CCKC Newsletter Volume 3 Issue 4 by Tapan 'Ananta' Garg

Volume 3 | Issue 4

Sachin Jain Chief Information Officer Evalueserve

Ritu Madbhavi Chief Information Officer FCB Ulka

FCB Ulkaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Creativity is Fueled by the Cloud

Evalueserve: Journey from a Cloud Adopter to a Cloud Innovator

Cloud Computing: Helping Virtualize Education

Evalueserve: Journey from a Cloud Adopter to a Cloud Innovator

FCB Ulkaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Creativity is Fueled by the Cloud

Cloud Computing: Helping Virtualize Education

From the team at CCKC The prime objective of this newsletter is to provide CIOs with actionable knowledge in relation to Cloud Computing and to cut through the hype and share insights which are grounded in experience. We believe sharing your journey to the Cloud will help your peers adopt Cloud with more openness and confidence. For further information, feedback, and suggestions on the Cloud Computing Knowledge Circle, email us at: cckc@cioindia.org

FCB Ulka’s Creativity is Fueled by the Cloud

Ritu Madbhavi is everything a CIO should be — innovative, forward-looking, and unafraid to take risks. A university topper from Lady Sriram and a self-confessed “math geek”, Madbhavi has a Masters in Applied Maths from Canada. She began her career at TCS and then worked briefly with NIIT, before taking a break after the birth of her son. In her second innings, Madbhavi joined Datamatics, opting to work in hardcore software development, before moving to FCB Ulka around 18.5 years ago. Madbhavi, FCB Ulka’s CIO, is truly a visionary leader, whose discerning eye on the business has won her a legion of admirers, both within and outside her own firm. She admits she has grown with the organization, over the years. “Today people talk about how IT has moved from backend to frontend, and how a CIO is supposed to be in line with the business. But at FCB Ulka, this has been my experience right from the start,” she says. Madbhavi is of the opinion that you can’t deliver any solution unless you understand the business. That’s why, in the past, she also doubled as Head of Interface Interactive, one of the agencies in the group.

“My role is simple — to align with the business. My team and I are always on the lookout to provide proactive solutions. We prefer not to wait for requests to come in from users, but research and implement solutions, and then seek inputs,” says Madbhavi. Her philosophy seems in line with the ethos of FCB Ulka, a firm that is ‘innovation centric’ and at the ‘absolute cutting-edge’. However, she cautions that jumping on the bandwagon must be discouraged. “One shouldn’t blindly adopt a new technology just because it’s out there. The technology should fit your need and simultaneously add value to the business.” Her strong belief is that one can’t base all decisions purely on cost alone. Madbhavi has thus carefully structured her team, using an outsourced model and delegating the entire infrastructure management to a leading provider. Her extremely lean team comprises only two software people, who’ve been with her for a decade, and 7-8 external programmers. The Cloud Story At FCB Ulka, the concept of private Cloud and co-location came into play when they moved into their office at Phoenix Mills, Mumbai. Recalling FCB’s early days, Madbhavi says, “The building didn’t have a generator and there were frequent power cuts, so we decided not to move servers here. Instead, we moved them to the Tata data center. That was a

good decision from an IT management perspective — all of a sudden, we didn’t have to worry about mundane things anymore, such as if the AC broke down or had a leak, or if the generators stopped functioning.” Another consideration was backup; and the compliance issue of having to maintain tapes for a period of 7-9 years. Madbhavi further explains, “Aside from this there was the on-site, off-site debate, and then the transporting and getting the tapes back for restore policy — it was like having a mini department running to just ensure compliance!” Madbhavi believes activities such as DR, backup, storage, and replication are highly manpower-oriented and time-consuming, and shouldn’t even be on a CIO’s agenda! They have to function as pure hygiene. Madbhavi’s prudent attitude can be seen in the way she endeavors to maximize the life of hardware. “We believe in squeezing our hardware to the maximum, and don’t believe in changing it every three years,” she says, explaining how Delhi was their Disaster Recovery (DR) site for storage. The main data, however, had to reside on-premise, because of extremely large file sizes, and no feasible way of moving it to the Cloud. Madbhavi’s proactive leadership style can further be seen in her experimental outlook and the way she views every

