S P I N E
CTO FORUM
Technology for Growth and Governance
June | 07 | 2010 | Rs.50 Volume 05 | Issue 20
LITTLE GIANTS
A stitch in time PAGE 40
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
THE SPRING OF TECHNOLOGY | MANAGING AGILITY | THE BIG CLEANUP
Shun the primitive style PAGE 12
Wealth Weavers
Volume 05 | Issue 20
CIOs who go beyond their roles and create wealth for their organisations | PAGE 22
BEST OF BREED
Ten cloud computing secrets PAGE 16
A 9.9 Media Publication
EDITORIAL RAHUL NEEL MANI | rahul.mani@9dot9.in
Blue-eyed boys CIOs who can also drive revenues are the strongest contenders for the top job.
O
ne of the most frustrating factors in a CIO’s life is that in large parts of the industry, IT is still considered to be a cost centre—a function that CEOs and CFOs eye with scepticism, and for which they do not sanction budgets easily. When they do, there is the pressure to demonstrate a quick RoI. Many of you are likely to agree that an IT function often receives the "step-motherly" treatment within an enterprise. In the majority of cases, this is
EDITOR’S PICK 12
because the CIO is viewed as a "capital-intensive" black box! It is no surprise then, that a CEO doesn’t consider you as his partner in growth. How can we, as a community, change this? How can a CIO become the blue-eyed boy of a CEO? Should CIOs be revenue-driven to get into the big league? In my opinion, the notion of IT being a cost centre, instead of being a shared corporate resource that may be leveraged for a company’s revenue
Shunning the Primitive Style
It is high time CIOs should look at modernising their application infrastructure and move on to cheaper and faster platforms.
growth, is an antiquated idea that detracts CIOs from achieving agility, or better business outcomes. But, it is true that only some CIOs are making an effort to be revenue driven. There is no doubt that in today’s economy, CEOs will seek out CIOs, who, apart from finding cost-efficient and businesseffective means to run IT, can also leverage their expertise for the growth and profitability of organisations. If the CIOs want to be considered as a business-oriented person, they should morph their cost centre into a profit centre. CIOs will have to win business, or perish. This model can be extended to servicing organisations in the same industry. Ones that imbibe this approach will find it easier to get on the Board, and eventually, become CEOs. Needless to add that a
CIO stands for Chief Information Officer, and not a Chief Infrastructure Officer. Another likely model could be a "non-profit" model where you charge-back for services to your internal clients and either break-even, or make a small profit at the end of a year. However, a not-for-profit model also means that you have to have your service-level agreements in place—solid metrics that will show your performance. The risky aspect is that if you don't perform, your clients might look outside for the same services—so, you better have a good organisation set-up in place to perform properly. Are you set to become the CEO’s blue-eyed boy?
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22 COVER STORY
22 |Wealth Weavers
COLUMNS
04 | I BELIEVE: CUTTING DIAMONDS Ravishankar Subramaniam, Director, IT Advisory, KPMG, on benefits of mentoring fresh talent.
A set of CIOs who look beyond mere management of the IT infrastructure and create wealth for their organisations.
48 | VIEW POINT: CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE An attempt to ease management pressure. BY KEN OESTREICH
Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before Recycling
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COPYRIGHT, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Kanak Ghosh for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd, C/o K.P.T House, Plot Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd. TTC Ind. Area, Plot No. A-403, MIDC Mahape, Navi Mumbai 400709
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FEATURES
36 | NEXT HORIZONS: TRUTH ABOUT IT STAFFING AND ROI The soft stuff about knowing what your team wants, can add to your RoI in more ways that you think. BY PATTY AZZARELLO
VOLUME 05 | ISSUE 20 | 07 JUNE 2010
www.thectoforum.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Kanak Ghosh Publishing Director: Anuradha Das Mathur EDITORIAL Editor-in-chief: Rahul Neel Mani Editor (Online): Geetaj Channana Resident Editor (West & South): Ashwani Mishra Associate Editor: Dominic K Assistant Editor: Aditya Kelekar 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 & Suresh Kumar Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi
12 A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
12 | Shunning the primitive style.
It is high time that the CIOs look at modernising their application infrastructure and move on to costeffective and faster platforms. 16
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REGULARS
01 | EDITORIAL NTERPRISE 06 | E ROUND-UP IDDEN 37 | H TANGENT advertisers’ index
16 | BEST OF BREED: ACTIVELY MANAGING FOR AGILITY Your long-trusted methods of planning could cost you more than you think.
45 | HIDE TIME: SUDHIR REDDY, CIO, MINDTREE, Loves movies and is passionate about his Yamaha MT01.
IBM REVERSE GATEFOLD EMC IFC SAS 09 MICROSOFT INSERT 18 IBM IBC CANON BC This index is provided as an additional service.The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.
ADVISORY PANEL Ajay Kumar Dhir, CIO, JSL Limited Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IS, Godrej Industries Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Country Head, Emerging Technology-Business Innovation Group, Tata TeleServices Vijay Sethi, VP-IS, Hero Honda Vishal Salvi, CSO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO, Essar Group SALES & MARKETING VP Sales & Marketing: Naveen Chand Singh National Manager-Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (09880436623) Product Manager: Rachit Kinger Asst. Brand Manager: Arpita Ganguli GM South: Vinodh K (09740714817) Senior Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar Singh GM North: Lalit Arun (09582262959) GM West: Sachin Mhashilkar (09920348755) Kolkata: Jayanta Bhattacharya (09331829284) PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh, Mohd. Ansari, Shashi Shekhar Singh OFFICE ADDRESS 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
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THE AUTHOR HAS close to 25 years of experience in leading an IT function in India and South-East Asia.
PHOTO BY GIREESH GV
I BELIEVE
BY RAVISHANKAR SUBRAMANIAM Director, IT Advisory at KPMG.
Cutting Diamonds
Mentoring fresh talent for growth 'MENTORING is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction’ – by John C Crosby. Many of us have felt the need for better quality of freshers from institutes. We have also sensed the feeling of bewilderment of these youngsters as they start on the long journey in business. I believe that, one way the IT community could help itself is by recognising and pro-
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CURRENT CHALLENGE RECOGNISING AND PROMOTING THE NEED FOR APPRENTICESHIP
moting the need for old hands and seasoned campaigners to take freshers under their wing and guide them as they get accustomed to business. The accounting industry and the medical profession recognised the need for apprenticeship over a century ago; it is time the IT industry does so too. Some large IT companies have established training divisions that help ensure inexperienced employees attain a required competency level before they are assigned to projects. In the case of smaller IT setups, mentorship is more viable. Still others have gone a step ahead and have elaborate training programs that not only train professionals but mentor them to take on larger roles in the organisation when their managers decide to move up the ladder or move on from the organisation. That which is measured is likely to be delivered. Other professions measure the number of surgeries, the number of legal cases, the number of clients, the number of shishyas. We IT folks can surely devise a method to count the number of employees we have helped grow professionally. It is just like doing one good deed a day. While we figure out a mechanism for measurement and reward, I appeal to each one of you to start mentoring at least 2 young graduates each year. The difference it can make to our organisations is huge. We will also derive satisfaction in giving back to society what we have been fortunate to gain. And, it is an educative process for the mentor – much more than we think! As leaders in IT, it would be the right time to start this as a formal or semi-formal initiative within our departments. Those of us who do so will become more attractive employers to fresh graduates. We will also retain happy, committed, performers in our teams.
LETTERS CTOForum LinkedIn Group Join close to 400 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
One of the hot discussions on the group are: How do you treat your vendors – like a partner, a service provider, or a mere salesman?
CLOUD EVERYWHERE The interview with Rolf Kleinwächter, Head of Managed Office and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Fujitsu, was a great article and provided great insights not only about Fujitsu's future in the Cloud - but trends in the Cloud as well. There is a lot of thrashing in this space and it is hard to determine which Cloud to go for. Everyone is doing something a little different and thus it’s hard to compare Cloud to Cloud. A similar diagnosis is by David Chappell: "If I ruled the world”, says David Chappell, “I would make the phrase ‘private cloud’ illegal.” In conversation with David Gristwood, David Chappell, during his recent world tour, discusses Windows Azure, its importance and role in the partner ecosystem, and other cloud players, such as Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, VMware and more. CLOUD NINJA, posted on Infosec Island
“Your editorial “A page from Vendor’s Diary” was interesting. My suggestion to vendors is that they should do some research on users, look at all past and current applications, meet them in forums and do an initial introduction. If they approach the CIO with a specific offering that he may need, there are great chances of getting heard. ”
In IT, it is all about partnerships. We will not be able to satisfy our end customers unless all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together perfectly. A closer comparison is with an orchestra or a stage play. The end result is totally dependent on each participant performing its role as per the plan. If all partners work towards joint objectives, we will never have to open the contract papers for missing deliverables or SLAs.
—Asmita Junnarkar Chief Information Officer at Voltas Limited. In today's business world the use of words like service provider, system integrator etc. are no longer valid. The complexity and specialisations required in any industry are challenges that need "collaboration" with specialists for continued success. I have followed one simple golden rule - there is no "I” and “You" with those who work with you - even though they may be from different organisations. Only genuine collaboration and partnership bring success. I consciously avoid using the word "vendor" in all my interactions.
—KR Sreenivasan CIO and CQH, Tata Capital Limited.
The creator of 'Suicide Machine', Gordan Savicic, believes that connectivity and the social experience offered by web2.0 companies go against the grain of human freedom. In an interaction with CTO Forum, Savicic talks about what motivated his team to design the noose that would allow users to strangle their virtual identities. To read the full story go to:
thectoforum.com/ content/harakirinet
OPINION
SENSE OF DIRECTION
Speed is of essence, but of little use unless you are headed on the right path.
S R BALASUBRAMANIAN, Executive VP IT, Godfrey Philips India
“I believe it is essential to maintain the delicate balance between being futuristic and delivering fast enough before the requirements change in the future” 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
CTOF Connect
AMRITA GANGOTRA Director IT (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel
http://www.thectoforum.com/content/sensedirection
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STORY INSIDE
Enterprise
Brocade for Finance: Company announces finance options for customers. Pg 10
ILLUSTRATION BY SURESH KUMAR
ROUND-UP
Zap to the Cloud. SAP, Cisco, EMC and
VMware team to speed the journey to Cloud Computing. ONE OF THE key problems of migrating to the Cloud with all your systems is the sheer scale and complexity of the operation. Especially if you have a SAP implementation in place, it is extremely difficult to port the system to the cloud. Now, SAP could have an answer. Using the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition and its Vblock Infrastructure Packages, SAP, Cisco, EMC and VMware are working towards making the switch to “private cloud computing” simpler. The initiative marks an important step toward running SAP software reliably and securely on internal and external
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cloud environments, and also underscores integration with the SAP NetWeaver Adaptive Computing Controller tool to help customers increase flexibility and save costs in their data centres. In lab tests with Levi Strauss & Co., the technology partners demonstrated potential TCO reductions by running SAP on Vblock. Independent tests commissioned by SAP, Cisco, EMC, VMware and Accenture show that running SAP on Vblock architecture can reduce TCO in a number of key areas, including: Reduction in capital expenses, fewer implementation costs and savings in upgrade expenditures.
