S P I N E
CTO FORUM
Technology for Growth and Governance
LESS PRIVACY, BETTER SECURITY | BUSINESS ANALYTICS ROI | INTELLIGENCE ON THE GO
INNOVATE OR
DIE
AMRITA GANGOTRA Bharti Airtel
November | 21 | 2010 | 50 Volume 06 | Issue 07
CIOs of Indian telecom companies are reinventing their IT strategies, exploiting analytics, NUMBER PORTABILITY, 3G and SOCIAL MEDIA
to attract and retain customers | PAGE 25 NAVIN CHADHA Vodafone Essar
ALPNA DOSHI Reliance Communications
Volume 06 | Issue 07
VIRTUALISATION
Bang on Target Bold and Virtual Boosting IT Management Lean and Virtual A 9.9 Media Publication
EDITORIAL RAHUL NEEL MANI | rahul.mani@9dot9.in
Telecom: A new ‘Generation’?
MNP and 3G will change the telecom space, forever.
T
he telecom vertical is going through its worst and best time. The controversy around the 2G spectrum allocation is far from being over, but the industry is readying itself for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and 3G. MNP kicked in on November 25, 2010, in Haryana. Consumers can now change their operators at the drop of a hat by spending INR 19. This comes at a time when operators can no longer get into a price war to lure in new customers. They need to
EDITOR'S PICK 33
innovate to create differences in brand perceptions and services before their competition gets to. There is a real threat to survival! Now, they will have to worry about users migrating to other service providers, while fighting for approximately 20 million new customers entering the market every month. New operators can gain in the short term, by playing up their modern networks and greater free bandwidth and therefore their ability to offer a better service. But, in the longer term—sticki-
Virtualisation: That’s How I Did It! The story is best told by
its author. Any other way, however close to original, will not have the same impact. That is what we thought when we asked CIO's to write their own case studies.
ness will come from delivering superior quality on all fronts. And in a jiffy! Telecom companies will have 50 days to prove their worth. Since, that is the minimum time a customer needs to spend with a service provider before they switch—again. Operators will also have to contend with the imminent launch of 3G services. Frankly, in the immediate future, the impact will be limited. Nielsen assesses that only about 20% of India’s urban mobile users will subscribe to 3G services in the short run. Secondly, the biggest driver of 3G is data— which by definition restricts it to the premium segment, currently. Also, broadband connectivity on mobile phones is still not the primary connectivity option. However, this will not be the case forever. As the popularity of applications that warrant broadband connectivity on the move grows,
3G penetration will increase. Operators, therefore, need to build strategies and innovate in the way they bundle applications, services and devices, to benefit from, as well as, drive faster adoption. Otherwise, like China, it will be just another service with few takers. With millions being spent on licences and network upgrade, this is the last thing that the operators can live with. In this issue, we get to the root of what some of the top Indian operators are doing to weather these changes. We speak with the CIOs of Airtel, Reliance and Vodafone, to understand IT strategies and what they are doing to help businesses gain in this phase. As always, I look forward to your views.
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CTO FORUM 21 NOVEMBER 2010
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COLUMNS
04 | I BELIEVE: BUSINESS ANALYTICS ROI Chandrasekaran N, Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland on why IT must demonstrate clear understanding of business.
CIOs of Indian telecom companies are reinventing their IT strategies, exploiting analytics, number portability, 3G and social media to attract and retain customers.
58 | HIDDEN TANGENT: WHAT DOES 3G MEAN FOR YOU? In the different roles that you play in your life. BY GEETAJ CHANNANA
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FEATURES
52 | TECH FOR GOVERNANCE: HOW TO MAKE GOOD IT POLICIES Results of a new global study. BY SEAN MICHAEL KERNER
THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
www.thectoforum.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur EDITORIAL Editor-in-chief: Rahul Neel Mani Executive Editor: Geetaj Channana Resident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra Senior Editor: Harichandan Arakali Correspondent: Nipun Sahrawat DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Sr. Visualisers: PC Anoop, Santosh Kushwaha Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T Suresh Kumar, Joffy Jose & Anoop Verma Designer: Sristi Maurya Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi
16 SPECIAL FEATURE
33 | Thats How I Did It
The story is best told by its author. Four top CIOs of the country talk about their virtualisation journey.
44
55
REGULARS
01 | EDITORIAL 08 | ENTERPRISE ROUND-UP advertisers’ index
44 | NEXT HORIZONS: SURVIVING CONSTANT CHANGE The team should be a part of the change. BY ABBIE LUNDBERG
55 | HIDE TIME: RISHI KAPOOR, DIRECTOR-IT, METLIFE GOSC loves to rally in the Himalayas when he is not busy with his full time job.
AIRTEL COVER ON COVER LG IFC APC 5 GOOGLE 7 HP SOFTWARE 12-13 POLYCOM 17 IBM 19 SYBASE 23 ACE DATA 57 SUN IBC CANON BC
ADVISORY PANEL Ajay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limited Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej Industries Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group SALES & MARKETING VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) Product Manager: Rachit Kinger (9818860797) GM South: Vinodh K (09740714817) Senior Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar Singh GM North: Lalit Arun (09582262959) GM West: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284) PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh OFFICE ADDRESS Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Kanak Ghosh. Published at Bunglow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Silver Point Press Pvt Ltd, D-107, TTC Industrial Area, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 400706. Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur For any customer queries and assistance please contact help@9dot9.in This issue of CTO FORUM includes 8 pages of CSO Forum free with the magazine
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I BELIEVE
BY CHANDRASEKARAN N Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland THE AUTHOR, CURRENTLY with Ashok Leyland, has over 35 years of experience in IT industry, designing mission critical systems, managing software exports etc.
Business Analytics ROI IT must demonstrate clear understanding of business challenges and not just capture data.
IN A BRICK- and-mortar industry, investments in IT systems and solutions are the most difficult to correlate to ROI. Conventionally IT has been viewed as a support function. The underlying thought process is that while the core business is evaluated as a profit center, the IT func-
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CURRENT CHALLENGE IT SYSTEMS AND SOLUTIONS ARE THE MOST DIFFICULT TO CORRELATE TO ROI
tion is looked at as a cost center. “IT is an important element in business strategy execution” is commonly heard. While the “investment” is poured into IT enablers, the return would be visible from the core business only; and that is the way it should be. One needs to move away from quantifying the return, but look at qualitative improvement of the business process execution that IT is able to bring out. This requires competencies in the IT team to be able to understand business and implement business analytics that could track the qualitative improvements and make them visible. This demands that there is a single version of truth in data that is captured at various touch points. This is where the problem starts. While the data used in transaction systems has always got to be right, in other areas, such as engineering, pre-sales and service, there is a lot of room for interpretation, the data quality depends on several soft factors such as the personnel skills, non-use of subjectivity in data input, and process standardisation. It is essential therefore to work on 'people and processes' rather than just on 'technology.' This needs a collaborative style of working with the core business stakeholders. Winning their confidence is critical to success in implementing analytics, to bring in the business intelligence they are looking for. This would happen only if IT could demonstrate clear understanding of the challenges the business faces – not just capture data, but design methods and tools that could make their life easy. The analysis of clean data would bring to the surface the benefits that accrue to business; the real ROI! So the choice ahead is only one. Transform the historical approach of 'looking for technology' into 'looking through technology'!.
LETTERS Unlocking
78
Knowledge
U N LO C K I N G K N O W L E D G E
COVE R S TO RY
MILLION NUMBER OF VISITORS WIKIPEDIA ATTRACTS MONTHLY AS OF JANUARY 2010. THERE ARE MORE THAN 91,000 ACTIVE CONTRIBUTORS WORKING ON MORE THAN 16,000,000 ARTICLES.
& Wisdom in the Enterprise
500
CTOForum LinkedIn Group
MILLION
APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF ACTIVE USERS CURRENTLY ON FACEBOOK.
EVERY MINUTE,
24
HOURS
OF VIDEO IS UPLOADED TO YOUTUBE
Information is not everything, it is of use to the organisation only if it is actionable. By Daniel Burrus
1,000,000,000,000
130
THE NUMBER OF FRIENDS AN AVERAGE FACEBOOK USER HAS, IT WAS 120 LAST YEAR
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29.5 CRORE
NUMBER OF TWEETS TO DATE ON TWITTER
E
APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF UNIQUE URLS IN GOOGLE’S INDEX
very company has both information and knowledge. What’s the difference? Knowledge is something that’s actionable and that generates value for the receiver; it’s dynamic and causes action. Information, on the other hand, is static and is not actionable. It’s simply compiled data. For example, if you received a list of all the sandwich shops in your state, you’re now informed, but you don’t have any real knowledge of how to make a sandwich. However, if someone showed you how to create a great sandwich that tastes better than any other sandwich you’ve ever had, you now have something actionable. The person shared with you some knowledge based on his or her experience. You can go home and recreate that sandwich again. That’s knowledge. The good news is that knowledge increases in value when it’s shared. Think about it … have you ever learned from a co-worker? A customer? A stranger in the coffee shop? Of course you have. But you didn’t learn by giving the other person basic information. More than likely, you were in a dialog. You shared your knowledge and they shared theirs. In the process, you both learned something new and valuable.
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Join close to 500 CIOs on the CTO Forum LinkedIn group for latest news and hot enterprise technology discussions. Share your thoughts, participate in discussions and win prizes for the most valuable contribution. You can join The CTOForum group at: http://www.linkedin.com/ groups?mostPopular=&gid=2580450
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KEY COMPETENCIES TO MAKE THE CIO A BUSINESS LEADER
Three words...foresight, unity and expenditures. It is the job of the CIO to move the business forward technically. But the CIO has to coincide with the business and needs to have the buy in from the rest of the executive team. 1.The CIO has to have foresight to see where the business is heading. 2. She has to have unity with the executive team. 3. Expenditures- It is the CIO’s job to streamline processes where ever possible.
Key competencies which can make CIOs true business leaders CIOs also need to understand in commercial terms what value the department is generating and optimise costs, TCO and maximise ROI. They need to keep a close watch on cash flow and understand the impact investments or rather treat the initiatives in IT from investment point of view and review the investments.
—D.D.Mishra Head - IT Outsourcing at Vodafone Essar Limited Are CIOs the right architects of Change Management? If yes, How? A CIO is a bridge between IT and Business. He has to understand what changes will bring value to the organization and how it will impact other resources i.e process, applications, IT and People (Organisation). This is the basic quality which has to be in a CIO.
—Sanjay Dhulia Sales Manager- India at Ids Scheer
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http://www. thectoforum.com/ content/lessmore
DELIVERING PROMISE Aligning the IT enterprise with business.
WRITE TO US: The CTOForum values your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and how to make it a better read for you. Our endeavour continues to be work in progress and your comments will go a long way in making it the preferred publication of the CIO Community.
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Modern networking and virtualisation technologies are an opportunity to implement the philosophy that 'less is better,' ensuring a closer-knit functioning of networks and data centres, says Greg Bunt, an Enterprise Architect at Juniper Networks, in an interview with Nipun Sahrawat.
OPINION
TOM ECHEVARRIA, Zachry Constructions
Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@thectoforum.com
CTOF Connect
SUNEEL ARADHYE CIO - STEEL AND MINERALS ESSAR STEEL LTD.
“Already businesses with lean staffing are willing to invest more in technology rather than people. Sporadic cases of CIOs playing strategic roles in shaping future business are more often than not exceptional cases of individual brilliance than moves that happened by design.” To read the full story go to: www.thectoforum.com/content/deliveringpromise
FEATURE INISDE
Enterprise
CEO's Should Capitalise on iPad Explosion Now. Pg 10
ROUND-UP
Social-Networks to Replace E-Mail
20 percent employees to use them by 2014. GREATER availability of social-networking-services,
coupled with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20 percent of employees to use social networks as their business communications’ hub by 2014, according to Gartner. Analysts say that the social Web and its mobile extensions are enabling richer interactions among people and expanding collaboration to a broader level. “In the past, organisations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only,” said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner. “Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles. ”
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While microblogging is reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use e-mail in parallel — optimising the business need with the communication modality. “The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode,” Ms. Basso said. Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across e-mail and social networks. By 2012, contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.
DATA BRIEFING
40% PREDICTED VIRTUALISATION OF SECURITY CONTROLS OF DATA CENTRES BY 2015. SOURCE: GARTNER
E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
THEY SAID IT A RAJA Former Telecom Minister A. Raja, said he would prove that everything had been done according to the law. The DMK Minister maintained that he would not comment on the spectrum allocation issue as it was “sub-judice” and said the affidavit submitted by the Telecom Department before the Supreme Court “says it all”.
DaaS Reality. Wipro, Citrix and Microsoft partner to deliver an integrated solution. WIPRO and Citrix Systems have combined on an initiative with Microsoft to deliver an integrated Wipro Desktop as a Service (Wipro DaaS) solution that uses desktop virtualisation technologies of Citrix and Microsoft. The Wipro DaaS solution is based on Citrix XenDesktop and leverages Citrix FlexCast delivery technology to provide multiple types of virtual desktops – hosted or local, physical or virtual – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user. By leveraging Citrix HDX technology, each user is assured a rich, high definition experience on any device, including PCs, Macs, thin clients, tablets and smartphones. The solution incorporates the Microsoft VDI Premium Suite, which includes Microsoft VDI infrastructure and management software so customers can virtualise, manage, stream and remotely display applications and deliver desktops remotely. “Wipro is excited to work with Citrix and Microsoft in developing a Desktop as a Service solution to simplify the implementation and management of virtual desktops for various industry verticals,” said, Deepak Jain, Senior Vice President, Global Head Technology Infrastructure Services (TIS).
QUICK BYTE ON GLOBAL WEB SECURITY
“Where does that question arise from? It doesn't arise at all, We will prove that everything has been done according to the law,The entire matter is sub-judice. It may not be fair on my part to comment on this...” —A Raja , Former Telecom Minister
Astounding results show almost 111.4 percent increase in the number of malicious websites from 2009 to 2010. 79.9 percent of websites with malicious code were legitimate sites that have been compromised. Websense Security Labs predicts 2011 will bring more targeted attacks on content through new blended vectors. THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
CEO's Should Capitalise on iPad Explosion Now. Impact of
new mobile devices can benefit the enterprise.
THE APPLE iPad and its ecosystem are likely to disrupt existing technology use profiles and business models, and CEOs should ensure that its potential is being seriously evaluated inside their organisations, according to a new report from Gartner . “It is not usually the role of the CEO to get directly involved in specific technology device decisions, but Apple's iPad is an exception,” said Stephen Prentice, Gartner Fellow and vice president. “It is more than just the latest consumer gadget; and CEOs and business leaders should initiate a dialogue with their CIOs about if they have not already done so.”
Gartner forecasts worldwide media tablet sales to end users to reach 19.5 million units in 2010, driven by sales of the iPad. Media tablets are poised for strong growth with worldwide end user sales projected to total 54.8 million units in 2011, up 181 percent from 2010, and surpass 208 million units in 2014. Unless there is a self-evident case to the contrary, Gartner recommends that IT organisations should provide at least "concierge"level iPad support for a limited number of key users, and prepare a budgeted plan for widespread support of the iPad by mid-2011.