challenge as an opportunity. At the time Madbhavi was exploring a way of moving only backup and DR onto the Cloud, she happened to voice her requirements to a Microsoft representative. Microsoft immediately introduced her to StorSimple, a technology that just seemed to fit her need perfectly. It had provision for 20TB on-prem, with cold data migrating to the Cloud, with provisions for backup and DR activities. However, she was sceptical because while StorSimple had implementations across the world, they had nothing in India at that point. Being the research-oriented, analytical CIO she is, Madbhavi spent almost 2 months to come to a diligent decision. Finally, after carefully weighing out the pros and cons, Madbhavi decided to take the plunge. “Initially, Microsoft didn’t offer StorSimple individually, but bundled it together with Azure for every purchase above $50,000 and we went ahead with it,” says Madbhavi. Later, when FCB’s development servers ran out of support, Madbhavi decided to move development on Azure too. “The package ended up running beautifully. I was pleasantly shocked when I did the costing, because our costs came down drastically. For zero Capex, at the same Opex, and with the same annual power and insurance costs, I now had a full-fledged Virtual Machine (VM). Thanks to Azure!” What’s more, the powerful combination of Azure and StorSimple also came with zero performance issues, allowing Madbhavi’s team to simply run an auto-script every night, with automated shut downs. “Since the implementation, there’s been no looking back,” Madbhavi confirms. Over a period of five years, Madbhavi notes that the model ended up working out to be 45% more cost-efficient.

Office-ial Gains Another incidental benefit of Azure is the added advantage of Office 365. Madbhavi concurs, when she says, “The minute we introduced O365, our management costs started going down. We no longer needed people performing simple maintenance tasks such as updating batch versions.” She also loves O365’s storage space of 50GB, of which she says, “Earlier, for on-premise we had to keep increasing, from 2GB, 10GB, 20GB, and so on. It was a loop we didn’t know how to get out of.” Madbhavi is also a fan of OneDrive for business (with unlimited storage on the Cloud), as well as Skype for business. What’s more, FCB has since moved its entire production environment onto the Cloud, being one of the first organizations to move into Microsoft’s India data center. “Right from the StorSimple era, we haven’t spent any money on servers. My entire SQL server, Sharepoint — nearly everything is on the Cloud now, on Azure,” confirms Madbhavi. The Road Ahead Currently, FCB is implementing the Enterprise Mobility suite. “Security is one of the most important things for a CIO, and the reality is that mobility is the way of the future,” affirms Madbhavi, while backing up her observation with the fact that people want to access everything on their phones. “For us, mobility is all the more critical with people working off their iPads, tablets, etc. That’s why we must ensure maximum security for our data.” And Microsoft’s EMS helps them do just that. When asked to share her key learnings and advice to fellow CIOs, Madbhavi is optimistic about the future of the Cloud. “One of the biggest fears CIOs tend to

have is security. However, the new thinking is that the security vs. Cloud argument is flawed. The minute you move onto the Cloud, you have the entire security teams of large vendor organizations, at your service. This ensures redundancy at a totally different level.” She further elaborates, “Unless there is a business law, which prevents you from moving to the Cloud (some of which should change now with India data center), then go for it.” Bandwidth, too, can be cited as a roadblock, but Madbhavi brushes that concern aside, “When you’re working with a low bandwidth, it’s anyway time for an upgrade. And with bandwidth costs crashing now, I don’t see an issue on that front.” Madbhavi is so pleased with Azure’s suite, with its regular new additions, that she’s using Azure Media Services now for FCB’s creative work. “Media Services chooses/optimizes the right format for your data, leaving me and my IT team time to strategize, innovate, and think about the future rather than the mundane stuff.” Madbhavi is confident she’ll be able to execute all her projects that are in the pipeline, because of the varied features of Azure. “Anytime there is the question of a new investment, I believe in thorough assessment and investigation. I always ask myself: Can I reassess the solutions? My advice would be not to approach things with a mere ‘replace’ mindset, but one must actively relook, re-evaluate, and re-architecture the solution. After all, technology changes almost every four years. So one must be open and embrace new technologies, without any fear,” says Madbhavi, signing off.