DATA BRIEFING
22%
WILL BE THE GROWTH RATE OF PC SHIPMENTS WORLDWIDE IN 2010 —Source: Gartner
E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
THEY VIC SAID IT GUNDOTRA
ILLUSTRATION BY ANIL T
During the recently concluded Google Developer Conference – Google IO – Vic Gundotra showed that they are ready to compete with Apple on its home ground. While speaking to developers, he said
Joining hands. HP and AlcatelLucent to join hands for Unified Communications. HP and Alcatel-Lucent have announced they will provide new communication solutions, allowing clients to easily adopt and deploy Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C). Building on the companies’ global alliance, this agreement enables HP and Alcatel-Lucent to deliver and market end-to-end UC&C solutions to clients. These solutions use the convergence of telecommunications and IT to transform the way customers use UC&C services. “Clients want an open, holistic approach to services delivery that maximises their investment in UC&C,” said Gary M. Budzinski, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Technology Services, HP. The offerings include: Migration from multivendor and legacy PBX to an IP voice integration layer that uses Alcatel-Lucent’s open IP Telephony architecture for UC&C; Automated workflow and workload within business processes; Industry applications for UC&C that demonstrate a streamlined approach to reducing costs and improving efficiency, such as Digital Hospital. These offerings are built on HP’s UC&C consulting services that include services from strategy and planning through implementation, design and education. They may be implemented on a customer’s premises or via an outsourced model.
ILLUSTRATION BY SURESH KUMAR
QUICK BYTE ON ENTERPRISE SERVER MARKET IN APEJ
“When I joined Google, on the first day, I met Andy Rubin who was responsible for a top secret project called Android… He argued that if Google did not act we faced a draconian future. A future where one man, one company, one device and one carrier will be our only choice. That’s a future we don’t want.” —Vic Gundotra, Engineering Vice President Google
The enterprise applications software market in the APEJ region returned to positive growth in 2H 2009, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Semiannual Enterprise Applications Tracker. IDC forecasts this market to grow by 15.4% in 2010. CTO FORUM thectoforum.com
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E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
More on Azure. CDC Software
Announces its First Cloud App to be Developed on Windows Azure. CDC SOFTWARE Corporation, a global provider of hybrid enterprise software applications and services, announced its CDC Respond complaint management system will be its first cloud SaaS application developed with the Windows Azure platform. The announcement of CDC Software's cloud solution for Respond is the latest
move in the company's plans to expand its growing portfolio of cloud-based solutions. Already, CDC Software had made several cloud-based acquisitions, as well as made investments in two SaaS application companies as part of its Strategic Cloud Investment Partner Program (SCIPP). Under SCIPP, CDC Software plans to make minor-
GLOBAL TRACKER Fujitsu
Gartner says Asia Pacific server shipments up 27.3 percent in first quarter of 2010 8
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Oracle Other Vendors Dell
1.5 5.6
Asia/Pacific: Server Vendor Market Share in Percent, 1Q 2010
7.6 12.9
HP
33.3
IBM
39.1
ity investments in, and form strategic reselling partnerships with, companies offering cloud-based or point solutions which complement its enterprise solutions portfolio. CDC Software already has piloted CDC Respond on the Azure platform and plans to deliver the product by the end of the year. The Windows Azure platform is a set of cloud computing services that can be used together or independently that enable developers to develop cloud applications. "CDC Software's commitment to developing cloud-based solutions using Windows Azure technology is a measure of the ecosystem's faith in Microsoft Cloud Services," said Moorthy Uppaluri, general manager D&PE, Microsoft Corporation. "I am especially proud to announce our new cloud product based on Windows Azure while participating at Microsoft's press event with Steve Ballmer in Delhi today," said Peter Yip, CEO of CDC Software. "We are excited about developing this new product largely due to our successful partnership with Microsoft. Our CDC Respond cloud application is an excellent addition to our already strong SaaS product portfolio." "This new cloud product illustrates our commitment to the Windows Azure cloud infrastructure," said Alan MacLamroc, chief product and technology officer for CDC Software. "We believe that by developing applications using Windows Azure and leveraging our Agile development methodology, we will be able to launch flexible, reliable and scalable cloud applications quickly to the market. Azure provides us the ability to develop SOA-based multi-tenant architectures with the tools we are already using, and deploy them to a robust platform with staged production, failure-resilience, elastic scalability and self-service provisioning. CDC Software shares a complementary vision in cloud computing with Microsoft, and as a result, we expect to partner with them again on future cloud products." Since late last year, CDC Software has acquired four cloud-based companies including last week's acquisition of TradeBeam, a cloud-based supply chain execution software company, and has invested in eBizNET Solutions, a provider of SaaS supply chain execution solutions, and Marketbright, a SaaS marketing automation company.
E NTE RPRI SE ROUND -UP
ILLUSTRATION BY PC ANOOP
Brocade for Finance. Announces financing options for customers through Brocade Capital Solutions.
BROCADE has introduced Brocade Capital Solutions, a privatelabel captive financing program, through which Brocade and a network of qualified business partners and financial services firms will offer customers tailor-made financial options that encompass and complement all of Brocade’s technical and support portfolio. The program has been designed
to enhance and expand Brocade's relationships with its customers and help Brocade better respond to competitive and business pressures . The Program has became more business critical with customers according to a survey by IDC, which predicts that the worldwide market for IT leasing and financing will grow from nearly $90 billion in 2008 to more
FACT TICKER
Rebounding Services.
IDC predicts 3.1% growth for the APEJ IT services market. IT services spending in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region witnessed a strong rebound in 2010 as many IT projects that were put on hold during the downturn are back on CIOs’ agenda now. According to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Semi-annual IT Services Tracker, the overall IT services market in APEJ is
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estimated to grow by 13.1% in 2010 after flat growth last year. Business priorities are quickly returning to pre-recession status and CIOs are more proactive in managing changes in the marketplace. Key findings include: Sustainability and business process optimization will be the key factors to drive
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than $125 billion by 2011. Some of the most frequently mentioned benefits for IT leasing cited by customers include: Protection against equipment obsolescence; Freeing up capital for other uses; Providing the opportunity to better balance project costs with benefits. "The goal is to provide our customers more options in the way they are able to acquire Brocade solutions and manage the lifecycle costs of those assets," said Deb Dutta, vice president, Brocade Asia Pacific. "Through Brocade Capital Solutions, we address our own long-term business strategy of growing our business while meeting an increasingly important customer demand." Brocade has unveiled two specific financing programs to provide customers low-cost options in procuring solutions: A three-year, “same as cash” (0% financing) plan; A plan offering no payment for 90 days and 2.9% financing for a three-year lease thereafter. Both financing plans apply to select hardware and software in the Brocade networking portfolio.
technology refresh and transformation. Migration, virtualization, consolidation and relocation projects continue to grow as enterprises seek to optimize IT investments. With the market moving towards an era of consolidation, new delivery models like cloud computing will drive the next phase of IT services growth. Enterprises are actively evaluating the potential benefits of a public, private or hybrid cloud model. Vendors offering cloud services need to optimize
costs and mitigate the risk for enterprises to adopt this new model. They have to provide a clear return on investment and address security risks, performance and availability. Data centre consolidation and a transition to nextgeneration data centres have been fuelling the demands for consultancy, infrastructure build-out and managed services. A number of deals were signed in the past 12 months by multinational corporations to build mega data centres in the region.
GREEN TALK
E
Bay's newly opened data centre has managed to achieve high levels of redundancy while also using as much as 50-percent less energy than other facilities that it leases. In a blog post on Data Centre Pulse, eBay's Senior Director of Global Data Centre Strategy Dean Nelson lays out what went into building "Project Topaz," the code name for what he calls "the single largest infrastructure project that the company has ever undertaken." Picture that everything has a backup – even the backups have backup. Now keep in mind that nothing is really 100% bulletproof, but in terms of a resilient data cenre, we have built the highest level possible. Now, many think that when you build a data centre with this much redundancy, it will be extremely expensive to operate and very inefficient. Quite the contrary. Besides running the data centre operations for the company, I'm also responsible to pay the power bill. So, the data centre must be built like a tank, be able to brush off major faults, lower our operating costs and be extremely efficient. We have built a fault tolerant Tier IV level data centre that is 50% less expensive to operate than the average of all other data centres we lease today. It is also 30% more efficient than the most efficient data centre in our portfolio. At a designed PUE of 1.4, it lowers both our economical and ecological costs.
Floating on the Cloud: Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus says that Cloud-based system architectures are more scalable and flexible than previous architectures
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S T UAR T MCG I LL
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
STUART MCGILL | CTO, MICRO FOCUS
Shunning the
Primitive Style
It is high time the CIOs should look at modernising their application infrastructure and move on to cost-effective and faster platforms. In an exclusive conversation, Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus shares his thoughts with Rahul Neel Mani
These are not very good times for CIOs and enterprise IT organisations due to budgetary pressures. How do you think CIOs should handle the application development and application lifecycle management? You are absolutely right. I think in today’s environment typically the CIO’s are focusing on cost, on ability and speed of delivery. In the global economy and particularly in local economies, like Asia the construct
is such that the speed of delivery is incredibly important. How can different strategies benefit CIOs? Whether or not CIOs prefer cost over delivery, the fact that they are looking at alternative strategies around modernisation is something that will not go unnoticed. This trend has picked up in the last two-three years. Applications can’t run on platforms that are costly or inflexible. Therefore, the focus is on moving the platform as quickly as possible to achieve lower costs as quickly as pos-
sible and channel the saved funds into investing in the future. CIOs need to play the role of a business transformer. For example, how can cloud computing help them in protecting investments. How can it decrease cost while allowing the customers to take advantage of the technology? So, to answer your question in precise words, the CIOs need to relook at their application development and life-cycle management strategies and think of flexible models with modern approach.
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A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
S T UAR T MCG I LL
You spoke about modernisation of applications and costly and inflexible platforms. How to deal with these two aspects? There are two different approaches industry takes to modernise applications. One of the effective ways to look at it is to create a large application project that would include making of pioneer packages, rewriting subcomponents and the customisation of the application. This is an “all-in-one” approach. Second approach is with regard to packaged, point applications which are deployed quickly as per the need of the enterprise. The enterprises need to prioritise how they want to go about the modernisation. According to me, CIOs need to move the platform first – to a more cost-effective platform to deliver immediate cost savings. If they see some tangible savings then those saving can be reinvested into modernising organisational application framework. But I don’t mean to suggest at all that such projects should get delivered at an incredibly high risk. If your company decides to implement SAP ERP, you buy the software and, engage a consultancy and spend next couple of years fine tuning that. It’s a high risk game in which you cannot think of changing the application in near future. But what you can do is that if your current applications are successfully running, move them on to a cheaper platforms. Many customers are using this approach in the order to drive home savings in the range of 60–70%. What are these cheaper platforms and what do they consist of? How do CIOs insure that these cheaper platforms are not going to create any sort of problem in continuity? Valid question! The platform shift and re-hosting has been there for quite some time. There has been a lot of momentum to shift from mainframes to UNIX, Linux and
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Windows. Lately moving into the cloud has also come up as a very logical choice. These are all proven next-generation platforms which do not cause continuity issues to the businesses. If you move from Mainframes to UNIX or Linux or Windows, you can achieve up to 70% saving on your annual operations cost. That’s true, but large enterprises swear by mainframes to run critical applications and do not want to migrate to any of the options that you have mentioned. I strongly think those enterprises don’t have the relevant information on the next generation platforms. Because the global trends suggest a huge migration from mainframes to cheaper platforms which deliver the same level of performance, security and reliability at lower cost. When you talk of migrating from mainframes to UNIX, Linux or Windows environment, what’s next? You briefly mentioned about the cloud, how will it help the CIOs and the people who actually take care of the application infrastructure? Cloud-based system architectures are more scalable and flexible than previous architectures, because they are re-hosted, they are simplified and they actually use very cost-effective infrastructure. Second important point is that the world in which we all operate is changing and the way our customers expect systems to be delivered today is very different. Our next generation expects everything to be delivered through the web, through social networks or networking without even bothering about where do they get the access. On top of it all, they believe more
THINGS I BELIEVE IN Global trends suggest a huge migration from mainframes to cheaper platforms. Most secured and secret organisations can run on a public platform CIOs need to play the role of a business transformer.
