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Technology for Growth and Governance

April | 21 | 2010 | Rs.50 Volume 05 | Issue 17

AT THE HEART OF COLLABORATION | AUTOMATION IMPERATIVE | NOT IGNORING THE BASIC NORMS

Social networking is a deal clincher PAGE 18

Volume 05 | Issue 17

BEST OF BREED

I BELIEVE

Time to

Security's

PAGE 13

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CHOOSE WORTH A 9.9 Media Publication

INTRODUCING

Monthly insights on Information Security

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

Break the ice. CIOs should encourage Social Media and not police it.

L

et’s face it. CIOs are still not at ease with social networking. For the past two weeks I am pushing hard to ignite a discussion on almost all my LinkedIn groups about social networking, but I have got abysmally low response – you can say it’s nil.

At times, social media can be distracting and the use of certain sites by employees can lead to a conflict of interest for business. I agree. But ignore the capabilities of social media tools and you do so at your own

EDITOR’S PICK 20

peril. The networking culture that social media engenders has the potential of transforming the business to stay ahead of its competitors.

I have a strong opinion about social media and its usefulness to organisations. Various functions across companies have valid business reasons to use social media to not only network with peers but also mine the invaluable data that is generated. And thus I trash the very idea of putting a firewall

Lip lock in bytes

The first few moves for gaining a presence in the social media space may be easy, but having a lasting romance is hardly so.

to blindly block all micro blogging sites or prevent users from using social media.

A recently released survey from Robert Half Technology – the US-based IT Staffing Company – came as a dampener. The survey shows that many CIOs are clamping down on employee access to social media sites. 38 percent of CIOs questioned said they've created stricter policies on use of social networks compared with just 17 percent who said they've relaxed their rules. CIOs are worried about sites like Facebook and Twitter and tag them as distractive ones. When the whole world is talking of social media as one of the strongest enablers, why are CIOs wary of it?

Even as we are discussing this issue, the Web is undergoing transformation. Do your IT, marketing and HR functions

realise that? Do they understand how they can use it to their advantage? That not using it can deprive them of a competitive edge? From incubation of an idea to innovation in product marketing strategies to realtime customer interaction and feedback, social media can help businesses achieve everything much faster.

Social media is here to stay.

What is important is education and guidance. We must know where the challenges lie, what the opportunities are and what checks must be put in place to ensure that risks are minimised and benefits are maximised.

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Monthly insights on Information Security

If securityyou are afraid RIGHT concerns, doof using the clo nt QUES TIONS be. JUST ASud for its TO YO UR VE K THE NDOR PAGE 05

COV E R D E S I G N: B I N E S H SR E E D HAR AN

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Securit

18 COVER STORY

18 |Enterprise 2.0

COLUMN

04 | I BELIEVE: SECURITY'S WORTH Nandita Mahajan, Chief Privacy & Information Security Officer IBM India/South Asia and IBM Daksh on demonstrating value.

Social networking is changing the rules of communication. It is redefining how you interact with your customers and your employees.

48 | VIEW POINT: FRONT SEAT IT managers need to effectively influence technology purchase decisions. BY STEVE DUPLESSIE FEATURES

Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before Recycling

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34 | NEXT HORIZONS: BREAKING OUT OF THE MOULD The essential checklist for a successful IT restructuring exercise.

BY PATTY AZZARELLO

VOLUME 05 | ISSUE 17 | 21 APRIL 2010

www.thectoforum.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur EDITORIAL Editor: Rahul Neel Mani Editor (Online): Geetaj Channana Resident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra Assistant Editor: Aditya Kelekar Consulting Editor: Shubhendu Parth Principal Correspondent: Vinita Gupta Correspondent: Sana Khan DESIGN Sr. Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Binesh Sreedharan Associate Art Director: Anil VK Manager Design: Chander Shekhar Sr. Visualisers: PC Anoop, Santosh Kushwaha Sr. Designers: Prasanth TR & Anil T Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

10 A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

10 | Infrastructure Next “Get the right

mix of services over cloud and those inhouse,” says Rolf Kleinwachter, Head of Managed Office and Infrastructure-as-aService, Fujitsu.

13

13 | BEST OF BREED: THE NEW ADDRESS BOOK Only about 700m IPv4 addresses are left, close to 200m were used in 2009. IPv6 is around the corner.

45

45 | HIDE TIME: MUKESH SINGH, SENIOR VP, MAKEMYTRIP. COM This marathon runner likes to think big and execute small.

REGULARS

01 | EDITORIAL NTERPRISE 06 | E ROUNDUP OOK 44 | B REVIEW

advertisers’ index IBM REVERSE GATEFOLD WESTERN DIGITAL IFC MAGANET 43 MICROSOFT BC

ADVISORY PANEL Ajay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limired Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej Industries Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group SALES & MARKETING VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) Product Manager: Rachit Kinger Asst. Brand Manager: Arpita Ganguli Bangalore & Chennai: Vinodh K (09740714817) Delhi: Lalit Arun (09582262959) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284) Mumbai: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh OFFICE ADDRESS Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd C/o K.P.T House,Plot 41/13, Sector-30, Vashi, Navi Mumbai-400703 India Printed and published by Kanak Ghosh for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd C/o K.P.T House, Plot 41/13, Sector-30, Vashi, Navi Mumbai-400703 India Editor: Anuradha Das Mathur C/o K.P.T House, Plot 41/13, Sector-30, Vashi, Navi Mumbai-400703 India Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd. D 107,TTC Industrial Area, Nerul.Navi Mumbai 400 706

This index is provided as an additional service.The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

CTO FORUM thectoforum.com

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THE AUTHOR IS a CISM and has more than 24 years of experience in systems analysis, IT consultancy and infosec domains.

PHOTO BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

I BELIEVE

BY NANDITA MAHAJAN Chief Privacy & ISO, IBM India/South Asia & IBM Daksh

Security’s Worth

Infosec must demonstrate its value to business IN TODAY'S scenario, the corporate security function cannot be worried only about controls. We need to be seen as adding value to the business.

I believe that the ability to provide innovative solutions for complex business problems is what will be the true worth of the function. For instance, our business process outsourcing business handles many accounts in which a person's health care data or credit card number is processed. Our agents work on client applications that are legacy and

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CURRENT CHALLENGE PROVIDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR COMPLEX BUSINESS PROBLEMS

may not have role-based security.

What this means is that even if the customer care representatives do not need to see customer's personal information, the application screen can still display this information. We are working with IBM's Research Lab to develop a data masking tool that can be configured to block sensitive information based on an individual's role.

Given the importance of the ITeS industry to the Indian economy, it's very important for the government, academia and the private sector to collaborate in the area of information security. While the Data Security Council of India is moving in the right direction, more support and skilled resources are required.

Being a CISO has impacted my thought process: subconsciously, I start noticing and looking for the 'not so obvious'. While social networking provides an excellent platform to find old friends and make new ones, I am careful as to what I share and how I safeguard personal information.

I have benefited immensely from IBM's mentoring program. My mentors have provided me several deep insights, not only on my domain, but also on a wide variety of technical areas as well as on leadership aspects. My mentees too have provided a different perspective on issues that either they or I am faced with.

I may have had a discussion at one time with my mentees on issues like cloud computing, security, fraud, online privacy – and at a later point of time when I have an opportunity to do something on one of these issues, I am able to apply the thoughts and learning into the implementation plan. At other times, based on their interest and capability, I involve them on a project that I am working on.

They take on this project as a stretch assignment and I am able to leverage their interest and capabilities.

LETTERS CTOForum LinkedIn Group Join more than 300 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?gid=2580450

Some of the hot discussions on the group are:

THE CXO PARADOX CTO Forum’s April 7 Cover Page "The Leadership Pipeline" reminds me of my favourite topic "New Face of CIO - CIO Vs CXOs". CIOs are encircled with CXOs. However the paradox is that who is the winner? I am in the process of writing on this topic too.

MANJIT SINGH BIMRA, Dy. General Manager IT, Tractor Engineers Ltd (L&T Group)

FIXING A LEAK I would like to thank you and CTO Forum for one of the most informative articles “A Mandate to Prevent Leaks” in the Security Special of CTO Forum last month. Even the management at Radico Khaitan liked it very much. I would also like to thank you and your team for coming up with a very object-oriented technical magazine for people like me. I wish we will get more insightful content from the CTO Forum team in the months to come.

FARHAN KHAN, AVP-IT, Radico Khaitan Ltd

“Thank you for your editorial on CIO Without Borders. I liked the heading of the Editorial – ‘CIO with Heart’ and very much enjoyed reading it. It is good to know that people are appreciating our work.”

Do non technology professionals make better CIO/ CTOs? Do you think CIOs need non-IT business experience?

How does it help shape their careers?

Yes - I fully agree with your statement. CIO needs business experience (including non-IT). The backbone is systems and business process knowledge, defining/ sourcing of raw data and its manipulation to derive meaningful information for application towards the business growth.

CTO deals with the Technology and Infrastructure part of the business. CIO integrates the technology and business applications to enhance the business value and its growth.

In my opinion, a technology professional will play the role of CIO/CTO better. In future the role will merge as CITO Chief Information & Technology Officer.

—J P Singh Vice President at Bonanza Portfolio Ltd.

CTOF Connect

Advanced analytics, cloud computing and the mobile web will be the technologies to watch out for in the next few years, says Dr. Manish Gupta, Director, IBM Research – India and Chief Technologist, IBM India/SA in an email interaction with CTO Forum.To read the full story go to:

thectoforum.com/ content/analyticswill-createbusiness-value

OPINION

A REWARDING LIFE, ENRICHED BY IT

ATEFEH RIAZI, Founder, CIO Without Borders, Former Global CIO, Ogilvy & Mather.

CIOs must not become cocooned in their islands of technology.

“I believe that a great leader steers clear from the role of a ‘hoverer’. The best way to get the most out of your team is to allow them discretion in planning, and implementation.”

To read the full story go to:

WRITE TO US: The CTOForum values your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and how to make it a better read for you. Our endeavour continues to be work in progress and your comments will go a long way in making it the preferred publication of the CIO Community.

Send your comments, compliments, complaints or questions about the magazine to editor@thectoforum.com AJAY KUMAR DHIR CIO, JSL

thectoforum.com/resources/opinions

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STORY INSIDE

Enterprise

HP Labs researchers discover new uses for the "memristor". Pg 9

PHOTO: PHOTOS.COM

ROUND-UP

PC Market Grows 24% in 1Q 2010, says IDC. Emerging market dynamics and

improving business spending favour sales.

PC market grew 24.2% in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10) compared to one year ago, when the market declined by almost 7% - the lowest growth since 2001. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, both Desktop and Portable PC shipments exceeded expectations, with solid growth rates driven by sustained consumer demand and renewed commercial buying. The year-over-year gain in Desktop PCs reverses a series of quarterly declines that began in 3Q08.

IDC attributes the renewed growth to continued THE WORLDWIDE

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recovery in emerging markets, improved business sentiments, and growth of specialized designs like All-in-One PCs. "The strong first quarter builds on the fourth quarter rebound and shows rising confidence in the PC supply chain and commercial client base along with persistent demand from consumers," said Loren Loverde, vice president, IDC Worldwide Trackers.

"This is part of an expected recovery trend that should include strong second quarter performance and lift growth for the year to 15% or higher."

12% DATA BRIEFING

GROWTH OF MANAGED SECURITY SERVICE REVENUE IN 2009. — Infonetics Research

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

THEY DAVID SAID IT PERLMUTTER At the recently concluded Intel developer conference, David (Dadi) Perlmutter, executive VP and co-general manager, Intel Architecture Group, outlined Intel's future course of action. He said:

Infosys to Manage Microsoft’s Internal IT. The two companies ink three-year services agreement.

“With an additional 1 billion connected computing users by 2015 and with more types of devices, there is value in providing a common experience between the devices” —David (Dadi) Perlmutter

INFOSYS announced that it will manage internal IT services for Microsoft worldwide.

As part of this managed services agreement, Infosys will streamline implementation processes, simplify support and service, while at the same time lowering the enterprise costs through the use of the latest Microsoft solutions such as Windows 7.

The deal will provide Microsoft with IT help desk, desk-side services, and infrastructure and application support from multiple global centers. Infosys will manage Microsoft's internal IT services for applications, devices, and databases in 450 locations across 104 countries. Infosys will establish a dedicated Service Excellence Office to help Microsoft implement ISO 20000 and ITSM Processes. This agreement provides Infosys with a unique opportunity to partner with Microsoft IT and gain deep and early expertise in the implementation and management of the latest Microsoft technologies, and thus enhancing Infosys capabilities to help other customers leverage Microsoft's innovation and adopt these technologies.

Infosys has announced that it has partnered with Unisys to provide global desk-side support and service desk based on their strong capabilities, commitment to innovation and customer service.

QUICK BYTE ON CLOUD COMPUTING MARKET

CXOs are increasingly interested in cloud computing because it can deliver lower costs, higher returns and increased efficiency. Analyst firm IDC says that cloud services will outpace traditional IT spending over the next five years and will represent $44.2 billion by 2013.

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PHOTO: PHOTOS.COM

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

CIOs in Asia Pacific Bullish on Upturn in Economy. Flat IT

budgets still a challenge.

THOUGH grave uncertainties shrouded the world economy in the last year, a majority of CIOs in Asia Pacific believe that economic recovery will set in by 2010. This was revealed in a poll report that outlines the CIOs’ mindset for recovery based on a survey conducted by Hitachi Data Systems.

An overwhelming majority (86%) of the CIOs believe that recovery will be in place by 2010.

Titled ‘The CIO Roadmap to Recovery’, the report summarises the key CIO chal-

GLOBAL TRACKER

Percentage of Americans Having A Personal Profile Page

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65%

35 to 44 Years

25 to 34 Years

51% 18 to 24 Years

surpasses TV as the most essential medium for Americans.

77%

SOURCE: ARBITRON INC & EDISON RESEARCH

Have Social Media Profiles. The Internet

78%

Upto 18 Years

Almost Half of Americans

8

lenges in 2010 and the need for businesses to transform into leaner, greener, yet more flexible and business centred units. The report provides a detailed analysis and action plan of how CIOs and IT professionals can use limited funds in targeted, specific areas to derive the greatest possible strategic business value from IT in the most cost effective way.

