THE HOTTEST 7-LETTER WORD/ 32
THE CIO’S DIFFERENT ROLES/ 104
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DATAQUEST
Vol XXXI No 06 I March 31, 2013
Celebrating 30 Years of DQ
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The Business of Infotech
UP’s 15 Lakh Laptops. Will it restore HP as the PC market leader?
Rajiv Srivastava VP & GM, PPS, HP India
CIO HANDBOOK 2013
Exclusive Case Studies
MARCH 31, 2013
HandBook 2013 The Importance of Being a CIO. And Staying Relevant
108 pages including cover
Ballarpur Industries........ 30 MTS................................. 35 Tata Teleservices............ 44 ICICI Securities............... 52 Hero MotoCorp................ 54 Essar................................ 60 Haryana Government...... 66 RTO.................................. 67 Amul................................ 69 Shopclues.com................ 80 YES Bank......................... 88 Mahindra Finance........... 90 Gati.................................. 96 Wipro............................... 98
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CONTENTS March 31, 2013
14 UP’s 15 Lakh Laptops. Will it restore HP as the PC market leader? COVER STORY
The UP-HP deal has shaken up the domestic PC landscape, and holds the potential to re-crown HP ...
17
The Importance of Being a CIO. And Staying Relevant
With CXOs becoming more tech-savvy, CIOs are...
CIO, Is your Eye on the Ball? With technology playing a critical role in business, the CEO wants the CIO to come up ... Event 26| Outsourcing Virtualization Tops CIO’s Priority List
At a recent CIOL C-change event, a survey was conducted among 50 CIOs to highlight the top priorities for IT investment done in the last financial year and...
4 | March 31, 2013
27| C-Change Looking for a Seachange
The 10th edition of C-Change brought to the forefront a host of issues that CIOs are grappling with, but the ultimate message was—innovation is the key to success
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Big Data
Services
30| Case Study/BILT BI Saves BILT from the Phantom
A phantomphantom inventory of about 10,800 metric tonnes across its... 32| Which is the Hottest 7-letter Word? Big data, of course, but it’s not an easy road to walk...
69| Case Study/Amul From Cows to Consumers
Bringing in the white revolution was no cakewalk... 72| IT Outsourcing Stability, Predictability, and Delivery
This will be a critical year for many markets...
34|CIO Speak To B or Not to B. Scary, Right?
74| Outsourcing: Align with Changing Times
A fresh look every year might be a good idea for IT ...
—Arun Gupta CIO, Cipla
78| Retail: Quickly Adopting New Tech
The retail industry is investing heavily in technology to enable itself to adapt to...
Cloud
35| Case Study/ MTS The Transformers
After initiatives like deep subscriber analytics, m-Bonus ... 38| 10 Steps to the Cloud
While moving to the cloud, there are a few ... 42| Outsourcing: Partying with the Cloud
E-commerce
80| Case Study/Shopclues.com New Kid on the Block
Having a distinct online identity and leveraging ... 82|CIO Speak ‘Blind cost reduction can be detrimental’
The ability of outsourcing vendors to effectively balance ...
—Amod Malviya SVP and head, engineering, Flipkart
Data Center
84|‘Digital technology has become a lifeline’
44| Case Study/ Tata Teleservices Beating the Odds
Growth in business both laterally and vertically led to ...
—Vinod Bidarkoppa director (IT) and chief information officer, Tesco HSC
46| An 8-point Checklist for DC Outsourcing
Organizations are always under a constant tussle between ... 49| What is the Right Management Approach?
A data centre lifecycle covers various aspects from strategy, to design, implementation and continual improvement
88| Case Study/Yes Bank An Innovative Social Inclusion Idea
YES Bank introduced a remittance service banking... 90| Case Study/Mahindra Finance Effective Money Control!
Enterprise Apps
Mahindra Finance’s entire manual market practice... 92|CIO Speak
52| Case Study/ Icici Securities IT Simplifies
‘We are working to provide HIS access on smartphones’
IT enabled ICICI Securities to cater to the needs of the employees while keeping the application simple ...
—Srikanth Raman chief information officer, Narayana Hrudayalaya
54| Case Study/ Hero MotoCorp Bringing Method to the Madness
94| Infrastructure: Enjoy the BIM Benefits
Hero MotoCorp adopted the dealer management system... 58| ERP: Innovation & Evolution, the Keys to Success
Keeping abreast of technology developments and being in tune with...
Security
BIM is a strategic initiative that requires top-down ... 96| Case Study/Gati Need for Speed
True to its name, Gati is always striving for speed ... 98| Case Study/Wipro Be a Thought Leader with Social Media
60| Case Study/ ESSAR From Bane to Boon
As expansion to global destinations meant new problems for Essar... 64| Do you have a Killer Security Strategy?
In today’s dynamic business environment, organizations ...
Ask yourself the right questions before designing ... 100| Social Media Harness Social Media in 3 Quick Steps
Businesses that decide to ride the social media ... 104| Back of the Book Different Avatars of a CIO
Government
REGULARS
66| Case Study/ Haryana Govt Touching a Million Minds
Edit . ...................................................6 Inbox....................................................8 Ganesha.............................................10 News................................................102 Last Matter.....................................106
Haryana government’s decision to set up computer ... 67| Case Study/ RTO Conecting the Dots
RTO’s project of centralizing all ... DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 5
EDIT
Vol XXXI No 06
HandBook 2013
March 31, 2013
EDITORIAL GROUP EDITOR: Ibrahim Ahmad EDITOR: Ed Nair EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Atreyee Ganguly, Shweta Verma ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Shrikanth G (Chennai) SR ASST EDITOR: Shobha Sivakumar ASST EDITOR: Onkar Sharma (Gurgaon) SR CORRESPONDENT: Shilpa Shanbhag (Mumbai), Jalaja Ramanunni (Bengaluru) CORRESPONDENT: Akanksha Singh, Prerna Sharma SUB EDITOR: Charu, Ruchika Goel, Krishna Mukherjee ASST MANAGER DESIGN: Bhagbat Pattnayak, Harnek Singh, Pramod S Rawat COVER DESIGN: Pramod S Rawat EDITORIAL ADVISOR: Prasanto Kumar Roy
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Ibrahim Ahmad
Your Net Worth
ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in
T
hank God, the focus is back on the network. With so much happening around the world—economic slowdown, social media, BYOD, mobility and remote workers, 24x7 operations, and so on—it was critical that something seriously drastic was done to make the traditional IT networks user-friendly. Software defined networking or SDN is the step in that direction. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, in simple terms, SDN technology allows the organization’s network to be more agile, flexible, and user sensitive by taking some of the key controls away from the network hardware and software and giving it to the network administrator. It is a little too early because SDN is just coming in, but supporters claim that with this new approach the network continues to be safe and becomes a facilitator rather than a hurdle. A few of the networking biggies disagree, but it seems that SDN is becoming a phenomenon and everybody is jumping into the bandwagon. What I am very happy about is that this is another great example of technology being driven by user needs. Let me tell you why. Today most of us book our train tickets using IRCTC. While booking regular tickets is a fun experience, but try booking a Tatkal ticket. It is a nightmare, enduring which is still not a guarantee for success. If I as a user had a choice of another network to book my Tatkal ticket, I would have dumped IRCTC. Similarly, most of the telephone operator websites for their users is a pain—whether it is changing of some service, or paying bills, or updating personal information. The promise of SDN is that all this will be a thing of the past. Today, there are so many things that are done online—from buying movie and train tickets to paying utility bills to filing customer complaints to apply for a passport. If the online experience is bad, we get upset with the organization, and I think rightly so. And if it is good, we praise them. This is true not just for customers, but even for partners, suppliers, investors, as well as employees. The organization is getting to be as good or bad as the network is. In days to come, the network will be the face of the organization. Those who have great networks (that are simple, agile, yet secure) will have a big advantage over their competitors. Let me finish my point by quoting Dr Sadagopan, who zealously heads the IIIT in Bangalore. He says, “Your network is your net worth”. This will not just be true for individuals, but will be true for the organizations and the governments too. And SDN seems to be the promise in that direction. visit www.dqindia.com
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INBOX
HandBook 2013 Q&A wITh DoT SecreTAry/ 86
rAhul DrAvID on leADerShIp/ 90 `50
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DATAQUEST
Vol XXXI No 05 I March 15, 2013
Celebrating 30 Years of DQ
The Business of Infotech
Power of Social The
Vol XXXI No 06 March 31, 2013
I can see a lot of background work happening for a output like this. All the best to you! Sudharshan HS ONZE Technologies (India) pvt, via email
Today social technology extends beyond customer interface. Even though many practices remain in the early stages, organizations are convinced they hold tremendous potential to drive business value
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Rotnoraj Dutta Sayvaa, Anvesak, Wirehead Infotech, via email mArch 15, 2013
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The article has come out really well. In case there is a web version available kindly send me a link.
ThE powEr of SociAl
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Real Reasons to Go Social
Your story on social networking platform (Dataquest, March 15) is very well-researched. In fact, this is one of the best stories on the subject that I have read in a long time. All praise for the story for the insight it provided. Shashi Shekhar Pandey, manager, marketing, Aricent Group via email
Unwrapping Big Data’s Huge Potential
This is with reference to your article ‘Unwrapping Big Data’s Huge Potential’ (Dataquest, January 2013). The story is informative. Big data has been used in TV-show ‘Satyamave Jayate’ to study viewers’ sentiments and also in pro-founding ‘ the higgs boson’ particle. Big data can be used in agriculture to increase output and reduce losses, health care betterment, etc. Can it be used in reducing bomb blasts by terrorists?
Galgotia, galgotiacollege.edu H P, www.hp.com IBM, www.ibm.com Microsoft, www.microsoft.com Molex, www.molexpn.com NEC, www.necindia.in
Pg. No. 33 11 2,47 3,12,13 108 41 107
Novell, www.novell.com
9
Panasonic Toughbook www.panasonic.co.in/toughbook
7
Sai infosystem www.saicare.com
23
Seagate, www.seagate.com
37
Smart Technologies www.smartlech.com/in
19
Stellar Information www.stellarinfo.com
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Zoho, www.zoho.com
63
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Dare to Dream
This was a great article. Thanks again ! Jaspreet Singh, founder and CEO, Druva Inc, via email
It’s a great article. The other technology related articles in the issue are also quite interesting. Milind Borate Druva Software, via email
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GANESHA
HandBook 2013
Nasscom 2013—Unveiling the Silver Lining! DR GANESH NATARAJAN
As IT companies look to dispel the clouds of sluggish growth, the Nasscom Leadership Forum was all about optimism this year
The author is vice chairman and CEO of Zensar and chairman of the National Knowledge Committee of the CII. He can be reached at maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
T
he Nasscom Leadership Forum is always a great place for friends to meet, new acquaintances to be formed, and myriad innovative ideas to be explored. While there were not too many breakthrough ideas that emerged in this edition of the event, the confidence that the clouds of sluggish growth would soon be dispelled by new rays of hope was apparent in most of the companies that participated. The optimism lies beyond the numbers though those look pretty good too. As expected the software industry is expected to come in at the lower end of 11-14% forecast for FY13, with the domestic industry having rediscovered its IT investment appetite likely to turn in growth numbers better than exports. The 12-14% estimate for the next year is a sure sign that the worm is turning and with green shoots abundantly visible in the US, Africa, and Asia, promising to compensate for the continuing despondency in Europe, the decks are being cleared for a much better FY14 for the industry. The point to be noted of course is that the growth profile will be substantially different from the last decade of rampaging growth in IT and business process services. The silver lining that is visible appears to be a heady mix of products, solutions, platforms, and services, underscoring the impatience that CIOs today have to wait for a prolonged period for development of new applications. Capex to Opex as the preferred method of consuming IT budgets is here to stay and the profile of industry growth will certainly be more shaped by innovative products and services than by 10 | March 31, 2013
The 12-14% estimate for the next year is a sure sign that the worm is turning and with green shoots abundantly visible in the US, Africa, and Asia traditional AMS and ERP services. Our own experience at Zensar working with clients in all our key verticals of manufacturing, retail, insurance banking, and healthcare has demonstrated this in abundance in 2012 and is likely to be accelerated in 2013. All industries have to change and grasp the next sigmoid of growth before older sigmoids begin to slow down. The good news for our industry is that even as the traditional IT services get cannibalized by cloud and everything as a service, the clairvoyant firms have already embraced the new order. The growth of new segments: engineering services, software products, internet and e-commerce and gaming and the return to good growth numbers give us all the conviction that the goals we have set for 2020 will be met. It is always amusing to see some jealous onlookers predict doom for Nasscom. Here is one association which has served the industry well as its single voice for over 2 decades and has always found great leadership in its presidents and chairmen. The emergence of a think tank here or a focused group there are all welcome signs of an industry maturing and certainly not a threat to the parent ship! The charter for Nasscom will become even more significant as the industry surges forward to renewed success!
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
COVER STORY
UP’s 15 Lakh Laptops. Will it restore HP as the PC market leader? The UP-HP deal has shaken up the domestic PC landscape, and holds the potential to re-crown HP as the PC market leader ONKAR SHARMA onkars@cybermedia.co.in
H
ewlett Packard India seems to have found the holy grail that will spark new life into its business and help it reclaim its old glory. The Uttar Pradesh government’s `2,858 crore laptop deal with HP comes at a time when analysts and peers were about to declare HP’s PC business a ‘sick’. While the deal might not help overcome HP’s overall worry but it will surely give a much needed boost. It also happens to be the biggest PC order ever in global history. With the deal, everyone involved in the ecosystem and part of the industry, is going to experience a change. It was not easy for HP, first of all, to participate in the deal and secondly, to emerge a winner. It needed absolute transformation, even at an ideological level.
Transformation
HP has consistently pitched itself in the mid-premium and standard range of products. And that was the reason why it refrained from participating in the ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) deal in Tamil Nadu. While Lenovo was the biggest gainer in that deal, HP served a part of that. In the ELCOT deal, the price of the product was something that questioned HP’s premium range image. But the irony is that while in the ELCOT deal it did not show much interest but for the UP deal, it quoted a price of `19,058 per notebook. It was unusual that HP suddenly joined the sub-20k PC segment, which it always was averse to. It seems the company has succumbed to market behavior with dwindling market share and business. When Dataquest shot this question to Rajiv Srivastava, VP and GM, HP India Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) 14 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
Group, his words in reply were carefully chosen. Of course, this did not take us anywhere because whatever he said was obscure in nature. “The project is going to have great social impact, and we are proud to partner. We never thought that we would be able to associate so deeply in this manner with a social project of this scale. We are committed to make this project a grand success,” Srivastava says. He was wary of being too vocal about the market conditions that were forcing the company to look at options and bring in necessary changes in its policy.
It’s all about Gaining Market Share
The biggest gain for HP might not be in rupee terms but in terms of market share. The deal is the biggest in the world, if analysts and peers are to be believed. HP has been trailing behind in the PC market share for the last 3 years. Lenovo, Dell, among others are eating into its business. Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst, Gartner India says: “It is a fight for the market share. The UP deal is less about revenue. The configuration at which the PCs have been sought leave little space for making money.” For HP, the laptop deal is a great opportunity to win market share. “The deal will impact the market dynamics in a big way. In the PC space, it will give an edge to HP over its competitors,” adds Sumanta Mukherjee, lead analyst, IT practice research, Cyber Media Research (CMR) India. Market share affects the reputation of a company. In a market like India, which has a lot of scope for PC penetration, deals of this scale will play a major role in shaping the reputation of a company. “If HP successfully fulfills the orders, it will be DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Overview At a pre-bid meeting on September 10, attended by some of the top companies like Lenovo, Intel, Acer, Wipro and Microsoft, some changes in the tender document were suggested The UP government through its nodal agency the Uttar Pradesh Electronics Corporation (UPECL) floated the Request for Proposal document on August 29, 2012 It failed to get a single bid till October 1—the deadline The fresh bids were invited with changes in the tender On January 23, 2013, HP bagged the order On March 11, 2013, HP delivered first set of 10,000 laptops
a feather in its cap. All of a sudden, it will be respected for its capability to handle projects of this scale,” adds Mukherjee. In the latest IDC numbers, HP boasts to have emerged the market leader in PCs after close to 12 quarters and that too, with a significant margin between HP and its #2 rival. “We are taking measures to strengthen our position in the market. The proof of this is in the regained leadership position which we lost 3 years back. The gap between us and the #2 is pretty significant. We are relying upon few things and focusing on inherent strengths. The UP deal will further help us stay a leader,” says Srivastava.
Lucrative Deals
The volumes at which the government is buying PCs for free distribution are high. This attracts several vendors to these deals. “Given the demand for lakhs of PCs in the free laptop programs, it is obvious for companies like Acer to get serious. The whopping scale is something that cannot be overlooked,” visit www.dqindia.com
says Saji Kumar, director, product management, Acer India. He clearly points at the market share that falls in one’s kitty through these deals. While ELCOT helped Lenovo to stay leader in 2012, HP is poised to move ahead with the UP laptop deal. In addition, the government deals have started flowing in at a time when the global and domestic PC buying trends have touched bottom. The domestic computer market grew 3.5% to 11 mn units in 2012 compared to the previous year. And even this 3.5% growth was driven by projects such as ELCOT. “Manifesto buying has revived life into the PC market. And the stakeholders involved in these deals suddenly gain much more than the revenue,” shares Vinay Sinha, director and country manager, enterprise business, South Asia, AMD India.
Infusing Confidence
HP will deliver 1.5 mn laptops in a stipulated period of 7 months. This will reinstate its leadership position in the global market. Plus its potential to handle projects of large scale will be recognized throughout. “As of now, the UP laptop project looks like the biggest ever, though it is yet not clear. Among other things, HP’s reputation will grow manifold if it completes the project well in time. Even if it does not gain much in revenue, it will gain market trust and reach,” opines Mukherjee. The trend of free laptops gained impetus after the Tamil Nadu government’s move to distribute free laptops. In 2011, the Tamil Nadu government had awarded the contract to 6 vendors for supply of 9,14,000 laptops under the first phase rather than giving it to just one vendor.
Others Deals in the Pipeline
Several states such as Goa, Karnataka, Chattishgarh, are expected to float similar tenders. March 31, 2013 | 15
COVER STORY The UP and TN projects have given impetus to manifesto buying and opened doors for other political outfits in states like Rajasthan and Goa, where these deals are expected to happen. “Manifesto buying is going to happen in a big way, post the UP and Tamil Nadu free laptop programs. We were part of the TN project which we successfully completed. Acer looks forward to government deals in other states,” shares Kumar. “So at first glance and even at the second or third, the deal is a political stunt. But the good thing is that this stunt is helping masses and students at the grass root level. Secondly, the stunt is expected to be repeated to gain political mileage in other states. We see further deals coming up in Goa, Odisha, and Jharkhand where polls are yet to take place. In short, manifesto buying is set to take off in a big way,” says Sinha of AMD India.
HandBook 2013
The Road Ahead
There is no doubt that the UP deal will help HP to regain its lost crown. Besides, it might infuse a dose of innovation in the market not only in the laptop domain but also in the associated areas. With 1.5 mn laptops, the UP market will open up a world of opportunities for stakeholders like ISVs (internet service providers), application developers, and content providers.
‘The Laptops will be Delivered within 7 months’ programs allow us to strengthen our position in the government segment. Whether it is CCTNS, APDRP, UID, railways and so on, there lies a huge opportunity.
Facts about the Tender
When the tender was first floated, the UP government did not attract any bids for `2,800 crore laptop deal. Then the terms were revised to invite fresh tenders. In the revised tender, the bidders were asked to submit 2 sample laptops each: one with Intel processor and one with AMD processor. HP bagged the deal beating HCL, Lenovo, and Acer (who quoted `21,983, `23,919 and `25,199, respectively for a single machine). The biggest factor that helped HP win the deal is the company’s capability to supply laptops. “We have a strong supply chain—global and domestic—to meet the demand. The Pant Nagar manufacturing facility in UP has an installed capability of 3.6 lakh,” says Srivastava. 16 | March 31, 2013
“Laptops rendered to students will rejuvenate the entire market sentiment. It is up to ISVs and content developers how they reap the opportunity,” opines Mukherjee. However, on an election promise, the government’s move is set to trigger a number of things. It is on to private stakeholders to further jump in with their innovations that touch the masses and boost the digital inclusion. n
—Rajiv Srivastava
VP and GM, HP India Printing and Personal Systems (PPS) Group
India is an under-penetrated market on the PC and connectivity fronts and is moving slowly up the ladder. Does the fact surprise you? Well, that’s the opportunity. It is only the capability that matters. We are seeing the roll out of so many socially powerful programs by the governments. These
How do you see the UP government’s laptop deal changing lives? It is a 1.5 mn laptop deal. The laptops will be delivered within 7 months. In my opinion, it is a great initiative by the UP government. Let it be a poll gimmick. But it will translate into the mass adoption of technology at the grass root level. It is too fundamental for the transformation of Uttar Pradesh. How would you deliver 1.5 mn laptops in just 7 months? We have a global supply chain and a manufacturing plant at Pant Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. The installed capacity of the Pant Nagar facility is close to 3.6 mn units. But the product will be supplied using both the Pant Nagar manufacturing facility as well as the global supply chain. We have started the delivery from March11, 2013, with 10,000 laptops.
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
COVER STORY
HandBook 2013
The Importance of Being a
CIO.
And Staying Relevant With CXOs becoming more tech-savvy, CIOs are under tremendous pressure to prove their importance. How can they adapt to the changing situation and stay relevant?
W
SHILPA SHANBHAG shilpas@cybermedia.co.in
ith agility being the new buzzword and the top management turning more tech-savvy, a CIO has to be always on his toes. He has to quickly adapt to the changing market realities or face extinction. While a school of thought believes that in this techsavvy era, the role of a CIO is reaching a dead-end, a number of CIOs who Dataquest spoke to argue that a tech-savvy CXO is proving to be a great advantage and CIOs are receiving a shot in the arm to reinvent themselves. According to Bhavin Patel, group head, IT, Nova Medical Centers: “Today in the cutting edge technology Yuga, CXOs getting more IT savvy is an extended support for CIOs rather than their role diminishing. While dealing with techsavvy CXOs, CIOs have to put less stress on technology understanding and can focus on presenting RoI, benefits, long-term, short-term goal achievements, and other business oriented fact.” DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 17
COVER STORY “The role of a CIO is changing at a faster pace as CIOs no longer follow the traditional path. This will require a CIO to delegate a part of his functions to do central role of a business driver, supporting business analytics, stay vigilant on revenue leakages, and more importantly become the eyes and ears of the management—a change agent and incessant innovation officer. In an ever changing scenario, CIOs will continue to enjoy newness, challenges and get in turn continuous learning opportunity. In the future, the role of the CIO will be central to business and will be sought after,” says Sanjeev Kumar, group CIO, group president, business excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries.