in self-service. It makes great business sense to adopt cloud services because not only you pay as per the usage but also the infrastructure doesn’t lie idle. For example in any country across the world, for the first eleven months of the year no one wants to fill in the taxes and during the last month everyone wants to fill in the taxes - not want to but have to. Therefore, we need to have the infrastructure that supports that one month. And guess what! You happily pay for it the entire year. Therefore, cloud architecture allows you to build infrastructure to support such peak loads and you have to pay only for what you have used. You do not have to pay for the wasted capacity for the rest of the year. The commoditization of the future infrastructure models will fit into our cost model and also at the same time the applications modernisation will come into place. Do you really think that selfservice can become a reality in places like India? We depend a lot on our service providers to service us. Where will they go? The service providers will not vanish. They may decide to be cloud
S T UAR T MCG I LL
A QUESTION OF ANSWERS
“Cloud architecture allows you to build infrastructure to support peak loads and you have to pay only for what you have used.”
infrastructure service providers. Someone has to provide that service – why not the service providers? Playing a devil’s advocate here if I can ask a straight question - what are the typical 3-4 great benefits that a CIO can get if he moves on to a self service mode? It is not just the CIO who can get benefitted but also the CFO. If a CIO can deliver an application or IT framework which asks for less investment in services, and dramatically lowers the costs and increases the speed of delivery, it will be music to the ears of his/her CFO. Isn’t it? What needs to be delivered is a faster, reliable low-cost platform which can uncompromisingly run efficient business applications. These are the three things that are appealing to both CIOs and CFOs and they can only be achieved through self-service.
You mentioned that CIOs should look at transforming the business. While going for these kinds of transformations, which are aimed at revenue growth, they all come with some risk to the infrastructure, business applications, data etc. How can CIOs work to mitigate these risks? You can look at it in two ways: One which evokes a CIO to opt for significant investments to achieve transformation. That’s where the bigger risk is because it asks for a significant investment, significant change and affects what a CIO is expecting from his job to deliver faster to meet the requirement of an organisation. Second is a lowrisk framework wherein CIOs can move the applications to a cheaper platform and which makes sense to their businesses. It will not only deliver cost savings but also the ability to re-invest the money that you save.
There is a huge paranoia around the aspect of security when you go into the cloud and people don’t take it very positively. Do you think this is the right approach that CIOs have taken or anybody who has to handle the cloud part of the business? Do they need to get so paranoid about it? I think you are right. CIOs are quite paranoid. I think they need to start from the top before they really understand. I think the CIOs are absolutely correct to ask those questions to anyone they should expect these questions to be answered now. I must share that most of the US government departments including the CIA and parts of the homeland security run using the cloud. Most secured and most secret organisations can run on a public platform if they need to. So it’s not something that can’t be solved. But CIOs need to differentiate between concerns and paranoia. The security concerns are valid but paranoia is not. The CIOs should ask the right questions and expect most convincing answers. One final thing: What would be the two most important trends that you see in the application space in the next couple of years? I think the two most important macro trends in the application space will be cloud architecture in platform systems and mobile architectures for the Internet. Those are the two massive trends that we must watch out for.
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10 things about the Cloud you don't already know. Pg 18 The Big Cleanup enabling a stress free migration Pg 20
ILLUSTRATION BY PHOTOS.COM
BREED
FEATURE INSIDE
DATA BRIEFING
17.4%
EXPECTED INCREASE IN SPENDING BY INDIAN USERS ON EXTERNAL SERVICE PROVIDERS. SOURCE: GARTNER
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Are You Actively Managing for Agility? Your long-trusted methods of planning could cost you more than you think. BY JOE WOLKE
A
colleague recently attended a concert at the new 80,000-seat Croke Park football arena in Dublin, Ireland. As she learned, the sparkling state-of-theart stadium was built in a residential area with little available parking, and accessibility mainly by public transportation. In fact, during the event, the neighbourhood was closed for blocks in all
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directions, allowing pedestrian traffic only. Tens of thousands of concert-goers faced a long walk through the residential neighbourhood, arriving from all directions. The centre of the stadium — the seats and the “pitch” — is apparently spacious and comfortable. The sound equipment, stage and seating are all top of the line, and my colleague’s experience at the concert
AG I L I T Y
itself was fantastic. But once the concert ended, the crowds were herded back out through narrow residential streets. Most walked miles before finding a train, taxi or bus. Clearly, planning for this new stadium lacked in certain key areas, all of which impacted the concertgoers’ ultimate experience — and had extraordinary collateral impact on the local community. Croke Park is a perfect metaphor for something we often see in Organisations: inadequate infrastructure technology planning. The latest, greatest mission-critical application is finally in production when something seemingly comes out of nowhere, significantly impacting the infrastructure technology environment and/or the budget. Recently, a financial services company I know of implemented a new management application that enabled them to push data entry into the field. They followed the traditional methodology in developing this application — defining functional requirements, developing tools, provisioning storage associated with those tools, and taking the application into production. However, they did not address the burden that the additional 150 remote users would place on the network during periods of peak load from other applications. The network simply could not support this broader user community. Just as the application was placed in production an immediate fix was required and the company was forced to invest in extra network bandwidth. It’s important to note that this financial services company had an extremely sophisticated IT group. This just illustrates that the complexity of today’s IT environments is such that even the best of IT Organisations can miss things, using a process designed for an earlier generation of infrastructure technology —especially if they haven’t experienced that particular problem in the past. It happens, but it can be avoided.
Didn’t we already fix this? This issue (we call it a lack of infrastructure readiness) is a problem many believed was solved 15 years ago. In fact, at a recent client conference, Forsythe polled nearly 40 of our key clients all CIOs, VPs of infrastructure, and other top IT leaders at major companies and more than 70% said they had this problem licked. When pressed to examine the issue further, though, many realized that the processes they believe addressed this problem don’t always work. We see this every day in data centres and IT departments. In fact, as businesses grow more dependent on IT, and as IT gets increasingly complex and interdependent, horror stories are common. Although most companies follow the traditional methodology for developing applications to a “T,” they still miss some of the stickier gotchas, which can cause them significant unplanned spending. This is because the problem has changed and the established methodology often used to develop applications is not effective at preparing shared infrastructure technology to support new applications. So why does this still happen? It’s not that we don’t have a process. The problem is that the process fixes a model that is 15 years old. When you design an application, you address a particular function. Fifteen years ago, an infrastructure, like the application it housed, was built to support a particular function or system. The project justification and specification methodology created at that
TYPE OF CHANGE
BEST OF BREED
POTENTIAL AREA OF IMPACT
MAJOR APPLICATION SUCH AS SAP, ERP AND CRM
• Network Traffic • End User Support • Storage • Business Continuity/ Disaster Recovery
ACQUISITION OR MERGER
• Security and Access Control • Network Quality of Service (QoS) Guidelines • IT Service Management • Data Centre Strategy • Software Licensing • Desktop Support
NEW DATA CENTER
• Network Connectivity • DR Plan • System Monitoring and Support
time worked for the architecture that was in place, based on standalone systems. It covered both sides. Currently, applications are still built with the same objective: one function. However, today’s infrastructure technology addresses multiple applications and functions. Complexity and inter-dependencies are the issues of the day, especially given virtualisation, storage consolidation, and shared services. This complexity will only increase with anticipated changes like Cloud computing, unified data centre fabric, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). The model has changed. But the process hasn’t. The fact is by optimising infrastructure through all these technologies individually you may be creating a problem as big as the one you’ve solved.
Facing the music Over the last several years, many CIOs have had to answer this question form their CEO: “What happened to the return on investment (ROI) that I was promised when I invested in those new systems?” To understate the obvious, CIOs aren't always able to answer this question to the business’s satisfaction. In the early 2000s, many CIOs got burned when traditional project justification models failed. They could not effectively calculate and measure ROI for projects and systems running on shared infrastructure. IT lost credibility, and discretionary budgets were slashed. Today’s CIOs and CTOs are still jumping through hoops to justify budgets and to obtain money for infrastructure investments. This all occurred because many IT leaders didn’t yet fully grasp, anticipate or explain the real cost of implementing new systems. It’s more than the cost of developing and implementing software. Metaphorically, going back to Croke Park, it’s the cost of the collateral impact on the Croke Park community, from lost property value to lifestyle infringement. Okay, so how do we fix the problem once and for all? It’s an easy answer. We can’t. Technology doesn’t sit still long enough for us to perfect one solution that works for everything. But we can create and implement a process that addresses today’s model and evolves with the use of technology solutions that optimize infrastructure by addressing multiple applications. And, if we continue to stay on top of evolving technology, then we can effectively ensure “infrastructure readiness” on an ongoing
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basis. Preparing your infrastructure can help you avoid spending more than you planned. First, you have to understand all ways that a change can impact people, process and technology. This is a useful exercise not just for application changes, but also for technology changes like virtualization, and business changes like mergers and acquisitions. We recommend that clients set up an assessment matrix that identifies potential areas of impact for each key technology domain. This matrix should also include baseline performance metrics for each area and a process that identifies changes to these baselines that might come from the business change that is being implemented. This tool then serves as a guide for identifying infrastructure changes to be made in conjunction with the project for implementing the business change. The “potential areas of impact” listed in the chart above are just a few of the major areas that will be impacted during a transition. Consider that for each of these areas, companies typically already have a strategy in place based on previous needs. That strategy should be revisited based on the change occurring. Second, enterprise architecture initiatives should have the capability and the flexibility to deal with changes or additions to the system portfolio and the technology landscape, such as virtualization,
shared storage, etc. The architecture should be flexible enough to handle significantly different technology models as they become viable. Third, it’s important to set up a funding model that includes infrastructure readiness as part of any system change. This allows you to appropriately associate the cost of a shared infrastructure with the change. For example, the ROI calculation for an investment should note the full cost of the IT infrastructure, including services for the entire life of the application or asset. This equitable costing model for the new shared infrastructure should also incant the user to optimize the return (think justification to the CEO). If you develop an effective model using a shared network or virtualization, upfront costs might be 20 percent of those for a traditional model, thus justifying the short- and long-term investment.
— Joe Wolke is a director in Forsythe’s IT Strategy practice and works with clients to define and deliver projects based on business needs and objectives. He has more than 25 years of business management experience, and spent the last 15 years in executive IT positions defining, communicating, and implementing IT strategies for global Fortune 500 Organisations.
Up in the Cloud
T
Ten things about Cloud Computing you don't already know. BY ROB MCGARVEY
ILLUSTRATION BY ANIL T
hey should have renamed this year's Interop, Las Vegas "Up in the Cloud" because the dominant theme at this April's business computing show was the time has come for Cloud computing. And yet there remains so much that many of us — CIOs very much included — still don't get about this fundamental shift of computing out of the office, off the desktop and into the Cloud. So, to clear the air (no pun intended), here are 10 facts gleaned from Interop keynoters and panellists that just may be news to you: "It's the most important thing happening": Lenny Heymann, longtime Interop GM, set the agenda in his opening remarks before an SRO audience at the first-day's keynote. "Cloud computing is changing how we do business. This is a platform change that will allow businesses to be more agile." That's the point. Cloud com-
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puting isn't about better computing -- although it may be that, too -- it is about agility. For businesses today, that is key. Plodding businesses die, the agile survive. This shift is inevitable: By 2012 only 21 percent of businesses will not use Cloud computing, said one speaker. A related factoid out of Gartner is that, by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Everything will be Cloud-based and leased. Collaboration in the Cloud: Fuelling the shift into Cloud computing is the need for real-time collaboration tools that let workers, in many locations, work with the same document. Already Google Docs and Lotus Live are designed with Cloud collaboration in mind. Microsoft's Office 2010, too, pounces on this tool set. Cloud collaboration just may be the office worker want for 2011. The goal: making file sharing in the Cloud every bit as easy as it now is to type in a URL.
