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The Business of Infotech

Vol XXXI No 09 I May 15, 2013

Through with

Innovation

How vendors are dancing in step to meet customer demands

Out to Kill The proposed US immigration bill could massively disrupt the Indian outsourcing industry

84 pages including cover

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CONTENTS May 15, 2013

COVER STORY

Through with Innovation Enhanced computing experience. New business drivers. IT...

Out to Kill

The proposed US immigration bill could spell massive disruption for the Indian outsourcing industry 4 | May 15, 2013

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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Government

16| Analysis Betting Big on Software

47| Uttarakhand Lacks IT Vision

Recently in an event held in San Francisco Dell showcased... 28| Will iSPIRT empower Indian IT Products?

The creation of iSpirt has evoked mixed reactions but think-tanks... 30|Q&A ‘Innovation powers our business’

While the state government projects are working fine, the central government projects are in limbo 50| E-Governance

Rise of the Digital Citizen

Digital citizens are all over social media. The governments must... 52| E-Gov Snapshots

—Dr Sophie Vandebroek CTO, Xerox

DataWind Completes Aakash-2 Supply

32| Product Innovation Can India Afford to Lag Behind?

Product innovation in India has so far remained a mere lip service...

Enterprise Apps 36| Supply Chain management What is Changing the Face of SCM?

Cloud computing, social media, among others are some of the... 38| Big Data What Makes SAP HANA tick?

60| Speech Analytics: Look Who’s Talking!

Many contact centers are now leveraging speech analytics to help them identify important information ... 62| E-tailing: Choosing the Right Battleground Digital commerce will chart a new course in India... 65| Consumerware It’s all about Consumers!

Dataquest takes a closer look at if and... Q&A: ‘India is one of the countries where HANA adoption has been the fastest’

—Rajamani Srinivasan vice president, applications sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent

42| ‘Growth of workplace mobility has increased the demand for business apps’ —Sunil Lalvani managing director, BlackBerry India

43|Q&A: ‘Our quest is to be #1 in all the pillars of the EIM space’

Consumerware allows users to do much more with... 67| Mobile Apps: Curating the Best Strategies With the changing times it has become crucial to design... 68| Network Security: Mission Critical With a surge in adoption of ICT networks, enterprises... 70| Mobile Advertising The Next Destination

As consumers rely more and more on mobile technology... 72|Q&A

‘We have developed applications that are in the top 10 category in the Android market’

—Graham Pullen senior vice president, APJ, OpenText

45| Enterprise IT Trends Aligning with Market Realities

—Saurabh Singh CEO & founder, AppStudioz

74|

A survey conducted by E&Y and CIO Klub shows that the current economic volatility is pushing CIOs... 54| Messaging Apps Are they a Threat to Telecom Operators?

‘In decision making, the best part is innovation and creativity’ —Srikanth Appana vice president, IT, SKS Microfinance

76| Dig Data Enterprise Satisfaction

It is essential for operators to adapt to a fastchanging world or be doomed. For those who do use messaging apps though... 56| Digital Marketing

VOICE&DATA and CyberMedia Research undertook the Enterprise Satisfaction Survey with...

3 Social Media Must-Dos for Brands

Brands should focus on 3 key social media principles to grow their social following —Sundeep Kapur

80| Back of the Book onPositive Thinking Anupam Kher

REGULARS

58| Cloud: Business in Balance

Shifting IT investment from infrastructure to innovation 63| Entertainment in the Cloud Service providers and entertainers should strategically include cloud enhancements with their offerings to increase adoption potential among consumers DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

CIO SPOTLIGHT

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Edit . ...................................................6 Ganesha...............................................8 News..................................................12 Last Matter.......................................82 May 15, 2013 | 5

EDIT

Vol XXXI No 09

May 15, 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, Krishna Mukherjee (Gurgaon) SR CORRESPONDENT: Shilpa Shanbhag (Mumbai), Jalaja Ramanunni (Bengaluru) CORRESPONDENT: Akanksha Singh, Prerna Sharma SUB EDITOR: Charu, Ruchika Goel ASST MANAGER DESIGN: Bhagbat Pattnayak, Harnek Singh, Pramod S Rawat COVER DESIGN: Pramod S Rawat EDITORIAL ADVISOR: Prasanto Kumar Roy

Ibrahim Ahmad

The $45 Mn Warning

ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in

BUSINESS CORPORATE HEAD of SALES & MARKETING: Satish Gupta (satishg@cybermedia.co.in) MARKETING: Manish Uniyal (Mgr Audience), Arvind Razdan (Asst Mgr) DELHI/NCR Amresh Mishra (Mgr Sales), Pratibha Verma (Exec Sales) BENGALURU T Roshan Sahadevan (Mgr Sales) MUMBAI Pankaj Ladh (Asst Mgr Sales), Meenakshi Madan (Asst Mgr Sales) PUNE Sunay Choudhury (Mgr Sales) CHENNAI T Roshan Sahadevan (Mgr Sales) KOLKATA Sandeep Roy Chowdhuri (Sr Mgr Sales) HYDERABAD Srinivas S (Asst Admin) INTERNATIONAL Vikas Monga (Mgr Sales)

OPERATIONS GENERAL MANAGER: CP Kalra SR MANAGER: Anuj Sharma MANAGER: Debabrata T Joshi MARKET SUPPORT: Jayant Singhal

SHARED SERVICES VICE PRESIDENT: Manish Verma PRINT SERVICES: T Srirengan (GM) CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTION: C Ramachandra (Sr Mgr), Sudhir Arora (Sr Mgr), Jagdeep Khanna (Mgr), Raghavendra S (Mgr), Raju Salve (Asst Mgr), Srinivas Gangula (Sr Exec), Bhawani Singh Rajawat (Asst Mgr) AUDIENCE SERVICING: Sarita Shridhar (Mgr) PRESS COORDINATOR: Harak Singh Ramola (Exec)

www.dqindia.com 6 | May 15, 2013

t could not have been more shocking case of cyber crime skill and precise coordination. A gang of very highly networked thieves stole $45 mn from ATM machines in 26 countries. The modus operandi was simple but the coverage vast—information was stolen from databases of prepaid debit cards which was then copied to fake plastic cards with magnetic strips. Perhaps as a trial $5 mn was withdrawn on December 22 last year; and then the big rip-off happened in February during a 10 hour operation where $40 mn was taken out in 36,000 transactions. All this surely makes a good story for a racy thriller. But there is a big problem in the story. The India connection. The two companies, which are alleged to be the source of the debit card info leak that resulted in the $45 mn robbery, work out of India. According to experts, the hackers broke into the two processing companies’ databases, raised the balances and withdrawal limits on the accounts, then swiftly withdrew money from ATMs around the world. While no big noise has been made so far, instances such as these will positively put out sourcing of banking processes to India, bringing it under the scanner. This is the fourth big event in less than 12 months when outsourcing of critical processes to India by big financial global names has created problems. Once because of poor controls against suspicious transactions, another time a global rate rigging fraud, then money laundering risks. This ATM heist has the potential to be a great game spoiler for the Indian BPO industry, which is anyways under a lot of economic and political pressure. And when such news is picked up by people around the world, not just businesses but the governments and consumers start doubting India’s capability. Global security experts who matter believe that it is not surprising that hackers target banks that rely on Indian firms to process transactions. According to them, India is a soft target because it is fast growing with a fast growing IT infrastructure. One impact of this crime, specially for a country like India, will be that smaller BPO outfits will lose business. Many banks will not like to expose them to additional risks that come with using smaller firms. There are about 1,000 mid to large sized BPOs in India that did business worth $49 bn last year. Experts opine that a good 30% of that would be coming from banking including debit and credit card related processing jobs. These units employ hundreds and thousands of people. All this would be under threat if we have more such incidents.

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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

GANESHA

The Internet of Everything ‘Internet of Everything’ provides ripe opportunities for a country which is looking for new ways to connect millions of people in small towns and villages and the growth agenda that is critical for all of us DR GANESH NATARAJAN The author is vice chairman and CEO of Zensar and chairs innovation, knowledge management and IP Council for CII. He can be reached at maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

isionary CEOs have many qualities and the foremost among them is the ability to build a compelling vision, share it with the community and get buy in from all participants to move the company forward. John Chambers, the legendary leader of Cisco, is one such visionary who has grown the company from under a billion dollars to nearly 50 bn and achieved the near impossible distinction of keeping his company at the very top of the network equipment game for over 2 decades. In the last few years, I have had the privilege of interacting with the great man thrice. The evolving vision of John Chambers has taken the company through its launch of Smart Connected Communities to Video led Collaboration to his new theme of the ‘Internet of Everything’! And the opportunities are ripe in a country which is looking for new ways to connect millions of people in small towns and villages to the growth agenda that is critical for all of us! Consider the vista that one of the significant investment areas of the country—the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC)—can open up to make some of these global concepts come to life in any chosen state that hosts a part of the corridor— Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat immediately come to mind! In each of the industrial cities that already exist and that will emerge as the manufacturing revival happens, the use of broadband to connect people to people, people to machines, and devices to devices will enable new ways of working and communicating. A combination of high quality telepresence video transmission with less bandwidth hogging ‘webex’ enables doctor-patient as well as teacher-student 8 | May 15, 2013

In a white paper written by the Cisco team, the estimate for global value creation by IoE is over $14 trillion through increased revenue and lower costs interactions that could substantially enhance the quality of care giving as well skills dissemination. The Internet of Everything (IOE) is not new to China touting IOT or the Internet of Things for the past 2 years, but in India with the broadband networks finally happening and applications being the limitation rather than technology, there is an opportunity here for the governments to collaborate with the private sector, large entities like Cisco, a multitude of entrepreneurs building content, and last mile facilitation solutions around the country to make true social transformation happen. In a white paper written by the Cisco team, the estimate for global value creation by IoE is over $14 trillion through increased revenue and lower costs. The application areas are multiple, from smart buildings, factories, and grids to connected healthcare and education and even connected gaming, entertainment, and marketing. Transforming existing industries and creating new ones and changing the way communities live and work—a truly exciting proposition! Will the latest chambers visit and his interactions with the powers that be in the country enable us to rediscover a path to the 8% truly inclusive economic growth? It can and will, if we think through the opportunity carefully, invest wisely, and enable the new networked economy to flower and flourish!

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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Application and Web servers Databases

File Servers

Laptop/Mobile Handset

Mainframes

SafeNet DataSecure

Data Center

Private Cloud

Internal Cloud

FEDERATION

External Cloud

2009 SC Magazine “Best Buy” 5-Star Rating

w w w. s a f e n e t - i n c . c o m

Network Product Guide’s Best in Tokens

2009 WindowSecurity.com Reader’s Choice 1st Runner Up

NEWS

John Chambers Hints at Manufacturing in India

ohn Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems reiterated Cisco’s commitment to India and its intention to continue investing in the country for the long run.

Though he did not specify any details, John expressed interest and support for setting up a manufacturing base in India under the government’s NEP (New Electronics Policy) for

ESDM (electronics systems design and manufacturing) through the preferential market access rule enshrined in the policy. The rule ensures preferential market access for products developed and manufactured in India for which IPR resides in India to address strategic and security concerns of the government consistent with international commitments. John pointed out that 70% of Cisco’s products are made up of software and firmware, a large part of which is already done out of India. Cisco, with its second headquarters in India, called as the Globalization Center, has been develop-

ing new products out of India. Cisco also has joint development centers with Wipro Technologies, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Zensar Technologies. Wim Elfrink, EVP, industry solutions and chief globalization officer, Cisco said: “Our product, Cisco ASR 901 Router, developed in India has been used even in the developed countries.” The product has been awarded the Nasscom Innovation Award 2012 for innovation in creating a unified platform to serve the needs of 2G/3G/4G mobile backhaul and carrier Ethernet applications. ED NAIR ed@cybermedia.co.in

IT must be used to promote inclusivity, says Chambers

ohn Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems was in India on a 2-day visit to promote his company’s stake in the country as a technology supplier and to hobnob with the government to ensure Cisco’s involvement in key ICT projects in the country. John met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and IT Minister Kapil Sibal and other government leaders in IT. His pitch to them was to use technology as an agent to promote inclusivity 12 | May 15, 2013

across many areas in the country. John said, “We are very much aligned to what your government is aiming to do towards promoting inclusion.” John’s second point of advocacy was that of urbanization and the concept of connected communities. He said that by merely doubling the broadband penetration a country can achieve half-a-per cent growth in GDP. John revealed that Cisco was awarded the

master ICT contract for the DMIC (Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor) project. This involves setting up the infrastructure for 20 citizen collaboration services and delivering it through the publicprivate partnership mode. John Chambers’ grand goal is to be the #1 IT company in the world. What he means by that is about Cisco being the #1 IT partner for enterprise IT and ICT-based economic development; not necessarily by revenue or size but in terms of

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the technology content to deliver next generation solutions. John said, “Yes, it will require us to be profitable and continually invest in leading edge areas. Cisco has proven its role in creating new markets—examples include cable digitization, connected communities, telecom transformation, healthcare solutions for national impact, IP-based energy grid, and many such areas.” ED NAIR ed@cybermedia.co.in

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Social Media to Help Politicians in Image Building: Shashi Tharoor

ocial networking sites are becoming image building tools for politicians and Narendra Modi is one such politico using the medium, said the minister of state for human resource development, Shashi Tharoor. But at the same time, he feels that with 9-10% internet penetration, winning an election entirely on social network cam-

paign has a long way to go. Tharoor was speaking at the ‘Social Media in Politics and Governance’ conference on the India internet day organized by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) Delhi-NCR chapter. The minister, who is also an avid tweeter, said that the government perceives social platforms as a valuable medium of communication. He further said that social media is vital to take directions and directives for necessary actions and to access information, but it poses certain challenges. He also reiterated that he doesn’t want any kind of censorship and said that the government is concerned about its abuse

such as in the case of recent communal sadism in North East India. Web 2.0, he said, will help in demystifying politicians. “US president Barack Obama uses Twitter extensively, while the UK government leverages social media to issue guidelines. Google and Yahoo have today become household names,” he added. Referring to Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Road, Transport, and Highways Minister CP Joshi’s recent Google Hangouts, he said that the government is moving in the right direction. Tharoor is also planning a Google Hangout soon.

There are some interesting studies on social media that suggest it could impact 160 constituencies. Tharoor also said that the IT Act, 2000, already gave legal impetus to digital signatures and it was former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s vision that helped in initiating projects such as the National e-Governance Plan and National Informatics Center in India. New media, he said, can be used as a new medium of communications. With social platforms, the government is witnessing transformation in an incremental manner. (Article was first published on ciol.com) MUNTAZIR ABBAS muntazira@cybermedia.co.in

Supreme Court to Examine ‘Validity of IT rules’

ccording to media reports, the Supreme Court will examine the validity of Information Technology Rules. A bench of justices TS Thakur and SJ Mukhopadhaya issued the notice to the Center and all the states on a PIL filed by a company Mouthshut.com(India), which runs a portal mouthshut.com, challenging Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011. The company pleaded with the apex court that the rules be declared as illegal, null, and void as they are ultravires of the Constitution.

Micromax Launches its First 3D Smartphone

icromax introduced its first 3D phone—Canvas 3D (Model No. A115). The latest offering from Micromax needs no 3D Glasses to view its content in 3D, thereby giving the user a hassle free rich life like experience. Powered by a 1GHz dual core processor, Canvas 3D (A115) promises superior quality graphics, multi-tasking, and improved application performance. Canvas 3D comes with a 5” full touch screen and runs on Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean). Packed with a 20,00 mAh battery, the phone provides a talktime of up to 4.5 hours. The phone sports a 5.0MP rear camera and features a 0.3MP front camera which will facilitate video-chatting. Users can also convert the regular pictures into the 3D picture format. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 13

NEWS

EMI Offers to Boost Samsung Galaxy S4 Sales in India

hile Samsung Galaxy S4 is launched at a price of `41,500, the real purchase price could be

`40,000 or less, depending upon the retailers’ operating margins. The company has extended a zero-interest EMI offer to this new device. The EMI scheme, being offered by ICICI and Standard Chartered, is no less than a panacea for the company that has actually become

a household name in India. The offer is currently available on credit cards—only VISA and MasterCard. The offer of cash back is valid only on 12 months EMI (cash back is not offered on 6 months or 100% downpayment). The cash back value is capped at `5,668.

Mahindra Satyam Strengthens BFSI Leadership Team

ahindra Satyam has appointed Niraj Vedwa as the global head—banking, payments, and cards. At Mahindra Satyam, he will be responsible to grow and support the existing businesses and also to strategize and incubate new service offerings in the above market segments.