Evalueserve: Journey from a Cloud Adopter to a Cloud Innovator Evalueserve, a global professional services provider offering research, analytics, and data management services was incorporated in the year 2000. Evalueserve is powered by mind+machine™, a unique combination of human expertise and best-in-class technologies that use smart algorithms to simplify key tasks. This approach enables them to design and manage processes that can generate and harness insights on a large scale, significantly cutting costs and timescales and helping businesses that partner with them to overtake competition. They work with clients across a wide range of industries and business functions, helping them to make better decisions faster, reach new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, and see a tangible impact on their top and bottom line.

Sachin Jain, CIO (Global IT Operations) and CISO at Evalueserve, has been instrumental in transforming Evalueserve from a newbie in Cloud computing to a Cloud innovator. In his current role, he is responsible for all aspects of strategic IT planning, implementation, support, and information security worldwide as an integral component of business plan. Jain comes with close to two decades experience in

the IT industry and has been associated with Evalueserve since December 2000. Apart from setting up an IT group, which includes a software development team, and information security practice at Evalueserve, he has been credited with converting the internal software team from a cost center to a profit center. Winning awards for his role as CIO for successive years and leading his team to innovate has

become second nature for Jain! Adept at implementing Cloud technologies, Jain talks about what drove their Cloud adoption in 2001 from a humble co-located virtual server to their current model of Microsoft’s Cloud services and solutions. He highlights how the adoption of Cloud has changed the very framework of how Evalueserve operates.

Recap of the first decade of Evalueserve’s Cloud Journey Data Center Transformation Evalueserve started out with humble beginnings in 2000, with the intent to reduce the footprint of the client-facing servers maintained on premises. This was achieved by moving all client-facing applications to co-located servers in

the US and eventually ended with the transition to Microsoft Azure in 2014. Says Jain, “With co-located data centers, we needed to take care of managing day-to-day operations, hardware and software licenses, capacity planning etc.

including patches and overall security”. The transformation started with the in-house data center where the Evalueserve IT team moved 150+ physical servers to just 4 physical servers by using virtualization in 2011. The prudent move to using Azure

as IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) in 2014, besides creating efficiency in the in-house IT service management operations, has also yielded far reaching results. Apart from saving costs on hardware investments, maintenance, and licensing, it has helped bring down the time required to respond to the business. What’s more, the payper-use model as against a fixed monthly payout has helped the company’s bottom line. This has set the tone for the next step of transformation - desktop virtualization. Desktop Virtualization In 2012, Jain’s vision was to virtualize the desktop environment within the organization to create an always available,

anytime anywhere secure access to a virtual desktop. With this goal in mind, a virtual desktop infrastructure was put in place. This led to improved availability of end user systems to process client data for research by their then 2000+ strong workforce. The solution provided scalability to their IT operations, flexibility of configuring based on business needs, improved costing, and thereby improved overall productivity. Jain puts all the change in a nutshell, “In last four years, the situation has completely changed. Earlier the majority of workload was running on the on-premises servers, whereas now, the situation is totally opposite. We now have most of the

workload shifted to the Cloud.” The above changes in data center management and desktop virtualization paved the ground for the next set of major initiatives.