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The consumer Internet enters the enterprise: "The Cloud started in the consumer Internet," said Interop keynoter Kristof Kloeckner, an IBM vice president and CTO of Cloud Computing. Many users have gained familiarity with the Cloud by using Web-based email (HotMail to GMail) and later Google Docs. They work, so why not in enterprise? This, incidentally, emerged as another big Interop theme: business users want the same computing-Internet experience in the office that they enjoy at home but, in many workplaces, this just isn't so. Pinch the pennies: IBM's Kloeckner said that an enterprise using Cloud based tools will save 20 to 30 percent compared to one using traditional tools. That huge discount is a key spark for the rapid-fire triumph of Cloud computing. Multiple models: Most Interop speakers envision a coming world of many Cloud types — notably public Clouds (shared spaces, accessible by many users from many places); private Clouds (built out for one organization that does not want to share
resources with others); and hybrids, which mix some public assets with some private (perhaps employee health insurance records are stored in a private Cloud but archives from last month's sales meeting are stashed in a public Cloud). Sound confusing? The confusion is unavoidable right now as organizations test their comfort levels with the various Cloud options. As they get clearer, the picture of Cloud computing will jump into focus. Security remains worry No. 1: The primary roadblock to wider Cloud deployment remains security concerns: every bit as valid today as they were a year ago. Clouds certainly can be and are secure, but not all Clouds always are and not all CIOs are yet persuaded. Another worry for some CIOs is the fear of lock-in, of commitment to a particular Cloud vendor. (Note similarities to lock-in to an outsourcing provider or proprietary software vendors.) Mobility goes with the Cloud: The absolute best place to deploy mobile tech to users, and to store their work, is in the Cloud.
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Nothing is anywhere near as reliable and fast once users go mobile and especially not as they switch to handheld mobile devices.
Blowing in the wind: Many speakers admitted it: "Cloud computing" sounds, well, undependable, fragile. And almost nobody knows how it differs from software as a service (SaaS). Don't ask what the new name will be, but don't be surprised when "Cloud computing" slips out of the language and something new seeps up. Take off your Czar Crown: Overheard at Interop is that, as the Cloud becomes ascendant, IT stops being a monopoly controlled by an internal department " ... and the CIO is no longer czar." Ouch. But that is what the man said. — Rob McGarvey has written over 1500 articles for many of the nation's leading publications —from Reader's Digest to Playboy and from the NY Times to Harvard Business Review. McGarvey covers CEOs, business, high tech, human resources, real estate, and the energy sector.
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CASE STUDY | CA-CIB
The Big
Cleanup Challages
NON STANDARD SERVERS, RACKS AND NETWORK EQUIPMENT was making managing the network extremely difficult. On top of that there was NO DOCUMENTATION that could help the team in ensuring an error free operation. 20
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L
ately we have been running a cartoonography contest on our website. This is about captioning a cartoon of a CIO surrounded by a mess of wires in his data centre. He is trying to direct his IT manager on how to plug leaks on the network. This was exactly Boman Nakra’s state when he joined Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank (CA-CIB)– then known as Calyon Bank. CA-CIB has been present in India since 1981 and provides various financing and investment banking services through six branches across the country. It is amongst the top five foreign banks in the country for capital markets products. It is also a leader in treasury markets and provides services to leading Indian companies and financial institutions.
C O N S O L I D AT I O N
COMPANY DASHBOARD COMPANY NAME Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank B USINESS: Financing and investment banking services L OCATIONS Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad H EAD IT Boman Nakra INDIA HEAD Michel Roy, Senior Country Officer
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was needed. This had a huge effect on downtime, also because there was no redundancy in place. To make matters worse, there was no documentation that could help the team identify the cables. There were many defunct servers too, that were still lying in racks, taking up expensive real estate. The capacity of the data centre and server room was not utilised properly. In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives it was imperative to proceed with a consolidation project.
The solution For the solution, Nakra found solace in standards. “The solution was standardisation. How much of equipments can be standardised, given the framework of the organisation”, he says. As a part of the consolidation process, all old, aging and non standard servers were identified and removed. Eight out of eleven open equipment racks were removed and replaced with standardised racks. Proper planning has ensured that all related racks were placed together. Following the incorporation of new racks, the IT Equipments have been installed as per functionality. For instance, the communication related equipment like routers/ switches/ firewall/IPS have been grouped together as per their functionality. IT Equipment relating to regulatory systems have also been installed in a separate rack. It involved careful planning and execution to complete this process to ensure that there was no downtime involved. Thus, most of the migration was done over weekends and after office hours. It was also because of Nakra’s experienced staff, that he was able to achieve this huge transformation without a glitch.
The benefits
BOMAN NAKRA says that to consolidate his infrastructure, “the solution was standardisation. How much of equipments can be standardised, given the framework of the organisation”.
“Better management, better control and better compliance”, says Nakra. Reorganisation has benefited the CIO, his team and the organisation as a whole. There has been a 25-percent reduction in the real estate being used for IT equipment. The space saved has been allotted for better seating arrangement of the IT staff. The organisation has also resulted in lower power consumption, cutting the energy bills by close to 10-percent (estimated at 1.2 KW per rack).
Going forward The challenge The servers in CA-CIB, prior to consolidation, comprised of many open slotted angle racks. The IT equipments including core LAN switches, routers, firewall and servers were not in contiguous racks and were spread across various open racks. The cabling in the data centre was untagged and very messy, making it difficult to maintain the equipment. Also, there was no patching in place to organise the tangled cabling. A lot of time was wasted to identify the cables and at times an outsourced specialist
There are more than 46 servers in the data centre of the bank in Mumbai – these include tower mount and older technology servers. Also, there are many servers that are there in the six branches across the country. Nakra plans to consolidate all these servers in the data centre in Mumbai for ease of management and better uptime. The MPLS network for this purpose has been collapsed and re-created with Bharti’s help. — Geetaj Channana
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PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI
Wea
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Many CIOs are expanding their roles by starting a new business model, or managing consolidated departments. By Ashwani Mishra
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Wealth
avers MANIKKAM V.S. is responsible for the overall business requirement of
HENKEL CAC PVT. LTD. that includes
IT operations, infrastructure, software and services.
SUNIL GUJRAL
in addition to his CTO role, took over as the CEO of Technical Solutions Group of QUATTRO offering infrastructure management services to SMBs and US customers.
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he idea of one actor playing multiple characters in a movie is not a new one. Even though many people begin and end the conversation with Eddie Murphy for his performances in films such as Nutty Professor and Norbit. Back home who can ever forget Sanjeev Kumar enacting nine roles in the 1974 film Naya Din Nayi Raat that represented the different moods of a man as per the Indian art ethos. He played the roles of a lover, a brave hunter, an epileptic, a coward, a transvestite, a drunkard, a poetic heart and so on. A similar trend is now being seen in enterprise circles. These enterprises have created new CIO-plus roles that are typically more strategic, enterprise wide and, often, customer-facing. However, unlike the reel, where there is the possibility of several retakes to make a scene perfect, a corporate boardroom offers no such freedom. “CIOs have been successful. This has made the management believe that these guys can also add value outside their IT roles,” says Sunil Gujral, EVP, CTO and Business Head for Technical Solutions Group of Delhi-based Quattro BPO. But, before a CIO can lay his claim to business, he must be focused and aligned with the corporate goals. "A CIO should, of course, be aligned with and focused on the corporate goals—both short and long term ones. But, in several other organisations a CIO also plays the role of a technology strategist, i.e. the person who looks forward in time to gauge how an organisation can use its IT to improve margin
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50% CIOs hold positions outside of traditional IT. According to a 2008 Gartner Executive Programmes survey
PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI
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directly (cost reduction, revenue increase), or indirectly (increase customer satisfaction). "I am certain that every organisation can improve its performance through an improved use of IT. Actual initiatives that achieves this will be different from one organisation to the next," says Rolf Frydenberg, Senior IT Management Advisor at Joymount AS, and the Founder and Board Member at Manag-E Nordic AS.
Come one, come many A few months ago, Gujral took over as the CEO for a leading business line—Technical Solutions Group of Quattro—in addition to his CTO role. The Group offers services such as infrastructure management, desktop management etc. to SMBs and its US customers. This needed Gujral to understand the cost of delivery and budgets among other things, which arise from an operations perspective. Though he still retains the CTO post, he devotes less time to it, as he has created a team that stepped in and assured him
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EXPERT
SPEAK ERIC BRAUN
President and Managing Consultant, TeamShare Solutions
Manikkam V.S., Henkel: You want more business intelligence about how to run your operations better—the CIO is wellpositioned to provide that.
that they would manage IT. However, for strategic decision making, his opinion is always taken. “CIOs just need to instill confidence within the management. Once this is done, I believe that they are also given additional roles in the business,” says Gujral. Many in the industry believe that CIOs are better positioned to deliver improved processes and business results in their new roles, than they would have, had they held just technology positions. Just how successful a CIO can be to manage his role as the IT head (with attributes such as mentality, work style and thought process), influence the management's decision to place upon him additional responsibility, or handover new portfolio within his existing role. This is primarily because CIOs have a greater ability to influence their organisa-
tion’s direction—process, strategy and business models—when they have more of a role on the business side. Another reason to consolidate agencies or assign new roles is to save money by reducing the number of managers. A 2008 Gartner Executive Programmes survey of 1,500 CIOs, found that more than half of the CIOs held responsibilities outside traditional IT roles. Many more were given additional responsibilities in areas such as human resources—without officially adding these roles to the designations. “You want more business intelligence on how to run your operations better—the CIO is well-positioned to provide that,” says Manikkam V.S., Assistant General Manager (Materials), Henkel CAC Pvt. Ltd. Manikkam was told to manage the addi-
Ultimately, an organisation should have two functional roles—that of an internallyfocused CIO and that of an externally-focused CTO. Depending on the nature of the organisation, the two roles may be separate, or combined into a single person. The CTO role should align more with the client's perspective and look inward at the technology supporting the business, to see if it can be leveraged as value-added offerings to clients. Sometimes, it may make sense for these offerings to be given for free to the clients, which is certain to delight the client if the offering helps them improve productivity. An additional bonus is that the internal system or product will most definitely improve if it is transformed into a system or product for clients, because organisations always let bugs slide for internal systems. Even if there is no additional revenue involved, the organisation is certain to benefit from better internal productivity. Another bonus is that, the IT organisation is certain to achieve more innovation just by adding a level of disruption to the organisation. CTO FORUM thectoforum.com
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EXPERT
SPEAK VISHNU GUPTA
Chief Information Officer, Calcutta Medical Research Institute
There are several ways to be a Revenue Driven CIO. Most important is to make system available for every time, when customer in on the door. In so many businesses like Healthcare delayed service is denied service. Sunil Gujral, Quattro BPO: CIOs have been successful and this has made the management believe that these guys can also add value outside their IT roles.