Donning Many Hats
The misconception about the CIOs role is that the function is largely responsible only for maintenance roles, procuring IT related components, associated governance, and managing employee IT issues. Apart from that, the CIO’s office has now undergone transition of sorts to become decision ‘makers’ from being decision ‘influencers’. Today, CIOs form an integral part of the organization deploying technology to facilitate the changing business of customers. As technology becomes central to every department from marketing to delivery, CIOs have become a key participant in every business decision. Having IT strategically engaged throughout the organization is fundamental to being competitive and dynamic. “I believe that like any other executive, the CIOs role simply needs to evolve with the business climate and as the array of technology solutions continue to evolve at an ever increasing rate. With rapid technology changes in facility management areas, the CIO may end up managing a whole spectrum of facility related equipment such as CCTV, access 18 | March 31, 2013
HandBook 2013
A CIO’s Score Card Budget Efficiency: This is the low hanging fruit. Was the CIO able to deliver within budget for planned expenditures? Were unplanned expenditures foreseeable? Uptime for Services: With organizations becoming dead in the water when IT goes down, top tier companies are aiming for higher uptime. Project Managment: Was the CIO able to deliver as per milestones defined? Even in the middle of projects these can be measured. Technology uptake: How many users are properly and effectively using the companies systems? Security: Have there been any information leaks? Do systems pass a yearly security audit?
control systems, and building automatic management system, etc,” feels Chella Namasivayam, CIO, iGATE. The CIOs role is becoming more that of a consultant to the business, than that of a systems integrator once a direction is established and finally a trusted partner in operations. So, the CIO needs to be able to effectively interact with the business unit(s) he is supporting. The more the CIO is immersed in the business and fully understands the strategies and objectives, the more relevant they will be and the more effective the IT team can be. The CIO also needs a solid, high-level understanding of systems architecture. The ability to assess proposals in a prompt and confident matter—whether from the IT team, a partner, the business, or otherwise— can be critical.
Expectations
Senior management now expects the CIO to fully understand the business he is operating in as well as emerging IT trends that could affect their business (sourcing strategies, business analytics, technologies, etc), basically everything that is going on in the business and everything going on in IT. The CIO needs to find ways to stay connected to the emerging trends, independent research, reviews with consultants, industry associations (particularly peer groups) and conferences, university relationships, etc. Apart from being a great technologist, the CXO level expects the CIO to
improve on the overall organizational goals such as revenue, gross margins, use of capital, customer satisfaction. The CIO needs to understand how to deliver a solution. Understanding the various options for delivering a solution and then managing it successfully to completion is often how the CIO will be most critically measured. He must have a fundamental understanding of how to run an operations team and ensure that services are being appropriately delivered. This is simply an expected capability that is a critical requirement of any CIO. A CIO has to be mindful of consumer needs, thus making his/her role largely customer-centric. Keeping in mind the global economic situation, the CIO also has to be innovative and pro-active to deliver solutions while maintaining a tight IT budget.
A Consummate Communicator
It is not enough for the CIO to be technically proficient, he needs to have a keen insight on how the technology can be used to leverage total outcome of the enterprise in terms of its productivity, revenue growth, profitability, and overall business value. In this new era, the role of the CIO includes his ability to gauge the capability of new developments in technology to add to business productivity. Being able to communicate with all levels of the organization, building a platform to
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
COVER STORY
Dataquest puts the CIOs of various companies on the hot ‘The role of the CIO is indeed changing’ “With the world becoming more dependent on IT, the CIO’s office needs to move from being a cost center to ‘keep the lights on’ to that of an innovation leader who is able to increase the ratio of time and investment in innovation” —Hemal Shah CIO, Dell India
‘The CIO is a change agent and an incessant innovation officer’ “A CIO will delegate a part of his functions to do central role of a business driver, supporting business analytics, stay vigilant on revenue leakages, and more importantly become the eyes and ears of the management—a change agent and incessant innovation officer”
—Sanjeev Kumar group CIO, group president, business excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries
‘The CIO is an integral part of the organization’ “The misconception about the CIO’s role is that the function is largely responsible only for maintenance roles, procuring IT related components, etc. The CIO’s office has now undergone transition of sorts to become decision ‘makers’ from being decision ‘influencers”
HandBook 2013 —Chella Namasivayam CIO, iGATE
‘CIOs now not only have to be IT experts but business savvy’ “CIOs now not only have to be IT experts, they also have to learn and grasp more of the business operations”
—Aditya Berlia member of management board, Apeejay Stya & Svran Group
20 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
seat to know their take on the changing role of the CIO ‘An IT savvy CXO is both a blessing and a curse’ “Having an IT savvy CXO is both a blessing and a curse. On one side, he typically understands more realistically what is technically possible and on the other hand, he also tends to push for a specific solution or wants to drive a project himself rather than identifying requirements”
—Rich Strader director, IT strategy and security, Ford Motor Company
‘The CIO has evolved from just managing IT systems’ “The role of the CIO has evolved from managing IT systems to understanding and enabling the strategic architecture of the firm. The focus is 2-fold—handson-the-wheel for managing today’s operations and innovating for strengthening the firm in the future” —Sudhendu Bali EVP, IT, Lodha Developers
‘CIO is not a term which can be replaced so easily’ “CIO is not a term which can be replaced so easily, it exists and it will remain there forever. Rather, a CIO will keep on adding more and more roles in his portfolio”
HandBook 2013 —Vishwajeet Singh CIO, Epitome Travel Solutions India
‘CIO’s role would be enhanced, not diminished’ “I would see CXOs getting more IT savvy as an extended support for CIO rather than the CIO’s role diminishing. While dealing with tech-savvy CXOs, I believe the CIO has to put less stress on technology understanding and can focus on presenting RoI, benefits, etc”
—Bhavin Patel group head, IT, Nova Medical Centers
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 21
COVER STORY How to Stay Effective Be a people’s person, without that no IT company/ IT organization or a CIO will be successful Score card on interpersonal skills should have high rating Be a good and sharp communicator Stay focused. Don’t drift on vendor’s input but instead consider business needs and priorities. Be a quick decision maker, and above all bold and courageous As far as possible speak business language Adjust quickly to changing paradigms Keep abreast with technology changes, perception changes Keep expanding your knowledge and role
share ideas and engage people in communication and the process of dialogue, allows for consensus on strategic decisions at all levels. A CIO must be a consummate communicator. It is imperative that the CIO connect with the business team, the IT team, strategic partners, industry counterparts and so forth in order to succeed. Several ways to improve communications include: nn Regular update: sharing updates on the status of a particular project and the team involved keep everyone on the same page, reduces confusion or lack of clarity. nn Set reasonable expectations and do not back down; become known as someone who thinks carefully before making a commitment and then delivers it; let everyone know this as a behavior and communication style. nn Practice taking a complex, technical message and making it simple for others to understand; don’t over-simplify but rather find a way to truly explain in a way that is succinct but complete. 22 | March 31, 2013
HandBook 2013 nn Clarity of vision: when one has clarity of vision, it cascades onto a team and organization where the goals are not ambiguous. It is essential that you clearly state the subject matter so that the person you communicate with is clear about the desired outcome. nn Take time to research industry trends and conceptualize them in a way that it could be put to use; identify those that are applicable to the organization and be prepared to propose this when and if appropriate.
5 Areas Where a CIO can Add Value to Business Ensure good governance: Governance helps alleviate issues by providing both users and IT with a forum for coming to broad agreement on priorities. New revenue opportunities: CIOs can showcase their business suaveness by highlighting new revenues lines of business Move beyond the traditional technical sphere: CIOs should move beyond the traditional value of simply sourcing servers to a more strategic role Forecasting technology: Forecasting how technology will change and adapting to it Marketing and Branding: CIOs can make a difference with online presence, socialization, online financial matters
Challenges Galore
The largest barrier to CIO effectiveness include alignment with top management on strategic direction, resource management, and IT personnel capability. Until a CIO have alignment with top management, he will struggle to obtain resources (budget, business team support, change management support, etc) and it will not be effective. The challenge for the CIO today is to make sure that their company gets a lot of value for the technology it has deployed. Often, IT teams struggle to identify the specific demand (both project work and on-going operations and support) for their services. Forecasting is complex—particularly to the detailed, resource planning levels required to staff. And, there are often constraints within the IT team that prevent rapid assessment of the current state (project and program status, operational effectiveness, etc.) Couple this with varied needs for IT technical skills and leadership requirements, and it becomes very difficult to manage resources. “Most companies have started facing information system exhaustion. Earlier employees were used to an overhaul every 10 years, but now it is happening much sooner. The greatest barrier for a CIO is now organizational exhaustion and mismatched expectations. Information systems are rarely
perfect from day one. Employees, a even top management, can get very irritated with multiple changes that don’t work seamlessly and require a lot of training and unlearning. On the other hand, over-promotion of an IT change can lead to unrealistic expectations of quick performance and productivity gains. CIOs thus have to not only communicate effectively, but also manage expectations well. Luckily with a huge influx of IT savvy and enthusiastic young employees, this is getting a little easier,” says Aditya Berlia, member of management board, Apeejay Stya & Svran Group.
On a Final Note
IT certainly has a ‘key seat’ at the executive table, and CIOs can provide valuable input on how IT can support new initiatives that the company is undertaking. More importantly, IT also has an opportunity to bring up disruptive new technologies that companies could use to get ahead of the competition. Soon, the lines between IT and business could disappear. n
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
COVER STORY
CIO, Is your Eye on the Ball?
With technology playing a critical role in business, the CEO wants the CIO to come up to speed and handle the technology component of business independently
I
t is widely accepted now, that information Highlights technology plays a major role in bringing The modern day CEO is a techno-savvy leader who expects the CIO to take the weight off his shoulders when it comes about cost efficiencies and helping corporato selecting the right technology for the company tions to do more at less cost. This has been CIO often gets too bogged down in his technology world amply demonstrated in North America in the forgetting that the very purpose of induction of technology aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis when in an organization is to improve business results despite a drop in consumption; the bottom line of companies not only stayed healthy but improved. All this should have led to be an increase in the profile and importance of the global CIO. However what we hear and see are CEOs and CFOs taking all the credit and hogging the limelight with hardly a mention of the CIO. Why? In most companies the CIO, although accepted as the technology guide of the company, often finds himself sidelined and inadequately consulted when major business decisions are taken. Maybe there is a case for the CIO to take a re-look at his role and perhaps widen his skillsets or even reset his thinking.
Expectations from a CIO
The modern day CEO is a techno-savvy leader who expects the CIO to take the weight off his shoulders when it comes to selecting the right technology for the company. The CEO is just too busy providing the leadership and direction to the company and is often desperate for a reliable work sharing partner. He already has, in the CFO, a work partner who takes care of the finances and balance sheet of the company. With technology playing a critical role in business, he wants the CIO to come up to speed and handle the technology component of business independently. It is with this intent that only IT professionals with great capability and understanding of technology are appointed as the CIO of a company. These skills are deployed to select the best in-class applications, networks, and solutions at the lowest cost for the company. But the CIO often gets too bogged down in his technology world forgetting that the very purpose of induction of technology in an organization is to improve business results. 24 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
Operating Paradigm Model for a Techno Business CIO
Productivity Creating lean organization and lean processes enhancement Security enhancement via process improvement Bringing about year to year cost reduction Assist in process simplification and standardization across operational units Simplify, Organization standardize, Identify enterprise wide applications and replicate Align IT computing infrastructure keeping future Business Vision and needs in mind Business With departments for integrated working Strategy Partner for With business units for synergy growth With suppliers to maximize value Align with leadership to understand evolving Innovate and business drivers Inspire Solutioning to retain quality manpower Innovative solutioning
Integration of business and IT is a complex exercise. How such integration is achieved by the CIO in a real life situation is presented below. The components could differ from industry to industry but the essentials are common. The business and IT integration paradigm model is based on a real life example of a multinational corporation based out of the US. The CIO, in this case, is a critical and significant member of the decision making team. An organization brings about operational efficiency and excellence by focusing on 4 key components of a company: n Productivity enhancement through process improvement and adopting new technologies n Standardization and simplification of operational processes n Integration of multiple components to ensure better coordination with internal and external stakeholders n Human resource management and development IT plays a critical role in each of the above mentioned 4 components. The 4 components when they work together seamlessly result in achieving higher business results, productivity and improved business results. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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Building Organization IT Strategy and Align with Available IT Budgets
Business-IT Integration
The CIO seeks to integrate company business requirements and strategies with available technology solutions. In order to do so, he interacts with the key business stakeholders, understands what ticks them, what are the pain points and based on this internal requirement analysis prepares an IT strategy that he implements organization wide. In many ways the CIO acts both as a business and technical consultant to business. Such a role will require him to understand, strategize, and create a business and an IT architecture that is put up before the IT service providers who, in turn, then come up with the best solution available with them. When he does that he finds his voice getting heard and he starts feeling good about himself and his role. Many global CIOs have achieved this self transformation and others can follow their footsteps. n
SUDHIR AHLUWALIA ex Indian forest service officer who was head of India consulting in TCS maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 25
OUTSOURCING
HandBook 2013
Virtualization Tops CIO’s Priority List
At a recent CIOL C-change event, a survey was conducted among 50 CIOs to highlight the top priorities for IT investment done in the last financial year and also the top IT investment plans going forward in the current financial year COMPILED BY: PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in
Top Priority in 2012 analytics
bcp
Top Priority in 2013
bi
business
consolidation datacenter networking software
byod
cloud data datacenter dr erp
3d data
analytics bi bcp
connectivity
disaster dr engineering erp hrms
implementation information infrastructure integration investment license mobility mpls
consolidation
mobility open sap source virtualization
infrastructure mdm outsource private stabilization system unified vdi view
technologies upgradation virtaulization
Top 3 Investment Areas in 2013
collaboration
ifrs
opensource optimization processes
recovery sap secuirty server
byod
newer
security solutions
optimization
technology ucs
IT Budget (%of Company’s Revenue) 25
52% 46% 40%
20 15 10 5
Virtualization
26 | March 31, 2013
Data Center Hardware
0 Software Licenses
Less than 2%
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4-6% 2-4%
8-10% 6-8%
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
C-CHANGE
HandBook 2013
Looking for a Seachange The 10th edition of C-Change brought to the forefront a host of issues that CIOs are grappling with, but the ultimate message was—innovation is the key to success
JALAJA RAMANUNNI jalajar@cybermedia.co.in
C
hange is inevitable and with rising competition in global marketplace, technological advances, changing demographics, and the speed of information transfer, CIOs today are dealing with a number of problems. To take on the challenges, it is important to evolve at every phase and navigate with the fast-changing technology. The 10th edition of C-Change, which was organized by CIOL in Bangalore recently, was all about transformation and evolution. At the event, some of India’s leading personalities addressed issues that CIOs face on a day-to-day basis. We tried to streamline their views. Excerpts
To Survive, be a Catalyst in Change Adoption
A CIO’s role is slowly but gradually diminishing in enterprises as other business heads in enterprises are taking over IT roles too. In this scenario, CIOs have a challenging task to stay ahead and remain game changers, VS Parthasarathy, group CIO, EVP, group M&A, Mahindra & Mahindra said while speaking on the topic ‘Change or Perish’. “In the present scenario, a CIO is in charge of innovation, communication, external collaboration, internal collaboration, and enterprise agility too. However his DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 27
C-CHANGE
HandBook 2013
“The role of a CIO has evolved over the years and now he/she is more involved in business transactions. In future, the management will truly understand the value of CIO’s contribution to the business”
—Anuradha Roy GM, ERP, Steel Authority of India
“A CIO is in charge of innovation, communication, external collaboration, internal collaboration, and enterprise agility” —VS Parthasarathy group CIO, EVP, group M&A, Mahindra & Mahindra
role and responsibilities are changing as finance heads, manufacturing heads and even marketing heads are getting separate IT departments under them. With advancement in technology, the transition is already happening. Data managers and business process managers are turning into value creators,” he said. Parthasaraty had 4 tips for CIOs before wrapping up—aspire to be on the board, become business integration expert, be a catalyst in change adoption, and drive transformation.
No Need for an IT Background
Anuradha Roy, GM, ERP, Steel Authority of India, was the only woman who represented the CIO community at C-Change 2013. Apart from standing out in terms of gender, she comes not from an IT background, but from the business side. “It is a constant learning experience and every day is a challenge. That’s what keeps me going,” she quipped. She admitted that she had her doubts earlier but is now convinced that a person does not require an IT 28 | March 31, 2013
background to understand the business value it brings to the company. The key is to be an enthusiastic learner and offer perspective from a business angle. “Essentially the business was MIS oriented and CIOs used to analyze data and update the management. Their roles have evolved over the years and now they are more involved in business transactions. They understand that they are shouldering a huge responsibility. Certainly, in future, the management will truly understand the value of CIO’s contribution to the business and make them more involved in line function,” Roy added.
Big Data should Add Value to Customers
No matter how many times we hear the words, the opportunity is yet bigger in big data. In a panel discussion on ‘What is a CIO’s obsession’, Sam George, head, IT, Gitanjali Gems stated that his focus this year is on big data. “We are aware that utilizing data can increase your revenue. We want
to ensure that whatever data comes in, we have to make value out of it for the customer. Moreover, the world is moving to a decentralized system in the form of BYOD. It is crucial to carefully decide how much information can be shared on these devices after considering the security point of view,” he added.
Focus on Business, not Technology
BS Nagarajan, technology director, VMware said that a CIO’s obsession has been shifting considerably. CIOs today are increasingly looking at results and the emphasis on the latest technology is losing importance. The focus instead lies on getting business value out of any investment. “We emphasize on benefiting from the economies of public cloud on a private cloud. The oldest benefit of virtualization is cost, but it’s not the only reason why people opt for it. It is also a reliable method to increase efficiency,” he said.
Balance BYOD with Security
Bask Iyer, SVP and CIO, Juniper Networks found a way to balance BYOD and security within the enterprise. Juniper gives its employees a ‘Choose Your Own Permitted Device’ option, which allows employees to bring a device that Juniper permits. Juniper tells them that there would be some standards like encryptions, password protections and remote wipe that they would enforce. These are standard precautions because the data still belongs to the company. He added that there are so many Android phones that they cannot possibly test the application on all these platforms. “Every BYOD strategy needs to be optimized on 3 vectors: enduser satisfaction, cost, and security. I respect the concept of personal choices but there is a work protocol to follow as it is a matter of data security,” he said. n
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CASE STUDY BILT
BI Saves BILT from the Phantom A phantom inventory of about 10,800 metric tonnes across its manufacturing units was eating into the company’s profits PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in
W
ith 7 manufacturing plants across the country, BILT, the largest paper manufacturer in India and Malaysia, was faced with the problem of streamlining the inventory management issues in production for the last few years. Since few of the manufacturing plants were integrated after acquisitions, there were lots of gaps in system accuracy. The company could not account for about 22.5 lakh kilogram of workin-progress inventory from one unit alone in one week. Estimates for other units couldn’t be accounted for due to high volumes. To add to the agony, the company had to pay huge premium for insurance for the unaccounted inventory. The management had to take immediate measures to control such a huge disaster and also save millions of dollars in the production cost which was called for in tough competitive scenario.
IT to the Rescue
The internal audit team highlighted that there was a mismatch in the system inventory and the physical inventory. That became the starting point of investigation for the management. They identified that there previous system did not have the capabilities to analyze the work-in-progress inventory accurately and thus, it was an immediate need of the hour to fix the issue by implementing the right analytical solution for the same.
30 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
The company evaluated multiple vendors and zeroed in on oracle ERP solutions with spend analytics applications and a strong BI. This provided them with 3-fold architecture that tightly integrated multiple business functions within a single database and the management could extract real-time business analytics through structured reports using their BI application. The solution also provided the customer to do away with multiple data entry for a given transaction that eliminated any system error thereof. The project provided an excellent application to the users to meet the challenges of historical as well as current stock mismatches without much effort and the best part was that they had do minimal manual work (that too optional just to override the application recommendations) for making the corrections. Novelty of the project was the automation of identification of stock gaps based on complex multi-tiered business logic and then providing the ability to users to correct the stock levels without doing lengthy manual activities. This automated solution was deployed first time in any paper manufacturing organization.
Gaining Momentum
After successful implementation of the application, the company
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
identified 22.5 lakh kilogram of work-in-progress inventory from just 1 manufacturing plant. Users could segregate the inventory into different classes across manufacturing processes and remove the unwanted and physically non-existent inventory from the system. The operational impact brought by the project was phenomenal as benefits started pouring in even from unexpected quarters as the corrected data started making its way to different BI dashboards Since inventories are a core function and have the potential of impacting almost all other functions, the accuracy in BI dashboards data started helping all the departments with improvements in: 1. Inventory stock valuations across manufacturing units. 2. Accuracy of paid insurance premium for getting inventories insured in manufacturing units as well as depots, earlier it was either more premium paid or less premium paid than required, both of which had impact on risk as well as bottomline. 3. Inventory turns per annum. 4. Ownership among users to maintain correct inventory in system as now they had the capability to achieve this and hence no excuses. 5. Accuracy of decision support system for top management and others as BI application gets accurate actual data and is able to provide correct dashboards and become single source of all truth. 6. To top it all, increased productivity of manufacturing, accounting,
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inventory management, and audit teams as efforts to maintain and audit parallel manual records went down drastically The biggest benefit derived was to achieve OTIF (On Time In Full) targets by the employees. Due to this, the employees can now track the actual work-in-progress of any order and maintain/ control the timelines for fulfillment of the same. The senior management can also log-in to the system to view any information regarding OTIF at any point of time. Information technology in BILT is seamlessly integrated with business. Most of the IT initiatives are joint initiatives with business and are taken to gain competitive advantage or to fine tune automated processes as well as to automate new or left processes. n
Problem Work in progress inventory couldn’t be accounted from all the manufacturing units.
Solution Implemented enterprise BI application with integrated database and streamlined production work flow.
Benefits Reduce substantial cost of production through proper inventory management.
March 31, 2013 | 31
BIG DATA
HandBook 2013
Which is the Hottest 7-letter Word? Big data, of course, but it’s not an easy road to walk. Here are some pointers which will do the trick
SHRIKANTH G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in
Highlights
V
endors often say that every organization needs to have a big data plan, but some CIOs still tend to disagree. A CIO, who had donned many senior tech leadership roles across verticals, told Dataquest, when we approached him for this story on ‘tips and tricks’ on big data, “Nothing to offer on big data.” “Currently, it is all air to us,” a statement like that kind hits the nail ‘bang on the head’. Clearly big data or for that matter any emerging tech trend until it manifests across enterprises, need to pass through hype, critique, adoption, and finally harvesting the benefits. CIOs and CTOs have 3 different school of thoughts on big data: a section dismisses as hype and says show me the RoI, the second category says what’s new, it has existed for years—it’s a new wine in old bottle. The third category, whom the vendors love a lot, says big data 32 | March 31, 2013
Big data, or for that matter any emerging tech trend, until it manifests across enterprises, need to pass through hype, critique, adoption, and finally harvesting the benefits The big data market is expected to reach $23.8 bn by 2016, growing at a CAGR of 31.6%
makes for pervasive impact and it touches all in many possible ways. While we respect the criticism but at the same time, let’s give a fair chance to vendors as well and ponder about the big data advantages and how you can make it work for your enterprise. But if at all a CIO considers that big data might have some positive impact, then he need a well laid out plan of action.
Where do you Start?
Before delving into the ‘how to’ part, let’s look at why big data plan is must if you are a CIO. Recently, in a presentation, at the Nasscom Leadership Forum, on the multi-pronged impact of big data, Manoj Singh, COO, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, said:“The big data market in early 2012 is estimated to be $5 bn and is expected to reach $23.8 bn by 2016, growing at a CAGR of 31.6%.” Irrespective of whether you are a skeptic or supporter—no one can deny that data is growing, and more the storage is merrier, but more
the data ‘is not merrier’ and this is where big data comes to play. So if you are a CIO struggling to find a way out of the data maze and wanting to create a big data plan and a strategy, then according to experts like Singh, a multi-pronged actionable roadmap will help taming the data. He has the following advice which he called ‘options for action’. Action 1: Start with highly specific questions about the business problems you are trying to solve. Action 2: Artistry comes from fine tuning discipline with the need for agility—make sure the technology choices you make can support such flexibility. Action 3: Focus on force-organizational silos to understand your strategic goals. Action 4: Build your bench with left-brained data scientists. So clearly, it’s thing like data due diligence to right mix of technology to the relevant skills to mine the data and profit from it in real-time. n
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
CIO SPEAK
HandBook 2013
To B or Not to B. Scary, Right?
