Earth Friendly CIOs

S P I N E

CTO FORUM

Technology for Growth and Governance

February | 21 | 2011 | 50 Volume 06 | Issue 13

IS PERCEPTION REALITY? | CLOUD IN ENTERPRISE FAR FROM REALITY | WHAT MAKES YOUR BUSINESS TICK?

I BELIEVE

SELF

AWARENESS FIRST PAGE 06

NEXT HORIZON

Earth Friendly CIOs Indian CIOs are going green. And this time, they are strongly backed by their top management. It is time enterprises added a new chapter of "going green" to their IT policy.

Volume 06 | Issue 13

A 9.9 Media Publication

PERVASIVE

CONNECTIVITY PAGE 39

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

OPENING THE IT

INNOVATION BOX

PAGE 14

AD

EDITORIAL RAHUL NEEL MANI | rahul.mani@9dot9.in

Do innovations die with people? Apple would continue to innovate with or without Steve Jobs

It is true that the people who have been able to come up with the innovations in many industries are maybe not the people that either are best skilled at, or, frankly, enjoy running large enterprises where they lose contact with the day-to-day workings of that innovative process.”

If you are a die-hard technology fan, you would recognise these words. Yes, this was Steve Jobs talking to ‘Newsweek’ in 1985 during his departure from Apple.

The company couldn’t survive

long without him and Jobs was recalled to lead Apple again in 1997. Since then, you, I and the entire world has seen what Apple has done to the world of tech gadgets.

Known as a fierce competitor and a savvy marketer, Jobs has become synonymous with innovation. I recall a CNBC Town Hall Chat in 2009 where Bill Gates was asked to comment on Steve Job’s role as CEO of Apple.

Besides mouthing the routine words of praise, Gates added,

EDITOR'S PICK 26 Earth Friendly CIOs

Indian CIOs are going green.

And this time they are backed by their top management. It is time enterprises added a green chapter to their IT policy.

“He, of all the leaders in the industry that I've worked with, has shown more inspiration and has saved the company.”

After regaining the leadership role in 1997, Jobs created an institution that not only attracts and fosters experimentation but also dares to challenge the status quo. Under his leadership, Apple, in the past one decade, has given the finest technology products to mankind, be it the iMac, iPod, iPhone or the iPad. Steve Jobs isn’t keeping well these days. If one were to believe the recently published pictures of Jobs in The National Enquirer – a US Tabloid, he doesn’t have much time left. According to rumor mills, the man who lived a mission to dominate the world of gadgets is fighting a terminal pancreatic cancer. A few media reports have even stated that he can barely survive for a couple more months.

It is a fact that Apple is a hub of innovation. But yet another fact is that if anything happens to Jobs (given his fragile state), Apple may go into deep slumber because the entire effort of innovation seems to be wrapped up in and around him.

Will innovation in Apple die with Steve Jobs?

I don’t think so. And here’s what gives strength to my belief: “If I’m a million miles away and people at Apple are still working to make the next great personal computer, then I will feel that my genes are still in there,” said Jobs in the same interview I cited above.

Join me in wishing Steve Jobs new life.

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FEBRUARY 11 C O V E R D E S I G E N B Y J AYA N K N A R AYA N A N

CONTE NTS

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26 COVER STORY

26 | Earth Friendly CIOs

COLUMNS

06 | I BELIEVE: FIRST, BE SELF AWARE Know who you are and it will show you the way forward. BY SURESH A SHANMUGAM

It is time enterprises added a new chapter of going green to their IT policy.

52 | VIEW POINT: THE VIRTUAL REVOLUTION IS UPON US IT has found religion, and its foundation is virtualisation.

BY STEVE DUPLESSIE

Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before Recycling

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FEATURES

46 | TECH FOR GOVERNANCE: SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK Balancing Risks and Rewards BY JOSE GRANADO AND CHIP TSANTES

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: Yashvendra Singh Resident Editor (West): Minu Sirsalewala Agarwal Senior Editor: Harichandan Arakali Assistant Editor: Varun Aggarwal DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Sr. Visualiser: PC Anoop Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR, Anil T, Joffy Jose Anoop Verma, NV Baiju, Vinod Shinde & Chander Dange Designers: Sristi Maurya, Suneesh K, Shigil N & Charu Dwivedi Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

14 A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

14 | Open Your Box of Innovation “If you

get your basics right, you get the license to innovate,” says David Awcock, Group Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank.

39

39 | NEXT HORIZONS: PERVASIVE CONNECTIVITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

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48 | NO HOLDS BARRED: THIRU VENGADAM, MD, IFS SOLUTIONS INDIA, on his plans for the company in India

REGULARS

01 | EDITORIAL NTERPRISE 08 | E ROUND-UP

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ADVISORY PANEL Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, CIO, Pidilite 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, CIO, Cairns Energy 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.

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THE AUTHOR IS an IT professional, with experience in operational management and IT services consultancy gained across multiple industries.

PHOTO BY JITEN GANDHI

I BELIEVE

SURESH A SHANMUGAM Head-Business IT Solutions, M&M Fin Services

First, Be Self Aware Know who you are and it will

show you the way forward

IF YOU try to link the rise in technology and business with the idea of 'Who am I?' you will get some real insights in where you are today, where you need to go as a CIO with certain responsibilities that come with job. If you achieve this alignment of the self with the needs of those that depend on you and leverage all the tools available to you,

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CURRENT CHALLENGE STRENGTHENING AND EXPANDING THE COMPANY'S RURAL REACH

such as the best emerging technologies, you'll get unprecedented growth.

First, address the issue of 'Who am I.' It will make you more self aware, tell you about your strengths and weaknesses and show you the way forward. Then, you'll be in a position to leverage all the technology that is out there and ensure that not only is your business growing but that in the process it benefits people way beyond the immediate organisation.

The idea of being more self aware extends from an individual to the entire organisation, and questions you ask of yourself are also the same or similar: 'what are my capabilities, what is my model, are there lacunae that need to be overcome, which tools are the best in my context to reach out to the most people, and even, if necessary, is there something fundamental about myself that I need to take a hard look at?'

At the individual level this boils down to accepting that as a CIO one has certain responsibilities that go much beyond simply ensuring the IT enterprise up and running – there is a responsibility to the larger community that we call society.

First, be self aware: Ask yourself, if it is really justified to say, 'as CIO, I know IT better than the users.' If you get the answer to this question right, you'll become what I term a 'successful IT human being.'

An example is what we did in trying to reach out to people in the villages. We combined our knowledge of who we were, with the financial needs of the people we were trying to serve – for example, a lowermiddle-class father of two daughters and husband to a housewife – and enabled the service by coming up with the specs for the correct technology interface. This nearly doubled the number of people we could do business with.

LETTERS S U P P LY C H A I N M A N AG E M E N T

By Varun Aggarwal and Yashvendra Singh CLAY MODELING BY PC ANOOP, PRASANTH TR SRISTI MAURYA & JOFFY JOSE PHOTOS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

The New Age

CTO FORUM 07 FEBRUARY 2011

CTOForum LinkedIn Group

Supply

Chain

n ideal situation for a CIO would be to deliver his company’s products to the targeted customer at the right time and price, and be left with zero inventory. This calls for an ideal supply chain, which in turn depends on several factors including a country’s infrastructure.

While CIOs in India can’t do much to improve the overall infrastructure in the country, some of them are trying to make their supply chains as efficient and futuristic as they can.

Escorts, for instance, is planning the next level of evolution in its suppply chain.

“Collaborative software is the way ahead for supply chains,” says Vipin Kumar, Manager and Head, IT, Escorts. “Manufacturers and distributors want more transparency and insight into each others’ operations so they have better understanding with respect to production, dispatch and inventory. The answer to this is deployment of collaborative tools.”

Over the next three years, Escorts plans to put in place a

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COVE R S TO RY

portal though which the vendor and distributors can collaborate.

At JK Tyres & Industries, “The future of supply chain management would be a combination of the conventional approach of automation (ERP) and the new approach of collaboration tools,” says SS Sharma, Chief General Manager, IT. “This integration of the traditional and modern approaches can be facilitated by hand-held devices to provide immediate access to information wherever you are,” says Sharma.

To sustain the customer base as well as profitability, the entire supply chain process at JK Tyres was recently integrated using SAP R/3 modules such as Sales and Distribution and New Dimension SAP modules such as Advance Planning and Optimization.

Daya Prakash, Head, IT at LG Electronics says, “RFID as a technology is evolving, and it won’t be late before we see large scale adoption in the years to come. We are already using RFID for tagging high-value items and barcoding the rest.”

“We’ll also be testing GPS tracking systems and mobility solutions to improve our SCM further,” he says.

With the global economic situation remaining fluid, cost pressures on enterprises continue. As supply chain is considered an overhead, streamlining it will directly add to a company’s bottom line.

Those CIOs who have transformed their supply chain into a demand-driven value network, capable of adapting to market trends, have improved their company’s revenues and brand equity. Others have no option but to follow suit.

THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

IMAGING BY ANIL T

Indian CIOs are utilising cutting-edge technologies for streamlining their supply chains.

Not that they have options.

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Join close to 700 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: www.linkedin.com/ groups?mostPopular=&gid=2580450

Some of the hot discussions on the group are:

WHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OF A GOOD CTO? WHAT ARE THE PREREQUISITES FOR A CTO ROLE ?

I see the CTO role as that of a technology leader bridging the gap between the commercial requirements of the enterprise and the technology support of those requirements. An effective CTO should be able to guide the efficient implementation of IT whilst also using it to shape the commercial strategy of the business.

The Cloud is all air and no substance Do you think cloud is going to die a quick death of SOA or is it going to make big headway into the enterprise? Is it old wine in a new bottle? What does it lack in making a convincing case?

Its real and all about today and tomorrow.

However, you have to bring it back to a realistic service that gives tangible benefits.

There are a great deal of 'cowboy' stories and not many who really understand it.

—Ronald Kunneman, Director at Digitra

Eng Lin Goh, CTO, SGI in a conversation with Geetaj Channana on the evolution of the company after its takeover

by Rackable, and their contribution to cloud computing and high-performance computing in the enterprise.

http://www. thectoforum.com/ content/hpcenterprise

OPINION

PARTNERS IN BUSINESS

CIO role from technology steward to business value creator

RICHARD WARD, Head of Technical, WIN Plc

“CIOs need to position themselves as 'Change and Innovation Officers'. This will help them fight undesirable perceptions within the business about IT and give them the leverage to become significant partners in business.”

To read the full story go to:

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CTOF Connect

NAVIN CHADHA, IT DIRECTOR, VODAFONE ESSAR LIMITED

http://www.thectoforum.com/content/ partners-business-1

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FEATURE INSIDE

Microsoft Releases WebMatrix Pg 11

Enterprise

ILLUSTRATION BY ANOOP VERMA

ROUND-UP

Open Source Finding Home in Enterprise Lower Cost of Ownership Continues to Be a Major Driver

A RECENT SURVEY by Gartner revealed that more than half of organisations surveyed have adopted open-source software (OSS) solutions as part of their IT strategy. Nearly one-third of respondents cited benefits of flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes as reasons for adopting OSS solutions.

Gartner conducted a primary research survey of 547 IT leaders in organisations in 11 countries from July 2010 through August 2010. The goal was to determine current and future OSS adoption and usage habits.

"Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as

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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

a significant reason for adopting an OSS solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently — if they can customise the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage," said Laurie Wurster, Research Director at Gartner.

Gartner's survey indicated that just over one in every five responding organisations (22 percent) was adopting OSS consistently in all departments of the company. However, a much-higher number of respondents (46 percent) used OSS in specific departments and projects.

DATA BRIEFING

$1.5 TRILLION WAS THE WORLDWIDE IT SPENDING IN 2010

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

THEY STEPHEN SAID IT ELOP Microsoft and Nokia recently created history by announcing a broad mobile phone partnership that joins two powerful but lagging companies into mutually reliant allies in the mobile phone market.

ILLUSTRATION BY SHIGIL K

“Microsoft is contributing to Nokia’s substantial monetary value. Some people interpret that to be in the millions or tens of millions.”

Bharti Goes for Smart Towers IBM to provide technology to make towers consume less energy BHARTI INFRATEL, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel and one of the world’s largest telecom passive infrastructure providers has signed an agreement with IBM to provide Intelligent Site Operations to more than 32,000 tower-sites spread across 11 telecom circles in India.

By combining sensors, data tracking and analytics, IBM’s Intelligent Site Operations offering provides the company real-time visibility and insight to centrally monitor and manage their large and distributed tower infrastructure along with centrally orchestrating and tracking operations.

The IBM Intelligent Site Operations collects data, on the state of each cell tower, such as energy consumption, fuel consumption and alarms. This data is fed to a monitoring system which analyses it and converts data into actionable intelligence in real-time so that staff can make better business decisions. The system receives more than 600,000 events a day which are reduced to less than 1-2 tickets per day per site by applying intelligence to determine which events require immediate attention.

Advanced business analytics software helps to identify opportunities for greater efficiency.

—Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia

QUICK BYTE MOBILE BROADBAND

Worldwide mobile broadband-enabled subscriptions are mounting up, and will hit the one billion mark in 2011. According to ABI Research, at the end of 2010 there were more than five billion mobile subscriptions globally, with one in five of those having access to mobile broadband.

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ILLUSTRATION BY SHIGIL K

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

Android Rises, Symbian^3, Windows Phone 7 Register Early Wins 100.9 m smartphones shipped during Q4 2010

ACCORDING to the IDC’s worldwide quarterly mobile phone tracker, vendors shipped a total of 100.9 million smartphones during the fourth quarter of 2010, up 87.2 percent from the 53.9 million smartphones shipped during last year. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 302.6 million smartphones worldwide, up 74.4 percent from the 173.5 million smartphones in 2009.