BlackBerry Appoints Sunil Lalvani as MD for India Region

lackBerry has announced the appointment of Sunil

Lalvani as the managing director for India. With the appointment, Lalvani will be responsible for overseeing and driving the overall business strategy and growth for BlackBerry in India. Sunil Lalvani is an in-

dustry veteran with over 20 years of extensive experience in the telecom sales and networking sector. Sunil had been with BlackBerry since 2009, spearheading enterprise sales in India prior to his appointment as the managing director.

Google Now to Take on Rival Siri

n a direct confrontation with Apple’s Siri platform, Google has taken Google Now to iPhone. Apple users access Siri, a personal assistant, to get updates on most of the things under the sun. Google Now, a predictive search and voice recognition tool, was 14 | May 15, 2013

introduced last year on mobile devices running on Android at Google’s I/O conference. Soon, it would be available on Google

Search app on iTunes for iPhones and iPads. Apparently, iOS users have to log in to their Google accounts to access the service. These new-age technologies are the latest breakthroughs in the mobile arena, which would make day-to-day life easier for users.

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Infosys Partners with IPsoft to Automate IT Services

nfosys has signed an agreement with IPsoft to provide tools that free engineers from mundane, repetitive tasks. IPsoft’s technology includes the element of machine learning or artificial intelligence as some call it so that companies don’t have to employ an army of people to write the complicated scripts that traditional automation tools require. Infosys will use the technology to automate parts of its infrastructure management and network management services. It will also work with IPsoft to adapt to application maintenance and business process outsourcing services.

NEC India Appoints Partho Dasgupta as MD

EC India, a subsidiary of NEC Asia Pacific, has appointed Partho Dasgupta as the first managing director from India. He will undertake the leadership of NEC’s business operations in the local market and report to Toshiya Matsuki, regional CEO at NEC Asia Pacific based in Singapore.

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st th th

Contact: Arvind Razdan at +91 997 178 2277, arvindr@cybermedia.co.in

ANALYSIS

Betting Big on Software Recently in an event held in San Francisco Dell showcased its software and services might and how it is aggressively taking on the key enterprise computing trends SHRIKANTH G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in

ell is in transition and it’s going all out in leveraging its traditional organic competencies along with the inorganic assets it acquired over the years. Today Dell is not just a PC company, it’s got software, services, and a slew of integrated solutions that make it a leading converged IT infrastructure player. Recently in an analyst and press event in San Francisco, Dell’s senior leadership demonstrated its multi-pronged business strategy and how it’s enabling the enterprise computing in many different ways. The event was themed on the concept: ‘The Power to do More: Accelerating Results’ and was hosted by John Swainson, president, Dell Software. Swainson told in his inaugural address to the analysts and press from across America and Asia Pacific that, “Dell Software is the glue that ties hardware business—both client and server. Unlike our competitors we do not have any legacy baggage and hence our software leverages on our core strengths cutting across end-user computing services, security, and cloud server, storage and networking capabilities. We are doing a range of solutions and services like legacy modernization to optimizing workloads to standards based scalable architectures. Indeed we have a big footprint.” “Dell is uniquely positioned to deliver highly differentiated, complete solutions—from clients to cloud and everything in between—that remove the barriers created by legacy technologies while empowering customers and partners to unlock new business opportunities”, added Swainson.

Dell in Transition

Over the years, the once predominantly PC companies like IBM and HP have successfully morphed into software and services player as well. But Dell for long has been a PC company and its services and software play has been rather subdued. 16 | May 15, 2013

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“Dell Software is the glue that ties hardware business—both client and server. We are uniquely positioned to deliver highly differentiated, complete solutions—from clients to cloud and everything in between” —John Swainson president. Dell Software

But in the last couple of years one is seeing hectic action and it has significantly ramped up its presence in the software space by key strategic acquisitions on key 3 areas: Security, systems management, and information management. On these 3 areas, Dell has made strategic acquisitions that have given the scale and domain depth in the software and services space. That’s got reflected on its revenues as well—from just $100 mn business in its software business, the company has grown software revenues in excess of $ 1.5 bn with about 6,000 employees. Says Joanne Moretti, VP and global head, software marketing, Dell, “Dell’s software is going to play a critical role in Dell’s transformation. This along with Dell services offers incredible opportunities for our customers looking at accelerating business results. We are addressing DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

specifically the 2 key challenges in IT—What business expects and what IT can deliver and through Dell Software and services we are bridging that gap.” Dell executives in their briefings drove the company’s competencies on 4 key critical areas which Dell called: Transform: Convergence & Cloud, Inform: Turn Data into Insights, Protect: Overcome the Evolving Security Threat, and Connect: Embrace Consumerization and BYOD. Quips Tom Kendra, VP and GM, systems management software, Dell, “Dell is uniquely positioned to address all these disruptive changes surrounding cloud security, mobility, and BYOD. If we take the case of BYOD, the real problem enterprise IT organizations face are many and the significant ones are issues like: How to enable access to corporate applications and data visit www.dqindia.com

from any device from any location? How to understand the environment and policy requirements, considering key mobility/BYOD dependencies? For instance as we look at enterprise device strategies of today 3 models exist—corporate issued, choose your device (from the list of devices authorized by company), and bring your own. The last 2 has its own set of issues and it is here Dell with its slew of solutions makes for a robust and consistent BYOD experience.” According to Dell sources, it has the best offerings for the challenging BYOD scenarios as its core components that work together to enable BYOD strategy is aligned to business. Dell says it provides heterogeneous device support capability, a flexible approach that integrates with existing IT landscape and the ability to grow with the business Meanwhile in order to further aggressively push its software offerings, Dell also announced an enhancement to the structure of its PartnerDirect partner program to include software and enable the sale of end-to-end solutions through one simple channel program. Dell Software resellers now will have specific requirements within PartnerDirect to become certified partners, including unique revenue thresholds to achieve premier and preferred partner status. At the end of the day, the ‘Power to do more event’ by Dell showcased the company’s end-to-end strategy for meeting customers’ requirements and the customer-led discussions showcased Dell’s integrated technologies and scalable design point, which are proving instrumental in addressing emerging business demands and technology megatrends, including consumerization of IT, cloud computing, data insights, security, and business intelligence. n (The author was hosted by Dell in San Francisco) May 15, 2013 | 17

COVER STORY

Out to Kill The proposed US immigration bill could spell massive disruption for the Indian outsourcing industry ED NAIR with inputs from Jalaja Ramanunni

ed@cybermedia.co.in, jalajar@cybermedia.co.in

he world’s most powerful country’s paranoia, or call it xenophobia, is driving it to erect barriers against temporary immigration of highly-skilled Indian tech talent. The proposed US immigration bill regarding H1B visa could spell massive disruption for the Indian outsourcing industry model. It directly hits the nerve of the industry which is based on people mobility between India and its largest market, the US. The submitted Senate Immigration Reform bill recommends sharp changes to the professional (H-1B, L-1) rules that could force the India-centric providers to meaningfully change their business approach if enacted in the proposed form. The 18 | May 15, 2013

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The impact of the bill if it comes into force would be a reduction of 20-130 basis points (bps) on the operating margin and a 1-5% EPS reduction level of success on the Senate side could provide an indication of whether the House will be able to produce a bill. Uncertainty around this key issue would prevail for a while. Says Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro, “It will take a few more months before the bill converts into a law. We have to make sure our country’s voice is heard during this process.” Indian companies, traditionally used to collective lobbying under the umbrella of Nasscom, have activated individual lobbying efforts. For example, Cognizant has spent the highest amount of money among outsourcing companies on lobbying, shelling out about $1.95 mn. This figure is higher than amounts spent by any of its India-based IT outsourcing rivals or even Nasscom, the industry body that represents India’s $108 bn IT industry, a Times of India report states.

Positives and Negatives to Consider... We expect the bill to be passed only after September. The larger part of the bill deals with illegal immigrants, family visas, and visa proposals for healthcare and agriculture. These issues will hog the debate, less focus will be given to H1B visas. It’ll not be an easy task to get amendments done fast. If the bill becomes a law in its current state, there are positives and negatives to consider. —Ameet Nivsarkar Positive Impact: VP, Nasscom Increase in the number of H1B visas cap has been increased to 180,000. Increase in the ability to get green cards. The quota for India is totally 6%, but with the proposed change, the percentage/reservation system will be removed and will be replaced by a first-come-first-serve basis, giving Indians a higher chance of getting green cards. The waiting period will reduce. Negative Impact: Every company which has 25% American citizens will not be allowed to apply for visa, which affects a company’s ability to get access to visa. We foresee an Increase in operational costs. The proposed bill increases cost in three areas: visa fees, compliance and reporting requirements, and wage and salary in H1B program. Companies will not be able to permit H1B or L1 holders to work from clients’ side. It is important for the solution/service provider to understand a client’s business model. For instance, if you’re building a sales app for a car manufacturer, it is important to see the process, current app, deploy the app on-site, and test it, etc. The proposed bill limits the provider by denying his work from client’s side.

The first and the draconian part of the bill is called the 50-50 rule. Sen Grassley (R-IA) introduced an H-1B/L-1 visa bill that, among other changes, would introduce a “50-50 rule”, which purports that an employer with more than 50 employees would not receive any additional visas unless 50% of the workforce is American. For

example, if company X that has 800 employees in the US (or read onsite), additional H1B visas would be granted only if more than 400 employees are American. This means that the number of American employees have to be increased. It is an indirect way of forcing the recruitment of American employees. Most Indian companies have been very liberal in using Indian employees on H1B and L1, even as they have been increasingly proactive in recruiting American employees. The bill also envisages steep increase in visa fees for H1B and L1. This is designed to act as a deterrent to mass filing by companies. Indian outsourcing companies are waiting to understand the full implications of the proposed bill. Says T K Kurien, CEO, Wipro Technologies.

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The Proposed Bill

“We haven’t fully understood the implications of the immigration bill yet. It’s too early to talk about the cost implications. Our prime concern is that the procedural aspect—the compliance and the time it will take. Procedural compliance implies a higher turnaround time. The advantage we see is the increase in cap.”

Impact

The cleverly drafted bill is purely aimed at curbing the Indian outsourcing industry from freely serving its US clients. First, the 50-50 rule would mostly apply to Indian companies, especially the large ones that are likely to have less than 50% of their employees (even if they number in thousands) of American nationality. It is like flanking Indian companies in a huge semicircle. May 15, 2013 | 19

COVER STORY “It will take a few more months before the bill converts into a law. We have to make sure our country’s voice is heard during this process.” —Azim Premji chairman, Wipro

“Free movement of skilled professionals for temporary work is a trade-related matter and should not be linked to immigration. It is important that trade relations between India and the US align to the longterm strategic agenda that supports growth in both the markets,”

—Som Mittal president, Nasscom

“The language appears to be clearly discriminatory in nature, specifically targeted at Indian IT companies and putting them at a competitive disadvantage against their US-based competitors,”which represents the $108-bn ( `5.9 lakh crore) Indian IT industry. India exported software worth $46 bn to the US in 2012-13”

“We haven’t fully understood the implications of the immigration bill yet. It’s too early to talk about the cost implications. Our prime concern is the procedural aspect—the compliance and the time it will take” 20 | May 15, 2013

—J Satyanarayana secretary, department of electronics and information technology

—TK Kurien, CEO, Wipro Technologies

The other semicircle is the 15% rule that acts like a safety valve for American companies like IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and others. According to this rule, companies that have less than 15% of their employees on H1B, can apply for more H1B visas. That is, an IBM or Microsoft can freely add on more H1Bs till it reaches the 50% mark. For the Indian companies, steep increase in visa fees will add salt to the wounds since it would directly add to their costs. Thus the provisions of the bill taken together are a clear indication of the US adopting a protectionist approach and wanting to erect a trade barrier for Indiacentric IT services companies. Analysts estimate that the impact of the bill if it comes into force would be a reduction of 20-130 basis points (bps) on the operating margin and a 1-5% EPS reduction. According to a prominent US analyst, who wishes to be unnamed, the bill has meaningful negative consequences for all the large India-centric providers that rely heavily on the H-1B and L-1 visas to handle the on-site portion of their support and development work. He adds that in the worst case scenario, this could go as far as preventing the “Tier I” providers from doing work with US clients. This would be so disruptive to the existing way that the Fortune 500 companies manage their critical IT operations that cooler heads will prevail and the legislation is not passed, the analyst firm hopes. Large Indian outsourcing companies might look at acquiring US companies with large local workforces. Another consequence could be that clients might be willing to let a greater percentage of projects shift to offshore locations. n

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INNOVATION

Through with Innovation Enhanced computing experience. New business drivers. IT transformation. How vendors are dancing in step to meet these new customer demands KRISHNA MUKHERJEE and ED NAIR

krishnam@cybermedia.co.in, ed@cybermedia.co.in

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May 15, 2013 | 21

INNOVATION

“Doing well what we do well is important” —Rajiv Srivastava vice president and general manager, printing and personal systems group, HP India

he IT industry has been passing through a HP ultrabooks is one such category where the need craggy road with dwindling market share and for connectivity and mobility is driving innovation that plunging sales. It has become inevitable for is differentiating HP from the rest. HP is also making companies to rethink their strategy and busisure that it has got a range of products from `20,000 to ness models to seek new avenues of growth. Many of the `1 lakh. The company has differentiated partner stratsuccessful IT companies are orchestrating ‘innovative’ egy for consumers and for the commercial markets. ways to enhance consumer experience, However, differentiators don’t last helping drive business needs, and long; companies have to constantly providing the means to transform IT. It come up with new differentiators. Not is the relentless drive to stay on in the only that, they have to execute perfectThe reasons market and be relevant. ly in a focused manner, while playing which helped Take for instance HP, the leading to its intrinsic strength areas. “Doing PC vendor that has been seeing the well what we do well is important,” HP get back to oppressive wave of tablets eating into says Rajiv Srivastava, vice president the leadership the PC market. The company always and general manager, printing and position are pitched itself in the mid-premium and personal systems group, HP India. standard range of products. It was a At HP, the next sets of differentiators many, but one positioning that they held in the PC being worked on are about improving of them is market. But the large deal from the UP response times and usage/ user experiinnovation government forced it to enter into the ence. Examples here include tying up sub-20k PC segment. with Universal Music and Hungama.com to give embedded music service to its Delivering on New Demands of customers and opening up an HP India Customer Experience online store to sell its products online. If HP played the tactical move to bag a big order, its focus “If we can provide devices which are forever concontinues to be on emerging segments that drives growth. nected and the speed of connectivity is seamless, this 22 | May 15, 2013

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“New concepts of discovery and search, independent of the application, will come into being. This is where we will differentiate ourselves a lot” —Vivekanand Venugopal VP and GM, Hitachi Data Systems India

really helps the customer decide on the devices we offer. But we also witnessed a change taking place in the mood of the industry. The industry trend became more mobile. That’s why tablets became commonplace. At the same time, we saw a new space coming up—between tablets and laptops. That was of hybrid notebooks which complemented both our needs, laptop as well as tablet,” Srivastava says. Overall, it is the ability to read and respond to the needs of the market and delivering innovation that helps HP succeed in a difficult market. “We gained back the market leadership in the overall PC client space after almost 3 years. The reasons which helped us get back to the leadership position are many, but one of them is innovation,” he adds.

Tackling new Business Drivers

On the enterprise side, the story is very similar. Hitachi Data Systems saw its business recover well during Q3 and Q4 of FY 2012-13. The recovery was driven by a set of new business drivers of which cost saving was one of the key drivers. Cost saving is no longer treated in isolation; it is part of the IT organization’s overall mandate to focus on increasing revenue and integrate better with business. In effect, it actually means delivDATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

ering more business value than merely shaving off few slivers of costs. Enterprises have been besieged with disruptive technology trends like virtualization, cloud, mobile, and big data to name a few. Choosing the right vendor and right technology helps enterprises derive better value. It also means that enterprises need to embark on the right path and choose the correct roadmap in these areas. Making a wrong choice would make them lose valuable money, precious time, and lost business opportunity. Says Vivekanand Venugopal, VP and GM, Hitachi Data Systems India, “Our cloud strategy is distinctively different. We help customers build private cloud infrastructure, our partners help service providers use our new offerings, and service providers in turn provide cloud-based infrastructure focused on SLAs and outtasking certain areas.” Venugopal takes up virtualization as an area to illustrate new drivers and trends that are influencing the market. The penetration of storage virtualization is 30% in India as opposed to 70% globally. The future is about virtualization of application, content, and data in that order. “New concepts of discovery and search independent of the application will come into

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INNOVATION

“There is accelerated adoption of converged infrastructures in a move to transform IT” —Geoff Hayden COO, EMC APJ

being. This is where we will differentiate ourselves a lot,” says Venugopal. Venugopal adds that customers are looking at business velocity, he cautions them against going in with vendors based on marketing alliances. Herein, he strongly makes the case for a single integrated system or a unified system from one vendor. Vendors have been creating such integrated stacks that are called by various names such as converged systems, unified compute platform, unified storage, engineered systems, and such. This is another example where the vendor has the opportunity to uniquely engineer a solution that differentiates itself from others. Most vendors report that their customers to see a lot of value around such solutions.