“CIOs are challenged with flat IT budgets while managing the surge of data. As businesses gradually move towards recovery,

CIOs need to take a hard and in-depth look at the areas that contribute towards building a resilient IT framework that will deliver results and help organizations to succeed during an upturn. Hitachi Data Systems is focused on helping companies to drive redundant costs out of their storage implementation by utilizing existing assets.

Strategic use of technologies such as virtualisation and dynamic provisioning automate performance and increase utilization, helping enterprises to align IT and business goals most effectively,” said Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President & General Manager, India, Hitachi Data Systems.

The survey shed light on key CIO priorities for 2010 and cost management remains a perennial concern. With growing expectations that IT organisations will shift from being a cost centre to a profit centre, a storage strategy that reduces OPEX is a top priority for APAC CIOs. Reducing costs was highlighted again when the CIOs were asked on what they value most in their organisation’s IT strategy and reducing operating costs headed the list (50%) beating technology implementation.

Mindset towards adopting new technology in Asia Pacific is high, as 73% of the CIOs express interest in pursuing new technology and be one of the first to use them. However in the same vein, almost 50% of the CIOs were of the opinion that the inability to calculate the financial benefits (Return on Investment) of an improved information infrastructure presents the highest barrier to investing in new information infrastructure.

The report provides valuable insights into how IT can be leveraged as a business enabler, sustainable IT strategies, and upcoming technologies on the block like cloud computing.

The survey was conducted when CIOs and senior IT representatives of top enterprises across Asia Pacific attended the Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific CIO Summit at Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, in early November. The Summit served as an opportunity for senior IT management from across the region to meet and share insights with each other on the upturn in the economy.

E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP

Small is the New Big for SAP. Software major targets SME customers.

From L to R: DEBDEEP SENGUPTA, VP SME and Channels, SAP India; ANAND SUDARSHAN, CEO, Manipal Universal Learning and ANUP GUHA, CFO, Greaves Cotton

SOFTWARE firm SAP is targeting one billion customers by 2015 of which the small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) are to be a sizable portion. This was revealed at the SAP Talk Show held recently in Bangalore.

Speakers at the event advised SMEs that in order for their business to grow and their market share and profitability to increase, they must first achieve transparency and scalability. Currently, SAP has over seven lakh SME clients worldwide and the company said that it has tripled its SME base

over the past three years. In India too, SAP has a strong SME strategy. “We serve over 3,300 SME customers in the Indian market,” said Debdeep Sengupta, Vice-President SME and Channels, SAP India.

The show also saw SAP making an alliance with Wipro. Together, they will offer a subscription-based business delivery model, called the SAP Business All-in-One solutions suite, targeted at SME companies. Through this alliance, SAP is looking to reach out to SME customers in class B and C cities across India.

“The offering would be an end-toend ERP solution which can be both scalable and flexible to suit the needs of SMEs in India,” said Luis Murguia, Senior Vice-President and President of SME, SAP EMEA and India .

SAP Business All-in-One is a hosted solution suite which aims to help SME companies get started with a lower up-front cost by eliminating high capital costs required for purchasing a software license or IT hardware. Since it is a hosted solution set, customers are do not need to maintain or support the solution.

In the Indian market, the model is available for a two, three or fouryear period from Wipro.

SAP already offers another product called ‘Business by Design' for the SME market. This product provides end-to-end ERP solutions and offers lower flexibility compared to Business All-in-One. “While Business All-in-One is hosted and managed by SAP partner companies (Wipro in India), Business by Design is managed directly by SAP,” said Murguia.

SAP said that the SME offerings price is ranged from Rs 10,000 and Rs 12,000 per user per month.

This includes license, implementing and hosting charges.

— By Ashwani Mishra

FACT TICKER

Cloud Standard. SNIA

announces cloud data management interface.

THE STORAGE Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced at SNW Spring 2010, the formal approval of the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) as a SNIA Architecture standard. This is first industry-developed open standard for cloud computing and will allow for

interoperable cloud storage implementations from cloud service providers and storage vendors.

The standard is applicable to public, private and hybrid storage clouds and is expected to be implemented by service providers and cloud infrastructure vendors for all

cloud deployment models.

More than just a data path to the cloud, the CDMI also includes the ability to manage service levels that data receives when it is stored in the cloud. The CDMI also includes a common interoperable data exchange format for securely moving data and its associated data requirements from cloud to cloud.

The new standard, produced in record time for an open standard, was created by the

SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group (TWG) which consists of more than 180 members from more than 60 different organisations around the world.

"This milestone means that we should soon start to see open cloud interfaces for public and private clouds," said NetApp's Val Bercovici, who serves as Chair of the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative.

MEMORY NEXT

H

P Labs researchers have discovered that the “memristor“ – a resistor with memory that represents the fourth basic circuit element in electrical engineering – has more capabilities than was previously thought. In addition to being useful in storage devices, the memristor can perform logic, enabling computation to one day be performed in chips where data is stored, rather than on a specialized central processing unit.

HP has created development-ready architectures for memory chips using memristors and believes it is possible that devices incorporating the element could come to market within the next few years.

HP researchers also have designed a new architecture within which multiple layers of memristor memory can be stacked on top of each other in a single chip. In five years, such chips could be used to create handheld devices that offer ten times greater embedded memory than exists today.

HP claims that Memristors require less energy to operate and are faster than present solid-state storage technologies such as flash memory, and they can store at least twice as much data in the same area. It also says that Memristors are virtually immune from radiation.

One of the greatest benefits of memristors is that they do not “forget,” which can enable computers that turn on and off like a light switch.

—Nilabh Jha

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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

R O L F K L E I N WÄ C H T E R

ROLF KLEINWÄCHTER | FUJITSU

Infrastructure

Next

Rolf Kleinwächter, Head of Managed Office and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Fujitsu, agrees that it's still early days of cloud computing, but says his company is prepared to cash in on the developments.

‘Infrastructure-as-a-Service’ enables more efficient and scalable provisioning of virtual machines, but it doesn’t seem to solve the challenges of business process integration, workflow, security, compliance, monitoring and management and automation that customers need. How does Fujitsu look at it and have you provisioned solutions to these problems in your IaaS offerings?

You have to take into account that IaaS is only one of the four layers within Fujitsu’s Dynamic Infrastructures portfolio. Our Infrastructureas-a-Service offerings, which are now being rolled out across the region, enable the dematerialisation of IT hardware. Assets that were previously fixed costs can be removed from the balance sheet and transformed into variable costs. The pay-as-you-go Infrastructure-as-a-Service model,

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which is already the accepted standard for services such as telecommunications, electricity and water, is now extended to computing resources.

With Fujitsu’s I-a-a-S for Server, which is the first offering, companies have the option of replacing all or some of their on-premise hardware with a simple, secure plug-in connection – with physical servers located in dedicated, purpose-built and secure Fujitsu data centers. Our trusted PRIMERGY server product line and the combination of ETERNUS storage as well as network and software experience provide all the necessary components for reliable and dynamic server resource allocation. And our service orchestration ensures that customers can combine the I-a-a-S for Server with their own on-premise Dynamic Infrastructures.

We recognise and appreciate that there is no “one size fits all” approach

to IT, therefore we offer a variety of different offerings. IaaS for Server is not specifically designed to solve the business and workflow challenges that you mention. These are addressed by different part of the Dynamic Infrastructures portfolio.

For example, customers who want a totally worry-free solution can opt for Managed Services, where Fujitsu takes over the management of existing IT infrastructures – then all that the customer has to manage is the payment of a monthly invoice.

Switching on to IaaS for servers, companies can benefit from service provisioning, scaling and load balancing, etc.

But won’t the customer get locked in with a proprietary hardware/ software? How do you provide standardized customer-choice based infrastructure?

USE CLOUD SENSE: CIOs should have a fair mix of services running over cloud infrastructures and those run in-house, says Rolf Kleinw채chter.

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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS

R O L F K L E I N WÄ C H T E R

With our IaaS for server offering we are providing both standard and customized server solutions, all running on Industry Standard x86 servers, with a variety of standard operating systems. Therefore the customer should not be locked in; in fact, quite the opposite, since we are offering standard platforms.

For customers who want more of a customized solution, it’s also possible to order a “bare metal” server via IaaS. But this is not about lock in. This is about simply moving the physical server hardware out of your datacentre and into a datacentre operated by Fujitsu.

Large enterprises work in cycles that are much slower than the pace of innovation in the industry. Changing IT systems while work is in progress is akin to changing the foundation of a house that you continue to live in. How would you change this conservative thinking especially in places like India?

That’s exactly the point. We are not asking enterprises to take a leap of faith or go through a paradigm shift here. Instead, we are increasing the variety of choice, by providing customers with alternative delivery models that they can use how they see fit (by scaling up or down). This means a company might try IaaS for server for the first time to handle the extra server power demand generated by month-end reporting.

It gives companies the ability to augment existing services and an effective transition path for quickly, cost effectively and safely moving to new delivery approaches. The IaaS offerings are designed to be flexible – with the focus on “as-a-Service”, which means that we give customers the flexibility they need, so that IT infrastructure can provide a positive contribution to their business.

If I am a CIO, I would not like to move my entire IT portfolio to a single cloud provider.

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How do I keep my cloud deployments in sync? Are they interoperable?

Can I move things from one cloud to another? How will you give a convincing answer on these issues?

You are right in stating that today there are no standards in cloud. It’s a very fair point to make that many CIOs will not want to move their entire IT portfolio to a single provider at this point. It’s still early days of cloud infrastructure.

Fujitsu is also able to offer a hybrid model, where customers can mix and match different types of services within the same domain. For example, in future, a customer will be able to choose a combination of Infrastructure-as-aService for Server and Managed Server. This mix is something that helps differentiate Fujitsu from standard offerings, and gives customers greater flexibility to set up their infrastructure so that both price-performance and Quality of Service are always optimised, no matter what.

Can a CIO tie the Quality of Service (QoS) that he needs to provide to the business with the elasticity of the cloud?

Yes, we think so – by being shrewd and making a choice of what services are best being run over cloud infrastructures, and which ones are best kept in-house. For example, we have already seen the emergence of many dedicated hosted email services, and web-based CRM systems, which are two great examples of services that work very well in the cloud. We offer customers professional assistance in determining

“It’s still early days for our IaaS portfolio; our focus will be online storage and backup expansion”

THINGS I BELIEVE IN CIOs will not want to move their entire IT portfolio to a single provider at this point There is no “one size fits all” approach to IT There are no standards in the cloud

and tiering the services that they are considering placing in the cloud, so that organisations can find the sweet spot in terms of both price-performance and Quality of Service.

Fujitsu claims that storage and server services they provide as Dynamic Infrastructure are from leading vendors. Can you elaborate?

Fujitsu is a top four IT services vendor, worldwide. We are also a Tier One vendor of storage and servers.

In addition, we have a slate of worldclass partners including NetApp, Cisco and others as fully-integrated parts of our end-to-end solution.

Looking ahead, what plans has Fujitsu drawn? There was to be a further announcement detailing the full Infrastructure-asa-Service suite during autumn.

It’s still early days for our IaaS portfolio. We’ll have more announcements this year. The focus will be online storage and backup expansion.

—rahul.mani@9dot9.in

BEST OF

Time to choose. Opt for the right brand while virtualising your systems. Pg 15

ILLUSTRATION BY SANTOSH KUSHWAHA

BREED

FEATURE INSIDE

DATA BRIEFING

203 MILLION IPV4 ADDRESSES WERE USED IN 2009.

CLOSE TO 700 MILLION ARE STILL AVAILABLE.

The New Address Book IPv6 is around the corner. It's time you took note.

BY THOMAS STRUAN

T

he Internet is running out of addresses.

That is what they keep telling us. The IPv4 block is simply inadequate. Given the expansive nature of Internet adoption this might be true, but are we really running close to the end of the Internet?

Most regional Internet registries have said that 2010 or 2011 would mean the end to IPv4 with the vast majority saying that their allocation of IANA IP addresses would be exhausted in early 2012. But is this really true? Honestly, the answer to that question is really moot because IPv6 is coming whether you

want it or not.

So, let's talk about what plagues IPv6 implementation. Having done several of these conversions I would like to share my insights into how to make your IPv6 transition a headache-free event.

The dual stack Until IPv6 becomes a reality there is really no getting around the fact that IPv4 is still the standard. So, you have to allow for that. The only way you can manifest IPv6 and IPv4 is to "Dual Stack" your configuration.

But understand that you have no options here: IPv6

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I P V6

is coming and you cannot wait until it is a reality or you risk being shut out of the Internet altogether.

So, what does "Dual Stack" mean to you?

Simply put it is the operation of IPv4 and IPv6 in a single environment using both IPv4 and IPv6 hosts. By adopting such a hybrid implementation, programmers can write code that operates on both IPv4 or IPv6. Such software would use hybrid sockets which would accept both IPv4 and IPv6 packets. Used in conjunction with IPv4 communications, a hybrid stack would use IPv6 internally and the present IPv4 addresses as IPv6 addresses in a specially masked format.

This specially masked format is essentially an IPv4-mapped address with the first 80 bits set to zero, the following 16 bits set to one, and the final 32 bits are filled with the standard IPv4 address.

There are pitfalls to the IPv4-mapped address. One is that some O/S's don't support the hybrid format due to security issues or protocol issues. So, look at your O/S on a case by case basis. Microsoft O/S uses IPv4 & IPv6 in separate implementations so a separate socket has to be opened to support each protocol. Linux O/S use the IPV6_V6ONLY socket thus making a hybrid dual stack somewhat problematic.

Tunnelling Without going into all of the various methods and techniques, tunnelling is a viable option for those who look at dual stacking as an overly ambitious project. Tunnelling is basically using a device or software to translate IPv4 addresses into or from IPv6 addresses before any packets are transferred to the Internet.

There are various tunnelling options - Automatic Tunnelling (i.e. Teredo), Configured Tunnelling (formerly known as Configured and Automated Tunnelling), and Proxying. All work in similar ways, but differ in the approach taken (translation of IPv4 into or from IPv6, but the procedure for doing so changes).