"Android continues to gain by leaps and bounds, helping to drive the smartphone market," said Ramon Llamas, Senior Research Analyst of IDC's Mobile Phone

GLOBAL TRACKER

Small and medium business (SMB) spending in India on

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is anticipated to rise by a sizable 43% in 2011, according to AMI Partners.

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Technology and Trends team. Adding to the competitive landscape is the entrance of two refreshed operating systems, Symbian^3 and Windows Phone 7. By the end of the quarter, Nokia had shipped five million Symbian^3 units while Windows Phone 7 vendors shipped more than 1.5 million units.

Market Outlook IDC expects further gains for the smart phone market in 2011, as smart phone vendors deepen and broaden their offerings.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors Nokia noted the positive progress of its new Symbian^3 smartphones during 4Q10: five million units combined from the N8, C7, and C601 worldwide, a strong showing given their recent introduction to the market. At the same time, Nokia's volumes are largely comprised of older devices, while MeeGo-powered devices have yet to arrive on the market. In addition, Nokia continues to struggle in the North America market.

The recent cancellation of the X7 smart phone at AT&T highlights Nokia's challenges and a new device has yet to be revealed.

Apple's iPhone gained more ground in the worldwide smart phone market, with shipment volume growth coming from Asia/Pacific and Japan. In addition, Apple made further inroads into the enterprise market, with more companies adding Apple to their approved smart phone list and increased development of corporate-centered applications. Rumors of an iPhone 5 have begun to heat up the blogosphere, with many expecting a new design and perhaps a mobile wallet.

Research In Motion reached a new shipment volume for a single quarter in 4Q10, and posted nearly identical year-over-year growth for both the quarter and the year.

Driving growth was stronger interest from outside North America, with several markets posting double-digit gains. Meanwhile, RIM continued to enjoy market leadership in North America, but nonetheless saw mounting challenges from the competition.

Popular devices for the quarter included Torch and Curve 3G. Samsung took top honors for having the largest year-over-year improvement for both the quarter and for the year, an accomplishment largely fueled by its popular Galaxy S series smartphones. New Galaxy devices are expected to launch, including the Galaxy Fit, Ace, and Mini. Not to be overlooked are Samsung's bada-branded smartphones, as well as its emerging Windows Phone smartphones, both of which received a warm reception.

HTC reaped triple-digit growth for both the quarter and for the year, second only to Samsung. Driving its success were its increased brand awareness, market positioning, and a series of devices that have resonated well with users and carriers alike.

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

ILLUSTRATION BY SHIGIL K

Microsoft Releases WebMatrix Free Web development tool to create, customise and publish a website easily

MICROSOFT has announced the entry of WebMatrix - a free Web development tool to help website developers to easily create, customise and publish websites. The company also unveiled a set of video tutorials, ‘how-to’ tips and other resources for helping new Web developers get started.

“Web is a vital growth engine which empowers developers and is critical to drive growth. WebMa-

trix is designed to provide a simple yet powerful set of tools that developers of all backgrounds and skill sets need to build, customise and deploy Websites on Windows,” said Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Developer Partner Evangelism, Microsoft India.

WebMatrix will be available in nine languages and includes tools to create new websites, using code provided through a variety of available templates or using existing free open source Web applications, such as WordPress, Joomla DotNetNuke and Umbraco.

The ecosystem of nearly 40 open source application partners supporting WebMatrix is essential for development success on the Web. WebMatrix provides the tools needed to run a website, including the Web server, database and Web frameworks. WebMatrix increases development productivity with support for multiple programing syntaxes, such as ASP.NET “Razor” or PHP, and Web helpers, which give a single lineof-code solution for complex coding tasks, such as inserting Twitter feeds or video. It also includes search engine optimisation reporting tools to help build search engines’ friendly websites that are more discoverable to their users.

When a website is ready to be published, Web developers seamlessly publish it to their own hosting provider or one available through WebMatrix.

The tools include a gallery of offerings from hosting providers that range in scalability and price based on users’ needs. Microsoft already has an extensive group of more than 30 hosting partners spanning 18 countries, including 3 companies from India Netmagic Solutions, Sify and Net4India.

FACT TICKER

Worldwide mobile application store downloads to touch 17.7 billion in 2011 WORLDWIDE mobile application store downloads are forecast to reach 17.7 billion downloads in 2011, a 117 percent increase from an estimated 8.2 billion downloads in 2010, according to Gartner. By the end of 2014, over 185 billion applications will have been downloaded from mobile app stores since the launch of the first one in July 2008.

Worldwide mobile application store revenue is projected to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, both from end users buying applications and applications themselves generating advertising revenue for their developers. This is a 190 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $5.2 billion.

Free downloads are forecast to account for 81 percent of total mobile

application store downloads in 2011.

This percentage has been decreasing since the first launches in 2008, and Gartner estimates free downloads will continue to decrease in 2011, but they will increase again from 2012 through 2014. Users will begin paying for more applications as they perceive values in the concept of mobile applications, and they become more trustful of billing mechanisms.

In 2010, application stores' revenue is estimated to have reached $5.2 billion. The growth between 2010 and 2014 is forecast to be over 1,000 percent.

GREEN COMPUTER

SCIENTISTS at the University of Glasgow have developed an ultrafast computer chip, which is 20 times faster than regular desktops.

Regular PCs have two, four or sometimes 16 cores but the new central processing unit (CPU) developed by the researchers effectively had 1,000 cores on a single chip.

Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede said the super computer is also greener than regular desktops, reports the Daily Mail. Using a chip called Field Programmable Gate Array, the transistors within the chip were divided into groups and asked each to perform a different task.

By creating more than 1,000 minicircuits within the FPGA chip, the researchers effectively turned the chip into a 1,000-core processor - each core working on its own instructions.

"FPGAs are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker - so they are also a greener option," Vanderbauwhede said.

"I believe these kinds of processors will only become more common and help to speed up computers even further over the next few years," he added.

Vanderbauwhede will present his research at the International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing in March next year.

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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

D AV I D AW C O C K

Delivering much more: Today technology is expected to deliver beyond prure play business

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D AV I D AW C O C K

A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

DAVID AWCOCK |STANDARD CHARTERED

OPEN YOUR BOX OF IT INNOVATION

“If you get your basics right, you get the license to innovate,� says David Awcock, Group Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank. Innovation and doing more with less are not just buzzwords but the ground reality. That doesn't mean having systems up and running can take a back seat either. David shares his ideas, in an interview with Minu Sirsalewala Agarwal, on how he manages both.

What is technology for you?

How can technology enable agile business models - to do more with less?

IT is an enabler that can manage cost/risk and at the same time enhance business value. During 2009, when the bank faced difficult times challenged by the economic situation, we focused on managing costs effectively and making available

the right technology to customers.

In 2010 the focus shifted to innovation and investment on technology to improve products and services.

We want to make technology truly an enabling function and not a back office function. This is where aligning IT with business processes is an imperative to enhance business value. All technologies must be assessed for their business value

before adoption. A successful IT strategy has a strong corporate backing and is not driven by hype.

Tracking the implementation stage becomes absolutely essential for building a strong foundation.

As a technology head, what is your role in your organisation?

The role of a technology head today is that of a value creator for the busi-

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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

D AV I D AW C O C K

ness. Technology enables organisations to identify the areas where the business could derive value from and then provide solution to realise the value. My role primarily is to tech-enable the organisation, maintain the network, see to the optimal running of the data centre.

To add to this, the role is evolving towards creating time and capability for innovation. Being a part of the boardroom is integral to the technology role for quite some time now. Today technology is expected to deliver much more and beyond pure-play business. Today most of my time is spent on innovating for the business and creating value around the innovation.

How do you do justice to all the roles?

What is most important is that an efficient system and network is in place. If the routine services have been done right one can look at spending time on the other areas.

You need to have a robust, clean, sustainable and a scalable architecture in place. With a right team in place there is more time for innovation as I am spending less time worrying about cost and stability of the existing systems.

Your core banking system (CBS) is developed in-house and is based on open source. Do you always prefer open source over proprietary solutions?

We adopted open source mainly because we can build an application suiting our needs. You can have more control over how and when you use it.

The core banking system we have is an interesting one as we are one of the few organisations to have developed such a large scale CBS inhouse based on open source.

The system is linux based and J2EE; and is very modern. The open architecture enables us to highly customise it to our needs. The system has been rolled out across the

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“Connecting the customers across regions and demographics enables the business to create better business opportunities.� bank in many countries, including India and is now being rolled out to Malaysia and Singapore.

Also with open source, you are not at the vendors' behest for upgrades and there is no compulsion on licensing renewals or limitation to how and when you need to modify, phase out or scale your applications.

Often we have found that most of (proprietary) updates do not give the level of business benefits that we look for. And most importantly, it (open source) is highly cost effective.

What role is social media playing in the financial sector as we go ahead?

Emergence of social media is important to all industry verticals as we go ahead, and especially in the financial sector it plays a creative role in understanding the end user needs. With more and more

THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

THINGS I BELIEVE IN Emergence of social media is important to all industry verticals as we go ahead With open source, you are not at the vendors' behest for upgrades and there is no compulsion on licensing renewals With a right team in place, there is more time for innovation

people accessing social media tools the customer-vendor relationships are progressing towards better demand creation.

An active interaction with your user community for new products based on their requirements is offering the business value over a period of time as it allows you to better manage risk associated with any new product.

Connecting the customers across regions and demographics enables the business to create better business opportunities.

As a result we have seen multiple new initiatives, like building of the groups equity business system where there is huge system activity happening. We are actively looking at the trading systems, transaction banking and the private banking services that is right solution for the right customer.

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FEATURES INSIDE

How to Improve IT Value Measurement Pg 20

BEST OF

What Makes Your Business Tick Pg 21

BREED

Why Utility Computing Failed But Cloud Computing Did'nt Pg 23

ILLUSTRATION BY JAYAN K NARAYANAN

I

Is Perception Reality?

For CIOs of the day, it is tough to know what their bosses and underlings perceive of them.

BY PAM BAKER

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n response to a somewhat recent LinkedIn post asking for a single word or phrase to characterise people's leadership style, 1500 LinkedIn professionals offered up a steady stream of "courageous, passionate, compassionate, sincerity, charisma" and other warm and fuzzy epithets.

Not surprisingly, there were no posts indicating harsher forms of rule. This, of course, begs the question of whether CIOs see themselves as they really are or as they'd rather be? Or, put another way, in the career fun house of mirrors, how do you know which reflection is the one your bosses and underlings see?

"Perception is reality, so understand that your strengths, if overplayed, become weaknesses," said Barry Carter, a CIO for 10 years, at AirTran, Capital One, UnitedHealth and Alliance Data, prior to taking his current post as EVP of IT Services at Fujitsu America. "Seek feedback from myriad sources" regularly to guard against perception clashes, he advised.

The view from C Deck: The view from the C-seats is effected by how your fellow exec's see IT in general. "Companies treat IT as one of four archetypes: grinder, butler, business partner; or strategic enabler," explained Carter. "This treatment of IT depends on how the senior team views the IT organisation."

In most cases, IT is trying to operate on a higher level than the business sees it. Many businesses have had such bad service from IT they just want them to keep the systems up and handle the basics requests while IT wants a seat at the table and to be allowed to innovate. "So we have a role/expectation conflict between the IT organisation and the business," said Carter.

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Moving from grinder to strategic enabler: Carter said grinder is the very lowest level. The first step up from grinder is to make offers and anticipate needs of the business like a butler. "If the basic daily functions are not being met by IT, then the business is not going to be willing to listen to the offer of the butler, regardless of how brilliant it is."

Clearly, most IT leaders want their organisations to co-create with the business, and this is where the business partner role comes of the above pertains to you. The first signs into play. "The most fun I ever enjoyed as can be subtle. "When a CIO notices that an IT partner was during a period of hyperthere are high level meetings taking place growth at Capital One," he said. "We were and they were not invited and conversations on the 'triple-double.' That was three years of become more business and less collegial, 100 percent growth year over year." they should take notice," said Ann Spoor, Carter and his IT team overcame the CEO and founder of Executive Lattice. basics and moved above grinder status by Other signs that the bell tolls for thee are the end of the first year of his tenure. They more easily noticed and tracked. Active, advanced through butler and were a true recurrent and prolonged inter-departmental business partner by the end of year two. battles are a sure threat to a CIO's career and "Year three was special because we were the so are project shortfalls. "Runaway projects, strategic enabler driving automation to simbudget misses, lack of strong relationships plify the business and were working handwith business partners, and recurring outin-hand to grow the business." ages of critical systems are sure signs a CIO How to tell you're on your way or just is standing on shaky ground," said Carter. on your way out: It is no secret that CIOs When to hold and when to fold: There have often enjoyed a short shelf-life. Reports is another threat to a CIO's career that has from leading executive search firms, includnothing to do with what the CIO actually ing DHR International and DICE, say that does. "There are companies that don't CIOs remain in their jobs only from three believe IT is important," said Carl Gilchrist, to five years. leader of the Information Officer Practice in "The average tenure of a CIO is decreasNorth America for international executive ing," said Todd Harris, director of Research search firm Spencer Stuart. "In those situat PI Worldwide, a provider of human ations, I recommend that you find a comcapital analytics for organisations. "Unfortupany that does believe that IT is important." nately, they're more likely to be fired sooner How can you tell if your company values when results aren't achieved fast enough."

IT in general and you in particular?

Harris said there are several prevailing "If the company is making investments reasons for CIO "flame-out:" and IT isn't part of that process, then the CIO isn't being included in the decision n Doesn't fit with the company's culture. process and is just not a facn Was "over-promoted" into tor," said Gilchrist. the role.

If all signs point to EXIT what n Inability to change and are your odds at finding greener evolve. pastures beyond the door? n Lack of self-awareness.