GLOBAL TRACKER
Threats on Security
On average, 63 percent of small businesses were most concerned by viruses, 60 percent by Trojans, 59 percent by datastealing malware, followed by 56 percent by data leaks
56% 59% 60% 63%
SOURCE: THE 2010 ANNUAL TREND MICRO END USER SURVEY
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“Individuals are willing to buy these devices themselves, so enterprises must be ready to support them,” said Prentice. While some IT departments will say they are a ‘Windows shop’, and Apple does not support the enterprise. Organisations need to recognise that there are soft benefits in a device of this type in the quest to improve recruitment and retention. Gartner also recommends that CEOs ask their marketing and product development teams to present a creative briefing as soon as possible, detailing how iPads could be used by the company and its competitors, because the iPad has the potential to be hugely disruptive to the business models and markets of many enterprises Like the iPhone before it, the iPad is an iconic device that redefines markets. Media "gurus" and forecasters struggled to categorize this device at the time of launch — and some made the mistake of assuming that, like all tablet-format devices before it, it would remain a niche product for a limited market. According to Gartner analysts, the iPad is not a notebook replacement for most users, but a valuable companion device. As it is much less intrusive in face-to-face environments than conventional notebooks, it is well suited to a sales or information-sharing environment. It also makes electronic media consumption effortless and casual, thereby increasing consumption. With an undeniable "style" factor and ease of use, as well as various multitouch, display and communications capabilities, the iPad makes a strong statement in many customer-facing sectors, such as retail, hospitality and tourism. In transportation, especially aviation, Australian carrier Jetstar is trialing an iPad rental service for in-flight entertainment, and Malaysia Airlines is using iPads in a kiosk mount as self-service check-in devices. Gartner advises CEOs to act sooner rather than later. “While there are no certainties, the iPad looks set to become a market-disrupting device, like the iPod before it,” said Prentice. “Even if you think it is just a passing fad, the cost of early action is low, while the price of delay may well be extremely high,” said Prentice.
E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
Big Blue Releases Cloud Based Social Software. Will help improve business performance in connected global environment.
A NEW enterprise social software by IBM, Lotus Connections 3.0, has been introduced that delivers advanced analytics capabilities that helps users gain access to information and people on the fly to accelerate collaboration. IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 provides tools such as communities, forums, wikis and blogs and new capabilities like advanced social analytics, enabling users to expand their network with recommendations of people to connect with based on prior connections and similar interests.
A transformation is taking place as a new generation of social media savvy workers are emerging. In fact, according to the 2010 IBM Chief Human Resource Officer Study, financially outperforming organisations are 57 percent more likely to allow their employees to use social and collaborative tools. However, fewer than 23 percent of employees use social networking or collaborative technologies to preserve critical knowledge, while just over a quarter use those tools to spread innovation throughout their organisations. "Social business helps organisations transform the way they work by connecting people and accelerating decision-making," said Alistair Rennie, general manager, collaboration and social software, IBM. "IBM is at the forefront of enabling social business, and driving a new generation of organisational productivity, with a secure and compliant social collaboration platform." The next version of IBM's social collaboration platform, provides tools such as communities, forums, wikis and blogs to help users discuss and refine ideas. With new capabilities like advanced social analytics, users can expand their network with recommendations of people to connect with based on prior connections and similar interests. Lotus Connections users are also given recommendations of content they would be interested in based on their actions -- for example, if they commented on a specific blog or tagged a Web site. The new software allows users to discover people and content in a network, helping users to build broad, powerful networks to reach new resources and experts, especially those that a user did not know previously. These advanced analytics capabilities were born out of IBM's social software Research lab in Haifa, Israel.
FACT TICKER
Smartphone Market Grows 89.5% in 3Q 2010. New devices
and robust delivery fuel growth. THE WORLDWIDE smartphone market reached a new milestone during the third quarter of 2010 (3Q10), with the leading vendors posting double- or even triple-digit year-over-year growth. According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 81.1 million units, up 89.5%
from the 42.8 million units shipped during 3Q09. "That the smartphone market has grown nearly ninety percent from last year and more than six times the overall mobile phone market indi indicates strong demand worldwide and vendors' collective ability to meet that demand," says Ramon Llamas, senior
research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "The other important development during the quarter was how vendors are seeding the market for future growth," adds Llamas. "BlackBerry, iPhone, Microsoft, and Symbian all announced refreshed operating systems, with each one providing an improved user experience. While these new operating systems initially appear on high-end devices at launch, they provide a glimpse of what the broader smartphone market will look like next year as the OS finds its way into more devices in the market."
NEXT-GEN
To meet the automotive industry’s ever-increasing need for processing performance and integration, Freescale Semiconductor has come up with its next-generation 32-bit MCUs designed specifically for automotive applications. The new Qorivva microcontroller (MCU) families, based on Power Architecture technology, are built using a unique 55 nanometer (nm) non-volatile memory (NVM) process for improved power efficiency and cost effectiveness. The new 55 nm Qorivva MCU families address key challenges for the automotive market, including the need for increased performance, new safety requirements and enhanced security features. The increasing complexity of new automotive electronic systems is leading to rapidly increasing requirements for MCU performance, making multicore processing a necessity for both safety and performance. Safety mandates around the world continue to increase, with many requiring fault-recognition systems and even fault tolerance. At the same time, as complexity continues to grow, reducing power consumption is quickly becoming critical, as up to 100+ electronic control units require current to function within the vehicle.
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BESPOKE WORKS
HP StorageWorks Division
KYLE FITZE R&D Director, HP StorageWorks Kyle Fitze is an R&D director for HP StorageWorks. His team manages HP’s Hitachi partnership, integrating their high-end storage array technologies into HP customers' mission-critical storage environments. Starting with Compaq in 1997, Fitze now oversees marketing, product management, business development and technology portfolio strategies at HP’s industry standard server and storage business units.
Beyond Storage Tell us a bit about your work so that we can set the context for your visit to India. A: I'm based in the U.S. and I manage the R&D team, and manage the business for XP and now our P9500 family of products. I'm travelling through Asia to evangelise our new products and talk about our strategy going forward. If you look at the dynamics of the tier I storage market, it's about a $3.8 billion worldwide market, but it's relatively flat, except in the emerging markets. In India, there's a huge transformation in infrastructure and a lot of the problems that customers faced worldwide from explosive data growth and managing SLAs and managing power -- those are 'hyper sphere.' The kind of growth that you are seeing here in India is making all of those problems even bigger her and customers may look to start small but then not be limited in how far they can grow in the future, not be locked in with the choice they make with infrastructure and that's exactly the problem we're solving with the XP. With the P9500 we can start with as
little as eight drives and scale to 2000 drives without ever taking the system down. We can drive the initial purchase cost down because of the efficiencies and the industry standards solutions. Those are capabilities that are very beneficial to our typical Indian customer from manufacturing to financial institutions, government or health and life sciences -- these companies are common in seeing explosive growth, budgets constrained, the need to see greater energy efficiency and this delivers that promise. The top pain points that customers have, in your view? A: The three biggest pain points that customers have and we've validated this through third party research and our own research, are like this: One, just managing growth. The greater, richer content; the proliferation of smartphone technology and rich media technologies are driving explosive data growth and Indian and global companies are looking to provide access to their remote employees,
their sales teams and those kinds of dynamics make the data growth and management problem the number one problem. Second, in being able to guarantee the service level. In a global economy and in real time the hyper growth in the Indian market. Email has become a mission critical application, right? If they go down and sales orders don't come in and customers don't get the information they are looking for and they can't be responsive. Today customer loyalty is a click away and if you are not there and your web portal is down and they are gonna go find somebody else to place that order with. Maintaining that system up is the second big challenge. Then protecting that technology over its life cycle is a challenge. We are addressing all of that with this new product. We've got the ability to scale seamlessly, the ability to guarantee performance with our products like APEX and the ability to take that rich stack to recovery solutions and remote capabilities. HP isn't just a storage company. We are the number one server company, the number two
networking company, we've got a breadth of technology that few others can bring in, and we can solve that problem from an entire data centre perspective and not just storage. Especially with the P9500, how do you address these problems? A: From the efficiency and scalability perspective, we've got an architecture that ensures that no single component can cause an outage. What that means is that customers can easily and add to this system without ever having to bring them offline. We have XP customers who have never brought the system down for maintenance or expansion. That's the reason that our non-stop server teams use XP exclusively for their external open system storage. They can trust that you install it once and grow it over time and never have to bring it down. On efficiency, we had to spend a lot on R&D to bring greater efficiency to this generation of products. Another aspect is about how easy it is to manage and grow your storage and protect your data over time. We bring developers in with customers and test how easy it is or intuitive it is for customers to use the array. If it is confusing and difficult then all the elegant engineering in the world is not going to address the fact that you've confused your customers. A lot of the work that we did are software management tools based on the user-centre design and development. One of the things we have done with this generation of products is we are introducing the ability to, and this actually came out of our experience with our own IT organization; HP IT uses XP exclusively for mission critical storage. We've in the last five years, worked from a situation where we had probably 800 data centres the world and consolidated to six sites with three regional centres in Houston, Austin and Atlanta and they designed it that way so that they can get really efficient available power and labour to manage the systems. Also these were sites that didn't get a lot of weather and so on. They could do remote mirroring and synchronous copying across sites for data protection. What they found out was even though the physical location was within the metro distance so you can do synchronous replications, the actual way the fibre was routed
between sites exceeded that so we were getting latencies and synchronous replication was not meeting service levels. We worked with Hitachi to develop a solution that ensured we got the benefits of synchronous copy and also deal with the latencies of greater than the physical metro area distance . We are offering that ability to our customers. HP storage for smaller firms -- is that possible? A: That's one of the benefits of HP's breadth of portfolio -- from just the desktop all the way to mission critical data centre technology. What's common across the portfolio is our desire to reduce infrastructure cost, to simplify storage provisioning and management and to make that integrate better into our
Tell us something about your partnership with Hitachi. A: It's a terrific partnership that's been going on for 13 years now. We initially started this collaboration at a time when Hitachi was a mainframe storage company. We brought a lot of experience on open systems, Unix, knowledge around fibre channel and we collaborate on requirements necessary to delivering open system solutions. Back then it was the XP 256 that we introduced back in 2001, and we've been able to keep up that close collaboration ever since. Architects on my team fly to Japan once a month and talk about future road maps -- we are already working on the next generation of the P9500 as it takes that long to bring something to the market. Through that collaboration we do two
“THE BREADTH OF OUR TECHNOLOGY PORTFOLIO HELPS CUSTOMERS ACROSS THE DATA CENTRE PERSPECTIVE AND NOT JUST STORAGE.” customers' applications environment. if you are a small or a medium business and the P9500 is just too much for you, we have solutions very similar in the lower end of the market with various arrays with file, block, near-line and online service. The breadth of technologies we can bring our customers regardless of size or industry -- the same challenges, but the scope or scale is different. To them it is mission critical, to them it is a huge investment. Compared to maybe a global company it's much smaller. When the customer’s need changes to something bigger, With the XP for instance, and now the P9500, you can actually virtualize the storage and attach the existing arrays and storage as an external drive.
things: We add value for Hitachi -- some of the papers that we've written and patents we've developed, concepts that we have incorporated into the core product benefits our customers, but also in doing that we understand the very inner workings of the array and we can use that knowledge with our know-how on HP Unix, servers and networks to deliver end-to-end solutions and to add value around that. Collectively we make a better product.
StorageWorks Division
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
STEVE DURBIN
STEVE DURBIN | VP SALES AND MARKETING, ISF
Less Privacy,
Better
Security
Information is the lifeblood of not just corporations but organised crime terrorism, says Steve Durbin of the Information Security Forum in conversation with Rahul Neel Mani. The ISF’s released its Threat Horizon Report, and Durbin says we may have to give up some individual privacy in return for responsible governance and security. This is the first time that ISF has made the Threat Horizon Report public. It is a huge gain for non-members. What are the major findings of this report that you would like the vast majority of businesses to ponder upon? You’re right, this is the first time that the ISF has released such a report into the public domain and the timing of this is by no means haphazard. Globally we are in the midst of continually sophisticated
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cyber threats that governments are only now beginning to openly admit as being amongst the most serious to national security. And that is at the macro level. At the level of the individual or indeed the enterprise, we are faced with daily opportunities for cybercrime to take hold and impact us personally. It is against this backdrop that the ISF has decided to share some of its world-leading research into the threat trends that we and our members see as being
critical. I would draw your attention to three major findings or drivers if you like that make the threats we detail in the report so real. The first is a fundamental weakness in infrastructure. Under-investment in both organisational and national critical infrastructure has weakened the underlying IT platforms. They are poorly placed to support new and evolving business technologies such as e-commerce, cloud computing and mobile working all of which are
STEVE DURBIN
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
Pain point: The under-investment in critical infrastructure has led to poor resilience at pinch points
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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
everyday realities. Secondly, the rise of the Internet generation coupled with high levels of personal technology adoption has caused an irreversible change in attitudes to protecting information. Thirdly, increasing globalisation means that organisations of all kinds are subject to greater threats as a result of being seen as an attractive target, having to meet the needs of multiple legal jurisdictions and becoming a more complex organisation. Clearly these three drivers will impact different businesses in different ways but if the vast majority of businesses examine the impact of these three drivers on their business today and put in place policies, procedures and training of their employees to help mitigate the risks they face, the impact would not be insignificant. On the one hand the appetite for risk and bad governance is shrinking, on the other the cyber attacks and threats are at their highest. What are the most crucial steps that corporate houses need to take to minimise the damage? Two words – Contingency and Integrity. As I mentioned before, the under-investment in critical infrastructure has led to poor resilience at pinch points with the risk of complete loss of communications, data and the associated impact this has on the business. The sheer scale of information, its life in multiple locations and the lack of detailed management of that information has led to a toxic information wasteland where organisations are unsure as to which of the multiple copies is right and true or who is qualified to make that judgment. Inadequate integrity checking leads to unforeseen effects from changes to business information and potential compliance failures; poor records management opens up opportunities for fraud. Attackers have adopted strategies based on a combination of threats such as these that can lead to them
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STEVE DURBIN
obtaining authentication details, gaining access to systems or networks, misusing systems to commit fraud, stealing proprietary information and introducing malware. Businesses can better equip themselves to deal with these threats by following these steps: 1 Evaluate contingency arrangements 2 Undertake business impact assessments for failure of critical applications and processes 3 Review adequacy of security, integrity and version controls 4 Establish records management and compliance monitoring procedures 5 Introduce common risk language and understanding of threats across the organisation, whilst seeking pragmatic ways to assess and manage risk holistically. What is the right way of creating a balance and how can privacy be upheld without compromising on issues such as national security and terror threats? I think your term 'creating a balance' is absolutely spot on here. Clearly this is a challenging issue, especially for multi-national organisations that need to juggle on a daily basis the different demands of the various jurisdictions in which they operate. But how do you create the balance? Well I think enterprises need to start from a position that there is no perfect solution so pragmatism will need to prevail. Ensure privacy policies are clear and meet the needs of the jurisdictions in which the enterprise operates. Gain the input of legal advisors and industry colleagues who are grappling with the very same issues. Finally create a forum for discussing changes in the law both within and across jurisdictions. But how can we square this with needs of national security and terror threats? In my personal opinion, it is an impossible ask. Sadly, I do believe that the right to privacy has probably reached a point of no return when it comes to matters of national security. We live
THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
"Xxxxx denny dantoptati aute viditinas quatiutm tharum accusfu ghore eatibea volore dummy text space filler"
THINGS I BELIEVE IN Underinvestment in critical infrastructure has weakened the underlying IT platforms. Rise of the Internet generation has caused an irreversible change in attitudes to protecting information. Increasing globalisation means that organisations of all kinds are subject to greater threats
in an increasingly dangerous world where access to information is the lifeblood not just of an enterprise but also of the criminals and terrorists. The only way to combat this effectively is, I believe, for us to give up some of our rights to privacy – but that places a huge onus on our elected governments to behave in an appropriate and accountable manner. How important is a comprehensive risk and governance policy to take precedence over the simple information security architecture so that the corporate sees the bigger picture. What are the key suggestions that you will recommend? This is an essential component in any effective approach to security and risk management. To manage risk you need to plan for it – identify, plan, protect. Security teams need to identify the information risk management procedures that need to be in place to
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
STEVE DURBIN
meet the requirements of the business. With organisations needing to look much more closely at their internal security structures and how they can meet compliance regulations there is a need to make use of tools such as those used by ISF members to manage and control information risk throughout the enterprise. In particular:
security professionals need to adapt and enterprises need to change to cope with a new world. How can they do these things? 1 Consider the architectural options available for working without a network boundary – if the boundary hasn’t gone already it soon will, so time will be well spent considering the options!