Pitching for High-powered Offerings

IBM recently launched its Power 7+ range of UNIX servers. The company terms it as an attempt to create a new market that has not happened in UNIX history. The new market is the low end of the server market that is dominated by the x86 segment. The Power 7+ is an example of providing the power of UNIX and RISC at price-points comparable to the x86 as a cost-effective alternative to the latter. 26 | May 15, 2013

Viswanath Ramaswamy, country manager, power systems, STG, IBM India/ South Asia, calls it, “Living up to the commitment to its customers and protecting the credibility in the minds of its customers. We are changing the mindset that UNIX is for the high-end enterprises.” IBM claims superior performance for its new Power 7+ servers. The Power 7+ works on high clock speeds second only to mainframes, sports a cache of 10 MB L3 cache per core, has an AIX encryption layer for additional security apart from several other new layers including a cloud software layer, virtualization sliced down to create virtual machines out of one-twentieth of a core. These features result in better performance with Hadoop on Linux, the in-memory database standard; 40% improvement in middleware (Websphere) performance; and 35% improvement in BI-analytics (CognosSPSS) workloads. Viswanath also notes a shift in client priorities for IT buying from mere capacity expansion to acquiring technology to support new business initiatives. For example, banks are spending to improve mobile banking, auto ancillaries are spending on technology to catch up with its OEMs. Says Viswanath, “Spends have been done to translate to a line of business growth.”

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“With Power7+, we are changing the mindset that UNIX is for high-end enterprises” —Viswanath Ramaswamy country manager, power systems, STG, IBM India/ South Asia

Moving Ahead with Transformation

On the whole, companies are looking for IT transformation amidst concurrent waves of disruptive technologies like virtualization, cloud, mobility, big data, and social media. Says Geoff Hayden, COO, EMC APJ, “There is accelerated adoption of converged infrastructures in a move to transform IT”. He says that the companies are looking at the right type of solution to embrace cloud, virtualization is being extended through the other layers of the IT stack, and new architectures like softwaredefined networking are all forcing a rewrite of the rules of IT. What’s the best model to embrace cloud mainstream, what about combining cloud infrastructure and cloud services, how to create the optimized cloud— these are some of the questions CIOs are seeking answers to. Vendors that provide the right answers for the long-term would win. Investments into ‘trust computing’—a term that denotes confidence, security, and compliance—are a high interest area. The shape of the big data market is still emerging. Companies such as EMC are on a spree of acquisitions to amass technology to cover every emerging facet of the big data market. Geoff says that big data is not a one or two product game; it would require a whole platform. The design goals should be very different and should cover the entire lifecycle of data. Geoff revealed that EMC is working on such a platform that delivers massive scalability, real-time analytics, and predictive analytics. Geoff also said that new infrastructure options like VCE (joint venture between VMware, Cisco, and DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

EMC) also offer unique value propositions to companies looking at IT transformation.

The Winning Edge

In the end, it is all about change, change all over. The pace of technology innovation has dual effects. One, it forces IT vendors to help their customers move along the envelope of innovation in a way that preserves or stretches the value of existing investments. Everything old cannot be junked for everything new. Second, customers themselves are forced to seek and prove business value out of new technology investments. Customers should ask for or rather demand innovation from their vendors. The two effects reinforce each other mutually; it makes the vendor and customer waltz with each other in a show of balance and symmetry. The good thing is that the circle is virtuous, not vicious. The driving force for this cycle is the innovation power of the vendor and the business savvy of the customer. But there will always be a gap between the two. This gap is the negative feedback that keeps the system stable (in the spirit of systems theory about stable and unstable systems). The economic environment and the pace of technology innovation are the other 2 opposing forces. Vendors who operate within this circle will emerge winners. That’s the winning edge. n

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May 15, 2013 | 27

ANALYSIS

Will iSPIRT empower Indian IT Products? The creation of iSpirt has evoked mixed reactions but think-tanks like this are much needed to jump-start the nascent Indian IT products space SHRIKANTH G

with inputs form Jalaja R shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in

“D

ebate is so much better than denial”, said Julie Walters the famed British actress and comedienne in a TV interview long back. This in a way reflects many of the issues the Indian IT industry faces today. As we look at the FY 13 results of many IT majors, it points to a ‘bigger slowdown’ on the anvil - but openly many deny the impending gloom. As the services space gets increasingly cluttered the companies in the fray are trying to differentiate themselves. But are Indian IT firms re-inventing enough to take on the challenges of the new normal? Do they have a clear ‘derisking’ strategy? Do they have enough alternate ‘lean on’ when one geography fails? Often when asked to IT company CEOs large to smal—the response many times is one of cautious optimism. When author Chetan Bhagat called Infosys a ‘body shop’ couple of years ago, it created ripples and a strong backlash and tons of pumped up conversations eulogizing on ‘meritorious services’ rendered by Indian IT services companies. But there was a section of the audience who did ponder over that—not just from an Infosys perspective or reference—but from a broader industry perspective and asked: Is there some truth in what Chetan Bhagat asked? Sure there is, if we do not do enough products and foster IP driven R&D set ups then we risk being called ‘body shoppers’, and the truth always hurts. That boils down to the fundamental question: Why is India not able to replicate, at least partially, the traction it has in the services business? Inter28 | May 15, 2013

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estingly, even the top 5 companies which have products in their portfolio do not clearly break out their nonlinear revenues.

Why do we shun home grown IT products?

Clearly at this point in time Indian IT companies need to re-invent and look beyond services. From an industry perspective, they also need a platform to jump-start IT product initiatives. Interestingly one is seeing the beginning of some action on these lines. Take the case of the creation of iSpirt (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table). About 30 companies (most of them members of NASSCOM as well) banded together earlier this year to create a like-minded platform sharing for IT products companies in India. Sharad Sharma, one of the key founding members of iSPIRT tells Dataquest, “We are trying to create a community that elevates the software product industry. Bangalore has a startup community and what we intend to do is to create a community for software products on similar lines. Using this platform people can share business models, discuss issues and seek guidance from each other. Our approach is multi-pronged, we will be handholding by way of workshops and other modes, that will help address common problems product companies face.” Sharma also takes pains to emphasize that iSPIRT is not an

industry body that threatens or competes with NASSCOM. “We were surprised by the reactions to the iSPIRT creation. In fact we are open to collaborating with big industry bodies like NASSCOM that can make a difference at a policy level as it would be easier to address issues”. We also checked with Ramco Systems CEO Virender Aggarwal and asked him his thoughts on the creation of a think tank like iSPIRIT. He says, “Certainly it’s a welcome move. I personally think NASSCOM has done a spectacular job in the IT services space and it would certainly help if it can replicate that success to IT products as well. But I consider, more than product development, where Indian product companies fail is in marketing the product. The marketing efforts have to be proportional. If you spend too much time on development and least time on marketing activities, then your product is bound to fail.” Ramco is one of the early movers in the enterprise business apps space. Right from its Marshal ERP to eApplciations to Virtual Works and now its cloud platform ‘On Demand ERP’, it certainly has carved a niche. And it is seeing an increasing uptake in the western markets for its aviation suites. Its cloud based ERP has also seen good success domestically. But for Ramco to reach at least this scale and size it needed to pump in millions of dollars over the years, and

despite the investments, its profits over the years have remained flat, but Ramco is bullish on its outlook. There are multiple risks involved in product development and up front development costs is the one that inhibits most companies in taking the plunge. Building an ERP like what Ramco has is not an easy task. But many companies do not have the dedication that was demonstrated by companies like Ramco, which has worked with singular product focus.

Where do we go from here?

Body shopping, though sounds crude, is considered a reality. The services business executed via the third party ODCs out of India runs on the sole premise of cost arbitrage. While Indian outsourcing companies beg to differ with various Global Delivery Models (GDM) and their colorful sourcing models to companies like iGate even pitching on outcome based model as against the typical time and material model—the bottom line is we are a low cost geography and companies outsource for cost savings and quicker project turnaround times. Clearly, as we move forward, think-tanks like iSpirt might be a blip in the large services ocean we are right now but companies in the products fray must support initiatives like this and change this blip into a ripple that can create a difference in upping India’s ante in the IT products space. n

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May 15, 2013 | 29

Q&A

Dr Sophie Vandebroek is Xerox’s chief technology officer and the president of the Xerox Innovation Group since 2006. She is responsible for overseeing Xerox’s research centers in Europe, Asia, Canada and US. Previously, Dr Vandebroek was chief engineer of Xerox Corporation and vice president of the Xerox Engineering Center, technical advisor to Xerox’s COO and director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada. Dr Vandebroek is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, a Fulbright Fellow and a Fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. She has received awards from Xerox, IBM, HP, Monsanto, the Belgium National Science Foundation, Semiconductor Research Corporation, IEEE, and Cornell University. In 2011 Dr Vandebroek was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and elected into the Royal Flemish Academy for Arts & Sciences. In an interview with Dataquest some time back, she talked about the key trends in document management outsourcing, the print business, Xerox’s emphasis on research/ innovation and the market shifting to digital and how Xerox is empowering its clients in many different ways. Excerpts — Dr Sophie Vandebroek

CTO, Xerox

30 | May 15, 2013

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‘Innovation powers our business’

n the digital shift

The industry is definitely going through a major transition, and certainly the shift is towards more and more digital and I definitely see a scenario in 10 years down the line, enterprises will not be using paper at all. But that does not mean, printing will die, but it will complement the digital infrastructure. In line with the market shift our revenue traction demonstrates a significant tilt towards business process outsourcing services, and this slice is growing for us significantly. If we look at 2012 Xerox’s revenues, the bulk of it has come from outsourcing, which includes business process services, IT outsourcing services and the technology business, which extends to services like managed print services. Yes, we will do printers but here again, managed print services is ushering in significant value for the customers. To give an example, one of our clients—P&G—which used to have 60,000 print devices globally and in a span of 5 years we have consolidated that to 6,000 devices globally and in the process shifted bulk of their document processing needs to managed print services. So the point I am making is that its digitalization of infrastructure, and towards that end we have a combination of products, services, IT solutions and we top it with state of the art document management and imaging processing expertise acquired through cutting edge research.

On Innovation

Innovation is the crux of what we do and the heart of what we do relates to what we call the agile business DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

processes. We enable enterprises to be flexible and nimble. We devise ways and means that cuts manual processes and interventions. This clearly brings down the amount of administrative time. Take the case of the healthcare business, we are looking at completely weeding out of manual processes so that all patient records are digitized. We are also creating innovative solutions. For instance we realized that in a typical hospital, a significant amount of nurses’ time goes in individually managing the case sheets of so many patients and they spend a huge amount of time on connecting various different patient specific parameters like drugs, treatment protocol et al. In this backdrop what we did was that by creating a smart software we connected all the layers and enabled it on an iPad and now nurses can have a single window view of the patients and at all times have the insight and discovery to manage the particular patient. But still, it’s an ongoing process, there will always be some amount of manual interventions and we are constantly trying to improve efficiencies. The same applies to our insurance claims processing as well, just to give a sense, in a year we process millions of claims but we do have some manual processes that need to be eliminated and we are always working on innovative solutions for these challenging scenarios. Whether it be products or new services, we spend a lot of time on research. We do about 10 patents a week and have invested around $1.8 bn in R&D and we have in total visit www.dqindia.com

filed around 55,000 patents over the years. Our research cuts across a spectrum, from transportation infrastructure to toll gate to parking lot management. We use innovative image processing that automates the whole lot of processes and brings in high degree of efficiency and management. The Xerox Research Centre India is one of 5 global centers we have. Researchers from our center collaborate closely with their peers in the US and Europe, who in turn actively participate in Open Innovation partnerships in India. These research partnerships cover a broad range of topics including cloud computing, services marketplace design, multilingual technology development, personalized information delivery, video based patient monitoring and rural technology initiatives.

India as a market

We are seeing spectacular growth across our technology business and we are indeed an early mover in the managed print services. Our revenues here in India is definitely growing faster as compared to globally. On the research side, India is emerging as a key hub with some key innovation happening. The Xerox Research Centre India (XRCI) was inaugurated in March 2010 and the center’s mission is to capture innovation opportunities for Xerox in the emerging markets and to advance our position as the leading global provider of document and business process services. n SHRIKANTH G shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 31

PRODUCT INNOVATION

Can India Afford to Lag Behind? Product innovation in India has so far remained a mere lip service. But looking at the sluggish market conditions, rising competition, and increasing US restrictions, India has to innovate, or perish

s the Indian IT industry matures and moves up the value chain, the next logical step would be to invest significantly in research and development activities. It may not be a good idea to rest on our laurels as competition from countries such as China is only going to heat up and the quicker we warm up to the fact ‘innovate or perish’, the better we would be able to continue our leadership in this sector. Innovation has to be the next ‘mantra’ for companies in India. The focus of most Indian and multi-national companies has been to leverage India as a source of low-cost resources, typically following a model of setting up the base sighting cost advantage as the primary reason followed by attempts to tap the Indian talent for research and setting up an exports center of value added goods and services. Here lies the key; most firms both Indian and MNC talk of value addition or in other words, minor modifications in either processes or the existing product range. Product innovation pretty much remained a lip service and the efforts soon turned 32 | May 15, 2013

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HOW TO RIDE OVER THE TSUNAMI OF DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES The perfect storm is being created. Never before have had so many technologies colluded to disrupt and change the landscape of many industries. The BPO industry (earlier called as the IT-enabled industry) being a close cousin of the tech services industry is no different. Especially, when we are talking about the convergence of IT services and BPO, the technology forces have a direct impact.

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PRODUCT INNOVATION to customizing the product to suit specific target markets.

Developing an Innovative Spirit

Though India can pride itself as the cradle of all civilizations and can boast of innovation for several thousands of years in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and sciences, the story ever since independence has been different. Caught up in virtual stampede to develop and address the growing aspirations of the population, India plunged headlong into creating an industrial base for itself on borrowed and sometimes home grown technology. This spurred the demand for engineering and science graduates, and thus the birth of the premier institutions in the country. However the emphasis was more on rote learning and much less on creativity and innovation. The root of the lack of innovative spirit can also be attributed to the education system that lays more emphasis on speed and accuracy and very little on creative thinking. The R&D spend in India amongst most IT services companies continues to be a fraction of the total budget. Truth to be told, that most firms invest more in getting their processes right, which is not necessarily wrong and which is keeping up with the times and industry practices, where process efficiencies continue to be the main drivers. Most firms continue to lack a clear product strategy and it is most often times ‘luck by chance’.

Some Grey Areas

Usually product development is not given its due, with companies engaging resources in transition (in between projects) and on bench for this activity. A concerted effort seems to be missing with regards to innovation and product strategy. The other problem is also to do with marketing spend that is required to make a product successful and reach the 34 | May 15, 2013

Most firms continue to lack a clear product strategy and it is most often ‘luck by chance’. Usually product development is not given its due and a concerted effort seems to be missing with regards to innovation target customers. Having said that, it is not totally gloomy out there and there are many examples of successful products from India, however, this is just scratching the surface. In this context, the industry, academia partnership cannot be over emphasized. In the West, industry and academia partnerships are routine, which set the tone for cutting-edge research. There is an urgent need for these sectors to come together and take up joint research activities.

iSpirit to Play a Crucial Role

The timing of the formation of a think tank by a group of 30-odd Nasscom members christened iSpirit, could not have come at a more opportune time. India has a vast pool of resources, which can develop products for the education, retail, banking, and financial services sectors. Apps developed for various smartphone devices are proof of this talent base. There are many such developers in many towns and cities across India and catering to SMB enterprises. The association can play a pivotal role in giving the platform and the big picture to the talent. Further, the domestic product companies probably require a voice at the government level related to

product patents, taxation, VAT, etc. With IT services companies both Indian and foreign MNCs reporting less than favorable results and projecting reduced guidance for the year ahead and the US increasingly looking inward and adapting restrictive trade practices with regards to movement of services in the form of H1B cap, hiking the visa fee, etc, it is imperative that the emphasis must shift to creating and developing frameworks and products to sustain the India IT growth story. In this regard, Indian MNC services companies and the product companies must look to collaborate with MNC product companies and forge partnerships for conducting the next wave of research and product development and adapt jointly GoTo-Market strategies. For India to truly emerge as a global software product player, it calls for a concerted effort on the part of the industry, associations, and the government. The nascent product development industry in India needs encouragement and the government must re-visit some of the taxation policies to encourage product companies and induce them to invest more in R&D. Apart from looking at taxation and VAT government policies need to be simpler and it should also relax the transfer pricing mechanism guidelines, which would encourage big MNCs to invest more in setting up R&D centers in India. All these measures would provide the much needed impetus and a platform for research within India itself for the thousands of engineering and science graduates. n

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SRINI JOSYULA

The author is director, IT services, DST Worldwide Services, India maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

APPLICATIONS

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

What is Changing the Face of SCM? Cloud computing, social media, among others are some of the hottest tech trends affecting OEM supply chains

or the past 30 years, modernized technology has been applied to make supply chains increasingly more efficient. And, as with most things, supply chains and technology share one constant ‘change’. Throughout this constantly changing landscape, most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) continue to focus on new technologies that can help take their supply chains to the next level. As companies increasingly use their supply chain to compete and gain market share, spending and activity in this area are notably on the upswing. Technology and process upgrades at forward-thinking companies clearly show that supply chain excellence is more widely accepted as an element of overall business strategy. There are many technological trends that will define the supply chain efficiency of OEMs. Here are 6, which are the flavors and will change the future.