Meeting business expectations all year through: Office 365 Jain explains the reasons that prompted them to consider using Microsoft’s Office 365. “Interestingly, a business impact analysis done as part of designing controls for disaster recovery (DR) conducted across the organization globally, showed chinks in the emailing service, which we needed to be up and running always”. Allocating storage to end users was another big issue. It was a tough balancing act, having to allocate storage quota to individual users (as the number of users was increasing) while accepting the limited availability of storage. The cost of maintaining a highavailability cluster and huge storage were critical driving forces in adopting Office 365. Additionally, Evalueserve had over a dozen tools running on top of its Exchange server that were locally managed to ensure

compliance, security, and monitoring. The combined cost and effort involved in maintaining these individual tools and their individual licenses worked out to be very expensive. Office 365, in its earlier avatar as a BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), was pilot tested at Evalueserve a couple of times. Jain found that Office 365, with its bundled Cloud-based email, collaboration tools, web conferencing, telephony, and other services, in addition to Office Professional Plus, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync Server was all that Evalueserve was looking for to power their business. Adoption of Office 365 at Evalueserve helped in more ways than one. “Firstly, Office 365 helped us meet business expectations of high-availability by having

multi-geography redundant setup. From a technology and IT perspective, it helped us converge all the disparate tools into one single tool, allowing us to manage all the features from a single console. The Office 365 offering was apt for our business and IT needs, and investing in the Office 365 bundle helped us save money for the organization”.

Security and Licensing: Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility and Cloud Suites Jain is well-known in the industry for his know-how on Software Licensing, and it comes as no surprise that he has put his knowledge to good use at Evalueserve. With many organizations going the hybrid way in allowing users to access the office network via both the corporate and employee-owned devices, it was important to secure the critical client data. Looking for a win-win solution, instead of picking and choosing from the security management tools, Evalueserve went for the comprehensive solution provided by Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS). The EMS comes bundled with the following key features: Azure Active Directory Premium (Identity and Access Management) Delivers robust identity and access management by centrally managing identities across the datacenter and the

Cloud with a mobile device management software solution. It supports single-sign on to 2500+ SAAS apps, multi-factor authentication, self-service password reset, group management, and security reporting. Advanced Threat Analytics Is a network security software with sophisticated and automated behavioral analytics. It identifies suspicious activities and advanced threats in near real time with simple, actionable reporting. Intune This Cloud-based enterprise mobility management solution helps control employee access to corporate applications and data on virtually any device. Azure Rights Management Provides comprehensive encryption, identity, and authorization policies

designed to secure corporate files and email across phones, tablets, and PCs. Next came the move to Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS), a new licensing offering, which is quite different compared to the traditional licensing mechanism. Jain demystifies it for us: “The ECS is a bundle of bundles. Compared to the existing model of licensing, the ECS allows for simpler and discounted licensing based on users as against devices. With employees accessing the network in multiple ways via desktops, tablets, and smartphones, this licensing model makes better sense.” The ECS bundle comprises of Office 365 E3, Enterprise Mobility Suite, and Windows Software Assurance per User.

Innovating on the Cloud: Multi-tiered Disaster Recovery (DR) platform It’s been a long-term quest at Evalueserve to find a solution to their Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) for many critical client projects. Jain was on the hunt for a solution that struck the right balance between the manageability of complex and time-consuming data recovery process and a cost-effective model for a global DR framework for client/project data. But necessity is the mother of invention! Under Jain’s leadership, an industryacclaimed and award-winning DR solution was developed in-house by innovating on the Cloud. Evalueserve decided on using

Microsoft’s Azure StorSimple, a complete enterprise hybrid Cloud storage solution that provides primary storage, backup, archive, integrated data protection, and connects to the Cloud seamlessly. The solution capitalised on StorSimple’s capabilities to automatically archive cold data from on-premises to the Cloud, provide cost-effective backup, and reliable disaster recovery. While it was normal practice to use StorSimple as a primary storage solution, their inventive solution used a combination of primary storage (NAS) and StorSimple as a secondary multi-tiered storage both on-premise and