“I do believe that the right to privacy has probably reached a point of no return when it comes to matters of national security.” —Steve Durbin, VP Sales and Marketing, ISF
1 Good practice – establish policy and procedures that are in line with current regulatory and compliance requirements and establish means of monitoring their effectiveness 2 Benchmark – monitor your security posture and compare your results with those of other organisations 3 Tools and standards – make use of tools that exist to meet regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II and to measure and achieve compliance against world standards such as ISO/IEC 27002 and COBIT What are the best practices that you would prescribe to ensure corporate security for Mobile enterprises and those who are adopting cloud and virtual infrastructure? Mobile and remote working, outsourcing and cloud computing have combined to all but remove an organisation's network boundary that, coupled with the increasing penetration of smartphones and laptops, has blurred the lines between business and personal usage – the trader who wants to use an iPhone for securities trading, the salesman who updates his orders from his Android phone or chats on Facebook whilst completing a proposal for a new client, these are all the realities of life today. Boundaries have all but disappeared so
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2 Investigate the feasibility within the enterprise of trusted zones and the niche application of products such as digital rights management. 3 Establish policies for the use of personal devices and access management across devices. 4 Establish asset management for smartphones and assess the security implications of their use. 5 Educate users through communication and awareness programmes that are supportive of the work day reality as opposed to seeking to prevent or restrict usage of these devices. The highly competitive global market has given rise to more organised attacks on proprietary information and IP of organisations that do fundamental research. How would you assess the scenario? How are these espionage attacks being planned and what should the organisations do to mitigate the risk? Cybercrime is big business. Cyber criminals are clever, sophisticated and have resources at their disposal that many enterprises would only dream of. That is the reality. And I do believe that the trend is set to continue. So what can organisations do? Well the threat is clear: there is an increased risk of loss of proprietary information through targeted hacking and other cyber attacks that
have the potential to lead to a loss of reputation and trust in addition to the financial cost of the theft of proprietary information and IP. In the face of such threat organisations must identify the sources of high-value information and evaluate niche solutions such as data loss prevention. Here it really is a case of planning for the worst and hoping for the best. What is an ideal plan for protecting corporate information assets. Can you describe a full-blown plan in a nutshell? What does an ideal plan look like? I’ll let you know when I see one! Each plan needs to be mapped to the needs of the individual organisation and to address the business critical issues that affect the successful day to day running of the enterprise. A full blown plan should address the six key components of information security and risk management good practice: 1 Governance: the framework by which policy and direction is set providing senior management with assurances that security management activities are being performed correctly and consistently. 2 Risk: the potential business impact and likelihood of particular threats materialising – and the application of controls to mitigate risk to acceptable levels. 3 Compliance: the policy, statutory and contractual obligations relevant to information security which must be met to operate in today’s business world to avoid civil or criminal penalties and mitigate risk. 4 People: the executives staff and third parties with access to information who need to be aware of their information security responsibilities and whose access to systems and data needs to be managed. 5 Process: business processes, applications and data that support the operations and decision making. 6 Technology: the physical and technical infrastructure, including networks and end points, required to support the successful deployment of secure processes. And once you have created the plan, review it, test it, monitor it and do not be afraid to make changes to it. An effective plan changes with the needs of the business – and that can be a pretty full-on task for even the best security teams.
BEST OF BREED
C A S E S T U DY
CASE STUDY | LIFE TECHNOLOGIES
Intelligence On The Go CHALLENGE:
Life Technologies U.S. had a clear roadmap of empowering its field sales force with timely and intelligent customer insights to sell more, sell better. It deployed MOBILE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE to empower its sales force with VALUABLE DATA on the go.
W
ith revenues at $3.6 billion, Life Technologies, a global biotechnology tools company providing cutting edge systems, consumables, and services for scientific researchers across the world, had a clear roadmap of empowering its field sales force with timely and intelligent customer insights to sell more, sell better. For this, the company required a business intelligence solution that supports a variety of smartphone devices including the Blackberry and the iPhone - enabling its sales personnel to take timely decisions shortening the decision making cycle. As a result, the company thought of deploying IBM-Cognos for Blackberry devices and ‘Roambi’ a data visualisation application from MeLLmo Inc. for the iPhones. The company today boasts of tremendous incremental improvement in sales force productivity and shortened the sales cycle.
The Challenge Serving nearly 75,000 customers around the world, Life Technolo-
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gies is pioneering scientific research in areas such as academic research, drug discovery and development, toxicology and forensics, disease diagnostics, clinical cell therapy and regenerative medicine, and biologics manufacturing with the help of its cutting-edge scientific tools. It is quite a challenge to support the field sales force with adequate data that helps them reduce the decision support cycle and increase productivity at the same time. “To make this a reality, it was essential to have an automated and responsive system which can help the sales representative in accessing critical customer information on the go,” says Manoj Prasad, Vice President Enterprise Architecture, Global Applications and Testing, Life Technologies.
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BEST OF BREED
MANOJ PRASAD, Vice President Enterprise Architecture, Global Applications and Testing, Life Technologies
“While all this was aimed at boosting employee productivity and increasing their efficiency, in the long run, the aim was to improve customer satisfaction by leaps and bounds.” Both the executive management team and the field sales force required daily sales reports that could give the status of sales, planning and forecasting. There was also a need felt to provide inventory reports so that the sales force can make realistic promises to their customers. But this wasn’t so easy. There were a bunch of barriers to be overcome before moving further. One, there wasn’t a single technology platform/application that could push data to all types of smart phones and mobile devices. And in Life Technologies, there were
nearly 2,500 Blackberry users and 800 iPhone users. The second biggest challenge was to integrate the two with the data warehouse. “We did not have the luxury of time to wait for such an application to develop,” Prasad says. “Mobile BI was the strategic priority for our department in 2010.” Life Technologies' goal was to roll out mobile applications that would allow its field sales force to deep dive into the data on the cutting-edge tools it was developing, to take to the researchers who needed those tools.
The Solution Anticipating the frustrations that would spew from the non-availability of an app, Prasad's technology and application development THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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“THE MOBILE BI PROVIDED BETWEEN 30-60 minutes of saving per sales representative per day. There are nearly 1000 sales representatives in Life Technologies. This adds to 1,000 hours of saving. ” MANOJ PRASAD, Vice President Enterprise Architecture, Life Technologies.
teams didn’t wait for one. “We knew that enterprises like us had already started going mobile,” he said, spurred on by improvements in the ability of smartphones to display graphical information and the emergence of intuitive graphical interfaces that can better handle BI visualisations. Delivering these benefits to employees was obviously appealing. “That’s the reason why the user demand pushed for the Mobile BI as the top priority for implementation,” he said. In their quest to overcome the bottlenecks of the technologies available and the inherent inability of those technologies to work on the popular smartphones, Prasad and his architecture team looked for different options to get data from SAP Business Objects and IBM Cognos BI systems onto employees' Blackberries and iPhones – the two most popular devices used in Life Technologies. “At this point, we were really at the crossroads. On the one hand, we were committed to deploying a Mobile BI solution in the stipulated timeframe and on the other, there was no one single vendor/technology that could work seamlessly on the different devices used by the employees,” says Prasad. After much evaluation, the team came up with a unique proposition. They selected MeLLmo Inc. Roambi, a data-visualisation application that takes BI data from various available sources and makes it iPhone friendly. Unfortunately, Roambi doesn’t support the Blackberry. IBM Cognos V8.4 was used to push the data to Blackberry users. Prasad then asked his team to use Roambi to develop two reports - sales quotas and daily sales reports - that are important to company’s sales force. As a pilot, a test version of daily sales reports taken from Life Technologies' Cognos data warehouse was rolled out to nearly 50 sales professionals who used iPhones. “This worked well. But there was another problem now. A majority of our users have
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Blackberry and Roambi doesn't work on it. So we planned to use the mobile version of Cognos to deliver similar reports to the Blackberry users,” says Prasad. "After having tested the applications multiple times in various environments, I showed it to the CIO and a few customers. They all got very excited." COMPANY DASHBOARD COMPANY: Life Technologies HEADQUARTER: California, USA CHAIRMAN AND CEO: Gregory T. Lucier OPERATIONS: A global biotech tools company dedicated to improving the human condition. Its systems, consumables and services enable researchers to accelerate scientific exploration, driving to discoveries and developments that make life even better.
The Outcome As a company, Life Technologies is very focused on customer experience and satisfaction. From 2009 the company’s prime focus has been on how to work with the customers closely in the best possible way. Before this deployment, the sales force didn’t have the right data on time to service their customers. The customers weren’t very satisfied with the quality of service delivered to them. “How can you expect the sales force to sell more when the customers are not happy with the services provided to them today,” questions Prasad. The deployment wasn’t easy but after going through the rigour, the company has certainly experienced a sea change in the productivity and efficiency of its sales force. “We have an edge over our competitors. Now our sales force reaches out to the customers well informed and in time,” says Prasad. Today, even the service engineers are also empowered using the mobile BI. They have all the required data to service the equipment efficiently. The Mobile BI provided between 30-60 minutes of saving per sales representative per day. “There are nearly 1000 sales representatives in Life Technologies. This adds to 1,000 hours of saving. These 1,000 hours can be used for selling more products,” says Prasad. Prasad’s team is already working on applications for other parts of the company, such as a global warehouse report, and has set up a mobile development architecture team to devise an entire mobile strategy for Life Technologies, with a particular emphasis on BI. —Rahul Neel Mani (This case study was done through a telephonic conversation.)
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IMAGING BY PC ANOOP
CIOs of Indian telecom companies are reinventing their IT strategies, exploiting analytics, number portability, 3G AND SOCIAL MEDIA to attract and retain customers. By Ashwani Mishra
he Indian telecommunications industry is an excellent example of how end users usually benefit from increased competition among service providers. If anything, the intensifying competition among the mobile phone services providers in India has left the consumers happy and always wanting more. If fact, they want the world from their service providers. The penetration of mobile connections in India has skyrocketed in the last couple of years. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India added more than 18 million subscribers in August alone this year, taking the total number of mobile users in the country to 670.6 million, which translates to close to 3 percent growth month on month, further consolidating India's position as the largest wireless market in the world after China. Mobile services revenue in India will grow close to 20 percent this year to $19.8 billion, according to Gartner Inc. The Indian wireless industry is expected to score a doubledigit growth rate till the end of 2012 and the penetration of mobile connections is projected to reach 72.5 percent by 2012 and 82 percent by 2014.
Tech all the way But what do these figures mean for the CIOs of Bharti Airtel Ltd., Vodafone Essar Ltd., Reliance Communications Ltd., and other leading wireless services providers in the country. They are on their feet at all time. IT has to meet both customers' needs and expectations, be innovative, and churn out new services and products in the shortest possible time as conventional revenue sources slowly give way to new services and applications. Declining Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is also a major concern for them.
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“In such a scenario, understanding customer profiles and their needs is important,” says Amrita Gangotra, Director-Information Technology (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel. “We are looking at how IT can help increase revenue as voice ARPUs decrease and we need to offer other services that will compensate them.” For example, Airtel was able to resolve customer queries and complaints via selfservice interactive voice response systems (IVRs) routed through a Customer Interaction Management (CIM) platform, which is linked to Airtel’s Oracle customer relationship management (CRM) solution. The caller’s account information is then sent along
with the call to an agent’s desktop, where it appears in a pop-up window. The solution helped the company segment calls based on various factors such as product or service, preferred language, and the caller’s overall value (for instance, a Platinum customer) and route the call to an appropriately skilled agent. This helped increase the first-time resolution (FTR) rate substantially. With millions of customer calls, it translates into significant savings in time and money. That these incremental innovations are happening all the time establishes only one thing: CIOs in these companies must shoulder the added responsibilities of cutting cost of IT services and keeping their
“WE SEE MORE CONSUMPTION OF SUCH (APP) SERVICES IN SMALLER CITIES AS THERE IS HUNGER FOR CONNECTIVITY AND INFORMATION. THERE IS A PENT-UP DEMAND FOR THE MODEL.” —Amrita Gangotra
Director-Information Technology ( India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel
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IT strategies in sync with business goals and all the while keeping customers happy. They all agree that innovation will play a vital role in helping their companies stand out for all the right reasons, in the eyes of the customer.
For example, many device manufacturers offered customers app stores deployed on mobile phones. Early this year we were the first Indian telecom operator to launch a mobile applications store (Airtel App Central). This enabled Airtel mobile customers to transform their basic phone into a Smart Phone by accessing over 1250 Apps across 25 categories for their business, games, books, social networking and other needs. Offering an easy single click purchase – with no credit card required – the cost is automatically added to the customer’s mobile bill or deducted from the available talk-time. We see more consumption of such services in smaller cities as there is hunger for connectivity and information due to limited broadband penetration in these parts of the country. This has clearly indicated that there is a huge pent-up demand for the model. This will increase the data usage and the ARPUs around it. Everything on the network side is moving towards an IP-based infrastructure and the application layer is going to play the role of a differentiator. Managing and handling the scale is going to be a challenge that has to be dealt with on a regular basis.
New Paths At Vodafone Essar Ltd., India's second largest GSM mobile service provider, director of IT Navin Chadha saw that he could integrate the intelligence the company gleaned via its social media efforts and provided feeds
Amrita Gangotra
Director-Information Technology ( India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel
into his back-end systems. By doing this, Chadha's team aided other business functions as well as catered to Vodafone's customers and enhanced their experience. The effort paid off in helping Vodafone discover complaints that were going unnoticed and THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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PHOTO BY SUBHOJIT PAUL
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or us data analytics is a big ticket item. Unstructured analysis of data is fast gaining currency as an important way to get customer insights. This involves elements such as recorded customer calls, emails, VOCs from chat sessions and blogs. Unstructured feeds can be complex to analyse and the accuracy of their inferences can be questionable. Building a marketing strategy based on deep customer insights can give a firm a powerful competitive advantage. While there are tools available to examine such data to extract meaningful content, deciding on the right approach and analysing the data can make a lot of difference. We have a major focus in terms of how we need to segment our customers and carry out campaigns. This will help us to have better conversion rates and create stickiness with our customers. With 3G on the horizon, the plan for us is to provide more services and data applications like video streaming, portal or Internet browsing to make it more interesting for the customers. So we have to innovate around how we can provide services on the data aspect which will interest the customers and create more usage around the data services.