"The rise in demand coun Doesn't deliver the necessary OF ALL BREACHES pled with flat salaries bodes business results. well for technology profesn Delivers the necessary busiINVOLVE STOLEN sionals who are eager to take ness results but in the wrong way OR EXPLOITED advantage of new opportuni– behaviourally, for example, is IDENTITY ties in the coming year," said not seen as a "team player."

Tom Silver, SVP of North Even knowing this, it may CREDENTIALS America at Dice, a technology be hard to spot signs that any

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Reports from leading executives search firms, including DHR International and DICE, say that CIOs remain in their jobs only from three to five years.

90%

and engineering jobs board.

According to Dice's annual salary survey, 40 percent of tech professionals anticipate they could make more money by changing employers in 2011. However, the 24 percent who felt switching employers would not increase their pay found their assumption to be true – they reaped, on average, nearly $13,000 more than those who anticipated finding a higher salary elsewhere.

The best news is that the overall technology environment is gradually improving.

"In fact, job postings are up 30 percent year/year and tech professionals can find about 70,000 jobs on any given day on Dice," said Silver. "Across the US, every major metropolitan market is seeing growth, further increasing demand for highly-skilled tech talent."

Remember though, that changing jobs may not change the reflection your higher-ups and underlings perceive. Stay in touch with them regularly and check your image often.

—A prolific and versatile writer, Pam Baker's published credits include numerous articles in leading publications including, but not limited to: Institutional Investor magazine, CIO.com, NetworkWorld, ComputerWorld, IT World, Linux World, Internet News, E-Commerce Times, LinuxInsider, CIO Today Magazine, NPTech News (nonprofits), MedTech Journal, I Six Sigma magazine, Computer Sweden, NY Times, and Knight-Ridder/McClatchy newspapers. She has also authored several analytical studies on technology and eight books. Baker also wrote and produced an award-winning documentary on paper-making. She is a member of the National Press Club (NPC), Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and the Internet Press Guild (IPG).

—This article appears courtesy www.cioupdate. com. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit CIOUpdate.com.

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How to Improve IT Value Measurement

How do you apply the right measures in the right way to improve the value of your IT investments?

Start with this four-step guide.

BY BRIAN G. BARNIER

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ou've heard it before. The CFO asks "how do we know what value we're getting from IT?" The business line leader asks "How do I measure the value of IT to my P&L, not just help desk tickets closed?" The CEO asks "How do I know our IT spend is allocated to best support our objectives?"

Economic pressures are putting more emphasis than ever on the CIO's use of best practice in value measurement – the right measures applied in the right way to get the right insights to improve value. Painfully, this came at the same time that a Center for CIO Leadership study entitled "Communicating Business Value" reported that only 51 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I have developed business value indicators that link IT performance metrics and business goals."

A review of questions asked during training sessions I've conducted in the past 12 months reveals four key insights to improving value measures.

This sounds simple and "alignment" has been pursued for years.

Yet, when examples are given in workshops, it turns out that many enterprises are falling into two traps. On one hand, they are tying to IT operational (cost per unit) and not real business objectives.

On the other hand, they try to leap from tactical objectives, such as ticket-closing times, to overarching business objectives such as "agility." This is a stretch.

Whether in projects or operations, the gap to business objectives is real. A 2009 study by ISACA – an 86,000-constituent, 160-country IT management professional group – found that alignment to business objectives had the lowest maturity of any of the success variables evaluated.

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Tip for Matching IT Measures to Business Measures Map objectives in steps: growth, revenue, profit, customer satisfaction, and IT objectives. To make it tangible, try using the metrics that are already applied to organisational objectives. In this way, new product introduction rates can map directly though steps to IT application flexibility.

Many enterprises try to map to business objectives, but fall into

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a trap when they don't link to portfolio categories and measures.

It's somewhat like a person trying to earn more income from a retirement portfolio without ever specifically changing asset allocation strategy.

In IT terms, CIOs will say their portfolio includes "build" and "run."

In retirement terms, this is like saying they want to "preserve capital" and "grow earnings." These are broad-brush statements, not tied to practical business objectives for product flexibility, data integration or resilience. More specific statements can drive architecture, hardware and software acquisition, operations design, and resulting metrics.

Tip for Matching Value Measures to Business-IT Investment Portfolio Review the investment directions shared by your CEO and CFO at the past few investor conferences. Compare those priorities to your IT portfolio categories. How can they match up better than they currently do? What specific value measures can tie these together?

Sounds simple, but enterprises struggle with this. In workshops, IT leaders will often say "we've done this." Yet, in exercises, it becomes clear there are gaps. On the benefit side, a typi-

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cal trap is failing to talk to all beneficiaries in the organisation and ask how they benefit from a given solution or service.

50%

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Yet, daily performance is reported through more typical accounting systems or maybe IT service management systems.

ORGANISATIONS Tips for Reporting Value with Consistency Simply ask the primary sponsor "who else benefits?"

First, configure all systems to track similar measures.

TO SHIFT IAM and have a conversation with that person or team.

This is generally a business-analyst/end-user type skill EFFORTS FROM Sometimes, the beneficiary is in the "extended enterin an IT Finance role.

ADMINISTRATION prise." The process of having a conversation with a busiSecond, look for opportunities to integrate your software ness partner or major customer might not only help tools.

Ask your vendors how they have helped others.

TO INTELLIGENCE you improve the documentation of benefits (and value To help you toward success in value measurement and measures) but also to sharpen your requirements. reporting, here's a bonus tip from the painful lessons of On the cost side, a typical trap is undercounting lifecycle others -- implement all these tips in a balanced way. costs, even insurance costs. This can show up in something as complex It's a bit sad to hear how an energetic leader worked so hard as an acquisition or more tactical such as a new software application. on one or two of these key areas, and yet still faced a grilling on "where's the value?" Print out this list, tack it to your wall and check off each tip as it's completed. Take the hard lessons others Tips for Managing Costs learned and put them to good use.

A simple tip in software acquisition is to just talk with the vendors about life cycle costs under these two scenarios: 1 alternative infrastructure environments; and 2 different change rates from your business user. —Brian Barnier has a split career between the business and IT. He coThen get clarity with the business owner on value measures. developed a new program in auditing IT risk management for the InforA surprising number of organisations struggle to deliver the mation Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). He is a principal value expected due to a simple trap -- they use different measures at ValueBridge Advisors, where he draws on his experience to provide of value in their investment portfolio process and daily operations. advisory services such as executive mentoring and problem-solving In budget decision-making processes, there is often one set of workshops. financial tools, whether a spreadsheet, or a more formal portfolio —This article was first published in the CIO Insight. For more stories please or financial planning application. visit www.cioinsight.com

Tip for Understanding Who Benefits

What Makes Your Business Tick?

To become a business partner, a CIO has to know his company's strategy and customers.

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uch has been said and written about the gap between IT and business and the need for IT to understand business requirements. However, many IT executives try to bridge that gap by aligning IT's capabilities with the direct, yet sometimes conflicting, requirements from various business functions across the organisation.

BY AUGUSTO PERAZZO

This is a narrow view of the business.

In order to truly become a business partner, IT executives need to expand this internal, closed view of business requirements by gaining an understanding of its true customers and how the organisation at large, chooses to apply its limited resources to generate profits and compete in the marketplace. This external view of the business strategy should then drive every IT decision.

Who is the customer?

It's not uncommon for IT executives to refer to a business counterpart as "my customer;" usually another executive or manager whose day-to-day operations are supported by IT. This aligns with the view that IT is an internal service organisation fulfilling demand generated by other internal functions.

Although this is an important role for IT to play, it provides a dangerous degree of THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

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The most critical IT services are the ones that support the most critical business functions separation from the external forces that influence the business strategy. Instead, IT should see itself as the business. So then, pursuing this logic further, if IT is the business then who is the customer? IT will need to look outside of the organisation for the answer.

The first step to understanding what makes the business tick then is understanding: 1 which markets and customers the organisation serves or is trying to reach; 2 which services and products are offered to these segments; and 3 which channels are available for customers to "consume" these offerings.

If that information is not readily available as part of the overall business strategy, that should not be considered a show-stopper but an opportunity for IT executives to strengthen the relationship with the business by working with marketing, sales, finance and other business divisions to define and document this in the form of an external services/product catalogue.

Who creates value for the customer?

Once IT gains a clear understanding of

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which markets and services are important to the organisation, it can then start looking at which business functions contribute to the provision of these services and what enabling components these business functions rely on. In general, a business function can be said to be comprised of and rely on the "4 Ps" – people, processes, platforms and places.

Of these four, platforms represent IT's main role in supporting the business – any equipment and technology used by the business function to carry its activities. This web of dependencies is usually documented as part of an enterprise-wide architecture view and describes how value is created. Most likely the enterprise architecture will include dozens of business functions, hundreds of business processes and thousands of platform components such as hardware, applications, telecom devices and other equipments.

IT’s goal is to make sure that the business functions have at its disposal a resilient, highly available, productive, efficient and cost-effective platform that can rapidly

evolve to accommodate shifts in the business strategy (e.g., changes in specific markets, customers and services the organisation chooses or is required to pursue).

However, faced with an ongoing mandate to do more with less, IT must find a way to prioritise allocation of its limited resources.

The focus must be on the most critical pieces of the enterprise platform and IT services.

The most critical IT services are the ones that support the most critical business functions. To determine what is critical, IT can leverage a technique employed in business continuity programs – the business impact analysis (BIA). The goal of a BIA is to assess the impact to the organisation in case a business function is disrupted and it can no longer perform its functions. The higher the impact, the more critical a business function is. The impact should be assessed as a way to answer the question: How important is the business function to the creation of value to the customer?

Gaining this kind of intelligence is paramount but not an easy task. IT should not expect that these answers will be handed to it by the business. The business functions driving most of the operational IT requirements will most likely not know this. If asked, each business function will tell IT that what they do is critical to the business and thus IT must find a way to support their needs. This Ptolemaic, or geocentric, view is far from reality.

It is important to notice that the results of this work might question the existence of some functions, so it is important that IT take a non-confrontational position and help business functions realign to support critical aspects of the business.

Once again, this is an opportunity for IT to lead and partner with the business to justify their position.

Confronting strategy The upfront investment in understanding what makes the business tick will pay off down the road when IT is confronted with a series of strategic questions: Where to invest IT dollars? Which projects to fund? What should be outsourced? What part of the IT platform should be covered by expensive disaster recovery solutions?

How to rationalise the IT portfolio? Which

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services should we retire and what new services are needed?

Although these require different considerations, they all should share one common theme: IT should invest in and support the most critical business functions as dictated by the most critical customers.

So, what do you do with the other stuff, you might ask? Get rid of it!

In sum, the real IT customers are the external stakeholders that are consuming the services and/or products provided by the organisation. IT should work with the business functions to gain a clear understanding of who these customers are. All IT investments should be made to assure that the true customers are getting what they need from the organisation.

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—Augusto Perazzo is a principal consultant in PA Consulting Group's IT Consulting practice. He has 14 years of extensive experience in managing IT organisations with a focus on process improvement programs, application development management, outsourcing and service management.

This article appears courtesy www.cioupdate. com. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit CIOUpdate.com.

Why Utility Computing Failed (But Cloud Computing Didn't)

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While there were successful POCs, Utility Computing sales stalled. However, it seems Cloud Computing is here to stay. So what did Cloud Computing do right that Utility Computing did'nt?

BY KEN OESTREICH

ince about 2006 I’ve been involved with data centre IT the ‘psychographics’ of the buyers. But overall, we could point to a automation. Back then I started with Cassatt, one of few frequent problems: the first companies trying to automate infrastructure Automation was scary: The word “Automation” frequently components in the data centre. Rob Gingell, the CTO, scared-off IT administrators. They were accustomed to complete had a design principle of “service-level automation”, control of their hand-crafted infrastructure, and visibility into every where the variable monitored and maintained was the service, not layer. If they couldn’t make and see the change, they didn’t trust that the server. That was a revolutionary thought. the system actually worked.

The technology behind this was a combination of orchestratLack of market reference points: Peers in the market hadn’t ing physical and virtual devices, which automatically composed tried this stuff either – and there was no broad acceptance that utility appropriate infrastructure stacks to keep the service computing was being adopted SLA within pre-defined bounds. And it absolutely Inflexible Process: The use of ITIL and ITSM procedures were designed to govern manual IT control, and worked! The best market description we had for this had no way to incorporate automatic approaches to (for technology was “Utility Computing,” and drew from example) configuration management. the analogy of electrical utilities: No matter what the OF WEB Organisational fear: There was usually the unstatdraw (load), the supply would always be generated/

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retired (elasticity) to keep up with it.

But selling the Utility Computing model, and servicelevel automation technology, was hard, if not impossible. We’d frequently have successful POCs, and demonstrate the product, but the sales inevitably stalled.

The reasons were many and varied, frequently tied to

APPLICATIONS CURRENTLY CARRY A VULNERABILITY

ed fear that the utility computing automation systems would obviate the need for certain jobs, if not entire IT organisations. Plus, the systems spanned multiple IT organisations, and it was never clear which existing organisation should be put in charge of the new automation.

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Multiple Buyers: Because Utility Computing touched so many IT organisations, the approval process necessarily included many of them. Getting the thumbs-up from a half-dozen scared organisations was hopeless. Even if the CxO mandated utility computing, implementation was inevitably hog-tied.

Enter Virtualisation Somewhere around 2007, OS virtualisation began to go mainstream.

And its value proposition was simple and uncomplicated: Consolidate applications, reduce hardware sprawl. It was a no brainer.

But just below the surface, virtualisation had an interesting effect on IT managers: It began to make them more comfortable to break the binding of physical control and physical management of servers, transitioning instead to being more at ease with logical control of servers.

up IT automation, without visibility into hardware implementation, worked and was useful.

