telecom
Commission & Secretary (Telecom), Dept. of Telecommunications.

For those who missed the event, they can watch a preview of the live broadcast on Jio's official YouTube channel.