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resolve them to the customers' delight. Vodafone's IT engineers are also working to capture the required data to build a knowledge-driven 'chat-bot' that will simulate human conversation. “Innovation is the key to survival and a healthy business,” Chadha says. “We continuously strive to find innovative solutions to business problems and stay ahead of the curve.” The operators are also intensifying their focus on finding innovative and cost effective solutions to reduce call volumes at call centres, optimise network costs and offer better services to their end customers. Reliance Communications Ltd., India's largest CDMA mobile services provider, is carrying out an 'Architectural Restructuring for Customer Experience Transformation' to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) for its customers and assuring positive experience, so the provider can retain good, paying customers. It has lined up strategic initiatives across all customer touch points starting from acquisition, service fulfilment, customer support and assurance, and billing. Apart from falling ARPUs, other key threats faced by these companies include regulatory challenges, customer churn, and saturation in metro and urban markets. Customers are demanding, and looking beyond connectivity from these players. In addition, the competition is no longer limited to within the telecom sector. Device manufacturers and Internet companies are targeting and capturing the same consumer base of these telecom companies for mobile applications. “Apple and Google have already used innovation successfully to get a strong foothold in the services market,” says Alpna Doshi, CIO of Reliance Communications. “Competing with such players for service revenue and innovation is the game changer here.”
CASE STUDY
VAS AND 3G ARE THE KEYS
T
elecommunications companies are launching new products and services and focusing on newer sources of revenues as conventional sources have dried up. There is greater focus on leveraging data as a source of revenue as voice revenues head towards the lowest in the market. Value Added Services or VAS is one of the service areas where we see a lot of opportunity. Leveraging the existing relationship with the customer for cross-selling and up-selling of various promotions and products is also very lucrative at the moment. There is an increased emphasis on service differentiation and enhanced customer experience to remain competitive and to reduce churn in a cluttered environment. With Mobile Number Portability (MNP) round the corner it will be the customer
PHOTOS BY JITEN GANDHI
The Apps Boom Mobile application services are widely classified under the Value Added Services (VAS) family. In India, until recent times, VAS was dominated by handset manufacturers with very little competition from network operators. But that is about to change with major service providers launching online mobile application stores.
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Navin Chadha
Director-IT, Vodafone Essar
TE LECOM
experience which will be the key for retention. IT partners with the business in all these areas and acts as an important enabler. Whether it is enhanced self service or better interaction on the portal, better campaign management, or reduced time to market or developing and implementing innovative products and services – IT plays a pivotal role. We have to react to complex changes faster through deployment of technology and that comes as a challenge. Mobile banking is one of the areas where we are working very closely with the business by leveraging technology that will benefit the end customer in our country where we have widespread rural population with limited access to banking and financial facilities. IT can be a great asset in reducing network cost through various innovative systems, and by leveraging social networking. We are going to be coming up with some innovative solutions in the near future in this area. Vodafone is investing huge amounts of money and resources to upgrade the network infrastructure and make it 3G ready. We will be a leading player in the 3G space in India, offering services such as video calls, online gaming, broadband on mobile, enhanced data services and faster Internet browsing. Over a period of time it is predicted that mobile usage to browse corporate information will outstrip PCs and laptops. If this happens, we have an opportunity to leverage the 3G infrastructure and combination of cloud services with mobile devices.
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“MOBILE BANKING IS ONE OF THE AREAS WHERE WE ARE WORKING VERY CLOSELY WITH THE BUSINESS BY LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL BENEFIT THE END CUSTOMER.” —Navin Chadha
Director-IT, Vodafone Essar
A cost-conscious customer, then, is no longer denied access to applications that would hitherto have been available only on highend handsets. She can simply download the app of her choice from say Airtel's online store or from her respective operator's online store. Such innovations have therefore made VAS one of the most important differentiating factors as users will soon be spoilt for choice. Mobile phones may well become the predominant mode of access to the Internet for many users and even small businesses in the emerging markets including Indian and China, according to the definitive Mobile Internet Report that Morgan Stanley released in December last year. Low penetration of fixed-line telephones and an already vibrant mobile VAS services space are important reasons for this, according to the report. The report also looks at why operators are starting application stores. Using the UK as an example, it argues that users empowered by the mobile Internet change their surfing habits. A majority of mobile Internet users stay with the operator's Internet portals (such as Airtel Live and Vodafone Live) because while public Internet usage is ridiculously expensive, these portals are free. Airtel’s app store that went live in February, with over 1,200 applications, got a million download requests within 20 days of the launch. Airtel was the first Indian operator to attempt replicating the highly successful business model of Apple, the pioneer in this space. The company launched its mobile applications store — Airtel App
Central through which customers can access applications for business, games, books, and of course social networking, with some apps costing as little as 5 rupees. The cost is added to the customer’s mobile bill or deducted from available talk-time in the case of a prepaid connection. For Airtel, VAS accounted for 11.8 percent of its total revenues as on March 31, 2010. SMS revenues had risen from 4.1 percent in the previous fiscal to six percent. Non-voice revenues, which are considered to be the core mobile VAS category, had increased from 9.5 percent to 11.8 percent. Airtel's not alone either. Reliance Communications, Vodafone and Aircel all have their own versions of the app store. Reliance Communications and GetJar, the world’s second largest app store, formed a strategic
1m
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alliance in April. GetJar will offer Reliance Communications its extensive catalog of over 65,000 free mobile applications. Reliance Communication’s over 100 million subscribers will gain immediate access to GetJar’s massive library of applications via a GetJar apps store through Reliance's VAS platform R-World. GetJar will also enable RCOM to offer its Apps Store on a large array of mobile handsets across multiple brands and not remain restricted to a few high-end smartphones. Reliance Communications will offer the GetJar Apps Store across GSM and CDMA networks. This year alone, mobile users across the globe will pay more than $6.2 billion to buy apps, including games, social networking tools, productivity and entertainment-based mini programmes for mobile phones, says Gartner. Worldwide downloads in mobile application stores will number as many as 21.6 billion by 2013, the research firm forecasts. Free downloads will account for 82 percent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 percent of downloads in 2013, according to Gartner. “Telcos may become mere pipes providing bandwidth if they fail to innovate,” says Chadha. “Now is the time to innovate, and leverage the relationship with the customer.”
Finding Intelligence One way that operators are increasingly exploiting that relationship is to analyse all that they know about their customers. With data analytics most of these companies have a major thrust on how they can segment their customers and carry out campaigns for service and product offerings. Analytics will provide them with intelligence to improve conversion rates. Vodafone revamped its Business Intelligence (BI) architecture to meet the business growth the provider was seeing. The company decided to implement BI tools to support analytics and Customer Value Management (CVM) for executing marketing campaigns. Data-mining tools and analytics would be used in identifying potential segmentation, priorities and retention efforts while CVM tools would lead to increase in conversions at lower cost of communication, says Vodafone’s Chadha. The new tools deployed
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increased the conversion rate, which in turn led to increase in base management revenue due to better segmentation and use of modelling inputs. Chadha adds that using the BI tool, the churn percentage on postpaid business has reduced by 0.5 percent in a year, translating into substantial revenue saving and generation due to ongoing relationship with churn subscribers. “Differentiating yourself from the competition is a crucial factor,” says Reliance's Doshi. “We want to think through the way we use various functionalities of each of the systems that we have. We want to derive intelligence out of them and analytics is certainly a huge part of our differentiating game.” Analytics will help the telecom operators not only earn revenues but also act as enablers in the value chain, while customers get personalised services. With Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and 3G on the horizon, operators have the onus of creating services to increase customer stickiness and offer more for less.
Emergence of MNP and 3G After innumerable delays, MNP wherein a subscriber can retain his number while
“THE THREAT FROM OVERTHE-TOP (OTT) PROVIDERS WAS NEVER THIS STRONG. THE THREAT OF CARRIERS TURNING INTO A 'DUMB PIPE' IS ALREADY KNOCKING AT THE DOORS.” —Alpna Doshi
CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd.
CASE STUDY
CAUTION AGGRES S
A
t Reliance Communications, we have a two-pronged strategy to ensure that while we meet the market challenges we don’t miss out on the huge market opportunities. We want to tighten spending while continuing to pursue strategic plans to expand the subscriber base, capture new regions and/or offer new services, grow in smart phones and data usage. Therefore it’s a mix of fiscal caution and focused aggression. We are focussing on new technologies and models such as virtualisation, cloud computing and Web 2.0 to reduce cost, and improve efficiency and asset utilisation. Additional initiatives have been launched to deliver further cost reductions. These plans frequently include updating software systems to modernise service delivery and management. We understand that quality of service is expected to be an important differentiator in attracting and retaining customers in view of 'Number Portability' and 3G. We want our IT to enable business process changes to support new services and reduce operational expenses. We are carrying out architectural restructuring for 'Customer Experience Transformation' to improve the QoS for our customers and assure positive customer experience. We also have plans to introduce as much automation as possible. Our western counterparts are well ahead when it comes to automation. From a global perspective, the solutions from various providers already exist. All that
TE LECOM
N WITH S SION we need to do is tap that intellectual property and ensure that our processes can be implemented using those advanced systems. We would do most of the development by ourselves but it will be the technology that we plan to take from partners. In differentiating ourselves we want to think through the way we use various functionalities of each of the systems that we have. We want to derive intelligence out of them and analytics is certainly a huge part of our differentiating game. Also the launch of campaigns and the audience that needs to be targeted is also enabled by IT. Looking at the macro picture, the telecom industry across the globe is being redefined. Telecom is now no more dominated by the traditional 'carriers.' The threat from Over-theTop (OTT) providers was never this strong. The OTT service providers have already cannibalised approximately 30 percent of the telecom carrier’s revenue and the shift is only speeding up. The threat of carriers turning into a 'dumb pipe' is already knocking at the doors. Transformational change in business model led by innovation is the only rescue from this threat.
Alpna Doshi
COVE R S TO RY
changing his operator is set to be launched. It will be first tried in Haryana, from November 25 this year, and across India in a few months. “The industry is expecting a huge churn” says Kamlesh Bhatia, Principal Analyst, Gartner, as subscribers move from weak operators to major operators who offer better services. “There is an opportunity for the new operators who are looking to grab the high-end subscribers from the established operators. This move is bound to be beneficial to the operators who offer congestion-free network and excellent customer service.” As the ARPU from voice based service goes down, mobile service providers are tapping many other opportunities to increase their revenue. The 3G roll-out has also opened new vistas of business. Data is expected to contribute 29 percent to 3G ARPU from handset users, according to a study by the The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and consulting firm BDA. With 3G services, carriers’ margins are expected to improve as data services offer higher margins than voice services. MTNL witnessed a rise of 15 to 20 percent in its ARPU after 3G services were launched in select cities in the country. “We have invested money to upgrade our network infrastructure and make it 3G ready. We see a big opportunity to leverage 3G infrastructure and combination of cloud services with mobile devices,” says Chadha. All this points to a shift in the point of focus for the CIOs – from hardware to software. It will also soon be a shift in the way CIOs themselves see their roles in their organizations. The convenience of the mobile device – note that we say device and not phone – to deliver applications and services to customers, be it for business or pleasure, makes it the new battleground for wireless market share. The mobile platform's relevance to people's lives today is such that CIOs will find that they will be asked to contribute big time with not just the technologies, but the technology-led business strategies that might make or break tomorrow's wireless leaders.
CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd.
—ashwani.mishra@9dot9.in
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“OPERATORS MUST TAP CUSTOMER KNOWLEDGE, DIFFERENTIATE” Mobile services providers need to build on their intimate knowledge of their customers to differentiate themselves and create compelling, affordable packages, or risk losing customers and revenue to players such as Google, Skype and Nokia, says Kamlesh Bhatia, Principal Analyst, Gartner Inc., in a interview with Ashwani Mishra. How has IT evolved in the Indian telecommunications service provider companies, and how are they gearing up to tap the changes in the market? A. IT was always an integral part of the telecom industry where it ran everything from CRM to billing to revenue assurance and network management. It worked till a certain point. The perception of IT within the telecom companies has started to change. Many of these companies are not looking at IT to merely offer tools to the business but they are looking to create a differentiation that will allow them to compete better. Competition is no longer limited to within telecom sector, as new players have emerged outside this segment who also want to capture the same consumer base. These include over-the-top players, or device manufacturers makers such as Nokia, Internet companies such as Google and Skype. They have started to target the same customer base and wallet segment within the consumer space, which has touched off a ripple effect among operators. Consumers too look at phone companies differently, with higher expectations of services that will enhance their mobile-phone experience, so there is immense pressure on the CIOs of telecom companies, as the operators seek to not lose revenue to the new users.
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In what areas can the operators provide this additional value? A. Operators must seek areas where they can differentiate themselves and not just support their internal set up. One important area where they have an upper hand is the customer information and a direct point of contact. So it is all about how these operators can leverage that information and create packages that will be compelling enough for users to embrace. When I say compelling, I mean that the package should be personalised and affordable – areas where IT will play major role. Can you put this in the context of exploiting information? A. They should be looking at innovation that focuses on managing the information within their network. Some of these areas include analytics and business intelligence. They should also be looking at device management and subscriber data management. Data in many of these telecom companies resides in pockets in Home Location Register (HLRs) or Home Subscriber Server (HSS). Subscriber data management consolidates all the data in a single data repository and allows creating differentiation. The operator can use this data to create intelligence and applications and supply it to their customers. We see many CIOs in the telecom compa-
nies focusing on these areas right now. This will help telecom operators earn revenues and act as enablers in the value chain, while customers get personalised services.
How do you see the whole telecom ecosystem changing over the next few years? A. We believe that there is going to be three distinct categories for service providers going forward over the next three to five years. One category will be a diversified service provider who will focus on innovation and develop new products. The second category will play the role of an enabler who will focus on creating networks and IT systems to enable third-party providers to plug-in to their systems for delivery of products and services. These providers will invest in business analytics and intelligence. The third category will invest and optimise their infrastructure and focus on connectivity. This does not mean that these providers will be limited to these categories. They will also be a part of other categories and this will depend on the kind of focus, investment and strategy that these players have in mind for the next five years.
—ashwani.mishra@9dot9.in
V I R T U A L I S AT I O N
C A S E S T U DY
VIRTUALISATION:
THAT’S
HOW
I DID IT! The story is best told by its author. Any other way, however close to original, will not have the same impact. That is what we thought when we asked CIO's to write their own case studies.
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all it disruption or an attempt to break the monotony, but it is a fact that what a CIO can tell about an implementation (in his own words), we just can't. To realise the ambitious dream of making CIOs storytellers, CTO Forum reached out to a large number of CIOs with a request to write their own 'Virtualisation' story. Frankly, the initial response was good (if not great!). We received mails from at least 20 CIOs that they are willing to pen their stories. We were excited and thought that the idea worked! The excitement was short lived. 20 came down to 10, 8 and then finally 7. But after an extended deadline we could manage just 4. We don't blame CIOs at all. It was an experiment, which we thought will sell like a hot cake. Perhaps our expectations were not right. At the end it's a win-win. Here're the four case studies written by CIOs of those companies. We sincerely think you will appreciate them and will feel inspired to write one next time.
