Unisys Announces Winners of Ninth Annual Cloud 20/20 Contest

Unisys Corporation has announced the winners of the ninth annual Unisys Cloud 20/20 competition, one of India's largest annual technical project contests.

This year, the contest drew 8,048 participants and 329 project submissions from colleges across India. The project titled Intruder Pin Prevention by D Santhiya, and G Alice Monique of Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College Puducherry won the first prize (Rs. 2,00,000 cash). Saurabh S Chalke, Avnesh Garg, Sanjay M and Akshay V Desai of University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bengaluru bagged the second prize (Rs. 1,25,000 cash) for their project Kinect Based AI Gym Trainer. The third prize was awarded to Arvind R, Niranjan Kumar N, Ramkumar and George of Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College, Puducherry, for their project Vibe Room.

Cloud 20/20 continues to provide engineering students across India with a platform to showcase their innovative ideas and apply disruptive technology trends to solve real-world issues. The contest encourages innovation among students and helps create an IT talent pool.

This year's themes included Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, cloud-based applications and services, cloud security, DevOps and potential future technologies. Unisys provided each team with a mentor for guidance in creating projects that have a practical application.

In addition to the cash prize, Unisys will offer the finalists internships and job opportunities, subject to winners' eligibility and openings within the company. Over the last nine years, Cloud 20/20 has attracted more than 22,000 team entries.

For this edition of Cloud 20/20, the adjunct competition started early, with Unisys’ first-ever countrywide hackathon in December 2017. The hackathon had an impressive outcome, with 143 ideas submitted across five identified themes such as Safe Cities.

"The IT industry is witnessing a massive transformation of the skill sets required by professionals to help businesses and governments work more innovatively and offer exciting products and services to their customers," said Ravikumar Sreedharan, managing director, Unisys India and head, Global Delivery Network, Unisys. "The Unisys Cloud 20/20 technical contest plays an important role in encouraging students to work with new technologies such as AI and machine learning - and to apply innovative thinking - that will support their career development as well as the growth of the Indian IT industry," added Sreedharan.

Tarek El-Sadany, senior vice president, Technology and chief technology officer, Unisys, added, "It is essential that students and professionals in the IT sector embrace disruption. Through initiatives like Cloud 20/20, Unisys is proud to enrich the learning environment for students and empower them to be the future leaders in the digital domain."