Getting RoI with Efficient ERP Usage

As supply chain networks have become more complex, the need for greater and improved supply chain technology solutions has become critical. Enterprise resource 36 | May 15, 2013

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planning (ERP) and best-of-breed supply chain management (SCM) solution providers have made significant investments in developing solutions to address the needs of manufacturing and distribution companies. With the economy slowing down, many companies will learn more about the capabilities of their existing ERP to utilize its yet untapped potential.

Proliferation of Mobile Devices and Applications

Traditional logistics and supply chain operations are slowly but surely giving way to more streamlined mobile processes that rely heavily on wireless devices and applications to operate at peak efficiency levels around the clock and around the world. If there’s a technology that’s helping to get real-time visibility in a supply chain, it’s mobile devices and the software that makes them tick. The capabilities of both have progressed significantly over the last decade, with even the most basic cellular phones now including GPS functionality, text messaging capabilities, and application functionality. Several technology-agnostic mobile application platforms have been developed to help suppliers extend their enterprise, supply chain, and commercial applications to mobile devices. We will see a very fast movement towards mobile devices replacing legacy systems and mobile applications becoming even more sophisticated.

Highlights

are going for full cloud solutions. Cloud computing offers SCM functions in an efficient, scalable, reliable, and secure manner. Today cloud computing has arrived and has better RoI than inhouse solutions. For SMEs this is a no-brainer.

End-to-end visibility has been a holy grail for SCM solutions. Many tried but no one was able to provide a ‘glass’ (read transparent) supply chain. All partners in the supply chain from retailers through raw material providers must constantly collaborate on what events are occurring, the data behind those events and how they can execute as a unified group to respond to the challenges as they unfold. Solving a problem by pushing costs to another supply chain partner is an antiquated proposition as companies realize that cost shifting is not a sustainable, competitive solution.

Demand Forecasting Using Social Media

More Sophisticated and Actionable Analytic Solutions

Traditional logistics and supply chain operations are slowly but surely giving way to more streamlined mobile processes If there is one thing these trends have in common it is that having constant feedback and control over supply chain functions

Although most supply chain organizations still prefer on-premises or hosted applications, interest in cloud-based SCM technology is growing, especially for certain functions within SCM. Where large enterprises are opting for hybrid solutions, on the other side SMEs

One of the greatest challenges that complex supply chains of the companies face are the accurate forecasting and demand planning. In this context, the social media can be leveraged effectively to analyze customer data and achieve more insight on forecasting, planning, scheduling, and inventory management. Social media helps in bringing real-time data in terms of the percentage likes or dislikes posted by users of a social media site. Also the informal interaction enabled through social media helps consumers to express their candid views about a product. Social media not only could help build leaner supply chains but also help in bringing companies closer to their customers. Since social media is something that is used by majority of consumers on a daily basis, it is slowly evolving as the most powerful tool to know the current demand trends of products. In my opinion, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter should seriously look at integrating big data from their social platforms into supply chain and ERP solutions. If they do not, someone else will do it and make billions.

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Cloud Computing

Tracking an End-to-End Visibility

Big data is a big IT story now. And combining the data of multiple supply chain partners, turning that data into information and being able to react and execute accordingly requires a lot of data. Big data solutions combined with complex event processing (CEP) solutions are being used more than ever this year to digest the enormous magnitude of available data and turn it into executable actions. Leveraging these tools with supply chain visibility solutions will quickly become a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have’ as companies utilizing these tools set the bar for the new normal in supply chain performance. Thus, having constant feedback and control over supply chain functions is key to doing business in today’s ever-changing environment. For this reason, these trends are likely to continue into 2013 and beyond. n

HITENDRA CHATURVEDI

The author is founder and CEO, GreenDust maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 37

BIG DATA

What Makes SAP HANA tick? Dataquest takes a closer look at if and how HANA is impacting real-time analytics SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR

shobhas@cybermedia.co.in

he colossal amount of big data is becoming tougher to handle for organizations. What can help the organizations crunch data and help in real-time analytics at least one order of magnitude faster? CIOs today are beginning to rely more on what is called in-memory computing (IMC). In-memory computing (IMC) has for some time now been letting user organizations develop applications that run advanced queries or perform complex transactions on very large data sets faster, and is far more scalable than when using conventional architectures.

IMC Gaining Mileage

Organizations are transitioning to this by storing application data in a computer’s main DRAM, rather than on electromagnetic disks. The main cause of rapidly adopting IMC is the ongoing maturation of application infrastructure technologies and the cost of semiconductor technologies going southward, say analysts. “The relentless declines in DRAM and NAND flash memory prices, the advent of solid-state drive technology and the maturation of specific software platforms have enabled IMC to become more affordable and impactful for IT organizations,” says Massimo Pezzini, vice president and Gartner Fellow. IMC technology is now more affordable and more proven. 38 | May 15, 2013

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“We had to go in for design changes for some of the reports as well because they were not as per the standard for HANA and these took about 2 months time. We are still doing the design changes” —Subodh Dubey CIO, Usha International

“SAP HANA supports full HA scenarios and standby nodes in case of hardware failures. SAP HANA writes a copy of what is happening in memory to disk” —Harish Ganesan co-founder & CTO, 8KMiles.com

Competing IMC Applications

With more than 50 software vendors in the IMC application infrastructure market, one such platform and solutions is the SAP HANA which banks on in-memoryenabling application infrastructure technologies and supports in-memory database management systems (SAP HANA DB), etc. “Growing popularity of cloud and price reductions on SSDs/RAM makers have led to the emergence of new breed of NoSQL and inmemory computing softwares in the last few years. SAP HANA is one of them,” says Harish Ganesan, cofounder & CTO, 8KMiles.com and an expert in big data applications. When Mark Hurd, co-president, Oracle recently took a dig at SAP’s HANA being their “most innovative database - then good luck to them”, it did not come as a surprise. Amongst competing in-memory databases for online transaction processing and analytics workloads, IBM solidDB—a DB2 front-ended high-speed database suite, Oracle’s In-Memory Database Cache, a performance extension of Oracle 11g, etc, rank close with their innovations. Comparable to HANA tools DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

for analytics is Oracle’s Exalytics. However, Rajamani Srinivasan, vice president, applications sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent chooses to ignore competition, “We currently do not have any ERP or business suite application vendor who offers their application on in-memory or a real-time database like HANA. Lot of them claim that they have in-memory computing, but the complexity and the various levels of maturity exists—they offer more as an analytics engine which is what SAP was doing in 2010, which was the 1st generation when SAP started, but SAP moved on to offer multiple things; one of them being to offer the transformational business suite to be certified on HANA which is not something anybody else offers at this point of time. Eg, Oracle application or Fusion, I have not heard them offering Exadata, for example. It can be as a side car for Oracle apps but, I have not heard, frankly.” HANA is making it a battle of it. It was the biggest revenue yielding product line and fastest growing product line for SAP globally. “Second year of HANA we did some $350 mn (US dollars) globally. It is the fastest growing segment for SAP,” reveals Srinivasan. visit www.dqindia.com

Seeking Faster Analysis

A recent IDC global survey of over 750 IT managers and business managers on challenges they face with separate platforms for transactions and analytics, found 40% required more than 2 days to prepare financial data for reporting. Respondents chose ‘faster access to information’ as the factor that would have the most positive impact on their organizations. ‘Faster analysis’ was chosen as the third most impactful change. One implication of HANA’s ability to work with a full database in-memory for analytics is that KPI computations can be completed faster with improved query performance when compared to disk based databases. “One of the biggest advantages that I see in SAP HANA is the ability to aggregate and update large volumes of data in near-real-time ie, it can handle both transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) processing effectively. Even AWS has a version ported to its cloud infrastructure called SAP HANA One recently, which enables companies of any size to deploy business-critical or consumer-facing applications that can leverage the power of in-memory transactional and analytical data processing offered by SAP HANA,” says Ganesan. Better utilization of current applications is another. “One benefit is that adoption of BI has tremendously increased; we are having 75-80% utilization of HANA for BI purpose and most of the users are now showing productivity increase in terms of creating reports from this rather than creating like earlier using excel etc. Now they are doing it spontaneously, so the report which used to get generated in half an hour earlier is now getting created in a minute,” says Subodh Dubey, CIO, Usha International, sharing his experience on implementing HANA. “Asian Paints is also working on a plan to see how they can integrate. May 15, 2013 | 39

BIG DATA For eg, their CRM has been integrated with social media. Today from Facebook they get lot of data into their CRM. They are looking at how they can put it on HANA and make it run,” Srinivasan adds. Other key features that keep it going are: HANA has progressed to running on servers with 100 TB main memory powered by IBM by May 2012. Compatibility with other database products. As a database agnostic company, it also partners with vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft for business applications. Its own offering, SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere, is also compatible with HANA. “SAP is advancing its real-time database capabilities by integrating key Sybase database technologies such as SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere into its comprehensive enterprise information platform,” Carl Olofson, research vice president for application development and deployment, IDC stated recently.

“The new version of SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere technologies work in combination with solutions such as SAP HANA decreasing administrative complexity, allowing SAP to enable practical, easy to use enterprise data delivery to users anywhere, any time,” adds Olofson. “From a pure database management standpoint, our entire business suite landscape has been certified on HANA. HANA can be implemented as a standalone for advanced analytics capabilities which can be done in a non business suite environment,” says Srinivasan.

What about Glitches?

One of the important questions people ask regarding in-memory computing systems is what happens when the server (power) fails? “SAP HANA supports full HA scenarios and standby nodes in case of hardware failures. SAP HANA writes a copy of what is happening in memory to disk, using a combination of save-points and log files. So

you can DR using disk mirroring to an alternative data center as well,” says Ganesan. However, there is another challenge too in terms of adapting design changes while adopting HANA. “One challenge I can observe is that, because SAP HANA simplifies the way how applications can be architected, it sometimes requires a radical change in the design philosophy for the enterprise architects,” Ganesan adds. “Yes, we had to go in for design changes for some of the reports as well because they were not as per the standard for HANA and these reports we had to make the design change and that took about 2 months time. We are still doing the design changes, it is a continuous process and how to create new and analytics based reports, etc,” reiterates Subodh Dubey, CIO, Usha International. With the clock ticking since launch, HANA is thus beginning to impact analytics, benefiting organizations - if not real-time, at least in near-real-time. n

HANA is available in 2 formats—for organizations which do not have any SAP footprint and want to deploy HANA for analytics and secondly, organizations which use business suite comprising ERP, CRM, supply chain, etc. These are business suite solutions now being certified on HANA. Enterprises who are using some of these applications can also be using HANA as a real-time database for SAP business application. Dataquest queried Rajamani Srinivasan, vice president, applications sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent on how the enterprises have responded to HANA. Excerpts —Rajamani Srinivasan

vice president, applications sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent

‘India is one of the countries where HANA adoption has been the fastest’ 40 | May 15, 2013

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value add for its business. It primarily wanted to run real-time material resource planning (MRP) using SAP ERP. That is why the company decided to move to SAP HANA and this gives a lot of business value in terms of being real-time on its inventory and material planning. What business value does HANA offer to the customers? Please give some examples to illustrate... When people move to HANA, from a value stand point, there are 3 things that we want to give: being smarter, being faster, and being simpler. Normally when we talk of big data implementation, how fast data can be crunched in milliseconds, etc. Being smarter means organizations can innovate, with focus on unsolvable business problems. They can initiate new processes, channels, and solutions that never existed. For instance, in machine readable data that exists, equipment generates a lot of information. We can integrate this with lot of other multiple sources of data that can come in; we can integrate with social media. Lot of this data which lies inside and outside organizations today, can be crunched and you can form new processes. A machinery manufacturing company wants to understand prowess of real-time service to organizations; what it can do is, through the cloud, whatever data it receives from the customer’s side, it can predict and give a service to the customer saying, “This spare part needs to be replaced”, etc and provide a proactive service to the customer. Utility companies can do smart metering which is an initiative adopted by them across India, even in Karnataka there is a pilot of smart metering that is happening. Being faster means you can have real-time insights—the transactional and analytics in one system. Earlier, all ERP used to have a world DB system, data warehouse DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

For customers who have to move to HANA, whether they deploy it for analytics, or enterprise applications, there is a very clear business case that requires to be built for analytics, etc. Through HANA, it is one single database, where we have fused the analytical and the old transactional database into one database which offers information in real-time. MRP, CPG companies can run real-time promotion planning, they can react to a competitor’s action on a real-time basis. Being simpler is about simplifying the architecture through HANA— one single database. We also offer simple query user interfaces—interactive in nature. We also offer predictive analytics, mobile offering—imagine a sales person at a customer site wants to query about something, through a mobile handset he gets a 360 degree view; he can always get the information. The whole thing is delivered in a simple way. What is the benefit in terms of cost? For a new customer who buys SAP HANA database, the pricing is exactly the same as someone wants to buy SAP ERP, or say an Oracle database. It doesn’t cost anything different, it is exactly the same. For customers who have already bought SAP ERP, who have been running on other database and want to move to HANA, there is a different pricing mechanism. We knock off the price they have already paid visit www.dqindia.com

towards the whole database and the differential price is what they pay to SAP. For customers who have to move to HANA, whether they deploy it for analytics, or enterprise applications, there is a very clear business case that requires to be built. Can you specify the areas and avenues where the improvement comes in? Absolutely. There are different situations, depending upon the usage. For example, someone who runs material resource planning (MRP), if he runs on SAP ERP—the benefits will be mentioned to the customer depending on the MRP runs, usage, etc. If someone runs it for a process like finance—it will have accounting and finance close, how quickly the finance gets closed and how efficiently the receivable management can be managed. We have observed that in many organizations there is a time lag in terms of getting a realtime view. While having a real-time view, on the basis of our experience what sort of receivables can they cut (benefits). Also, what sort of relevance an organization has depending on its focus for receivables. Then, it can also look at treasury management, it can look at payables, it can look at analyzing its profitability. There are multiple things it can look at when an organization is into finances. For example, how a manufacturing company through material planning can reduce stockouts; how can it predict/demand, how it can reduce inventory and safety stocks, etc. There are these parameters that we offer and are tailor made for every organization depending upon its usage of SAP and then give it a costbenefit analysis. That gives a lot of clarity to the customers so that they can understand what and how they will benefit by adopting HANA. n SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR shobhas@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 41

ENTERPRISE APPS

‘Growth of workplace mobility has increased the demand for business apps’ With the trend of mobility being adopted across enterprises more rapidly, there are now specific tablet/smartphone versions of enterprise apps being offered by vendors such as Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, etc. Unlike other mobile manufacturers, BlackBerry is not much known to support too many apps—either enterprise or consumer, in fact it draws flak quite often from its users. Dataquest spoke to Sunil Lalvani, MD, BlackBerry India, to take a reality check.

oes BlackBerry (PlayBook tablet/ smartphones) support any enterprise apps versions? The growth of workplace mobility has increased the demand for business applications and thus the opportunity for enterprise developers. BlackBerry does support enterprise app versions by vendors. For instance: With the Cisco WebEx app on BlackBerry 10 we are able to schedule and join Cisco WebEx meetings, as well as invite and view attendees, chat, screen share, and more. Cisco WebEx has become a key business and collaboration tool, and on BlackBerry 10, it’s one of the key apps that helps to connect with colleagues to get more done while on the go. Citrix Podio on BlackBerry 10 smartphones is built on HTML5, providing a powerful work collaboration platform that enables you to work the way you want to, where you want to, and using tools that perfectly fit your team’s projects and workflows. Citrix Podio on Blackberry 10 brings collaboration and business processes together through workspaces and apps that are powerful, collaborative, and social alternatives to spreadsheets, documents, and email. SAP has developed enterprisegrade finance apps on the BB10 platform using the SAP Mobile Platform. With the SAP Mobile Platform, the mobile app development community can build apps that can run on 42 | May 15, 2013

distinguish an app from a consumer app and make selections.