The box Your equipment is going to be the first place you must look to making a change. Essentially, you have to contact the vendor who supplies your routing and switching equip-

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ment and see if your current version will support IPv6 and, more specifically, if it can perform any IPv4 / IPv6 translation. If the answer is no, then you need to be prepared to upgrade either the device operating system or replace the device altogether.

The provider

If you don't feel as though your ISP is being forthright with you or if you feel that they are unprepared, you should consider making a switch

Contacting your Internet Service Provider is also critical: ask them to spell out (in very clear terms) what their plans are for IPv6 adoption and discuss with them what you must do to ensure ZERO interruptions in your service. Don't take "I don't know" or "nothing" as an answer — somebody there knows something so escalate until you get a satisfactory answer.

If you don't feel as though your ISP is being forthright with you or if you feel that they are unprepared, you should consider making a switch (if that is an option).

VOIP can kill you With the introduction of vast VOIP networks IPv6 is being adopted as the standard by many carriers (especially 3G and 4G networks). Internally VOIP works well across IPv4, but, as VOIP networks expand universally (especially in the mobile telephony space), IPv6 adoption is becoming an absolute necessity.

The end game Making the decision to adopt IPv6 isn't really going to be yours. At some point it will happen and your organisation needs to be prepared. The hype of IP addresses running out on the internet should not sway you (CIDR and NAT have delayed the run-off of IP addresses), but preparedness is part of business.

Preparedness aside, there are benefits to IPv6 implementation that can be a boost to your business: Security (it will be easier to detect the sources of malevolent activities); scalability (device to device communication can be greatly expanded); cost (IPv6 has significant cost advantages for current networks and for developing large scale networks required by industry).

Overall the move to IPv6 is a growing reality. Being an early adopter doesn't need to be your goal, but having a plan should be.

V I R T U A L I S AT I O N

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Time to Choose

Virtualisation may be the remedy for many ills, but choosing the right brand is important.

BY MATT SARREL

V

irtualisation is a pretty hot topic in enterprise IT these days. It's safe to say that everyone has some sort of virtualisation project going on. According to a survey

by TheInfoPro, more than half of new servers in 2009 were virtualised compared to 30% in 2008.

In some way, virtualisation is a VMware world. Everyone from SAN to server to network vendors has some kind of tie in to VMware. VMware runs on over one-third of Cisco's Unified Computing System units that have been deployed to date. Enterprise management platforms such as HP Insight are being extended to include deep support for VMware that simplifies and expedites the management of hordes of virtual machines. This is important because it keeps operations flowing smoothly and allows you to use a similar process to manage virtual servers as you did when managing physical servers. Everyone knows that process already and it will decrease the burden of migration and help achieve a faster ROI. Far and away the most popular hypervisors are those made by VMware. The primary draw is the ubiquity of VMware. With the vCloud initiative you could build your own dynamic data centre running VMware's vSphere and vCentre and then automatically scale up and down using external Cloud providers. There are over 1,000 Cloud service providers that are "VMware Virtualised" plus countless others that

have adopted VMware's vCloud API. There are two viable alternatives to VMware: Microsoft and Xen. That same TheInfoPro survey reported that 24% of the new virtual servers are Microsft Hyper-V. Thirty percent (30%) chose "other", which in all likelihood means Xen or the free Citrix XenServer. All three have their strengths and weaknesses and certain applications may be better for one than the other. VMware and Microsoft don't play well together. Xen plays well with either.

Server virtualisation revolves around the hypervisor, the software that sits on top of the hardware (either directly as "bare-metal" or on top of an OS), partitions the hardware into multiple virtual machines, and manages interactions between hardware and virtual machines.

There are currently three main choices for a server hypervisor: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware (ESX and vSphere), and Xen (an open source hypervisor supported by Citrix).

Here’s the skinny on choosing a hypervisor: 1. VMware should be at the top of everyone’s list because they’ve been doing virtualisation for more than 10 years. No one doubts VMware’s ability to deliver a reliable hypervisor and extensible management tools.

Developing a hypervisor with excellent performance, reliability, scalability, and manageability doesn’t happen overnight, and these are critical features for an enterprise computing environment.

2. Microsoft is a relatively new comer with Hyper-V and based on the success of SharePoint, I believe that anything Microsoft gives away with their server software has an excellent chance of being implemented.

Like most Microsoft products, Hyper-V isn’t the best and will probably never be the best, but it is bundled and pre-installed so why not enable it and give it a shot?

3. Xen is an excellent choice for budget conscious shops that have implemented Linux servers. There is always a trade-off between cost and power/utility. During these times of economic hardship, companies are more willing than ever to make that trade. Also, if you rely heavily on Citrix for your server infrastructure, then their support for Xen should be an important purchasing consideration.

4. If your goal is to have dozens or hundreds of virtualised servers residing in multiple physical locations and forming both internal private and

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V I R T U A L I S AT I O N

external public clouds, then your only real choice right now is VMware vSphere due to its scalability and manageability. VMware currently owns the high end enterprise virtualisation market.

The nitty gritty Microsoft Hyper-V - Microsoft provides a limited version Hyper-V free of charge plus there are various flavours that come with the various forms of Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V starts with support for up to 8 CPUs and 1 TB RAM in the host machine and goes up from there.

Microsoft focuses on using virtual machines to increase application and server availability, therefore an important feature is live migration, or the ability to move running virtual machines from one Hyper-V physical host to another without disruption of service. If you are a Microsoft shop, then it may make some sense to get your virtualisation feet wet with Hyper-V because you've already got it.

VMware ESX - This is the most widely implemented hypervisor today (most virtualisation professionals cut their teeth on some version of ESX). The current version supports up to 64 logical processing cores, 256 virtual CPUs and up to 1 TB RAM per host and will run a broad range of guest operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and NetWare. Virtual machines can boot from local or shared SAN storage. VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a clustered file system that allows multiple ESX hosts to access a single virtual volume concurrently, paving the way for shared storage via Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, or NAS. VMware vSphere 4 - More than a hypervisor, vSphere 4 is a data centre Cloud computing platform built on VMware ESX. There was a lot of

Putting Hardware to Good Use Interview with ANJAN CHOUDHURY CIO Bombay Stock Exchange

W

hat do you make of virtualisation today?

IT hardware is getting smarter by the day.

Processors today have multiple cores with increased computing capacity. These smart servers therefore can support a lot of applications in one box compared to the model of supporting one application per server. Moreover, not all applications require the same resources throughout the day, and the peaks for no two different applications takes place at the same time. This makes virtualisation a very efficient way to extract the maximum out of IT hardware/investments.

Is virtualisation technology achieving good traction?

Virtualisation is definitely making a lot of inroads. All operating systems supporting mission critical applications have native virtualisation functionality. For windows machines, the same can be achieved through third party solutions. One should take advantage of this feature by putting high computing capacity machines with very high memory and deploying many applications on it. It will be much better as it will be more cost efficient compared to the situation where one low end server is deployed for each application. This will also reduce electricity and air-conditioning consumption and reduce the space requirements in the data centre.

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buzz earlier this year when vSphere shipped because it promises to control internal and external virtualized Cloud environments by automating management and dynamically allocating resources to migrate live virtual machines across physical machines to minimize service interruption. For example, an application could automatically scale up and down using both internal and external virtual Cloud resources. An important consideration is there are huge numbers of API's and third party add-ons, so industry support is strong and getting stronger for vSphere. sources.

Xen - The Xen hypervisor is an open source alternative which provides efficient and secure virtualisation of x86, x86_64, IA64, ARM, and other CPU architectures. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and various versions of the BSD operating systems. It was developed in conjunction with engineers at over 50 data centre solution vendors, including AMD, Cisco, Dell, Fujistu, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, Samsung, SGI, Sun, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

Xen has a reputation for being lean and mean; high performance and not many management features like others mentioned in this article.

You can add the Xen Cloud Platform to gain sophisticated management features similar to those found in VMware vSphere and Microsoft System Centre Virtual Machine Manager.

Keys to a successful implementation Develop a clear business case in favor of virtualisation that demonstrates an ROI and a reduced TCO. Start by assessing your current physical server environment. Where previously you scaled up by adding more physical servers, reduce costs by consolidating them into multiple virtual servers running on a single physical server. This not only reduces the resources needed today, but you can reap future rewards of more efficient scaling using a virtual platform. There's also the potential of decreasing the cost of your business continuity program because, unlike physical machines, virtual machines can be pushed from one location to another.

Beware of potential licensing and support implications, however. It's possible that a particular application's licensing policy changes when run on a virtual server so look before you leap. Also, verify that the application is supported on your virtual platform and that tech support has the know-how to help if needed.

Allocate time and resources towards planning this wide-sweeping change in your enterprise architecture. Virtual servers are different from physical servers so policies, procedures, and concepts will have to adapt. It should go without saying to make sure there are backups and archives of physical systems. Try to get a handle on how much hardware is required for each virtual server and then make sure you allocate properly. Especially keep an eye out for "virtual sprawl", or the sometimes magical ability of virtual environments to expand out of control until they are unmanageable. Finally, understand how the timing of this project affects other IT initiatives and make sure that all other projects include virtualisation support.

Make migration as smooth as possible for end users. The best outcome would be if no one even noticed that you've gone virtual. In order to do this, monitor performance and availability of pilot and initial deployments. Upgrade hardware as needed to meet performance and availability goals.

V I R T U A L I S AT I O N

Virtualisation’s Windfall

Interview with C MOHAN, CTO, Reliance Life Insurance Company

R

eliance Life has been on a high-growth trajectory for some time now. The IT department has responded to such dynamic growth by moving from the traditional independent computing model to a highly virtualised one.

Reliance Life has implemented three layers of virtualisation to build agile, scalable and high-available IT architecture. Layer I ideals with network virtualisation, layer two is about storage virtualisation and layer three is about server virtualisation.

“Like any other business, growth in the insurance sector is slower in the

beginning of the year, but as we reach towards the end of a business year, growth is rapid and exponential. This means that the use of IT resources is varied over the course of the business life cycle,” says C Mohan, CTO Reliance Life Insurance Company.

“Also, we can dynamically upgrade and or downgrade the bandwidth of a network by linking it to the business performance of a particular branch. Linking business volumes to bandwidth has been very useful.” It has reduced not only the data centre building costs but also brought down operational costs.

BEST OF BREED

fit the resources if our application uses five percent (5%) of resources today then we'll be good for a few years as it grows to 50%. But this means that you're paying for tomorrow's resources today and we know technology resources get cheaper over time so this excess capacity is basically wasted. Running a number of virtual machines on a single physical machine allows IT departments to use that extra capacity.

Running multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine also consolidates the physical server footprint in the data centre. And fewer physical servers means less rack space, energy consumed and heat produced, plus the accompanying reduction in administration costs.

Virtualisation provides a great deal of flexibility by divorcing the OS and applications from the server hardware. You can add or remove resources from the virtual machine without shutting down the physical server and disassembling it. Remember the agony of the last time an application was jeopardised by failing hardware? In a virtualized environment the application's virtual machine could simply be pushed to different hardware. This flexibility facilitates more efficient scaling of server environments as business needs grow.

—­M att Sarrel is executive director of Sarrel Group, a technology product test lab, editorial services, and consulting practice specialising in gathering and leveraging competitive intelligence. He has over 20 years

Benefits of virtualisation

of experience in IT and focuses on high-speed, large scale networking,

Virtualisation can reduce costs related to underutilised physical servers.

Many enterprises purchase servers with the plan that use will grow to

information security, and enterprise storage. E-mail: matt@sarrelgroup. com. Twitter: @msarrel.

COVE R S TO RY

SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

Social networking is redefining how you interact with your customers and your employees.

Internally, informal professional networks and

informal business processes can unlock a treasure trove of ideas. An active presence on a networking site can better showcase client-facing initiatives. But a false move can send your customers scuttling away. Know the rules of the game before playing it!

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SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

Inside

20 | Lip Lock in Bytes 25 | Powering the Next Gen Enterprise 27 | Are your Employees Sharing Enough?

29 | Rules for the New Socials

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23 | CIOs and the Art of Tweeting

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Lip Lock in Bytes Kiss social media the right way and it could help seal your company's fate.

BY GEETAJ CHANNANA

am a self professed foodie. I love all kinds of cuisine – be they Indian or foreign. Being based in Delhi, I am fortunate enough to be able to gorge on all kinds of food. There are a variety of restaurants catering to different palates in the city.

Some days back I came to know of a new Bengali restaurant through a promotion on Facebook. They were promoting a special food menu on the occasion of the Bengali New Year. That is all it needed to get me excited. And, before you know, I had a plan to visit with some friends.

Once again, I was on the restaurant's page on Facebook, this time to get the phone number. Just then, I spotted a tab that said reviews. Curious to know others' opinion, I clicked on the tab. There were reviews from customers, some as recent as a day before my planned visit. Most of the reviews were extremely negative, describing the food and service nothing less than pathetic. There are no points for guessing that I promptly changed my plan.

This is exactly what social media can do to your business.

I

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Connecting to the Outside World Earlier, communication between product companies and customers was largely one way: marketing teams used to influence customers using print, audio, video and electronic advertising but customers rarely had an opportunity to make themselves heard. Now customers or prospective customers have a voice too.

Though social media is a wonderful channel for obtaining feedback, it can boomerang and hit you in the face if your product is not up to the mark.

Atul Luthra, Head of IT, PVR has embraced social media. The move seems to have worked well for them. “The biggest benefit is that we are able to reply directly to the customer and resolve their issues quickly. Our responses are on the Web which is in public domain and this increases the confidence of customers with PVR,” he says.

PVR runs an application on Facebook and Orkut, enabling them to interact with their customers, announce special events and resolve their queries. Their application also allows the users to book tickets online. It's not customary for

players in this space to do so – Facebook does not even have a secure protocol to handle such transactions. Users booking their tickets from this application are redirected to another site which carries out the transactions and are then brought back on to the site again. Though the ticket booking facility is useful, Luthra says, their biggest asset is the platform.

“The conversion of tickets on the platform is not much, but we gain by being able to connect to customers and getting insights on what they expect,” he says.

PVR is also actively considering the micro-blogging platform Twitter to connect to their customers. Luthra is looking at hiring a dedicated resource to help them better manage their Facebook page and contribute regularly on Twitter.