Shubhashish Saha CIO, Apeejay Surendra Group Page 34
Arun Gupta CIO, Shoppers' Stop Page 36
Vijay Sethi Vice President IS and CIO, Hero Honda Page 39
Jagat Singh CTO, Cybage Software Page 40
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IN BRIEF COMPANY: Apeejay Surendra Group ESTABLISHED: 1910 GROUP CHAIRMAN: Karan Paul BUSINESSES: Hospitality, Tea, Retail, Shipping & Real Estate
CASE STUDY | APEEJAY GROUP
BOOSTING IT MANAGEMENT
With an 'ultra-thin' team, Apeejay's IT department exploited the strengths of virtualisation to proactively manage a server sprawl that was threatening to go out of control. By Shubhashis Saha
E
stablished in 1910 with its foundation in Steel, Apeejay Surrendra Group is today an over 6,000 crore enterprise employing close to 43,000 people in rapidly expanding operations in Tea, Hospitality, Shipping, Retail and Real Estate, and has diversified into new business initiatives such as Shipyards, Logistics and Knowledge Parks. You must have heard about the 'problem of many,' have you? Our project was something to do with problem of 'too many.' In the process of supporting
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business growth across group companies, we kept on adding individual servers without being able to realise the total return on investment. I am going to share here the story of our 'journey' to server virtualisation, which we started early last year. We called it Project Shakti – a server virtualisation project implemented at Apeejay. With VMware ESX, the implementation consisted of 12 servers in the database category and 12 in business applications. The remaining servers were distributed among messaging, work flow, gateway and security. Since the
A P E E J AY G R O U P
with a representation from each category using ESX 4.0 and using existing HPDL360 and IBMX3650 boxes with a basic configuration of dual CPU, 900GB HDD and 13GB RAM with VMclient for single window management of the environment. The project has been delivered in three and half months using one inhouse resource. In the initial phase, we migrated the most critical ones like 'gateway & security' and business applica—Shubhashish Saha CIO, Apeejay tion servers. Balance server Surendra GroupSoftware got migrated later. The implementation has been designed with complete redundancy last two categories included servers that between two VMs. required intensive management, these Other than the initial installation support were migrated first. Four servers each from from a local vendor, no external help was the two categories were migrated. Two taken to implement the solution. However, physical servers from IBM and HP have there were challenges faced during the been used with hard disk capacity of 900 initial phase of the implementation due to GB each, with 12 GB RAM. These physical lack of complete technical knowledge on servers host 10 and 12 virtual machines VMware, which was acquired subsequently respectively. Consolidation of 24 servers through self-learning and implementation has been completed so far. experience. Though the organisation overall Now, the important question was, why and IT in particular benefited immensely, virtualise? In December 2008, Apeejay's overall it we felt that a little more aggressive ultra-thin IT team, with just two in-house implementation strategy could have yielded engineers, started facing several technical better result instead of being defensive. It is challenges in managing the more than 40 better to choose server from each category individual servers accumulated over a perilike security, messaging and business appliod to meet the needs of the conglomerate. cation server in the 1st phase itself. This Apart from the manageability, there were would have helped in understanding and many compelling reasons for Apeejay to go providing better clarity on which category down the virtualisation path. will work on a virtual server platform and These included resource utilisation; need which will not. to implement a scalable IT infrastructure As quickness and fast response were with lowest investment possible; future scalthe main expectations, we had to adopt a abilityand support for business growth; and strategy, which was different from a conventional approach of detailed modeling initiating a green policy. and designing to an agile one, and started It was known that virtualisation is the off on the basis of overall objective. Supanswer to all the above problems but there port and encouragement from the senior were two self-imposed conditions. The first management has worked as an additional was on hardware resource where the deciadvantage. sion was to go ahead with the existing hardApart from the guidance from group ware and to not buy any new boxes. The 2nd CTO, one in-house team member, Senior condition was on external resources – the Manager - IT infrastructure, Joy Bagish and project was to be implemented and manone external resource from the hardware aged in-house. These two simple conditions vendor were involved in the complete implemade the implementation a bit complex. mentation. We decided to migrate twenty two servers
PHOTO BY DRISHTI
“The solution has been implemented by spending Rs.10 lakhs on software but zero cost on hardware.”
C A S E S T U DY
The project has resulted in several benefits for Apeejay in general and Apeejay IT in particular, as follows: Proactive management of many ( more than 40) of our servers with thin IT resources: After the implementation, there are two VMs configured and currently managed through one VM client instead of individual server management. Resource reallocation is happening on the fly based on the seasonality and statutory requirement of multiple group company businesses under Apeejay Surrendra Group. Resource utilisation: The utilisation of server CPUs, which were earlier in the range of 15% to 20%, is now 70% to 80%. To implement a scalable IT infrastructure with lowest investment possible: The complete solution has been implemented by spending Rs. 10 lakhs on software and accessories. Zero cost on hardware. Future scalability and support for business growth: Three new business servers, one server for HR application, and three IT infrastructure server have been configured without buying any single hardware and generated savings of Rs. 30 Lakh. A real example of delivering more with less. Green initiative: Along with allied power and space savings, with an assumption of average 4 tons of CO2 annually per server, Apeejay IT has roughly generated a savings of around 100 tons of CO2 per year. Apart from this, the cost of cooling has come down to one-fifth. For Apeejay, It’s a journey and a philosophy, which will be pursued and followed up in the coming years as well. The similar setup will be extended to primary DR site at Delhi , Badrapur. Apart from VMWare, Microsoft HyperV are being rolled out in branches at Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. Apeejay IT promises to deliver an integrated virtualised environment consisting of multiple VM solutions across geographical locations.
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IN BRIEF COMPANY: Shoppers' Stop ESTABLISHED: 1991 GROUP CHAIRMAN: Chandru L. Raheja BUSINESS: Retail
CASE STUDY | SHOPPERS STOP
BANG ON TARGET
With a clear goal on mind, Shoppers' Stop started its virtualisation journey and achieved ROI in 20 months. By Arun Gupta
I
t all began in early 2007, when our IT organisation was at the crossroads; the business was expanding, retail was going through change in the country, and competitors were whipping up euphoric expectations thereby putting artificial pressure on everyone. Our server infrastructure was bursting at its seams, the data centre built almost five years back had already outlived its usefulness and servers could now be found spread across various offices in makeshift computer rooms, thus necessitating change and that too quickly. The choice was between building a larger data
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centre which could hopefully last us the next decade, or outsource the data centre and adopt a hereto unknown buzzword – virtualisation. So the journey began with two teams going on different paths, one working on the business case to build a new data centre or outsource it, and the other to explore the world of virtualisation. Our technology landscape was and continues to remain fairly simple with IBM i-series servers logically partitioned (read virtualised) for different business units running the core JDA retail ERP applications, Intel servers – standalone and blades – with Linux supporting Oracle e-Biz, PeopleSoft and Hyperion,
“We broke-even in 20 months and have saved more than Rs. 5 crore in server investments in last 2 years.” —Arun Gupta CIO, Shoppers' Stop
and Windows with Microsoft SharePoint based applications respectively. We had just invested in Netezza, the data warehouse appliance, and many new applications were expected to be implemented in the next 12 months and thus new servers were to be procured and hosted in the data centre. The implementation of SAN and NAS with virtualised storage, a year earlier had improved the storage infrastructure, but data growth implied that it may not last the term that was originally anticipated and would require an upgrade much sooner. The first team, led by the Head – Infrastructure, supplemented by a financial/ purchase executive came back with budgetary estimates and time lines to build a new data centre and comparative analysis of outsourced options which effectively rendered the discussion one-sided in favour of outsourcing it. The team went off to discuss merits and capabilities of different service providers and negotiations but not before setting the other team with a target that whatever they did the number of racks should remain the same over the next 5 years to ensure that the business case did not go bust. A tall order claimed the second, which was the technical team lead by the Enterprise Architect and joined in by the application owners, Windows, SQL, and data centre specialists! The starting point was the evaluation of available virtualisation stacks and it was a relatively easy choice with VMWare providing the best capabilities (as determined using an evaluation matrix). Other virtualisation technologies were as yet evolving and did not have the maturity or market expertise available. Initial candidates for the
pilot were chosen from the test and development servers for non-critical applications running Windows operating environment. The first three months provided experience on how to configure, deploy, manage, scale up or down the configurations based on workload. All these worked well enough for the team to gain comfort with virtualised infrastructure. Once the review confirmed the stability of the overall virtualised environment for the application stack proposed to run on it, I set the mandate that all new applications will be deployed only on virtualised servers while we work towards moving current applications in a phased manner. The die was cast in August 2007 with the data centre migrating away from dispersed locations into the outsourced service providers’ premises. The management was supportive, given a clear business case that promised savings within 2 years and increasing with each new application being added to the overall server farm. The first pothole was hit quickly, unsettling the plans. The application in question behaved erratically as the number of users increased. The application provider tested the application in a controlled environment and confirmed the issue. The way forward at that point was to strike off that one application from the list and move on, but the apprehension remained about other applications from the same provider. All others worked without issues and thus were migrated and deployed on virtual servers. In July 2008, a new application and technology stack was ready for deployment and the potholes gave way to roadblocks. Everything worked well until the load started increasing. One particular application provider accepted that they did not support virtual servers, but some customers had deployed them and it was working for them. They stipulated conditions under which the same would work on proprietary virtual servers but that was not aligned to the chosen standard. However, our tests on the defined technology stack indicated
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that the application once again was unable to scale up. We tried various alternatives including Microsoft Hypervisor, with no success. All applications from this technology vendor faced similar challenges and to date this remains unresolved and thus continues to run on physically separate servers representing about 25 per cent of the overall applications and workload. Virtualisation brought new lessons to the team. Easy for provisioning new servers, someone also has to track the number of licenses required with every new server and track them. It’s a journey which is two steps forward, one step backward. Each new application if not certified explicitly requires rigorous testing beyond the conventional. The starting point for us was slow with 8:1 virtualisation (8 partitions per physical server), moving now to 15:1 with a target in the coming year to get to 20:1 with new hardware offering multiple cores and CPUs. As anticipated, over the last 3 years, the data centre space has remained constant even though the number of servers has increased. Physical servers have reduced from around 100 to now 20. Utilisation and thereby efficiency is now around 40-50 per cent with some more room to grow from the earlier average of about 15 per cent. The storage infrastructure was upgraded in 2009 increasing the capacity 3 times and connects well to the virtual environment. Now all applications with the exception of the incompatible and uncertified are operational on virtualised servers. So what about Return on Investment? Well, we achieved break-even within 20 months and have saved more than 5 crore rupees in server investments in the last 2 years. The future is already here with the formation of a Private Cloud using the overall server and storage infrastructure in a homogeneous interchangeable and on-demand scalable environment. In data centre resilience and disaster recovery is now enabled using virtualised servers. As we continue to work with our technology partners, over the next 12-18 months, we believe that the data centre will be able to offer on-demand compute and storage to the business at costs lower than what anyone could in a fully disparate physical world. Next step, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure! THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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CASE STUDY | HERO HONDA MOTORS LIMITED
BOLD & VIRTUAL
The road less travelled might just be the right one for an organisation. What's needed is the patience to check it out, and the perseverance to follow through. By Vijay Sethi
T
he year was 2008 - we at Hero Honda Motors Ltd. the world’s largest two wheeler manufacturer, had been witnessing phenomenal growth. The IT enterprise was working closely with business to put in place technology-led solutions throughout the value chain. We at IT were looking at our plans and working out areas where IT would help the organisation sustain this growth and help the organisation stay ahead of its competition. When we reviewed our plans to analyse the infrastructure requirements in terms of servers and peripheral equipment required for the next 6-8 months, we were startled to see our infrastructure and consequent data centre space, energy requirements and the related needs. It was even more worrying because we had just set up the new data centre and it was very evident that soon we would run out of space in the new data centre and would also have to enhance our power and cooling requirements significantly. All the capacity planning computations which had been done by us only a year back when the market scenario was quite different, now looked unrealistic and this made us think about ways to deal with the situation and strategise to curb our increasing infrastructure and operational costs. One of our guiding philosophies has been that technological advancements should always attempt to make life simpler and efficient and we thought to ourselves that when we can use technology to do that for users why not attempt to achieve the same goals for the IT team as well to combat the challenge at hand.
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The team was given a simple task, which was to think of the best possible way of coming out of this situation. Our teams started evaluating various options – both technological and non-technological – including ideas like consolidating applications, hosting some of the applications with third parties and looking at virtualisation. Virtualisation was the most talked about technology and it seemed like the most fitting solution for us. Virtualisation as a concept was not new to us. For our Unix based systems, we had been using the native features of the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) based systems for virtualisation and were quite familiar with partitioning and other ideas. but now we had to explore its use for a different area which was our Windows-based applications. We started with seeing whether the learnings and experience which we had of using the technology in one set of our environment could help us in deploying a similar concept in the other set as well. In the attempt to understand and then make our decision we did some research on the technology, we read on the Web as to what people were saying about virtualisation, we gathered case studies of any implementation so as to learn from them, we also read analyst reports and went through vendor presentations. What we read gave us more reasons to not take the plunge than to go ahead. The extent of server virtualisation globally was very low, storage and others was even lower. Article on article about numerous challenges kept staring at us; there were articles on concerns around the management complexity after the deploy-
ment; some were of the opinion that the nature and number of application instances and quite frequently OS instances remain virtually unchanged or may even go up in most of the organisations. Some mentioned that in fact, virtualisation actually inserts a new layer in the IT infrastructure which itself needs to be managed and secured. Some case studies and articles mentioned difficulties faced with regard to clarity on licensing, vendor SLAs and also in deploying management and monitoring tools that would work across both virtual and physical landscapes. Another concern mentioned in the same respect was that the performance of applications in a virtualised environment was not certain. These views about concerns did get to us at times and led us into thinking about what is the right path to take, but we also knew that any new technology has to go through cycles of proving the benefits vis-à-vis the effort and investment. Therefore when it came to deciding whether or not we should take the leap of faith, we went for it as we felt geared up to face the challenge. We were also conscious of the fact that the virtualisation project would need huge focus and efforts to leverage the true benefits of Virtualisation both from our side as well as from the vendor’s side. The primary and the most important stage was when we had to decide our technology and implementation partner as it is one of the most critical factors contributing to the success of a project. Before implementation a major task that was to be done was to study our own environment and way forward keeping in mind complexities involved in a virtualised
IN BRIEF COMPANY: Hero Honda Motors Ltd. ESTABLISHED: 1984 GROUP CHAIRMAN: Brijmohan Lall Munjal BUSINESS: Automobiles
some power point based presentations; rather it had its own set of challenges where there were occasions when we found ourselves grappling over seemingly minor issues on which teams would end up spend—Vijay Sethi ing nights trying to Vice President IS and CIO, Hero Honda resolve. Also, we went through extenenvironment and segregate the applications sive testing of various applications before based on whether they would continue in moving to the virtual platforms in order to a standalone environment or whether they ensure that the transition did not affect the would move to a virtualised environment. I day to the day use of these applications by must confess here that the implementation our end users. was not a cake walk as was shown during The project aimed at achieving both
PHOTO BY SUBHOJIT PAUL
“Like any other new initiative, Virtualisation also had to face internal apprehensions.”