Use of EC2 (initially) lay outside the control bounds of IT management and IT’s organisational boundaries. Developers and 1-off projects could leverage it without fear of push back from IT – usually because IT never even knew about its use.

Once IT management acquiesced that EC2 (and similar services) was being used, they finally had reason to look more closely. And the revelations were telling: How was it that the annualised cost basis for a medium-sized server was lower than an in-house implementation could possibly hope to achieve? How come configuration and tear-down was so simple? Finally IT had to look in the mirror at the fact that this thing called cloud computing might be here to stay?

Looking Back While it’s clear that the concept of cloud computing isn’t new, some important industry changes – more psychological and organisational than technological – had to take place before widespread adoption would happen.

And even then, it took some simple commercial implementations to prove the point. Too bad these weren't around a few years earlier during the "utility computing" era.

Watching this unfold, lessons *I* learned – or at least some explanations of this effect I’ve examined have been Psychology/Attitude shifted: the more broadly OS virtualisation was adopted, the more IT’s attitudes became accepting of automation and of logical control.

Technology change was replaced by operational change: The new approach is more a change to the operational approach than a technology upheaval. The way users interacted with the cloud was appealing and nearly viral.

Value was Immediate: The “new” cloud economic evidence was/is usually so compelling that it has forced IT to take a second look. This started with simple consolidation economics, but has expanded well beyond that.

Broad availability accelerated adoption: Even only a few commercially available cloud providers helped provide immediate proofpoints that the new model was here to stay. And purchasing this technology was as simple as entering a credit card number Going forward, I would expect these 4 (perhaps more) “pressure points” will continue to help accelerate the use and adoption of internal clouds, public clouds, etc. In future Blogs I’ll begin to look at how to further mainstream Cloud (and automation) adoption, as it serves to accelerate improvements to business’ bottom line.

There were fears utility computing automation systems would obviate the need of certain jobs As consolidation initiatives penetrated data centres, additional virtualisation management tools followed. And with them, more automated functions. And with each new function came IT’s incremental comfort with automating logical data centre configurations.

And Then, Commercial Examples At just about the same time, Amazon Web Services had begun to commercially offer these virtual machines in their EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud. This could be had for the use of a credit card, and charged-for on an hourly basis. IT end-users now had simple – if sometimes only experimental – access to a truly automated, logical infrastructure. And one where all “hands-on” aspects of configuration were literally masked inside a black box.

Now the industry had its proof-point: There were times when full-

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—Ken Oestreich is a marketing and product management veteran in the enterprise IT and data centre space, with a career spanning start-ups to established vendors. This article was first published on http://fountnhead.blogspot.com/ and appears here with prior permission from the author.

AD

Earth

Friendly Indian CIOs are going green. And this time, they are strongly backed by their top management.

The time is here when enterprises added a new chapter of going green to their IT policy.

PHOTO BY PHOTOS.COM

B

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y putting so much carbon in the atmosphere, we have irreversibly changed the Earth. We won’t have another ice age, not at least for another 200,000 years — James Lovelock, scientist and environmentalist.

Rapid industrialisation and intensive agriculture have, over the years, emitted huge amounts of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. Although IT may not rank amongst the more serious carbon emitting sectors, it has played its part in contributing to global warming. With strong growth expected in the years to come, the sector’s carbon footprint is only going to expand.

To put things in perspective, according to a study, data centers globally consume 0.8 percent of the total electricity generated in the world at a cost of $7.2 billion. This was in 2005. Data centers have been growing rapidly, and their numbers would have increased significantly in the last six years.

While electricity consumption in Indian data centers is yet to be quantified, given the IT sector’s strong footprint in the economy, one can assume

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CIOs that energy consumption would be more compared to the global average.

Against this backdrop, is an Indian CIO concerned about his IT infrastructure’s carbon footprint? If yes, what is he doing to mitigate carbondioxide emission from his IT infrastructure? Above all, is he getting the desired support from his top management in deploying green IT? The CTO Forum magazine conducted a survey on this issue with CIOs across the country. It threw up some interesting and positive results. Of the 82 respondents, 86 percent vouched for absolute support from their top management on deploying green IT. For a large percentage (72 percent), going green was a corporate mandate.

The more popular initiative being adopted by CIOs to cut down on their carbon footprint included virtualisation, hardware refresh, reduced printing and the use of web 2.0.

From the responses received, we selected a few CIOs who had taken the lead over others in greening their IT. Read on to know more.

GREEN IT

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GREEN IT

Into a

hospital

PHOTO BY NITISH SHARMA

A

Calcutta Medical Research Institute has decided to make its IT completely green with consolidation and server and desktop virtualisation. By Varun Aggarwal

s medical tourism in the country is booming, the healthcare industry in India has started leveraging IT like never before to offer services at par with their global counterparts. Healthcare industry in India is still amongst the lowest spenders of IT globally. However, there are some early adopters like the Calcutta Medical Research Institute (CMRI), which is a 400-plus bed multi specialty care provider open round the clock. Set up in 1969, CMRI is an ISO 9001: 2000 certified institution.

CMRI has tie up with Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the No. 1 Heart Hospital in America for 10 years in a row, to provide international healthcare.

The company is in the expansion mode and is in the process of starting two more hospitals including one in Jaipur. Once these facilities are established, three more hospitals would be opened in different locations.

The challenge before this growing company, which is a part of the CK Birla Group, was to ensure that cost was kept under control while they offered better services to their customers.

Also, aware of its environmental responsibilities, going green turned out to be the only option for them to achieve this.

As Vishnu Gupta, CIO, CMRI says, “We realised early that virtualisation could not

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only help us reduce costs, but would also help streamline processes and enable us to go green.” As a first step towards going green, the company looked at deploying desktop virtualisation. Gupta decided to do a pilot with NComputing’s desktop virtualisation solution at the hospital’s library. The pilot turned out to be highly successful. From five PCs, the requirement came down to only 1 PC with 5 monitors. The company has already started saving money on power – usage has reduced from 130 watts to around 12 watts.

Desktop virtualisation contributed towards increasing the operational efficiency by reducing the downtime of hardware and sharing the resources of high-end terminals. These terminals would use the resources of a single high-end PC, while giving the same operational output.

e “Thsav-so t cos were that n g e s ingpealinagem ice ap man ink twving ” the 'nt thapprofor it. did fore gets be bud nu GupRtaI h Vis IO, CM the C

“We have multiple departments which use specific software solutions for their day-to -day operations,” Gupta says. “The licensing cost for each terminal within that department increases.” Moreover with many such software solutions requiring specific hardware, replacing such terminals with thin clients became a smart option.

“Since thin clients have the capacity to replicate any machine's resources over multiple terminals, we have been able to reduce hardware-specific machines,” says Gupta, who has received complete backing from his management in his initiatives.

This meant a corresponding reduction in the related “housekeeping and maintenance” activities. The power consumed by the thin clients was “negligible compared to

GREEN IT

conventional CPUs,” he avers.

The company leverages Web applications extensively due to which most of the work at the hospital doesn’t require the executives to store any data on the system.

Thus, the system whose resources are shared with four other PCs, can do with a standard desktop hard drive. The extensive use of web apps also reduces the cost of software licenses and maintenance.

The company is now testing NComputing’s enterprise offering wherein one high- end desktop with about 16-32GB RAM would be able to support upto 38 PCs. The deployment would further reduce the cost of desktops, and also greatly reduce the UPS costs that the company had to bear earlier.

Usually it is a challenge to buy within the budgets for a new IT deployment. But Gupta didn’t face any such challenge. “The cost savings were so appealing that the management didn’t think twice before approving the budgets for it,” he says.

Consolidating the infrastructure As the next phase of greening the organisation, the company is looking at consolidation.

With CMRI's operations increasing as a result of several new facilities in the pipeline, the company has decided to consolidate its entire IT infrastructure in one place. Instead

COVE R S TO RY

TURN IT ON The world market for wind turbines saw robust growth in the first half of the year 2010, with approximately 16 Gigawatt of new capacity added worldwide. China represents the largest market and added 7800 Megawatt within only six months, reaching total installations of almost 34 Gigawatt. The USA, still number one in total capacity with 36 Gigawatt, saw a major decrease in new installations and added only 1200 Megawatt, followed by India.

Source: World Wind Energy Association

of servers being setup at various locations, CMRI would now have a common data centre serving all the hospitals. Virtualisation would be a key element to fulfil this need.

“We have been using Microsoft’s HyperV technology for a while and would continue to use it for non-critical workflows. HyperV has also helped us acquaint to virtualisation. Now, that we understand virtualisation technology well, we’re doing a PoC to run our critical applications in a virtualised

environment using VMWare virtualisation server,” Gupta opined.

“Once we are able to consolidate our hospital infrastructure in one place, the next step would be to consolidate IT infrastructure in other CK Birla Group companies,” he says. The consolidation would be guided by Gupta and would enable an internal cloud for the entire CK Birla group, which would help the company reduce its carbon footprint significantly.

power As part of going green, private power utility CESC is streamlining its printing infrastructure

By Yashvendra Singh

O

ne of the biggest challenges confronting a CIO, aiming to transform his legacy IT infrastructure into a green and efficient one, is the justification of the capital expenditure to the company’s CFO. But what if the CEO himself takes a lead in this area? This was exactly what happened at CESC, the private power utility of the RPG Group stable.

As part of the company’s corporate social responsibility, CESC’s CEO, Sumantra Banerjee, convened a meeting of all senior officials THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

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GREEN IT

“Also, to discourage unnecessary printing, all mails from our captive mailing system will carry the logo of a green tree and a slogan,” he says.

A recent European Union guide on ‘green purchasing’ claims that adopting duplex printing can help in cutting costs by as much as 38 percent over the entire life of a printer. In a Manufacturing cell phones, computers, and study, Citigroup had once calculated other consumer electronics requires a lot of energy. that $700,000 could be saved annuIn fact, 81 percent of the life-cycle energy costs ally and 76 tons of solid waste could associated with a single computer is from its be eliminated if each of its employmanufacture, only 19% from its operation. In other words, ees saved just one paper a week by the computer you’re using right now, in all the years you’ll own it, will never conadopting duplex printing. sume more energy than was required to create it. The production of a single computer also uses Roy believes while there is an initial 42,000 gallons of water. Please recycle your used electronics and turn them off when not in use. capital cost for the new infrastructure, Source: www.goinggreentoday.com it will be recovered in about a years’ time. “Besides, the stationary cost will half,” he says justifying the move.

The IT department at CESC is also working towards reducing of the company, including the CIO, a couple of months back. The the electrical wattage of the equipment by deploying products with brief for the department heads was to bring in energy efficiency in energy efficiency ratings. their respective departments.

Roy intends to consolidate the IT infrastructure by bringing the variSays Debashis Roy, Vice President, IT, CESC, “Cutting down the ous systems running at scattered locations under a central location. carbon footprint was very important for a power utility like us. We “Towards this goal, we are setting up a new data centre where have four coal-based thermal power plants that generate 1225MW. we would be virtualising and consolidating several critical applicaWith coal being the major culprit in carbon emission, we took the tions, which include payroll, billing and CRM. We have categorically decision of lowering our carbon footprint.” instructed the builder to optimise the data center’s design, and to With a strong backing from his management, Roy set about the look into the green aspect at every step,” he says. task of making CESC’s IT green. To keep everyone on the same Roy is also undertaking desktop and server virtualisation. He is page, all members in the IT department were communicated the yet to decide the platform for consolidating and virtualising though. need and importance to go green.

CESC has about 2500 desktops across all departments.

“The first thing we have decided is to streamline our printing infrastructure, and bring down paper usage in the company. We have got an analysis done, and would be phasing out all large format printManaging e-waste ers that are more than three years old. These would be replaced by Yet another initiative that Roy is adopting towards reducing the duplex printers to enable printing on both sides of paper,” says Roy. carbon footprint of his company is adhering to the best practices CESC has 35 departments in all, and their printing needs run related to e-waste disposal. into lakhs of pages per annum. While Roy finds it tough to quantify “While there are guidelines for proper disposal of e-waste, few how many pages would be saved, he expects “paper consumption to companies adhere to them," he says. come down to half.”

"We are prolonging the life of the equipment by maintaining it well. We are trying to use a desktop for at least 5 years. CESC is also trying to engage with recyclers that are adept at disposing off e-waste. In the west, there are proper e-waste recyclers that salvage and re-use products, and we are trying to associate with such recyclers in India,” Roy says.

As CESC has seriously got down to reducing its carbon footprint just a couple of months back, it is still in the process of calculating its total carbon footprint. Once it gets the figures, the company plans to keep 2011 as the base year, and then set a target of reducing carbon emissions over the subsequent years.

“By taking this step, our corporate IT policy has added another chapter of going green. These measures would cut CESC’s carbon footprint anywhere between 2-5 pery Ro s cent.

This is just the beginning for us,” exclaims Roy. i h SC

WHO IS THE CULPRIT?

e e “Wld b out at u g woasin formt aree ph arge tha threse l s all interthan. Theaced pr ore old repl rintm ars be x p ye uld uples.” woby d er as E eb IT, C D

, VP

GREEN IT

‘Hum aur From rolling out solar-powered ATMs to encouraging employees and customers alike to cut down on paper use, IndusInd is actively promoting the green agenda. By Minu Sirsalewala Agarwal

I

ndusInd Bank, which derives its name and inspiration from the Indus Valley civilisation, has a robust technology platform supporting multi-channel delivery capabilities.

As a banking institution, IndusInd realises it has both a direct and an in-direct impact on the natural environment.

"Having recognised the impact on the environment, we decided to mitigate its contribution to global warming and climate change, and kickstarted a novel project," says Mihir Bhavsar, Head Corporate Sustainability, IndusInd Bank.