ANIL NASHIER
Sr. Manager Business Information Management at LeasePlan Corporation, Netherlands
CIOs should start with positioning IT as a business enabler - purely a business support function. Lots of IT leaders fall in the trap of business and IT alignment, which sometimes throw them out of business. IT is part of your business as much as other functions. It is purely CIO's vision that considers thinking of leading an overhead function or being a revenuegenerating entity. The impact revenue-driven CIO brings in an organisation is revenue-driven operating model compared to a purely efficiency driven model. This in turn will transform one's ability to contribute at business model level in terms of value preposition.
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tional role of procurement within the company a couple of years ago. Before that he was just the IT head. In his new position, Manikkam is responsible for the overall business requirement of the organisation that includes IT operations, infrastructure, software and services. In addition, he evaluates, approves and decides all products and services for the company. This means that apart from managing IT, he now has to manage the procurement of raw materials involved in the chemical manufacturing company and equipment. “I was looking for a challenging role within the organisation. The management thought I fitted the bill for procurement as well. In the initial stages, there were some minor issues in understanding the procedure, as it involved intensive details of materials and equipment. However, today I have learnt the art,” says Manikkam. Satish Pendse, CIO, HCC Group, and President, Highbar Technologies (an HCC Group company), underwent a massive transformation in terms of competencies and skill sets, required to head a business function.(Read case study) In May this year, HCC hived off its infor-
mation technology division into a fullyowned subsidiary—Highbar Technologies. The formation was the result of a boom in the infrastructure sector in India and nearby regions, with ongoing core projects worth over Rs 50,000 crore in Mumbai alone. New infrastructure companies are being set up to take advantage of this growth, and these companies will have IT requirements. Analyst reports from brokerage firms suggest that between five and 10 percent of the total project size will be for information technology solutions. “CIOs have to take themselves away from the comfort zone and look at new opportunities. However, it is not easy. The added responsinility requires self-transformation, and at the same time, flexibility to change roles easily,” says Pendse. True. And there are several CIOs out there who wish to identify other relevant areas of business and apply themselves to them. They are looking for new roles through which they can leave a profound impact upon delivering value to business. —ashwani.mishra@9dot9.in
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CASE STUDY
One too many
Satish Pendse, CIO, HCC Group, and President, Highbar Technologies (an HCC Group company), shares his experience of diversifying into a business head
Board turns a blind eye To start with, the management was skeptical, since IT was not their core business. As one of India’s leading infrastructure companies, with a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore, the company already had a pipeline
PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI
I
n August 2008, Satish Pendse realised that in India, the potential of IT to provide value to an overall infrastructure business was extremely high. He evaluated the prospects of the IT that could be turned into the "new business model" for HCC in the infrastructure domain. He saw that prospects of the IT were not being utilised to its full potential in this industry, when compared to others, such as banking and telecom. Also that IT knowledge within the industry was low. Secondly, he saw that there was a strong government focus to invest in the infrastructure front, as well as increase the role of private participation and foreign trade investments. Finally, the infrastructure sector was being neglected by IT service providers as their businesses saw growth—both in terms of adoption and revenues in other sectors such as banking, telecom, retail etc., in India and across the globe. “All these factors created a gap between the needs of the infrastructure sector and the offerings by the IT industry,” says Pendse. He wanted to bridge this gap and felt that HCC could fit this role, as it was one of the most extensive users of IT, and with their domain knowledge they could communicate easily with other companies in this sector. However, Pendse had a tough challenge at hand. All these were his findings. He still needed the management nod for his plans to become a reality.
worth Rs 17,000 crore for the following four years. “They had concerns about getting into a new business line, the IT operations at HCC could suffer and they didn’t want to be stranded with their CIO starting a new initiative. They were justified,” says Pendse. However, he did not give up.
A strong believer Pendse went ahead without forming any new company. For 18 to 20 months he visited over 200 companies in the infrastructure space to offer IT services. “Eighty percent of these companies told us categorically that prior to us there were other providers who tried to sell their prod-
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EXPERT
SPEAK SANJOG AUL
CEO, AVVAL & Talk Show Host, CIO Talk Radio
CIOs need to lead innovation at both ends i.e. top line growth and bottom line savings to increase the much desired gap which we call profit. Yes, the fact is that IT is a support function thus there will be costs. However, if costs are incurred in a planned way, they also result in tangible contribution towards increased revenue. Few myopic CEOs may inhibit this ability of a CIO to invest is such IT lead/ driven/supported innovations as there could be an expectation of immediate cost containment or instant gratification related to incremental revenue generation. Attempting to become blueeyed boys of such CEOs would jeopardize business/ IT/ CIOs interests.
ADE MCCORMACK Digital leadership specialist, Auridian
If the CIO wants to be considered a business person first and a technologist second then they should morph their cost centre into a profit centre. The more IT functions behave like service providers the better the service the users will receive. For me the profit centre is more Darwinian and thus more natural.
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ucts, but the differentiating part was that we told them why it was required for their businesses,” adds Pendse. Despite the economic slowdown and a tough IT spending scenario, Pendse managed to get 27 customers. His initial assumption of connecting with the industry, and raking in business proved right. The delivery of services to these customers was also carried out in an efficient manner. “This gave the management the confidence, as they were sure that I will not harm the legacy or the brand,” believes Pendse. Finally, in May 2010, HCC hived off its information technology division into a fully-owned subsidiary—called Highbar Technologies. What will be the focus of Highbar Technologies in the near term. What goals have you set for the next five years? For the next five years, we want to focus only on the infrastructure sector with a different approach. The IT services industry has been overly populated. We did not want to be one among them, as this would have resulted in the company being marginalised. We accept that we cannot compete with the major IT service providers if we try to follow their business model. These companies sit on large cash, resources and expertise. So, we have decided to be verticalfocused rather than be solution-focused. The market that we are looking at is approximately Rs 2,000 crore and after five years it will grow to a Rs 3,000-crore market. We have started providing SAP services. There are other existing players in the market, but the difference is that we speak the language of our customers. We offer implementation of SAP ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence and support, and now we have also started process consulting. We also have specialised line of business IT products. We want to be an end-to-end IT service provider to the infrastructure industry. Some of these products will be developed by us. While others that require large investments and expertise, which we lack, will be done through partnerships. This year we are opening our subsidiary in Dubai and want to tap that market. So, in the next three years we want to consolidate our position in India and the Gulf.
In the third and fourth years, we wish to target the European and Far East countries. The primary role of a CIO is to build buy-in within the organisation and choose the right partner/solution and carry out the programme management to ensure it happens smoothly. Over a period of few years, we want to be looked as the CIO for the infrastructure industry. Just like the CIO is held responsible for the success, or failure, of an IT project, similarly, Highbar Technologies will be responsible for the outcome of IT deployment within infrastructure companies. Today, we have a team of 125. We expect the team to grow and include 1,000 employees by the end of five years. How are you managing the IT needs for HCC? I continue to remain the CIO for HCC Group. However, my involvement has now reduced. We have divided Highbar in two sections; one servicing the internal IT exclusively, while the other looking at external customers. The internal service group has KRAs that are related only to HCC, and I have a person to head this function. How challenging is it to manage IT and, at the same time, be the head of business function? I have undergone transformation. The CIO role attributes are completely different from those of business heads. So, you need to have the flexibility to change your role fast. That is a challenge. Managing internal customer, I believe, is more difficult than managing external ones. When a CIO speaks, people listen. Now, you need to listen to others even when they are wrong. CIOs are more focused on the delivery of IT. In this business, delivery of IT is a small aspect, and there are other challenges such as HR, marketing and financials. None of these roles are a part of the CIO's challenges. Usually, CIOs have to manage people who are from their fraternity—people who have come through these ranks and understand the team's mindset. But now, one has to manage a brand manager, an accountant and HR and sales personnel spread across locations. This is a great challenge.
S TORY NA M E
SECTION NAME
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The ash cloud caused by the eruption of a volcano beneath the Eyjafjallajรถkull glacier in Iceland caused travel chaos across much of northern Europe, and the disruption still continues. Marie Hattar, Vice President, Borderless Networks Marketing, Cisco recalls one such incident where few of her colleagues were grounded at various airports for a few days but still managed to be in sync with the business operations. 30
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M AR I E HAT TAR
PHOTOGRAPH BY JITEN GANDHI
Can you provide a quick overview of Borderless Network Architecture and why will enterprise CIOs look at such kind of architecture for their business needs? Mobility has emerged as one of the key trends within the enterprise segment. The number of employees who are trying to be productive and work with various types of mobility devices is increasing fast. Analysts forecast over 1.3 billion workforce to be connected through devices on WiFi networks over the next two to three years. This will result in new enterprise challenges like scalability, security and providing consistency to the users of these devices. The Borderless Network Architecture is essentially about connecting anyone with any device. What we intend to do is to ensure this happens securely, reliably and seamlessly. Another key area is the use of video collaboration in enterprise environments. Recently, I had a few colleagues who were trying to return to the US but because of the volcanic ash, they had a hard time getting back. Some of our meetings and interactions were possible through the use of video. This example shows that users get flexibility and they can continue to conduct business despite unfavourable circumstances. How have you placed the role of video in such kind of network architecture and what are some of the issues faced? The role of video is transformational. It allows us to carry out execution of different business models. For example, you can offer medicine to rural villages by utilising the service of doctors in the cities. You can change the way retail business is conducted. One of the advertisements that we show out there is the concept of virtual video dressing room. So even if you are unable to find a stock of your choice in the store, using the virtual video you can
see how it looks on you. Take the example of a local branch of a bank. If a customer has a specialised question on equities, the bank branch can bring in a specialist over a video to address the customer’s issue. So they do not have to hire additional staff for such queries. This is the reason why we believe that video is transformational and drives different behaviour on the network. Coming to the challenges part of your question, we understand that the requirements for managing video is a lot more sensitive than managing voice on the network. The priorities that video has is sensitive to latency and jitter. So the requirements on the network are going to be different. Also, the IT departments are apprehensive as they see the rise of video directly proportional to bandwidth utilised. We believe that with more video on the network, the requirement of how it needs to be managed and prioritised will change. One of the parameters that we use today for network measurement is the quality of service, but imagine if everything is video and real-time. How will the network prioritise one over the other? So there is a need for a new set of architecture and protocols to make this possible. This is where Borderless Network Architecture plays an important role. The other key market place transition that we are seeing is the workplace experience. The transition is
“With more video on the network, the requirement of how it needs to be managed and prioritised will change.”
NO HOLDS BARRE D
that work is no longer a place where one goes but it is something one does. But wouldn’t a lot of service providers say that “we do this too.” So what differentiates Cisco from the others? The key difference is that we do this reliably, securely and seamlessly. This is the unique differentiator. In terms of how we bring this to market is by focusing on five key pillars. We call these pillars as network services. These are capabilities that go across all of our products. The product areas include routing, switching, mobility, security and application acceleration. We have introduced some key network services with this launch. For video we have introduced MediaNet. It introduces protocols across routing and switching that allows prioritisation and reserve bandwidth. Another capability that we have introduced is EnergyWise that creates significant savings in terms of power consumption. So if you are not using phones or laptops or PCs it will shut automatically shut them. We ran this capability for around 10,000 PCs in the office of a public sector company in the US. Their annual energy bill was around US$ 700,000. When they implemented EnergyWise and put in policies to shut down their personal computers and phones when not in use, they were able to reduce the cost by US$ 430,000. So it is close to 60 percent savings. There is no other vendor that uses the network to provide such high energy savings. In terms of security, we have introduced a feature called as TrustSec that helps to create policies in an easy manner. We have also added an additional layer of security called as MaxSec which carries out encryption of data. With these services will want to deliver a better level of service so that businesses can use their IT infrastructure to change their business models. —ashwani.mishra@9dot9.in
DOSSIER NAME: Marie Hattar DESIGNATION: Vice President ORGANIZATION: Borderless Networks Marketing, Cisco
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FEATURE INSIDE
Establishing foundation for IT Business Integration Pg 34
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R Truth about IT Staffing and RoI The soft stuff about knowing what your team wants, can add to your RoI in more ways that you think. BY PATTY AZZARELLO
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unning an IT organisation is very much about optimising cost and risk: What is the lowest cost way to deliver each service without risking the required service level? What must be developed or managed internally and what should be outsourced? Once you get clear on that, how do you then think about the RoI for investing the in the people who remain on staff? I never understand when some business leaders see their people more as an expense to manage down, than an asset to build up or when they think people-oriented initiatives do not have a hard RoI. I never viewed the investment in people as a nice-to-have or a soft business driver. I’m not talking about over-hiring or overpaying, or not outsourcing anything at all. I’m not talking about touchy-feely team building that is not connected to the business reality. And I’m not talking about weak, overly consensus-driven, everyone-gets-asay-about-everything management practices. I’m talking about paying market value for talent, but treating people above market; in ways that matter to them as humans, and that drive the business forward.