BEFORE YOU TAKE THE PLUNGE, ASK: n Do you connect with consumers? n Is social media relevant to your industry? n What are your revenue drivers? n Do you have loads of unstructured data? n Are you feeling left out? n Is big data the answer?
Arun Gupta, CIO at Cipla shares his take on big data and the hype surrounding this debated technology trend and the dilemmas CIOs face
I
f you look at the evolution of big data—who is talking about it? It’s the vendors and consultants, the big internet companies, social media companies where data volume is thousand-fold higher in creation and analysis— these are the ones who have been espousing the benefits. Let me ask a simple question. How many corporates have gone beyond anecdotal references or possible pilots which can be classified as ‘really big data issues? The answer often times a cliched ‘it depends’. Sure I agree that data volume is expanding rapidly in every enterprise, but are the dimensions anywhere close to big data requirements? For instance, data created on Facebook in a day would probably be more than the data volume generated in a large $20 bn enterprise in a year. CIOs are worrying about expanding storage needs that never seem to be adequate; they are likely to be facing challenges in setting up 100 TB every month or quarter or year. I recall a leading market research report sometime back 34 | March 31, 2013
that said: “Because of lack of information, processes and tools through 2012, almost in excess of 35% of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets. And now big data adds to the challenge.” Sounds scary. But when consultants present slides that are highly populated with elements and complicated numbers on the use case scenarios on big data—even if the CIO and his team had understood it, how do they translate this into business terms that can be explained to the CMO or CEO? Where is the empirical model for RoI? There are many examples being floated on how retailers can use big data to understand customers better and then improve upon revenues. “I am unable to find a retailer who was able to get there. These propositions are all hypothesis of what can be done, no real business problems have been solved as yet and neither have any companies found real use. Because big data is all about unstructured data while structured data has models to massage them and generate conventional wisdom.” Moreover with budgets under continuous pressure and discussions on new projects getting rigorous, large investments in big data in the corporate world, according to me, is still a long way off unless someone comes up with a model to pay-per-outcome and is willing to wait until the result is achieved. So the bottom line is a well-defined clear RoI deliverable. This is the key and until and unless there is a clear case of higher RoI out of big data, it will remain one of the challenges for both CIOs as well as vendors. To sum up, conventional organizations have thus far watched from a distance the big data (r)evolution! n
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AS TOLD TO SHRIKANTH G shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
CASE STUDY MTS
HandBook 2013
The Transformers
After initiatives like deep subscriber analytics, m-Bonus, m-Ad, MTS is now transforming its business needs yet again by taking BSS stack on the cloud AKANKSHA SINGH akankshas@cybermedia.co.in
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alue creation in enabling varied business models and enhancing agility of business is what primarily drives technology leadership in any environment. MTS also boasts of doing absolutely the same as Rajiv Batra, CIO, MTS, says: “At MTS, we integrate with business through 2 distinct processes—a structured methodology to enable businessas-usual, which inherently needs strong planning and control, and an unstructured methodology to enable disruptive innovation which inherently demands flexibility and experimentation.” This has surely done wonders for the company as it led to a number of firsts in the marketplace for MTS, including market shaping initiatives such as ½ paisa tariffs, deep subscriber analytics for close to real-time campaigns, and cloud offerings that are generations ahead of competitive offerings. There are a number of other initiatives that are carried out in both the streams for control, operating efficiencies, and ensuring continued business alignment.
Zeroing in on the Right Solution
These include ‘Functional Days’, wherein IT experts from multiple technology streams (IN, VAS, CCT, BSS, MIS, etc) spend an entire week with an identified business function (such as sales, marketing, finance, DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 35
CASE STUDY MTS etc) to address their short-term and long-term needs. Leveraging on this strategy, another feather was added to the hat when BSS stack on the cloud was built—the first ever done by any operator. Thrust from marketing to offering its partners the ability to white label MTS data card dongles to deliver in the marketplace was the main driver for this innovation. It wanted to see other customers who can use the resilience of the solutions. Since the brand was new, it needed multi-tenant, effective, and reliable solution built in-house. “The main thrust came from marketing. We wanted to see other customers who can use the resilience of the solutions we are providing. Since our brand was new, we needed more volumes and market. So, this project came into being.” informs Batra. To maintain their legacy of innovating and transforming the telecom domain with their own inhouse built products and solutions, MTS decided to create a BSS stack on cloud with the help of their tech team. Cloud gave it a multiple tenancy which helped to cater to multiple service providers. So, it was obvious for them to take the BSS stack over cloud.
The Transformer—On-Cloud BSS Stack
The technology team at MTS has designed and implemented the firstever BSS stack on the cloud. They designed, architected, in-built, and implemented this solution for their customers ranging from telcos to FMCG companies, retail etc. Compliance to partners’ information security requirement and integration with their systems for seamless operations was the 36 | March 31, 2013
HandBook 2013
primary challenge. However it was overcome in short duration with ‘no error approach’ followed by our project management team, adds Batra. The project initiation took 2 years, whereas the MTS tech team took 1 year to built it after that. “This offering is used to offer our partners the ability to white label MTS data card dongles to deliver in the marketplace. This was a cross functional project that included over 30 people across the organization from legal, finance, network, marketing, etc,” says Batra. IT function managed the entire business deal construct life cycle from visioning to contract negotiation to SLA creation to commercial launch. “Our home grown BSS stack has been re-architected for multi-tenancy with key components being optimized for effective ROI. The core telecom elements like HLR, VLR, online charging, PDSN, AAA, RAN AAA, and mediation will be shared,” he adds. Multi-tenancy was achieved by introducing middleware, utilizing the multi threads and processes at application layer and providing customizable interfaces to each partner. Almost all the modules used by inhouse developed system like CRM, provisioning, rating and billing, mediation, MIS, e-Flow manager, e-recharge, SMS Engine had to be redesigned to use multiple threads and processes and were segregated for common and specific partner activities. Additionally, the user interface was also enhanced substantially to integrate role based access and a user-friendly experience without compromising on data privacy and security.
initiative empowered the business with additional marketing channels through partners to increase the penetration of white labeled MTS dongles in the market, while at the same time offers considerable cost benefits compared to individually using different systems for partners. “This re-architected system has reduced the time taken for setup of a new infrastructure for partners from 6-9 months to about 1.5-2 months. This has quicker ‘revenue turnaround’ both for us and our partners.” This re-architected system has reduced the time taken for setup of a new infrastructure for partners from 6 months to about 1.5 months. “All that is required is customization specific for the partner and the white labeled data offering will be ready for launch in the market,” adds Batra. Standardized architecture reduces the performance tuning, planning and operations overhead for partners and lowers the set up cost. These provide a pre-fabricated platform for jump starting operations to partners and in turn provide quality service to customers. n
How it Helps...
Since the thrust was from marketing for such kind of a solution; this visit www.dqindia.com
Problem Thrust from marketing to offer their partners the ability to white label MTS data card dongles to deliver in the marketplace
Solution The technology team at MTS has designed and implemented the first ever BSS stack on the cloud to meet the business needs with effective RoI on its implementation
Benefit This re-architected system has reduced the time taken for setup of a new infrastructure for their partners from 6-9 months to about 1.5-2 months. This has quicker ‘revenue turnaround’ both for them and their partners. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
CLOUD
10 Steps to the Cloud
While moving to the cloud, there are a few critical aspects that need to be kept in mind to ensure a successful migration
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SHILPA SHANBHAG shilpas@cybermedia.co.in
o doubt, adoption of cloud has yielded benefits for the companies, but at the same time it is not really necessary for all projects and may not be suitable for some at all. For instance, keeping the RoI in perspective, if the existing services are meeting the business objectives and are cheaper than cloud then the migration is redundant. Cloud adoption makes more sense when it involves large scale of services that need flexibility or have variable/seasonal demand. A business should opt for cloud only if the cost and efficiency post migration rules over the current services. Apart from choosing the right vendor and appropriate solution, it is equally important for organizations to analyze metrics for the pros of cloud computing, such as elasticity of computing power, leveraging already built-out, and established IT services, avoiding the costs of building and maintaining IT infrastructure. These are some of the factors that will ensure a successful migration. In this relation, Dataquest sets the scene right for you by identifying the ways/means to deal with IT infrastructure while moving to the cloud. 38 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
Set Correct SLAs
One key requirement for implementing cloud is to develop mutually agreeable and clearly defined service level agreement (SLA) for demarcating general and high-level service offerings. Adopting cloud does not entail restructuring of the entire existing IT system/structure. SLA contracts (internal or external) for cloud services are key compliance enforcement mechanisms and should be synchronized with an organization’s unique requirements. The business will need to decide what features are critical for a cloud solution to provide, and what non-critical items will be there on the list. SLAs of the cloud service providers need to be analyzed thoroughly by reading the fine print and all clauses (with regard to security, maintenance, and support services) should be clearly defined to avoid any confusion. Performance of the cloud provider needs to be assessed through a small POC (proof of concept). For example, some providers provide 99.9% availability, while some provide 99.95% availability. The higher the availability assurance, the higher the price. You need to determine what the minimum level of assurance you need, perform a cost-benefit analysis, and make an appropriate choice.
Identify Criticality
Depending on the business processes, there are several cloud options to consider. For non-critical processes, a public cloud solution may be the fastest, most cost-effective solution. A private cloud might be necessary for a critical business process, especially for meeting the organization’s security and regulatory compliance requirements. For organizations which wish to move multiple business processes to the cloud, a hybrid solution may DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Highlights
A SaaS solution may be the best fit if an organization wants to leverage an application provided by a cloud vendor A cloud pilot project is a good way for an organization to evaluate cloud services to see how useful, reliable, and cost-efficient they can be
be the best way to leverage the efficiency of public clouds while maintaining corporate policy and regulatory compliance requirements with internal cloud solutions. A semi-private cloud solution may be appropriate if like-minded organizations are willing to partner for an end-to-end cloud solution. A SaaS solution may be the best fit if an organization wants to leverage an application provided by a cloud vendor. Depending on the requirement of each organization vis-a-vis data management, storage, security, and compliance considerations, a right fit will have to be arrived at.
Pilot Framework
A cloud pilot project is a good way for an organization to evaluate cloud services to see how useful, reliable, and cost-efficient they can be. A pilot project should be a non-critical application that has limited scope, a short-time frame, and loosely defined estimates of its RoI. Building a pilot project has the added benefit of giving the organization a chance to learn how to use cloud services.
Scalability
Expanding businesses of companies of various sizes make the budget and IT requirement, critical points to consider. Expanding business makes enterprises realize that their current infrastructure no longer fully supports their evolving needs. visit www.dqindia.com
The need to consolidate data and optimize/cut costs leads to upgradation of their network infrastructure before implementing newer technologies like desktop or server virtualization. Establishing expectations upfront enables businesses to determine what they can actually afford and prioritize accordingly. While opting for cloud, companies should provision for easy scalability and efficient management of resources keeping in view future projects. Scalability is not a default function when you deploy cloud, though PaaS deployments do come with some scalability from the existing environment. In order to scale up there is a need for applications to be placed behind auto-scalers within the cloud.
Back-up and Recovery
A data backup plan is a must for organizations and today, businesses of all sizes understand the repercussions of not having essential data always available. Issues like customers’ unresolved problems, breach of SLAs, absence of suppliers, and degrading staff morale and productivity come to fore. Senior management should consider the cost of repercussions, against the much smaller investment required to keep data and applications adequately protected on an ongoing basis.
Encryption and Compression of Data
Before putting data in the cloud, the company must use tools to compress and encrypt the files. This will not only save the storage space but also avoid redundancy of data. Additionally, tools available which ensure data is stored in the cloud only once to avoid duplication.
Plan Well
It is worthwhile to plan in detail the migration strategy and not March 31, 2013 | 39
CLOUD underestimate the effort involved to thoroughly test critical enterprise application prior to embarking on this journey. Poor planning can cause disruptions to normal business operations that may prove very costly to recover. Besides, it would have severe impact on goodwill with customers, suppliers, and partners. While deciding to let go off legacy applications, the transition needs to factor the technical, service, and commercial aspects of concluding the current hosting service. To this end, one needs to ensure that all customer data, software and operational requirements are safely stitched for the right user experience while adopting new cloud infrastructure.
Security
Prior to signing on with a cloud provider, an organization should conduct a thorough vetting of the procedures and processes followed by the provider. These include the fact that who manages/monitors the data; where exactly will the data reside; what are the protocols in case of emergency for data retrieval; in case of multiple tenants, what are the guidelines in place to separate 2 accounts; also the cloud provider should also provide details around security testing and audits, IDS, IPS, firewall, apart from clearly stating out the responsibilities and guarantees in the SLAs in situations such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that can greatly impair performance. The applications might themselves contain several components, than would initially appear and some of the shared components cannot be moved to the cloud. So securing connectivity between the enterprise and the cloud needs to be established. Also, in the process, one must refrain from duplicating tools, processes or teams. Right to audit, ability to understand the 40 | March 31, 2013
HandBook 2013
Cloud providers should provide details around security testing and audits, IDS, IPS, firewall, apart from clearly stating out the responsibilities and guarantees in the SLAs
impact of various regulations need to be well understood. Type of service undertaken according to the business need, equally needs to be mapped with respect to underpinning security controls.
Support System
It is very important for the provider to provide the relevant support services along with a clearer picture of the probable outages that may occur. The vendor should have a qualified team of engineers who will be able to provide 24X7 support. Support services are an important aspect while moving to cloud, and it would be wiser to choose a vendor who can provide the requisite bandwidth. Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Windows Azure offer a graded paid support service. Based on the criticality of the applications/data and the business needs, the right support option needs to be subscribed to. Along with the IT infrastructure, it is equally important to design your support model. It is important to have various support layers from layer 1 to layer 3 or 4 as per the organization’s requirements and capabilities.
You would need to plan for the geography spread and the support window. If you are looking at a 24x7 support, ensure availability of SME’s (subject matter experts) based on the follow-the-sun-model and available on-demand based on elasticity factor. You would need to keep in mind the cross-section of security, operations, Infra, DBA, logistics, PMO, etc, and accordingly hire and schedule resources.
Administration and Maintenance
In-house IT administrations lack the expertise when it comes to managing cloud environments. Hence, it is imperative to streamline IT infrastructure management tools to manage more complex and multienvironment mix in association with the vendor. Additionally, standardization of processes go a long way in ensuring the cloud infrastructure growth is streamlined. It is recommended that maintenance/upgrade windows are fixed before hand so that the necessary testing can be completed in advance ensuring stability in service. Furthermore, downtime for both maintenance cloud services and applications can be combined to cut down the outages for customers using the application.
On a Final Note
Decision makers need to carefully consider the benefits and pitfalls of utilizing cloud technology for managing IT infrastructure. Hence, it is highly important that a well implemented IT Infrastructure strategy should truly enable CIOs to get a centralized view of the entire business and cloud technology can play a critical role in driving this. n (This article is a compilation of views of various spokespersons and to view individual comments visit dqindia.com.)
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OUTSOURCING
Partying with the Cloud The ability of outsourcing vendors to effectively balance traditional IT outsourcing services and cloud services holds the key to their future prosperity
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s the hype and confusion over co-mingled public and private cloud starts to dissipate, more CIOs are joining the cloud computing party. This will have an impact on the IT outsourcing service providers, who will see their business models and customer value propositions disrupted. Service providers in the IT outsourcing space have, after all, profited significantly by taking on their customers’ highly complex, one-off collections of IT assets and finding ways to manage them more efficiently than their customers can. But the essence of cloud computing is a move towards highly standardized racks of commodity servers and a software environment that together make for a highly efficient use of resources. Cloud computing, when done right, has the potential to actually replace, and not just augment, legacy environments while adding value by reducing costs and increasing agility.
State of Data Center Management
PwC surveyed 489 business executives to understand the real state of data center management today, how fast business executives expect to move to cloud infrastructures in the future and who they will turn to-traditional IT outsourcing providers, new cloud-oriented providers, or internal staff-to make the shift. 42 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
Individual interviews with vendors offering traditional IT outsourcing and new cloud based offerings, including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), complemented the survey. The PwC IT outsourcing and cloud computing survey suggested that many, if not most, functions of the traditional data center—internal or outsourced—will gradually migrate to the cloud. The survey revealed a growing interest among IT outsourcing customers and noncustomers for infrastructure in the cloud, especially private cloud; and a slight preference for new cloudfocused service providers over traditional IT outsourcing vendors to manage the private clouds. As a result for the next several years, IT outsourcing providers will face the dual challenge of delivering
traditional IT infrastructure services while trying to meet the growing demand from their own customers to migrate to cloud computing, including IaaS. IT outsourcing providers not ready or able to move with their customers could put the entire relationship at risk. This provides an opportunity for younger cloud based IT infrastructure providers to aim at the enterprise market for IaaS. IaaS is indeed a boon for IT outsourcing customers who are thinking of moving workloads to the cloud because it gives them many of the same characteristics of IT outsourcing at a lower price and with greater flexibility. But the big question for IaaS providers is: Over the long haul, can they match the spending, innovation, and marketing one can expect from IT outsourcing providers, many of whom are already offering cloud services?
Migration to Cloud
The survey indicated that the migration to cloud will be gradual and the cloud will coexist with traditional infrastructure for a long time. In the near future, there is likely to be enough demand for both traditional IT outsourcing and cloud services to keep everyone busy. Many IT outsourcing vendors are realizing this trend, and are also gearing up to play that role, specifically aiming to provide 3 vital cloud services—planning and workload assessment, migrating workloads to the cloud, and managing all the moving pieces. Despite such efforts, the PwC survey suggested that in some cases IT outsourcing vendors may lack credibility as cloud experts. IT outsourcing executives recognize the problem, and are working to increase awareness of their cloud capabilities and are undertaking marketing efforts to re-brand themselves as both IT outsourcing and cloud providers. However, if IT DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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outsourcing vendors over-emphasize the cloud they risk alienating existing customers who prefer traditional infrastructure. The challenge will be to maintain the right kind of balance between traditional IT outsourcing services and cloud services.
The Future
The overall picture that emerges is that the future holds tremendous opportunities and enormous challenges for the IT outsourcing vendors. Established IT outsourcing vendors clearly have a role to play as enterprises move to the cloud. Evidently, there appears to be a new, cloud related business available to IT outsourcing providers if they can offer the right menu of services to customers who have previously shied away from them. Their ability to seize the opportunity and to offer credible private cloud services could, in fact, determine their ability to prosper in the future. The results of the survey did not suggest a clear cut answer to the future of IT outsourcing in the cloud era. Though there is hardly a tsunami on the horizon that threatens the traditional data center, whether managed internally or by IT outsourcing vendors, indications are clear that the business executives know that cloud computing will soon be the single best approach. However the migration to the cloud would take some time. On the surface this may appear to be good news for IT outsourcing vendors, but only if those vendors are perceived as helping customers to reach the cloud. n (Article was first published in Globalservicesmedia.com)
RAJESH RAJAN and RITESH PAL The authors are leader, emerging technologies and senior consultant, PwC India, respectively maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 43
CASE STUDY TATA TELESERVICES
Beating the Odds Growth in business both laterally and vertically led to re-planning of IT infrastructure PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in
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ata Teleservices (TTSL), one of the leaders in the Indian telecom space, was growing leaps and bounds when it realized the need to upgrade its IT infrastructure to sustain high demands in the future. TTSL took a strategic decision to consolidate its backend infrastructure facilities in Hyderabad. As a result, a new data center, technology area, and user facility, together known as Gyanpeeth, 3.4 lakh sq ft in area, was built and developed from scratch. The earlier data center, also in Hyderabad, was not fully geared for this growth and hence, the need to migrate was contemplated. TTSL has its large central primary data center in Hyderabad and site level DR center in Delhi and there was an urgent need to migrate the business critical primary data center into the new facility in Hyderabad within 6 months as the building lease of old data center facility was expiring by the end of March 2012. At the same time, TTSL was working on consolidating its centralized operations in all spheres—IT, technology, network, NOC, etc—at its own 44 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
new and state-of-the-art facility in Shamshabad, a quieter suburb of Hyderabad.
A Logical Step
Hence, it was a logical move to migrate the data center to this facility, which offered world-class amenities and almost limitless potential for growth and expansion. One of the important considerations for the company in the migration was the opportunity; it offered to upgrade their deployment architecture. TCS being the IT Outsourcing partner executed the large data center and user migration program. TIA standards were adopted to build tier-3 compliant new data center with state-of-the-art architecture. TTSL has a long-term partnership with TCS as its strategic IT outsourcing partner. Since 2005, it has helped TTSL to manage its costs better and build a portfolio of about 80 applications serving 90mn subscribers. The applications were a combination of COTS and custom built applications. The approach was to build custom applications wherever possible to ensure cost effectiveness and maximum value creation. Due to the prevalent ‘don’t fix if it ain’t broke’ mindset—particularly for mission critical systems, many CIOs are constrained to live with a build-as-it-grows design which does not always result in elegance and efficiency.
The Challenge
The biggest challenge it faced was to take an aggressive target of 6 months time-frame for completion of mammoth data center migration with optimal cost and without impacting ongoing IT operations. The idea from TCS was to improve standards of overall IT efficiency through modernization, optimizations, and innovative solutions. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Migrating several thousand servers, switches, routers, and storage equipment, which host several petabytes of data and hundreds of mission critical applications, without experiencing a single moment of business discontinuity was almost an impossible task set by TCS. Shifting production stacks turn-by-turn to an interim staging environment, which was not always a replica of the original, came with its own risks that required sound mitigation. Data replication between the old and new sites was a critical hurdle, due to the sheer size and need for speed. For the first time in the world, a 10Gbps link was commissioned successfully for this. Getting multiple partners and agencies to collaborate to work as one unit with a single goal was imagined to be a daunting task but proved to be one of the big successes. Finally, as with all projects, there were tough timelines and a need to adjust their roll-out was an added challenge.
What it Did
1 The company identified the need to establish a dedicated LAN connectivity between old and new data
Problem The earlier data center was not fully geared for business growth and hence the need to migrate was contemplated
Solution TTL and TCS IT teams together took the opportunity to substantially improve the overall IT efficiency by making as many improvements as possible through technology modernization, optimization, and innovative solutions
Benefit Improved deployment architecture has clearly provided an ability to isolate and fix problems much faster, leading to better business performance visit www.dqindia.com
center to boost the time taken for exchange of data during migration and also ongoing live. They ensured to implement the best possible industry standards CAT6a cables in the data center to ensure there are no latency issues at peak load. 2 It re-designed the passive components to ensure better cooling and power facilities apart from improved network cables within the DC. 3 The organization believed the need to virtualize the entire server farm to increase capacity utilization of existing servers. 4 It upgraded most of their applications and databases to support tighter integration of their work flow and processes. Since the infrastructure was completely heterogeneous, TTSL had to carefully integrate the changes in the application and the databases which could support consolidated management for the same. 5 The overall networking was revamped with improved switching and routing solutions with firewall architecture to make optimal use of data flow and security protocol.