tangible benefits in terms of a promising ROI and a significant step in our Green IT efforts, which is core to our management’s environment conservation philosophy. Despite the concerns and challenges that the project faced upon its commencement, all the efforts paid off well and the project team comprising the internal IT team, our partners and also our key business users ensured that project was delivered successfully. The role of the business users was very significant as they were the ones who were responsible for the testing of the applications in virtualised environment which was required to ensure that applications behaved as expected with proper business logic. Like any other new initiative, Virtualisation also had to face internal apprehensions regarding whether the benefits it promised would be achieved but today after being on the platform for ample time, we can surely say that we were able to achieve the expected returns on our investment in less than six months and there have been recurring savings on expenses including energy, space and management overheads. Virtualisation has IT to contribute our bit towards Hero Honda's green efforts. Another important benefit derived out of this initiative is that now the expected downtime of applications in case of any failure has come down drastically and this is an important step in our business continuity endeavours. Finally, we were able to continue within the same data centre till date. The success of the project built our confidence in virtualisation and this is the reason why we consider virtualisation to be an option whenever we plan for any new application or system. THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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CASE STUDY | CYBAGE SOFTWARE
LEAN & VIRTUAL
With a well-planned desktop virtualisation project, Cybage’s IT team led an initiative that boosted the use of the BPO firm’s desktops and cubicles manifold. By Jagat Singh
IN BRIEF COMPANY: Cybage Software ESTABLISHED: 1995 GROUP CHAIRMAN: Arun Nathani BUSINESS: Software Services
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e think virtualisation is to IT what digital money is to commerce. Its simulated computing environment that abstracts away from the physical hardware offers great flexibility in provisioning computing resources. To take advantage of cost arbitrage in an area where competition is only based on cost arbitrage, no organisation can ignore efficiency. IT enterprises worldwide agree upon the need to design a lean infrastructure, providing more for less. It is also time to look at infrastructure as an adaptive system to address upcoming challenges. Virtualisation is at the heart of building a lean infrastructure and therefore is almost unquestionably popular. Cybage has its own ExcelShoreTM system that helps us in providing better value-per-unit cost. This project is a component of the ExcelShoreTM.
What? The project was to optimise infrastructure or have a lean-infrastructure. Usually, this lean infrastructure is aimed towards server farm and that’s there in place for many organisations in some or other form, including Cybage. However, here this virtualisation application was to use server
machine requirements and space (and related utilities and facilities requirements), but there is fair amount of savings through by-products such as simplified provisioning of resources and reducing downtime.
Why? We have a small, but diverse Customer/ Technical Support and Back Office Processing group of about 250 people. The group works 365 x 24 x 7 but not every customer needs that schedule. There are customers who need support only during weekends but 24 x 2. There are customers who need support during all days but only 16 hours (16 x 5) and so on. Considering the diversity of schedule, it’s not easy to optimise use of infrastructure. Ideally, optimisation in Customer/Technical Support or BPO is done by sharing the same machine and cubical by different agents during different shifts. In Cybage’s case, this is difficult due to various disparate shifts and small team sizes. The need was to optimise space and machine usages while keeping one machine per cubical at the most for different shift users.
How? We started optimisation efforts first without virtualisation and soon we realised
“In the hyper-competitive IT sector, we need to make a calculated decision before adopting new technology.” —Jagat Singh
PHOTO BY MILIND WADEKAR
CTO, Cybage Software
based computing or virtual desktop to build a lean client/desktop infrastructure to reduce cost by optimising desktop setup. The remote desktops mirror the applications, programs, and data on their respective virtualised desktops on the central server. Thus computational needs of various users can be accomplished using a thin client comprising a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Direct saving comes from reduced
we cannot optimise it much due to very different schedule requirements and small team sizes. For almost 250 people, we could save only a total of 6 cubicles which was not much. This started on the request of our COO, and the amount of time that we spent and result that we got forced us to think beyond usual the workflow/roster initiatives.
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Beginning Sometimes, a dead-end presents a better path, and this is so very true in this project. I remember, when our COO said, “This is a technology problem and you guys solve it. We are not operating with desired efficiency of three shifts per cubical and we need to achieve that.” That was the beginning for us to find a solution which works in given situation and not necessarily in an ideal situation of 365 x 24 x 7. Ideas started flowing in and included running a Citrix-based environment to a file-server-based approach to a traditional Novell-based setup of client-server to laptop versus desktop – all had some or the other issue and were not resulting in the desired output.
Breakthrough Cybage was building its expertise around Cloud computing at the same time. Closely knit emerging technologies team at Cybage helps in exposing and validating thought process across project teams. This was the time when quick provisioning and mobility, functionality sharing, central hardware and software management, green computing advantages of virtualisation led our project to desktop virtualisation. Quick provisioning and mobility: Virtualisation is most suited to our case where we have employees working in shifts and we don’t want to bind them to a particular cubical. Operational optimisation of the existing hardware and provisioning of computing resources can be easily achieved through virtualisation. The remoteness of the data centre ensures that data security is not compromised. Functionality sharing: The disproportionate use of thick clients in that the functionality of the thick client is not fully exploited can be overcome. The user hardware requirements can be provided on need-basis using software. Along with hardware, software licensing costs are also significantly reduced. Central hardware and software management: A looming infrastructure is definitely an overhead for organisations. Virtualisation can automate the process of managing the hardware and software requirements centrally. Green computing: Normally, a thin cliTHE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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ent uses only approximately 20 per cent of the processing power of the CPU – this increases power consumption. With desktop virtualisation, the processing power of the CPU is effectively utilised as all the processing is done at the server end. Thus overall power required for running and cooling the hardware can be minimised, also reducing the carbon footprint. This was not the main success criteria for the current project, but it has now become a full-blown initiative.
Constraints In the hyper-competitive IT sector, a business enterprise needs to make a calculated decision before adopting a new technology. It is really unfortunate when a company pumps huge investments into procuring a technology that then fails to deliver sustained business value. The two key concerns that need to be kept at the top for any optimisation projects are utilisation of the existing setup and ease of deployment and use. We looked at many virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions but we realised they mainly focused on server side technolo-
gies and used either a thin client or a thick client per user to connect to the data centre. A thin client is a feasible option for a startup organisation, but for a large organisation that has already invested in procuring hardware it is impractical. A thick client per user is a waste of resources when you want to optimise machine usages. We adopted a very unique approach by which we convert single thick client into multiple thin clients by sharing its hardware among multiple users. Each user in Cybage VDI solution has only a monitor, keyboard and mouse. And, there is single CPU shared among N users. The CPU or the server hosts discrete user sessions and allows users to access their virtualised desktops on the data centre. The deployment of our VDI solution does not involve any kernel level changes on the client side. It seamlessly fits into the existing infrastructure without adding to any maintenance overheads. This project was not a volume project. It was a high-complexity project coupled with practicality to extract the best cost benefit.
On the technical side, it was led by one of our two senior-most architects to ensure the solution was technically the best possible one given the constraints.
Achievements and the Future The project was successfully completed, and we have started realising its benefit in term of cost. The direct saving here is the optimum usage of machines and cubicles (with related utilities and facilities), which translates to approximately 8-10 percent of revenue for given number of cubicles. There is no Capex saved in our case as there is a buffer infrastructure created for overall growth. However, if we look at the next three years, it does reduce buffer infrastructure requirement. Being a private company with a very active management, Cybage is able to focus on long-term issues and that does help in executing projects which help in the long run. VDI was even easier to get buy-in for, as this had a visible and quick benefit.
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How to Survive Constant Change. Pg 46 Staying Ahead of the CIO Career Curve. Pg 48
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Does Outsourcing Destroy IT Innovation? Outsource the work but try and keep the leadership in-house. BY SUSAN CRAMM
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ndy Grove penned a fascinating commentary about the impact of outsourcing on American job creation, and the subsequent ability to innovate in the sectors that have been outsourced. He challenges the belief that as long as knowledge work stays in the United States, it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. Grove believes that "not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is important for technological evolution." Grove makes a good argument that, over time, companies lose the ability to innovate in the sectors they outsource. Does this argument apply at a lower level to IT outsourcing? Consider whether or not this statement has merit: With extensive outsourcing, over time, companies lose the ability to innovate IT. Successful outsourcing requires strong internal leadership. Question is, how can an organisation attract, develop and retain IT-smart leaders in an environment where many of the developmental assignments are outsourced? In the case study outlined in my last blog, the organisation needed leaders with expertise if they had any hope of realising:
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1.The project was buried under too many layers of management. 2.Even though there were multiple managers involved, the project lacked the level of management expertise and clear delineation of accountabilities and authorities. 3.The process for defining requirements consisted of too much paper and not enough hands-on prototyping. 4.The project team did not have any practical way to manage scope given that success factors were not defined. 5.The recommended technology approaches were too risky. 6.In spite of strong senior level commitment, the level of front line organisational churn and user dissatisfaction necessitated cancelling and restarting the project. Relying solely on external service providers for this expertise isn't the answer. Even if our case study vendor knew everything listed above (and, believe me, they did not), vendors often don't know how to be heard and are conflicted about the messages they should send in light of the fact that these messages could negatively impact their relationships and, potentially, their revenue. Some researchers are questioning the value of broad-based outsourcing. Research on IT management practices within the banking industry found that top-performing companies outsource less, and those that outsource IT on a wholesale basis "struggle to use IT to drive value and have limited strategic flexibility as the business context evolves and hardware prices plummet." What do you think? Is it possible that large scale outsourcing not only limits strategic flexibility but also the capability to innovate with IT and therefore use IT as a strategic asset?
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When internal leaders outsourced the work, they made the mistake of outsourcing the leadership of the work too. This common outsourcing fallacy has led to believe that there's little need for senior leadership expertise within IT. They hire a brand name consulting company to make it happen. The project seems to be humming along when it hits a wall, in what they thought were its final two months. It turns out that the users hate the software and for the next eight months, the project devolves into senior leaders "encouraging" the users to accept the software through education and some minor modifications. The project is eventually delivered but not without a significant amount of organisational angst — it exists today and will continue for the foreseeable future. The software is late and not accepted by its users. The search for the guilty party settles on the vendor. Everyone agrees they are at fault and resolves to pick a better one next time. Clarify the scope of work and relative responsibilities, they chant. Hold them accountable.
Lessons learned? Case closed?
Hardly. This is an all-too-typical case of the difficulties inherent in outsourcing. Outsourcers have specialised expertise, but they don't have perfect expertise. After all, they are hiring from the same pool Outsource the Work, Not that you do. the Leadership INCREASE IN When outsourcing, you can't Think outsourcing eases leaderOUTSOURCING manage through the contract, ship burdens? Think again. A company decides to impleSPEND IN Q1 2010 you have to manage through the people. Delegating to a vendor ment some packaged software to COMPARED TO is no different, on a day-by-day streamline their financing operaQ4 2009 basis, than delegating internally. tions. They decide to outsource You have to stay close in the the work. The company does beginning to ensure that objeca great job working through a tives and success measurements are well disciplined process to define requirements, understood, the approach makes sense, solicit bids, evaluate vendors, finalise the accountabilities and roles are clarified and scope of work, and negotiate the contract.
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the team jells. Then you have to stay close enough throughout the project to see what others aren't seeing, catalyse the right conversations, and ensure that the right midcourse corrections occur. In the project above, internal leadership believed that their work was done when the vendor walked in the door. They assumed that the vendor knew what they didn't know — about how the business and IT operated, the legacy systems, the packaged software, and the new technology platforms. And they were completely dumbfounded when the users revolted against the software. When internal leaders outsourced the work, they made the mistake of outsourcing the leadership of the work as well. This is a common outsourcing fallacy, but a crucial one to recognise, because it has led many to believe that there's little need for senior leadership expertise within IT. That is, since IT is outsourced, leadership can be, too. While it's true that IT organisations that operate with an extensive network of outsourcing relationships have fewer employees, those that remain have to be much more sophisticated in their ability to exert indirect — versus direct — influence. Is your internal leadership sophisticated enough to make outsourcing work for you rather than against you?
—This article was originally published on HBR. org and is reprinted with the prior permission from HBR Blog. For more articles you can log on to www.blogs.hbr.org
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How to Survive Constant Change
The team should be a part of change, it should not be something that is happening to them.
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BY ABBIE LUNDBERG
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bout five years, ago, when I was still editor in chief at CIO, we began a major transformation from a printcentric media company to online. During that time, every day brought new challenges, frustrations, discoveries, joy and despair. I think many of us thought we’d power our way through all that turmoil and, eventually, things would get back to “normal.” After a couple of years, it began to dawn on us that if there was ever to be a new normal, it was well over the horizon, and in fact, we’d better learn to live in a state of change.
Change is a process I’ve been interested in the topic of change since I started working with CIOs over 20 years ago. Information technology is a serious catalyst of change. In the course of my research – and through my own experiences, I’ve come to believe that change in itself is neither a negative nor a positive, but it is a force – a force to be understood, reckoned with and, to some extent, managed.
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We published a great article by Chris Koch on the neuroscience of change back in 2006. It explained: Change hurts. Not the boo-hoo, woe-is-me kind of hurt that executives tend to dismiss as an affliction of the weak and sentimental, but actual physical and psychological discomfort. And the brain pictures prove it. Change lights up an area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is like RAM memory in a PC. The prefrontal cortex is fast and agile, able to hold multiple threads of logic at once to enable quick calculations. But like RAM, the prefrontal cortex’s capacity is finite—it can deal comfortably with only a handful of concepts before bumping up against limits. That bump generates a palpable sense of discomfort and produces fatigue and even anger…. The prefrontal cortex crashes easily because it burns lots of fuel of the high-octane variety: glucose, or blood sugar, which is metabolically expensive for the body to produce. Given the high energy cost of running the prefrontal cortex, the brain prefers to run off its hard drive, known as the basal ganglia, which has a much larger storage capacity and sips, not gulps, fuel. This is the part of the brain that stores the hardwired memories and habits that dominate our daily lives. “Most of the time the basal ganglia are more or less running the show,” says Jeffrey M. Schwartz, research psychiatrist at the School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. “It controls habit-based behavior that we don’t have to think about doing.” Like, for instance, many aspects of our jobs. This explains why even when people buy in to change intellectually, they often fall back on the old way of doing things. So how does change happen? First, it’s important to really understand that change is a three-stage process, not a flip of the switch.