Twitter has come into a lot of limelight lately with the likes of Lalit Modi, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Tharoor getting involved in one or more controversies using the service.

Even Barack Obama has a Twitter page.

In the case of the US President, it was his account being broken into by a Frenchman that caused quite a stir!

But, on the other hand, to put things

SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

into perspective, Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter, has recently announced that they have more than 105 million users and they are fielding about 19 billion searches a month, compared to 90 billion being fielded by Google.

If you are not exploiting this platform already, you should be worrying because probably your competitors already are.

“The main feature of the social media platform is that it is viral in nature.

Since it is very viral, it leads to customer acquisition. This results in lesser costs in acquiring new customers,” says Manish Dhingra, Founder and COO, Tekriti, a company that creates Facebook applications. “On Facebook, a business account allows you as well as others to post comments on the pages. It builds a 360-degree communication loop with the customer.”

Taking the first few steps in gaining a foothold in the social media space may be easy enough, but making a splash is hardly so. There is lot more to it than building a print or television advertisement. You should be geared for brickbats as well and ensure that there is a public relations specialist handling this job for you. “It should be simple and fun to post updates as well as respond to comments.

Also the social media networking initiative should have a complete buy-in from marketing,” adds Dhingra.

The buy-in is extremely important and there should be a concerted effort by the management to make it a priority. If the company makes only a halfhearted attempt to promote its online initiatives, the pages on the networking site can easily become brand-bashing pages instead.

Companies like Dell have exploited the Web 2.0 platform very well through applications other than those on Facebook. Dell's idea storm is a perfect example here. This is a website where users can register and give ideas on what they want from Dell products. It was started

in 2007 and has generated more than 13,000 ideas for Dell, out of which Dell has already implemented more than 400 ideas. Excited by the response, Dell has started a new initiative – storm sessions – for this social brainstorming. These are limited time ideation sessions where Dell posts an idea and asks their customers to comment on it.

If this sounds a bit far-fetched for an Indian audience, let us look closer to home for an example. A leading BPO – whose identity we can not reveal – is working on a similar platform. This BPO is always in need of subject matter experts. Though the BPO hires many subject matter experts, they also make use of services of people outside the organisation. Using a Dell-like portal, based on Microsoft Sharepoint, they have found a new way of finding the right expert. On the portal, experts can register themselves with the BPO. The BPO in turn posts questions that can be answered by the registered experts. The expert with the best answer is rewarded and is considered for a longer term contract with the BPO. “Collaboration has gone beyond just email and file sharing. People have realised that it is not enough to manage their teams and knowledge,” says Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business

“we gain by being being able to connect to the customers and getting insights on what they expect” ATUL LUTHRA Head of IT, PVR Limited

COVE R S TO RY

Division. “Also the new generation of employees are the Orkut and Facebook generation. They expect similar networking tools in the organisation and react better to them,” he adds.

Inside View The marketing department may have found the social networking media naturally fitting in with their plans, but there's much more to social media than that.

Many organisations across the world are toying with the concept of using social media internally, for what is known as Enterprise 2.0.

While people are collaborating and interacting with their friends and peers using social networks, similar networks are mushrooming in organisations to help them use and retain their knowledge resources more efficiently.

One such brick and mortar organisation in India is Mukand Limited. They have created a corporate intranet based on enterprise 2.0 features. Using an indigenous offering – cyn.in – the company is using a service oriented model to implement collaboration features.

“It is a closed user group where we provide chatting, communications and social networking facility. Awards and rewards are put on such a system and this helps keep people motivated,“ says V L Mehta, Chief of IT, Mukand Limited.

HR's applications are also integrated with the intranet system and people can check their salary slips and other account details. For Mehta, it is a glorified intranet that does things on the fly and helps people communicate better.

Looking at a networking site as a glorified intranet might work for some enterprises, but is there scope to do more? Michael Schrage, Research Fellow, MIT Sloan School’s Centre for Digital Business feels that you can coax more magic out of platform than you can imagine. “If I tell you that television is just like radio, but with pictures – I would be technically accurate, but we all know it is a lot more than that. Similarly, a collaborative intranet is a lot more than a glorified intranet with email and other apps. You are trying to create a dif-

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better integration of work forces and employees could use the available knowledge pool more effectively. It proved to be a great tool to access unstructured knowledge buried deep inside the organisation.

However, these tools are not without drawbacks. “The biggest challenge is to get people to talk,” says Choudhury.

“People may be wary of sharing knowledge.” Also the 90-9-1 rule of social media is even more skewed here, where only a few people interact. This rule states that 1% of users are creators, 9% edit or modify that content and rest 90% just consume it.

Schrage points out that companies should not get disheartened, and just ensure that they are committed to the platform and keep driving people to it in various ways. “The most important thing I have learned is that you have to recognise and reward information sharing in an organisation if you want social media tool to be effective”.

Thus it is very important that the tools are implemented and made a part of the An exclusive interview with Stowe Boyd, Managing Director, business process itself. While sharing Microsyntax.org and a Web 2.0 Evangelist on myths, realities and his experience with various organisathe future of Web 2.0 in enterprises. tions who have tried to implement these tools, Schrage says, “Organien the company's ability to It is a popular belief that Web 2.0 will sations that have used the conrespond to challenges. have the greatest impact on workcept of Enterprise 2.0 and have The way to get going is to place collaboration. How would got good reviews from internal start now, based on where you you defend/oppose it? users are often the ones that are. Investing in experiments STOWE BOYD: O'Reilly is well known have 360-degree job reviews. around social media to connect for defining Web 2.0 as a computing platJust a push by a CIO or a more deeply with customers and form - a new sort of Operating System. My CEO to use the tools is not partners could be a good start. Crowd belief is that the key differentiation between as effective.” sourcing innovation — drawing on the smarts the early Web and Web 2.0 is the emergence of Schrage wants CIOs the trend where the individual displaced the group as the basic distributed across the company and outside, in to go away with just organising unit, and information flows principally through the user community — is another big bang area one thought, “No matsocial relationships. More than just the buzzword, Web 2.0 is companies need to be exploring. And internal microter how good a tool a transformative force that's propelling enterprises across all streaming (micro-blogging) is an upcoming area that a company may be industries towards a new way of doing business characterised most companies should start looking at. using, it is more by user participation, openness, and network effects. important that the Is Web 2.0 secure? Apparently, as with cloud organisation pubAre these tools helping companies to obtain a comcomputing, there are many security issues with licly recognises, petitive edge? What should enterprises do to harness Web2.0. What are your views? supports and the true potential of Web 2.0?

SB: I don't understand this point of people worrying acknowledges SB: Web 2.0 is not about competitiveness, per se. In miliabout security while deploying Web 2.0 tools. It can run the importance tary terms, it is not a bigger gun. Web 2.0 allows companies on physically secure servers behind a company's fireof informato organise themselves in different ways, to operate differwall, if needed. I think security is overrated, like romantic tion sharing ently, to connect with consumers and marketplaces in new love, but even applications in the cloud can be secure. and collaboways. So, competitiveness is a secondary benefit.

—By Rahul Neel Mani (Stowe coined the term 'social tools' in 1999, and he has remained ration.”

If you are looking for a single quality to help clarify the impact focused on their impact on business, media and society ever since.) of Web 2.0, consider resilience, since Web 2.0 seems to broadferent kind of experience. The key to success in a collaborative architecture is the notion of a shared space.” He adds, “This kind of a system is like a blackboard.

While in a class only a couple of people have a piece of chalk, but on the internet you have thousands of people with their own pieces of chalk.” Schrage says that it is important to manage the rules of engagement around a shared space and believes that SharePoint does a decent job of that.

This managed space can be extremely beneficial for an organisation too. “The biggest benefit for an organisation is the speed that it provides to deliver new prod-

ucts, take decisions and implement new things,” says Romasha Roy Choudhury, Business Director - Cyn.in, a social media and collaboration tool for the enterprise.

“What typically happens is that any knowledge shared on a project remains inside a mail chain or is scattered across separate mails,” says Choudhury. The 'managed space' thus plays an important role by creating a central repository of information and enabling and ensuring faster and more accurate decisions.

Other important benefits of having such a tool include reduced ramping up time for new employees or new members of a project. A good example of this was when the teams of Tech Mahindra and Satyam were merged. They used a similar tool to ensure that there was

Web 2.0: Taking Challenges Head on

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SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

CIOs the Art of Tweeting Don't be caught with the wrong note.

A loony tweet may need you to face the music.

BY ALLEN BERNARD

A

lmost overnight it would seem Twitter has come out of left field to take over the micro-blogging world (or, depending on your perspective, create it).

From CNN to the Fortune 500, Twitter is making huge in-roads into our culture. You can use it to post whatsoever is on your mind or search it like a National Security Agency spook to see what is being said about almost anything. You can keep up with cricket scores or post a change management update ... really, if you think about something and can write about it in 140 characters or less, you can "tweet" it―complete with links to pics, video and other articles and/or, gulp, other tweets.

So, as the enterprise debate about how to handle this powerful new communications tool gets underway―when to use it, how to use it, who should use it―the question for you, as the CIO, is "Should I use it?" The short answer is a qualified "Yes". If you are a forward-thinking CIO who wants to make his mark, Twitter is probably a good tool for your toolbox. If your are more the head'sdown type who doesn't really spend a lot of time outside of the data centre, then Twitter probably doesn't have a lot to offer you personally. Your service management staff, however, might benefit greatly. Twitter can also help you in other ways without you having to post anything, but more of that later. Either way, however, Twitter is something that you, as the CIO, are going to have to understand and deal with.

"It creates a richer personal connection in some ways, but it's virtually impossible to discuss anything in depth," said Stephen Hultquist, a consultant and CIO for hire. "So, you have to realise what it's good at doing" ... and not doing.

Tweets with a sting Twitter can get you in trouble real fast. There is the story going around of a senior manager working on a FedEx account who, without realising the power and reach of Twitter, tweeted from his Memphis, (a city in USA and the home of FedEx corporate office) hotel room that if he had to live in "this city" he'd kill himself ... or something to that effect. Well, to cut a long story short, that tweet got back to the folks at FedEx and a short time later their agency lost the account. There were probably other factors involved but Twitter played a role.

This one example shows the power of this new medium. If the manager had said those unflattering things about the city that is home to FedEx's headquarters to his or her spouse in private or even blurted it out in a bar with folks from FedEx in the room, it would still have been no big deal. But he didn't. He used a public medium, readable by anyone, anywhere with Internet access.

"I've definitely seen a few cases everybody from industry analysts to executives who tweeted when they shouldn't and it's led to everything from lawsuits to lost market share," said

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Jim Haughwout, vice president of Technology and the CIO of Neighborhood America (NA), a enterprise social networking software development house.

Open and searchable Twitter is not email, but its similar. It's not social networking, but it's similar. It's not SMS, but it's similar. It's not IM but, yes, you guessed it, it's similar. Twitter is all of these things and something all its own. It really is new and it really is powerful. The unrest in Iran over the summer gives you some idea of the power that can come from an Internet-based, public, real-time, instant-messaging, SMS-type platform that is searchable. And maybe that's the key that sets it apart from the others: its searchability.

Because Twitter's API's are open, thousands of developers have written thousands of applications that interface directly with the

Open Your Mind

Amit Somani, Senior Product Manager, Google India, shares his views on why enterprises should look at Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies to bridge the gap between perception and reality.

underlying platform. These engines allow you to search the Twitter stream for whatever you want: brand information, personal information, corporate information, product information ... anything, and in real time.

This brings us back to the central question: should you tweet?

And the short answer: Ultimately, you have to decide what you want to get out of the collective stream of consciousness that is Twitter. If you are looking to communicate better with your colleagues, employees and peers, it could help but you have to be careful about what you say and how you say it.

Tweet and sensibilities Like the early days of email, dashing off a quick, ill-worded reply can get you in trouble (at least in Memphis). Yet, the etiquette is still being worked out as we speak. So, the rule of thumb is the same one you use with any written medium that is public: think before you write and then re-read and think again. "Don't tweet what you think of your secretary," cautions Hultquist.

No matter what you think of Twitter though, you have to be aware of what it is and what it can and can't do, said Chris Curran, CTO at Diamond Management Consulting and an avid Twitterer.

"You've got to determine whether it's something that's good or it's something that's bad," he said. "That's another reason for the CIO to understand it: so they can have an informed opinion and not be a chicken little when the chief marketing officer or CEO comes knocking on the door asking questions.”

How do you define Web 2.0 technologies and their progress in the enterprises?

Let me clarify that Web 2.0 is not a technology/ set of technologies, solutions or products. It is a combination of all. Web 2.0, unlike the earlier version of web, works on the fundamentals of openness, collaboration and open participation. In today’s context, Web 2.0 is a great enabler of collaboration — both inside and outside the enterprise. Within Google, employees use wikis, document sharing over intranet and tools like ‘Google Moderator’. It is becoming an important character of enterprise work culture.

Are enterprises adopting Web 2.0 as part of a broader business practice now?

Interestingly, you can now have a Web 2.0 feature in all existing applications where collaboration is needed or desirable. Email, for example, provides us features and the ability to collaborate. These are instances of collaboration in real-time using the power of Web 2.0.

Applications like Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, and Twitter are attuned to help you collaborate in real-time. Zappos, a classic company into customer service was recently being acquired

by Amazon because the former applied all possible ways and channels using Web 2.0 to reach to the customers. Today, the core tenet of doing business is being connected and that’s what Web 2.0 helps us achieve.

What should enterprises do to harness the potential?

To harness the power of Web 2.0 tools, one has to know the DNA of business. One has to look at the organisation’s business fundamentals. We have to ask questions to ourselves: Are we about collaboration? Are we about openness? If yes, how much of it is required? And finally, what technologies do we want to reach there? There are some side effects too that introduce some vulnerabilities in the system. To overcome them, we have to figure out what we want.

—By Rahul Neel Mani

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Vendors tweet too Brand management is one of those new catch phrases (well, at least to me, an IT journalist) that has caught on with the rise of social media.