—Sunil Lalvani

managing director, BlackBerry India

both the new BB10 and the existing BlackBerry platforms and devices. How can a user differentiate and select between enterprise apps and other consumer apps available on the tablet/smartphone? An enterprise app is designed to fulfill an organization’s business and industry needs. These apps intend to drive business productivity of an organization. For instance, for an office requirement—an app that will help to view and operate Microsoft office files, powerpoint excel, emails will serve the purpose. On the other side, consumer apps are designed not only to inform and boost productivity, they also act as a source for entertainment. Depending upon the use and requirement, a consumer can easily

Can you share some specific instances? Some specific enterprise apps are— for healthcare, MphRx Connect offers cloud-based and mobile-based solutions for storing, retrieving, and sharing patient health records among hospitals, physicians, and patients across geographies on mobile devices (all BB platforms) and web interfaces; Deltecs Infotech, the pioneers in delivering mobile learning solutions, developed the Mlearning App called Drona; a mobile learning tool that transforms the learning content into mobile applications that can be analyzed. In the retail space, Perfetti van Melle India (‘PVM India’) manufactures candies, the chewing gum company deployed BlackBerry smartphones, instead of laptops, and software license improved employee productivity. BlackBerry BES 10 enables organizations to embrace consumerization by delivering a comprehensive business and productivity app portfolio, an enterprise-grade app management framework and a lowcost app development environment. BlackBerry offers loads of consumers apps for information and entertainment, some of them include the IPL mailer app, travel app mailer, Gameloft app, Whats app, etc. n

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DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Q&A Today, 67-85% of information in enterprises is unstructured and includes PDF documents, CAD diagrams, models, emails, contracts, case records, templates and a whole host of data that is created during every day operations. One avenue in enterprise applications is that of Enterprise Information Management (EIM) that helps process and manage information coming in various avenues such as cloud, social media and mobility. Graham Pullen, senior vice president-APJ, OpenText was recently in New Delhi as part of a larger entourage from Canada holding trade talks with the Indian government and exploring opportunities in the G2G space as well. OpenText is a Canada based leading provider of Enterprise Information Management (EIM) solutions and already holds a 17% market share in the ECM market (source: Gartner). Dataquest spoke to Pullen to gain insights on OpenText and its EIM strategies. Excerpts —Graham Pullen

senior vice president-APJ, OpenText

‘Our quest is to be number one in all the pillars of the EIM space’

hat has OpenText been doing in the EIM space? OpenText has been around now for 28 odd years. We obviously started life solving all document and content problems for organizations, where companies didn’t have document management systems in those days, of course. Now, I think the document management of choice would be SharePoint from a Microsoft perspective. But we started even far back, designing the company or building the company to not solve just document management problems. We built a repository; we built a platform that could manage both the structured and unstructured information such that organizations, whether they be top-tier commercial banks, DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 43

Q&A oil & gas companies, telecommunications companies or governments could manage information flowing through their organizations and in a secure manner. So now we’re in a world where social networking and mobility have become topics of discussion and we still manage those environments in the same secure manner that we always did when it was really a laptop or a computer that connected to a server with the repository. What are the main opportunities you see in this market? For us, fundamentally, EIM’s addressable market is made up of 5-6 opportunities. The first is where we started, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), that includes everything from input management, ICR, OCR, scanning, imaging, ingesting information into your corporate repositories, making it intelligent with metadata; putting attributes and attaching it to things. Organizations were struggling because their content, their value on content was spread around flat files systems that they had no control over. And therefore, that not only exposed the companies to risk on where that information went to or when an employee left it, they would completely lose everything. The 2nd pillar to EIM is Business Process Management (or BPM). Business process management or business process improvement is getting a lot more specific, like case management process management. And this is where OpenText has been taking that the Global 360 (G360) acquisition that we made and the MetaStorm acquisitions were two very well regarded in BPM solutions. Then you have Customer Experience Management (CEM) where our customers are trying to get closer to their customers. Like, a telecommunications company or a bank seeing a single view of its customers. 44 | May 15, 2013

Being able to provide that single view of the organization and being able to recognize areas of interest from your customers is really important

So being able to provide that single view of the organization and being able to recognize areas of interest from your customers is really important. The other key opportunities are in areas of Information and Exchange, Discovery (of data) etc. We are putting a lot of effort into building semantic search capabilities for instance, that enables people to find information in that vast and deep web of information in more of a semantic way, put it in context to the problem that they are trying to solve or why they are doing the searches. So it’s not Google or Yahoo orientated. This is definitely using social capabilities as well. We are in good shape in those 5 pillars. And the sixth one that we are creating is a bit that glues all of that together, we call it InfoFusion. A large organization already has multiple repositories of structured or unstructured: Oracle, SAP, SharePoint or PeopleSoft environments, which is now bought by Oracle - there are so many buckets of information around a corporate at the moment. OpenText has built InfoFusion that enables you to enter those buckets of information and manage them and control them in the same way as if it were in the OpenText environment.

And that gives a lot of organizations either the ability to transition over time or the ability to leave things as they are. If they are not broken, don’t try to fix them, as they say. But leverage the information in them. Which are the challenges that CIOs face and EIM can help in? The 3 main disrupters currently are cloud, social networking, and mobility. Cloud, CIOs need to handle with sensitivity as cloud is completely redefining the server, the multiprocessing and millions of transactions in the cloud, for this OpenText is now helping build easy links from infrastructure to cloud (EDI). There are 2 mn customers in the cloud using OpenText. In case of social networking, crowd sourcing resulting in collaboration of productivity, knowledge management, and a social environment is happening and for this CIOs are asking for OpenText collaboration for this to happen in a secured, managed manner. In terms of mobility, server, productivity and cloud environment have changed in terms of business and in this scenario, how do we manage devices is another challenge. Apart from these, the weakest area and opportunity for improvement is information governance and compliance. EIM can help CIOs address these. Plans going forward... So, we are about Enterprise Information Management. We intend to be number 1, but to be number 1 we have to be number 1 in every one of those 5 pillars. Our quest is to do that within the next 3 years. Right now we are number 1 in only a couple of those pillars. n

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ENTERPRISE IT TRENDS

Aligning with Market Realities

A survey conducted by E&Y and CIO Klub shows that the current economic volatility is pushing CIOs to look within and help businesses improve their bottomline

recent study by Ernst & Young and the CIO Klub highligted that ‘Improving the bottom line’ is the key focus for Indian CIOs in FY13-14. In its 5th edition, the annual report “Enterprise IT trends and investment 2013” is based on the survey of over 180 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from various companies across major industries. The findings of the survey over the last five years highlight how CIO priorities have changed in response to the fluctuating economic scenario globally and in India. In 2009, cost reduction was a priority with shrinking markets and declining demand and in 2010, the mood was cautiously optimistic in tandem with visible growth for the year ahead. In 2011, in spite of the slow down, the mood was optimistic and organizations planned to take the plunge for large IT investments. However, due to continued uncertain economic environment, the focus in 2012 shifted to create a lean, agile and resilient IT function. This year the focus has shifted outward and CIOs are concentrating on bringing value to the business. While CIOs generally help businesses improve the top line, the current economic volatility is pushing DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 45

ENTERPRISE IT TRENDS them to look within and help businesses increase their bottomline. Devendra Parulekar, Advisory Partner, Ernst & Young said, “Balance of Power is shifting to customers as consumerization of technology gains momentum. More than 60% of CIOs plan to focus on customer-centric initiatives thereby enhancing the customer experience and providing them with easy and effective interface to collaborate with the business. Customer-centricity in turn is closely linked to customer relationship management, social media and enterprise mobility.” Says Shirish Gariba, president, CIO KLUB. “The CEO cockpit view of the business is expected to drive mobility evolution. 62% of organizations are likely to implement, upgrade or evaluate mobile applications in the coming year.” CIOs are working more and more towards enhancing the customer experience.. Additionally, this IT enablement agenda is likely to be driven by business intelligence, analytics, budgeting, planning, consolidation, business workflows and mobile-based applications. Cloud is expected to bridge the gap between consumerization of technology and the traditional enterprise application world. Increasing number of businesses are moving into the virtual world, supported by new technologies and driven by the need to lower their IT infrastructure and administrative costs while adopting a flexible and scalable model for IT. Though adoption of cloud services has gained impetus, the progress is still slow. This is not surprising, as the number of risks and challenges identified by respondents have remained fairly consistent over the years. Like any other transformational initiative, adoption of cloud also faces internal resistance as handing over the IT infrastructure and data security controls is an inherently uncomfortable 46 | May 15, 2013

Top Priorities for CIOs in 2013-14 Being customer-centric and enhancing customer experience by providing customers with easy and effective interface to collaborate with the business Transforming IT and enabling business processes to create efficient operations Building resilience in IT to ensure business continuity Investing in enterprise mobility to provide flexibility to personnel in executing business processes Investing in business intelligence to leverage structured and unstructured information for decision making Securing the IT environment by investing in information security technologies and protecting the organization from internal or external threats

situation for most senior managements. Another decisive factor for the slow adoption is the increased bandwidth and network costs that somewhat neutralizes the savings in internal infrastructure costs. Improving effectiveness of the IT function to enhance the experience of internal customers and IT-enable their requirements is another important area that is expected to occupy the CIO mind-share. This has been on the participant CIOs’ agenda for the last three years. However, the focus is greater this year, with 52% of the respondents citing this as a priority, as compared to 42% in the previous year. Focus on improving IT internally is consistent across the size of the organizations and sectors. In FY13-14, information security continues to feature in the top priority list. However, the security investments are oriented towards reducing data risk posted by the consumerization of technology. The survey reveals that organizations have already taken steps to address

external threats, such as external hacking and are now focusing security investments in protection from internal threats. Mobile applications deployment is expected to gain momentum in 2013-14. 62% of respondents are likely to implement, upgrade or evaluate mobile applications in the coming year. More than 35% of the respondents, who have either implemented or are evaluating enterprise mobility with BYOD, are expected to consider mobile device management (MDM) and network access control (NAC) technologies to protect corporate data and mitigate the risk of unauthorized disclosure. The survey also reveals that business leaders are extremely cautious with their investment plans this year, especially with the current uncertainties in the policy and regulatory environment and the spiraling costs. IT spend increase will be restricted to address inflation and rising costs. However, the outlook differs from sector to sector. For example, the automotive sector is not expected to witness high capital expenditure; 47% of the respondents from this sector expect the capex to decrease as compared to the previous year and 33% expect it to remain constant. On the other hand, the pharmaceuticals and life sciences sector respondents have overwhelmingly voted to increase the capital and operational expenditure; 83% of the respondents have cited an increase in capital expenditure while 67% of the respondents have cited an increase in operational expenditure. It is surprising to note that this sector had adopted a very cautious approach the previous year. Respondents from the retail and consumer products sector have recognized business continuity as their priority, and 60% of the respondents have confirmed this. n

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GOVERNMENT

Uttarakhand Lacks IT Vision While the state government projects are working fine, the central government projects are in limbo Sandhya Malhotra

sandhyam@cybermedia.co.in

ue to lack of connectivity, IT penetration in Uttarakhand has been limited. The geographical terrain and low population density are the constraints because of which problems of connectivity are encountered in the hilly regions. Despite all these factors, the digitization process in most of the government departments are gradually picking up. For IT industry the high literacy rate and availability of English speaking young resources in large numbers (because of major cities of the state being traditional educational hubs), the state is a good destination for IT/ITeS/BPO/ KPO industry. In addition, the state has a year round serene climate, low cost of living, good quality of life, and industrial peace. Land is available in IT Park at a fraction of the cost as compared to metros. Setting up enterprise in Uttarakhand therefore becomes a very viable alternative. While it is difficult to chart the exact spending pattern, the budget allocation for major IT projects easily makes government the largest user of IT in the coming years. At the center of the government’s technology agenda is the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), for which an estimated `40,000 crore has been earmarked in both central and state government budgets. Many of these projects are expected to be rolled out during 2009. By conservative estimates, 80% of the allocated budget will be used by 2014. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 47

GOVERNMENT Apart from the allocated budget for the NeGP, the state budget for implementing IT solutions hover between `100 crore to `200 crore for large states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and between `50 crore and `100 crore for smaller states like Uttarakhand. An estimated `1,300 crore is expected to be spent over the next 3 years on 34 state-wide data centers and close to 200 support data centers of major government organizations. In Uttarakhand, the booming education vertical and a strong government sector in the capital of Dehradun is becoming a fast growing PC market in the country. However, the health of IT industry in the state has been growing steadily, spurred by an increasing focus of the government on IT and increasing awareness among home and enterprise consumers. With state and central government offices being located here, there is a large demand from the government side as well, constituting about one-third of Dehradun’s PC consumption. ONGC, which has its head office in Dehradun, and Survey of India is a major buyer. Apart from the government, offices of many of the top IT companies are here, which also are routine buyers. There has been a significant transformation in recent times. “Six to seven years ago, the IT sector was quite low here. Today, nearly all IT distributors have their reach in this place, resulting in regular supply of IT goods. However, latest technologies like VoIP and Wi-Max are not available and will still take some time to reach here,” observes Nitin Jain of Dreamz Craft Infosolutions, Dehradun. Vikas Dewan, CEO, strategic marketing, a company to reckon with in terms of projects for IT and OA infrastructure in various government, PSUs, educational institutions, industry and retail, is also a major supplier to the government. He recalls, 48 | May 15, 2013

Some projects undertaken by channel partners in current fiscal Setting up of data center for the state finance department and deployment of real time network of 700 thin clients, across the state on the SWAN network Implementation and on-site support for 1000 notebooks in a single campus in Doon Setting up a 1400+ node managed network in single campus and providing endto-end solution for desktops, workstations, EPOS solution, networking, and power conditioning in a single campus

“The IT wave in the state came post the formation of Uttarakhand state, in the year, 2000. Our company’s success was complimented by the political changes and economic growth. Dehradun became the epicenter for the businesses in newly formed state of Uttaranchal. To cope with the growth spurt we took financial aid from commercial institution in 2002. In the same year, the state government formed IT friendly policies and initiated IT enabled projects.”

Govt-Channel Partner Cooperation

In Uttarakhand, several state driven IT projects either have reached to the state of completion or some new projects are expected to be rolled out soon, as in the last quarter of JFM 2013, which is government buying period just getting over and delivery of the new projects commencing soon. As government is the biggest buyer of IT products followed by corporates and SMBs, the role of local system integrators/solution providers becomes significant as it offers immense opportunities to the partners. In the Uttarakhand state, government follows a well defined transparent procurement policy (Uttarakhand

Procurement Rules). In addition, guidelines if any issued by DeitY, Governement of India for any project funded by DeitY are also followed. Under certain conditions procurement on DGS&D rate contract is also done. According to Sanjay Mathur, task manager, IT development agency, (ITDA), IT department, Government of Uttarakhand, “The state works closely with the local channel partners, generally all major IT OEMs interact both directly and through their partners. Post-sales support is a major area where local IT channel partners play a significant role.” In the words of Dewan, “In the state, Dehradun is a hub for government projects. Being the capital, most of the projects get allocated and sectioned in the capital. Moreover, the local fulfillment of the supply of any hardware and software are routed through the partners. The state IT rate contract made us the leading player in IT and OA business in the state. Having said that in the current state of affairs, despite being Uttaranchal’s capital, the state Government’s role in sprucing up the IT sector has been close to zilch. Like in other states, the government could have generated IT awareness among the public. There has been no interaction of the government with neither the leaders of technology sector, nor with us.” On a sarcastic note, the channel partners rate the previous government as better than the present one. “The previous government used to promise a lot of things, but did nothing. This one doesn’t even say anything,” Dewan says.

Digitization at Government Departments

Talking about the IT digitization in government departments, Mathur informs, “In Uttarakhand, the entire treasury functions are online, today all employee and pensioner data are

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—Mukesh Bansal co-founder and CEO, Myntra

“The state works closely with the local channel partners, generally all major IT OEMs interact both directly and through their partners. Postsales support is a major area where local IT channel partners play a significant role”

“In the state, Dehradun is a hub for government projects. Being the capital, most of the projects get allocated and sectioned in the capital. Moreover, the local fulfillment of the supply of any hardware and software are routed through the partners” online. SMS service informs you of your salary and pension disbursements. For grievance handling ‘Samadhan’ portal offers you an online service. E-tendering has been started in the state.” Showing dissatisfaction on the e-tending process, Jain highlighted, “Starting out the e-tending process was a good move shown by the government, but the irony is pre-qualification criteria set by the government, which seizes the opportunities for the local partners. The government has set unrealistic criteria which does not allow smaller partners to participate in these opportunities.”