Benefits
The improved deployment architecture has clearly provided an ability to isolate and fix problems much faster leading to better business performance. TTSL focus on using the migration as an opportunity to make their architecture more efficient also led to optimization in capex, thus providing long-term cost savings. TTSL identified several servers and stacks that they could either sun-set or consolidate, thus creating a leaner design. By keeping an eye on power consumption and cooling requirements, TTSL achieved substantial overall savings in opex as well, while contributing to a greener environment. An overall sense of exhilaration prevails at the end of a job well done, which is also a reward in itself. n March 31, 2013 | 45
DATA CENTER
HandBook 2013
An 8-point Checklist for DC Outsourcing Organizations are always under a constant tussle between managing critical data in-house or outsourcing it. Hence it’s critical to go through this checklist before outsourcing PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in
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ata center outsourcing is always a hot topic of discussion as there is a lot of risk attached to it. An organization should always calculate the whole costs of an internal facility and then compare them to the costs of external hosting. While cost of internal facilities includes costs of licensing, maintenance, security power, connectivity, cooling, property costs, and staffing resources, some key considerations are required to select the right vendor for outsourcing of data. Despite its risky nature, data center outsourcing has seen a constant growth in the Indian market. If the first step of selecting a data center services vendor is done right, then surely the organization will benefit in numerous ways. 46 | March 31, 2013
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DATA CENTER Here are some key considerations that can help access the right selection of vendor for outsourcing of data center: 1 Determine IT’s Ability to Meet Business Needs: While data center processes are of high value, the ability to deliver IT services in a structured manner can lower the overall cost of enterprise significantly. The ability to fulfill the performance expectation and quality in services on data center process outsourcing should be evaluated properly before taking any decision. Access, process by process should be considered on priority basis. Then determine what can be retained or outsource using mathematical models. 2 Proper Documentations: Do proper documentations once each process has been clearly identified. Be sure to include the capabilities required to continue delivery of processes which should define clearly a) service scope b) key performance indicators (KPI) c) service level agreement d) governance and transition processes. 3 Space Utilization: Space utilized for your equipment is a major criteria for selecting the right data center since each square foot utilized adds to your cost of operations. Certain basic questions you may ask should relate to server density and form factor plus cooling and energy saving criteria as these are also billable. 4 Power Supply: If the outsourced location has uninterrupted power systems. The questions should be—is the power supply via a series of fault-tolerant and redundant sub-systems? Is it backed by commercial and private power sources, including batteries and generators? 5 The Cost Factor: Outsourcing can bring resources in terms of newer skillset that you may not 48 | March 31, 2013
HandBook 2013
Highlights
While data center processes are of high value, the ability to deliver IT services in a structured manner can lower the overall cost of enterprise Before drafting SLA, one should remember that the vendor has the choice of various processes
have in-house, however, everything comes with a cost. The 2 major cost criteria in an outsource DC can be measured in terms of fixed and variable. Fixed cost can be measured by laying down parameters on infrastructure and its utilization. On the contrary, variable cost can be determined on periodic basis by identifying, by leveraging the resource utilization in terms of manpower. Permanent staffing could be reduced or eliminated if required. 6 Data Connectivity: One major criteria of deciding the right vendor should be to identify the data connectivity and networking solutions being adopted by the vendor. Though security for the same is of prime concern, one should not overlook the performance requirements of hosting critical applications over the network for a typical client server interface. Important considerations such as dedicated storage network and WAN connectivity should be taken care of. Further, a secured and dedicated backup mechanism for critical data should be provided by the vendor. In case of any unforeseen mishap or disaster, the client should access clearly the data security or DR policy of the vendor carefully before taking decision. In such cases, RTO and RPO should be calculated and certified.
7 Selecting SLA: Before drafting SLA, one should remember that the vendor has the choice of various processes. Hence, the company and data center outsourcing vendor agree on all the processes. One should necessarily discuss a detailed work plan with the data center services vendor. An SLA should consists of: nn Nature of the service provided should be specified. For example, SAP application maintenance support. nn Level of the service provided should be specified: frequency, coverage, time-scales, etc. nn Details of the refund or compensation if things do not go according to plan. nn Weekly meeting to review the progress and clarify doubts. SLAs need to be measured periodically, and all issues which arise should be documented. The document would help in tracking. 8 Security Concern: One has to look into the types of security being used for different purposes from physical access to logical access. Does your data center services provider control physical access via lock and key? Is a card scanner being employed to track who is there in the data center and when? Does your data center services provider maintain a log entry describing the purpose of every visit? As the sensitivity of your application server intensifies, so does the security needed to protect it. Many companies are not comfortable with the idea of letting a data center service provider manage their key IT resources. These concerns are addressable by deploying a solution to prevent data loss, along with a comprehensive network security solution. Ensure that your data center service providers are accountable for delivering the service. n
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DATA CENTER
HandBook 2013
What is the Right Management Approach? A data centre lifecycle covers various aspects from strategy, to design, implementation and continual improvement
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ata Centres in India
Data centres in India have been growing at a fast space since the last 10 years or so. Ever since the National E-Governance (NeGP) project was kicked off in May 2006, it has created a platform for multiple data centres across Indian states to support its state-wide e-governance projects. An initial investment of `1600+ crore is planned over the next 4-5 years. This is apart from many private players who have invested in some of the largest data centers. Organizations are making a big shift from a distributed IT setup to a more manageable, efficient centralized model, leading to consolidation of branch and remote IT resources into fewer, but larger data centers. Though we are in the early stages of cloud adoption, cloud service providers will also be a key contributor to the growing need for more data centers. As per Gartner’s May 2012 forecasts over the next 5 years, the growth of servers would be at a CAGR of around 6% while for storage systems is about 18%. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 49
DATA CENTER TechNavio’s analysts have forecasted that the data center equipment market in India may grow at a CAGR of 10.4% over the period 2011-2015. As per Indian data center market review 2012, data centre market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22% and will touch `6,500 Crore by 2016. Looking at the Data center focused projects in India, this may be possible. Government of India’s UIDAI project is already building data centers of 50,000 sq ft, each in Manesar and Bengaluru as a part of its Central Information Data Repository (CIDR) Infrastructure. In fact, global companies have envisaged this segment in India as a growth market and have been investing in Indian data centers over the last year or so.
Data Center Life Cycle (DCLC)
The immediate view for developing a data center is usually focussed on primary aspects such as space and size requirements while the long term view on sustenance and energy management often comes after few months of operations. DCLC approach is expected to help users consider the necessary steps in taking a holistic view on data centers, which would eventually help them from a design, build, operations and continued sustenance perspective.
Stage1—Business Requirement Analysis Business Requirement Analysis is the first and the most critical stage which will decide the overall space and sizing for the Data center. In this stage, we derive the following:nn Total compute requirements phased over a period of next 3-5 years. nn Centralized or distributed requirements at various locations. nn Primary, DR, and BCP site requirements. 50 | March 31, 2013
nn Ascertaining the capability of existing hardware available to support existing/new requirements. nn Estimation on space/power requirements based on compute requirements and technology refresh roadmaps from OEM’s. nn Design for a green field data center or a retrofit DC where existing one is already available. nn Finally, documented plan approved by the Senior Management with Project completion timelines. The output of this stage is a complete analysis of the business requirements, computational needs, business projections, number of devices needed and projections for the next few years.
Stage2—Planning and Design
Planning and design is the strategic stage in which the following is usually considered: nn Planning for locations—Decision on where in the country to host depending upon economic & political situation, environmental factors, weather, seismic conditions, power availability, etc. nn Data Center Tier (TIA 942) and uptime guideline considerations are generally factored to showcase efficient designs. This has to be carefully balanced with the capital requirement and real uptime needs. nn In-house designed or need of a design agency. nn Determining the size of white space and other areas depending upon compute requirements including growth and future expansion, non-DC, support & utility area space, etc. nn Power Supply Options—Power utilities available, primary feed, backup feed possibilities, DG set size, environmental factors, use of green energy, etc. nn Telecom connectivity including diverse routes and service providers.
nn Statutory compliances to be factored. (for eg, banks need to comply to RBI norms, etc) nn Budgets and financial approvals followed by the developing request for proposal bids, evaluation process including the service level compliance depending upon needs.
Stage—Data Center Commissioning
Data center commissioning stage would see the actual delivery of the project. This stage will cover the following aspects:nn Vendor Team mobilization will include how early the work starts. Usually, this stage is found to delay the project for want of key personnel required to kick-start the work. nn Equipment delivery & installation practice will help in how fast the work gets completed. It is necessary that each OEM gives an undertaking to the full cooperation for installation and support, usually over a period of 5-10 years for supply of equipment & its serviceability during its usable life. nn One has to carefully monitor the work to avoid Time-overrun and ensure that the project is within the control, both of the executing vendor and the owner of the Data center. nn Project would be completed on time if both the Vendor team and the Project owners collaborate and work for each other instead of the usual blame-games which ought to delay projects, sometime also leading to cost-overruns by the implementers. nn Finally, a well documented project covering the warranty, support and handover documentation would enhance the credibility of the implementers and help the customer, i.e. the Data center owner in achieving its objectives.
Stage—Data Center Operate, Sustain, and Enhance Stage
The DC operate, sustain, and enhance stage truly reflects on the best
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practices followed by the data center team on its ongoing healthiness and Continual improvements. This stage will factor the following:nn Ensuring that the Operations team is well qualified to run the Operations on a day to day basis, 24x7 management of equipment & people shifts without uptime degradation/ downtime, ensuring availability and manageability using right skilled team. nn Load and thermal management of the data center avoiding hot spots and excess cooling. nn Continual OEM support. nn Management overview using standard operating procedures, checklists, SLA, and task compliances. nn Reviews—Internal teams, OEM, other support vendors. nn MIS reports for customer/ senior management confidence in services delivered. nn Actively considering cases of improvements and its implementation, preferably on a pilot basis.
Stage—Re-assessment for Changes and New Requirements Re-assessment stage should be essentially planned right from the first year itself rather than waiting for couple of years. It should factor the changes that a data center needs in terms of new requirements, changes to the environment like Cooling, Power requirements, air-flow, ageing of equipment, changes in efficiency such as increased power consumption or inability to deliver the work as per the specifications. As a part of the standard operating procedures, this stage will help improve the utilization and keep checks on the equipment. Based on the behaviour of equipment, it can be possible to predict failures due to overheat, high current consumption, excess fuel consumption, sudden variances, etc. This stage is essentially DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
a regular audit of operations and requirements to ensure that users don’t enter a stage of surprise either at the requirements, equipment, availability, space crunch, obsolescence, etc, and a fair prediction can be made, an essential element for Senior Management intervention and action on timely basis.
Data Center Maturity Model (DCMM) Tool for Planning & Improving Energy Efficiency across the Entire Lifecycle
Data center owners/operators interested in improving their data center’s energy efficiency and sustainability will gain from the DCMM tool developed by the Green Grid in 2010. This model provides clear goals & direction for improving energy efficiency and sustainability across all aspects of the data center. DCMM touches upon power, compute, storage, cooling, networks, other facility, other IT. Users can benchmark their current performance using the data center maturity model equaliser. By determining levels of maturity and identifying the steps/innovations required as part of the DC & IT strategy, achievement towards greater energy efficiency/sustainability improvements are possible. Adopting DCMM can help companies use data center assets more effectively, reducing their capital & operational expenditure, as well as minimizing their environmental impact and improving their corporate/social responsibility standings. Data center owners/operators and senior managers can use the DCMM tool for direction, self-assessment, and informed decision making. They can determine where they stand in relation to current best practices and understand the roadmap of the industry. For DCMM, the following steps are defined in moving from a Low visit www.dqindia.com
efficiency to the highest achievable efficiency through progressive use of best practices:nn Level ‘0’ (Has low or no progress) nn Level ‘1’ (Started to adopt part best practices) nn Level ‘2’ (Has adopted best practices) nn Level ‘3’ & ‘4’ (It is better than most others) nn Level ‘5’ (Visionary, is likely to achieve targets over a 5-6 year period) So level 0 data center is a one which has taken no efficiency improvement measures while level 5 is the ultimate in energy efficiency. Levels 3 through 5 represent future capabilities toward which the industry should collectively move and innovate. DCMM tool simply provides a yardstick with which to measure progress, unlike other ‘Codes of conduct’ or rule sets which may sometimes end up as counter-productive.
Conclusion
While one would like to consider a proprietary approach to developing and managing data centers, it is best suited for the organisation to select a proven method. The description of a data center lifecycle is a process which covers various aspects from strategy, to design, implementation and continual improvement which has been adopted from the more conventional Plan-Do- Check- Act (P-D-C-A) aspect of the quality standards and is universal to either a service provider data center or acaptive data center. n
ASHISH DANDEKAR The author is ex-CIO, Power Exchange India & currently council member, Gerson Lehrman Group maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 51
CASE STUDY ICICI SECURITIES
IT Simplifies IT enabled ICICI Securities to cater to the needs of the employees while keeping the application simple and in step with time
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SHILPA SHANBHAG shilpas@cybermedia.co.in
oday, IT plays an instrumental role in contributing to the better functioning of almost all business departments. It is no longer a support function, but the right alignment of business strategy and information technology holds tremendous importance in a business. Financial services organizations are heavily dependent on technology which run on a very complex infrastructure. In addition to the traditional branch touch point, almost all products and services need to be offered through multiple electronic channels (internet, IVR, call center, mobile, kiosk, etc). Joydeep Dutta, CTO, ICICI Securities says, “In our organization, projects are assessed and executed on the basis of what value they deliver. We classify projects which generate revenue, achieve cost savings, deliver customer convenience, improve process efficiency and speeds, or enhance productivity.”
Implementing the Right Product
Last year, a customer relationship management (CRM) product was implemented at the company across all sales groups which catered to the interest of over 2,000 employees. This implementation ensured storage of customer information on a single platform securely and easy accessibility. This standardized the sales processes across teams. Later it was decided to develop a mobile application on a tablet form factor which would make the sales team more productive by addressing the following needs: nn CRM capability while the employee is on the move—a salesperson spends more time out of office and accessibility to customer database on the tablet and ability to access/update sales activities on a daily basis would prove to be a real benefit. 52 | March 31, 2013
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Finer Points Some of the features of this implementation are as follows: The application is connected to the main CRM database while the user is in connected mode The user can log in to the application through the same active directory sign in credentials as for intranet applications The application is capable of allowing the user to work in a connected or a disconnected mode While in an offline mode, the application stores all information recorded by the user locally in a SQL Lite database The synchronization process that runs in the background while the user is online ensures that there is less data inaccuracies There are facilities to auto wipe the application after the user leaves the organization
“We deployed the CRM and content solution over tablets by developing an application written in native android code” —Joydeep Dutta CTO, ICICI Securities
nn Continuous self training of the employee on the company’s products and services—what was learnt in training after joining needed to be continuously refreshed, having ready access to the training material enabled reference on need basis. nn Presentations and demos to customers on the tablet—negating the need for paper documents to be carried, supporting multimedia video demos and interactive presentations to showcase better to the customer. “We developed an android based application to address the above capabilities. The content application module bundled all relevant product material available to the sales team into a package containing presentations, demos, product documents, financial calculators, and training videos that could be shown to the customer at the time of pitching for a sale,” adds Dutta. The main focus of this impleDATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
mentation improved productivity of the salesperson. Meanwhile, it has also enabled better engagement with customers during face to face meetings. “We deployed the CRM and content solution over tablets by developing an application written in native android code. We chose android operating system since it was the most widely used mobile platform available through multiple manufacturers,” he says.
Creating Value
Business heads these days proactively engage their IT counterparts during strategic and operational planning, and try to co-create value for the organization. Though IT creates value, defining and measuring the same can be a challenge. Usually if it cannot quantify the benefits and strategic goals, CIOs can refrain from implementing the project. A very important element in the functioning of IT is joint ownership visit www.dqindia.com
and monitoring of all projects that are executed. At ICICI Securities, Project Management Office (PMO) was set up to track various projects across different IT teams. Business users raise their new requirements and change requests with justification into a project management tool. The project gets routed and approved by the business owner and his supervisor, and gets subsequently routed to the relevant IT owner. With each IT owner and business owner having a view of his/ her projects. Projects in the pipeline are discussed in review meetings between the IT and business teams, and prioritized for taking up. Both the IT and business teams while managing their respective projects update the status and issues from time to time in project management tool, which gets consolidated in a composite projects dashboards.
On a Final Note
Business agility now depends on application agility. The business can change and expand only as fast and efficiently as its applications do. “To ensure agility and facilitate business outcome, we have attempted to develop a simple and structured approach to planning, developing, and deploying projects. Simple enough to be able to consistently sustain the process discipline among teams and structured enough to get the project status to be as measurable as possible and easily understood by the stakeholders. Importantly, joint ownership of every project ensures better transparency and minimal expectation mismatch. This in turn helps achieve expected business outcome, and the success or failure of the project is for the joint project team,” says Dutta. n March 31, 2013 | 53
CASE STUDY HERO MOTOCORP
Bringing Method to the Madness Hero MotoCorp adopted the dealer management system on cloud to efficiently manage all concerned data
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t Hero MotoCorp, since the last few years, there has been visible effort to strategically align business and technology to bring about positive business outcomes. Here, the CIO is a part of the enterprise management team, which is the key organizational decision making body and this is reflective of how the business uses technology to gain leadership in the industry and values the contribution of IT. One of the many feathers in its technology cap is its annual IT scorecard for the business, which shows how IT has helped the organization grow and transform. The IT scorecard also helps business assess the value that IT has generated for the business in the year. At Hero MotoCorp, technology has proactively helped equip the organization for the expected challenges in the business landscape than act as a reactive solution to operational business problems. An innovative initiative undertaken recently is the Dealer Management System (DMS), a community cloud hosted by Hero MotoCorp, where the application is based on Siebel CRM and has been implemented by IBM and Oracle. The DMS is accessed by all its dealers who are in-turn charged for it. The way the project has changed the manner in which its dealers now communicate with customers and with Hero has been the most innovative attribute of this project. 54 | March 31, 2013
SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR shobhas@cybermedia.co.in
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Under the Deluge
“A lot of data was being generated— from the customer perspective, who wanted to know which models were available and all related info; from the company perspective, where it wanted to keep track of inventories at dealers, which bike models were being sold the most, etc; and from the dealer perspective, where the dealer wanted to keep track of invoices, OEMs requesting the dealer to give information, and the deal-
ers wanting to know exactly what was happening in their showrooms, neighboring cities. The company itself was losing track of insights into customer behavior, the selling/servicing process etc,” says Vijay Sethi, CIO, Hero MotoCorp. “There was too much manual activity from all these ends for punching data into the system, too much effort leading to inefficiencies and internal problems. These were largely the key drivers that prompted us to adopt a common community cloud based dealer management system (DMS) bringing all our automotive employees, dealers, and customers together,” he adds.
Infusing Strength
So, armed with an IT spend of `150 crore, inclusive of the amount and effort spent on training roughly 10,000 of the dealerships’ staff and its own employees who were not entirely IT-savvy to use the system effectively, the community cloud was put in place. The company charges a service fee from the dealers for accessing the DMS, considering the money and effort a dealer would have spent on hosting his own standalone IT systems.
Problem Tracking, assessing and processing data from company, customer and dealer ends manually
Solution A Siebel CRM based dealer management system was devised and the tech solutions implemented
Benefits Multiple benefits such as company control over all the data under a community cloud. Customers, dealers and the company can now access the relevant data anytime, anywhere. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 55
CASE STUDY HERO MOTOCORP
Making the Most of it
Thus, while earlier all the dealerships had their own way of managing various processes, the project brought consistency in the processes being carried out by the dealerships. It also brought transparency into the system as sufficient and relevant data captured in DMS and through analytical tools was now readily available for the dealer as well as for the organization. The system is now live and working at all the company dealerships and other part of networks at more than 1,000 customer touch points and all information is being collated real-time. DMS has also reduced the time lags which existed earlier as it took time for the information to flow from the dealership level to the marketing offices and then after collation to the zonal level and finally consolidate at national level. Hero 56 | March 31, 2013
MotoCorp also uses public cloud for some of its integration with its partners. “So there is some method to this madness,” says Sethi. The company has actively intertwined its social media policies, mobility and videoconferencing, and predictive and semantic analytics processes to gather and process data. Marketing campaigns are run on Facebook, Twitter and results are shared by the IT team and within the organization. Customer relationships are being reinforced as all feedback including negative ones on social media are being dealt on adhoc and current basis, although email communication is currently only 90% structured. “Most of the employees, the sales force specially are accessible anytime, anywhere as mobility is part of the larger BYOD strategy of the
HandBook 2013
company (irrespective of whether it is a self owned/company given device depending on HR policies), leading to faster decision making,” adds Sethi. There is enough security on the cloud as well as for mobility as there is a data leakage prevention strategy in place, with a secure MPLN gateway. Several parameters such as— what the IT investments are, what the business perspective is and what feedback the marketing team gives, what the capex is, how much IT transformation is happening, how many people are being trained in IT, what has been the IT usage, what the future building projects and prospects are—are mapped through the IT business scorecard and are being done similarly so for the DMS too, thus leading to greater efficiencies in and around the project. n
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Advertorial
Case Study
Driving Business Excellence By Strategic IT Outsourcing The Client The client is a large diversified business house engaged in manufacturing and sale of fertilizers and related products.
Client Requirements With the business going global, the client was looking for an efficient information system that would integrate across all business functions leading to a faster information availability and better control of operations. This prompted the client to look for an IT partner who could provide: Strategic outsourcing of IT services through a value driven robust delivery model A single technology platform for real time information Drive up profitability by boosting efficiency and slashing IT costs Help company position for future growth
Solution Offered As part of a wider drive to rejuvenate the client organization’s IT Infrastructure, HCL Infosystems offered a costeffective, responsive and end-to-end IT infrastructure management solution that included:
IT Infrastructure Management solutions- This included Data Center Management and Support, Network Support , Enterprise Security Service, End user computing Hybrid /Remote Infrastructure solution- HCL offered a hybrid model that included remote as well as on-site and on-call support at the client’s plant, head office and other offices spread across India. Application Support Implementation of SAP Business Objects 4.0 using ASAP Focus Methodology of pre-configured product solutions. Business Object (BO) solution integration with the SAP ERP application and Microsoft Share Point Portal (MOSS) Implementation of Oracle Exadata (XD) - To increase performance of SAP applica tions, Oracle Exadata was implemented. This was the first instance of SAP running on Ora cle XD in APAC. This implemen tation helped the client reduce IT costs through consolidation, store more data, improve perfor mance of all applications, make business decisions in real time Business process rationaliza tion and simplification of report ing functions
Business Benefits 30% increased performance as a result of implementation of SAP Database running on Oracle XD Increased number of users accessing multiple applications without any time lag Managed Security Risks Reduced power consumption and effect cost savings by enabling green atmosphere Hybrid compression enabling savings in storage, maintenance & support Improved inventory management with timely reports and increased collaboration Comprehensive business insight and analysis, supporting faster decision making with real time analysis of information on integrated systems Enhanced coordination of work across multiple locations ,across 1000+ suppliers and 5000+ distributors
We chose HCL for their all round expertise covering Applications and Infrastructure and we have certainly made the right decision. Not only has HCL been an excellent Strategic Outsourcing Partner, they have also enabled a significant transformation in our IT. HCL implemented Oracle Exadata, which was the first instance of SAP running on Exadata in APAC. We look forward to continuing this journey with HCL Customer Speak
ERP
Innovation & Evolution, the Keys to Success Keeping abreast of technology developments and being in tune with current and upcoming trends will ensure value
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nalysts are saying that the world has entered into a post-PC era currently dominated by social media, cloud computing, and mobility. Over the past months, the IT field has seen various developments described using terms such as ‘bring your own device,’ ‘big data’, and ‘IT projectization’ that portend a 2013 characterized by even more innovation and evolution. So what are some of the trends that the global IT community and technology stakeholders can expect in the coming year?