The one-way street that advertisers have enjoyed for so long is being turned on its head with the consumer now in control. The corporate world is listening. As the CIO, you are going to be in the hot seat when it comes to explain what effect these tools are having on the corporate brand. The CIOs I spoke with for this article all use it, for example, to see how a particular vendor's products are doing in the market before they commit to using them. That's powerful. They also use Twitter to see how their corporate brand is faring out "there".

SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

"Twitter is a new channel, yet it is the only channel right now that you can put things out there for anyone to see and also use it for quickly searching on what other people are saying and find people that are talking about topics you are interested in," said Haughwout. "Again, it's another vehicle for marketing and communications."

Haughwout uses Twitter to do informal test marketing. When NA was developing one of its own social networking products, Haughwout used Twitter to see if people were more inclined to use chatting functionality in things like Facebook or if they were more wedded to their AIM accounts. He did this so he could better understand where to build the chat hooks into their product.

About 60% of the folks that tweeted back liked the social mediastyle chat so NA went with that direction. "If you're a Fortune 500 brand you're probably large enough to get the equivalent of a focus group."

CIO-for-hire Hultquist uses Twitter to get action on problems he is having with vendors. He'll tweet that is having problems with some product or other and, if the company is large enough and is listening, then as often as not, it would respond. "I might post a tweet saying I'm dealing one last time with company A or I can't believe how poor this product is."

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Collaboration Perhaps most of all, said Hultquist, Twitter is a collaboration tool.

One that is breaking down barriers between leaders and those they lead. This is especially important going forward. The new generations are working in a much flatter, less loyal business world where who you know and who knows you is more important than how long you worked at Company X or Y. In this world, leaders need to adopt different leadership styles: styles based more on collaboration and sharing than fiat. Twitter can help with that effort.

“If they want to be the old-fashion, authoritarian leader then, no, it's not going to be helpful to them," Hultquist said. "But, if they understand that that doesn't work very well any more and what is much more workable is a collaborative approach to leadership, I think it's a good tool for that.”

"We’re learning that you can't hide anything," he continued.

"So, the myth that you are in control somehow because you have knowledge that others don't have, is really harmful to you as a leader. So, instead, flip it on it's head and develop trusting relationships with your staff and the people you support in ways that show your human side – as somebody that wants to collaboratively work with them. I think Twitter is a good tool for that."

— Allen Bernard is the Managing Editor of CIOUpdate.com

Powering the Next Gen Enterprise Web 2.0 tools can kick up a storm. Make sure you use them to your advantage.

BY SAURABH PANDEY

hat do you think will power the next generation enterprise?

Maybe you know the answer already – people!

Want to go even deeper – it's collaborative ideas!

The success metrics of new genera-

W

tion enterprise are already very clear: how can we be more innovative, relevant, efficient and adapt to change at 2X the speed thus far?

While the metrics and the power engine (people and ideas) seem traditional, the implications are very futuristic.

CK Prahlad, a world renowned

strategy professor and thinker, states that in the new age enterprise will have to focus on a simple formula: n=1 and r=g. What he means by this is that the next generation enterprise will have to create products and services customized for every single consumer and in order to do so they

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need to source resources globally. No single firm or individual can have a complete monopoly towards satisfying customized needs of individuals in the new age of business. This is the key for Enterprise 2.0.

The next generation enterprise will have to harness the collaborative power of its stakeholders (its buyers and suppliers largely) to generate new ideas, work on those ideas and create innovative, relevant and efficient products that can be adapted quickly.

The next generation enterprises are already facing a tough problem – they are global in nature. Their intellectual capabilities are scattered across the globe. The only means to organise this intellectual energy is email and the age old intranet!

Mr. CTO are you still with me?

Email is too official and intranet is used very cautiously and sparingly – these are formal platforms that may not be best suited for breeding collaboration and ideation for all occasions.

How can ideas that are conceived at a casual moment be shared instantly without anyone having to look at them with a microscopic lens. How can the least common denominator also feel empowered to share and to collaborate. How can this entire process be made fun, casual and

yet relevant for business?

Given that the collaboration of ideas of people from across the globe can make or destroy a firm, the biggest challenge here is to create an ecosystem where ideas can converge and take shape. This convergence helps in collaboration, ideation, knowledge management and learning, and most importantly can help us in looking at trends earlier on that can define the future.

Enterprise 2.0 is all about harnessing the Web2.0 (the participatory tools of internet like wikis, blogs, microblogging, tags, social sharing) tools from a business perspective – lending all the stakeholders an opportunity to collaborate within an enterprise platform.

Look at how Dell is using Web 2.0 to create new products. In 2007, Dell initiated its ideastorm program, and launched a special website www.ideastorm.com. The idea was to give a voice to customers so that Dell could learn and listen to ideas and feedback from its customers, fans and even hate groups. People can share ideas or vote for a good idea. Dell also posts a specific topic and invites discussions from everyone. This allows Dell to understand what's relevant for public and what's not!

In just three years people have submitted over 13,000 new ideas and Dell has already implemented over 400 of them!

Just one collaboration platform can make a firm more customer friendly, in tune with trends and quick to roll out new products and to innovate!

Many people feel that use of social tools within an enterprise can actually reduce efficiency! My take is – in absence of this, employees will still use social tools in a fragmented and insecure way external to the enterprise and that will be more damaging than not having an enterprise 2.0 capability.

Employees may use external social tools in an insecure way and that will be more damaging than not having an enterprise 2.0 capability

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Intel thought the same way and implemented an enterprise-wide social computing strategy with the objectives of: 1.Cultivating world-class workforce: As older employees leave the organisation they take away the intellectual knowledge accumulated over the years. At the same time, new employees that are young are taking over – enterprise social computing can help in information exchange in an informal way and quicken the whole process as well.

2.Finding expertise within the organisation, 3.Increasing interactive collaboration across the organisation 4.Spurring radical innovation 5.Attracting and retaining employees and 6.Capturing the tacit knowledge of employees Intel developed a platform complete with blogs, forums and a professional networking system, and feels that early findings are showing improvement in information dissemination and ideation.

Intel also believes that it has to deploy the complete stack of social computing platform rapidly to leverage its full potential.

It's very clear that the next generation enterprises understand the power of scattered knowledge that needs to be brought together – they also understand that the informal professional networks and informal business processes hide a treasure of innovative ideas that can never open up on formal communication channels. The need for enterprise 2.0 to extend collaboration and share power with the lowest common denominator in an enterprise is already evident.

About the author: Saurabh Pandey, Director Vertical Business, Ibibo Web Pvt. Ltd. Saurabh has over 13 years of experience in marketing, brand management, and sales in companies like Google, Airtel and Jasubhai Digital Media . Saurabh is a social media enthusiast and also writes regularly at his blog http://www.atomthought.com

SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

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Are your Employees Sharing Enough?

Gautam Ghosh, Consultant, 2020 Social in conversation with Geetaj Channana on using Social Media in the organisation, its benefits and what it means for the CIO.

A

re Indian enterprises serious about using social media in India?

Multinationals have been using these kinds of tools in-house for some time now. Right from big-blue, IBM to others. IBM has actually made tools for internal use and then started selling these tools outside. Lotus connections is a micro blogging and wiki suite. Sources from within these companies say that though they have taken off in the US, either they lack champions or they have not been utilised in India. So there are organisations who use these tools worldwide, but they have not really taken off here. With

the exception of IM, which has always been there and is not a Web 2.0 product.

The only application which organisations have been using is SharePoint. It is easier for IT leaders to say yes to it because you do not have an extra IT vendor to negotiate with. The problem with SharePoint is that it is still document centric – whereas the principle of Web 2.0 is that it is people centric. Cisco and IBM may be using these tools worldwide, but they are not very popular in India.

What is the biggest challenge in making people use social media tools?

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The challenge is that the technology needs to become embedded in the business processes. If ERP was all about business processes, Enterprise 2.0 has to do with business relationships.

There are currently lots of tools for managing the relationships within the enterprise and also for building relations with customers. There are CRM systems and e-mails. These systems are not giving anybody any pain. Nonetheless, they are frustrating at times in the etiquettes they employ and the way they are structured. Also, the vendors have not been able to showcase how these things will be able to ease some pain that currently the business relationships have.

Are you saying that Enterprise 2.0 does not have a strong enough value proposition?

I would say that it is not championed well. It is not being sold well.

This is because the organisations that make these tools mostly focus on the US market. I haven’t heard of any organisation that is really trying to market it here. There are organisations like Cynapse which has Cyn.in, which is open source. Organisations can deploy it on their own servers or buy it as a service.

Vendors also believe that Europe is a great market for them.

They are also concentrating on the product itself. There are very few consulting organisations for this.

There are organisations who are using tools like Yammer and it does not require the CIO’s mandate to be deployed because it is on the cloud. Tools like Yammer will be used by certain groups in the organisation. For instance, the sales and marketing could be using it without the others knowing about it. The CTO may not realise this. So employees may be using Yammer and Twitter for business purposes.

What are the benefits?

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Is there any way the organisation can get monetary benefits by using tools like Social Text and Cyn.in?

One of Social Text’s testimonials include a a CTO of a financial firm who says that earlier their employees spent, at an average, a day in a week searching for information. Before using the social networking tools, they had to rely on a taxonomy-based system that the servers used for searching. The social networking tools use tags, and thus are faster to search with.

This CTO was able to cut this time down from a day a week to two hours a week. Thus, saving them close to $5 million in a year.

And, as more people get on to it, more knowledge gets into the system. Thus, while saving money the organisation is also able to save all that knowledge that could have been lost.

What are the things to remember while deploying these tools?

The key thing is that it should be embedded into the business process and people should not see it as a separate task, above their regular work.

You never know what will click in an organisation. There is a steel organisation where professionals with more than 20 years of experience working in a brick and mortar company suddenly took to microblogging. It happened because it takes less time to use and learn. They did not take on to the bigger tools that allowed them to upload file, because it was difficult to include in the day-today working.

This example shows that if companies can get their employees to use one functionality it is easier to get them to start using other facets of the tool.

People are not looking for perfect products; they would rather go with what is quick and dirty

I would like to see it as a spectrum. One of the parts simply has to do with connecting people. In a large distributed organisation or a smallish firm that is distributed, it is important to know one’s colleagues.

That is the corporate social networking part. It becomes an employee engagement and communications aspect. This is like Facebook for the enterprise.

The other end of the spectrum is the collaboration part, where knowledge is the centre. I may have a document that I have worked on and I put it out there, five people add stuff to it. The collaboration results in a document that undergoes constant versioning instead of an email that goes round and round. It is like Wikipedia in the enterprise.

Tools like Social Text combine these two aspects. It is like a participative intranet. This is like an additional layer on top of the intranet.

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The best part is that the language here is not too different. It is something that people are used to on Facebook, Twitter or Orkut.

So, you may not have a choice in co-workers, but you may be able to discover people who share the same interest. It is an additional way to connect you to the organisation.

What does it mean for the CIOs?

Unless CTOs/ CIOs are able to understand these changes and define how it could affect their organisations, they'll have to worry about losing their job.

This is because people are not looking for perfect products; they are saying that they would rather go with what is quick and dirty but easy to use than wait for the perfect product that may come two years later. That is the reason why even though only a few people have taken to Yammer, yet it has the most number of successful cases.

SOCIAL N E T WORKI NG

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Rules for the New Socials When your company's employee with the Black Hat meets the market analyst wearing the Red Hat, do they shake hands?

BY TOM MCLAIN, ATTORNEY WITH CHOREY, TAYLOR & FEIL

D

o companies really need to develop policies to address social networking or social media?

The answer to this question may be surprising – Yes. The reality is that the social networking/media phenomenon may be falling within the radar of management of many companies for many reasons, including the informality of the media.

However, there are some very real dangers that need to be considered.

At the outset, the terms “social networking” or “social media” are themselves misleading, due to the inclusion of the word “social” and due to the mistaken belief that, because they occur on a computer over the Internet, they are not a serious endeavour. For example, it is easy to dismiss social networking as just a new way to chat or gossip.

A better way to think of social networking is that it is “computer-based” networking.

Company executives understand the

concept of networking in the traditional sense – meeting with people in face to face settings that may or may not be social for the purpose of advancing one’s business.

“Social networking” needs to be thought of in the same terms – it is just traditional networking facilitated by computers instead of being face to face.

It is also a mistake for company executives to dismiss or underestimate the social media phenomenon as a fad or as something that is reserved to a small number of people.

In August, 2009, a video was produced (for the Internet, of course) entitled “Social Media Revolution” that provided some amazing statistics: 1.By 2010 members of Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers; 2.The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females; 3.There are over 200,000,000 blogs and 54% of bloggers post content or “tweet” (post on Twitter) daily; 4.What happens in Vegas no longer

“stays in Vegas,” but shows up on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…

Quite simply, the raw numbers associated with social media are huge and so the question naturally arises whether social media has any real power, reach or impact.

There is little doubt that the sheer numbers have caught the attention of sales and marketing teams. Consider the following additional statistics from “Social Media Revolution:” 1.78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% of consumers trust advertisements; 2.People care more about how their social group ranks products and services than how Google ranks products and services; 3.34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands and 25% Internet search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

Very quickly, two things become evident: first, the sales and marketing groups of any company will be forced to

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begin using social networking and social media to promote the company’s products and services and, second, the sales and marketing groups of any company will be forced to begin monitoring social networking and social media to manage negative publicity about the company’s products and services.

Given the informal nature of these media, there will be a stronger need to establish guidelines on how to promote products and services and how to defend them, particularly with respect to company-sponsored communications or “official” activities.

Unfortunately, it’s the “unofficial” activities that can raise even higher levels of concern.

One of the aspects of social networking and media is that user profiles of the party doing the communicating typically indicate where the person works.

Moreover, the communications themselves are public and may be of endless duration. Thus, informal, unofficial communications by employees are of considerable potential concern. It is easy to imagine a host of scenarios which could lead to acute embarrassment for the company.

For example, suppose a public company employee is active on Twitter and well identified as a mid-level manager for the company.

Suppose further than an unrelated but unscrupulous twitter user decides to use twitter as a part of a pump and dump stock scheme for that company.

If our mythical company employee were to innocently pass along information from the unscrupulous Twitter user simply because he was proud of his company and that information was false, would our mythical company employee be an accomplice to the pump and dump scheme?