New Projects in the Pipeline

The state government plans to connect all the government offices to the UKSWAN. A massive capacity building exercise is being drawn out for the government employees. G2C services are to be offered through the CSCs in the rural areas. BackDATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

—Vaibhav Agarwal founder, Fab Furnish

end computerization for bringing services online will be taken up on a massive scale. The Government has already signed an MoU with Bharat Broad Band Network Limited for OFC connectivity to all the gram panchayats. People of Uttarakhand will get a smart ration card in February next year and enjoy the facilities of a computerized public distribution system. Off late, the government has announced computerization of foor and civil supplies department. In the next phase the entire supply chain will go online and issue of smart ration cards to beneficiaries will be taken up after a proper verification process in the state.

Growing Red Tapism

Fear of payment delays, unwillingness to give bribes, and red tapism are the biggest reasons why many partners are reluctant to pursue government business. Although there are quite a lot of visit www.dqindia.com

projects which are in the pipeline, but growing red-tapism is a major bottleneck before the IT vendors as well as for the partners. As per Jain, “Due to the laxity of the state government, many center government funded projects are yet to see the light of the day. Unlike our neighboring states like Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where the ICT in education project has reached the 4th stage but in Uttarakhand we are still crawling in the first stage. Such laid-back attitude of government is disappointing the overall IT industry and hence we are seeing the stage of slump in the market.” Agreeing to Jain, Dewan said, “As far as state funded project goes, we have been seeing IT refreshment in many government departments, wherein most of the center funded projects have been stuck with the state governments for last many years. Projects like ICT in education, roll out of SWAN to the end customers, transport and police modernization are in doll drums, which are in tune of `500-700 crore. The state government lacks long term IT vision and will power to make Uttarakhand a fastest growing state of India.” But many small partners who do not have a good track record of doing business with the government are reluctant to dive into the water again. “Our personal experience has been bad. Payments were held up for many months, and we had to shell out more than 50% of our margins as kick-backs to release the payments,” complains Deepak Singh Rathore of Himcom Systems from Haldwani. “Certain government rules have also been a bit of a challenge for partners. “When we deal with the government, we have to either give a bank guarantee for 10% of the bill value or collect the same value after the warranty period. It is very rare for a re-seller to have double-digit margins and meet such prerequisite,” concluded Jain. n May 15, 2013 | 49

E-GOVERNANCE

Rise of the Digital Citizen

Digital citizens are all over social media. The governments must be there too to connect with them

here are 2 prongs of possibilities for digital citizenship and e-governance. One is achieving efficiency in running business as usual for the administration and another easing processes for citizens. This is using the medium prescriptively: the technology solutions already exist, and it is a matter of re-engineering processes, people, organizations, and strategies to it. It represents the simple adoption of the existing best practices and technologies for execution, for example, an ERP implementation in a government agency, or enabling millions of citizens to file their taxes online. India has made giant strides in this domain ever since it launched its e-governance initiatives by improving public access to information and services, sharing data within and across organizations, and improving the efficiency of business processes. The push in e-governance was aided by the swift growth in internet and telecom usage by Indians. In May 2012, India reached a mobile-density of nearly 77%, just ahead of China’s 75%. Although it is not at 100%, like in the United States, or Brazil, or Russia, at 929.37 mn mobile phone subscribers, India is the second-largest telecom market in the world, right behind China’s 1.341 bn mobile users.

Huge Scope for Internet Penetration

We have about 130 mn internet users, of which only about 20 mn are broadband users. This actually means we are grossly under-penetrated, and we have a lot to look forward 50 | May 15, 2013

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to as we improve these numbers. In the recent words of a global CEO, “the sum of all that is this place is going to be rocking.” The other prong is entrepreneurial, imaginative. It challenges us, the citizens, and the government, to use these same means creatively to spur innovation and chart successes hitherto impossible. Startup Village, near Kochi, is one such exciting project. It is the country’s first telecom business incubator, representing the partnership between the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Technopark, and MobME Wireless. The initiative, modeled on the technology incubators in the Silicon Valley, aims to incubate 1,000 start-ups over 10 years and start the search for a potential billion dollar company from a college campus by 2020. Or the e-choupal initiative, which aims to cover more than 100,000 villages—or a sixth of rural India—and create more than 10 mn ‘e-farmers’ who harness knowledge to enhance their competitiveness in the global market. The project has already reached more than 3.5 mn farmers. As in anything in India, grand ideas tumble in the face of faulty execution, and the successful implementation of its myriad projects will be the cornerstone of India’s digital citizenship and the real test for our governments and our bureaucracy. The e-governance plans remain incomplete without penetration or actual utilization. Many of the service centers that have been setup in rural India must be refurbished, re-equipped, and training programs and propagation must be given weight to ensure full implementation of the e-governance initiatives. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Highlights India’s public policy must align with the needs and ambitions of its digital citizens or the increasing levels of their engagement with the government will suffer a setback The vision for public services of the future must be to increase engagement and ease processes, not to debilitate or limit its citizens in anyway

Civilians to Play a Crucial Role

It is no longer about what the government can do for itself and its citizens, but how citizens are impacting their governments. In large part, social media tools have ignited and channeled movements that have shaken political systems by allowing citizens to assert their expectations from the government. Even the fourth estate, the allseeing, all-reporting media, has enthusiastically embraced online social networking sites—most TV and radio channels, and publications, have twitter handles and Facebook pages that can report events as they happen, where they happen, and an interesting story becomes a trend in a matter of minutes thanks to millions of sharing, re-tweeting netizens.

The Government should Connect

There are opportunities for the government in turn to direct this relationship through social media itself and propel its governance agenda. Digital citizens are all over social media. The governments must be there too to connect with them. The Planning Commission recently hosted a Google Hangout, a modern day town hall meeting, to address the 12th 5-Year Plan. And so did the finance minister after his Budget speech. Such tools are increasing the number of avenues for citizens visit www.dqindia.com

to participate in the governing process. This is in line with the findings of the recent Accenture Digital Citizen Pulse Survey that found that nearly 1 in 5 Indians surveyed identified no barriers that prevent digital interactions with the government. With more such initiatives, we can expect this number to go up. India’s public policy must align with the needs and ambitions of its digital citizens or the increasing levels of their engagement with the government will suffer a setback. It is still early days in the legislation of internet and technology in India, and we are yet to draft a comprehensive, forward-looking internet policy. But legal provisions such as ‘Section 66A’ of the Information Technology Act, which forbids ‘sending false and offensive messages through communication services’ and can lead to 3 years in jail, threaten to forge a divide between the progressive, informed Indians, and their presumably passé representatives. The mass outrage at the arrest of 2 young girls in Mumbai expressing their political sentiments on a social networking site was clear indication of the prevailing mindset; inelegant censorship of a free internet is unjust, encroaching, and amoral. This is not to say there is no need for regulation at all; but there should be an intelligent, evolving, minimal way to do so. The Mumbai Police recently established the country’s first social media lab in a police force, with the aim to monitor and learn trending topics so as to systematically plan for law and order. It remains to be seen which way the tide will turn with this new initiative, but one can hope for a positive outcome. n

NILAYA VERMA

The author is managing director, health and public service practice, Accenture Management Consulting maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 51

E-GOV SNAPSHOTS

DataWind Completes Aakash-2 Supply 67,000 Hectares

ataWind has completed the supply of 100,000 Aakash low-cost computing access devices for IIT-Bombay (under the Ministry of Human Resources Development’s National Mission for Education). The project won by DataWind for the supply of Aakash-1 devices was subsequently modified to 98,000 Aakash-2 devices and 2,000 devices for Aakash-3, all at a price of `2,263 (currently $41.61). The Aakash-2 devices are, as claimed, the world’s lowest cost computing access devices, delivered

to IIT-Bombay with 12 months warranty and accessories . The devices utilize multi-touch projective capacitive touch-screens manufactured at India’s only touchscreen making facility in Amritsar. The devices are powered by a Cortex A8-1Ghz processor, and contain 512MB of RAM. Flash memory of 4GB can be supplemented by up to 32GB through its micro-SD card slot. In addition to embedded Wi-Fi, the Aakash-2 tablet computers support external 3G and EVDO dongles for mobile broadband data connectivity. Supporting Google’s Android 4.0 operating system, VGA camera, G-sensor, internal microphone, speakers, and headphone jack, the Aakash-2 is said to be a full-featured tablet computer intended to break the affordability barrier with the mission of bridging the digital divide. Commercially, the device is sold as the UbiSlate 7Ci

VMware Selected for Maha Gov Cloud

he Government of Maharashtra has selected VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology for its MahaGov Cloud. MahaGov Cloud is an initiative by the Directorate of Information Technology (DIT), the Government of Maharashtra, to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) to various state departments for their e-governance initiatives. The Government of Maharashtra has deployed VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director to virtualize the state’s data center, which hosts the MahaGov cloud. VMware was chosen after an extensive evaluation conducted by the Government of Maharashtra. Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary IT for the 52 | May 15, 2013

Government of Maharashtra, says, “The Government of Maharashtra is committed to making e-governance a success in the state. We were confident that virtualization and cloud computing would play a pivotal role in enabling our vision for e-governance in the state of Maharashtra. Our partnership with VMware, the industry leader, will help us on our cloud journey and fulfill this vision.” The Directorate of Information Technology (DIT) has conducted a number of user awareness programs and has laid down guidelines for the state departments to confidently host their applications on the MahaGov Cloud. It has also published a rate card for these cloud services that any government department or public sector undertaking can avail at a nominal cost.

Granted for SEZs in 2013

resenting a written reply in the Lok Sabha, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma announced the export numbers from the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) during the last 3 years and the current financial year. In FY09-10, the value of SEZ exports was `220,711 crore, recording a growth of 121% over the previous year. In FY10-11, the value of SEZ exports stood at `315,868 crore (43% growth over the previous year), whereas in FY11-12, the value of SEZ exports were recorded at `364,478 crore (15% growth over the previous year). From April to December, 2012, the value of SEZ exports stands at `353,195 crore. Formal approvals for 577 SEZs covering a total area of 67,787 hectares have been granted, as on February 20, 2013. According to a government release, “In terms of SEZ Act, 2005, a SEZ may be set up either jointly or severally by the central government, the state government, or any person for manufacturing of goods or rendering services or for both or as a free trade warehousing zone. Such proposals duly recommended by the concerned state government are considered by the board of approval for SEZs.”

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11 Cr Vehicle RCs and DLs to be Digitized by March 2015

he details of registration of vehicles and driving license holders from 993 regional transport offices across all the 35 states and union territories, will be available on one integrated national platform. The ministry of road transport and highways has initiated a scheme to provide financial assistance to the state governments for digitization of the legacy data and aims to digitize all the legacy data of 11 crore vehicle registration certificates and driving licenses by March 31, 2015.

Vijay Chhibber, secretary ministry of RT&H, welcomed the participants of the 5th national workshop on computerization in the transport sector and explained the implementation of new portals in the system.‘Vahan’ is designed to automate vehicle registration, permits, taxes, and fitness certificates. Whereas, ‘Sarthi’ deals with the issuance of the driving license, learning license, conductor license to citizens, and license for driving schools. The idea behind these 2 portals is to ensure the registration of vehicles and data of driving license holders to be placed on one integrated national platform. Having data online will not only eliminate duplication of driving licenses but will also ensure to record data of driving offenses or challans at one place. This will benefit both citizens and the system.

Aakash 3 to Cost `2,500

aving supplied 1 lakh units of Aakash tablets to IIT Bombay for `2,263, Datawind is ready to provide the next version of the device at a tentative price of `2,500. “As per my information, the committee on Aakash tablets is looking at higher version of the device for `2,500 a piece and we are ready to match the price on order for every 10 lakh units,” Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli. It is learnt that Datawind has recommended higher specifications for the next version of Aakash DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

tablets. The device will also include a SIM slot and enable users to make calls. Tuli also mentioned that the company will manufacture LCD panels in India for the tablets to comply to the Preferential Market Access policy norms which in general has been opposed by foreign companies. The policy mandates government to procure electronic products, including tablet PCs, which should have at least 30 per cent components made locally. Datawind will set up a LCD touchscreen unit in Amritsar. visit www.dqindia.com

Kapil Sibal Unveils National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap

nion Minister for Communications and IT Kapil Sibal recently unveiled the ‘National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap Version-2, a document containing policy guidelines for IPv6 transition prepared by NT Cell, Department of Telecom (DoT). Highlighting the importance of internet, Sibal said:”Internet is an important tool to connect not only people but people and devices. The explosive growth of mobile subscribers and exponential growth of data has made it imperative to transit to IPv6 to move to smart knowledge society.” Sibal emphasized that IPv6 is a limitless highway and the challenge is to bridge the gap between IPv4 and IPv6. He further added that Internet of Things (IoT) offers an immense opportunity for India whereby products and services based on IPv6 can be manufactured here and exported globally. “IPv6 based innovative applications in areas like rural emergency healthcare, tele-education, smart metering, smart grid, smart building, smart city, etc, have tremendous potential to boost the socio-economic development of the country,” added Sibal. COMPILED BY ONKAR SHARMA onkars@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 53

MESSAGING APPS

Are they a Threat to Telecom Operators? It is essential for operators to adapt to a fast-changing world or be doomed. For those who do use messaging apps though, it can be a big opportunity

uite often we come across this question: Are messaging applications a threat to telecom operators? And the answer to this is— it depends. Messaging apps are breaking traditional operator business models and will indeed be a threat to operators that don’t adapt to them. However messaging apps can also be an opportunity for operators that adapt to the brave new world of smartphones and data. Historically, SMS has been the largest revenue-driver for operators, after voice. The key to the success of SMS has been its simplicity, reach, price, and reliability. SMS was simple to use, worked on every device, was well-integrated with the address book, and was reasonably inexpensive. Nevertheless, all that changed with the advent of smartphones and data plans and what seemed inexpensive earlier, now appears very expensive. This scenario is changing gradually. One of the most widely used data applications in the world; text messaging is now losing its status with the 54 | May 15, 2013

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Highlights Integrating SMS and IP messaging can offer an even richer experience for users, while keeping operators in the game Social messaging services partnered with operators to enable hybrid messaging, which is the next big thing

These messaging apps are often free to use and quick to set up. It is possible to talk to many people at once and work can be discussed in groups. Instant messaging systems allow people to talk to each other from different countries, allowing friends to keep in touch.

Doom for Operators advent of modern messaging applications. Traditional SMS is becoming increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services available on smartphones with data connections. A number of low-cost and even free alternatives to SMS are experiencing an increased demand.

Traditional SMS: Waning Sheen?