Social, Mobile, and Cloud
The convergence of social, mobile, and cloud IT infrastructure has been coined SoMoClo by some industry experts. SoMoClo enables enterprises to deliver an end-user experience that connects its workforce to the social network anywhere via mobile, and provide employees with data whenever they need it through the cloud. 58 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
Big Data and Analytics
The sheer volume and scope of data is changing the way that business intelligence systems are processing information in order to ‘slice and dice’ it into usable chunks of upto-the-minute, accurate information from across an organization. Providing keener insights into internallygenerated data to help to anticipate trends, facilitate planning and support speedy decision making. This is where a proven enterprise resource planning (ERP) system comes into play, making it possible to extract, process and package data from all areas of a business from a single access point in real-time. Many agree that 2012 was the year of big data, and that this concept and the new analytics that go with it are expected to gain further traction in 2013.
The Cloud
Although cloud computing has been a favorite IT buzzword over the past few years, in 2012 the concept saw steady maturity especially as adopters began settling into the three types of clouds that have managed to clearly form shape: the full internet cloud—also referred to as the ‘public cloud’; the private cloud which involves significant virtualization; and the hybrid cloud which integrates public and private components. The private and hybrid clouds are expected to welcome a broader audience in the coming year and beyond.
Edge Apps
The majority of companies that have invested heavily into ERP over the past 15 years need more capabilities than their legacy systems deliver. Core ERP vendors and other multiplatform players are exploring applications that tap and stretch ERP into other activities such as supply chain and collaboration. These emerging apps are simple plug-ins to a core ERP solution, in the same manner DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Highlights
The key for industry is to keep abreast of technology developments and be attuned to current and upcoming trends to deliver high-value and timely solutions to organizations Ideas are the main assets that make possibilities limitless for business and even for life
that apps add functionality to a mobile phone. The sustained emergence of such ‘edge applications’ in 2013 will showcase the ease of integrating existing ERP and new edge solutions. Savvy decision makers in businesses need not fear when a new technology arrives. Proactively leveraging new trends to boost business growth and success is a process. They should periodically assess their technology assets; figure out if these are still relevant and if they can provide a competitive edge not only today but tomorrow as well. The next step is to merge proven, existing solutions with the strengths of new ones to come up with a powerful suite that provides better performance and greater returns. This mindset will help decision makers welcome the new IT developments of 2013. For the enterprise IT professional, the coming year brings hope of ground-breaking, best practice packages that can respond to the growing complexity of business processes and leverage the potential of the hottest technology trends. Especially as enterprise data is expected to grow by a phenomenal 650% within the next 5 years, and with 80% to come in an unstructured form at that. Mobility, another key trend, will require a paradigm shift in organizational information sharing and communications; to give an idea of the sweeping changes ahead, around 80% of businesses worldwide are expected to assist visit www.dqindia.com
their workforce with the support of tablets by next year. The key for industry is to keep abreast of technology developments and be attuned to current and upcoming trends to deliver high-value and timely solutions to organizations. Epicor stays ahead of the latest trends through solutions such as its next-generation Epicor Internet Component Environment (ICE) business architecture. Based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)—a critical enterprise platform for the next decade—and web services technology, Epicor ICE enables enterprises to harness the full power of social, mobile and cloud innovations. The architecture was conceptualized out of the belief that nothing stays still in the global economy and business landscape and so enterprises must be equipped to adapt to constantly changing markets and capitalize on high-potential technology trends. Through an agile, next-generation business architecture such as Epicor ICE, organizations can use emerging technologies to achieve smarter business intelligence, more efficient enterprise searching, and on-demand access to ERP data from any device. Harvey Firestone, the American entrepreneur who founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, said that ideas are more important than capital or business experience. Indeed, ideas are the main assets that make possibilities limitless for business and even for life. By tapping into the latest ideas in the IT field coming out this 2013, enterprises can position themselves for further innovation, expansion, and success. n
PAUL HAMMOND The author is regional VP for Middle East, Africa, India and Turkey, Epicor Software Corporation Gerson Lehrman Group maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 59
CASE STUDY ESSAR
From Bane to Boon
As expansion to global destinations meant new problems for Essar, SSL VPN and GET VPN solutions turned it around for the better AKANKSHA SINGH akankshas@cybermedia.co.in
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s the Essar group was going global and mapping various geographies; some of the employees needed to travel across the globe. While on the move, they exchange files through mails, access corporate applications from laptops, mobile devices, tablets, public kiosk, etc. The company felt the need to provide its employees a solution that provides seamless connectivity to corporate network without the need for any special software installation while maintaining adequate security. While the company was facing issues related to remote access solution, it was gripped by another major problem and that was the potential threat to sensitive data flowing across its diversified business environments, making data security essential for the company.
60 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
By deploying SSL VPN, we saved 60% of the cost of implementation whereas with GET VPN; RoI was recovered from the day one of operation
VSNL Internet Cloud External Network
External Network
DMZ
DMZ
Juniper SA 6500
Internet Network
Juniper SA 6500
Essar implemented Juniper’s SSL VPN solution to a secure and flexible remote access solution
With diversified business ranging across verticals like steel, power, telecom, shipping, and engineering, the company was in utmost need for data encryption adoption for their WAN traffic to avoid potential threat to sensitive data.
Checklist—Issues to Tackle
Essar was clear to implement a secure and flexible remote access solution which can provide seamless user experience irrespective of the device / computer used to access the corporate network without compromising the security and efficiency with Juniper’s SSL VPN solution. The company also zeroed it down to use Cisco’s GET VPN technology to secure Essar’s data in motion across different service provider networks. What was ahead was the implementation of these solutions, but few problems were to be addressed: n Confidentiality of Data in Motion: Secure business data flowing through multiple ISPs. n Remote Access to nonEssar Employee: Partners and customers who are not part of the domain have no means to connect to Essar network DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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n Disaster Recovery: During a business disruption, demand for remote access could spike to include the majority of Essar workforce. n Extranets: To promote increased collaboration, wider access for business partners is needed, yet without compromising access control and security. n Mobility: Mobile devices like smartphones and tables running on
Problem Essar group’s global reach was expanding and with diversified business its presence was posed with potential threat to sensitive data flowing across its business environments along with urgent need to have seamless connectivity to corporate network
Solution Essar implemented Juniper’s SSL VPN solution and Cisco’s GET VPN technology
Benefits SSL VPN solution gave secure and flexible remote access solution. With GET VPN, the company secured its data in motion across different service provider networks March 31, 2013 | 61
CASE STUDY ESSAR
RoI Meter SSL VPN
GET VPN
Appliance and implementation cost: `10,000,000
Router Memory and Flash Upgradation: `5,500,000
Net Savings by deploying Juniper SSL VPN-60%
The cost incurred in this project is just for the regular upgradation of router memory and flash. No capital investment done for appliances, software or special services. RoI was achieved from day one of its operation
heterogeneous platforms need to securely connect to Essar network. n Enforcing Policy: Collaboration and regulatory compliance is encouraging more granular access controls, yet IT may struggle to enforce policy across disparate points of entry The most intriguing challenge the company faced with SSL VPN was the acceptance by business users who are already acquainted with a different technology for remote access (Cisco IPSec). Other technical challenges were conflict with websense remote filter client, Client deployment through SCCM, access through android devices and network integration. GET VPN, on the other hand, had its own set of challenges while implementing. It was a new technology and hence required a steep learning curve, as it was first-of-itskind implementation. “Acceptance by business of a totally new technology which is never been used by the manufacturing sector in India,” says Keyur Desai, associate vice president, IT infrastructure and projects group, Essar.
Solutions
SSL VPN—Essar used SSL which eliminated the need for pre-installed client software, changes to internal servers, and costly ongoing maintenance and desktop support. The SA series also offered partner/customer extranet features that enabled controlled access to differentiated users and groups without requiring infrastructure changes, demilitarized zone (DMZ) deployments, or software agents. 62 | March 31, 2013
The SA series included Juniper Networks’ Junos Pulse, a dynamic, integrated, multiservice network interface for mobile and non-mobile devices. Junos Pulse also enabled secure SSL access from a wide range of mobile and non-mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs, as well as Wi-Fi or 3G/4G and Long Term Evolution (LTE)-enabled devices. Junos Pulse delivered enterprises improved productivity and secure, ubiquitous access to corporate applications and data anytime, anywhere. “We rolled it out across 1,500+ retail outlets across ‘The Mobile Store’ and for 10,000+ mobile users across the Essar group. As per Essar’s technology road map this implementation is a significant step towards BYOD,” says Desai.
GET VPN by Cisco
Cisco’s GET VPN technology, based on the group domain of interpretation (GDOI) protocol defined in RFC 3547, is a group key based tunnel-less VPN solution for the enterprise network using private MPLS/IP core. It enables secure end-to-end fully meshed network, for data, voice, video, IP multicast and other applications, without the use of point-to-point VPN tunnels. “We rolled out Cisco GET VPN across 62 locations and total 3 ISPs (Tata, Airtel and Tulip),” confirms Desai.
How they Helped
The Essar group after implementing information security project viz SSL
VPN, GET VPN with required hardening of all nodes, saw huge RoI on the project.
Impact
As per Essar’s technology road map, the implementation of SSL VPN is a significant step towards BYOD. This provides an uniform remote access platform for plethora of hardware and software platforms available in the market. “SSL VPN access enabled Essar to deployment of secure IP telephony solution. Users can now receive calls and make calls to any office extension across the Essar group using their tablet (iPad) or smartphone through internet. This provided flexibility and significant cost savings, “ explains Desai. Essar is going global and Juniper’s SSL VPN solution provides seamless connectivity to corporate network without the need for any special software installation while maintaining adequate security. “We were able to make the communication secure for the applications like JDA using clear text protocols (Telnet). This mitigated a big risk for Essar’s retail ventures like ‘The Mobile Stores’ and ‘Steel Hypermart’, “adds Desai. On the other hand, GET VPN Implementation is first-of-its-kind for any manufacturing industry in India and a role model for others. “It uses existing infrastructure hence no capital investment on equipment involved. No additional point of failures introduced, QoS and Multicast configurations not impacted and no overlay routing,” says Desai. n
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SECURITY
Do you have a Killer Security Strategy? In today’s dynamic business environment, organizations can only survive if they are able to draw a long-term roadmap for security—a well defined strategy with a clear vision for the coming years
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any organizations worldwide have widely accepted and internationally recognized security frameworks and standards such as ISO 27001, which provide guidance and direction for establishing enterprise wide security processes and procedures. But problem arises when organizations channelize investments and resources to demonstrate compliance to such standards (eg, extensive documentation, huge checklists) instead of identifying and mitigating real risks. Similar has been the case with FISMA implementation in the United States—compliance to it has taken precedence over real security in the networks and systems of the federal agencies. Organizations today need to be ‘really’ secure, as the threat environment in which they operate is getting complex and dynamic; attackers are evolving innovative techniques. In such a scenario, organizations cannot rely on certifications alone, even though they may help provide assurance to their stakeholders. Though ISO 27001 standard is a good starting point for organizations for implementing security, it is not an end by itself. When organizations operate in a vibrant, dynamic, evolving, and competent environment—be it business, regulatory or threat environment as in the case 64 | March 31, 2013
of security, organizations can only survive if they are able to draw a roadmap for the coming years that looks at future conditions and requirements, strategic options, building required competencies, etc, and not just focus on the present. This is achieved by doing longterm planning and drawing a strategy to achieve the defined goals. But how many organizations today have a security strategy? How many organizations have a 5 year vision for security? Unfortunately—not many. Many organizations fall short in the following areas: Long-term Strategic Planning in Security Today, security practitioners strongly believe that security should be treated as a business enabler and not as a hurdle—adding value to business, by allowing business to offer innovative solutions & services to international markets round the clock, increasing productivity, reducing cost, providing customer delight, etc. If such an approach needs to materialize, security needs to be revitalized by working more closely with the business and IT and being given strategic importance within the organization. Unfortunately, not many security frameworks or standard promote such transformation. Such frameworks or standards are focused on control implementation—controls that are static in nature, focused on mitigat-
ing the existing risks, not focused on addressing the futuristic requirements/risks that emerge from business expansion and innovation.
Building Security Capability/ Competence
Security is a continuous journey, and no organization can be 100% secure. However it is important to measure the progress made/capabilities built over a period of time to address the evolving and perennial threats. This can be achieved by defining criteria against which
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
sector. Hackers and rogue insiders vie for this critical data. In such a scenario, the focus of all the security efforts should be on data, with lean processes and intelligent technologies deployed to protect it. Unfortunately, security implementations today result in lot of documentation, shifting the focus of the organizations to documentation preparation instead of addressing the real risks by protecting critical data. an organization can measure its capability maturity in security. Many existing security frameworks or standards, on the other hand, promote a ‘yes/no’ kind of approach to security, wherein an organization is certified as fully compliant if it has implemented the relevant controls. It does not provide any maturity criteria, which organizations can leverage to improve their security competence.
Focus on Protecting Data
Security frameworks or standards that are asset centric and process oriented help provide guidelines for conducting operational tasks in a pre-defined manner, but if too much focus is given on processes, then it may happen that the objective for deploying a particular process may get lost (outcome may not be achieved). This also at times results in loss of productivity and is perceived as bureaucratic. In today’s digital world, data has an economic value attached to it. In fact, in some industries like pharmaceutical, data is the life line of the organizations operating in the DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Tracking Security Evolution
Security as a discipline has evolved over a period of time. The stimuli have been many—the dynamic threat landscape, strengthening regulatory regime, research & innovation, globalization, business models, technologies, etc. For an organization to be secure it is important that it keeps track of all the latest developments taking place in the field of security—be it skills, technologies, or services. Today, specific security disciplines have evolved with very specific approaches to address the unique challenges faced. Specific trends and practices have been emerging to address the exact requirements of an individual discipline. The security market, both technology products and services, has solution offerings specific to an individual discipline. Security profession is also charting a path of specialization in these individual security disciplines. Many security standards or frameworks, on the other hand, do not take into consideration these evolutions. For eg, management of threats and vulnerabilities visit www.dqindia.com
is a very critical discipline today, requiring specific skills, technologies, and practices but there are no adequate guidelines provided by many of such frameworks or standards. Similarly, disciplines like secure content management, governance, risk and compliance do not find their rightful place. Such frameworks or standards fail to provide strategic and contemporary directions and guidance to organizations that are implementing and maintaining security.
Integration and Inter Dependencies
Many of existing security frameworks or standards do not take an integrative approach as they are focused on individual controls that are described and deployed in silos. There is a need to approach security differently—a way that helps overcome the above shortcomings of existing security frameworks or standards and enables an organization focus on real threats in its environment, without worrying about compliance to regulations. It should be able to assess organization’s maturity in implementing security in different areas with a view to continually improve the same. Such an assessment should further help organization draw a strategic plan based on evolution of different disciplines of security, and their inter dependencies, with continuous focus on protecting data. Compliance should be the outcome along with dynamic and vibrant security that enables quick response to threats, vulnerabilities and actual cyber attacks. n
RAHUL JAIN The author is senior consultant, Data Security Council of India (DSCI) maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 65
CASE STUDY HARYANA GOVT
HandBook 2013
Touching a Million Minds Haryana government’s decision to set up computer labs in 2,622 schools has opened up a new e-world for over a million students
ONKAR SHARMA onkars@cybermedia.co.in
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hen the Haryana government wanted to establish smart computer labs, it faced the daunting task of bringing computing to over a million students and required massive amounts of time and money. The state comprises 21 districts, which have over a million students studying in 2,622 schools. Haryana’s ‘ICT in Education’ project— part of the government’s mission of transforming Haryana into an IT-driven economy—is aimed at introducing every student to computing to empower them with the skills to thrive in the modern world. Under this project, the state sought to enhance and enrich the learning process for children in state-run schools and prepare them to find jobs in the future.
Search for a Solution
The Haryana government began the search for a cost-effective and energy efficient solution. After evaluating a number of options, the state government decided to implement virtualization solution in all schools. As a result, NComputing’s desktop virtualization solution was selected. The solution allows organizations to run multiple workstations off a single computer or server, saving 75% on maintenance and up to 90 % on energy usage. The new units consume just 1 watt of electricity, compared to 120- 50 watts by the traditional PCs. The state deployed 58,500 NComputing workstations across 66 | March 31, 2013
Problem Haryana government’s ‘ICT in education’ project meant providing e-education to over a million students studying in 2,622 schools
Solution It deployed 52,000 workstations in 2,622 schools, opening up a world of discovery and interactive learning for students
Benefits Computer labs benefit over a million government school students across all districts of the state Virtualization brought down the implementation cost significantly
its 2,622 schools. All workstations came pre-loaded with the EduBOSS operating system from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). EduBOSS, a customized version of BOSS Linux for education (free and open source software), helped in bringing down the overall cost of implementation.
As a result, the school incurred no operating system costs. “At C-DAC, we have to be 100% in alignment with the country’s priorities, hence, our commitment to enabling affordable access to computing for education. Along with NComputing, this proved to be an ideal solution to provide affordable computing access,” says Jagjit S Bhatia, executive director, C-DAC.
A Lab in Every School
With NComputing and C-DAC, every school has a 22-seat computing lab with NComputing’s X550 virtual desktops, one desktop PC, one KVA UPS, and one printer. Now, every student has the opportunity to gain computer skills and experience an enhanced learning environment. With wellequipped computer labs in its state-run schools, the government of Haryana is equipping the next generation of the state’s workforce to be globally competitive. n
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CASE STUDY RTO
HandBook 2013
Conecting the Dots RTO’s project of centralizing all information increased revenue by 50% and remarkably improved customer satisfaction
ONKAR SHARMA onkars@cybermedia.co.in
I
ndia has more than 1,000 regional transport offices (RTOs) across the country. The offices undertake vehicle inspections, issue plate numbers and registration tags, provide driving licenses, and collect vehicle taxes and traffic fines. Maintaining databases for large amount of information was a usual exercise for the RTOs as all the RTOs worked in silos. Each one maintained its own database containing details of all vehicles and registered drivers in its area. Certainly, the classical exercise restricted the offices to sync and map information country-wide. Without a system in place that connected all RTOs, it was difficult to track stolen vehicles, persecute offenders, and much more.
Centralization of RTO Records
In 2011, the Government of India decided to centralize their records and asked NIC to oversee the project. NIC selected Oracle Data Integrator to feed all drivers and vehicle records in RTO databases into state based databases (state registers), then into a single national database (national register). “Maintaining information in small databases held by each RTO was simply not an efficient way of operating,” says Dr Mahesh Chandra, deputy director general, National Informatics Center. “After reviewing a range of options, we decided to use Oracle Data Integrator as the solution had the robustness and scalability to support the large-scale nature of the project.” DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 67
CASE STUDY RTO
HandBook 2013
Challenges Consolidate vehicle and driver information held in more than 1,000 regional databases into state registers and a single national register Enhance data quality to ensure the accuracy and consistency of reports used for decision-making Provide 24x7 data services without shutting down the system and disrupting business operations Ensure data integrity in event of a disaster at RTOs Allow faster and more effective access to driver and vehicle records for law enforcement authorities Eliminate citizen dissatisfaction due to long registration lines and license issuance time Relieve staff burden to check driver and vehicle information when preparing reports and interdepartmental communications Improve the ability to track vehicles as they move from region to region across India Reduce the risk of illegal acts, such as bogus registrations and nonpayment of fines
Solutions & Benefits Centralized more than 250 mn vehicle and licensing records from more than 1,000 databases across the country into 35 state registers and 1 national register Increased revenue by up to 50% by enabling staff to use state and national registers to track drivers with outstanding payments even if they have moved to another state Improved citizen satisfaction by reducing processing time for tasks such as renewing driving licenses and certifying vehicle registrations from three days to one day Shortened the waiting time for services such as paying permit fees and road taxes from up to four hours to 20 minutes by introducing online applications and payments Reduced the error rate for processing driving licenses and vehicle registrations from 10% to less than 1% Enabled real-time sharing of vehicle and driver data with law enforcement authorities Cut staff administration costs by enabling transport offices to quickly search for vehicle and driver data in a single register which will eventually contain the details of 120 mn drivers across the country Ensured departmental data is available 24x7 and can be easily viewed using dashboards and scoreboards, enabling efficient query and analysis generating information to be shared with police or insurance companies Shortened recovery times and ensured 100% data replication in event of a disaster Increased the accuracy and reliability of vehicle and driver data through rigorous data cleansing and deduplication techniques, ensuring the accuracy of reports generated to support decision-making Improved services by introducing online fee payments, license applications, RTO appointments, and status tracking, minimizing the need for citizens to physically visit RTOs Minimized illegal activities by enabling enforcement officers to access both state and national registers to instantly authenticate driver and vehicle details
Implementation Process
NIC took advantage of Oracle Data Integrator’s built-in knowledge modules to help streamline the task of centralizing data from a range of smaller databases, including Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL. “The new system enabled us to pull vehicle, driver, and license details from many different places into state based registers,” adds Chandra. “From there, the data was fed into a single national database. The result is a much more effective system that can better support government, law enforcement, and citizens.” 68 | March 31, 2013
NIC worked with Oracle Consulting during the Oracle rollout. The knowledge module was customized before the data was transferred into state registers and the national PostgreSQL database. “We realized we had a complex task on our hands with a very large number of records stored in multiple types of databases across more than 1,000 locations,” says Chandra. “However through the use of new system, we were able to centralize this data and provide faster, more efficient access to driver and vehicle information. The solution has made
a significant, positive difference to government and law enforcement processes.” Having centralized all records, they can now be accessed in real time, compared to days previously, improving the quality of service to citizens, law enforcement agencies, businesses, and other government agencies. NIC also boasts to have reduced the total cost of database ownership by improving data back up and introducing new information services for enforcement staff and citizens, which has increased revenue by up to 50%. n
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CASE STUDY AMUL
HandBook 2013
From Cow to Consumers
Bringing in the white revolution was no cakewalk, GCMMF made optimum use of IT to make it big in the dairy industry PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in
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t is best known as the architect of India’s ‘white revolution’ and is credited for making the country the largest producer of milk and milk products. But the road to this was not at all easy for Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), known for its dairy products brand Amul, it waded through many troubles and leveraged the power of IT to make a mark for itself. It all started with only 2 village dairy co-operative societies and 247 liters of milk. But today, with more than 15 mn milk producers, 1,44,246 dairy cooperative societies, 177 district co-operative unions, and 22 state marketing federations, the company has proved its mettle. Expanding numbers of outlets, diversification of products, and manufacturing capacity are some of the challenges for any traditional company. Such has been the story of GCMMF that we bring to you where a traditional dairy farm used IT to streamline its supply chain.
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 69
CASE STUDY AMUL Problems The biggest challenge was to get all the entities on a common set of processes and a common way of working. This also meant bringing all parts of the organization to the same level of business process maturity. There were problems related to data discrepancies and inaccuracies. Apart from that, there was a lack of timeliness of data that used to exist when the organizations used to be in disparate systems
Solution Amul implemented a business intelligence system which provided it a view of movement of all its products across the country. IBM helped it implement SAP ERP system that enabled to have a complete view of the supply chain, have tighter integration between GCMMF and other district unions
Benefits Standard and harmonized processes, enabled by technology, across the organization helped in sustaining the planned growth Better visibility to enable a faster response to market demand changes, helped in increasing market share Better planning capabilities enabled optimization of process efficiencies Better management visibility and decision support through improved accuracy of information
The IT Call As GCMMF started expanding its operations exponentially, it needed a strong solution that can provide end-to-end supply chain as per dairy specific functionality, tighter integration between sales and distribution arm, accurate and timely data that needed to be provided to the farmers as they were also facing problems in terms of data discrepancies and inaccuracies. All this required a complete overhaul of the entire IT infrastructure. 70 | March 31, 2013
Particulars
Before SAP
DCS – Dairy Collection Centers Plants
(increased efficiency contributed to growth)
13328
16117
Approx 30
>100
48
50
1053
1238
Depots SKUs – Stock Keeping Unit
It was difficult for an in-house IT team to keep pace with the fast evolution of technology and stay knowledgeable about all the new solutions which could support their business. So, Amul decided to handover the management of IT to an organization which has competence in IT Infrastructure and application management. The management understood the need to focus on their core competence of milk production and distribution and outsource the non-core functions to partners who are knowledgeable in their areas like advertising and logistics management. It was not the first time; GCMMF had gone through multiple rounds of implementation of IT through the traditional route of engaging vendors to provide application solutions and buying infrastructure on their own. Hence, GCMMF leadership thought of partnering with a vendor who could take complete ownership of IT strategy and roadmap for GCMMF and member unions and be ready to work with a result oriented approach rather than selling solutions in bits and pieces.