The 'Green Banking Project' under the banner ‘Hum aur Hariyali’ campaign was commenced in the 'International Year of Earth - 2008' and since then, the focus and efforts towards the project have increased manifold.

Through this campaign, the bank took measures to ‘green’ its office spaces, reduce resource consumption, minimise carbon footprint and support environmental initiatives.

For Bhavsar, IT was a key area where the bank adopted sustainable green technology to cut down on carbon emission.

At the corporate office, IBL House, and Karapakkam, for back office officials, where applications are not resource hungry the bank has gone in for thin computing. Energy in-efficient TRT / CRT monitors were replaced with LCD monitors

"We are planning to replace around 500 more monitors by March 2011. The bank has a target of replacing all CRT monitor at its 230 Branches," says Bhavsar.

A comprehensive document management and workflow system branded iWorkS has been introduced through adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) tools and techniques. In this system, the documents are scanned at the branch or hub itself. The central processing unit then works on the scanned copy of the documents, scrutinises them and proceeds to open the accounts.

Apart from improved efficiency, better process control and improved customer service, the original documents can be stored at low cost locations. This has resulted in savings of 60 percent of the costs on premises, besides improving efficiency as lesser time is spent in finding and retrieving documents. "iWorkS eliminates the need to keep photocopies of various documents. The introduction of iWorkS application has saved approximately 13,30,000 sheets for photocopying, 2,60,000 sheets for checklist besides the toner cost associated with it," avers Bhavsar.

"This has also lead to an increase in printer life and has resulted in substantial costs in physical storage as well," he says.

As most green initiatives talk about virtualisation being an integral technology, IndusInd also went in for server virtualisation.

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"A consolidation ratio of 6:1 is targeted and power savings both for operating and cooling of over 75 percent versus desktop PCs configured in standby mode during periods of inactivity.” explains Bhavsar.

Desktop video conferencing is another tool that the top management uses to hold virtual meeting instead of physical meetings, thereby reducing travel considerably.

The bank mostly uses energy efficient office equipment that is either Energy Star or BEE 3-5 star certified.

Intelligent disposing of old hardware and its contents is an important step in e-waste management. The bank disposes all of its computer hardware after contents are destroyed (technically called degaussing) to agencies that recycle the plastic recovered from the tapes.

Another feature that the bank uses is sensors at the ATM units. They make use of managing software which enables central monitoring of each of the single ATM units. It gives complete report on the power consumption and its source, be it solar, fuel or battery. There is lot of intelligence that is generated in the reports and enables efficient distribution of the power source. It also indicates any main-

“We are planning to replace 500 CRT monitors by March 2011. The bank has a target of replacing all CRT monitors at its 230 branches.”

Mihir Bhavsar Head, Corporate Sustainability, IndusInd Bank

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GREEN IT

THINK BEFORE YOU BUY

Recycled aluminum saves 95% energy versus virgin aluminum; recycling of one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. Did you know this before using tons of aluminum in a year?

Source: Green 1.0

tenance related issues, outages or disruption physical or otherwise. This feature is available as an application on the desktop and is regularly tracked by the IT team.

The Way Ahead A few other initiatives such as solar powered ATMs are in the roll out phase. Currently the bank has carried out successful pilots and is looking at having around 50 solar powered ATMs for the B and C class cities.

The bank strongly advocates that you do not need to adopt technology to be ahead of the curve or to present a rosy picture to the community at large. It has to be powered by economics, efficiency and sustainability.

"For example, the solar powered ATMs is a key approach for efficient delivery of services as ATMs have maximum down time and outages in B & C class cities due to power fluctuations. Even the number of machines there are limited and the customers have to travel long distances to avail basic ATM services. If they can manage to run these units for considerable time period based on solar power they are enabling better customer service," he says.

IndusInd's objective is not just to reduce carbon emission but to reduce the production in the first place.

Every single ATM unit is powered by diesel which is not a very environment friendly

fuel. And if the unit runs out of diesel it has to be supported on battery back- up. By using solar power, the production of carbon will be reduced, thereby enabling reduction in the carbon footprint.

But is any adoption free of challenges?

"No. But it is a matter of time by when you tide over these obstacles. There are basic aspects like limited choices in terms of technology and alternatives to enable greener applications. High initial investments with no immediate ROI and long gestation period can be easy deterrents," he says.

"Thus, the bank takes consistent efforts to undertake activities which encourage the stakeholders and members of the wider community to conserve and protect the environment," avers Bhavsar.

In the financial year 2010-11, the bank will be submitting its first Sustainability Report on GRI guidelines.

"The reporting on sustainability performance is an important way for organisations to manage their impact on sustainable development," says Bhavsar.

"Reporting leads to improved sustainable development outcomes because it allows organisations to measure, track, and improve their performance on specific issues," he asserts.

Catalysing By deploying desktop and server virtualisation, Forbes Marshall achieved a cost saving of Rs 50 lacs in just one year 32

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orbes Marshall has been building steam engineering and control instrumentation solutions for over half a century. With 12 business divisions, the company manufactures products that cover the entire spectrum of energy generation and energy efficiency for the process and power industry. Rapid growth in Forbes Marshall has seen a corresponding growth in ICT within the company to speed up process and enable better interconnectedness. But the growth in comunication and networking devices has led to an increase in the

GREEN IT

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UNHEALTHY TREND Global warming not just makes the plant hotter, it also introduces new diseases. Microorganisms such as bacteria multiply faster and more effectively in warmer climatic conditions as compared to cold temperatures. The rise in temperature has led to an increase in disease causing microbes.

Annual Data Center Efficiency Savings for Forbes Marshall:

total energy consumption and carbon-dioxide emission exponentially. By 2008, the company was also facing the challenge of technology obsolescense.

Moved From Old Setup Virtualised "Warranties of lots of old servers were coming to an end. At the Setup same time, there were new requirements of hosting more applicaPUE Level (Power Usage Effectiveness) tions, which meant additional servers," says Sharat Airani, Chief-IT, 2.0 1.50 Systems & Security, Forbes Marshall.

DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure 50% 67% "On the other hand, there was a strong need to secure and protect Efficiency) our Intellectual Property by means of design, drawings and docuElectricity used per Year 1,05,120 kW 78,840kW ments," he says.

Annual Power Cost (@Rs 6/unit ) Rs 6,30,720 Rs 4,73,040 The company felt it was imperitive to increase the space of its data Annual Carbon Footprint 63 Tons 48 Tons centre to accommodate all this, which was practically not an easy task.

Airani decided to go in for virtualisation. This was the first time the word 'virtualisation' was heard in Forbes Marshall.

Annual Data Centre Efficiency Savings "Though it was an accepted concept worldwide, there was appreReduction In Kilowatts of Electricity Costs CO2 Emissions hension within the company for implementing it. Desktop users Electricity were wary of giving up their rights of storing data on their own 1 Year 26,280 kW Rs 3,15,360 32 Tons machines," says Airani.

Nevertheless, Airani went ahead and chose to implement VMWare's virtualisation solution.

"The end result after one of the departments implemented desktop virtualisation was evident.

Server consolidation was achieved in the 13:1 proportion," he says.

"It enabled secure sensitive corporate and customer information and reduced the desktop and server management task. it also helped in reducing the hardware for server and at the same time accommodated all those applications with upcoming project needs," says Airani.

"Besides, there were substantial savings in routine maintenance and support, space, power, and cooling requirements.

We saved approximately Rs 50 lacs in 2009Chief- Sharat Air ani IT, Sys 10.

Today, even the mail server in Forbes tems & Sec urity Marshall is virtual," he says.

"As a a result of our initiatives, our data centre has today become a value centre," adds Airani.

“ e saveW proxi d apRs 50 mately 2009- lacs in even 10. Today serve the ma , r i Marsin Forbels virtuhaall is l.�

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GREEN IT

Paving the to green From transforming its IT infrastructure, embracing new techniques and technologies such as storage virtualisation, to encouraging employees to work from home whenever possible, ACC is continuously making incremental improvements to its Green IT efforts. By Minu Sirsalewala Agarwal

G

iven today’s scenario it is an imperative for organisations from all industry verticals to look at how they can be green or contribute their bit towards the environment by becoming green. ACC limited has ingrained Green in its DNA and is constantly working on initiatives to extend it to its existing plants and offices.

The company headquarters at Cement House in Mumbai is a terrific example of how by retaining the external façade the organisation has still revamped the interiors to adopt green. Generally when we talk about Green IT, it is the data centres and the process centres that are focus areas as it is assumed that this is where the consumption of power is the highest. One sees lot of work done on reducing power consumption by deploying thin clients, optimised air conditioning, lighting, and various other hardware and software initiatives to further reduce carbon footprints.

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METAMORPHOSIS

ACC's corporate headquarters in Mumbai, now almost 70-years old, was transformed into an energy-efficient green building. While retaining the graceful façade, the interior of the building has metamorphosed into a contemporary workplace. In April 2010, Cement House received the Gold Shield from Indian Green Buildings Council in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design under New Construction and Major renovation category. It is the first old building to be awarded Green building status.

GREEN IT

Beyond traditional IT, there is a lot of innovation being done at the office and people level who are the main consumers of power and lighting. ACC went in for a complete redesigning of their headquarters which is now an atrium style open environment office. Prince Azariah, CIO of the company, seated at his open desk – yes, there are no cabins. Even the MD of the company sits in an open environment – shares the benefit of this style of interiors.

PHOTO BY JITEN GANDHI

Managing Power “The foremost is the air-conditioning, which in any organisation is the highest consumer of power as it is on for over 14 hours a day to 24x7 in many other organisations.” The open environment, therefore makes for much more efficient cooling, Azariah says, reducing power consumed.

“The other advantage is better lighting.

There is lot of natural light that comes in,” he says, again reducing the the corresponding power consumption.

A little more innovation that they have done is to sensitise lighting to the human presence. If a certain office area or cubicle is not occupied the light in those areas go off and come up when some human presence is felt. Also the company follows a no light policy after 6 pm in the evening and makes use of personal lights fitted at all terminals if an employee needs to work late. “We totally discourage late working hours and also encourage work from home if possible,” says Azariah.

Currently 20 percent of the power consumed is solar generated. ACC has deployed solar panels on the roof top which contributes nearly 20 percent of the total power generated in the building. The server room too consumes large part of its power from the solar set up. Other than the physical initiatives there is a bit on the applications front.

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“Green also means to be safe because if your initiatives will inconvenience your staff or result in accidents then it does not serve the purpose,” Prince Azariah CIO, ACC

There is a video conferencing solution in every meeting room and at each location, be it a plant or an office across the country.

Employee travel is discouraged as far as possible, to the extent that trainings for all mid management and senior management too is done over video conferencing. “For example most of our SAP trainings currently are over video conferencing across locations.” Though Azariah does not see much value in VoIP and other unified communication applications, they will not deter in implementing applications that will aid employee interaction and enhance efficiency. Though thin clients are one of the measures to reduce power consumption and adopted by many for greener environment, Azariah has not had a very pleasant experience with it at his previous work place and has gone in just for plain flat screens which consume at least 60-70 percent less power than his old systems.

The company is also going in for Windows 7, which will further enable reduced power consumption.

On being questioned on the disposing policy on the replacement of nearly 2000 old desktops, Azariah shared that they handed over the systems to an e-waste company.

They also work with NGOs and schools with similar requirements.

ACC follows a ‘don’t touch’ strategy whereby they are automating as many processes as they can. “Green also means to be safe because if your initiatives will inconve-

nience your staff or result in accidents then it does not serve the purpose,” Azariah points out.

The cement business is not a very clean business for the environment but the group does its bit to give back to the environment.

There is high consumption of fuel such as coal and the group encourages use of alternative fuels such as factory waste, gas which is in abundance and also better priced, he says. As they own mines they have good gas reserves which are more economical and efficient. This has enabled in reducing their carbon footprint.

Green IT for ACC is a serious concern which is evident from a mere fact that 50 percent of Prince Azariah’s KRA is CSR. This also shows the involvement of the Board as when CSR becomes a part of your top managements KRA then the responsibility also trickles to the departments at all levels. Also, these Green initiatives are not limited by IT budgets of the group and are taken up purely on need basis.

Azariah, whose key result areas include a strong dose of corporate social responsibility, hasn't neglected the conventional IT infrastructure either: He's sought increased efficiency by exploiting technologies such as storage virtualisation, and even moving the CRM onto the cloud. The group does not measure any ROI on green implementations and believes that the savings made and benefits accrued are motivations to do more.

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GREEN IT

Making a From offering to pay as much as 50 percent of employees commuting costs to getting experts on sustainable practices to holding interactive sessions at the company, Sasken seeks to encourage the idea that the net result of a concerted effort can be greater than just the sum of the individual initiatives. By Harichandan Arakali

W

and internalised by its employees, Sasken's internal communications team regularly works on reminding everyone about the importance of every individual role.

Some of the areas in which Sasken is trying to effect change are as follows: Training: As part of the induction programme on the day of joining, every employee is walked through a presentation where the importance that Sasken as an organisation, gives to the environment, is emphasised. This presentation involves tips on how he or she can complement what the rest of the organisation is doing on a daily basis. Also, it tells the employees how to optimally use the facilities that have been provided.

‘Prakruti’ Community: A group of 20 people constitute the Prakruti Community.

The group constitutes key stakeholders from the IT, Facilities and Marketing (from a communications perspective) teams who focus on specific environment centric activities and how we can become more sustainable. The team is constantly involved in conceiving innovative ways in which the organiGV CTO, Saske enkatesh sation can move towards creating a nC Techn ommunic healthier environment. ation ologie s Also, Sasken hosts the ‘Prakruti Mela’, during which it invites environment-friendly product vendors to its facilities in Bangalore and

e at Sasken are constantly looking for ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprint,” says G. Venkatesh, the company's chief technology officer. “Every employee’s initiative really adds up in the long run,” he says.