Operators are facing increased pressure to drive revenues from the messaging component

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Social messaging is becoming more pervasive and operators are facing increased pressure to drive revenues from the messaging component of their communications businesses. Messaging is moving from SMS to data and operator SMS revenues have dipped. Operators need to understand the impact of social messaging apps on consumer behavior, both in terms of changing communication patterns and the impact on SMS revenues, and offer services to suit. This user migration from SMS to data is primarily due to operator SMS pricing and richer user experience offered by messaging applications. SMS pricing is way higher than it should be; operators have milked this opportunity for too long. On data, messaging cost is embedded into data plan which is effectively much cheaper. Furthermore, messages are sent in real-time and responses are instantaneous, emotions can be expressed impressively, proper conversations can be held with another person without running up a large bill and files/pictures can be sent in instant messaging conversations. visit www.dqindia.com

It is essential for operators to adapt to a fast-changing world. Does this spell doom for operators? It will, for those who don’t change, but for those who use messaging applications it can even be an opportunity. As the usage of smartphones continues to increase, so does consumers’ alternatives to the SMS channel. Telecom operators must carefully consider the risk inherent in their markets, and time their reactions to the over the top threat accordingly, in order to remain relevant in the mobile messaging space. Integrating SMS and IP messaging can offer an even richer experience for users, while keeping operators in the game. GupShup is one such messaging app that integrates IP and SMS messaging, but there are others too. It is time for the next generation of messaging. Social messaging services which work on every mobile device and can be accessed via SMS, Web, WAP or mobile apps now exist. Keeping it universal, such services reach everyone, without worrying about what device the other person has. This is important especially in the emerging markets and will keep the operators in the game. Social messaging services partnered with operators to enable hybrid messaging, which is the next big thing. n

BEERUD SHETH

The author is founder and CEO, SMS Gupshup maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 55

DIGITAL MARKETING

3 Social Media Must-Dos for Brands Brands should focus on 3 key social media principles to grow their social following

ocial media is all about leveraging word of mouth. Successful brands follow these 3 key principles to grow their social following:

Finding Compatible Consumers

—SUNDEEP KAPUR

The author is a digital evangelist with NCR. He also authors www.emailyogi.com, an online book on digital best practices

56 | May 15, 2013

You need to find the right type of consumers and you need to do this correctly to sustain the community. Many brands put up digital signs that state ‘Like Me’ or ‘Follow Me’, some brands take this further by offering an incentive. This works well in the short-term as it creates an influx of new community members but it does not last too long as many join, for the incentive only. Intrigue works better than incentive as it draws in consumers having an interest in your brand. Good content and valuable interaction will keep your consumers there. A major movie rental company grew their Facebook following by offering a free movie. Well, its ‘Likes’ did very well—in less than 6 months it got more than 2 mn—but more than 75% of the list simply came in for the coupon and never came back. By contrast, an international wildlife publication does an excellent job attracting compatible consumers by putting up headlines like, ‘How can birds whistle and breathe at the same time?’ With this, it not only attracted a lot of consum-

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Highlights You need to find the right type of consumers, and you need to do this correctly to sustain the community Personalized relevance is what will drive social media success and you can only create this environment by paying attention to the preferences of your consumers

your brand, else you will lose the consumer to a competitor. The movie rental company continues to err by offering everything to

and your brand can do this well by collecting this information over a period of time from your consumers. Look for various consumer interaction points—before the sale, during the sale, after the sale. Capture this information through interactive surveys and regular feedback. A very good friend of mine owns a restaurant in London—he loves ‘Likes’ and his approach to earning the ‘Like’ is very laudable. He walks up to you during the latter part of your

everybody. It could do so much better if it caters to consumer preferences by segmenting its offers. By contrast, a major Indian financial institution respects your time by not asking you to choose your language every time you use its ATM for a cash withdrawal. It now uses the time saved and your respect earned to make you a relevant offer—its consumers appreciate this much more.

meal and asks you if you liked a specific dish, say the Paneer Makhani. Next, he requests you to get on Facebook and tell your friends that you liked the Paneer Makhani and even encourages you to post a picture. This user generated buzz gets his restaurant the attention of other consumers who want to come in and try the food.

ers, but its consumers actually stayed back and participated in the discussion.

Know Your Consumers Well, Actually…Very Well

You have just made new acquaintances, what is it that you would like to know about them? How much would you like them to know about you? Do you build up on this ‘information repository’ by getting them to fill out a long form or do you build this information up tactfully over a period of time? Successful brands keep the conversations focused and interactive by asking relevant questions. They try their best to keep track of what their consumers like to have, a personalized conversation. Brands can collect this information in 3 ways—first, by asking the consumer for some basic information, second—by observing the consumers behavior as this helps validate what the consumers tell you about themselves, third—by making some assumptions. If you want to learn how to make ‘better assumptions’ about your consumers look at Amazon’s approach— “People who liked this also liked this…” Personalized relevance is what will drive social media success and you can only create this environment by paying attention to the preferences of your consumers. Do not forget to inform the consumer about DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Get Your Consumers Talking About Your Brand

What do you think is better—a brand touting how great they are or consumers of a brand espousing the brand? What sounds more authentic? Wouldn’t you be more likely to listen to your peers? Brands need to assimilate a rich repository of information (user generated content from your peers) visit www.dqindia.com

What Drives Success?

Brands will succeed with these 3 fundamentals—finding the right group of consumers, knowing more about these consumers, and turning these consumers into brand ambassadors. What also matters is a social media site that is full of user generated content, current, and responsive to consumer queries. Successful brands think about longer-term engagement, aka what to do after the ‘Like’. n May 15, 2013 | 57

CLOUD

Business in Balance Shifting IT investment from infrastructure to innovation

loud computing’s enormous business value is convincing a rapidly growing number of CEOs and CIOs to join the cloud revolution. Executives are viewing the cloud as a way to begin shifting the IT-budget spending ratio—from the traditional 80% on infrastructure and 20% on innovation to something much closer to 50-50, which would liberate capital to fund market-facing growth initiatives. It’s a fantastic opportunity—in theory. However in practice many IT professionals—and even some vendors—appear to be at considerable risk of replicating the same insatiable jumble of technology that has challenged CIOs for decades. I am talking about complex systems built from hundreds of disparate components that chew through huge chunks of IT budgets and leave very little for innovation. In an ideal world, enterprises would avoid the problem by implementing a complete end-to-end suite of cloud products and services at every level of the stack. This approach would require little or no integration and free up precious IT dollars for customer-oriented initiatives aimed at growth, deeper engagement, and better decision-making driven by real-time analytics. So, where can businesses find such an end-to-end solution? There is no shortage of companies offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. A smaller number 58 | May 15, 2013

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offer Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. And only a few offer integrated Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) products.

Redrawing the Boundaries

This is important, because whatever boundaries exist today for the cloud, one thing is certain—they will be redrawn, reframed, redefined, and recast to match the relentless expansion of this technological inflection point. It is not only remaking the tech industry; it is also changing the way businesses view the potential of IT and how they should invest in it. The central issues are simple. What can customers do with cloud solutions? How can they free up more funding for growth and innovation? Imagine if a 3-year business— transformation plan forged through some bold collaboration between the CFO and the CIO used cloud computing to enable a big corporation to liberate $100 mn in IT spending to fund growth-oriented and customerfacing innovation. Instead of spending, year after year, 78% of the IT budget on lowvalue infrastructure, the CFO-CIO cloud plan would see that ratio moves from its current level of 78% for keeping the lights on and 22% for innovation, to 74%/26% after 1 year; 70%/30% after 2 years; and 65%/35% after 3 years. That liberation happens when companies turn to the cloud to reduce overdependence on big upfront capital investments and overall IT spending, and are thereby able to invest more in initiatives such as Customer Experience (CX) rather than another round of infrastructure sprawl whose value is increasingly hard to pin down. That’s the real magic of the cloud: It lets businesses rethink where and how they deploy their precious IT dollars, and allows those businesses to focus more of their IT budgets on projects that truly matter. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

The real magic of the cloud: It lets businesses rethink where and how they deploy their precious IT dollars Competitive Advantage

Different strategies are emerging as some tech companies decide to be specialized niche players while a smaller number of vendors choose to play at one or more levels of the 3-tier cloud stack: Applications (SaaS), platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS). This is for a simple reason— that’s what customers want! When customers buy a cloud, they get applications; they get a platform— database and middleware, and Java; and they get the underlying infrastructure—the operating system, virtual machine, and the hardware.

A Sweeping Vision

It’s a sweeping vision, and one that competitors will undoubtedly try to shoot down with heavy barrages of FUD—fear, uncertainty of doubt—including old stand-bys like ‘vendor lock-in’. But, they will have to be quick. Customers are showing that they’re looking beyond yesterday’s approaches and yesterday’s thinking, and that they are taking an increasingly dim view of endless mountains of integration work that’s not just expensive but doesn’t drive business value. Organizations aren’t turning to the cloud to be technologically hip but rather to help themselves begin to strategically transform the ways in which they do business. That’s because, after years of being over-

hyped and underperforming, cloud computing has become an ideal platform for driving those transformations in ways that are effective, affordable, and sustainable.

They want to:

Get better products to market faster Deliver better and more-engaging service to customers Optimize mobile-powered sales teams with right-time information and insights Align talent all across the company with business priorities Reduce risk for compliance and reporting All of those imperatives are being driven by a set of global forces that are stressing and reshaping every kind of industry and every type of business. Taken together, these forces make cloud computing a powerful alternative for businesses scrambling to keep up with an information explosion, a stunningly fast move to mobile commerce and lifestyle, and the parallel rise of social as one of the most powerful shapers of corporate image and success today. And many businesses are also quickly embracing the idea that there are 2 very distinct categories of cloud-services providers: The half-steppers that want to keep the old-fashioned burden of componentlevel buying and building on the shoulders of customers, and the new generation of full-service cloud providers who deliver complete and optimized cloud stacks. So far, that second group includes only Oracle. But, the integrated, end-to-end approach is proving to be very persuasive n

BOB EVAN

The author is chief communications officer, Oracle maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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SPEECH ANALYTICS

Look Who’s Talking! Many contact centers are now leveraging speech analytics to help them identify important information such as drivers of long average handle times, repeat calls, etc

he value of the information captured in call recordings is unparalleled and has been long understood by those in charge of contact centers. However the sheer volume of calls and manual processes required to extract information from call recordings often reduces the Voice-of-the-Customer (VoC) to a mere whisper. The recent advent of speech analytics technologies has suddenly caused a great deal of attention to be diverted to the customer voice, increasing the accessibility of this information for uses beyond quality monitoring. Many contact centers are now leveraging speech analytics to help them identify important information such as drivers of long average handle times (AHT), repeat calls, customer satisfaction, and call volume amongst others. The primary driving force behind organizations purchasing the product are as follows—reducing costs in the contact center, creating back-office efficiencies, and/or understanding the customer experience. As speech technology continues to evolve, organizations are expanding their speech analytics initiatives to create value across various departments. Early ‘directed’ technologies restricted organizations to getting answers only to the questions asked—focusing on the ‘categories’ of issues they already knew about. Today speech analytics not only provides ‘categorical’ insights, but it can also capitalize on the vast repository of unsolicited and unfiltered customer feedback in recorded calls. It provides a window into what customers are talking about—without predisposition towards an assumed outcome—effectively letting organizations 60 | May 15, 2013

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know what they don’t already know. Speech analytics can uncover issues that affect sales, marketing, operations, compliance, support as well as customers, partners, and employees. And the migration of this tool from the contact center to throughout the enterprise is reflected in the growing speech technology market. In fact, analysts predict speech analytics growth rates of ‘25% in 2013 and 20% in 2014’. Let’s take a look at the areas within an organization that can benefit from speech analytics.

Account Management

Forward-thinking enterprises are leveraging the voice of their customers not only to create process efficiencies that reduce costs, but also to drive revenues. For example, a national payment processing company used speech analytics to tap into the calls of customers who had closed their accounts to build out a profile of a customer likely to defect. The analytics team then leveraged the tool to search through incoming calls to flag existing customers who fit in that profile. After cross-correlating the list of retention risks with CRM data, the team established a process to proactively contact the most high-value and ‘at risk’ customers, saving more than 600 accounts worth `10 crores. In the first 7 weeks of launching the solution, the company had already achieved a return on its speech analytics technology investment.

Sales

For many enterprises, cross or upselling to customers is as important as retaining them. One leading financial institution analyzed the conversations taking place in its contact center to understand why a ‘service to sales’ initiative wasn’t meeting targets. By using speech analytics to help mine and analyze trends across the customer interactions, it quickly identiDATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

As speech technology continues to evolve, organizations are expanding their speech analytics initiatives to create value across various departments fied that certain terms and phrases in a script that were provided by the marketing team correlated with much lower conversion rates. When using the phrase ‘may we have another moment of your time’ to transition from the service segment of the call to the sales pitch, conversion rates dropped from an average of 15.1% to 6.3%. Simply by using a different phrase to transition, some agents managed to more than double the average conversion rate. Leveraging speech analytics helped uncover which components in the sales initiative weren’t working in time to benefit from fine-tuning the program.

Partner Management

Many of the calls into the contact center are driven by processes or issues over which it has no control such as:billing issues, missing orders, and broken products. These issues can even be more difficult to resolve when the source is external to the enterprise. One travel company discovered that many of the calls it received in the contact center were driven by a third-party’s billing department. This discovery led the company to work with the third party to improve its billing practices and reduce call volume.

Marketing and Advertising

Another area that can benefit from the customer recordings within the visit www.dqindia.com

contact center is the marketing department. Buried within customer calls is information on brand perception, messages that work, issues that can blow up into social media nightmares, and insight that marketing can leverage in future campaigns—an on-demand focus group. In addition to these proactive uses for speech analytics, the marketing department can also leverage it for times when messaging needs re-tuning or modification. One large organization was able to fix an issue in an advertising campaign based upon information gathered in the contact center. The contact center was receiving calls where customers were frustrated and confused by a particular television campaign. By analyzing the calls, it was determined that the voice-over describing the offer did not match the screen text. The voice-over indicated the offer had no restrictions, while the graphics indicated it was limited to certain types of customers. Once the issue was addressed, conversion rates increased and customer frustration was alleviated. Today speech analytics technology has made it easier than ever to identify and surface issues that can drive change not only in the contact center, but across the organization and its business as a whole. Enterprises that have found innovative ways to turn up the volume on their voice of the customer initiatives have been able to balance the needs of their customers and their business objectives. These enterprises have been able to optimize the business as they improve their customer experience. n

SIOBHAN MILLER

The author is director, solutions marketing, Verint Systems maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 61

E-TAILING

Choosing the Right Battleground Digital commerce will chart a new course in India rather than the traditional models

here is a clear rise in uptake of Indian e-commerce. We are close to where US was in the early 2000s with adoption at about 10%. There are clear signs in the growing demography of Indians adopting internet and their usage patterns. Etailing in India has primarily been through pure play e-tailers (large, medium and start-ups) and a few large brands having an online commerce presence. Pure play e-tailers and the larger brands have followed the traditional western model of etailing and are still determining ways to achieve net unit positive cash situation. There is a greater opportunity for Indian retailers to take a more localized approach towards digital commerce given India’s specific market conditions, features and buying behavior. Given that India’s percentage of organized retailing is at about 6% when compared to western markets (US at 85% organized retailing and China at about 20% organized retailing), the SMB retail segment as well as brands are still grappling with their strategy towards a digital presence. India’s smartphone penetration is at about 4% of total customer base. Still India ranks 5th among all countries in terms of subscriptions – ~44 MM. India has one of the highest growth rates in smartphone subscriptions across the world at about 52% y-o-y. India’s internet access via mobile is one of the highest in the world and is greater than desktop access. Mobile technologies bring together the unique intersection of knowing the customer, their location and context of purchase. 62 | May 15, 2013

—Sathiyanarayanan Vijayaraghavan Head, Global Retail Practice, ThoughtWorks

The Indian Way

Indian retailers in the SMB segment have an unique opportunity due to customer affinity and localization of goods and services. As some of the larger retailers have found out, retailing in India is like retailing in 20+ countries/regions each with their own tastes, needs and styles. To that end retailers will need to take a wholistic approach to digital (rather than jump in head first in e-tailing). There are large number of complexities associated with the adopting the western model of e-tailing in India. Logistics in the western world had been sorted before the arrival of e-commerce. The quantum of geographical differences within a developed country was minimal. Credit cards had a deep and broad adoption enabling e-commerce. This is not the case in India. SMB retailers and brands have an opportunity to utilize increasing smartphone usage amongst its

consumer base to identify better and provide greater value to their shopping experience. Indian consumers’ penchant for utilizing social media on mobile devices can further be utilized by retailers. A number of proven techniques such as mobile coupons (that have traditionally shown a greater propensity for increasing conversions), social discounts (ability to bring in greater value that individual coupons) etc can be utilized to increase the shopping experience and conversion rates/basket value. Retailer specific apps on smart phones can also play an increasing role in personalizing the shopping experience and ensuring targeted promotions are provided to consumers based on their shopping behavior. Brands can further utilize technologies such as QR codes in magazines, augmented reality etc to engage better with consumers. Real estate developers and builders have started augmented reality techniques to provide an interactive experience for consumers when they scan the photo of a building through their smartphone app. This allows consumers to get a 3D visual representation of how the home will look and feel like, the views from a specific house etc. In conclusion, SMB retailers and brands have a significant opportunity to enhance their relationship with consumers and earn their loyalty utilizing various digital techniques and strategies. Appropriate and pragmatic usage of the right technologies and capabilities will see digital commerce chart a new course in India rather than the traditional models. n

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CLOUD

Entertainment in the Cloud Service providers and entertainers should strategically include cloud enhancements with their offerings to increase adoption potential among consumers

he evolution of technology and an ever expanding collection of services are today helping consumers to connect from anywhere in order to live, work, play, and learn. Consumers are embracing a ‘connected life’ and altering the way they interact with each other. Thanks to increasing broadband penetration and availability of a host of personal devices—tablets, netbooks, notebooks, and e-books—all of which enable easy sharing of content online. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 63

CLOUD Over the years, these trends have also brought about a seachange in the way entertainment is delivered. Consumers want all of today’s media and entertainment options at their fingertips, no matter where they are or how they choose to access them. The cloud can empower the entertainment industry to provide the audiences a unified experience across platforms—and transform the economics of service delivery.