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William Bridges, author of Managing Transitions, describes the three stages as ending or letting go; the neutral zone; and the new beginning. This of course is a variation on the classic three-stage model of change –unfreeze, change/learn and refreeze – developed by Kurt Lewin, one of the pioneers of organizational psychology, and adopted by many practitioners and consultants in organizational development. The first stage involves overcoming inertia, defense mechanisms, existing biases and ingrained behaviors. As William Bridges writes, “every new beginning starts with an ending.” The second stage is where the change occurs. The old is gone, but we don’t yet have a clear picture of what the new reality will be. This is a time of both great potential and innovation – and of uncertainty and trepidation. Of all three stages, this one is where things most often go awry. The third stage is about locking down the new behaviors, norms and beliefs. Change requires that people feel at least two seemingly conflicting emotions at once: what Edgar Schein calls survival anxiety – or fear that staying the same is dangerous – along with a sense of psychological safety that comes from seeing that it’s possible to solve a problem and learn something new without a loss of identity or integrity. For people to change, survival anxiety must outweigh what Schein, an expert on organizational culture and change, calls learning anxiety. In fact, a culture of change is a learning culture. Jack Welch has said, “An organization’s ability to learn, and to translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” So what exactly is a learning culture? First of all, the organization’s assumptions, values and beliefs must support adaptation, learning and empowerment. And, pay attention, all you perfectionist managers: It’s more important to be committed to the process of solving the problem than to any particular solution. These days, with waves of change following one upon another, a learning culture may be not only a competitive advantage – it may be a condition of survival. Of course, to Welch’s second point, learning in and of itself is not enough if you don’t quickly translate what is learned into action.
Four Keys to Successful Change
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ing leadership author. People have to feel a sense of threat, crisis or dissatisfaction before Ever try to get someone to they have enough motivation change the way they do someto start the process of unlearnthing that they’ve been doing FEEL THAT THEY ing and relearning, according the same way for years? Ever try HAVE BEEN FULLY to Edgar Schein, an MIT Sloan to break one of your own habprofessor and expert in organiits? It’s not easy. Not because SUCCESSFUL IN zational culture. people are intentionally conIMPLEMENTING However, you have to be caretrary or obstinate, but because CHANGE ful with how you use burning big parts of our brains operate platforms, warns Kotter. If on autopilot, in deep grooves that’s all you do, you can create of habit, and establishing new a panic that stops new action. Fear makes pathways is hard. people focus on self-preservation instead This can be a serious problem for indiof organizational transformation. The way viduals or managers who find themselves in around this, says Schein, is to make sure the midst of major change efforts. that while people feel a sense of threat in There are four things you can do to help the old, they also feel a sense of psychologimake change happen: cal safety about learning the new. Sell the problem, not the solution. People aren’t in the market for solutions to problems they don’t see or understand, Focus attention. writes William Bridges, author of ManagOnce you create the impetus for people ing Transitions. For example, prehistoric to move away from the old, you have to humans were probably more inclined to provide them with a clear vision of the new give up their hunter-gatherer ways to grow alternative. Imagine the panic among the crops once they really understood that the cavemen and women once they understood wooly mammoths were dying out. that their prey was disappearing from the To really sell change, you have to touch land and before they realized they could people’s emotions. “Motivation is not a domestic certain plants and animals to genthinking word; it’s a feeling word,” says erate their own source of food. John Kotter, Harvard professor and best-sellFocus is essential because the working memory part of our brains can only hold a few concepts in mind at one time. The worst thing you can do in a change effort is overwhelm people with lots of extraneous information and detail. (For a great talk on this topic, check out David Rock speaking at Google on YouTube.) It’s important to distinguish between the overall mission of the group and its specific objectives. As long as you can show people that the new objectives still support the mission or core purpose of the group, it will be easier for them to switch. Early man’s mission was to eat to survive, not to hunt and kill mammoths.
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It’s important to really understand that change is a three-stage process, not a flip of the switch. William Bridges describes the three stages as ending or letting go; the neutral zone; and the new beginning.
Engage everyone in the change. Everyone should have a role to play in the change – otherwise it will be something that’s being done to them. People have to be able to see themselves in the new future, and that will be easier if they play a part in shaping it. The prospect of change causes uncertainty THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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and anxiety in people. That anxiety is overcome when people have a personal insight. People have an insight by paying attention and reaching their own conclusions. And such insight is solidified when people voice their ideas. In fact, brain research shows that paying attention, having an insight and voicing ideas create a lot more activity and connections in the brain than reading about or hearing someone else voice a new idea. What’s more, insight makes people feel better. Just as uncertainty causes anxiety, reaching a personal insight causes real pleasure. This reinforces the learning. Craft a message that’s simple and strong. Three keys to communicate change: 1.When formulating your message, choose your words carefully. Words matter, and
many a change effort has been derailed by a careless remark by a company leader. 2.Images are better than words to create an emotional connection, so show, don’t tell, by telling stories that paint a picture or using actual physical evidence or demonstrations to emphasize your point. 3.Effective communication requires repetition. There is so much that can get in the way of human communication. It’s rarely sufficient to tell something once and expect the message to get through. Don’t stop at the memo; use blogs, posters, town hall meetings, one on ones…. and then ask questions and listen to make sure your message is getting through in the way you intend. Most people don’t resist change intentionally; resistance to change is part of our
DNA. So if you want to change people’s behavior, remember these four things: Sell the problem, not the solution – you’ve got to help people get unstuck from where they are. Focus people’s attention – be very clear about the new priorities. Engage everyone in the process of solving the problem – this is much more important than any particular solution. Finally, keep your message simple, strengthen it by painting a picture that captures people’s imaginations, and broadcast it far and wide. —Abbie Lundberg is former Editor-in-chief of CIO US. This article was originally published on www. lundbergmedia.com and is reprinted with prior permission.
Staying Ahead of the CIO Career Curve Yes the CIO role is changing but you must not let go of your core technology strengths. BY PAM BAKER
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espite the changing role of the CIO, one thing remains the same: the CIO is expected to be the king (or queen) of tech knowledge. It just will not do to be ignorant about a new technology the millennial are bringing to work, or slow to address the perennial "adopt or not to adopt" question in the C-Suite. Being able to champion one tech over another and achieve measurable, desirable results is a direct route to promotion. It pays to stay ahead of the curve, but how, can you successfully predict what is coming next in the everchanging fast-paced world of technology? One of the surest ways to detect what technologies are coming next is to go directly to the R&D hubs. Regular visits to technology transfer
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offices at universities, labs and government offices will give you an early heads-up. Of course, those visits can often be virtual rather than physical as long as you know where to look. You might want to begin by finding the technology transfer office at leading universities and simply asking what's new there. But some professionals go beyond this simple inquiry. For instance, Denise Beeson, a small business consultant and SBA loan advisor and an adjunct instructor in the Small Business Management and Marketing Departments at Santa Rosa Junior College, offers these sources as excellent predictors: 1. Federal labs are a good place to look for new technology developments since they receive the most R&D funding by the government. Try using the search engine at www.federallabs.org to see what's out there.
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Some of our most cutting edge IT efforts can be found incubating at the centers. I'd like to see us do a better job of making sure those best projects percolate to the top. 2. Use the search engine at www.uspto.gov to see what technologies have recently been patented and what prior art has been referenced. 3. Conduct a technical literature search through your industry professional association or your local technical library. 4. Check out the PDMA, a new product development and management association that seems to have a pulse on what's happening. 5. Review the technology "matching" websites like www.yet2.com. "It takes some time to investigate all the above" said Beeson, but the leadership and competitive advantage such early information brings is well worth the exercise. However, a wily-nilly foray into the interesting world of R&D can also result in confusion or distraction. To avoid this problem, it is important to predetermine which lines of technologies are likely to impact your organisation and which are merely interesting to you personally. "I do my best to keep up with NASA's emerging technologies, of which there are obviously many," said Linda Cureton, NASA's CIO. "But I am more focused on keeping my fingers on the pulse of IT-specific technology." Cureton "reads a lot" to keep up with the latest trends and news. She also gets information from her staff, including the many CIOs at the NASA Centers. "Some of our most cutting edge IT efforts can be found incubating at the centers. Under my watch, I'd like to see us do a better job of making sure those best projects and practices percolate to the top and get shared across the Agency." Indeed, pushing technology throughout your organisation is as much a leadership requirement as staying abreast of developments. And, sometimes the technology you most need to push comes from within. "There are heroes at our centers whose IT innovations need to be tapped across the agency," said Cureton. "We have our CIOs and many staff showcasing their efforts to spread knowledge across our IT organisation."
Topping his list are "Popular Today" site aggregators such as http://popurls.com . "I read it every day, especially the Lifehacker and DZone sections," he said. "I'm not going to admit to clicking anything about lolcats." A trip to a brick and mortar bookstore also ranks high on his to-do list. "Once a month, I'll peruse the book and magazine rack at Borders and read up on cool, interesting tech for five to six hours over a coffee & lunch." It is important not to get myopic with Face-to-face meet-ups are a necessity internal technologies and remember to look too. "I attend about five to six meet-ups up and out, too. While Cureton's meetings per month about topics that interest me and summits include internal technology or my clients ... nothing like meeting pros showcases, "perspectives from public- and who can talk with you about their personal private-sector IT leaders such as President experiences with technology." Obama appointee Vivek Kundra, the U.S.'s Social media also provides a daily dose CIO, and Google's Vint Cerf" are also reguof what's new. "Twitter Lists especially are lar parts of the program. very useful. If I find a new technology or It is also important to recognise that IT isn't company doing something cool, I check a solo gig anymore. "Leaders today who are to see where they are listed and browse all facing extremely difficult problems with comtheir competitors." plex solutions need more than Search engines such as Google their individual heroics to prevail," can also provide quick clues. "If I said Cureton. "I stay up at night find two to three players in a given figuring out how to best tap into area, I just punch their names into a high-performing team of senior Google and see who else is in the THINK THAT leaders who have a group focus, space. Sometimes, I find an even ORGANISATIONAL shared direction, and who know better technology or company." DEPENDENCE ON how to harness their collective Real world friends are also strength to solve their most difinvaluable sources. "I foster IT WILL INCREASE ficult problems." long-lasting relationships with FURTHER While many heads are certainly folks who are experts in areas better than one, any group can be I'm not. When something caught in circular thinking just as easily as any crosses my radar that looks to be in their individual can. The search for "what's next" expertise, I'll often just IM or call them to must continue on a daily basis. ask their opinion about it." So where else can you look for clues? Perhaps the most interesting finding in "Identify the venture capitalists that fund this poll of where to look to find what tech the technology you need to hear about, or trends are coming next was the total e.g., B2B or B2C, and follow their blogs to absence of any mention to follow the techsee who they're funding," suggested Phil nology giants. Indeed, there were several Michaelson creator of KartMe, a Web organstrident warnings to steer clear of tech iser that quickly became an Apple staff pick. leaders in any given space. There are also a number of places a little "My No.1 recommendation would be to not closer to home such as lunches with peers listen to where the major technology compafrom other companies where you can look nies are trying to take things," warned Babak for signs of change in the tech landscape. Pasdar, president and CEO of Bat Blue, the Rich Morrow, principal engineer at quiofficial WiFi provider for ESPN's X Games. cloud, a tech firm that consults SMBs on how "The big organisations are where good ideas to securely architect, deploy, and maintain go to die." apps in the cloud, said he likes a good mix in learning avenues to help him stay abreast of — This article was first published on www. tech changes. cioupdate.com. It is reprinted here with the prior Here's how he does it: permission from CIO Update.
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‘LESS IS
MORE’ Modern networking and virtualisation technologies are an opportunity to implement the philosophy that 'less is better,' ensuring a closer-knit functioning of networks and data centres, says Greg Bunt, an Enterprise Architect at Juniper Networks, in an interview with Nipun Sahrawat.
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GREG BUNT
DOSSIER COMPANY: Juniper Networks ESTABLISHED: 1996 CEO: Kevin Johnson REVENUE: USD 3.57 billion PROFILE: The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with 7,000 dedicated employees and offices in nearly 50 countries.
What’s the state of networks and data centres today? The modern data centre is really just an oversized server room – an oversized workgroup computing facility. If you look at when we first built a network, it was because we had a set of computers and then we had a server and then more PCs hence more ports and then it grew out. When we did that, we built this three-tiered architecture, with mostly expensive equipment. The modern data centre is just a very large version of it. Now one of the things that's more unique to India is the outsourcing industry. When you provide outsourcing, you use low cost inputs, so if you start bringing complex technology into a data centre you've got a problem. If I were managing three boxes it was easy, one breaks, a red light blinks, I'll change it, but if we're using virtualisation, educated and trained management is required because you don't know where the malfunctioning component is – Just that it's out there, so automation is an important area of focus for us. The challenge is, 'How can we make it such that inputs are low from the costing perspective, at the same time you get benefits of these newer and more exciting technologies.' Otherwise what happens if you bring complexity to an outsourcer such as Wipro, for instance, is that their costs will go up. They become less economical and customers will outsource elsewhere. For us it's a balance. We're not going to wake up one day and everything will be virtualised or have less layers in a data centre, but we have to start. Customers are not only driving costs out of the server part of data centres, but the system as a whole and automation helps, reducing the number of layers helps, and that is really Juniper's value proposition.' How is data centre architecture evolving in the context of virtualisation?
Data centres are designed for 'North-South' traffic, whereas virtualisation starts breaking them down and increases both speed and 'EastWest' traffic. Juniper's view is that less is better. Maybe we need less layers. If at the access layer if A has to talk to B, rather than going up, how do I join these devices together. With very high-speed, say almost 128 Gbps, when the devices want to talk, I have a much faster part. On the contrary, economics means I don't have to build a whole layer for that effect. I cut the middle layer out, I improve performance and that is a stepping stone to virtualisation. That is largely the premise of the 3-2-1 architecture at Juniper. You want to reduce layers. You ultimately want a singular device but due to mid-level redundancy, you may have two of the level one layer as opposed one of the level two layer. What new routers and switching technologies are being used in modern networks? The virtual chassis VCF, consists of fabric, which is essentially a highspeed path. It enables us to join up to ten devices together, which means I can connect about 480 high-speed wired Gigabit ports – good enough for ninety percent of India, Asia and global level customers. That virtual fabric helps you increase speed. Say you have three applications that if running on the same
"Virtual Chassis allows the applications to communicate with each other as if they are in the same machine"
NO HOLDS BARRE D
machine in a virtual environment may share compute resources, but can communicate with each other. When they are in different regions they have separate CPUs, which is a benefit but now you need the applications to talk to each other over the network. That is why Virtual Chassis is so important. If I have a highspeed connection, this allows the applications to communicate with each other as if if they are in the same machine. Also you then need to be able to bring in other services. For example we have JunoSpace, an application that allows a network to respond in accordance to a change in a server: security has to move, the firewall has to move, quality of service has to move, so this is the intermediary platform. Say VMware talks to JunoSpace, which talks to the application. In a public-cloud-private-cloud set up, this talks to your developer in the private cloud. This may also talk to a public cloud resource posted by say Wipro or IBM. What knowledge should network administrators have to sail through the age of cloud computing? Many new administrators feel they are ceding control to servers. They're not. They don't know about networking just as a network administrator may not know enough about servers. There is a very distinct role here for both teams to play and a system that orchestrates both network and server is important. That's why we're talking about JunoSpace as a platform. The end customer never calls the system administrator saying that a switch is broken or the server person and say a certain CPU is running slow. They ring up and say that the application is slow. Network and server administrators must understand that this is not a land grab for roles and jobs. This is an opportunity for a networking person to learn more about virtualisation.
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T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE
IT POLICIES
4
POINTS
82%: IT pros say that their organisation has an IT policy 42%: Non-IT employees say that they have an IT policy 64%: Of the ones that have an IT policy think that it needs improvement 14%: VIOLATED IT policy to be more productive
HOW TO MAKE GOOD
IT POLICIES
Results of a new global study sponsored by Cisco reveal what bad IT policies can result for organisations.