Scout For the Right Solution
After SAP leading to
Before evaluating each solution by different vendors, GCMMF team decided to lay down some parameters which helped them to select the best solution. Following were some of the parameters used while evaluating the strategy—
nn Selection of vendor having strong knowledge of dairy operations and success stories nn Experience in successfully executing complex and mission critical projects nn Leverage best practices nn Functional coverage and integration of solution with member unions nn Scalability nn Shorter time to deploy but longer life nn Quick return of investment— low initial investment
The Eureka Moment
After screening various solutions, the management identified that the best possible process was defined within the complete suite of SAP solution. It gave them a complete view of its supply chain and helped to tightly integrate various functions and processes, including sales and distribution. “IBM helped us implement SAP ERP system. This system enabled us to have a complete view of our supply chain, have tight integration between GCMMF and our district unions. The system also gave us a view of the sale of our products to our distributors across the country,” says R S Sodhi, managing director, GCMMF, Anand. Amul also implemented the business intelligence system which provided it a view of movement of all its products across the country. Using this system, various reports were generated which enabled it
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HandBook 2013
IBM Technology helps GCMMF in its journey from Cow-to-Consumer… GCMMF’s Mission: Give farmer ‘the best price’ for his milk and consumer ‘value for money’ for the product
understand the demand pattern of all the products across the market place. To achieve the objective of C2C (cow to consumers), Amul had 5 initiatives in their roadmap, which were—ERP implementation for GCMMF, ERP implementation for member unions, a uniform automated milk collection system in all 16,000+ village societies in the Amul family, a distributor manage solution, and a retail management solution for Amul preferred outlets (APO). “We took care of 2 initiatives of implementing ERP for GCMMF and member unions. This provided us visibility of milk collection from village society and delivery of finished products. Our next priority is to evaluate and implement a suitable distributor management solution, which will provide us visibility of our supply chain till the retail outlets. We plan to start this initiative in the next few months,” says Sodhi. The company has set up a DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
state-of-the-art data center and IT infrastructure at GCMMF premises in Anand to support the IT implementation. It has gone live in 2 phases in April 2011 and March 2012. The first phase covered GCMMF and the 4 large milk unions, while the second phase covered the rest of the milk unions.
The Traditional Mode
Prior to SAP, the company used to work on customized applications which were decentralized. Data capturing was not structured to provide analysis on transactions with regard to sales, distribution, expenses, etc. The application was also not accessible online. This created a major loophole in decision-making processes for the management. Implementing solutions like SAP ERP provided them tight integration between multiple departments through its integrated modules and also helped automatic execution of various voluminous business visit www.dqindia.com
transactions like sales invoicing, freight expense booking, recording of purchases, tax accounting, payroll relate transaction, etc. In SAP, 100% accuracy of the transactions was achieved by maintaining proper master data in the system which was partly missing in the traditional system. Users were also happy with SAP because now various reports could be generated from SAP in desired formats and facilities for performing mass transactions. The overall solution helped the management to do 3 dimensional analyzes of its business processes. The biggest benefit was to streamline the distribution network across the country and provide real-time data to its partners.
Achievements
Standard and harmonized processes, enabled by technology, across the organization enabled the planned growth, with better visibility to enable a faster response to market demand changes, better planning capabilities led to optimization of process efficiencies, better management visibility, and decision support through improved accuracy currency of information. Better knowledge management and effectiveness measures to improve the efficiency of the processes, better audit trials across the organization between DCS and MU/business controls were other achievements. n March 31, 2013 | 71
IT OUTSOURCING
Stability, Predictability, and Delivery This will be a critical year for many markets and the role that IT plays within them
A
chieving business and IT transformation in a stable format is a complex challenge, and recently bundling has become an increasingly influential component for delivering real change, but with added predictability and control. At the start of 2012, the overall global outlook was cautiously optimistic, with the view that although the mature economies of Western Europe (even with the euro crisis) and North America were still struggling to regain their mojo, continuing Asian and Latin American growth would lubricate a much72 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
anticipated rebound—however, the IMF recently re-lowered its projection for global growth in 2013 to just 3.6% (assuming the US will avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’). With ongoing instability across global markets and even in locations with historically robust growth such as China and India, the outlook for IT services in the coming months, is unclear. IT customers are demanding greater predictability and control as a more risk-averse perspective takes hold. Cost cutting has made a slight resurgence in Europe but remains less pressing in other geographies, while raising organizational efficiencies remains the top IT investment driver.
What the Future Holds...
This points to a trend that has been gathering pace over the past 12 months and is expected to continue into the near future. Enterprises are looking for greater reliability and stability in their external service providers and as a consequence, substantial focus on governance and control is prevalent. However governance needs to be seen as more than a set of project support operations. Expect this investment in the governance and management layers to continue in as a full suite/portfolio of offerings is increasingly being procured in ‘bundled packages’ by buyers looking for expertise, stability, and breadth & depth of technology capability. Given these demands, it is unsurprising the vendor community has generally gone on an acquisition and consolidation binge over the past few years, with over $40 bn of acquisitions occurring in the past year alone. A more recent phenomenon that Ovum expects to continue in the short run is the growth of what we call ‘acquisitive engagements’. Contracts that involve a substantial equity and/or ownership investment. And this effort to gain a larger footprint is very closely tied to the DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Enterprises are looking for greater reliability and stability in their external service providers
phenomenon of IT services bundles accounting for a growing share of contract allocations (15 of the top 20 deals in terms of Total Contract Value (TCV) during the past quarter were bundled deals) driving extended contract lengths and greater value contracts. Competence in traditional ‘tower-based’ service offerings will no longer suffice, as the IT services industry enters into one of the most turbulent periods in its history.
Wave of Change
The exploding interest in newer technologies, slowing demand across many traditional industries, enterprises considering alternative engagement models and an increasingly competitive landscape (with many new traditional and non-traditional entrants) are creating a wave of change. And these shifts are being driven by a need within the buyer community for real change— the need for IT to not simply deliver efficiencies from an operational sense, but to integrate with business requirements such as increasing customer satisfaction, facilitating market awareness and making IT a key part of an organization’s comvisit www.dqindia.com
petitive advantage. As such, buyers are looking for relationships with their suppliers that touch all parts of an organization’s delivery and customer engagement models, which is not something that can be resolved in a two-to-three-year multi-sourced tactical outsourcing deal. Ovum expects bundling and its associated services to become more prevalent and continue to grow, especially among providers with a strong local presence and capability across products, services, and industries. Look to suppliers increasing investment in delivery models (both locational and asset-based), expanding their capabilities (both organically and through acquisition), targeting improved consulting and governance related solutions, as they seek to increase their footprint and presence. n (Article was first published in Globalservicesmedia.com)
JENS BUTLER The author is principal analyst, IT services, Ovum maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 73
OUTSOURCING
Align with Changing Times
A fresh look every year might be a good idea for IT departments to assess their existing frameworks, to meet new budget demands and better align with corporate objectives
I
T outsourcing contract performance and ratios of in-house/outsourced and onshore/offshore IT capabilities come into focus as IT departments assess how their current costs and strategies are affecting the business. As part of this evaluation, IT groups should determine whether previous outsourcing decision criteria have changed and whether supplier performance is meeting the standards anticipated at contract signature. The results of this assessment will help determine whether and how to take action—from driving improvements through existing contractual relationships to more drastic alternatives such as repatriating services in-house from a current outsourced arrangement.
Have Corporate Objectives Changed?
The decision to outsource is often based primarily on cost reduction, supported by a desire to focus on core business activities, leverage best practices brought by outsource providers, and quickly stand up new or modified operations as opposed to developing or expanding an internal capability. These decisions are driven by the current corporate objectives—for eg, meeting-specific operating expense reduction targets, ramping up delivery capabilities in concert with new product develop74 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
Customers of outsourced solutions need to ask themselves: Does our contract allow us to take advantage of these transformations by requiring the provider to propose and implement such changes?
ment and corporate expansion, or reducing investment in non-core internal capabilities. In the aggregate, these objectives generate relevant decision criteria for selecting an optimal IT delivery model—in-house, outsourced offshore, outsourced onshore, captive center, etc. Periodically, (and when better than with the start of a New Year?), companies should determine whether their previous decision criteria are still valid—ie, whether the lens through which the outsourcing decision was made is still appropriate given the evolving corporate objectives. If you were to reevaluate a ‘build’ versus ‘buy’ decision today, would the same weight be given to cost reduction, speed of standing up the operation, or retaining certain skill sets internally? GM recently changed its target outsourced service mix in part due to changes to these types of criteria, as have other companies.
Has Performance Met Expectations?
Labor markets and the outsourcing industry change over time. In recent years, there has been significant wage inflation in traditional outsourcing hubs and, as a result, service providers have been expanding their presence in other geographies. The wage pressures are not yet sufficient to tip the scales on the cost basis of major outsourcing decisions (ie, it is still typically cheaper to outsource basic IT functions such as monitoring and service desk, even in those traditional hubs), but the gap is closing and putting pressure on service providers. For solutions previously established in high wage inflation countries, providers may be tempted to cut corners, eg, replace existing staff with more junior resources, to retain margin—reducing service quality to an extent felt by the customer. Technology is changing and maturing as well. For eg, maturation DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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of cloud infrastructure and software offerings is creating viable disruptive pricing alternatives. Service providers should incorporate these technologies in their efforts to continually optimize the service and/or propose discrete efforts with gain sharing of cost savings. Customers of outsourced solutions need to ask themselves: Does our contract allow us to take advantage of these transformations by requiring the provider to propose and implement such changes? If not, do we have the contractual flexibility to deploy such solutions independent of the outsourced provider? Service quality also should be regularly evaluated. Companies must determine whether their existing outsourcing relationship is providing satisfactory service, not just in terms of adherence to contractual service levels, but in the overall health of the customer/service provider relationship. Customers should assess whether the user experience continues to be satisfactory or whether it has deteriorated to the point where the company may prefer to invoke supplier management escalation procedures available in the agreement, establish a remediation plan, re-compete services, or even consider an alternative delivery solution such as in-sourcing.
What’s Next?
Having considered the ongoing suitability of the outsourced relationship, the question becomes: What should a company do in response to the evaluation? #1 If corporate objectives and outsourcing decision criteria have indeed changed, determine whether the adjustment warrants reevaluation of in-house vs. outsourced solutions and/or the variants of outsourcing. Then, refresh the build vs buy analysis to include possible termination costs and constraints (eg, perhaps stagger transition away March 31, 2013 | 75
OUTSOURCING from a service provider based on commitments throughout contract years, benefits of delaying migration to reduce termination penalties, or other contractual constraints) and transition cost estimates. Consider that some companies are making a conscious decision to pay more ‘per unit’ for in-house onshore service delivery, with the additional costs offset by greater agility and responsiveness, increased efficiency, and improved service levels. Longer term, strategic advantage may accrue through a rediscovered ability to utilize IT as a strategic differentiator rather than a commodity cost center. #2 If corporate objectives and outsourcing decision criteria remain constant, confirm that initial savings estimates and expected service benefits have in fact been achieved. If results have fallen short, explore which service components are costing more than expected or performing poorly. Formal supplier management and governance procedures may be needed to audit and constrain billing scope. Ultimately, you may find that renegotiating portions of an agreement would help align the agreement with your environment and provide the tools necessary to enforce it properly through supplier management. #3 If the service provider is performing well, ask what additional 76 | March 31, 2013
opportunities are available in the marketplace. Effective outsourcing relationships can drive adoption of new technologies and techniques that save the customer money and improve delivery performance. Use the positive relationship to your advantage and test your options for further improvement. #4 If the service provider is not performing well, evaluate remediation options. Use contractual governance and escalation
procedures as forums to highlight specific shortcomings in reference to functional requirements. If developing an improvement program for the provider, consider including Legal in discussions so you know your rights for termination for cause and to help structure your remediation plan in a way that may support a
future case for termination for cause (not a desired outcome, but a possibility). In this scenario, you may also choose to preemptively conduct a fresh build versus buy analysis, as described above. By evaluating your outsourcing agreement’s alignment with corporate objectives and performance, your company will understand the level of action required to fine tune-or overhaul-the outsourcing relationship. Refinement through governance, improvement plans, new gain sharing arrangements, and other actions enabled through the current contractual arrangement is an appropriate tack to drive changes that preserve the outsourcing relationship. For more drastic changes, you may decide to re-compete your outsourcing agreement or to bring a portion of services in-house—actions that require substantial planning from all business stakeholders, change management, and technical oversight. n (Article was first published in Globalservicesmedia.com)
CHRISTOPHER STACY The author is a senior associate, Pace Harmon maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
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Increase Loyalty and Revenue with Innovative Outbound Solutions
APRIL 5, 2013
WESTIN, MUMBAI
Outbound contact centers have become extremely crucial for businesses today. Whether the objective is lead generation, direct sales, debt collection or proactive customer service, getting the desired result out of outbound interactions is a highly daunting task, especially at a time when communication channels are multiplying and competition is soaring high.
is an exclusive event aiming to provide a sneak peek into the latest innovations on the outbound contact center space. Hear from senior leaders on innovative solutions to help outbound contact centers increase revenues and customer loyalty while reducing costs. Join us on the evening of Friday, April 5 at Westin, Mumbai
Improve customer experience and loyalty Increase revenues at lower costs Increase agent productivity Lower TCO for an end to end outbound contact center operation Simplify the order, design, and deployment process
Technology/Business Decision Makers of Outbound Contact Centers
RSVP: Arvind Razdan - arvindr@cybermedia.co.in Event Organised by:
RETAIL
Quickly Adopting New Tech
The retail industry is investing heavily in technology to enable itself to adapt to the ever changing needs of the market place MALINI N malinin@cybermedia.co.in
T
he retail sector has significantly transformed over a period of time due to demanding customers who are getting more sophisticated, their spending habits, and the globalization of retailers. In India, traditional markets have paved way for departmental stores, hypermarkets, supermarkets, shopping malls, and specialty stores. And this has led to the complexities in managing retail operations. The sector is also on a quest to enhance revenue and decrease costs. Adoption of technology has proved to be a great tool in eliminating operational complexities and it has also enabled the dramatic transformation of business processes. At present, the sector has become a technology-intensive industry as it aims to enhance customer satisfaction, predict consumer demands, shorten lead times, reduce inventory holding, and eventually save cost and increase profit margins. Technology is enabling retailers to be competent and be victorious in a fierce competition. Technology has transformed the buying behavior—it is giving better visibility for management into store operations and it is improving bottom line.
Mission-critical Technologies
Technology uptake in the retail sector has been increasing y-o-y and retailers are enabled to deliver more value and higher service levels. Technology innovations help to stay competitive in 4 key categories in retail viz convenience, price, size, and speed. In stores and on the sales floor, high-tech tools help balance inventory assortments. With the help of customer tracking tools, retailers can increase customer satisfaction and promote loyalty by enhancing shoppers’ in-store experience. Apart from an in-store experience, technology
78 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
Tips for CIOs Many of the technologies adopted in the retail sector are essentially wireless. Centralization of wireless LAN management and security is a critical requirement while deploying in a retail environment that may contain thousands of access points in a large area. But if it is deployed properly wireless networks can be more secure than wired networks. The proper implementation of authentication and encryption resolves security problems. All wireless LANs inside a retail environment ought to be subject to PCI DSS requirements and wireless LAN should be configured for compliance. Retailers must move away from Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) as it can be broken easily and it makes their networks more vulnerable to intrusion while it could be used for inventory management applications. When technology is implemented and managed correctly it will continue to drive costs down and enhance productivity. IT systems will be an issue rather than components of the solution if retailers fail to manage IT landscape effectively. It is very evident that retail industry is investing more in technology in order to adapt to the ever changing needs of the market place. The industry wants to get more value out of IT.
also helps in enhancing the online shopping experience of its customers by giving them some of the best shopping applications with which they can shop without visiting the physical stores yet getting all the desired products at their doorstep. This kind of technology innovation guarantees an enhancement in the service levels of the retailer as it adds a lot of ease to the quite tedious task of shopping. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags is one of the key technology that is been adopted in retail sector as it increases operation efficiency, it is revolutionizing everything from logistics to inventory processing to customer experience. It is basically used to manage merchandise at every stage from shopping to stocking and sales. Each shipping box, hanger, block of display racks, and shopping cart at checkout can be simultaneously read using a reader/writer, making it is possible to substantially improve the efficiency of work performed by employees. There are 2 types of RFID— passive and active. Passive RFID tags contain no battery, and must be energized by DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
RFID readers located within a few meters. The typical use for passive RFID is to track inventory as it moves through doors, loading docks, or other choke points in a retail operation. Active RFID tags, on the other hand, contain a battery and active electronics and are thus slightly larger and more expensive. The current generation of active tags uses standard 802.11 wireless LAN technologies and can inter-operate with other devices, such as barcode scanners and PCs, on a wireless LAN. This means that only a single network needs to be deployed and managed, with all radio devices in a retail operation using the same network. Point of Sale (PoS) is replacing traditional counters. It is not letting customers to abandon long queues during congested periods and leave the store without making a purchase. Retailers have set up PoS using handheld computers, scanners, and printers with integrated credit card readers. During high-volume sales periods, sales people outfitted with these mobile PoS terminals can be positioned throughout a store at small tables. For customers paying visit www.dqindia.com
by credit card, the full transaction can be completed and a store receipt printed where it is convenient for the customer. Retailers are able to boost sales by reducing ‘out-of-stock’ situation with the assistance of in-store inventory both in retail space and warehouse. Merchandise has been entering into inventory upon arrival at the loading dock, tracked when it is moved to the floor, and removed from inventory when it is sold. Store associates using wireless-enabled handheld computers can easily and quickly perform inventory management tasks. For example, handheld computers with integrated barcode scanners can be used during restocking periods to instantly track how much product is on the floor and how much was moved to the floor from the back room. When merchandise is available in the warehouse or back room but is out of stock on the main floor, store associates can easily use wireless terminals to view the location of merchandise. With the addition of wireless printers, price updates can also be performed on the spot. ERP vendors are offering retailspecific systems which help in integrating all the functions from warehousing to distribution, front, back office store systems and merchandising. An integrated supply chain helps the retailer in maintaining his stocks, getting his supplies on time, preventing stock outs and thus reducing his costs, while servicing the customer better. CRM systems have provided retailers with real access to consumer data. Data warehousing and mining technologies offers retailers the tools they need to make sense of their consumer data and apply into business. This, along with the various available CRM systems, allows the retailers to study the purchase behavior of consumers in detail and grow the value of individual consumers to their business. n March 31, 2013 | 79
CASE STUDY SHOPCLUES.COM
New Kid on the Block Having a distinct online identity and leveraging the latest technologies has helped Shopclues gain significantly in the e-commerce market
SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR shobhas@cybermedia.co.in
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hopClues.com, the 35th e-commerce start-up in India that has a distinct ‘managed marketplace’ identity online, has quickly risen since its launch in January 2012, recording a growth of nearly 90 times in its first year of operation itself. In a period of 12 months, the firm has touched `100 crore in revenues and is now targeting over `350 crore this year. The company’s founder and CEO Sandeep Aggarwal, an erstwhile equity search analyst at the Wall Street, along with its 3 other founders—2 of them with a tech background having worked with the likes of Oracle and Ebay, set up shop in India with a permanent office and a core team in Gurgaon and with its founding office still in Silicon Valley, USA, where it started off in September 2011.
Zeroing in on the Right Model
The stupendous growth in such a short duration can be clearly attributed to the use of technology as Aggarwal reveals that its managed marketplace identity distinguishes it from several other e-commerce companies that use the inventory model. “The use of the inventory model in e-commerce business is very harsh, here you buy 100 pieces for `10 each and sell for `12 a piece and overall if you are left with 10 (inventory), your `2 profit is wiped out. And that is not truly 80 | March 31, 2013
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HandBook 2013
harnessing the true power of internet. Even my grandfather was doing the same, how am I doing things differently, that too with the technologies that are available to me but not to my grandfather?” says Aggarwal. The trick was to think innovatively and put up a different model altogether, setting it apart from the other existing e-commerce players. “ShopClues.com is a managed marketplace, our challenges are very different from a typical e-commerce company. We are constantly evaluating new technologies and new approach to the problems and look to solve it fundamentally,” says Mrinal Chatterjee, vice president, engineering, Shopclues.com.
Keeping it Networked
Based on the latest technologies, ShopClues strives to deliver a good shopping experience to its buyers and an unparalleled selling platform to its merchant partners. In order to give its sellers and buyers a fulfilling experience, it has set up an online technology platform which both parties can utilize and only need to bother about their merchandizing and pricing strategies. It offers fulfillment services through its current and in-the-offing interconnected fulfillment centers/ cross-docking facilities. “We are doing 5,000 transactions a day, we have 6,000 different sellers with us, we offer more than 2,000 categories of products and if you exclude books as a category from the catalog of any e-commerce company, we have the 2nd largest selling catalog,” says Aggarwal. Managing and keeping everything interconnected is a daunting task indeed.
Relying on Technology
Technology has a sizable part of its overall spend, and the company is constantly increasing its IT spend to keep up with the demand of the business. All the technologies have DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
been developed in-house. An ecosystem of IT partners has been developed who work closely with ShopClues.com to deliver the cutting-edge solutions and technologies. “We have a strong technology theme, we are on Lamp architecture, MYSQL, and PHP open source platform; we have the technology stack—there is the infrastructure layer, the middle layer, there is the front end and also the analytics tools and technologies are being used for mapping site performance to user behavior,” says Aggarwal. ShopClues.com has deployed a sizable number of servers to run the technologies—of these to run the business and some as monitoring and back-up servers. ShopClues. com is operated from multiple data centers. It has also developed a number of technologies to monitor and manage these data centers. There is a dedicated infrastructure team that manages day-to-day operations, capacity planning, monitoring, and reporting, says Chatterjee. Aggarwal adds, “We use different tools—some are plug-n-play from Google, some are in-built and some based on third party licences, testing tools, server performance tools, etc are also used. We have a big IT infrastructure in the data centers; we have deployed VMWare cloud infra. NetMagic is the solutions provider for this and sometimes Legspace in Hong Kong.” The peak time performance can be likened to the restaurant business. Aggarwal adds, “At peak we have about 5,000 concurrent users and for this we need huge server capacities—and even if it is needed for 1 hour you cannot say no to it at other times—once you have built in a 5-lane highway ie, even when you create a capacity, you have to pay for it, and you have to pay for the peak consumption and not average consumption.” visit www.dqindia.com
Active Social Media Usage
ShopClues.com claims to be the first e-commerce website which was first launched on social media, says Chatterjee. Social media and mobility is core to what it does. On the mobility side, it will soon be launching a mobile app and a lot of its investments are being planned on the mobile and tablet side. “Right now, roughly under 10% of our users are coming from the mobile side and they account for about 5% of our total business. Within our growth, they are larger than the business coming from PC based internet users. So in our case we will be focusing on mobile apps, one buyer, and one seller android based smartphone apps to empower them,” reiterates Aggarwal.