The Bangalore headquartered communications software company is initiating various go-green programmes at its various offices in India and overseas. In order to ensure that management’s commitment toward environmentally sustainable practices are understood

“We are cat Saske lookin onstan n which g for wa tly reduc we can ys in e ur c carboan footo print. n ”

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GREEN IT

COVE R S TO RY

organise a fair. Besides, the team organises a month long ‘Save The Environment’ campaign, where each week of the month is dedicated to one of the following organisation-wide iniThe HP researchers have shown that a farm of 10,000 dairy cows could generate 1MW tiatives: Save water; Save paper; Save of electricity, enough to power a typical modern data centre and still support other food; Save power. needs on the farm. Heat generated by a data centre could also be used to more efficiently The Prakruti Team also ensures that process the animal waste and thus increase methane production. This symbiotic relationship the importance of sustainability is reiterwould help addressthe dual challenge of reducing farm pollution and making data centres ated through events and talks that they more enviromentally sustainable. make happen at our facilities. During Source HP these events, eminent personalities in the domain visit the company for talks and interactive sessions. “Recently, we hosted an event in association with a biker’s club to encourage cycling to work,” Venkatesh said. “It is both environment friendly and good for health.”

Transportation: The company provides employees with the option of using transportation provided by the organisation, at a subsidised price (50 percent of the cost is picked up

by Sasken). This goes a long way in reducing their carbon footprint since it avoids the use of individual vehicles Despite the efficiency in delivering compute resources, the use for hundreds of people, Venkatesh said. of Blade servers translated to increased density and thereby higher Conservation of Paper: Sasken has programmes within the compower consumption per square foot. To overcome this, Sasken inipany to ensure paper conservation / reduction in paper consumptiated a shift to virtualisation of all its servers, storage and backup tion and recycling of paper. Some ways they accomplish this is by infrastructure. implementing the default duplex print option on our printers a Among its achievements so far via this initiative are the following: simple yet effective means to nearly halve paper consumption. All Reduction of 140 physical servers to 42 physical servers, thereby their printers are password protected. It avoids accidental prints and reducing the energy consumption per day. The rest of the servers avoids unnecessary wastage of paper. were converted into virtual servers.

Conservation of Water: Sasken was one of the first companies Total Rack space requirement reduced by 6 times, which effecto own and operate an Effluent Treatment Plant, which allows it tively means less square foot area for the data centre and there by to purify and recycle water for use in its gardens. It also follows reduced consumption per square foot. segregation of waste.

During late 2010, Sasken actively worked on redesigning its tenConservation of Power: Employees do their – they switch year-old data centre to bring in further reduction in carbon foot off PCs and office lighting when not in use. Sasken is moving print. With the newer compact data centre, Sasken is able to achieve towards CFL lighting systems and some facilities have reached a 833Kwh saving per day on its data centre cooling systems and 100 percent switch over. The company is also migrating towards 577Kwh saving per day on the server consumption.

Energy efficient LCD monitors.

Every Effort Counts: While challenges have not been many to The Sasken Corporate Headquarters in Bangalore is an example of implementing various green initiatives, given the management the use of natural light to the maximum. It has an open garden at its took a proactive stand, the company can never slacken on its effort centre, an attraction in its own right. Many cubes do not even need to get each and every employee to value his or her action in order lights till after 6pm, according to Sasken. Double glazed windows to obtain a larger goal. Understanding (by every individual) the reduce the power needed to cool the workspaces too. real value of each action – avoiding printing a sheet, for instance, While air conditioning is switched on throughout the standard or using the hot blower in the rest room as opposed to the paper business hours, it's switched off at 6pm, unless required in specific napkins is something the company is still trying to work on. In areas of the facilities. addition, “we wish they practise these environmentally conscious Data Centre: With increase in demand for compute power, storage actions both at home and at work and they do not hesitate in and consolidation exercises, Sasken began moving towards Blade educating others to follow suit,” Venkatesh says. Sasken has also servers during early 2007. With this, it aimed to achieve reduction in recieved the ISO:14001 certification. data centre power consumption and its performance.

SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP

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ILLUSTRATION BY JAYAN K NARAYANAN

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Pervasive Connectivity and Social Media Our practices must be revised to reflect this new landscape.

BY ROBERT GEZELTER

ervasive communication is more than a convenience; the societal landscape has been significantly altered by pervasive connectivity and the resultant availability of information.

Our practices must correspondingly be revised to reflect this new landscape. The pervasiveness of wireless communication has reached the threshold where the integrity of jury trials is at risk.

A delicate balance needs to be struck.

Disconnecting jurors from the outside world is often no longer feasible. Jurors need to communicate with the outside world to maintain their normal personal and work lives: children must go to school, bills must be paid, and families must coordinate activities. It is the concomitant ready accessibility of information that poses a challenge to the courts. The availability of external information, beyond that vetted through the court process, can easily undermine the integrity of a trial. The World Wide Web and mobile apps provide ready, almost frictionless access to large volumes of seemingly useful information.

Herein lays the basic challenge.

Social networking adds new dimensions THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Kansas), and the Honourable Ron Hedges to that challenge. The two way communica(former United States Magistrate Judge). tions inherent in social media permit inforIn his remarks, Judge Sweeney expressed mation to leak from trials with unpredicthis concerns about the intersection between able consequences to all: including jurors, mass adoption of wireless communicaplaintiffs, and defendants. Some of the tions and the Internet with the need for the resulting leaks are naive; others represent courts to ensure fair and orderly trials. His unconsidered or deliberate misconduct. In concerns embraced several areas: wireless addition to breaking the confidentiality of communications, Internet research, and the jury process and causing contamination social media postings that indicate prejuof the result, jurors may be inadvertently dice or allow side communications between exposing both themselves and their fellow groups of jurors, communications about jurors to unconsidered dangers. cases in progress with outsiders, or discloIt has been said that “once three know sure of information relating to deliberaa secret, it is no longer a secret”. A recent tions in progress to outside parties through panel discussion raised the question of micro-blogging. Judge Sweeney was rightly whether prospective jurors should be concerned that appropriate means are asked to provide the contents of their social network postings during voir dire.

This question raises a number of collateral questions on how best to balance various privacy interests with the Constitutional right to a fair trial. It is yet another case of how social media has blurred the line between private and public.

Social media has blurred dividing lines: both public/private and ephemeral/permanent. The dividing line between private personal thoughts written in a diary and public pronouncements used to be clear; yet many now post micro-blog entries with needed to ensure that our system of justice abandon. Even when these are in a forum retains its integrity and avoids distortion. with somewhat controlled readership, they These remarks were in line with an article are public, or at least potentially public. An he recently authored for the Journal of the ephemeral comment made on a telephone Maryland Bar Association. call is normally private, the same sent as a Online research by jurors presents a chalSMS text message may be far more easily lenge. Jurors have always brought their life retrieved later. Celebrities and others have experiences into the jury box; that is to be found to their chagrin that even private calls expected. Specific knowledge of the case and conversations can be recorded. is another matter entirely. In large cities, The mass public adoption of these techwe lose sight of the fact that the venue of a nologies presents a challenge for the courts, case may be unavoidably familiar to jurors; particularly when it comes to assuring but jurors are expressly instructed not to the integrity of jury trials. The other day, use references that have not I attended “Why the Legal been presented during the Industry Needs to Change trial. However, the pervasive and Embrace Technology,” nature of the web and access a panel discussion at ALM's through wireless devices has LegalTech 2011 conference in COMPANIES WILL vastly reduced the effort to New York City. The panel was

dane question to forego an action that seems as natural and automatic as breathing?

There is a huge volume of information on the World Wide Web. However, availability is no guarantor of quality, accuracy, or correctness. There is a real danger that a miscarriage of justice could result from such un-vetted outside research. Some data is inaccurate due to politics (e.g., neoNazi); other data has been determined to be fraudulent (e.g. MMR vaccine connection to juvenile autism). Introduced at trial, such information is subject to challenge or rebuttal, often outside of the jury's view. Done exofficio, it can poison the result without challenge. The problem goes beyond the overtly inaccurate. Even services of generally high

Online research by jurors presents a challenge. Jurors have always brought their life experiences into the jury box; that is to be expected.

50%

composed of three jurists, the Honorable Dennis M. Sweeney (Circuit Court for Howard County, Maryland, retired), the Honourable David J. Waxse (US District Court, District of

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do external research, which is now a mere key click away.

How does one convince those whose everyday routine naturally involves using Internet to research for the most mun-

quality (e.g. Google Maps, AOL Mapquest) inevitably contain errors, particular when data has changed (e.g. road construction) or out-of-date (e.g., Google StreetView).

Detecting prejudice has similarly always been a challenge. Some people are openly prejudiced for one side or another (“all defendants are guilty”, “cops always lie”).

Yet, prejudice is often far more subtle. Ferreting out prejudices of prospective jurors has, and likely will, always be a challenge.

Judge Sweeney mused whether the time has come for the voir dire interview of prospective jurors to include questions about social media pages, including routine requests to login and allow judges, attorneys, and parties to view social media pages (e.g., FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn). Should this be in open court, or with a more limited audience? Obviously, this question is not limited to one particular social media site, all such sites would be considered relevant.

What about dating sites? If a juror is found to have been less than completely forthcoming, is that grounds for mistrial?

SOCIAL MEDIA

Clearly, these questions have many facets, each with its own problems. Much of this material is not intended for viewing outside of its intended audience. Many make a variety of comments about employers, organisations, and others. Sometimes this is serious, other times it is intended to be jocular. There is a difference between complaining around the water cooler and publishing a negative article.

Regrettably, social media easily bridges the gap between the two, making permanently

public that which was private and ephemeral.

Also, what about guilt by association? Like many, my networks include a wide variety of extended family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances spanning a wide range of persuasions. Should I be judged by the anarchist who is in my network because we were classmates in high school? Should I be judged by the professional colleague who is on the extreme other side of the political spectrum?

This is an unexplored territory that sits

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between the private and the public. Striking a balance between these competing interests is as crucial as it is a delicate multi-way balancing act between competing interests and concerns. Identifying a correct balance between these competing concerns is crucial to ensuring the integrity of our juries.

—This article is published with prior permission from www.infosecisland.com

In 2011 Go Mobile or Go Home

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In 2011, if you don't advance your mobile strategy, you competitors will.

BY ASHOK VEMURI

iz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, recently spoke at one of our conferences. According to Biz, he and his team first knew they had something at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX. His friends were using an early version of the micro-blogging service to let one another know what bars they were moving to – usually hopping from an over-crowded bar to one with more space. However, as they moved from bar to bar the tweeting crowd would continually follow them. Their coordinating tweets were also broadcasting to the larger group where the party was, word would digitally and physically spread, and … Eureka!

While listening I couldn’t help but shake my head a bit in awe.

Twitter didn’t exist five short years ago and this simple service is now top-of-mind for many business and technology executives – for good reason, too. Twitter is one in a series of social networking innovations over the last decade that are rapidly redefining the customer experience.

The social networking supernova has changed the way each and every one of us shop, research, and share.

Social networking is not the only force driving change in today’s marketplace. The mobile is global, and the emergence of computing power on-demand is gradually shifting the way the business world approaches information technology. Technology and the consumer preferences tied to technology are rapidly evolving and those who fail to master this digital dance with consumers will find themselves in a nose dive toward liquidation (a la Blockbuster).

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MOBILE

ABI Research recently estimated that the mobile commerce market reached $4.9 billion in 2010 – big, but still a small slice of the $150 billion-plus e-commerce pie.

What follows is a look at the three trends that will come to a head in 2011, as well as New Year’s Resolutions to kick-start your organisation’s technology strategy for the new decade.

Learn from the retailer/banker/mobile carrier across the street; they’ll soon be your competitors - Industry lines are becoming increasingly blurred. Walmart has moved aggressively into the financial services space by opening 1000 money centres and acquiring a stake in Green Dot. In the with no initiation fees or monthly minimums.

UK, Tesco has opened six bank branches and has While currently only a niche offering, Square’s technology has launched Tesco Mobile, a mobile virtual network that runs on O2’s legs. Larger merchants may be attracted to Square in certain situinfrastructure. A consortium of telecom companies in Canada has ations – allowing the start-up to gain a significant foothold in the banded together to launch Zoompass, a mobile payments venture. $40 billion credit card processing industry. That sound you hear? ...

With the Kindle, Amazon has aggressively staked its claim as a perWarning bells going off in the heads of credit card processing execusonal technology player. tives across the US Larger, big-box retailers should be concerned, as In general, such moves are made to gain further control of the well. Square potentially provides a new level of freedom and interaccustomer experience. Walmart and Tesco see an opportunity to attain tion for smaller merchants. end-to-end control of the customer profile and wallet. The Zoompass Mobility is at the forefront of innovation. Many non-traditional consortium sees an opportunity to take control of the future of paycompetitors will emerge, as Paypal and Amazon did in the online ments. For incumbent CIOs, the challenge is matching up with a world, by cleverly exploiting the mobile channel. For CIOs, the key competitor that brings an entirely different technology footprint to is not to bring a knife to a gunfight. The business case is easy: Invest the table. Consider the movement of retailers into banking: in mobile or get left behind. n Retailers know their customer relatively well, having invested Take “front-end” lessons from the new guys - Consumers are significantly in analytics capabilities. spoiled. The iPad and iPod, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Amazon.com n Retailers lack a legacy core banking system, and will have the and Facebook all have served to set expectations of digital conveadvantage of starting from scratch. nience, simplicity, and user-friendliness. Increasingly, start-ups and n Retailers have the opportunity to cross-sell banking services at other non-traditional competitors are leveraging user-friendly busithe point-of-sale. ness models coupled with technologically advanced front-ends to Retailers will be moving into a heavily regulated industry and grab market share or mindshare. must develop the compliance processes and systems necessary to Mint.com and BankSimple in the financial services space, Skype comply with regulatory requirements. in the telecommunications industry, and Gilt Groupe in the retail As a bank CIO, it now becomes critical to ask, “How do I shore up space are all examples of this approach. Many of these (BankSimple, my perceived weaknesses?” A retailer moving into banking has the for example) were created to address customer pain points that have technological advantage of starting from scratch. It also knows its plagued traditional industry players for years. customers well and has unique cross-selling capabilities. There are For CIOs this is a fantastic opportunity. Such start-ups represent a moves a bank CIO can make. For example, by investing in advanced chance to look in the mirror and really understand where your technology analytics capabilities, a bank can better understand its customers’ may be lacking. As consumers increasingly depend on the online and needs and wants; improving cross-selling capabilities and enhancmobile channels, these weaknesses can become company crippling. ing the overall customer experience.