BY SEAN MICHAEL KERNER
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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
IT POLICIES
Does your organisation have an IT policy? According to a new global study sponsored by Cisco, 82 percent of IT professionals said that their organisations have an IT policy. When Cisco asked the same question to non-IT employees, only 47 percent of respondents said that their organisations had an IT policy. To add further insult to injury, for those employees who have an IT policy, 64 percent said that their IT policies are in need of improvements.
"IT departments can really make a difference and can open a door for a better relationship between employees and their IT departments," Inbar Lasser-Raab, Borderless Networks marketing director at Cisco, tells InternetNews.com. "IT departments have a lot of opportunities to be considered partners in the business. We already have that inside of Cisco, as we view our IT department as representing our customers." Among those respondents that admitted to violating IT policies, 41 percent said they did so in order to be more productive and to get their jobs done. The reason why IT policies were broken by 20 percent of respondent was because they didn't think that their IT department would enforce the policy. In terms of applications that are being restricted by IT policies, 41 percent said that their organisations restricted the use of Facebook, while 35 percent of organisations were restricting Twitter.
Cisco's Internal Efforts According to Lasser-Raab, the Cisco internal IT policy is very open and flexible. "The policy is to recommend to employees to use good judgment in the way they use company resources," Lasser-Raab said. "What they do is they guide us and we are supposed to go through the Cisco code of business conduct and we all need to sign that we've read it every year." Lasser-Raab explained that the code of conduct provides direction to Cisco employees on how they are supposed to protect
equipment. She added that at Cisco, security capabilities are also automated and updated for employees. Automation only goes so far, which is why Cisco employees also receive additional guidance and training. "They give us a lot of freedom but they also make sure that we go through training so we can be smart users and they can trust our judgment," Lasser-Raab said. Lasser-Raab added that what the global survey shows is that IT departments need to adopt policies that are flexible and well communicated. As an example of such flexibility, Cisco IT now enables Mac users. What the Cisco IT department did is let employees use their Macs, but they did not provide direct support to them. "So immediately many Cisco employees bought Macs and they established their own support community on the Cisco intranet," Lasser-Raab said. "The feedback today is that if you own a Mac, you'll get much faster support, with an answer from the community within two minutes." Microsoft Windows users on the hand
“IT departments have a lot of opportunities to be considered partners in the business.” Lasser-Raab, Borderless Networks, Cisco
T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE
have a longer wait for Cisco's IT department to call employees back on support issues. Lasser-Raab sees the self-support by Mac users as a win for Cisco employees and not as a loss for Cisco IT's speed of service to Windows users. "I think what it tells you is that when people are passionate about the equipment they like to use, they're just more connected," Lasser-Raab. She added that Cisco IT is busy setting up the network and performing other tasks, which is why they may not necessarily be as fast as the Mac self-support users group. "When there is passion, people will be flexible and will create things that are very efficient and that is the point," Lasser-Raab said. "The point is not that Cisco IT isn't great, the majority of Cisco employees are using company supported PCs." In creating a flexible IT policy the goal is to help enable employees to do their jobs without restricting access to applications. "The change we went through is an example for others," Lasser-Raab said. "If you open up IT policy and make it flexible for employees, while providing training and the tools to protect themselves, they'll be empowered." She added that with a flexible policy that employees see as being reasonable, they're more likely to support it. The company can enable employees with new devices and applications while still having rules around information and device security and usage. "I think that employees will be more and open and they'll be empowered and obligated as you have given them the keys and the responsibility to protect equipment and information," Lasser-Raab said. That said, not all vertical and jobs are the same when it comes to how IT policies should be made and applied. "You can trust people that are educated and capable enough to protect themselves and their information," Lasser-Raab said. "It has to be dependant on the type of job and company, but definitely there is room to empower more." — Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet. com, the network for technology professionals. This article is published with prior permission from www.cioupdate.com
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Author: Chris Salewicz
HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW
“Marley personified the idea of Rastafari”
Bob Marley The untold story The colourful
prophet of black selfdetermination. BY ANOOP CHUGH
BOB MARLEY wasn’t your regular Jamaican-born, dread-locked, cannabis-smoking, reggae musician, guitarist and a Rastafarian, a way of life that most Jamacian youth were falling for in the 60s. In his short span of life (36 years) he rose above all precedents one would associate with a free soul musician like him. Despite nurturing 11 children from nine different women, he is idolised, followed, adored and worshiped not just by Jamaicans, blacks but by anyone who has heard his soulful music. Chris Salewicz is the man who had the opportunity to observe the man in great detail during his highs (late 60s) and his lows (late 70s). Probably, that’s why his biography on the man is the most evocative of all the books written on the legend. After all it’s not easy to intrude into the day-to-day life of an effervescent and convoluted personality like Marley’s – his relation with his mother, women in his life (not necessarily his wife), his struggle for racial
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identity (white father, black mother), his early days with ‘The Wailers’ and later years with ‘Bob Marley and the Wailers’, his transition to Rastafari style of living, his political bend, tryst with cancer and concluding rise to the immortality. The author had a few interactions with Bob, backed up by the firsthand account of Marely’s relatives and friends resulting in insightful, intriguing memoirs on a man whom we could never fully understand. For me the most refreshing part about the book is not merely the life story of Bob Marley but also how his life and music influenced Jamaican culture, the island’s politics, its youth, Rastafari moment, use of cannabis and of course, impact on the world music. It took the author over forty years of research to unravel the assorted complexities of the man. Apart from music one of the major contributions, if one may say so, Marley had made was to unite the
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ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Anoop Chugh is the assistant editor of CFO India Magazine. You can reach him at anoop. chugh@9dot9.in.
Jamaicans in particular and blacks in general through the way of life called Rastafarianism. The man, Bob Marley, personified the idea of Rastafari. There have been citations in the book claiming without Bob world would have never learnt of the culture known as Jah Rastafari. Another picture that emerges out of the book portrays Marley as a peace-maker. Marley used his music and lyrics to bridge the gap between the two warring political groups in Jamaica only to get shot at prior to a peace-promotion event along with his wife, and manager Don Taylor at his house. Eventually, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled with a remark that tattooed on every Jamaicans heart forever, "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?" Post the book, I know the man the way a Jamaican does. —Anoop Chugh
HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE
In the Fast Lane RISHI KAPOOR
husbands can boast of having wives that are navigators of their lives as well as their hobbies. Rishi Kapoor is one of them. Apart from managing technology for one of the largest off-shore centres of Metlife, Kapoor is an ardent rally driver where his wife works as his navigator. He bagged the eigth position at Raid De Himalayas 2009 and was an official in the Raid De Himalayas 2010. Born in Kanpur, raised mostly in Aligarh, with his graduation in Ghaziabad Kapoor has spent most of his time in UP while growing up. But, after that he has travelled the globe on assignments. Except for Australia and New Zealand he has travelled to all parts of the world on work or leisure. Kapoor started his career with Macy’s India sourcing office. After working with Macy’s for a while he got a government job, in the Ministry of Surface Transport. His stint with the government lasted for a year where he created a network for them, giving VSat connectivity to their remote offices. But, he soon realised that it is not a place for him and moved back to the private sector to join Radico where he worked for two years. Here again he created a NOT MANY
CAR RALLYING: Kapoor is as serious about car rallying as he is about his work. He stood eighth in Raid De Himalayas in 2009. He participated in the rally on his customised Fiat Palio that year. Subsequently he took part in the rally as an official in 2010. This time he had a modified Mitsubishi Outlander for company. Kapoor goes for these rallies with his navigatior wife.
GADGETS: “My first gadget was a casio digial piano that my father bought me when I was a kid. This was the time when nobody had even heard of Casio in India. Since then my gadgets have been a couple of years ahead of the norm. These days I have the Nintendo Wii with the latest accessories you can think of. I enjoy it with my wife and kids during free time,” says Kapoor.
nationwide network, implemented an ERP and changed the IT footprint in the organisation drastically. What followed was one of the most interesting journey in his career where he joined HCL to work on project for the International Committee of Red Cross. He travelled THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
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PHOTOS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL
Director-IT, Metlife GOSC
HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE
Snap Shot the most difficult parts of the world in his job; that included West Africa in the middle of internal conflicts. He was evacuated many times from Freetown, Sierra Leone. “In fact it was captured and telecast by BBC. That is when my wife saw me being evacuated. This is when the curtains were drawn and I was told to behave myself and come back to India.” Says Kapoor. He came back to India in the year 2000 to set up one of the earliest call centres in the country for HCL EServe, which is called HCL BPO now. He was one of the first employees for this group. Following which he joined Wipro BPO to set up many BPO sites for the company. He followed this up with a short stint at IBM Daksh which gave way to the current assignment at MetLife. In a career spanning more than 15 years, Kapoor thinks he has learnt over time that it is extremely important to sync technology with business. He has always been a techie at heart – be it his profession or his passions. As he says, during the course of his career he has understood that though a technology may be extremely appealing, but it is worth while only if it is applicable to the given business scenario. He also takes great pride in his people management skills which he has acquired over the years. “During my 15 year people management career, there has been only one attrition in my team and that too for the better. I treat my team as the extension of my family.” He says. —By Geetaj Channana
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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM
Movies Kapoor likes to stay at home and watch movies most of the time on a home theatre system that he has assembled himself. Only seldom does he venture out to watch movies. “The last movie that I saw in a movie theatre was Dabangg, that too because my wife wanted to see it”, says Kapoor. Music He likes all kinds of music and his preference keeps changing depending on the mood. He has a huge collection of gazals and other music which he loves to listen to on his home theatre or on the music system of his Mitsubishi Outlander. “My car came fitted with a different system altogether but I wanted the one that comes factory fitted in the US model. So I imported the system and installed it myself”, he says. Books “I have never had the patience to read books, so I only read the selected portions that interest me. The workshop that you had on reading in the CTO Forum Annual Conference in Dublin was especially helpful in instigating a value of reading and the tricks of reading fast which are very beneficial,” says Kapoor.
HIDDENTANGENT GEETAJ CHANNANA geetaj.channana@9dot9.in
THE AUTHOR IS Executive Editor, CTO Forum
What Does 3G Mean for you? In the different roles you play in your life. A SIMPLE search on Google would result in more than 140 million hits that try to explain 3G. A search for ice cream on the other hand gives only 92 million hits. People are probably more interested in faster internet access on the move, than having a good dessert after dinner. Technology means different things to different people at different times. The humble smart phone can help you clench business deals as well as help one save somebody’s life after a road accident. Though this device may remain the same after 3G is introduced, its uses in different parts of your life may change. This is what it will mean for when you are: The enterprise: Organisations will be able to use video more effectively for teleconferences, while reducing the need for travel for their employees. High bandwidth applications like WebEx could be accessed on the move. Telecommuting will be a reality and would help the organisation save costs exponentially. You would also be able to use video more aggressively in your marketing strategy. Home users: You may not need to buy or store music and videos ever again. Audio and video could be easily streamed anywhere you are without the need of storing anything on your
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phone or device. Think on-demand music and TV on the move. Also, you would be able to use devices like the iPad and other tablets that support 3G more efficiently, as they would be able to access the internet from wherever you are. Other awesome features include Video Calls, video SMS, less call drops and better voice quality on your phones. Teenagers: It means more bandwidth for social networking, more videos being shared, music being exchanged and faster multiplayer gaming on mobile phones and tablet devices. But, the parent may like it too as you will be able to check where your kids are when you make a video call. DINKs (Double Income No Kids): The outgoing young couples would be able to see each other whenever they call, the kisses will be on video and cheating on partners would become extremely difficult. It may be easier to choose the clubs and restaurants, as more and more websites would opt for video to utilise the new broadband revolution. Grandparents: You would be able to see the first steps of your grand children, while sitting thousands of kilometres away without the hassle of a PC.
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Though the smartphone may remain the same after 3G is introduced, its uses in different parts of your life may change drastically.
Young parents: Would be able to keep an eye on the little one using an IP camera at home connected to their phones. It would take a lot of tension out of ensuring the safety of children. Doctors: They can get their patient's details while driving to the hospital before an operation. The patients should also be able to send video and other large data to their doctors’ phone that will help the doctor diagnose and treat patients remotely. Not too far are devices that can send real-time vitals to the doctors on their mobile phones. Watch this interesting TED talk by Eric Topol, a leading cardiologist, on the wireless future of medicine. (http://www.ted.com/talks/ eric_topol_the_wireless_future_of_medicine.html) Teachers: Can send videos of the wrong doings of students directly to their parents. Writing in the school diary or sending an email is going to be so passé. It will be a video SMS now. Get ready to get one soon. Telemarketers: They are going to have a field day. Now, customers receive SMS advertising on the latest and greatest flat that one must buy; after 3G you may get a video of that flat. I hope there is regulation that forbids this.
VIEWPOINT STEVE DUPLESSIE | steve.duplessie@esg-global.com
Why Startups Die
PHOTO: PHOTOS.COM
Negative Inertia and the Anti-“Why?” Culture
EVER hear the expression ‘spending good money after bad’? It happens constantly in business. From the board of directors down to the line level manager, people stick with their “people” (and often non-people) decisions WAY too long–even when it is obvious that this path is doomed. Worse, by doing so they eventually are forced to choose between good and evil, and they almost always choose evil. The board will stick with the CEO who is driving the train off the bridge, and fire the VP of sales because they are the problem–regardless of the fact that no one could sell the company’s products because the market doesn’t want them. For example, how many startups can you think of that have replaced the founding CEO with a “professional,” only to flounder (for any reason, not just because the pro CEO is a total idiot)? Then, while the floundering becomes a sinkhole for optimism, the board continues to back the person and their strategy–while true talent walks out the door.
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Quality employees leave–usually with legitimate knowledge of both why failure is inevitable and how it might be avoided. Rarely does anyone above those people embrace those thoughts. Why? Because as business humans we back the decisions we’ve already made, irrespective of the fact that situational dynamics have obviously changed. Don’t get me wrong, a talented product manager might know the flaws in a product/market, but they probably don’t know how to run a company. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be heard. Too often, the powers that be in a company will NOT know the fatal flaws of their own products/markets–they are blissfully ignorant and more than happy to run headlong into the abyss because they believe in their cause so strongly. I would argue that success is predicated on challenging the assumptions/paths we’re on and refining the course as we go. The Board’s job is to ask “are we on the right overall mission?” every quarter. The CEO’s job
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Duplessie is the founder of and Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. Recognised worldwide as the leading independent authority on enterprise storage, Steve has also consistently been ranked as one of the most influential IT analysts. You can track Steve’s blog at http://www. thebiggertruth.com
is to ask “is the company taking the best course towards accomplishing that mission?” probably a bit more often. The department head’s job is to ask “is our group moving in the most intelligent direction in order to accomplish our component of the course our CEO has set?” and so on. It’s easy to lose yourself in your personal/group mission and lose the context of “why.” “Why?” is the most important question in all of business. It’s hard to pick your head up and question why we are doing what we are doing. People don’t do that naturally. It’s up to the CEO and board to ask those questions, and to create an environment that fosters a culture that asks those questions. It’s up to the CEO and board to be able to look at their own decisions–and make changes–instead of defending the inane decisions they previously made. By not fostering a “why” environment that promotes debate and discussion on shifting/altering our business plan based on current environmental realities, we will fail.