Volume 2 | Issue 4
UB Raises a Toast to the Cloud
S. Ramakrishnan, CIO and Divisional VP of IT, United Breweries (UB)
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UB Raises a Toasts to the Cloud
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Insecurity about Cloud Security and Value versus Return
UB Raises a Toast to the Cloud The world of UB
S. Ramakrishnan
United Breweries Limited (UBL) has an association with brewing dating back nine decades, starting with five breweries in South India in 1915. From bullock cartloaded barrels or ‘hogheads’ of frothing ale, UBL’s beer business has gone on to become the undisputed ‘king’ in the Indian beer market. UBL today boasts an impressive spread of own and contract manufacturing facilities throughout the country. Here, innovative, creative, and aggressive marketing is complemented by a strong distribution network in addition toa management focused on building brand equity on one hand and exploiting it to the hilt on the other.
Before rising to the Cloud
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Raising a Toast to Cloud Computing
UB Raises a Toast to the Cloud
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Insecurity about Cloud Security and Value versus Return
United Breweries (UB) has a reputable brand stature, both in India and across the world. It’s no wonder that it was one of the first companies to adopt cloud computing in India. S. Ramakrishnan, CIO and Divisional VP of IT at UB, shares the story of how they brewed the right formula to blend this technology with their existing infrastructure.
In 1995, UB Group employees across different companies worked on a common domain using the MDaemon mailing solution. As their needs grew over time, companies moved to different messaging solutions such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and others. Though the messaging solutions were different they continued to use the common mail domain.
2012, they took the big step of upgrading to Microsoft O365. “With every upgrade, Microsoft provided us with exceptional offerings,” says Ramakrishnan, referring to the switch from BPOS to O365. While BPOS only offered email solutions, Microsoft’s new platform came with a range of services including Office, OneDrive, Yammer, and Lync. The transition to O365 was smooth and gradual. The IT team uncorked the process by first migrating email to the O365 and later upgrading their collaboration platform to Lync.
The right blend “Compared to other Cloud providers, Microsoft had the competitive edge with a wide range of applications that were easy to adopt and user-friendly,” says Ramakrishnan. Microsoft was a familiar interface for employees, hence the move to O365 was a natural progression for them.
When Microsoft launched BPOS — the earlier offering on the Cloud — in 2009, UB Group was one of the first organizations to embrace it. The organization achieved a new high with this technology, which offered a more cost-effective platform with its email solutions and services such as anti-spam software, virus protection, and additional data storage.
Going higher and beyond With changing times and technologies, a progressive organization as theirs soon needed more dynamic IT solutions. Thus in
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Raising the bar with O365 The problems that the group faced when moving to BPOS were not present during migration to O365. Ramakrishnan says all employees were able to upgrade to 0365 without any hiccups. Every application empowered them to work and communicate better. OneDrive offered employees ample space to store data, eliminating the need the need for a dedicated desktop backup solution and users could save copies of their data on the cloud. Today UBL has over 1,300 people working with OneDrive across 40 different locations. Lync proved to be a more economic option as compared to Office Communicator. Prior to O365, the company required at least four intranet servers for their instant messaging needs and the intranet bandwidth was becoming a bottleneck. With Lync, this service moved to the Internet and in the process saving intranet bandwidth for critical applications. Yammer stole a march on Sampark, the intranet portal built on SharePoint that was being used to share information in a very formal environment. Employees found the Yammer interface similar to social networking sites such as Facebook and the interactions seemed less formal.
“Moving to the cloud makes more economic sense due to its numerous advantages such as flexibility in applications and operations. It keeps you updated for future business needs.” - S. Ramakrishnan
The adoption level was so profound that within a matter of couple of months, more than 80% of the users joined the Yammer community.
Overcoming hiccups “There are several challenges you face while adopting a new technology, especially if you are one of the first to implement it,” says Ramakrishnan, and continues, “During the BPOS implementation, one of the main challenges that we faced was establishing a common active directory server across companies of UB Group.” This was not possible as the intranet domains of
companies were different and every one had their own active directory implementation. UBL implemented a directory sync server which synced users from the individual active directory to the central active directory which in turn synced with the Cloud. Another challenge faced was syncing passwords from Active Directory (AD) to Cloud. An application called Message Ops was implemented on premise to ensure that the passwords were synced seamlessly.
Inviting CIOs to taste success With Cloud, UBL is capitalizing on several business opportunities. O365’s applications are helping the company streamline communication, improve productivity, and save time. The company is also poised to go live with Azure, following a recent signup with Microsoft. “The Cloud is here to stay,” asserts Ramakrishnan.