This year kicks off a decade that will undoubtedly be driven by Entrench your organisation into the mobile commerce econew levels of technological evolution. Customers demand digital system - ABI Research recently estimated that the mobile commerce excellence and innovation. Those who succeed in delivering an market reached $4.9 billion in 2010 – big, but still a small slice of the unmatched customer experience will also likely suc$150 billion-plus e-commerce pie. The year 2011 will see ceed in gaining control of the market. a massive surge forward in "m-commerce" (mobile comProactive CIO’s will be to learn from non-tradimerce) adoption by consumers. For traditional industry tional competitors and gain a foothold in the mobile players this is both an opportunity and a threat. marketplace.

Consider Square, a start-up launched by another OF THE GLOBAL Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Square is an electronic —Ashok Vemuri is SVP and Global Head, Banking and

10.6%

payment service which allows users to accept credit card payments through their mobile phones. For merchants, Square is a blessing. Card processing is expensive and often not an option for many merchants (for example, street vendors or those selling produce in a farmer’s market). Square provides card processing “on-the-go”

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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

MOBILE USER BASE

Capital Markets - Strategic Global Sourcing for Infosys

WILL BE MOBILE

Technologies overseeing all US operations. He is also a

E-MAIL USERS BY 2014: GARTNER

member of the Board of Infosys Consulting, Inc. —This article appears courtesy www.cioupdate.com. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit CIOUpdate.com.

M A N AG E M E N T

NEXT HORIZONS

Eight Growth Opportunities for High Tech Firms While focused on high-tech, these findings can be applied by any company competing globally.

BY HANS VON LEWINSKI AND ARMEN OVANESSOFF

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lobal operations within electronics and high-tech firms offer a wealth of growth opportunities that can accelerate firms towards high performance. Accenture arrives at this conclusion based on new research, The Future of Electronics and High Tech, that polled COOs and other executives from companies in the enterprise, communi­cations and consumer technology industries that have operations in Asia, Europe, and North and South America.

The term “global operations” covers an expansive but critical set of capabilities that support the business strategy and value chain of a company. These include talent management, information technology, customer relationships, supply chain, organisational processes, leadership and culture. Decisions regarding the way these capabilities are deployed around the world have direct consequences on the health and vitality of a company; how they are able to deliver the current strategy; and how well prepared they are for the future.

1

Identifying Competitive Essence

One of the most basic tasks a firm can endeavour upon is to identify and bring to life its “competitive essence.” In determining this, a firm needs to make choices and realistic assessments about what its most important differentiating qualities and capabilities are. A company needs to objectively ask itself

what it does better than others and then deliver on its distinctive value propositions.

A firm’s competitive essence should be an idea, a vision, an inspiring rallying cry that everyone – employees, customers and collabor­ators – can understand easily and that is difficult for competitors to imitate. A firm’s competitive essence should act as a magnetic pole that guides operational decision making, helping to evaluate choices and trade-offs in a way that remains true to the company’s strategic direction. The accumulation of these operational decisions dictates the shape of the

international operating model; the guidance of its competitive essence verifies that investments are prioritised effectively.

Competitive essence may sound like a familiar and intuitive concept, but it’s surprising how few companies are able to drive this essence across the breadth and depth of their operations, let alone remain focused on competitive essence during times of serious market change. Those that do so improve their chances of achieving high-performance.

Most executives we interviewed for our survey (76 percent) believe their global operations THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

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are geared towards delivering something distinctive to customers; a competitive essence.

Most (77 percent) also agree their boards are aligned with that definition but few are satisfied with how their operating model is positioned to bring their competitive essence to life in a way that leads to high performance.

As previously noted, less than one fifth (17 percent) believe they are capitalising on their international expansion. The conversion of a clear and differentiating competitive essence into business results is getting lost in the translation.

There are, of course, exceptions to this general rule: Companies such as Apple, Cisco, and Huawei are examples of such exceptions.

Each has distinct value propositions and well-

tunities during the next few years. But in an environment of continued uncertainty and change, they are searching for guidance on how to prioritise their investments to attain these opportunities.

One smart way to begin is by using diagnostic tools that assess the overall health of your firm’s global operations. By applying such tools to its existing operating model, a company can gain deep insights into what capabilities it needs to attain operational excellence, the shortcomings it should address, and the business benefits of doing so.

The application of diagnostic tools can reveal to a firm, for example, that they need to re-prioritise their investments in areas such as supply chain or talent

The application of diagnostic tools can reveal to a firm, for example, that they need to re-prioritise their investments in areas such as supply chain or talent management. defined competitive essences. Because of this, each ranks among some of the industry’s most revered and highest performing firms.

A firm’s competitive essence should drive operating model decisions, and there needs to be flexibility in how these decisions are made. As their competitive and technology environments continue to evolve, firms need to adapt their operating models more frequently to ensure they are organised for success. Yet only 21 percent of our survey respondents strongly agreed they are well positioned to respond rapidly and effectively to changes in the global market. Therefore, it’s imperative to build flexibility across the entire operating model; across management technologies and processes, organisational structures, people and leadership.

All this must be done while remaining true to competitive essence. This is not an easy feat. But stagnation is a losing proposition in this industry.

2

Using Diagnostic Tools

Industry executives know that global operations offer a treasure-chest of oppor-

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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

management. These assessments can help firms identify where and how to align their investments with their competitive essence. Using these tools, opportunities can be identified in many parts of the organisation whether in design, sales, leadership, performance management or human resources. The key to the success of such diagnostics is their ability to offer new investment choices without negatively impacting performance.

n Only 7 percent indicated that building flexible and efficient IT systems to enable relationships inside and outside their firm was a focus for driving operating model decisions during the downturn, even though 60 percent of respondents agreed that doing so had grown in importance through that period; n Less than one quarter said they are using open-source innovation or crowd sourcing. Likewise, less than one quarter said they are harnessing virtual or mobile platforms. Only 14 percent are using cloud technologies; and n Sixty-four percent of those interviewed cited “poor global integration of systems and data” as the main reason why their corporate systems need improvement.

Clearly, new technology solutions offer a range of opportunities to improve global operations and gear them towards growth.

Cloud computing, for example, provides an on-demand Internet based technology, lowers infrastructure, maintenance and energy costs, provides access to capacity on-demand, increases network capacity, and provides capacity to customers faster.

Our survey suggests that electronics and high-tech firms are not yet gasping these opportunities.

4

Innovating New Products and Services

Innovation is a key activity that the operating models of electronics and high-tech companies must support. More than 80 percent of respondents said the imperative of innovating new products and services has increased in importance since the downturn. In fact, it is now on par with growing global market share. As such, decisions that improve the ways in which innovation activities are structured and executed are critical opportunities Leveraging Technologies for competitive advantage.

We learned that informaBy focusing on their intertion technology is widely connational operating models, sidered to be a weakness in the firms can confirm they have global operations of electronics the global capabilities necesand high-tech companies. The sary for rapid and interconresearch exposed that: ORGANISATIONS nected innovation across n Only 1-in-5 (21 percent) the world. Successful firms respondents were very confiHAVE A POOR realise that their global footdent in the capability of their GLOBAL print can be leveraged to build current IT systems to supINTEGRATION OF globally distributed innovaport their global operations, tion networks. although 70 percent said IT is SYSTEMS AND DATA These networks can bring critical to do so;

3

64%

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The best firms tend to have the best global talent generating exciting new ideas for use around the firm and participating on projects globally.

new and varied perspectives from the most innovative talent around the world. In addition, surveyed executives said innovation was not just about new products and services but also business models. More specifically, respondents told us shifting from selling products and services to offering full solutions formed a key imperative.

Improving the speed to market of new innovations also emerged as a critical imperative driving operating model decisions. When asked about the top three strategic imperatives that drive decisions about their firm’s operating models, the highest percentage, 57 percent, identified the development of more innovative products and services to meet customers’ needs.

5

Leadership in Investing

Our research found that leadership and culture provide important levers for improvement in global operations. Three in five companies (60 percent) rely most on leadership, people and culture to adapt to changes in the global market. But almost the same proportion (57 percent) said leadership, people and culture are the greatest obstacles preventing firms from adapting to changes in the global market.

There is a strong understanding of the importance that leadership and culture play in achieving high performance global operations, both as potential enablers and as potential obstacles. Many benefits of investments in leadership and culture accrue in the mid-long term, but in an uncertain business environment, these investments can take on new importance.

6

Focusing on Global Talent Management

While virtually all companies say they currently are seeking low-cost talent, 33 percent told us they are not actively recruiting highly skilled talent abroad. A similar number are not actively seeking new locations to source talent for innovation. In fact, only 10 percent of survey respondents say finding new locations to source talent for innovation is a key driver of their operating model decisions.

Yet, with more than half of companies telling us that developing and managing human capital is a highly important activity, executives clearly understand the need to do better.

The best firms tend to have the best global talent generating exciting new ideas for use around the firm and participating on projects globally. This philosophy serves as the backbone for their entire operating model.

7

Forming more partnerships and networks with customers

Accenture’s survey results suggest that coping with rapid technology change, new competitors, and more diverse customers increasingly requires a focus on external networks and partner­ships. Ninety percent of firms said enhancing partnerships and networks with customers formed a major imperative coming out of the downturn – an even higher percentage than those who highlighted the importance of cutting costs.

Building and improving these partnerships and networks with customers is one of the top operational imperatives that drive decisions around firms’ global operating models.

Firms such as Cisco and EMC have shown that choices around partnerships and networks are as operational as they are strategic, requiring a firm-wide focus on external collaborations to better serve customers, grasp new opportunities, and more effectively manage risk.

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tunities for firms in the global operations arena. According to our research, 89 percent of respondents will show growth in at least one aspect of their operations within emerging markets. Respondents most often cited manufacturing, marketing and sales, and sourcing as growth activities in emerging markets. Research and development was also chosen as an activity that will show growth in emerging markets.

However, operating in emerging markets is often more difficult than many firms expect, and requires new and different ways of organising processes, people and assets.

Many activities can be adapted locally within broad frameworks set by headquarters. The challenge, though, is identifying which activities should be customised for local or regional markets, and which should be centralised or outsourced to reap efficiencies.

Winning companies make these decisions with both their competitive essence and the customer experience firmly in mind.

Final thoughts Beginning now, firms in this industry should look hard at whether their operating models successfully support their competitive essence. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before investments go astray, veering from the company’s true strategic course and the fulfilment of its value proposition to customers.

They specifically need to reassess the readiness of their IT and talent for meeting the imperatives of tomorrow. Too many companies are undervaluing these critical levers, which provide the mechanisms to generate and spread new ideas, and provide the connection points between the company and its ecosystem of partners, suppliers and customers. The path to high performance requires these actions now.

—Hans von Lewinski is a managing director with Accenture's Asia Pacific Electronics and High-Tech industry group. He can be reached at hans.von.lewinski@accenture.com.

Armen Ovanessoff is a Senior Research Fellow in Accenture’s Institute for High Performance.

He can be reached at armen.ovanessoff@accenture.com .

Capitalising on emerging markets

Emerging markets offer outstanding oppor-

—This article appears courtesy www.cioupdate. com. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit CIOUpdate.com.

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T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE

SOCIAL MEDIA

5

POINTS

ILLUSTRATION BY ANIL T

ASSESS THE dangers EMBRACE AND respond to mobility, social media trends DISTINGUISH BETWEEN what is available on mobile devices versus what can be accessed from a secure location INSTILL RISK awareness in the organisation IT IS also important to set the right tone – from the top

Social Media at Work:

Balancing Risks And Rewards

Mobile workforce has endless ways to connect with colleagues, customers and clients. But at what risk?

BY JOSE GRANADO AND CHIP TSANTES

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THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

SOCIAL MEDIA

Joe, a sales executive at a

professional services firm, decided to walk back to the office after a meeting. The meeting with his target client went well – so well he felt sure that he had secured the business. He pulled out his mobile device to update his social networking status. "Walking down 5th Ave. On my way back to the office. Great meeting with potential client."

Across town, Martin, who works at a competing professional services firm, was taking a break from his busy morning and logged into a social networking site on his laptop.

Seeing the post, Martin knew exactly who Joe had been meeting with that morning.

Martin picked up the phone and scheduled a meeting of his own. Soon after, Martin had secured the new business, leaving Joe to wonder how such a good opportunity had slipped through his fingers.

Assessing the dangers

Your company can establish barriers that severely limit the embrace of mobility, networking, blogs, wikis, tweets and other forms of user-generated, content. But, in doing so, you not only discourage creativity, you also forfeit opportunities for breakthroughs in collaborative capability and overall performance. The failure to embrace mobility and networking can leave your business at a significant disadvantage relative to your peers.