Perhaps not, but the circumstances could prove to be highly embarrassing.

Thus, there are several points which need to be addressed in any social media policy adopted by a company.

Such policies will need to address communications that are made on behalf

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of the company or clearly in a person’s capacity as an employee.

Company Social Media Philosophy A company needs to determine how far its policy will extend in the workplace and beyond.

In the workplace, it will want the policy to govern company-sponsored communications, or “official communications” and personal communications.

Common topics for official communi-

Mechanics Employees will often already have social media accounts so the policy will need to require disclosure to the corporation of all social media accounts.

Accounts which will be used for official communications will need to be reviewed for consistency with the public image the company wishes to portray.

The company should also have the passwords to all accounts from which official communications are sent.

Employees need to understand that accounts will be monitored and that violations of the policy may result in the termination of the employee.

“Playing the Game” and Online Demeanour

There will be a stronger need for guidelines on how to promote products and how to defend them

cations include: proactive sales/marketing, reactive sale/marketing (monitoring social media and reacting to “bad press”), direct inquiry customer service, reactive customer service (monitoring social media and reacting to problems) and human resources recruitment.

Official communications and personal communications outside the workplace will also have to be addressed.

The philosophy should stress that regardless of whether personal communications or official communications are involved, employee productivity is not to suffer as a result of involvement with social media.

Many social media sites are set up so that a participant needs to endorse others in order to gain credibility; however, such endorsements may give the appearance that the company is actually giving the endorsement.

Thus, the company has an interest to protect in connection with any social media account used by an employee that identifies the employee as an employee of the company.

The policy will need to be defined and require that the employee exercise appropriate business behaviour.

This requirement will need to be supplemented by training.

Employees must not forget that, despite the informality of the communications, the comments they make online are public and essentially permanent.

Compliance The policy will need to be conformed to all other policies, such as the company’s email, confidentiality, privacy and communications policies.

The policy will need to remind employees to protect proprietary and confidential company information and trade secrets. ­Tom McLain, a former litigator, brings a deep level of understanding to the issues that face the management of a company and is an effective manager of a variety of diverse legal problems for his clients. This article is printed with prior permission from Infosec Island.

LITTLE GIANTS

WEB CONFERENCING

S warndeep Singh Managing Director, Logic ERP Solutions

COMPANY DASHBOARD COMPANY: Logic ERP Solutions.

ESTABLISHED: 1993 REVENUE: Around 5.15 Crores HEADQUARTERS: Mohali, India NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 125 CUSTOMERS: Approximately 6,000

FACE TO FACE

NO OF OFFICES: Five offices located at Mohali, Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Mumbai

Web conferencing engaged the workforce and clients in a way that helped boost productivity.

BY VINITA GUPTA

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WEB CONFERENCING

L

OGIC ERP SOLUTIONS is a Mohali-based, integrated ERP software development company that provides IT services to clients from various verticals. With geographically dispersed clients seeking IT support around the clock, Logic ERP Solutions’ primary challenge was to deliver a high degree of customer satisfaction by increasing the level and quality of support to its customers.

Challenges Faced Logic ERP Solutions has a small team of just 20 technical support representatives, so creating a robust 24x7 IT support unit was a big concern. During a technical snag, its IT staff would initially try to understand the problem remotely, often through an exchange of mails. This would be time consuming and in most cases the technician would have to eventually travel to the client location. It would take a minimum of 24 to 48 hours to close a support call. Such inefficiencies would impact the client’s productivity and would thus leave the clients unsatisfied. Whenever onsite visits were arranged, the travel costs would add to the company's expenses.

Reducing the sales cycle was yet another challenge. A small team of sales professionals spread over a wide geography met prospective clients.

“Sometimes we would be delayed in getting an appointment by a day or two. Such delays have led to us losing out on a prospective deal!” said Swarndeep Singh, Managing Director, Logic ERP Solutions.

It was then that Singh was motivated to explore web collaboration with the idea of helping company employees to focus on the tasks instead of the tools and help them reduce support costs and increase sales. Fom 2006 the company is using WebEx Support Centre and Meeting Centre tools.

“We had an evaluation process where we evaluated software solutions of other vendors. There were also services available in the market either for free or with a one time charge, but these came with security and reliability issues. We thus picked on WebEx, the only web conferencing provider to have earned both Web Trust and SAS70 certification,” Singh said.

Software is not required to be installed at Logic ERP Solutions' end; employees simply access it online through a Web portal and register with the help of a session number. The process begins with Logic ERP Solutions' support team member requesting for control. The customer (employee) then approves and grants permission. The sup-

LITTLE GIANTS

port team member can then access the customer's desktop, no matter where he is located. “It is as good as the support member being physically present there,”Singh said.

Increased ROI Web conferencing has contributed to Logic ERP Solutions’ growth.

While their call resolution time has reduced by 120 times, the company estimates their overall ROI to be 250%.

WebEx Support Centre has resolved software issues by providing 24x7 IT support for its approximately 6,000 clients at different locations. WebEx Meeting Center also helps Logic ERP Solutions quantify leads as it allows them more roundtables and more interaction at an earlier stage of the sales cycle. Imparting in-house trainings too has become faster as it can be attended by a large group of its employees, irrespective of where they are based.

The company holds most of the meetings for discussing client presentations online, so much so that their monthly usage of the Web conferencing platform is more than eight lakh minutes. The business value and productivity benefits of Web collaboration can be estimated from the fact that Logic ERP Solutions was able to hold approximately 9,000 support sessions a month as compared to a mere 60 support sessions before implementation of this WebEx tool.

Logic ERP Solutions approximately spends around 40 thousand per month for using this Web collaboration tool. However, the savings in terms of travel costs of the employees are more than the monthly subscription rate. “This tool has also helped the company generate many leads,” Singh said.

“With Web conferencing tools our mode of providing support has changed from 100% onsite to almost 100% online, thereby reducing our travel time and costs substantially,” Singh said.

“WEB CONFERENCING TOOLS HAVE REDUCED OUR TRAVEL TIME AND COSTS SUBSTANTIALLY. THIS TOOL HAS ALSO HELPED THE COMPANY GENERATE MANY LEADS.” Future Plans

Singh said that he felt that there was no way that he could sell and support so many customers without Web collaboration too. The customer support has been very good. “We are evaluating additional uses for the Web tools by exploring online events that could boost the company’s sales effectiveness,” he said.

— Vinita.gupta@9dot9.in

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NEXT

HORIZONS

FEATURES INSIDE

iPad for the enterprise Is it a good fit? Pg 37 Breaking out of the mould How to implement a new IT strategy. Pg 38

ILLUSTRATION BY PC ANOOP

W 2009’s Top Ten The ten most important social and digital media developments of 2009.

BY KENNETH CORBIN

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e aren't going to call 2009 the seminal year in the rise of social media, social networking or any of the novel digital applications and media that fly under the banner Web 2.0. That would be a bit presumptuous. But this year did bring a bumper crop of notable developments across the social Web and digital media, and we thought it would be worthwhile to commemorate a few of them.

We've assembled a top 10 list in loosely considered order, of significant themes and plot points in the unfolding story of the remaking of the media landscape – social and otherwise. Enjoy!

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The Kindle changed everything

So Amazon introduced its e-reader in 2007, but this year the Kindle has come into its own. This holiday season, Amazon proudly announced that it sold more Kindles than any other product, and for the first time, it actually sold more digital books than print editions.

But this is a bigger story than just a win for Amazon. For years, e-readers had been

T E C H N O LO G Y T R E N D S

something of a laughing stock in the technology industry – big hype, no sales. Now it's one of the fastest-growing categories in consumer electronics. Barnes & Noble and Sony both had trouble keeping their devices in stock through the holiday season.

Numerous firms introduced or announced plans for new devices this year, with many more to come in 2010, leading to breathless stories that run along the lines of "How Amazon Reinvented the Book." Hyperbole aside, the Kindle and its competitors are forging a new market that Forrester Research is projecting to double in 2010, offering a small ray of hope for beleaguered print publications – from books to magazines to newspapers.

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The 'Craigslist killer'

“Kindle and its competitors are forging a new market that Forrester Research is projecting to double in 2010” Without question, Facebook and Twitter were the two most buzz-worthy social sites of 2009. But since their respective foundings, both have faced the persistent question about how they plan to parley a base of users who enjoy a free service into a profitable business. Both took significant steps toward answering that question this year.

First, in March, Facebook took the rare step of divulging some of its financial information, leaking word to reporters that it had been operating at a profit for five straight quarters, and was on track for a 70 percent jump in annual revenue in 2009.

Facebook derives the bulk of its revenue from advertising and the sale of virtual goods. Then, late this month, reports surfaced that Twitter was actually operating in the black. The company, whose founders had long talked about developing and selling an enterprise-class product, had apparently scored enough cash from their deals to license real-time content to the search engines of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that it was operating at a profit. So it wasn't a down year for everyone.

Less significant for the facts of the crime – a medical student allegedly murdered an escort he solicited on Craigslist – than the colourful aftermath, the story of Philip Markoff was a case study in the sensationalism that has accompanied age-old crimes committed with the aid of new media. Markoff was quickly dubbed the "Craigslist Killer," a villain whom ambitious politicians seized on to launch an attack against an immensely popular and almost entirely benign Web site.

Had Markoff met the woman he is accused of murdering through a newspaper classified ad or the numerous escort services that advertise in the yellow pages, this would have been a non-story. But because it was Craigslist, a relatively new and still not entirely Social media in understood online service, the government case became a sensation, just as Barack Obama rode into JUMP (FORECAST) have some instances of cyberthe Oval Office in January on a bullying and sexual predation on IN ANNUAL wave of promises about opensocial networks. Thanks to the ness and transparency, vowing to REVENUES OF grandstanding of elected officials look for technological solutions FACEBOOK IN 2009 to every problem the country like South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and faces and change the way busiCook County Sheriff Thomas ness is done in Washington.

Dart, Craigslist spent much of the first half Given that he'd just finished up what most of the year bathed in negative publicity, agree was a remarkably tech-savvy camreminding us that in certain circles, that paign, open government advocates had which is new is feared. high hopes. How open government has really become after year one of the Obama administration remains a matter of considFacebook and Twitter in the erable debate, and it seems safe to say that black? So they can make if things in Washington have changed at all, money!

70% 7

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it has been in the direction of incivility and partisan intransigence.

But there is no denying that Obama and his team have spent a good deal of time and energy expanding the government's presence online. From delivering the weekly address to the nation on YouTube to hosting an online town hall meeting, Obama has been trying to hang on to his new-media credibility. Dozens of new government Web sites and blogs have sprung up, inviting comments from the public, and more federal proceedings are streamed over the Web than ever before. The State Department has begun including new media training in the curriculum for all foreign service officers, and earlier this month the Office of Management and Budget released its long-awaited open government directive, setting a timetable for the agencies to take steps like publishing information online and setting up Web sites where the public has a chance to comment on policies and proposals.

6

The agonies of journalism

Oh, the anxiety! Most are aware that 2009 was not a kind year to the news business. More and more people were getting their news online, aggregators were plentiful, classified revenue was dissipating, newspaper subscriptions dwindled and a sour economy continued to sap advertisers' budgets. Much of this was not new or even markedly different from previous years. But as the economic predicament grew more dire, the first big-city papers closed shop, beginning with Denver's Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, both beta papers in two-newspaper towns.

But that left many to wonder how long it would be before a major American city would be left with no newspaper at all.

And so it wasn't long before an industry's existential crisis became a matter for debate among policy makers, with the great,

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still-unanswered question being: can the Internet produce a business model that will support quality, time-consuming accountability journalism of the sort that can be physically dangerous or legally perilous. If not, is this a case of market failure that warrants the involvement of the government?

Everyone has an opinion, which made 2009 a noisy place in certain media and policy circles, as Congress held hearings, the Federal Trade Commission convened a two-day workshop, think tanks and industry conventions tried to breath hope into new ideas, and sometimes resurrect old ones. As in the TV industry, the events of 2009 were a dramatic illustration for the news business of the challenges of adapting old media to new, and the growing instability of a model that relies on advertising to subsidize the production of quality content.

5

Miley Cyrus off Twitter?

Oh no!

When the Disney star deleted her Twitter account in October, leaving more than 2 million followers in the lurch, it was big news. A seminal moment in the pantheon of social media developments over the past year? Perhaps not. But by god, people were upset. One fan threatened to kill his cat if she didn't come back to Twitter.

Miley made a rap video ("Good Bye Twitter") explaining her decision: "Everything that I type, and everything that I do All those lame gossip sites take it and they make it news I want my private life private ..."

Cyrus is hardly the only celebrity to call off the love affair with Twitter, but hers was certainly the highest-profile breakup. It lands on this list because 2009 introduced much of the world to a new method of keeping tabs on people's favourite celebrities, or at least their ghost-tweeting assistants.

For many, it became an all-access affair, where Reese Witherspoon shopping for produce or Ashton Kutcher standing in line at a coffee shop became a newsworthy event (and fertile ground for parody). It was big news when Oprah Winfrey set up a Twitter account, and then gauchely posted her maiden tweet in call caps. Kutcher built a buzz for himself when he challenged CNN to a race to 1 million followers. Professional athletes have been slapped with fines

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“When Iranian authorities cracked down on protesters Twitter won itself a new legitimacy” for tweeting during games. During the Wimbledon tennis tournament, announcers on ESPN 2 and NBC (Mary Carillo especially) contorted into unnatural positions to work Twitter references into their coverage, routinely asking players about their Twitter usage in post-match interviews. That wave of celebrity Twitter followers may well have crested in 2009, but let it not be forgotten that, for a time, it was a phenomenon, however unseemly.

4

Social media's woes: security and privacy

For all of the excitement and surging popularity that have attended sites like Twitter and Facebook in 2009, the social Web has become a favourite target of hackers and malware purveyors. Some do it for fun and publicity, others with an eye toward identity theft or other nefarious exploits.

Whatever the motive, attacks on social sites were a recurring theme throughout the year that doesn't show any signs of abating as we head into 2010. Partly because the sites are so popular, and partly because we trust them with a lot of our personal information, when they get hacked, it's big news. And an image problem, particularly if they have serious hopes for making inroads in the business community.