Scaling Up
ShopClues has been scaling a lot and going forward, it will be making a lot of technology investments in IT infra, physical servers, in storage, telephony analytics, billing and payments—a sizable budget would be used. “I would say in 2013, we would be spending close to about one-and-half a million dollars ie, `7-8 crore on various types of technologies—I would say in all 3 buckets, hardware, software and telephony, and services,” Aggarwal informs Dataquest. n
Problem Setting up a distinct e-commerce venture aided by technology
Solution An online platform supported by cloud infrastructure was set up
Benefit Not only merchants and buyers, but the company benefited as well in terms of scaling up fast and handling peak time performance March 31, 2013 | 81
CIO SPEAK An IIT Kharagpur alumni, an avid technology contributor, a strong open source proponent, Amod Malviya has played an instrumental role at Flipkart’s engineering division since its infancy. Malviya, SVP and head, engineering, Flipkart currently heads the engineering setup that powers Flipkart.com. Having joined as a senior engineering manager, his contribution has been immense. He has facilitated several technological innovations that are developed in-house; he implemented business intelligence and analytics in service which enabled the company to empower its customers with new tools to innovate alongside tracking performance in real time. During his decade-long career journey, he has successfully set up java based engineering infrastructure and scaled research algorithms for mass traffic. Malviya shares the strong and everlasting bond between Flipkart and technology; and the key technological focus areas with every passing year with VOICE&DATA. Excerpts
‘Blind cost reduction can be detrimental’
—Amod Malviya
SVP and head, engineering, Flipkart
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he e-commerce industry and ICT are inseparable. What has been the role of ICT in Flipkart’s great progressive journey? Technology has played a central role in the success of Flipkart.com. E-commerce is about the end-toend experience that a customer goes through. That is the reason our technology investments have pervaded every aspect of the business—website, supply chain, business intelligence, and even customer service. Today, we are able to make better and faster decisions because of the technology investments we chose to do in the past and the investments we are making in technology today will help us scale the business to the next level. E-commerce technologies allow two-way communication between e-retailers and consumers. And another unique feature of e-commerce is that, it enables personalization and lets sellers to target marketing messages to a person’s name, interests and post purchases. It enables e-retailer to change the product or service to suit the purchasing behavior and preferences of a consumer. What are the key ICT trends in e-commerce, and the key ICT challenges faced by the industry? Technology continues to evolve at a very rapid pace even in some of the older e-commerce economies. That makes trending difficult. However 3 trends that have mostly withstood the test of time are: Technology pervading every aspect of the business, from website to supply chain to business decisions Distributed systems—as they allow scaling a lot better. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a model of distributed systems that a lot of companies follows Metrics—technology increasingly DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
provide more visibility into the business operations and driving more effective decision making The rapid pace is simultaneously a challenge as well. Scale and agility are usually conflicting concerns. This becomes particularly amplified in a rapidly developing economy such as ours. Thankfully, we have invested in experimentation at the core of our technology platforms— though there are a number of challenges that we still face. Have you opted for outsourcing with respect to ICT related work? Which are the areas identified for outsourcing and how is it working for you? We do not outsource our technology work. Every organization focuses on its core differentiators while outsourcing all the other pieces. For us, most of our core differentiators are around technology and hence developed in-house. Has Flipkart deployed mobile applications for internal working? Yes, there are areas where we are experimenting with mobile devices. Logistics and warehouse are 2 areas that easily come to mind. How is mobile commerce working out for Flipkart? While the numbers are still lower; given the infancy of the mobile internet, the sales happening through our mobile channel looks promising. Mobile as a traffic channel is growing extremely fast. Bearing that in mind, we have a dedicated internal technology team focusing on this aspect of the business. How is ICT facilitating smooth business production such as procurement, customer focused processes, and internal management processes? We have custom built in-house technologies for all these, with dedicated visit www.dqindia.com
technology teams focused on these individual processes. We expose our engineers to a very large amount of business context and empower them to build the right technology solution for a given problem. What is the investment planned for ICT in FY14? Being a privately held company, we are unable to comment on internal investment numbers. There is pressure on CIOs/technology heads to reduce costs. What are the strategies planned for your company? Blind cost reduction can be detrimental. At Flipkart.com, we recognize that the primary way for us to be cost efficient is through technology. So our investments into technology have grown over time, and we will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. At the same time; within the technology setup, we are very efficiency conscious and rely on a set of independent and very lean teams to get the task done. Engineers are able to focus better in a smaller setup and are able to take decisions and move fast. This also has the added benefit of retaining and growing our start up culture—people have high exposure and accountability. They are able to make a visible impact and are not lost in a crowd. Being pioneers of technology adoption, what are the new technologies that Flipkart is planning to deploy in the next couple of years? We deploy something new almost every single week. Some of the areas I see a lot of innovation around large scale analytics, warehouse automation, web technologies, and intelligent systems. MALINI N malinin@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 83
CIO SPEAK Vinod Bidarkoppa brings over 20 years of global experience in diverse operational and strategic executive IT leadership roles with global fortune 100 companies. Prior to joining Tesco HSC, he was associated with HP, EDS, and Bosch. At Tesco HSC, Bidarkoppa is responsible for all aspects of information technology services including applications; online retail (Tesco. com); and infrastructure to the UK, the US, Central, and Eastern Europe; and Asia operations of Tesco. He is committed to build the best possible technology for over 5 lakh colleagues and millions of customers. This includes convergence and standardization of technology for all the countries Tesco operates today. Bidarkoppa believes that right talent is the key for success and innovation; hence he gives utmost importance on training and spotting the right talent. Bidarkoppa, director (IT) and chief information officer, Tesco HSC shares technological innovations developed by the company to enhance retail experience both for retailers and customers. Excerpts—
‘Digital technology has become a lifeline’
—Vinod Bidarkoppa
director (IT) and chief information officer, Tesco HSC
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as technology proven to be a competitive weapon in the retail sector? What are the key technological trends in the retail industry? IT is key in retail today, and Tesco has always acknowledged this. Similar to the airlines or banking sectors, in any large retail organization today, IT forms a key part of the skeletal system. I can’t imagine a world in retail which can run an enterprise as large and complex as distributed and multi-channel as ours without the secret sauce— technology. Technology innovation and changes are happening at an enormous rate—be it social media, mobile technology, big data, etc—they are changing the consumer world very quickly. Digital technology, in particular smartphones, has become a lifeline, offering not just untold choice, information, and access to bargains, but acting as a new and more affordable channel for entertainment and socializing. As a huge part of retailing goes online, technology has become one of the imperative pillars in the retail sector. With the industry undergoing significant changes and increasing customer demands, the savviest retailers are using technology to give them an edge. Be it online shopping or improving customer experience at store, technology plays an imperative role in both. Take us through the mobile applications developed by Tesco HSC? How is it working practically and are there any concerns in adoption? With people’s life getting busier, they prefer to do even the everyday chores like grocery shopping online on their mobile devices. To enable the customer to shop using mobile, Tesco launched mobile grocery applications on both Android and iPhone—the two ubiquitous operatDATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
ing systems of today’s smartphones world. A couple of really interesting and user friendly features provided by this app are barcode scanning support and recipe share. Voice search is another concept that the team is working on. It can really help save time in searching products on the mobile. How do you manage integration and management of IT activities as Bengaluru is your IT hub while the company’s retail outlets are outside India? It is important to understand the genesis of this center in India. The objective behind this center was multi-fold. Firstly, we felt that building capabilities and competence in one place is easier and faster than trying to build them in every country where you operate. Secondly, we felt that if you centralize activities, the ability to standardize them is very strong. And this means that every country we operate in does not have to re-invent its own technology or processes. Also, we have built a model where we are very customer focused and believe that while we can leverage on global scale, we need to remain focused on localization. It means that wherever the customer directly interacts, remains local and work which the customer does not directly feel or touch is centralized. So the decision of how to package a certain food item is left to the countries, but the system which tracks the movement of the food item is developed and maintained centrally out of India. What are the ICT challenges faced by Tesco HSC? Technology innovation and changes are happening at an enormous rate and we got to keep up with it—social media, mobile technology, big data, etc, are here and they are changing the consumer world very visit www.dqindia.com
quickly. The challenge for us is definitely to keep up with it and then to make sure we turn it into competitive advantage. Digital technology, in particular smartphones, has become a lifeline, offering not just untold choice, information, and access to bargains, but acting as a new and more affordable channel for entertainment and socializing. We believe that the future of retail lies in multi-channel commerce. But more importantly, the consumer buying experience has to cut across these channels. You cannot rely on a single isolated channel anymore. At Tesco, we are making good progress in this area; we understand that shopping trip and working to improving the customer experience. But this is a big technology shift today and we have to understand that, react to it, and be quick to move to take advantage of it. Additionally in IT, we have to continue to focus to organize the portfolio of new projects, get the right engineering behind and develop them in the best manner we can, and get new products to the market in the least possible time. It is vital to get a standardized and converged environment so that we can build once and deploy multiple times across countries. What are the technologies deployed at your organization to predict consumer demand, shorten lead times, reduce inventory holding, and eventually save costs? At Tesco, we have deployed a wide range of systems. We have teams focused on working on algorithms for fine tuning our supply chain systems which can take into accounts everything from weather patterns to sporting events and seasonal variations. MALINI N malinin@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 85
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CASE STUDY YES BANK
An Innovative Social Inclusion Idea YES Bank introduced a remittance service banking model which enables migrant workers in cities to instantly transfer money to their home accounts at almost negligible costs JALAJA RAMANUNNI jalajar@cybermedia.co.in
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often —Winston Churchill he focus of banks is slowly turning to an untapped rural market in smaller towns and technology is beginning to play an increasingly important role in this sector. Known for being tech-driven, YES Bank has been at the forefront of embracing technology in both internal and external services. They ventured out into cloud at a time when not many were ready to explore it. This time, YES Bank is being recognized for its remittance bridge service, which has been appreciated as an innovation in the banking sector worldwide. The remittance service is a banking model by which people—especially migrant workers who don’t have access to online banking services—can instantly transfer money to other accounts back home. Most often, they do not have the required documents for identification and risk management to
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
open their accounts in cities where they work, they open a bank account in their hometowns. These workers rely on banking module offered by various banks to deposit cash in their hometown account. As the banks typically open only couple of counters for three-four hours in the morning for this segment, the workers have to stand in long queues, which in turn results in the loss of their daily wages. Since the alternative facilities like money order, post office, etc, can prove time consuming, YES Bank came up with a system to electronically transfer the sum and the transfer costs involved is almost negligible. The model included setting up terminals in existing shops like photocopy shops and kirana stores to turn them into Banking Correspondent Agents (BCA) stores after proper authentication and registration. The BCA is given training for an hour. This facility was open to customers who didn’t have an account with YES Bank as well. The bank leveraged the existing available NEFT technology platform for this system. “Since we had all the security mechanism involved in this system, we didn’t have to pay a heavy price and we could implement it in a short time,” reveals Amit Sethi, senior president and CIO, YES Bank. The bank along with its first BCA partner, Suvidhaa Infoserve, developed an application and tested it for customer friendliness, security penetration, and central monitoring. For a customer, it is a 2-step process. To transfer cash, the sender first registers at the BCA store by providing state, city, bank, and branch details. He gets an OneTime-Pin (OTP) along with details of the beneficiary and has to confirm the details by sharing the OTP with the BCA store. The request is queued up in the bank’s NEFT cycle and sent to the beneficiary’s DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
The list of YES Bank’ s firsts in Indian banking include nn Adopting the cloud based model nn Income Based Repayment (IBR) based contact center with speech recognition nn RFID based recognition for customers nn Total outsourcing based model for technology nn Mobile based inclusive banking nn Implement 2-factor authentication with OTP (One-Time-Pin) in the country nn Remittance bridge
bank. In case a transaction fails due to any reason at the beneficiary’s bank, the system initiates an SMS to the sender along with an OTP. The sender can then go to the BCA store, share the OTP and collect the refund; the fee charged to the sender is also refunded. Since this facility is available 24/7, the sender can access it anytime. Apart from achieving a social responsibility of inclusive growth, the bank also befitted from the huge remittance flow. It is the first bank to offer bank interoperability services in India which has helped more than 5 lakh plus customers. More importantly 16,765 branches of 68 banks have received remittances through this system. To supplement the growing demand for our services through IMPS, they have about 12,000 retailers working as YES BANK BC Agents and 7,500 active ones.
Tech Concerns in Banking
Both technology and banking are changing rapidly and the biggest challenge that Sethi shares is meeting customer expectations over tablets, PCs, mobile, and ATMS. “We have to constantly gear ourselves to be all-pervasive and everywhere. At the same time, security and agility are of prime importance. The banking industry has to keep ahead of the curve and use the best security set-ups. The key is to stop thinking of your work as a back office function. Be more customer-oriented and visit www.dqindia.com
Problems Many don’t have required documents for identification and risk management to open bank accounts in cities where they work. Depositing cash using banking module was time consuming
Solution A system was developed to electronically transfer the sum with almost negligible cost, which can be used by non-YES Bank customers
Benefits Transfer money at negligible transaction charges Direct credit to your account or your beneficiary’s account with YES Bank & other Indian banks Maintain an address book of all beneficiaries Send personalized messages with each remittance Round-the-clock customer service assistance
business focused.” To be agile, Sethi advises that if you invest heavily in infrastructure, you can’t change technology according tot he industry needs. It is therefore important to keep the models agile. Many banks have already invested heavily in infrastructure. For the ones nearing their refresh-cycle, Sethi suggests that in order to be agile, shift to a cloud based, payas-you-go opex model which has worked for YES Bank. n March 31, 2013 | 89
CASE STUDY MAHINDRA FINANCE
Effective Money Control! Mahindra Finance’s entire manual market practice needed to be automated and digitalized, hence the new mobile solution was put in place SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR
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shobhas@cybermedia.co.in
or Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd (MMFSL) business information technology solutions are a strategic tool to gain competitive advantage and to improve overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. Its several activities include automating risk profiling to claims administration apart from offering insurance and other regular products. BITS (Business Information Technology Solutions) is the IT wing of Mahindra Finance Group which includes its subsidiaries, Mahindra Insurance Brokers (MIBL) and Mahindra Rural Housing Finance (MRHFL). All the technology initiatives are aimed at enhancing its corporate customer care towards solutions support services (3C=3S) levels to customer and convenience, remote servicing improvements on new business initiatives, and loan administration for timely collection and recovery while minimizing costs. Its information technology strategy includes achieving connectivity with all branches and mobility connection through its executives. Being a BFSI-NBFC segment, transformation of its entire manual market practice was needed. To be automated and digitalized, the new mobile solution (EMLAP) that helps in all the processes right from data inputs from customer, executive and corporate, control and managing, was put in place.
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HandBook 2013
The Challenges
Previously manual receipts were being issued to the customers while issuing a cover note for the money collected for insurance renewal. The new solution was introduced to have a better control on the money collected as it was a manual process and there was a possibility that the manual receipt books are lost.
Handling the Woes
There was earlier duplication of work at the back-end on the business application. “5-6 parameters were looked at for resolving the issue—the process had to provide business continuity, it had to be cost effective and be improving for the above function and thus bring in more efficiency. Some capacity of experience and intelligence across the enterprise has to be there towards strategic implementation,” says Suresh Shanmugam, head, MIBL-BITS. Shanmugam adds, “Being a finance company, all convergence in terms of cloud, mobility, etc, starts from the IT architecture and it has to be secure too for compliance and governance. The online mini branch was brought in to identify a speedy and quicker response to the transform the queries and ensure timely action.” “The project encompassed 3 entities—the management, the executives, and the customers. In olden days, for the management, if there were funds available online, there was liquidity to be managed and for offline, the fund management has to be done—all this was manual. Now it is all managed with more awareness as all data is available and thus even during recession when funds are not readily available. For the executives across the country, part of expenses, incentives based refunds etc, is now easily available online. This is exactly the difference from earlier days—no grievances as the executive gets incentives on time and hence he is happy. From DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
the customer perspective—he gets to know how much amount he has paid, previous 3-4 payments can now be seen online,” Shanmugam further adds. Hence business continuity is maintained, there is transparency too and transactions have shifted from just ERP to convergence of various aspects. With the system now accessible in real-time at the click of a button on the handheld device, all information is available with a multi-lingual screen; an IVR response system in place helps in real-time inputting. For instance, the rural customers could be speaking several dialects—in which case a response is generated in English/Hindi (Aapka …paisa hai) and the transaction printed out. “Now apart from these services for handling loans, mutual funds, etc, the device is also used to ping the customer information such as Astro messages for the day, booking tickets for him, etc, so he is emotionally connected to us; the metro customer however is more in the real world,” says Shanmugam.
The Benefits
Thus, earlier it was more of enforcement, but now dependencies have grown because of internet. However, “RoI is being ensured as roughly collection efficiency has increased by 200-300%. We started off with Visiontek’s devices, but now we have created 3-4 new vendors. With virtualization, outsourcing, etc, demand and impact has also increased. The mobile devices now being planned have IVR, 2 GB RAM, with facilities for voice recording, lots of info, scribblings and we are running the platform on open source. Connection to the location, to the executive, to the customers/ corporate is being maintained. The transparency and delivery standards got increased tremendously after deployment on mobility solutions. visit www.dqindia.com
Empowerment is being done through increased IT spend (It will be 2-5% of `28,000 crore).” Employee Engagement: Timely information, timely incentive, timely services solutions, customer gets hold of more closer to the end customers. The concept of Epos was delivered to business executives, collection executives, auditors, dealer’s premises, branch locations to empower employee engagements from all entities and timely services through common distributed channels. Customer: Data captured in the field is updated in the computer immediately. Security of data which is absent if manual receipt book is lost. Errors at the time of capturing data is avoided as customer is checking and signing the receipt. SMS confirmation to the customer happens immediately on making the payment. Executive: No cumbersome process with carbon/duplicate, etc. Better image of the executive in the market place. A record transaction is generated based on contract number/vehicle registration number whichever is available. More information on customer gets displayed before commencing with recording the transaction. No chance of data entry going to wrong customers.Cash denomination can be checked and tallied for total collection. n
Problem All processes for recording transaction were manual
Solution A mobile solution for input of data in the field along with an IVR based response and printed receipt was devised
Benefits Better management of funds All 3 entities-management, customer and executive are well connected through the central web server March 31, 2013 | 91
CIO SPEAK
Srikanth Raman, chief information officer at Narayana Hrudayalaya, has successfully enhanced the IT infrastructure which is supporting a massive healthcare operation at the hospital. He initiated the setting up of a private-hosted cloud model with HCL’s blu enterprise clouds infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution and thereby, reducing huge upfront cost. He has saved Rs 20-25 crore in capex costs by migrating to cloud. He was also instrumental in integrating HIS with cloud while ensuring seamless connectivity. Raman runs us through the technological competence at the hospital and the key tech requisites in the healthcare sector. Excerpts
‘We are working to provide HIS access on smartphones’
—Srikanth Raman
chief information officer, Narayana Hrudayalaya
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
W
hat are the key trends in the healthcare sector as far as ICT deployments are concerned? ICT is now focusing more and more towards the central players in healthcare—doctors and patients. The current focus has shifted to how we can have accurate clinical data in an analyzable form accessible anywhere for the doctor and the patient. This, in turn, has provided impetus to critical care medical equipment interfacing HIS (hospital information system) and delivering the analyzed data to the mobility platform. What are the pain points with respect to integration of technology? Multiple vendors not conforming to one open standard, unwillingness to allow access to proprietary protocols, etc, remain the key challenges; but the barriers are slowly breaking. While integrating our hospital management system on cloud, we were perplexed about issues of building up and owning systems, to find skilled IT resources and retaining them. And if we had built data centers, either centralized or disparate, we had to back it with a real-time disaster recovery site. The upfront cost implications were huge. A conventional data center set up, whether at a centralized location or at every hospital, would be a time-consuming and tedious affair. But fortunately, we deployed cloud systems and we saved over Rs 20-25 crore in capex costs by moving to the cloud. If we built our own infrastructure, it would have cost us between Rs 1-1.5 crore per facility.
HandBook 2013
efficiency at Narayana Hrudayalaya? EHR at Narayana Hrudayalaya has just started as the administrative rollout have just been completed. Already a unique ID works across the group hospitals for a patient, laboratory reports are automatically emailed to the patients once authenticated by the laboratory in charge, patient portals which would give access to individual EHR is under development. This would be the basis for the roll out of e-health and m-health initiatives from the patient’s point of view. In recent years, electronic health record has been an integral part of the healthcare segment. Have you made any advancements/upgradation in health informatics? The team is currently working on enabling the hospital HIS to work, out of a smartphone using apps which would give an acceptable user interface (UI) experience. The traditional way of using the same UI as the desktop UI is not good enough to entice the medical community into using technology to deliver healthcare. What is the rate of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) adoption in India? Has it been deployed in your hospital? CPOE framework in terms of online indenting and dispensing including in between prescription audit layer has been deployed in all our major hospitals in the in-patient service delivery. However until we deploy the specialized apps and UI, it will continue to be a proxy entry from the doctor’s point of view.
What are your EHR initiatives to enhance the quality of healthcare and administrative
Have you deployed e-health and m-health services? Mobility platform is the key to adoption of IT in healthcare among
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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the direct care givers and the recipient patient community. In order to cater to the rural masses, we embarked on telemedicine service in 2002 and we have connected Malaysia, Mauritius and Pakistan. Since then, we at Narayana Hrudayalaya, have been exchanging ECG reports, Audio/Visual data, CT scans, X-rays, MRIs and their analysis through telephone line, broadband connection or satellite. Our hospital is also a part of ‘The Karnataka Telemedine Project’, which was inaugurated on April 8, 2002. This project has linked two rural hospitals in Saragur in Karnataka viz the Chamarajnagar district hospital and the Vivekananda Memorial hospital with the Narayana Hrudayalaya. What are the ICT solutions planned for the future? At Narayana Hrudayalaya, we have already deployed all the key hospital applications on a cloud platform so that access could be universal with adequate controls built in. Our cloud model has resolved the burden of building a data center and let us focus on the business of health care. The cloud deployment ensures that the best security protocols would be implemented by specialized service providers who could handle security issues much better than a localized IT team, in terms of both available technical resources and the depth of expertise in deployments. How do you see the role of the CIO/ IT head changing over time? I see a good CIO / nimble IT as a strategic competitive differentiator who will have a huge say in the future and also help to reshape the business model of healthcare delivery. MALINI N malinin@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 93
INFRASTRUCTURE
Enjoy the BIM Benefits BIM is a strategic initiative that requires top-down executive support to succeed and changes the way companies work
With BIM, cross-functional project teams can now share intelligent models to better plan, design, build, and manage building and infrastructure projects
B
uilding Information Modeling (BIM) is an intelligent model based design process that adds value across the entire lifecycle of building and infrastructure projects. The rapid emergence of BIM is changing the way architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) project teams work together to solve complex design challenges and build better buildings smarter, faster, and at lower cost.