Azure Cloud. Jain explains, “We have two secondary storages (StorSimple - one in India and another one in the US), on which all our global locations are replicating the data. The snapshot of data from secondary storage is further going to the Cloud. In the event of failure of primary or secondary storage, the data can still be accessed in

representation of the recovery architecture is depicted below:

CHILE

CHINA

modifying the end user experience and without any additional workload to the data recovery process. A pictorial

StorSimple

ROMANIA

AZURE CLOUD SNAPSHOT

INDIA

real time with same access privileges as on primary storage. This can be done without using the traditional tape-based backup, which is a time-consuming process and may not be a fool-proof solution.” The benefits accrued from this implementation have not only met their RTOs, but also reduced the cost of manageability for the IT team and increased the efficiency of recovery, by enabling automated layers of recovery through multiple layers. The robust solution has also enabled enhanced real-time data recovery capabilities, covering all possible failure scenarios at facility, city, and country levels. All this has been achieved without

Economics of Cloud technology: Multiple perspectives Evalueserve’s informed and strategic decision to partner with Microsoft in implementing Cloud computing has paid rich dividends across all facets of their business. Be it in the form of Azure for Data Centre, StorSimple for Data Management or Disaster Recovery, and ECS for Software License Management, there have been significant cost savings in the range of 1015% on Office 365, and roughly 30% due to Azure. The storage costs have also come down. Apart from monetary benefits, the business has become agile in adopting changes in business models supporting anytime anywhere access and a faster time to market. With an easy to manage IT organisation, shrinking data centers, and no hassles of asset depreciation or license renewals, Jain has successfully implemented technology decisions that have not only benefitted the business but also made his CFO happy! Given that Jain is not only the CIO, but also wears the additional hat of CISO at Evalueserve, every strategic IT decision is

taken only after due diligence is done on security and performance fronts. In Jain’s opinion, evaluating Cloud performance based solely on the speed of response of the applications is passé. To get greater benefits such as availability, scalability, and ease of deployment of Cloud computing, a slight delay in performance or response times of non-critical applications is something that the end users will eventually adapt to, as per Jain. On the aspect of security, he strongly feels that features provided by well-established market players in Cloud technology far outperform what an organization can provide on-premise, both in terms of maturity of technology and sophistication. Be it adoption of Cloud technology or the latest

fad in the industry, he warns his peers not to join the bandwagon without being convinced about the same. Jain’s word of advice to his industry peers mirrors his own mantra in life — to take decisions only when you are completely convinced about them!

Cloud Computing: Helping Virtualize Education by Kunal Bhatia & Pranav Kumar M.B.A. (Batch of 2015 – 17), National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli.

For years, Cloud computing has been widely accepted by businesses as a revolutionary technology that reduces infrastructure costs, increases accessibility, and fosters collaboration. It is no surprise then that Cloud computing comes to the Education sector, helping solve critical challenges of massive scale

and complexity. Cloud makes learning accessible and affordable by bringing learning platforms to the people at anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Gone are the days of traditional learning, when lessons were restricted to classrooms and knowledge was locked in the dusty shelves of libraries. Cloud computing has

brought about a paradigm shift — with the emergence of the Cloud, learning about anything, from how to build rocket to how to speak English, can be accessed at the click of a button. What’s more, the method of delivery has shifted from the four walls of a classroom to our desks and in our pockets.

Here are some of the ways Cloud computing is rewriting the story of education: for storage, or investment in terms of textbooks and substantial tuition fees.