Then there's privacy, which is a big one for Facebook. This year has brought intense scrutiny from some regulators and privacy advocates, as well as its boisterous community of users. Facebook has responded with a series of updates aimed to clarify and simplify its privacy practices. The latest,

rolled out earlier this month, was billed as the most comprehensive effort to improve the site's privacy policy – and make people aware of it – in the young company's history. Its reward? A complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission asking regulators to intervene with legal action against the site.

3

Twittering Iran

In June, when Iranian authorities cracked down on protesters following the disputed presidential election, Twitter won itself a new legitimacy as news organisations were expelled from the country and the micro-blogging service became a prolific source of information about what was happening in the streets. The romantic idea that the so-called "Twitter Revolution" – the notion that Twitter was the glue holding together a ragtag resistance movement trying to cast off the shackles of a repressive regime – was, well, a little overhyped.

There was no Twitter Revolution, and it is true that the vast majority of the online chatter about Iran on the site in those chaotic days in June was contributed by people writing from other countries. But there was enough real information coming out of Iran at a time when foreign correspondents were filing their dispatches from neighbouring countries that the State Department prevailed on Twitter executives to delay a scheduled maintenance outage to keep a line of communication open with the people in Tehran. We saw something similar happen in November 2008 with the frantic Twitter posts during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Less than two months later, a jet landed on the Hudson River, with pictures and short messages describing the incident bouncing all over Twitter well before the mainstream news outlets were on the scene.

On the occasion of the Iranian protests, the incident that more than any other has established Twitter as something bigger than a novelty, the Onion said it best, as it usually does, when it ran the headline: "Twitter Creator on Iran: 'I Never Intended for Twitter to Be Useful.'"

2

The race to real-time

As the year unfolded, the online vanguard assumed a growing sense of urgency about information. It became about

N E W T E C H N O LO G Y

immediacy, real-time everything: news, social exchanges, status updates. Certainly Twitter, by its design and popularity, had a lot to do with this. Its surging base of users seemed to prove that there was a demand for delivering information in seconds to an online populace for whom e-mail seemed a relic of a bygone era.

Keen to meet that demand, the biggest companies on the Web have been revamping their online offerings with a more real-time feel. It began in March, when Facebook unveiled a redesign that gave prominent placement to a real-time status update feature that looked very similar to what Twitter offers. Several site tweaks later, Facebook ends the year as a direct competitor to the micro-blogging upstart. Couple that with the recent deals Twitter has signed with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to incorporate real-time updates in those compa-

nies' search results, and it seems clear that a great many well-paid Internet executives have decided that the real-time Web is the way of the future.

1

What is to be done about video?

The TV industry continued to slowly warm to the free, on-demand ethos of the Web while struggling to preserve a business model that came under severe strain in 2009.

One notable development came in June, when Time Warner (NYSE: TWC) and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) began nationwide trials of a program they're calling TV Everywhere, offering paying subscribers the option to watch premium content on the Web. Much to the consternation of advocacy groups who warn against erecting walled gardens on the Web, trials of the program have expanded to new content and distribution providers.

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But 2009 also saw moves by Hulu, acting under pressure from joint owners NBC Universal (now in agreement to be taken over by Comcast) and News Corp., to pull content from sites and services like TV.com and Boxee, a fine reminder that this lurching transition is happening in fits and starts. Then News Corp. executives, in their push to revitalize the paid-content business model, began hinting that Hulu could become a pay site, and are currently locked in negotiations with Time Warner Cable in an effort to extract a sweeter distribution deal, a dispute that could, in a worst case scenario, mean that Fox stations are pulled from the cable operator's lineup. So the AP caps off the year with a dark story warning that the model of free, strictly ad-supported TV under the generally understood distribution arrangements could be ending.

iPad for the Enterprise - is there a Fit? iPad seems set to make inroads into enterprise territory.

BY DAVID NEEDLE

I

t wasn't until a year after Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007 for consumers that it started talking seriously about promoting the device to businesses. This happened after it added software support for Microsoft Exchange as well as security features favoured by IT. Consumers are still Apple's prime focus, but a growing ecosystem of software and support has evolved for the iPhone. The iPad seems to be following a similar pattern in terms of Apple's early marketing emphasis on consumers. But business and enterprise support is coming much faster to support the device.

"Apple was looking for early adopters and we said 'sure,'" said Joel

Reed, senior vice president of product management for Sterling Commerce, an AT&T company.

Sterling Commerce hasn't announced any applications for the iPad yet though Reed sees a logical progression from the apps it already offers for the iPhone that give retail sales associates instant access to real-time inventory information and provide IT managers with the ability to constantly monitor data levels from anywhere. Customers include big name retailers like Best Buy, Nordstrom, Target and DSW. "The iPad gives us a larger display to work with and opens up opportunities like warehouse management and retail applications," Reed told InternetNews.com. For warehouse applications he notes

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I PA D F O R E N T E R P R I S E

there could be an opportunity for a third party to make the device more rugged.

Communications giant Cisco jumped on making its WebEx meeting and collaboration service ready for the iPad right at the launch date. The free cloud-based service lets users attend WebEx meetings that can include audio conferencing with a headset connected to the device. Other standard WebEx features are available such as screensharing with live annotations and chat with individuals or group chat during the meeting.

"The iPad is a great example of innovation from a mobile device standpoint," said Cisco marketing manager Alex Hadden Boyd in a blog post. "I’m sure many other vendors will follow suit and we’ll see rapid advances on tablets."

That was easy User Christopher Thompson commented on Boyd's blog that "in two short days the iPad has changed the way I think about computing. I’m wondering how it is going to change the way I interact in meetings."

"Already I can see the need to show gestures and be able to manipulate or emphasise content with touch," he added. "I also like the iPad metaphor of grouping photos and documents and I can see how this might be really beneficial in a WebEx meeting. Think of being able to toss around content the way Tom Cruise did in Minority Report, while your colleagues can work with you in WebEx. Very cool." iPhone developers like MeLLmo, which has attracted 50,000 licenses to its Roambi client business intelligence visualization for the iPhone, is excited about what it can now offer on the iPad. “The iPhone knocked down the barriers after three years to get IT departments to patch it in. Now that's done. That cleared the way kind of like a wildfire for the iPad which I think a lot of enterprise customers are going to want," Quinton Alsbury, president and cofounder of MeLLmo, told InternetNews.com.

Roambi adds a range of stunning visualizations to Excel spread-

sheets and for data from other enterprise sources including Salesforce, Cognos and SAP. "The interfaces and animations we offer gets people using the software companies may have paid hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on. All that money is wasted if the reporting system is dreadful," said Alsbury.

"The iPad offers a whole new opportunity to take the interfaces and enhance them and make the applications even easier," he added.

Sybase was quick to announce support for the iPad via its Afaria mobile management set of services that already supports iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Afaria 6.5, set for release by this June, adds mobile device management and security solution for both the iPad and Android devices.

Features include the ability for IT to perform a remote "kill" on the iPhone, iPad and Android devices via Exchange Server to protect the content should the device be lost or stolen.

"The popularity of highly functional smart mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android and now the iPad, is significantly impacting enterprise mobility support requirements as these devices increasingly cross over from consumers into the corporate setting," said Jack Gold, principal analyst of J. Gold Associates, in a statement.

"The extensive communities currently established around mobile development will enable a near term and dramatic growth of datarich deployments of enterprise-class applications where security and manageability are key requirements," added Gold.

Consumers said the primary reason they might want a device like the iPad is to be able to work when mobile, according to a recent Zogby survey commissioned by Sybase.

—David Needle is the West Coast bureau chief at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. It wasn't until a year after Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007 for consumers that it started talking seriously about promoting the device to businesses after it added software support for Microsoft Exchange as well as security features favoured by IT.

Breaking Out of The Mould

Lack of clarity and poor communication can hamper a restructuring exercise.

BY PATTY AZZARELLO

I

f you want to get your team to actually implement your IT strategy, key initiative or change agenda, watch out for the following: Lack of Clarity - Everyone is clear on the big picture, but really fuzzy about what specific

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actions to take, what projects to prioritize and what things to measure. They might be talking about “virtualisation” or “improving performance”, but there is no clear definition of what that means and what is it that they specifically need to do.

While big goals may sound and feel good, they often leave both leaders and staff wondering what they should do doing differently tomorrow, and how their particular role or work fits into the new picture. They are all inspired to support the new strategy,

I T S T R AT E G Y

but there is no concrete plan as to which projects will be prioritised, or if the necessary tasks are something like more communication with the business, different measures, or user training. Lack of clarity = lack of momentum.

Everyone leaves the room with the mission of “improving performance”, but nothing different happens. Everyone is already doing good, important work, so there is just not enough reason or motivation to do something new.

Weak Support - Every organisation faces dilemmas, persistent, unresolved questions and things that block action until they are decided. And there are typically widely differing opinions about how to resolve them.

Should we fix the problems in the current system, or invest in a new architecture?

Should we keep certain applications inhouse or outsource them? Should we renegotiate our SLAs with the business or ask for more budget?

Are you certain that everyone on your team is bought in? Have you closed all the unanswered questions? Have you had the debates? or have you assumed people are ready and on board?

“Gracious non-compliance” means it’s just much easier to sit in the meeting and nod your head, than it is to voice your concern or disagreement. It’s better to just get out of this meeting than to drag it out even longer by disagreeing. "My opinion won’t change anything, and it won’t matter anyway because we never follow through with these kinds of things," the thinking goes.

"Why not just be pleasant about it during the meeting so I look like a team player, and save time?"

Fuzzy Math - Once the team agrees something specific is important, then comes the directive to go “make it happen". If you want to do something different, there will need to be resource changes. Asking the team to shift resources offline, doesn’t work.

Even if their intentions are good, they will come to the resource trade-off discussion with their peers with the point of view that the resources for the new thing were supposed to come from somewhere else.

You as the leader are responsible for these trade-offs. You need to assign resources to

“Not only behaviours and skills need to change.

Engage your organisation with the new values.”

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are completely bored with articulating your strategy, don’t fool yourself that the organisation at large has even begun to hear you.

People need to know you are serious.

Values and Socialization - Often, not only behaviours and skills need to change, but values need to change to be more user focused, quality oriented and tough on spending. Have you done what it takes to engage your organisation with the new values?

Socializing the new approach, talking about how “this is the way we do things now”, is a critical component to making sure people know that is it OK to act differently than they are used to. It needs to be the new accepted way of working if you want to maintain action.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition - There is well studied marketing information on communicating messages to your target audience. It takes your audience seven exposures to your message for them to internalise and act on it. For each of the seven, they need to see or hear your message three times. That’s 21 times to get across "Buy this digital camera ". So, for certain, 21 times is not overkill for “Buy these 5 points of the new strategy and understand what you need to do about it." Think more like a few hundred.

the new thing and take them away from the existing work. Your team members each need to figure out how to best deal with less resources for the old stuff. Don't expect them to give up resources, or as a group re-align resources to do new stuff. It just doesn’t work. That is your job.

Poor Communication - You can’t over communicate. Once you have agreed, and articulated your strategy, and have your specific, concrete, priorities and tasks defined, communicate them over and over again, every chance you get throughout the organisation.

Consistency is a big lever. Start and end every team meeting with it. Start and end every all-hands meeting with it. Start and end every one-on-one meeting with it. Unless you

Lack of Measures - Even if your strategy gets off to a good start, you won’t gain momentum unless you have a set of measures, tracking and review process that are set up specifically to support progress on the new strategy. You need to identify the few key metrics which will drive the change, and make them very visible throughout the change process. Don’t leave anything important to chance. Don’t assume progress will happen because it was agreed. Make sure your whole team remains focused on the few critical things that change the game.

—Today Patty is the CEO of Azzarello Group, a unique services organisation that helps companies develop and motivate their top performers, execute their strategies, and grow their business, through talent management programs, leadership workshops, online products & public speaking.

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Data Loss is a

MAJOR CONCERN Assaf Litai, VP of Strategic Accounts, Websense speaks to Vinita Gupta about the significance of DLP solution and the company’s offerings.

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A S S A F L I TA I

How would Data Loss prevention (DLP) solutions help CIOs? Modern technology has changed the face of business and opened up many opportunities. However, the proliferation of information stored and shared electronically is proving to be rich pickings for aggressive fast moving security threats. With the ability to identify and monitor an organisations’ sensitive data, DLP solutions help prevent data loss through data transmission and exchange including email, Web, USB, and other channels.

DLP solutions provide CIO’s with the visibility into where data resides, where it’s sent and by whom. DLP can also simplify the task of ensuring regulatory compliance with built-in templates for financial, health care, and other regulated industries.

DOSSIER NAME: Assaf Litai

PHOTO BY JITEN GANDHI

DESIGNATION: Vice Precident of Strategic Accounts, Websense Inc. PREVIOUS JOB ROLE: VP of Technical Services at PortAuthority Technologies.

Which verticals are looking at DLP? Any company that has data needs to protect it. The drivers certainly vary from vertical to vertical but the basic need remains the same - to secure the data.

Providing flexibility to meet the specific requirements of each organization, Websense data loss prevention solutions comprise four unique modules. The modular design enables staged rollouts that best meet organizations’ specific needs. We are focusing on the enterprise sector and in India we have customers from BFSI, telecom, IT and BPO sectors like Reliance Capital and Cognizant.

SMBs too are looking at DLP solutions as they have fewer customers and if they lose the trust of even a single customer then it would negatively impact their organization.

Management of the solution is the major concern for the SMB sector and hence we have partnered with service providers that can help them in managing the solution.

According to DeviceLock survey it is the device and not

“Looking across the security industry as a whole, other security vendors are lagging quite a way behind the solution needed to combat modern security threats head on.”

—ASSAF LITAI VP of Strategic Accounts, Websense

the network where the data can be leaked. What is Websense doing to protect data loss at device level?

Websense Data Endpoint extends the visibility and control to endpoints over what confidential data is and should be stored; who is using it; how it is being used; where it is being transferred; and what real-time action is taken to prevent data loss at the endpoint. Providing visibility and control over copy-paste, screen capture, print, and transfer to removable media, Websense Data Endpoint can enforce policies in the endpoint environment with minimal overhead. We also provide encryption on the devices.