Embrace and respond to mobility, social media trends

Companies recognise that anywhere/any time It will behove you and your organisation to access presents enormous opportunities to recognise that mobility and social media are improve customer relationships, boost sales here to stay. Instead of banning mobile devicand accelerate growth. But there are also risks es and social networking sites at work, you in terms of data access and data leakage. The can mitigate the risks by simultaneously takrise of social media heightens the risk that ing steps to safeguard your company's most corporate strategies, new product developcritical access points and information assets, ment or other sensitive information could be while creating a culture of risk awareness and inadvertently – or intentionally – shared with compliance. The first step is to identify the key competitors or other inappropriate counteraccess points that must be secured. These will parties. Employees may also harm the busimost likely be associated with access to primaness and its brand though simple association, ry information assets such as intellectual propuploading inappropriate comments or other erty, customer lists or corporate email traffic. content in their personal lives that is perceived Once these are identified, you can implement to reflect on the company. a data leakage prevention program. On the Ernst & Young's 2010 Global process front, your organisaInformation Security Survey tion should make a distinction found that 60% of organisations between what is available on perceive an increase in the level mobile devices versus what can of risk they face due to social netbe accessed from a secure locaORGANISATIONS working, cloud computing and tion. The right people should be

60%

the use of personal devices. In truth, given these new technologies and practices, such risks can include "Joe's"minor lapse in judgement or a truly severe enterprise security breach.

PERCEIVE INCREASED RISK DUE TO SOCIAL NETWORKING

permitted to obtain the data they need where and when they need it without unnecessarily exposing themselves to any data risk.

Next, access to sensitive data, mobile or otherwise, should be

T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE

restricted on a "need to access" basis. You'll want to establish protocols requiring that data stewards be notified of access to critical data.

In terms of your people, those with access to sensitive information should be well briefed about the reasons data security is essential, as well as educated about the basics. Implement processes to develop awareness and ensure compliance with security requirements.

As for technology, it's worth evaluating the full range of data leakage prevention tools.

Such tools include firewalls and related intrusion prevention software, data encryption and products that inspect content while it's in transit or at rest. As it relates to mobility, remote wiping devices and the ability to quickly disable access are two essential measures to limit the damage of a lost or stolen device. The best companies will also be proactive, seeking to detect and mitigate minor issues before they become major incidents.

Instilling risk awareness Encourage your enterprise to develop a collective understanding of the nature of informational and 'reputational' risk – and gain employee support to help identify, manage and control that risk. Provide awareness training for staff at all levels about the overall risks of networking and mobility. Those employees working in areas of particular vulnerability, whether to information assets or corporate reputation, need especially focused training.

It is also important to set the right tone – from the top. As CIO, you – along with other key members of your company's senior management team – should champion mobility and networking. Serving as a role model, your daily routine should provide guidance as to appropriate mobile and networking behaviour.

Companies that blend the latest security and privacy controls with a culture of risk awareness have the best chance of success in finding a middle ground that balances the risks and rewards.

—Jose Granado is a Principal and the America's Practice Leader for Information Security Services within Ernst & Young. George "Chip" Tsantes is a Principal at Ernst & Young LLP's Financial Services Office within the Information Technology Advisory Services group. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP. —This article was first published in the CIO Insight.

For more stories please visit www.cioinsight.com

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NO HOLDS BARRE D

T H I RU VE N GA DA M

Cloud in Enterprise

Far From Reality From being SAP’s first employee in India to taking over as Managing Director of IFS Solutions India, Thiru Vengadam has traversed a long distance in his 23-year professional career. In his first media interaction after joining IFS, Vengadam talks to Yashvendra Singh about his plans for the company.

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How is IFS doing globally and in India?

We are doing well globally. For the period January-December, 2010, IFS reported net revenue at SKr (Swedish Krona) 2.59 billion.

Worldwide, we have a strong base of 2,000 customers. In India, we are focused on the three verticals of Aerospace, Energy and Utility, and Engineering. We have 35 customers in these verticals in India. All three verticals are witnessing exponential growth. Aerospace, for instance, is growing at 300-400 percent. The ERP market in India is, therefore, poised for growth. In 2010, the ERP market, which included software application, implementation maintenance services, and the related hardware, was pegged at $2 billion and I think NASSCOM has projected a growth of 21 percent.

T H I RU VE N GA DA M

But the verticals you are targeting would already have high levels of ERP deployment?

It is just the opposite. Companies have standalone systems, not ERP. We are trying to integrate all of that into a single integrated ERP system.

You will be surprised to know the findings of our recently conducted survey. According to it, there are about 45 power generation companies in India, and only three have ERP. Why should a CIO look at IFS where there is Oracle and SAP? Businesses can gain speed and agility by deploying our applications. A CIO’s mandate is to look for applications and IT infrastructure that lead to growth. Our product offers everything in one application. IFS Applications is a single, integrated product supporting the management of core processes like service and asset, manufacturing, projects and supply chain. Combined with software for critical business processes such as financials and HR, it comes across as a complete ERP solution. Besides, our applications have lower cost of ownership. However, it is not just the price that customers come to us.

They deploy IFS because of functionality, fitment, technology and ability of the application. The other advantage is the application architecture.

It is easy to deploy. You can deploy it on the internet on local area network.

Some of the large ERPs are complex.

If the application is complex, it will take more time to deploy, configure, and train people.

Give an instance where you have bagged a project where other MNCs were in fray.

There is a defence project, which I can’t reveal because of its secret nature. But we have successfully done a Proof-of-Concept, which the other two large players could not.

They have now withdrawn from the race. It is generally seen that despite other well-entrenched payers like SAP and Oracle, whenever

someone does an analysis they find our product better and closer to what they require. We ensure flexibility in deployments as per our customer’s requirements. For instance, the deployment in HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd) is different from that in NHPC (National Hydroelectric Power Corporation).

So tell me how are the two deployments at HAL and NHPC different from each other?

HAL has 29 divisions. Deployments in such sites are complex because the locations are scattered. In HAL, therefore, we have our applications running in a distributed environment. Every location has a server with our ERP running, while at the corporate level there is consolidated information. HAL has 10,000 IFS installations. At NHPC, in contrast, we have done a centralised implementation.

While NHPC also has 32 locations, they are in hilly areas and the company lacks infrastructure to maintain these facilities. In such a scenario, we have deployed the main server at the corporate office and given access to other locations through the Internet.

People in other locations just have a front-end device.

With cloud computing gaining traction, why would a CIO want to incur a huge capex?

We believe the larger companies may not go for cloud for at least the next five years. They can invest and they would want to keep things under their control. The scenario when large companies stop buying software is still years away, and by that time newer delivery mechanisms would have come up. Companies in future will have access to larger markets, and we can go into markets we are not addressing now. It will be additional revenue for us.

A major challenge for a CIO is to avoid information stagnating in data silos. How does IFS prevent such a situation?

NO HOLDS BARRE D

IFS Applications is built on the principle of open architecture, allowing other applications to access information and invoke functionality. Total solution integration ensures free flow of information whatever combination of software one uses. Both the services layer and application core are accessible to other applications and environments through IFS’ access providers for .NET, and Java or through SOAP. This allows any activity or service in IFS Applications to be invoked as a web service.

Technology trends are changing fast. By the time a product is launched, customer requirements have changed. How have you aligned yourself with this reality?

We have realised this change. Today, IFS Applications is developed in close collaboration with our customers.

We have opened our R&D to customers. Regular feedbacks and relatively small-scale releases mean that we get the functionality right, the quality is high, deliveries are fast, and we can control roll-out much better.

This approach has enabled us to cut our work-in-progress by 60 percent, increase our delivery rate by a factor of 10, and greatly enhanced quality. The time and money saved is being further invested in making the process even more agile and more efficient.

How are you expanding the market for yourself?

Presently, all enterprises in India use ERP from one or the other multi-national vendor. Local suppliers will be eliminated from the market. We have been trying to create an ecosystem like other MNCs, in the market for much longer, have done. By mid this year, we will will have partnered with at least three to four companies. Secondly, to create awareness, we will be participating in a number of defence and utility-related events within the first quarter itself. Thirdly, we are undertaking direct marketing activities to further increase our visibility.

THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

DOSSIER COMPANY: IFS Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. CUSTOMERS GLOBALLY: 2000 CUSTOMERS IN India: 35 SERVICES: ERP SOFTWARE

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Author: Richard Dobbs

HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW

“Good companies aren't necessarily good investments.”

Creating and Managing Value

In Value: The Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance, authors Tim Koller, Richard Dobbs and Bill Huyett discuss how to build lasting corporate value.

THE FINANCIAL crisis of 2008 rendered us all shy of taking risks. After all, the experience, observation, and intuition everyone seemed to have developed before the recession didn’t count for anything. The run-up to the financial crisis of 2008 is but one example of how easily financial myths, fads, and misconceptions overwhelm wisdom.

Will life, henceforth, for stakeholders and investors be governed by the play-safe formula “low-risk, low-return,” as we are still nursing our wounds from the downturn? Not necessarily, if the four cornerstones of finance are kept in mind while taking financial decisions, believe Tim Koller, Richard Dobbs and Bill Huyett, partners at management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company, in their ready-reckoner on long-term value creation – Value: The Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance.

The authors have zeroed in on four cornerstones of finance that should act as catalysts for more constructive value-oriented dialogue among executives, boards, investors, bankers and the press – resulting in courageous

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and even unpopular decisions that build lasting corporate value. The learning from the latest financial crisis, and periods of economic bubbles and bursts throughout history has taught us that the laws of value creation and value measurement are timeless.

The first and guiding cornerstone is that companies create value by investing capital from investors to generate future cash flows at rates of return exceeding the cost of that capital. Named, the core of value, it signifies the faster companies can grow their revenues and deploy more capital at attractive rates of return, the more value they create.

The second cornerstone of finance divulged in the book is a corollary of the first: Value is created for shareholders when companies generate higher cash flows, not by rearranging investors’ claims on those cash flows. The authors have named it the conservation of value, or anything that doesn’t increase cash flows via improving revenues or returns on capital doesn’t create value.

The third cornerstone is that a com-

THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Anuradha Das Mathur is the Co-Founder and Director at 9dot9 Media. She can be contacted at anuradha. mathur@9dot9.in

pany’s performance in the stock market is driven by changes in the stock market’s expectations, not just the company’s actual performance. It has been called the expectations treadmill – because the higher the stock market’s expectations for a company’s share price become, the better a company has to perform just to keep up.

The fourth and final cornerstone of corporate finance is that the value of a business depends on who is managing it and what strategy they pursue. Named the best owner, this keystone says that different owners will generate different cash flows for a given business based on their unique abilities to add value.

The most difficult part of creating value, and applying the four cornerstones, is getting the right balance between delivering near-term profits and return on capital, and continuing to invest for long-term value creation.

The book will help you to thoughtfully analyse the competitive dynamics of one’s industry, and make, and defend, decisions that will create value for investors and society at large.

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VIEWPOINT STEVE DUPLESSIE | steve.duplessie@esg-global.com

The Virtual Revolution Is Upon Us IT has

ILLUSTRATION BY ANIL T

found religion, and its foundation is virtualisation MARK PETERS and I wrote a report recently on why storage as we’ve known it (read: Monolithic) is going the way of the dodo. I want to emphasise one particular point that apparently didn’t stand out enough to some readers: we aren’t making our claims because we believe “next gen” storage architectures “should” happen, we know that it HAS to happen.

It’s only a matter of time.

The reason is simple: storage is a problem that impedes the ultimate goal in all this virtualisation hoopla, which is to create LIQUID IT. Utility computing models are what we are FINALLY going to end up with.

Praise be to god.

Server virtualisation is just the tip of the iceberg–but it’s a mighty tip.

It’s more of a key that has unlocked Pandora’s Box. It has shown the unwashed masses the light of what COULD be. (And what should be).

The “Cloud,” be it public, private, or hybrid, is the new term we use, which means a service enabled by ORCHESTRATING virtual (liquid, dynamic, autonomic – pick your phrase of choice) infrastructure to

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CTO FORUM 21 FEBRUARY 2011

create IT UTILITY SERVICES!!!!!

Can I have an amen!

An IT Utility – again, public, private, or hybrid – is an instant-on set of IT resources that has a known cost and a known functional performance level with a known (legitimate) SLA that can be put up or torn down as required. Hallelujah!

IT has found religion, and its foundation is virtualisation. The first order of virtual knights has used SERVER virtualisation to be the word of said god, but that is only one faction.

Server virtualisation is the great enabler, but only to start. Until ALL infrastructure is virtualised, connected together, and orchestrated holistically, we will not realise the total benefits before us.

This is the virtual revolution.Similar to the industrial revolution, it took time to undo all that had come before–it took decades to take hold. Once it did, the world changed forever. The impact of the virtual revolution may not be as great on a global basis, but what it enables for IT and the business IT supports is of the same magnitude.

Historic IT is horse and buggy.

THE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER FORUM

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

Piece by piece custom manufacturing. Virtualised IT is automated assembly lines and advanced robotics. It’s cars and planes. You can still ride a horse to work, but you’d be a jackass for doing it.

That’s why it’s inevitable that storage is the next IT industry area ripe for revolution. It simply has to happen.

Storage is a gate to the IT Utility, and that simply won’t stand. The traditional storage industry is still building buggies, and trying to get you to hook it up to your car. They are nice buggies, very plush, very expensive, and custom built–but that’s not what you need.

We need storage to be as virtualised, distributed, orchestrated, and commoditised as servers (and networks) are. Otherwise it’s like buying a nice new Ferrari, and trying to make it run by stuffing hay into the tank. Looks good sitting there, but not really very functional. Eventually, any revolution worthy of the people will occur. Sometimes it’s bloody, sometimes peaceful, but in the end, you can’t hold back the inevitable.

This is the word according to me.

Shallow be my fame.