SOF T SKILLS
The hard ROI of people
NEXT HORIZONS
“People don’t know exactly what to work on, so they don’t do as much work. Or work on the wrong things. It is your job as a leader to remove uncertainty.”
I have led several business turn-arounds where, by any definition, we were not awash in funds. But in each case, I was able to get the people who remained with the business to personally care about what we were doing, and to personally invest in the success of the new plan. A big part of the success came from how we treated employees as people. Each time, we delivered growing revenue and growing profits. We were able to do this because the whole team got on board — they were highly aligned to what needed to be done and why, and were motivated to contribstakeholders. They see different levels of ute above and beyond their job description. commitment and support from different Remind me again, how is that not a hard parts of your organisation. ROI? Why do business leaders think that If these decisions are hard for you as the they can do better for the bottom line by leader, why are you expecting every fronttreating their employees like expendable, line IT staffer to answer them on their own interchangeable cogs? every day when they are faced with real-time Investing in people reduces execution risk. choices? Get these resolved once and for all. This truth is at the core of the work I do with ROI More powerful, clear, consistent mesexecutive teams — identifying and fixing sages to stakeholders, Less sales stalls, less obstacles to execution. In IT you can’t afford re-work, less defence required. people not understanding what the business 3. Create Meaning — People want to feel drivers are for IT projects. You can’t afford to like their work matters. have conflicting opinions and priorities. You Make the big picture clear. Don’t expect can’t afford to have staff not be absolutely your staff to automatically see how their clear about what they need to be working work fits into supporting the big picture. on right now. What follows are six ideas for You need to spell it out and show them why reducing this execution risk in IT. their work matters. How does each person’s Note all of these increase motivation, (and work fit into the IT strategy and how does decrease employee’s anger and resentment), that support or drive the business? The but it you think motivation is a soft or notmore employees who understand and care critical measure; I have noted a hard ROI about the big picture, the more employees for each one as well. who can make decisions and 1. Uncertainty is expensive — innovate in ways that contribute Uncertainty causes people to value or reduce costs. wait for decisions instead of ROI More high quality work, working. People don’t know more innovation on revenue and IDEAS FOR exactly what to work on, so they cost, less time in needless claridon’t do as much work. Or they fication. REDUCING work on the wrong things. It is 4. Maximise Potential — Career EXECUTION RISK your job as a leader to remove development often falls first to IN IT uncertainty. HR and is then cut from the budget entirely. The core of More of the right work gets ROI career development is to help done. You build value. You go each employee at every level understand faster. Less time is wasted. their strengths and get them in a job that 2. Resolve persistent strategic questions and is a good fit where they can thrive and step disagreements — This is a specific version up. It’s a huge expense to have people in the of No. 1 above but just know that the longer wrong jobs. They are not thriving, so they you don’t provide answers, the more people are not productive, and they are taking up a either are not working at all, or are working spot for someone who could be thriving in in ways that conflict with one another. You that role. are also sending mixed messages to your
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ROI More productive individuals, higher value work done, more bench strength. 5. Recognition — The issue is not typically that executives meanly refuse or withhold Thank You’s it’s that they don’t have a system to recognise when something exceptional is done or when someone deserves to be thanked. The solution is easy: Set up a recognition process and culture, and involve the whole leadership team. ROI OK. So this one is about Motivation, but I can tell you for sure, that if one employee thinks, “Wow, the company really values me”, it makes them and everyone around them more productive. 6. Communication — Most organisations fail to communicate enough. Once you do 1-5 above, communicate about it every day, every chance you get. You should be tired of discussing your core messages. Not until everyone is sick of hearing about it, and you almost can’t bear to say it again, is it beginning to stick with the organisation at large. ROI Huge decrease in wasted time for endless clarifications, email debates, and revisiting decisions over and over again. (Stick to your plan. Go faster.) As a leader, you can’t delegate this stuff. You need to engage personally. It’s worth it. —Patty Azzarello became the youngest general manager ever at HP at the age of 33. She ran HP's $1B OpenView software business at the age of 35, and was the CEO of an IT software company, Euclid Software at the age of 38. 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. This article was first published on www. cioupdate.com
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BUSINESS OF IT
Foundation for ITBusiness Integration
Your business model should be comprehensive and simple at the same time for it to be effective. BY FAISAL HOQUE
Strategic enterprise architecture
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echnology-driven transformation in the 21st Century business environment puts a premium on the type of model we adopt. Not only are entirely new business models possible they are also necessary for survival. But they must be designed in a manner that allows them to morph into something new on the fly when the environment changes a lesson being learned a little too late by far too many organisations. “Business model” is one of those terms that takes on the meaning of its user, and we should begin with a clear understanding of what it is and isn’t. You can’t always be sure that one person’s “business model” is not another’s “value proposition”, “business case”, “revenue model”, “strategy”, and so on. When I use the term business model, I mean something quite different than the traditional financial model definition often referenced in most daily corporate dialogues: In my view, a business model is a much bigger picture, one that captures a snapshot of the enterprise and communicates direction and goals to all stakeholders in an attempt at effective and strategic execution.
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In fact, I’m going to use a different term for business model altogether: strategic enterprise architecture, or SEA. This will allow me to break it down into its components in a way that makes it an operational definition. Of course, the term architecture can mean different things to different people as well, so let me narrow it down. Enterprise architecture isn’t just technology. Some people assume that enterprise architecture describes only IT assets. By ignoring business architecture altogether, this misconception encourages companies to develop a road map that innovates IT but with no direct connection to business and process. Business architecture isn’t just processes. Others make the mistake of interpreting business architecture to mean just the business processes the company performs. This ignores the big-picture view of the business and makes it difficult for decision-makers to determine not only what processes exist but why these processes are executed the way that they are. A question often asked is how to quantify the value of a SEA and how that value can be demonstrated in financial terms. Perhaps the best way to visualize what an SEA is and how it adds value to the firm would be to show the types of information it might include. Typically, it classifies elements into four broad areas: The overall identity of the firm - This might include such elements as brands, the corporate mission, and reputation of the firm in the marketplace, as well as the target market and general differentiators against competitors. It might also include elements that describe the company’s unique culture, such as values, office rules, and behavioural expectations. The strategy for the firm – Elements in this category could describe how the firm translates its mission and values into concrete action. An important component of this role might be the ability to coordinate between multiple business units, each of which presumably needs to play a unique role to help meet common, strategic
NEXT HORIZONS
BUSINESS OF IT
goals. Strategy might include elements like goals, a time frame for achieving those goals, the resources that are required, and custom performance indicators. The internal assets that help the firm to achieve its strategic goals – This could include all of the resources that the firm might muster to pursue its strategy. These might be products and services; organisational assets, including the reporting structure, geographic distribution, roles/responsibilities, and individual resources; financial resources; intellectual property; distribution channels; and physical assets like real estate, operational and information technology, and so on. The external business environment in which the firm competes – This would include customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors. In addition, it could include demographics for the market and industry; potential entrants; information about compliance; emerging technologies; the external availability of technology resources, and general trends that influence the company’s position in its market. Each of these elements has subjective and objective (or, textual and numeric) attributes (metrics, priority, and feasibility, for example) that help give the SEA the depth of description and interaction that distinguish it from a simple diagram or drawing. For example, the element “high-value customer” could include attributes such as a textual description of who is considered a high-value customer and numerical values that describe the estimated number of customers that fall into this category as well as the revenue a customer needs
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to qualify as high-value. This information provides an important basis for developing business scenario models. Scenarios could vary according to the revenue required to qualify as a high-value customer. Keep in mind that explaining an SEA by example poses somewhat of a problem. Companies aren’t limited to one empirically correct set of elements that should make up the SEA. So while the categories and elements expressed here provide a pretty good example, they shouldn’t be considered a cookie-cutter mold after which every SEA should be patterned. Each company’s culture will inevitably produce a unique approach, none of which is necessarily better or worse than any other. One of the first things we notice about successful companies is they have a mission, an identity, a personality, a story to tell about what they are and what they are trying to achieve. This not one of those jargon-laden, abstract “mission statements” framed and hung here and there in the halls. Rather, this is a clear understanding and articulation of the reason the firm exists. —Faisal Hoque is an internationally known entrepreneur and author, and the founder and CEO of BTM Corporation. His previous books include Sustained Innovation and Winning The 3-Legged Race. BTM innovates business models and enhances financial performance by converging business and technology with its products and intellectual property. This article was first published on www.cioupdate.com.
HIDDENTANGENT GEETAJ CHANNANA geetaj.channana@9dot9.in
THE AUTHOR IS Editor (Online), CTO Forum
The Spring of Technology. Invest at the right time, and in the right technology, for the best results.
WHILE speaking to Walt Mossberg, principal technology columnist for Wall Street Journal, during an interview at the D8 Conference, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., made several interesting observations. Replying to a question on why Apple does not support Adobe’s Flash technology on its devices like the iPod, iPad and iPhone, he made a remark that may hold true for several technology organisations. Jobs said that Apple, as a company, does not have ample resources as other technology firms. Therefore, they choose which horses to ride carefully, and then ride with all their might. He also compared technology life-cycle to seasons— spring, summer, autumn and winter. And, he said that they invest in the technology that is "in its spring". He was referring to HTML5 here, which is an emerging standard, and Flash, which according to him, has lost its sheen. He added that Flash was revolutionary for its time, but now has had its day. However, HTML5 is the future and Apple will invest in it. The whole world is commenting on Apple's decision. Some believe
that it is the company’s closed technology policy, others say that Apple could have lost control had it allowed Flash on its platform. The debate is endless. Is there a brighter side? Being technology heads, you can certainly take cues from Apple’s decision—should you invest in the spring of IT, or should you wait for summer to set in. While speaking to CIOs, the impression that I formed was that they would rather wait for summer. CIOs would rather invest in a technology only when it is mature and tested, before implementing it in the production environment. This is a perfectly valid approach. But, this is also an approach that could kill innovation and growth in your environment. With rapidly changing businesses, it may not be long before you grow out of your tried and tested technologies. So what do you do? You certainly do not have endless resources at your disposal, so how can you ensure that you are innovative and secure and still promise the best quality service. The matter is again about choosing your horses carefully. Ensure that
“Carefully choose the horses you want to ride and then ride them with all your might. ”
the technologies you are looking at to implement in your business, align with your business goals and are forward looking at the same time. For instance, throwing servers or people may look like the easiest solution for capacity building. It has worked for many years now. However, if you keep doing this, it will not be long before you grow out of your IT facility—virtualisation and infrastructure management solutions could be the answer. There are several CIOs who have reduced their carbon footprint, power and space requirements by virtualising servers. Not only that, they have been able to provide better services to organisations by being able to provide on-demand servers. It has also helped them in scalability. Adding servers to their infrastructre was never easier. Still others are using powerful infrastructure management tools that automate a whole lot of the above mentioned processes. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Would you like to be safe, or would you like to be forward looking? Do let me know.