How is Websense’s solution different from its competitors?

Websense DLP technologies are part of the Websense TRITON solution

NO HOLDS BARRE D

and provide market-leading DLP capabilities designed to secure sensitive information and intellectual property, as well as manage and enforce regulatory requirements.

Our competitors have bundled the DLP solutions with their other solutions and they do not offer a complete end to end DLP solutions. We at Websense provide a complete DLP infrastructure that includes Web, e-mail and data security. We have 900 pre-defined policies build in the system to quickly start the risk management within the organization and we know how to successfully deploy the solution and have a single interface that helps to reduce the customer’s complexity and risk. Websense have around 75% share of the actual DLP deployment in 2009.

Does the company offer DLP solution as a Saas model?

The Websense Data Security Suite provides DLP for Security-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to ensure sensitive data is only transferred to and from approved SaaS applications.

Websense recently introduced TRITON - the first and only solution to combine industry-leading Web security, email security, and DLP security technologies into one unified architecture. The TRITON solution delivers increased content security and cost savings helping organizations achieve a significant return on their security investments while enabling them to leverage all the benefits of Web 2.0 — unlike point solutions that rely on redundant multi-vendor management tools.

Looking across the security industry as a whole, other security vendors are lagging quite a way behind the solution needed to combat modern security threats head on. Their goals are to unify their security solutions and their on-premise and SaaS deployment models, but only Websense is delivering this now, today, through the TRITON unified security architecture.

—vinita.gupta@9dot9.in

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THINKINGBEYOND CHRIS CURRAN | chris.curran@diamondconsultants.com

CHRIS CURRAN is Diamond Management & Technology Consultants’ chief technology officer and managing partner of the firm’s technology practice. He writes the CIO Dashboard blog at www.ciodashboard.com

Cloud's Punch Line

Cloud computing seems to have enough substance to make it more than a passing fad.

FOR those who have been in IT for a while, the cloud computing wave has many of the same characteristics as any other fad: huge vendor investments, lots of new startups, a lot of media coverage and a few high-profile cases that you hear about over and over. After talking this through with Diamond’s CEO Adam Gutstein and our colleague John Sviokla, I think there is one thing that makes the cloud phenomenon different — It directly address-

Current Use on Interest in Investing in SOA Already Implemented Currently Evaluating

11%

21% 68% Not interested

SOURCE: DIAMOND DIGITAL IQ STUDY, 2010 DIAMOND MANAGEMENT & TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANS, INC.

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es IT budget line items.

MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research periodically collects data on IT spend from over 1,000 companies. They report spending across four categories: Infrastructure, Transactional, Information and Strategic. While it varies by industry, the infrastructure spend in their last report was around 40% of total.

They boil the world of IT spending down to four simple categories and infrastructure is one of them and it accounts for 40% of all enterprise IT spend. One of the two compelling cloud computing stories is directly targeted at cheaper, greener and more elastic infrastructure. Bingo!

[The other story is around business agility provided through cloud applications.]

I believe that the easier it is to see where a new technology can impact a business, the broader interest and acceptance it can have in the marketplace. As another example, take a look at service oriented architecture.

SOA had a similar vendor and media buzz sometime ago but that has fizzled out today. Try to find “SOA”

“Infrastructure spend accounts for 40% of total enterprise IT spending”

on a top-line IT budget – you can’t.

In fact, making a case for an architectural investment like SOA by itself is almost impossible.

To support the notion of an apparent fall in SOA interest, consider the responses we got from almost 600 business and IT execs on their current and planned SOA investments in our latest Diamond Digital IQ survey. Almost 70% surveyed haven’t and aren’t planning to invest in SOA. I believe that this has more to do with the complexity associated with the communication of its value than its overall utility.

I think that cloud computing, especially infrastructure clouds, will be more like application maintenance outsourcing in that they both have easily addressable budgets, are easy to understand and, therefore, will be easy to sell organisationally.

What do you think?

IT TRUISMS

T H I N K I N G B E YO N D

Done With the Rule Book

The four IT truisms are so passé. It's specific pieces of advice that are required.

I'VE been thinking about the enterprise collaboration and enterprise 2.0 space. I recently read a post about Enterprise 2.0 adoption which I thought was quite interesting.

However, what I don’t appreciate as much is the use of generic truisms by experts when asked for specific advice with reference to some technology or vendor.

There are four truisms that we hear over and over. Apply these bits of advice to anything in your professional or personal lives – acquiring a company, planning a project, building a house, running a political campaign, or evaluating outsourcing: 1.Gain Executive Support 2.Provide Strong Leadership

3.Involve Key Stakeholders 4.Communicate Early and Often Yes, these are all vitally important but they are also no-brainers and as generic as white rice. Haven’t we heard these enough to know the basics for setting up and managing a successful initiative? I know there are still some out there who think hiring a bunch of PMP-certified managers is enough, but they should be a small minority these days.

What I expect from subject area experts are specific bits of advice unique to their fields. In this case, I particularly like this kind of advice from a conference summary: For Blackberry users, transition them to reading blogs via RSS feeds

“Demand more from leaders and experts you rely on (present company included)”

on the device Create (or replace existing) an online suggestion box with comments and voting Integrate social bookmarking into standard browser and replace local bookmarking As leaders, you should move beyond the seemingly constant focus on the four truisms. These are table stakes for any business initiative and should be second nature. I’m also asking you to demand more from leaders and experts you rely on (present company included). Push them to expand your thinking with deep insights specific to their experience.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to say Please and Thank You.

Author: Niall Ferguson

HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW

“Money has been one of the driving forces behind human progress”

Dough won’t Disappear. The Ascent

of Money is as entertaining as it is informative.

NIALL Ferguson had the guts to hammer out at Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in a public debate last year on macro-economics. Whether the rising bond yields were good for the US economy or not, that was the question. Krugman said yes and Ferguson no. And like in most arguments, there was no clear winner. Not losing was victory, said Ferguson's supporters. Ferguson shouldn’t have got into a technical argument with a person of Krugman’s repute, some others said.

Well, that argument may go on, but nobody ever disputes that Ferguson is one of the finest living financial historians in the world. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World proves just that, yet again.

His stellar work traces the rise of money and credit from ancient Mesopotamia to modern times. He writes about the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, which was moneyless, the emergence of metal as money, Italy’s loan sharks, evolution of banking and so on. The book, which has

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been adapted into a TV documentary, also delves into the growth of bond markets from the 13th century and describes the role of some of the biggest market manipulators such as Nathan Rothschild who used wars to make unbounded wealth. The rest of the book focuses on the emergence of stock markets during the 17th century, the rise of sectors such as insurance and real estate and development of international finance over the next couple of centuries.

He draws extensively from newspapers, centuries-old documents and his own previous works such as The House of Rothschild and Empire to offer a comprehensive read of the evolution of money, which, he says “has been one of the driving forces behind human progress”.

As money keeps reinventing itself over time, he argues, old empires topple and give way to new centres of power. He traces this power struggle from the rise and fall of the Spaniards in Latin America to the latest power centre – what he calls the

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

ULLEKH NP is consulting editor, CFO India.

He has earlier worked with news organisations such as Mint, DNA, The Hindustan Times and India Today. Over the years, Ullekh has written on a wide range of subjects including politics, business, advertising, art, travel, culture and people.

“dual country of Chimerica - China plus America”.

He writes that today’s financial world is the result of four millennia of economic evolution, and economies that have combined institutional innovations — banks, bond markets, stocks markets, insurance and property-owning democracy — have performed better than those that did not. “Yet the ascent of money has not been, and can never be, a smooth one … it is a roller-coaster ride of ups and down, bubbles and busts, manias and panics, shocks and crashes,” he says.

The book, which starts off by taking a dig at the Marxian forecast that “money will disappear”, concludes by saying that if financial markets are the mirror of mankind, “it is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty”.

It is timely, and as readable as it is informative, because in writing history as entertainment, Ferguson is a master.

HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

Think Big, Execute Small MUKESH SINGH

Senior VP, Makemytrip.com A WHIRLWIND TOUR: In 2003, on returning back to India after spending almost 8 years in USA, Singh decided to do a Indiawide train trip travelling in sleeper / passenger class compartments and making some unplanned stops at small towns and big cities.

“We have incredible diversity which you will notice only if you travel off the beaten path,” he says.

PM FOR A DAY? While on his India-wide tour, Singh had many conversations around politics and cricket

with his co-travellers. “Every Indian feels that if he/she becomes the PM for a single day, he/she can transform the country. However, if you ask them whether they would encourage their kids to enter politics, the answer is mostly a ‘no’!” says Singh with a hearty laugh.

THE GOOD AND THE EVIL: Singh has two favourite quotes: “Even good can be better” and the other from Julius Caesar, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

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PHOTOS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL

STUDENTS at the computer science department at IIT Kanpur aren't content with learning about the fastest processors. They want to design the next fastest. And so it was with Mukesh Singh and his project-mate who were determined to turn the computer on its head. The duo team came up with an idea for a 'Virtual Director', a program which was to attempt what had met with limited success so far – creating animations based on text input.

“We were both on a high while discussing the possibilities of what the project could do,” Singh reminisces. But future-gazing quickly made way for ground reality as difficulties in executing the project came to the fore.

That's when the their project management skills came to their aid. “We were trained to break up a big task into smaller parts, and execute those parts step by step.” The project earned the team the 'Best Project' award.

Along with the ability to make a mammoth task more manageable, Singh prides his capacity to deliver under pressure as the other important training that he picked up during his college days at IIT and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) where he studied Media Arts and Science. At both the institutes there was a substantial amount of courses that students had to work

HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE

Snap Shot on. The situation is no different in a corporate set up, Singh notes. In his current role as the VP-IT of Makemytrip.com, Singh handles 25 - 30 projects simultaneous. “The difference between a good senior management team and an extraordinary senior management team is the way in which the latter handles priorities and executes under pressure,” he says.

Singh feels proud of having helped set up three offshore development centers for eGain Communications (Pune), Sumtotal Systems (Hyderabad) and Amazon (Bangalore,Chennai and Hyderabad), some of the companies he worked for prior to joining Makemytrip.com. Yet, it's the act of contributing to the Indian society by generating around 500 jobs per year (direct and indirect) that brings him immense satisfaction. “In the last ten years or so, I feel I have been coming close to the target (of generating jobs),” he says.

Singh likes soccer and long distance running, both of which help him unwind. “Long distance running not only helps you unwind, it fuels your mental stamina,” says Singh.

It was on one such marathons that Singh ran a lap with an athlete – an incident that provided him a first-hand experience of the raw talent in India. At a marathon at Ladakh, Singh saw that a local Ladakhi lad outpaced him early in the race. The boy, who was just 17 and had very little of the running gear required for such highaltitude running, went on to win the race. “It got me thinking,” Singh says, “we are a country of over a billion people – the most populated country – yet how many Olympic medals or Nobel prizes have we won?” So impressed was Singh of the boy's confidence and determination that he charted out a plan to sponsor the boy's athletic training for the next eighteen months. —Aditya Kelekar

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The engineer and his doctor. Singh is married to a doctor, Julee. “My sister did not have a choice when it came to having me as a brother. In the case of Julee, it does not cease to amaze me how she voluntarily agreed to be my wife!” Singh says. Both of them love to travel, walk and have long gossip sessions over coffee.

His book and album. It's tough for Singh to pick one book as his favourite. His top few include Animal Farm by George Orwell, How Toyota Became Number One by David Magee, Rashmi Rathi (in Hindi) by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Julius Ceasar by Shakespeare. Boondien - Silk Route is his favourite album, the song “Dooba Dooba” his favourite song. “It’s a perfect song when I go for a long drive.”

Marooned on an island. If Singh had a choice of just one device he could carry while all to himself, it would be Kindle (for that matter any eBook reader).

“There are so many pending books for me to read.

Won’t be a bad idea to read some books stranded on an island!” he says.

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

Front Seat. IT managers

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTOS.COM

need to effectively influence technology purchase decisions.

SOMETIMES we lose focus on what matters to the buyer – or the buyer’s boss’s boss – when we’re trying to sell things. It’s a good idea every now and again to take a step back and make sure you are cognisant of the motivations and reasons those buyers (and their boss’s boss) are doing what they do.

I know that we like to get all fired up around infrastructure issues like disk arrays and servers, but we need to remember that by the time we’re engaged in those dog fights, the real money decisions have already been made.

If you want to affect the outcome of those decisions, you need to intersect the process at a higher (sooner) level of the value chain process. If you wait until all the good decisions have been made, you end up in the basement arguing fitzer valve specifications with someone who can’t talk to women without getting hives. Bad place to be.

The real cost hierarchy for any business application over its life is as

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follows: 1.Licensing – this is why Oracle is king of the world.

2.People – developing, implementing, and supporting – opex.

3.Energy – the cost of powering and cooling the crap that runs the app.

4.The crap – capex.

Crap is a big business, no doubt – but it’s the lowest overall cost in the life of the app, and rightfully gets the lowest amount of attention from the business.

It costs more to power and cool the crap than to buy the crap. Therefore, instead of arguing “my nanospaz is bigger than yours” or “my nanospaz is 16% cheaper than yours”, you should be saying “my nanospaz technology will consume 43% less energy over its lifetime, which will equate to a savings of one billion dollars.”

Why? Because the higher you go on the true cost hierarchy the more senior business people are likely to be involved – and the business is more likely to be affected by the decisions.

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

“Business people” does NOT necessarily mean senior IT people.

Might mean the people that actually are the true decision makers – the marketing dude buys CRM and Business Intelligence stuff, not IT. The facilities dude cares about power and energy, not necessarily the IT folk.

Legal buys e-discovery stuff, not IT normally. IT makes it work – often after the higher level decisions are made. I am not saying it’s right, only that it’s true.

Further, the higher up the stack my IT friends can learn to intersect these discussions internally, the better for all concerned. Since IT will inherit the “make it work” aspect of the decisions anyway, you might as well try to prevent the outrageously silly aspects of those decisions from happening early rather than later. In this way, you won’t get the mandate sent down that one of the core requirements of this new application is “interplanetary replication.” Nipping that one in the bud early will benefit all concerned.