1. Increasing reach through Massive Open Online Courses As the name suggests, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are courses with massive content and a very wide reach. These courses are made available over the Internet, open to all, and mostly consist of lecture videos and webinars to be viewed online. Dynamic Cloud computing has enabled eminent professors from top global universities — such as MIT or Harvard — to deliver content to learners who may be situated halfway across the world. All this in the comfort of their home, without any additional hardware

2. Revamping the modern classroom Textbooks, formerly our primary sources of knowledge, have severe drawbacks. For one, the world changes virtually every day, and textbooks just aren’t able to keep up. As a result, what students learn is already outdated even before they study it. Secondly, the cost of updating textbooks regularly is prohibitive for most educational institutions. With Cloud

computing, books are transformed from physical, heavy objects to digital entities that are always available to be read and saved for future reference, making updates easier and more efficient. The most important aspect of Cloud-enabled education is the ease of having the data at one’s disposal 24X7, anywhere, and from any device — right from entry-level smartphones to a desktop, tablet, or laptop.

3. Breaking down educational barriers in the rural sector With Cloud computing, applications,

storage, processes, and platforms can be accessed via the Internet, thus eliminating the need for physical data centers and local servers to a great extent. Thus Cloud computing can help in rapid penetration in rural areas, with minimalistic costs and infrastructure. What’s more, the Cloud utilizes pool-sharing of resources and minimal infrastructure, making it quite energy efficient — a desperately needed feature in the rural Indian context. Its ‘Plug & Play’ approach reduces configuration and maintenance requirements, while ensuring that information can be accessed anytime on most devices, be it desktops, entry-level smartphones, or tablets. The purchase of expensive licenses for educational software is eliminated by its pay-as- you-go model. Further, the Cloud makes resource sharing very easy, giving students access to thousands of up-to-date study materials at minimal costs. Callout: (Microsoft has teamed up with the Indian government to provide Cloud services in India, to help realize the government’s Digital India initiative).

4. Facilitating educational solutions for students in war-torn zones More than anything, education is a critical requirement for students in war-torn zones. It is the tool that can help them better their lives. As a part of the ‘Connect to Learn’ project, the International Rescue Committee is helping Syrian teachers in refugee camps get access to resources, via Cloud, to meet the complex requirements of children in such camps. This initiative enables teachers to access the resources from anywhere, helping them chalk out all-round educational products for the

children in difficult circumstances, who are often traumatized and require a different curriculum. Closer home, the Child In Need Institute (CINI) launched GPower (Girl Power) in 2014, which tracks trends in rural girls’ health, education, nutrition, child labour etc. via mobile and Cloud technologies, and helps take timely and corrective action to solve these challenges.

5. Empowering educational institutes Like most businesses, educational institutes too are rapidly adopting Cloud technology

to deliver better and more cost-effective IT services. Powered by the Cloud, institutes are able to satisfy the needs of students with the latest technology on campus, using pan-campus compatible software for specific departments, easy file sharing etc. Advantages for staff include better monitoring, enhanced choice (using models such as BYOD), setting up up-to- date curriculum with less investments, setting up smart classes, better collaboration with students over projects etc.

Cloud Accelerator Program Industries all over the world have recognized cloud computing as the way forward and are turning to it for their communication and collaboration requirements. Microsoft is working on an innovative program to help you better reap the benefits of cloud computing and incorporate it seamlessly into your IT strategy. Microsoft has three main tracks to help you begin your cloud journey: Track 1

Strategy - This is the beginning of the process which focuses on senior decision-makers of the organization. Microsoft will present a special brief to help them understand the benefits and aspects of working on the cloud. Track 2

Planning - Once the leadership is convinced of fully exploring cloud capabilities, the next step is to plan a migration process. Whether a quick cloud assessment your company needs or a detailed adoption blueprint, Microsoft will help you chart your cloud implementation process. Track 3

Tapan Garg Founder & CEO CIO Association of India P1, Gem Wellington Old Airport Road Bangalore 560017 E: tapan@cioindia.org W: www.cioindia.org

Getting Started - Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advanced migration service will ensure that your organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infrastructure and application move seamlessly to the cloud. Now your organization is ready to go! To know more, please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/india/datacenter/cloudaccelerator-program.aspx

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