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T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE
SECURIT Y
5
POINTS
REATING C MALWARE IS MUCH EASIER P LYMORPHIC MALWARE IS GAINING URRENT C TECHNIQUES ARE NOT FOOLPROOF
PHOTO BY PHOTOS.COM
AYS OF HOST D BASED ANTIVIRUS ARE NUMBERED Y OU MUST LOOK AT WHITELISTING AS A SOLUTION
HOST-BASED SECURITY:
ISN’T IT REDUNDANT? High time you looked at other solutions to keep your networks safe. BY ANDREW BAKER
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SECURIT Y
I’ve said it for a few years now, but host-based antivirus is really not working anymore. Not with its focus on enumerating bad code and its reliance on signatures to detect malware.
Recently, several prominent antivirus vendors have experienced problems with faulty virus definitions: Faulty McAfee update burns IT execs; BitDefender update breaks 64-bit Windows PCs; [Clamav-announce] problem with daily.cvd 10938; 100% CPU usage with VIPRE definitions 6272 – 6274. Although all of these vendors have promised the obvious improvements to their QA and testing processes, there is no sign that these problems will diminish over time. Instead, it is pretty clear that there will be more problems as the massive increase of malware is forcing vendors to push out updates faster and faster. There are several problems with malware protection which relies on signatures: 1.Malware writers are using sophisticated toolkits which reduce the skill and time needed to produce effective malware. 2.Polymorphic malware regularly gets around signature detection, forcing AV vendors to constantly push out new signatures – several times per day! 3.There are many kinds of malware that are still not properly detected by up-to-date AV solutions with current definitions. Where does this leave us? Host-based antivirus products are using up more CPU cycles to process an ever-growing list of viruses, yet are still unable to keep up with the onslaught of new malware. To make matters worse, the constant creation and release of new definition files is stressing the quality assurance (QA) process for antivirus vendors. We have reached the place where IT professionals are considering turning off automatic AV updates, and deploying labs to test the updates before release. In short, the odd of timely detection continues to drift downward ever so slowly, while the risk of friendly fire from the AV solution itself creeps upward ever so steadily. We are long overdue for a different approach.
Application whitelisting Companies such as Bit9, CoreTrace, and Lumension have been pushing application whitelisting for years now. Microsoft has also provided this technology via AppLocker in Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008. Even some of the major AV players have purchased or developed application white listing technology, but they have not been actively pushing it into the mainstream. They need to start. Better yet, we as IT leaders and professionals need to start evaluating and deploying the technologies that better address information security concerns in 2010 and beyond, allowing us to make better use our limited budgets and resources. Application white listing is a good idea, because for every environment, there are less items that fall into the “known good” category than bad code that you don’t want to run. Just consider the difference in a firewall rule-set that assumes a "deny all that has not been explicitly opened" stance versus one that tries to explicitly prevent access to all bad protocols and ports. The frequency of change in the “allow list”, particularly in corporate environments, will be greatly reduced as compared to the “bad list”. This automatically minimizes the chance for error. It also means that less processing power will be needed.
Mitigating code-enabled data I think that we really have to weigh the disadvantage of code-enabled data files and either abandon them outright, or at least ensure that there are centrally controlled configuration options for enabling or disabling the automation features of productivity applications. For instance, consider how diminished the threat of macro-embedded documents has become since Microsoft enabled much better controls over macro security, includ-
T E CH F O R G OVE R NAN CE
ing turning them off by default, and allowing them to be set via policies. We need to do the same for PDF exploits. Getting a better handle on security at the host level entails not only controlling which application can run, but determining in what context, and with what functionality it can run at any given time. If we can get vendors to provide us with centralised controls regulating all of the features they integrate into their apps, then each person and each organisation can determine what level of risk to assume for any given application. All of these options will sufficiently mitigate external risks without simultaneously increasing risks from errors. And they will consume less processing power and generate less application conflicts than our current antimalware solutions.
Using the right technology Signature-based security devices still have their place within the enterprise – mostly at the perimeter. (And even there, their days are numbered.) But at the desktop, they are increasingly causing more pain than gain, and it is time for us to change our approach, lest we find ourselves slipping further and further behind the malware writers. And white listing need not concern itself with every executable. Each organisation can determine just how much to watch and keep track of, balancing performance, productivity and security according to a risk profile that they select. Yes, there will be a few challenges to address in order to see mainstream use of white listing technology – including the integration of such technology into the patch management process – but, the gains will be well worth it. Environments that have moved in this direction are already seeing significant ROI just in terms of recovering lost administrator time from managing the AV process and from recovering from broken antivirus definitions. Those who get ahead of the curve in the next 9-15 months will save themselves and their organisations significantly vs those who keep using the same old methods, even as the nature and intensity of the threat landscape has changed dramatically. Blacklisting is out. White listing is in. Please get with the programme.
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LITTLE GIANTS
SHAKTHI KNITTING
COMPANY DASHBOARD COMPANY’S NAME Shakthi Knitting ESTABLISHED 1992 HEADQUARTERS Tirupur, Tamil Nadu CUSTOMERS H&M, HBI, Carrefour, Walmart, JC Penney, Fila, Playtex, Dim PHOTO BY NARAYANAN
NO. OF LOCATIONS 3 factories PRODUCTION Around 40,000 garments per day
A STITCH IN TIME Shakthi Knitting has automated their manufacturing process to enhance productivity, efficiency and save manufacturing time and cost. BY VINITA GUPTA
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SHAKTHI KNITTING
S
LITTLE GIANTS
hakthi Knitting, one of the largest manufacturer and exporters of apparel in India, specialising in casual wear, lingerie and high-performance thermals, chose Lectra’s CAD and cutting solutions to automate and streamline their production process.
IMPLEMENTATION IN A NUTSHELL
The challenge
CHALLENGES: Automate and streamline the production process Increase efficiency Improve cutting accuracy to save time
With such a large operation, Shakthi Knitting was still using a manual process for production. The goal was to reduce their operating costs by using less material and energy, and to increase their productivity through non-stop automated cutting. They also wanted the solution with faster machine that would be easier for their operators to use.
The right cut The company implemented Lectra’s automated, fully integrated including Modaris, DiaminoFashion V5R2, Optiplan Expert V3R2, a Brio 55 spreader, and a Vector automated cutting system. Implementation was done at Shakthi Knitting’s headquarters at Tirupur in three phases. During the first phase on July 2003 – Basic CAD, Spreader and Cutter were put into action replacing the Gerber spreader. In the second phase on August 2006, Diamino Markpro automatic marker making software was installed and in the third phase in November 2008, the Optiplan solution was implemented.
The pattern of growth Prior to the implementation of Lectra’s automated solution, patterns were created manually by Shakthi’s pattern master. By deploying pattern-making solution, Shakthi Knitting was able to create patterns more easily with very accurate measurements. Grading and alteration functions have been particularly helpful for the company; they are now able to create 75 patterns per month and 700 per year. “The number of markers we made grew as our turnover increased so we needed an efficient system for getting markers made, and the availability of experienced pattern masters was a point of concern. DiaminoFashion ExpertPro has helped us to achieve a reduction in yarn/fabric use. We now use it to perform costing estimations and have made excellent savings. It has increased our marker efficiency by around 10%,” says Yogesh Pai, Marketing Director at Shakthi Knitting.
Increase in productivity and efficiency The Vector automated cutting
COMPANY: Shakthi Knitting
SOLUTIONS: Lectra’s automated and integrated cutting solution BENEFITS: Optimised the cutting processes Improved quality Material savings Greater cost control Elimination of manual process Savings in time and labour hours system has helped Shakthi Knitting to meet its challenges in terms of better use of available fabric, greater productivity and enhanced cutting accuracy. “Ourproductivity has increased by 80% compared to the manual process we used before. We have also gained in flexibility – we can now shift quickly from one type of order to another, and that is a major advantage for us,” revealed Pai. In garment manufacturing, products often go through numerous stages of alteration in response to customers’ comments, and, due to fabric quality parameters, Shakthi Knitting needs to change markers frequently to meet measurement needs. Pai added, “Optiplan makes it easy to modify the markers and saves a lot of time before cutting begins. It has enabled us to greatly increase our efficiency. It has helped us to reduce costs and make material savings of up to 2% compared to the manual process.” Thus Shakthi Knitting is now equipped with the right combination of software and intelligent cutting equipment for a fully collaborative and integrated solution, from design to manufacturing. In less than a year's time the company is also planning to upgrade their cutting machine with the latest NGV series.
“OUR PRODUCTIVITY HAS INCREASED BY 80% AND HAS HELPED US TO REDUCE COSTS AND MAKE MATERIAL SAVINGS OF UP TO 2% COMPARED TO THE MANUAL PROCESS."
—Vinita.gupta@9dot9.com
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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
Hit the Ground Running
As a new CIO, if your assessment is not done in the first three months or so, the honeymoon is over. AS A new CIO, you have two choices for learning about your organisation. You can “hit the road” and meet with most or all of the leaders, stakeholders and a sampling of others, to get a broad picture, or along with the meeting and greeting, you can focus your efforts on key functions and relationships to ferret out the problems. A broad approach will uncover issues but won’t allow you enough time to dig in before moving on to your next meeting. Furthermore, if your assessment is not done in the first three months or so, the honeymoon is over and the problems are yours, whether you know them or not. So, you have to get it done fast. At Diamond Consultants, one of the common questions we get is how to assess the health or maturity of an IT organisation. We have developed extremely comprehensive models, and tools to develop these assessments. But for a new CIO, you don’t have the time for such a detailed and comprehensive assessment in your first 100 days. To address this, I’ve distilled our best
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thinking into five questions that can serve as a proxy for a more detailed assessment. With these five questions, you can develop a good view of what’s going on and where the hot spots are. The questions are: Do Business and IT Leaders Regularly Interact? By regular, I don’t mean “Hey, nice to see you” in the coffee line regular. And, I don’t mean executive status meeting regular. I mean, is there a regularly scheduled time during which real issues are discussed and concrete planning is discussed – not in large groups, but one on one. I worked with an insurance CTO who had a weekly meeting with the head of strategy – now, we’re talking. Here are some of the regular meetings you should look for: CTO/chief architect – head of strategy CTO/chief architect – head of new product/service development Head of Apps – business unit/ functional leaders
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Head of Ops/Infrastructure – head of customer service IT person responsible for people – head of HR/recruiting IT Controller – corporate controller The other thing to explore is what kind of regular meetings your predecessor had with key leaders – CFO, Controller, Head of HR, business unit leads, etc.
60% of IT leaders said their projects don’t deliver their planned scope.
Has Scope Been Cut for Any of the Top five Projects? “On-time, On-Budget” has got to be one of the most over used and largely useless measures of project success. The reason is that many times this magic is done by cutting scope. In Diamond’s 2010 Digital IQ survey, 60% of business and IT leaders said that their projects don’t regularly deliver their planned scope. So, just bypass the scope-budget metrics and go straight to the scope. Its the business capabilities that a project’s sponsor wants anyway. Cutting scope cuts business value and customer satisfaction.