Advantages
Some people mistakenly think of BIM as just a new variety of software. BIM is actually a process that relies on information-rich models to help owners and AEC service providers to more efficiently plan, design, construct, and manage building and infrastructure projects. The reliance on digital design models has been a common practice in the manufacturing industry for decades. Project teams at 94 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
companies such as Boeing and Toyota have placed digital models at the core of their collaborative, concurrent engineering processes for years, using them to support the entire project lifecycle from design and documentation to manufacturing and field support. BIM helps AEC service providers apply the same approach to building and infrastructure projects. Unlike CAD, which uses software tools to generate digital 2D and/or 3D drawings, BIM facilitates a new way of working: Creating designs with intelligent objects. Regardless of how many times the design changes or who changes it the data remains consistent, coordinated, and more accurate across all stakeholders. Cross-functional project teams in the building and infrastructure industries use these model based designs as the basis for new, more efficient collaborative workflows that give all stakeholders a clearer vision of the project and increase their ability to make more informed decisions faster. Models created using software for BIM are intelligent because of the relationships and information that are built into the model. Components within the model know how to act and interact with one another. A room, for example, is more than an abstract concept. It is a unique DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
space contained by other building components (such as walls, floors, and ceilings) that define the room’s boundary. With BIM, the model is actually a complex database and the room is a database element that contains both geometric information and non-graphic data. Drawings, views, schedules, and so on are live views of the underlying building database. If designers change a model element, the BIM software automatically coordinates the change in all views that display that element including 2D views, such as elevations or floor plans, and informational views, such as schedules because they are all views of the same underlying information.
BIM and Your Business
BIM changes the way companies work both internally and externally. Projects have become more and more complex, requiring firms to manage and share immense amounts of data across diverse and distributed teams. By enabling greater insight into the project at any point in its lifecycle, BIM helps AEC service providers to improve accuracy, efficiency, and productivity, resulting in time and cost savings. The significant value-added benefits that BIM ready firms can provide include: faster project approvals, more predictable outcomes, sustainable visit www.dqindia.com
design and analysis services, and improved collaboration and information sharing for integrated project delivery strategies. Even more powerful than the productivity gains is the potential that BIM offers to help enable AEC professionals and owners design, visualize, simulate, and analyze the key physical and functional characteristics of a project digitally—before they build it. BIM changes the design process, increasing the level of effort during early design, but speeding up your back-end production processes and—more importantly—resulting in a higher-quality outcome with fewer requests for information and construction change orders. By using a holistic design approach, BIM helps designers investigate how an entire building comes together, and it helps reduce the amount of design changes during construction. BIM is a strategic initiative that requires top-down executive support to succeed. It changes the way companies work. Externally, it enables companies to engage in innovative new project delivery methods; provide more affordable, more efficient sustainable design and analysis services; and offer a range of new services. Internally, the transition to BIM may result in broad organizational changes based on new and/or different staffing needs.
Conclusion
The change occurring in the global economy has presented architects, engineers, and contractors with a window of opportunity to retool their businesses and adopt new tools and workflows.n
GIANLUCA NICHOLAS LANGE
The author is regional industry manager, ASEAN, AEC at Autodesk maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 95
CASE STUDY GATI
Need for Speed True to its name, Gati is always striving for speed. The latest ‘express’ act is to ingrain enterprise mobility into its distribution process
SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR shobhas@cybermedia.co.in
O
ne of the industry pioneers in express distribution, Gati has historically relied on technology to always create innovative tech based solutions, which could help it overcome challenges it faces on the ground level of execution. For instance, way back it launched one of the early and exhaustive vehicle tracking systems and used it successfully from 2008. Following the tradition, it has now evaluated and started a project to put in place a process to cut down expenditure and enhance accuracy of its shipping process.
Labor Pains
A pick-up person, a‘Gati Associate’, goes to pick up a package from the customer. In the cargo industry, specifically there is a ‘docket’ that is ready for pick-up; or say, manufacturer ‘A’ sends a docket and the job of the pick-up person is to collect this; and a sticker has then to be pasted on this with details such as package number. If there are 100 such packages, then details have to be filled in 100 times. The details include origin, destination, pin code and if the pin code of the place is not available, then pin code closer to the service station which may be far away will need to be filled in. Often he may have incurred additional expenses and
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
charges on this. The final requirement is that these details need to be accurately captured on the label. All this was traditionally a manual activity.
who spent time with select personnel identifying how the day would be and what were the hiccups, how these could be identified and sorted, etc.
Picking New Ideas
Delivering the Efficient Way
To automate this shipment booking process, ie airway bill entry and package label writing, the solutions had to be mobile in nature and costeffective too. “We could also not have highend printers for this and the printing has to be done on the customer premises. The barcode needs to be printed on the label, and the label sticker needs to be highly adhesive and be thick enough to sustain wear and tear during transportation and also be visible for months if required,” says G Ravi Kumar, CIO, Gati. The size of each of the sticker is 70mm x 70mm and is unlike any normal receipt. He further reveals the constraints, “We evaluated several solutions; these turned out to be highly expensive solutions—hand held devices for instance, which were costing `70,000-1 lakh in addition to the printer. We were in search of low-end innovative solutions—a low-cost mobile device with a mobile printer that could easily fit in the palm of the pick-up person. After trials and errors with the mobile device, we then spent some time identifying the right printing product that could utilize bluetooth connectivity between mobile device and the printer.” A 4-member team evaluated and trials of piloting were then due. Once convinced and then finetuning the software, from March 14, 2012, it was rolled out in a select location. Then 400+ locations were identified. A major constraint was that the pick-up people specially were not IT-savvy. So next, they were trained by the IT people for the entire process DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Finally, a very innovative mobility solution project was rolled out at 6 major locations covering 250 Gati pick-up personnels. Now this is a cost-effective technology based solution, which has reduced the time taken, increased the accuracy and helped in load planning for the docket, as how much is the load cannot be known at real-time. The integration of printing from a low-end mobile device using bluetooth handheld receipt printer that too in real-time and with so much details, including barcode on thick adhesive sticker ,is indeed a very unique and innovative solution. Thus this solutions helps in capturing the airway bill details in real-time through a low-end handheld mobile device and also most importantly generate a bar-coded package label (customized label stickers with full details such as destination, number of packages, sequence number of package, assured date of delivery etc) using a handheld mobile printer again in real-time at customer premises. This whole process helps in reducing the pick-up time at the customer premise drastically and also saves time at various points of transit to do scanning of the package thus providing end-to-end visibility. Gati’s IT team developed customized native application using JSP, JAVA and J2ME which supports mobile platforms like Android and Symbian. An Android app that was developed as part of the solutions helped capture the entire airway bill, and a major advantage was that it had a better GUI and when offline, can also be used. If the pick-up person is at a place where there is visit www.dqindia.com
no signal, the app helps synchronize with the server the moment he is within range.
Automation to the Rescue
In terms of benefits, with manual writing, at the most 2 labels were being prepared in a minute and that too prone to some errors, but now 3 labels are being prepared and 30-40 stickers are being printed. “Accuracy is enhanced, and with real-time capture from and into the central server, we could save 1 hour per person per day. The hand held device also costs us only 1/5th of any previous hand held device solutions. Java enabled mobiles now come in the range of `6,000-10,000 and are affordable,” adds Ravi Kumar. Thus the solutions has improved booking and dispatch processes and helped save 200 man hrs per day for pick-up personnel (after full rollout it will be 500 man hrs saving per day). It has facilitated advance load dispatch planning at the operating units (OU). It has enabled Gati to scan barcodes at the different OU readily. Mainly accuracy is being achieved in the dispatch process with reduction in airway bill data entry time 30-40% and 100% accuracy in data capturing. The manual fallback is still continuing, it has not been eliminated entirely, but the company shall be doing so in a phased manner. n
Problem Details on the sticker label of a package were being captured manually
Solution Low-cost mobile device and a low cost printer identified for both online and offline using bluetooth
Benefit Accuracy enhanced, real-time capture from and to the central server and speedier delivery
March 31, 2013 | 97
CASE STUDY WIPRO
Be a Thought Leader with Social Media Ask yourself the right questions before designing a social media strategy for your enterprise. Wipro impacted the right decision makers by unlocking the power of social media JALAJA RAMANUNNI jalajar@cybermedia.co.in
J
ust about every brand has a social media presence today. Most are boring, and built with vague goals. When you create an official social media account, you should ask yourself why others would want to see your updates on a daily basis. When Wipro started using a social media platform, they considered it as a driver of business-strategy. A focus was laid on creating an experience for users. In 2007, Wipro decided to use social media as an effective channel to engage and communicate with its stakeholders. In order to foster internal collaboration, Wipro created an internal social media channel, MyWiproWorld—an online forum for collaboration, networking, ideation, and innovation—which enabled over a hundred thousand of Wipro’s global workforce to come together on one platform and simultaneously share 98 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
experiences, build relationships, and engage in various discussions. This platform connects over 110,000 employees with over 3,000 communities providing seamless networking and collaboration.
Challenges in Adopting Social Media
Relevance and reach were two of the most significant challenges that were involved in the adoption and implementation of social media at Wipro. The spokesperson comments, “When we began our social media journey, we were faced with questions like: n How do we create magnetic content that strike the right chords with our target audience? n Which are the various social channels that we need to engage in? n How do we enhance the reach of our programs on social media? We began answering the above questions by first establishing the Wipro Council for Industry Research —a content engine within the organization comprising domain and technology experts from the organization in collaboration with leading academic institutions and industry bodies to study market trends and address customer needs. This council generated insights and perspectives on issues faced by our customers thereby facilitating their business and IT strategies.” As a result, the digital team works in close collaboration with the thought leadership team and internal marketing teams at the respective business units to drive conversations online. The objective of this team was to strategize, drive, and monitor conversations across multiple channels. Having established an organization-wide discipline to create engaging content, the next challenge was to identify the channels of engagement. Wipro formulated a 2-pronged strategy to address this. “Firstly, we mapped our target audience with DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
The focus IS SHIFTING from engagement to creating an experience
various social channels to identify channels which show maximum likelihood of reach and engagement. Secondly, on the identified channels, we practiced a distributed communication strategy with dedicated handles on every platform. Each one catered to a different set of audience. This enabled us to stay relevant to each set of audience,” the spokesperson reveals. With the content and platforms in place, the next challenge was to enhance the outreach on social and increase the engagement levels. The digital team increased the frequency of engagement on social channels. Now, there are daily updates surrounding a variety of aspects related to Wipro, its customers and its employees such as business insights, company events, job postings and many more areas. spokesperson comments, “The quality and consistency of our messages on these channels have resulted in extremely positive engagement levels. Our Klout score of 84 on Twitter with a style of ‘Thought Leader’ is ahead of majority of the IT services companies. Some of our campaigns on social media, including the latest ‘Wipro Online Marathon’ have been a roaring success indicating that we are on the right track of solving the social media jig-saw puzzle.”
LinkedIn to Bait Niche Targets
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and reach IT decision makers and influencers from top-companies was LinkedIn. The case study states that Wipro was able to reach their focused audience, ie, over 90% decision makers from companies with over 10,000 employees. Wipro has seen some great results and and decided to increase the investments by 110% in LinkedIn since they saw a consistent value for their marketing efforts.
Worth the Journey
By embracing social media, Wipro has been able to increase its interactions with stakeholders, better understand their viewpoints and opinions, and work collaboratively towards making Wipro a better workplace for their employees and a partner of choice for their clients. “With a social reach in excess of 1 million, we use it as a communication medium to reach out to our internal and external stakeholders. As an engagement tool, we utilize our online channels to accomplish the following objectives: n Keep the stakeholders up to speed regarding the company and related news and information n Enable social users with latest insights and perspectives on business,” shares the spokesperson.
Pass on the Gyaan
Today, a majority of the enterprises look at social media as an awareness platform. A lot of thinking goes into gaining fans, making impressions and going viral. However, with social being the one single platform which influences customer at every point in his journey, organizations must look at it as a driver of business strategy. “The focus now shift from engagement to creating an experience. Some brands have successfully cracked social; however, it is a bottomless pit which offers newer insights and opportunities with every passing day,” the spokesperson concludes. n March 31, 2013 | 99
SOCIAL MEDIA
Harness Social Media in 3 Quick Steps Businesses that decide to ride the social media wave will get a head start, before the value of social media data becomes apparent to all competitors
W
ith the onset of Web 2.0 in the early 2000, social media has been growing at dizzying pace. Social media dialog between online users and the sheer volume of user generated content created online has become the norm lately, giving way to the more passive viewing of content through websites. Every minute close to 1 mn social interactions take place online in the form of content sharing and conversations only on social networking sites alone. So why has social media caught up with the masses? One fundamental fact that most need to realize is that this is a conversation medium not a communication medium and for any meaningful conversation to take place, one must be a good listener. Further elaborating on the point, social media is the first channel to be controlled by the users, hence the conversations online are vast, noisy, distributed, unstructured and dynamic, which poses a novel challenge. The quantity, quality, and complexity of social media data make it a challenge for any organization to integrate social media data with its applications. 100 | March 31, 2013
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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
HandBook 2013
Data produced on social media is different from the conventional data, it’s extremely noisy and dynamic. Removing the noise from the data is essential before performing effective mining. The dynamism of the data also poses a big challenge to the information technology department. Tuning into real-time unfiltered stream of social data can lead to clogging of networks, leading to performance degradation, and polluting the business applications with unwanted, spammy feeds. Also, dealing with the sheer volume of data will require the IT department to gain expertise in new skillsets such as utilizing the various social networks’ application programming interface (API) to extract data, developing crawlers to scout the web for information and big data processing. While it remains a steep uphill task for most in overcoming the challenges of social media data integration, the benefits of achieving integration with enterprise application outweigh the roadblocks. The possibilities of insights from social media data are endless, whether its lead generation, customer relationship management, product development or even measuring your overall brand performance. Those that jump on-board now will reap the benefits sooner. Here are a few steps to help a business integrate social media data with enterprise application:
#1 Qualify the Social Channels Relevant to your Business
Brainstorm on where your potential customers and current customers interact online. Prioritize the channels based on the conversation themes, relevancy and buzz. Since integrating social media data in enterprise application involves multiple stakeholders, make sure multiple representatives from each functional unit are present in the discussion. IT managers should primarily focus DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
on which attributes of social media conversation would be of interest to each department. For example, keywords specific to lead generation, ie, ‘buy’ would be of interest to the sales department, keywords related to the brand or competitors would be of interest to marketing or product department and negative mentions would be of interest to the customer service department. Once these attributes are identified, the IT team will have to deploy listening tools that manages to extract data, formulate a way to parse the social media data for relevancy and prioritize the social media channels.
#2 Identify which Enterprise Application to Connect to
The crux of the matter here lies in why and not how. There needs to be enough buzz online to produce meaningful and actionable insights. It is also possible that the majority of the conversations happening online might be of specific nature, ie, complaints. In this case it might be more logical to integrate the social media data only with a customer service application or ticketing system. It is critical to focus on the why so that you don’t end up with unnecessary sunk costs. Once there is a clear understanding on why the social media data should be integrated and the value it brings to the organization, the IT department needs to take charge of how they would go about achieving the objective of connecting the enterprise application with social media data. There are a couple of ways an organization could go about; either they could consider retrofitting or cloud based technology, keeping the current trend in mind.
connect to your brand. Social media, if leveraged properly, can foster relationships with your audience and customers. It is interesting to note that in today’s digital world, most customers have done 60 % of the research on the vendors before they decide to contact a sales representative. Most customers engage multiple times with a brand on multiple social media channels, ie, YouTube, forums, social network, blogs, etc. Hence, a constant presence is required on social media channels of importance to incorporate the customer behavior of engaging on multiple touch points. Companies that have implemented business intelligence have seen fairly soon. This is not the case with social media. Many have the misconception that tracking social media data will bring metrics that can be quantified in monetary value. In some cases it will not, and your metrics on performance would be around shares, clicks, buzz and word of mouth, which are some of the leading indicators of future financial gains. It is essential to know that social media data when combined with business intelligence software will be able to provide you with deeper insights on your customers based on their social interactions. Social media is at its peak of technology adoption cycle, some will decide to take the big leap, others will decide to sit it out. Businesses that decide to ride the social media wave will get a head start from their competition, before the value of social media data becomes apparent and is adopted by the masses. n
#3 Reach out to your Audience
Part of an effective social strategy is to also attain a substantial amount of presence online, making it easier for your audience to reach out and visit www.dqindia.com
JAGJIT SINGH The author is marketing manager, Beevolve, social media data aggregation & analytics services maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in March 31, 2013 | 101
NEWS
Patna Hosts Workshop on Technology The workshop aimed at educating government employees and businesses on the challenges posed by the latest tech trends
Sundar Pichai to Head Google Android
R
ecently, Patna hosted a technology workshop for government employees mainly from the Department of Information Technology (DIT). The theme of the workshop was ‘Showcasing the Technology of Tomorrow’. During the conference, a number of issues related to business continuity and agility were discussed. In addition, AK Singh, principal secretary of Information Technology, the government of Bihar, also shared his thoughts on the state of IT. “Today while most states in India are progressing towards the 2nd generation IT reforms, Bihar is still in the first stage of IT reforms. It is the government’s effort to implement IT to avail citizen services. The government is constantly working towards this,” said Singh, while addressing the audience. Besides, there were a number of brain-storming sessions by a technical team from Cisco India which aimed at educating the audience on the challenges posed by the changing business environment. “It has become essential for organizations 102 | March 31, 2012
to constantly meet the new and challenging demands of networking and IT,” added Vikram Kumar Mallavarapu, vice president of public sector, Cisco India. In a session on ‘using IT to transform government services’, Prakash Kumar, director, IBSG, Cisco shed light on the key factors that can help government services improve. In a 2-way discussion, the audience learned to resolve common issues that affect seamless connectivity in government offices. Besides, to help the audience, Cisco had set up a demo center to showcase how videoconferencing can improve government services and also save valuable time. In a session on ‘Inclusive Growth’, the use of latest technology to bring change in education, healthcare, and skills was debated.
Challenges for SMBs in Bihar
In the second part of the workshop, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) learned the tips for improving their infrastructure through the latest tools available. The importance of networks was at the heart of the workshop. The keynote speaker for the evening Dr MP Singh, head of department, National Institute of Technology, Patna, spoke on the benefits of cloud for small businesses. “Companies can utilize the solutions through cloud, instead of hosting them on-premise. It allows SMBs to save cost and time,” Singh said. The emphasis was also around how businesses can adopt new technology for their evolving data center and the new collaborative workspace. ONKAR SHARMA
onkars@cybermedia.co.in
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Andy Rubin, the father of Google Android, has stepped down and is replaced by another Google veteran Sundar Pichai, who is currently VP for Google Chrome. Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps.
FireEye ‘eyes’ India; Invests $50mn
Fire eye, one of the fastest growing startups of Silicon valley, with revenues over $100 bn (approximate), is now eyeing India for expansion. The company will invest close to $50 mn in their R&D center in Bengaluru, confirms Ashar Aziz, founder and CTO, FireEye to Dataquest. It plans to hire 250 people in the next 5 years in this facility.
DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
Advertorial
Case Study
Pioneering e-Governance The Client The client is one of the Municipal Corporations of Maharashtra
Client Requirements The client wanted to provide citizens services in an efficient, reliable and transparent manner at a single window. Hence, they decided to create an end-to-end e-Governed Municipal Corporation through appropriate use of Information and Communications Technology by partnering with an IT solutions company who could help them fulfill this vision.
Solutions Offered The portfolio of solutions offered by HCL included: Installation, commissioning and operation of Municipal Corporation Enterprise Service Centers(MCESC). This comprised providing ERP based solutions and support for essential municipal backend functions on Public Private Partnership (PPP) built on a Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) model with a timeline of 10 years Development and implementation of functional software catering to departments like revenue, city planning, health services, administration and accounts, grievances handling, civic services etc.
Creation of Citizens Facilitation Centre (CFC ) for time bound service delivery Data Centre & Data Recovery (DC & DR) set-up. This entailed - Management of DC & DR solutions - Supply, installation and commis sioning of the oracle software and licenses - Providing solutions for storage, backup and data replication from the primary site to the disaster recovery site - Integration of the equipments in the data center and the disaster recovery site Connecting the datacenter with CFCs and a dynamic website using LAN and WAN Provision of facility management services for existing IT infrastructure Creation of a dynamic multilingual website for citizens to enable them access services from anywhere in the world Design and implementation of a strong e-security policy Strengthen the IT department through training focused on IT management skills
Business & Societal Benefits For Citizens Single and integrated view of information through web-portal for beneficiaries Quick and decentralized service delivery Simplification of procedures Streamlining of the approval process Speedy redressal of grievances
For ULBs Greater transparency and accountability in the system leading to increased credibility in intra-departmental processes Improvement in revenue collection Better mobilization and utilization of resources Speedy adjudication of disputes
For Management (Mayor, Commissioner and Standing Committee) Availability of MIS on timely basis across all departments Appropriate and timely analysis and decision-support mechanism Ability to monitor and track programs, services, and revenues effectively.
Awards received by HCL Infosystems for the e-Governance Projects Skoch Digital Inclusion Award 2011, in the category ‘Top 100 ICT projects’ Most Promising New Technology for Urban Application at the 9th International Exhibition Municipalika 2011 Best Jury award for Urban SMKC E Governance Project at the e-World Forum 2011 Best Government to Citizens (G2C) initiative of the year at e-Maharashtra, 2012 Pune Municipal Corporation and Wisitex Green Infrastructure Urban Development Ratna (e – Governance) Award
BACK OF THE BOOK
Different Avatars Slow moving, still using legacy systems, believes in spending in creating heavy IT infrastructure at the cost of business agility
A geek who is totally immersed in the latest technologies and is not much in touch with the business realities of his organization
104 | March 31, 2013
Keeps hopping from the IT needs of one department to another, trying to integrate, but still carrying excess baggage along
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of a CIO
HandBook 2013
Agile, swift, at times too aggressive. But has leadership qualities to steer the IT agenda at a high speed Has maturity, wisdom, and experience. But prefers to play the role of a business consultant rather than IT manager
Diplomatically balances the IT needs of everyone in the organization; but quietly driven by his own agenda PRERNA SHARMA prernas@cybermedia.co.in DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication
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March 31, 2013 | 105
LAST MATTER
HandBook 2013
The Changing Role of the IT Organization Ed Nair,
The author is Editor of Dataquest & Global Services ednair@cybermedia.co.in
I
T organizations world over have been asked to prove business value through technology. During the recession, CIOs were left with budgets only for non-discretionary areas. Five years later, the budgets are not vastly encouraging, but the onus to prove business value is high. The four disruptive forces in technology—cloud, mobility, social, and analytics—took shape during this period. The caveat is that CIOs have to prove business value in these areas. These forces have also demonstrated their impact on functional business areas and the investments that these areas are seeking are more than the CIO’s own budget. For example, CMOs now believe that a combination of these 4 technologies allow them to reinvent or transform the marketing function. The CMO is therefore threatening to hold more budgets than the CIO. A recent report, IT Key Issues, from The Hackett Group, Inc, had an interesting finding that looked like a minor fact but had broader implications. The finding was that IT organizations can expect to see small increases in operating budgets, about 2% in 2013. The study found that the IT budget increases are in part being driven by increased demand and expectations, as IT organizations are being asked to respond to the new ‘borderless’ business environment by building out a flexible, virtual, data-enabled model for service delivery. IT will play a key role as companies seek to fundamentally improve how they collaborate, make decisions, and execute operations. The research identified three imperatives that shape IT strategy and the IT agenda for 2013: n IT leaders are seeking to demonstrate their impact on the business, both as a backbone of global operations and as an enabler of new revenue-generating capabilities n They are driving business-enabling innovation, in support of the new borderless business environment n IT leaders are seeking to future-proof their service delivery model IT’s role is clearly being recast. Services are now being offered in a form that functional business units can consume easily. IT’s role, therefore, changes from being an infrastructure and information service provider to that of being an enabler of service delivery. The report states, “IT is rethinking its role, focusing less on building the technology and more on enabling the capability. As a result, IT’s operating model needs to be radically different than it was 5 or 10 years ago.” The next question is—how does that change the CIO’s role? I invite the community to deliberate on this topic. Do write in to me at ednair@cybermedia.co.in 106 | March 31, 2013
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