Scaling up and down A company needs to keep pace with the volatile market. With on-premise solutions an organization will scale up, not scale down. The Cloud offers the flexibility to scale up and down without building an entire infrastructure.
Need-based approach Before making the switch, CIOs need to understand their expectations from the cloud. Once the requirements are clear, the company can decide on a platform that offers the best solution.
Courting knowledge The IT team is required to have sufficient knowledge before adopting cloud computing. Features such as lack of visibility can sometimes make people nervous. “For instance, if there is any issue on the new platform, many people get uncomfortable when they do not see someone fixing it,” adds Ramakrishnan jokingly.
Insecurity about Cloud Security and Value versus Return By Arun Gupta, Managing Partner & Director, Ingenium Advisory Recently I attended a conference of small and mid-sized Cloud service providers. Up for discussion at the conference was the current state of the market and its evolution, with digital being the primary focus. The idea was to collectively brainstorm and learn from each other’s experience. Participants spoke about the various evaluation criteria they were subjected to, problem statements they had to answer, and the two biggest stumbling blocks in their path: ROI and Security. These are challenges that remain even post maturity of the Cloud solutions and a growing customer base. Some large enterprises have adopted a Cloud-first approach to their new initiatives with any upgrade or refresh decisions. These early adopters and fast followers are now more or less convinced that it does not make sense to continue investing in conventional hardware solutions. Data centers and servers are best left to the experts to manage while application management was outsourced a decade ago. DevOps is the way to go and Cloud is where everything should reside. Of course, there are industries which have seen exceptions for some types of solutions which are still not amenable to be on the Cloud. Even the providers acknowledge this and keep away from pitching for such use cases. Big monolithic solutions are facing the agility challenge and the paradigm has shifted to accommodate multiple for-purpose apps on the Cloud. This either makes some parts of the solutions redundant or enhances productivity by reducing the effort it takes to complete a workflow or task in the conventional solutions.
Consumer and personal apps reside on the same devices that are used at work; this transgression, managed or otherwise, is here to stay. CIOs and CISOs have learnt that pushbacks are no longer accepted and they have to find a way to make peace and find solutions that allow coexistence. MDM has evolved to provide some level of compartmentalisation to separate the official from the personal, as well as provide the ability to brick a device should it be lost or fail to return on exit. So, where is the unfulfilled promise of security and ROI? Or is it just a favourite flogging horse? Questions such as ‘How secure is your Cloud solution?’, ‘Have you had any security certification done for your software?’, ‘When was the last time a penetration test was conducted?’, ‘What is the uptime offered on your Cloud?’, and ‘What is the ROI of your solution’, became the daily reality of service providers who had to field these questions every day with their customers. Since the Cloud is expected to save money, it was as if repeating the message would strengthen its value and make it work for the customer and stakeholders. After all the due diligence and certifications, customers go and deploy the solutions with limited security governances and vulnerable practices that expose the data. Eventually, if and when the data leakage does occur, the Cloud and/or the solution is deemed immature and not upto the market. Attempting to create idiot proof solutions with checks and balances in place to guard against human stupidity is the final and ultimate step in ensuring that the solution is secure. This has
remained the goal of every enterprise and a challenge for every provider. Return on Investment is a different ballgame altogether. Value is a function of the frame of reference of the perceiver and has nothing to do with reality. For someone, a dollar a month per user may be value and for another $10 is not expensive. Can service providers do justice to the wide spectrum of expectations? I am not sure that kind of elasticity exists. While volume driven discounts or market entry strategies may offer low pricing in the initial stages, such practices are rarely sustainable in the long term unless the end game is market valuation and not profitability. At the end of the discussions, collective wisdom indicated that alleviating the fear factor will take it’s time since evolution is inconsistent and everyone wants to reassure themselves of the risk factors. It doesn’t matter how many have taken the leap of faith or how long the solution has been around. Even today, buyers are apprehensive of every decision they take lest it not work in their unique environment, or they might not be able to leverage the value. I think that the discussion will keep popping up and we will have to provide reassurances a zillion times over.
This article originally appeared in Arun Gupta’s blog at CIO Inverted and is reproduced with permission from the author.
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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 of your company needs or a detailed adoption blueprint, Microsoft will help you chart your cloud implementation process. Track 3
Tapan Garg Founder and CEO CIO Association of India P1, Gem Wellington Old Airport Road Bangalore 560017 E: tapan@cioindia.org W: www.cioindia.org
Getting Started - Microsoft’s advanced migration service will ensure that your organization’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/cloud-accelerator-program.aspx
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