BUSINESS OF IT
Does the IT Leadership Group Operate as a Team? As follow-on to the first question, how regularly does the IT leadership team meet and interact? Are the meetings just the CIO’s staff meeting that follows a meaningless agenda or are they real issues-based interactions? The second part of this question is how well the team’s skills complement each other and how well each leader’s traits and skills align with their assigned jobs. Is the leader assigned to manage and track the IT portfolio really a better innovator and planner? Are Any of the Top IT Support Issues Recurring? MIT’s CISR’s research shows that firms who don’t have a stable service platform can’t do much else well. So, have a look at the top 10 or 20 high priority service tickets over the last few month and see if there are any patterns in who is logging the issues, what kinds of issues they are, how long they take to resolve, etc. You will also learn a lot about the organization’s attitude toward service, process maturity, staff, etc. Can Business Sponsors Simply Describe Business Cases? Every company has a different approach to business cases. One grocery company I worked with was satisfied with a “we know it’s a good project” to justify an investment (not advocating that, BTW). Instead of getting into the specifics, just ask the business sponsors to explain what they are getting out of the projects. See how simply they state the objectives, if there are any business metrics attached and make sure you can actually measure them. With these five questions, you will learn about alignment, processes, projects, people, service and support and most importantly, business value. Let me know what you think and other ways you have seen CIOs get up to speed quickly.
T H I N K I N G B E YO N D
The Perfect Marriage
Business and IT alignment is the holy grail of strategic planning – at least for the CIO. IMAGINE a world in which each and every activity over the next three years guarantees that the organisation moves closer to its goals and objectives. To achieve this requires that the underlying people, processes and technologies take you in the right direction on every project – simple in concept, difficult in practice. The secret to achieving this is to have IT and the business drive enough detail into the strategic plan to enable the architects to respond with an appropriate business design. Many things get in our ways toward this goal, but I have three favourites. See if they sound familiar.
Clip-Art Strategy I know you’ve done this before. I’ve seen it innumerable times. You’ve documented your business strategy using a clip art diagram of puzzle pieces or the façade of a Greek temple – you couldn’t resist labelling those Doric columns with your goals, showing how they support your vision statement on the capital. Sometimes this is followed by a second slide that lists a jumble of other goals and objectives including items like “We will be the least cost producer in our industry”, “We will meet or exceed all compliance and regulatory commitment”, or “We will be number one in our market”. This clip art approach to documenting a strategy is a sign that not enough detail has been generated. IT has an impossible task in generating an aligned response to such a strategy.
Just Give Me a Web Site This barrier arises because IT has taught the business to use “IT speak”. Vendors are also part of the problem – promising simple solu-
tions to complex needs. Frustrated business users jump immediately from their high level strategy to technical solutions. Some of my favourites include, “All I need is Salesforce.com”, “Let’s use the cloud” and “Just give me a web site.” This approach totally misses out on answering the question “What business problem are we solving?”
Fire and Forget Invariably, projects get launched and six months later someone asks, “Why are we doing this project?” or “Remind me what I get when this project is completed”. These are difficult questions to answer when you jump from a clip-art strategy directly to a set of technical solutions. There just is not enough detail available to answer those questions. Our response to all three barriers is to ensure that the business strategy is defined in sufficient detail to enable IT to respond with technical solutions. IT can subsequently justify why those projects are important and sufficiently measure progress in business (not technical) terms. We use business “capabilities” to fill the gap between a clip-art strategy and the technical solution. This means that IT needs to learn “business speak”, to capture the strategy in business terms – the operational, organisational, product, and information capabilities needed to achieve the business strategy. Ultimately, driving the business strategy to the level of capabilities forces the business to answer the question “what business problem are we solving” and allows IT to respond with an appropriate solution. That’s alignment. —Guest post by Dave Baker, Diamond’s Chief Architect
“IT and business should drive enough detail into strategic plans to enable an appropriate business design.”
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HIDE TIME | BOOK REVIEW
Co-Author : Rod McQueen
“RIM has a 20.8% share of worldwide smart-phone sales”
Smartest Product BlackBerry
is everywhere, they say. Here is a behind-thescenes account of the company behind this brand.
THE STORY of a student start-up becoming an international corporation is nothing new, but such building-from-scratch tales hardly lose their sting and appeal. Look around and you have Microsoft, Apple and several other IT companies that started off as small, college campus-based entities before they became hugely successful businesses. So did Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the ubiquitous BlackBerry, a product that is known in the family room as the boardroom. BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion by Rod McQueen explores in detail RIM’s early struggle with bigger companies and its rise as one of the world’s most accomplished technology companies. It also offers a fascinating and absorbing account of its architects—co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. The author says the combination of their personalities is excellent for business success in that they bring distinct strengths to RIM.
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Balsillie drives corporate strategy, business development and finance. He has enjoyed considerable success at striking broad range of deals for RIM. On the other hand, Lazaridis is the innovative visionary who remains amazed by his own entrepreneurial success, says McQueen. The tribute to these two men and their entrepreneurial spirit is at times is a bit longish, but never monotonous. The Canadian company, which was set up in 1984 – and went public in 1996 – launched BlackBerry in early 1999 and it went on to become a cult product, surprising everybody. The first BlackBerry device was introduced as a two-way pager. In 2002, it released smartphone BlackBerry, which supported push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. Founded with a loan of $15,000, RIM now generates annual revenues of nearly $15 billion and it is on the Fortune’s list of 100 fastest growing companies in
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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.
the world. It shipped its 75 millionth BlackBerry in 2009. Besides, RIM commands a 20.8% share of worldwide smart-phone sales, and the US government is the single biggest user of its services via BlackBerry. But, the struggle for this company is far from over. It is facing competition from similar garage-startups — Apple Inc. and Google. Both these companies now offer solutions similar to Blackberry's USP of push-email on devices that look and perform better than traditional Blackberry phones. The book by journalist-author McQueen does offer a behind-thescenes portrait of RIM and the people who built it and changed the world. It is interesting from start to finish because it is, in fact, the story of a stellar product – known primarily for its ability to send and receive emails – whose loyal users can’t imagine how they lived without it. And, still others who are so hooked to it that there are rehabilitation centres to rid them of their obsession.
HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE
Live Without Regrets SUDHIR REDDY
always try to be perfect. Keep up the good work. Do not be afraid of failures, as they are the catalysts to growth. Make the right choices and live without regrets. These are some of the things that Sudhir Reddy, Chief Information Officer at Mindtree believes in. Reddy was born in a middle class family at Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh and spent most of his childhood in Hyderabad and Vijayawada. According to Reddy, several people (grandparents, teachers and friends) were his source of inspiration and encouragement but none were more significant than his parents themselves. One incident that has had big impact on his life, happened in 1990, when he was leaving for the US for the first time. His father told him that US is a wonderful country and a land of opportunity. It has elements that can take you to depths of darkness or pain and others that can take you to heights of happiness. So what you want to become or where you want to go, is simply a matter of choice. Choose well so that you won’t regret. Reddy applies this learning to everything he does, even today. DO NOT
AN OUTDOOR PERSON: Reddy enjoys playing any sport like basket ball, badminton, tennis, trekking etc. He adds, “In busy schedule it’s difficult to take time out, but I believe that one has to make time, it should be like a practice.” PASSIONATE ABOUT THE MOTOR-CYCLE: He loves to ride his Yamaha MT-01, earlier he used to ride often but now
at least any one Sunday of the month he travels to places on this bike. He loves to travel a lot. FOND OF MOVIES: In free time, Reddy likes to watch Hollywood, Bollywood and even Telegu movies. Though, there is no favourite genre he liked 3 Idiots the most, from the latest releases.
Reddy asserts that all the little characteristics and values of his parents formed a robust foundation which contributed in a large way to where he is today. “Dad was adept at being stern when necessary and playful/fun to be around at other times. He was good coach,
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PHOTOS BY GIREESH GV
Chief Information Officer, MindTree
HIDE TIME | CIO PROFILE
Snap Shot cheer leader and knew how to make most of little things in life. The two qualities I most admired in my mother are her graceful presence and generosity. She was generous in everything from serving over-sized portions at dinner to showing empathy for maids or offering assistance to relatives/friends.” he says. When Reddy left for the US, his dream was to be in New York City. He applied for MS in computer science, since it had best chance of getting him a scholarship in that city. As a part of the graduate work program, he started setting up computer systems and application packages for small businesses. This naturally positioned him better for a computer job than a mechanical job. During this period he thought of doing his own business but then opted for a job as he wanted to learn more from the experienced professionals in the industry and did not want to struggle at an early age for starting a new business. Reddy has about 18 years of experience in the in the Information Technology space and before joining MindTree he has worked with Novartis, BASF and Wyeth. His dream is to raise his two children Prarthana and Prithvi in a right manner and create the love for art, sport and fun in them as his dad had done for him. —Vinita.gupta@9dot9.in
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Biggest dream…His biggest dream is to gain financial immunity by the age of 50 to pursue a career, hobby or business of choice. Also he teaches others to dream big and helpis them to reach their full potential. He says, “Today a lot of youngsters do not know what they want to be and hence I always ask them ‘what is their goal in life’ as this will at least make them think about their goal in life.” Play a coach’s role…The role he plays most of the time as a team leader is that of a coach. He brings the right players with the right skills. “I am a result oriented person and hence ensure that accountability is clearly defined and hence I set vision and craft a plan to achieve it,” states Reddy. Loves to enjoy life… Reddy is a fun-loving person. He tries to enjoy life as he feels that this is one thing that a person cannot preserve it for future. Even in the school days he had skipped school to watch movies.
VIEWPOINT KEN OESTREICH |
Converged Infrastructure
An attempt to ease Management Pressure
ILLUSTRATION BY PHOTOS.COM
FOR a long time I have been championing what is now being termed as ‘Converged Infrastructure’ — aka Unified Computing. It is an exciting and important part of IT management, demonstrated by the fact that all major vendors are offering some form of the technology.
What is converged infrastructure and how it will change data centre management? Converged Infrastructure and Unified Computing are terms referring to technology where the complete server profile, including I/O (NICs, HBAs, KVM), networking (VLANs, IP load balancing, etc.), and storage connectivity (LUN mapping, switch control) are all abstracted and configured in software. The result is a pooling of physical servers, network resources and storage resources that can be assigned ondemand. This approach lets IT managers rapidly repurpose servers (or entire environments) without hav-
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ing to physically reconfigure I/O components by hand and without the requirement of hypervisors. It massively reduces the quantity and expense of the physical I/O and networking components as well as the time required to configure them. A converged infrastructure approach offers an elegant, simple-to-manage approach to data centre infrastructure administration. From an architectural perspective, this approach may also be referred to as a Processing Area Network (PAN). Because the physical CPU state is completely abstracted away, and can be reassigned extremely easily creating a “fabric” of components. And, through I/O virtualisation, both data and storage transports can also be converged, further simplifying the physical network. The result is a “wire-once” set of pooled bare-metal CPUs and network resources that can be assigned on demand, defining their logical configurations and network connections instantly.
KEN OESTREICH: Ken Oestreich is Vice President Product Marketing at Egenera
Converged Infrastructure - Simplifying management for “the other half” of the data centre In the manner that server virtualisation has grown to become the dominant data centre management approach for software, converged infrastructure is poised to become the dominant management approach for “the other 50%” of the data centre – its infrastructure. However adoption will take place gradually, for a few reasons: IT can only absorb so much at once. Often, converged infrastructure is consumed after IT has already adopted OS virtualisation. Once this is done, IT starts looking for other sources of cost take-out, data centre infrastructure is the logical next step. Converged infrastructure is still relatively new. Unlike OS virtualisation it is less-well understood too. But there is one universal approach that can overcome these hesitations — money.