Connected, but…

While being connected feels good, the shift in consumer preferences towards a consistent, personalized ‘experience’ that accommodates their content preferences, access types, and chosen devices, has created several new challenges like: Disjointed Experience among Online Services: Online service activities require opening new windows and managing them, because most services are integrated for a seamless user experience Devices with Connectivity Disconnected from Each Other: Access connectivity alone does not provide a connected experience among devices Multiple Devices Add to the Complexity: Because each device comes with its own platform and management software, and managing it is difficult and timeconsuming Social and Sharing Behavior Becomes Complex to Manage: Viewers’ sharing behavior becomes more sophisticated, outpacing their ability to manage activities and introduces privacy implications Large Collections are Hard to Manage and Require Backup: Consolidating content collection on one physical device, massively multiplies the risk of losing all of the collection 64 | May 15, 2013

Highlights Cloud computing allows easy sharing of content while ensuring that devices connected are remotely monitored so new capabilities can be added immediately Since the level of audience interest varies, service providers must prioritize the offerings consumers are beginning to expect and strategically add enhancements that can differentiate their services

The Advantages

Given the above, users seek technology solutions to help enhance the consumer experience by enabling connectivity from any internet-enabled device and from any location while additionally helping users switch seamlessly from one device to another. One such technology is cloud computing which allows to easily share content while also ensuring that devices connected are remotely monitored so new capabilities can be added immediately. Data back-up and sync among devices happens from the cloud automatically so that users can view, access, and manage data from any internet-enabled device and automatically share information with friends and contacts. The other big advantage is that users pay just once regardless of device or vendor. Access to movies, TV shows, and music from multiple sources is possible through a single portal or user interface (eg, use TV remote control to browse VoD list, movies saved on PC, and Hululist on TV screen) and users can switch services seamlessly from one device to another (IM exchange on PC can continue on smartphone without re-starting the session or losing messages). Whenever there is a problem, the service provider remotely monitors the problems

and automatically fixes problems when they occur and consumers will not need to seek the assistance of ‘customer care’ executives for problem resolution. Given the above advantages the entertainment industry is using cloud computing to help meet varied consumers’ needs. Similarly, 55 members across industries form digital entertainment content ecosystem called ultra violet, and are developing an open ‘common file format’ standard. These are designed to play on any service or device, enabling ‘buy once, play anywhere’.

The Future

Going forward, the demand for cloud enhancements in the entertainment industry is expected to increase significantly. Therefore service providers and entertainers should strategically include cloud enhancements with their offerings to increase adoption potential among consumers. However they must remember that different people value different enhancements and combine different enhancements to increase impact. Since the level of audience interest varies, service providers must prioritize the offerings consumers are beginning to expect and strategically add enhancements that can differentiate their services. By doing that they can balance coverage/impact and cost (optimization) and in turn align consumer expectations to technology capabilities, get a good RoI in their respective business segments and create high brand value. The future of entertainment is definitely in the cloud! n

RAJESH REGE

The author is director, data center and cloud business, Cisco India and Saarc maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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CONSUMERWARE

It’s all about Consumers!

Consumerware allows users to do much more with their day-to-day products than they have ever imagined, including collaborating with others

he technology world is at the beginning of a subtle but fundamental shift from software to what we call ‘consumerware’. While the endpoint of most traditional software is the web, the endpoints of consumerware are a broad range of mobile devices and even consumer goods. Where the final promise of software was personal productivity, the final promise of consumerware is communal productivity and shared entertainment. Consumerware allows users to do much more with their day-to-day products than ever imagined, including collaborating with others. It has a different set of characteristics that differentiates it from traditional software, and it is imperative for app developers, enterprise managers, and IT departments to understand these characteristics in order to succeed in the mobile world. The 10 specific characteristics that make consumerware different from traditional software can be broadly classified into 3 categories. The first set deals with the core software characteristics that make consumerware different from the traditional desktop and web-based software. The second set is related to the user interface and experience of consumerware, which is vastly different from the traditional software. Lastly, the third set relates to how consumerware is used by consumers. These 10 characteristics have important implications on mobile strategy of software product companies and also traditional enterprises embarking on mobility initiatives. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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CONSUMERWARE Software Characteristics

Content-centric: Consumerware is highly content-centric and has integrated content development and programming like never before. The top 4 categories of applications in the Apple app store, for example are all content-centric: Games, books, entertainment, and education. Other popular app categories—travel, reference, sports, news, and weather— are similarly heavily content-driven. Data-driven and Analytics-centric: Consumerware relies heavily on data and is analytic-centric. Learning user preferences based on analysis of his actions, consumerware presents the type of content in the context that the user prefers. Consumerware must be able to gather and interpret data about user behavior and accordingly initiate actions for the user or provide a tailored user experience for each user. Transformational versus Transactional: Being increasingly web-based, a lot of software has become transactional and stateless. Consumerware, in contrast, has to be perpetually stateful, and able to continuously transform between states to support continuous stateful interactions, which has important architectural and business implications. Service-oriented versus Packaged: Unlike the traditional packaged software that comes in a box, consumerware embraces software as a service. Users subscribe to a service hosted on the cloud and use it through the use of web services. With data now becoming central, thanks to the prevalence of service-based architectures, programs are also able to connect and talk to each other.

Interface Characteristics

Contextual: One of the most significant changes in mobile applications made by Apple was to replace drop-down menus with screens that the user could swipe left or right to reveal additional content on the iPhone. While the 66 | May 15, 2013

Highlights While the endpoint of most traditional software is the web, the endpoints of consumerware are a broad range of mobile devices and even consumer goods The final promise of software was personal productivity, while the final promise of consumerware is communal productivity and shared entertainment

traditional software was event-driven, consumerware is highly contextual. Consumerware uses contextual information—time, location, movement, direction, sound—as well as interactive contextual information to provide individualized user experience. ‘Ultra-client’ Computing: The ubiquity of smartphones has reduced the gap between us and our applications by the use of sensors such as camera, accelerometer, bluetooth, gyrometers, altimeters, location sensors, and many more. That intimacy between the user and the application is what we call ‘ultra-client’ computing, and native clients are being increasingly written only at points where these sensors are involved. Endpoint Agnostic: Endpoints for consumerware could potentially be even non-computing devices like refrigerators, televisions, running shoes, automobiles, human implants, or mobile devices like a smartphone or tablet. Indeed, there are examples from around the world today of each of these endpoints from different companies who have showcased their ‘smart’ devices that talk the language of consumerware. In order to cater to the huge variety of these endpoints, consumerware also needs to be more versatile in managing form-factors, screen resolutions, capabilities, and interfaces.

ics to enhance non-game applications. It incorporates game elements like voting, points, awards, levels, and more to incentivize outcomes and increase user engagement. Whether it is in an explicit form of winning, scoring, badges, etc or implicit ones like the subtle encouragement to complete your personal profile, gamification forms an important characteristic of consumerware. Collaborative versus Individual: Consumerware enables sharing of aggregated data and supports community learning actively. Just as it works on multiple endpoints and integrates multiple data sources and services together, so does it bring people together, and enables them to tackle problems in teams and through active collaboration. Reach-response-based (Always-on): The mobile world as we have come to know it was based on reach and response. It allows mobile users—in both business and personal capacities—to be ‘always on’. Consumerware further blurs the line between work and home, and is taking the form of consumerization of IT and towards trends like ‘BringYour-Own-Device’ in enterprises. Each of these characteristics has important implications on the technical and business aspects of companies involved. For instance, content- and data-centricity and service-oriented nature unlock potential for innovative business models. Support for user context, multiple endpoints, and always-on capabilities impose user experience prerogatives that might have been negligible or were even absent in the traditional software. n

Usage Characteristics

Gamified: Gamification is the use of game-thinking and game mechanvisit www.dqindia.com

SHIVESH VISHWANATHAN

The author is senior consultant, mobility, Persistent Systems maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

MOBILE APPS

Curating the Best Strategies With the changing times it has become crucial to design effective test strategies for mobile apps, underscoring their challenges and best practices

he external app store ecosystem and the proliferation of internal facing enterprise apps have further enhanced the need for comprehensive testing mobile applications. Needless to say, device fragmentation, wide choice of firmware, varying resolutions, and resulting permutation and combinations can make mobile apps testing scope as complex as you can envision. A well-connected, smart enterprise is expected to become more convergent with the mobile ecosystem. Enterprises will need newer ways of testing mobile applications with a faster turnaround time. The BYOD policies will influence the way applications are developed, tested, and deployed. Inward facing and vertical specific enterprise app stores over the cloud will be rolled out by businesses for meeting needs of customers, employees, and partners. Enterprises will now embrace test strategy that will address device fragmentation and optimize QA time and spend via emulated as well as real device testing. Increasing conflicts among the applications are being attributed to BYOD, which needs to be addressed along the devices and platforms. In an ecosystem that is comprised of tens of thousands of different devices and over 400 operators around the globe, comprehensive testing of your mobile application can become really tricky and a challenge. Cost reduction, resource utilization, and improved RoI demand an effective test strategy. To improve your mobile testing strategy, it is essential to follow few points: DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Conclusion

Proposed Test Solutions Simplifying Mobile Testing

Choose the Most Important Devices: Organizations must plan their mobile testing strategy carefully to minimize the amount of handsets being tested. A well-designed strategy will take into consideration end-user profile, preferred OS/device choice, market share of associated devices, geography, network providers, access points, etc. Good understanding of the above parameters will help arrive at the types of handsets that will be projected for testing. Remote Handset Access: This mobile testing solution consists of real handsets, connected to real operators, which can be accessed via the web. This solution lets organizations test different devices with different screen resolutions and operating systems, saving costs, and efforts in procuring the real handsets. Automation Tools: Automation tools let you write a testing script that can be executed on several devices or countless times on one device and reduce costs on quality assurance and regression tests. The right automation tool can also check the end-toend functional flow in all possible platforms, indemnity problems as predefined in the script, generates reports and enables collaboration among the stakeholders in the organization. visit www.dqindia.com

Organizations with the right mobile testing strategy will be able to simplify their mobile testing and ensure QA. Recommended best test practices for mobile application testing: Accept that mobile testing has specific nuances: Get the mobile test team baptized on mobile testing best practices Focus on mobile specific test testing: Cut down redundancies in comprehensive functional testing Have a strategy in place to address device fragmentation: Everyone is out there building a mobile device Stay on the top of the mobile industry trends: Believe it! There is new one by the time this article goes to print Optimize mobile test efforts: More testing in less time Building your own device lab versus mobile device cloud: Avoid redundant investments Build your own mobile mind map and check list: Bring sanity and repeatability to mobile testing practices Choose the right mobile testing service provider: Get it right the first time Create your own best practice(s): Know what works and makes sense for you n

SAI CHINTALA

The author is SVP, global pre-sales and enterprise solutions group, Cigniti Technologies maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 67

NETWORK SECURITY

Mission Critical

With a surge in adoption of ICT networks, enterprises should keep an eye on the resultant rise in security threats

RITU SINGH

ritus@cybermedia.co.in

‘N

ecessity is the mother of all inventions’, and this holds true for the enterprises which are grappling to expand their ICT networks as customers increasingly look at information and communications technologies for some solutions. Meanwhile, the growth and expansion of enterprise networks is giving rise to a new challenge of securing these networks. Few years back, the threats were limited to the solitary desktops and PCs, but as desktops and PCs were replaced by the notebooks, netbooks, and a plethora of handheld devices like smartphones and tablets, threats evolved at a faster pace. As the security environment worsens due to a complex set of threats, network security must be dealt with seriously and in a much more comprehensive manner.

Types of Attacks

Information security is no longer IT’s step-child, but a mission critical: a data breach has an immediate effect on a company’s bottomline, its share price, its market share, and in some cases, on its ability to survive the loss of confidence and loss of contracts. The biggest threats for enterprises surface from the fact that they seem to be complacent. Enterprises are satisfied with what they have deployed for security. CTOs, CIOs, and security heads should brace up for any threats as these are evolving with the advancement of technology. Enterprises are increasingly witnessing more and more sophistication in the threat landscape with the emergence of attacks such as Stuxnet and Night Dragon. Secondly, there is an explosion of new technologies such as mobile devices and Web 2.0 that makes us more productive, but also more vulnerable to cyber threats. Adding to this, there are a limited number of trained resources to manage threats across enterprises. Although, we see an improved security posture at enterprise level, we believe that there is a lot more maturity required to use security as a business enabler. 68 | May 15, 2013

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The Cushion

The need of the hour is to have corelated interlocked defence, which helps organizations to become proactively secure. This will drive efficiency and control in cost, as enterprises move towards an optimized state. From a consumer standpoint, awareness about internet security is the biggest challenge. Security is as much a people issue as it is a technology issue. Consumers are unaware that it is also their responsibility to protect their data and their kids getting access to objectionable sites on internet. Consumers usually assume that the service provider or the PC vendor would take care of these aspects of data security which is not the case. IT has become central in driving business processes that serve enterprises’ objectives of increasing productivity and profit. But, as technology advancements help drive business innovation, they also make the current enterprise environment more complex with multiple media, multiple data locations, multiple devices, and multiple productivity tools.

The Security Market

Analyst firm Gartner’s 2011 report had predicted that the IT security market in India is estimated to be around $218 mn in 2012, with an annual growth rate of 20-30%. It expects the market will grow at a CAGR of 16.4% between 2011-2016. Network security has been one of the top agendas to be handled by CIOs in 2012—mainly due to the need to comply with government regulations—and it is expected that this trend will continue in 2013. The Department of Telecom has mandated that Indian telcos will be responsible for security of their own networks. They also should have organizational policy on security and security management of their networks. Network forensics, network hardening, network penetration test, risk assessment, actions to fix problems, and to DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Tips for CIOs Protect the assets that a device accesses rather than the device itself. Establish rings and zones to provide right-sized access with tight control over interface into data flow within rings CIOs should consider virtualized desktops (VDI), where employees can access company applications and data from any device, but the application infrastructure and data remain on corporate servers behind the firewall Use secure containers to access information from insecure and non-corporate deployed devices Use network access control (NAC) and certificates to ensure only approved devices can connect to the network, Deploy a firewall, VPN, and network IPS zone architecture to control traffic to and from key assets as well as provide protection for and from devices that cannot install host based solution Deploy an agentless vulnerability management solution to provide 24/7 visibility on every device that is trying to connect to the network and validate the compliance and risk that the device may bring to the network Deploy host and network anti-malware solutions to reduce infections and protect company systems to all devices that support this technology Deploy end-point security with a centralized management console to ease the effort required by security administrators and enable them to easily manage all end points in the system Enforce remote locate, lock and wipe technology on mobile devices to protect data in case the device is lost or stolen

prevent such problems from recurring, etc, are part of the policy and telcos must take all measures in respect to these activities. This ruling has forced telecom operators to adopt more stringent security measures. Likewise, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) mandate is also forcing banks to follow the guidelines laid down by it on information security. Following the guidelines, banks have been drafting and implementing their IT security policies.

over their Blackberries; employees across-the-board can be more productive by using mobile devices. The pressure to allow these devices on the network necessarily puts organizations at risk of being out of compliance with the regulations, like those meant to protect electronic patient information in a healthcare environment, industry guidance (like PCI), and corporate policies on which they’ve collectively spent billions.

Consumerization of Technology

It is always believed that the bad guys will always remain ahead of the cops, but the catch would be to minimize the gap. The CIOs of enterprises are always pressed for this. There is no denying that networks would expand in future and more and more data accessing devices will be added to it. Data will continue to be available anywhere, anytime, but the CIOs now have to prioritize their mission critical data and they have to constantly monitor and revisit their security protocols. n (Article was first published in VOICE&DATA)

New gadgets such as iPhones, iPads, android devices, and different laptops and tablets are connected to corporate networks and pose security risks. Employees expecting to receive corporate services on these devices are significantly expanding the corporate parameter. This could result in data leakage or data intrusion leading to direct access to one’s network. More devices in many form factors, accessing more applications, are being extended to more levels in the organization. This is no longer a world where only executives access emails visit www.dqindia.com

Conclusion

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MOBILE ADVERTISING

The Next Destination As consumers rely more and more on mobile technology, it is becoming vital for developers to get them the ultimate experience on mobile phones

he communication has started trending more towards mobile, breaking the jinx of stationed device. This transition has completely altered the way of accessing information. We have seen a spurt in adoption of mobile devices and the way mobile devices has been transformed as the first internet device for the masses. With the increasing penetration of mobile devices across the world, technology advancement and adoption of internet on mobile, today mobile devices have emerged as the new lifestyle of every citizen in the country and a 24X7 communications and entertainment companion.

Rise of Mobile—Impacting Advertising

This trend has brought a new wave in the advertising industry and redefined the digital focus. With people getting more comfortable in accessing information, mobile shopping, communication, and social networking from mobile, advertisers and marketers are gradually shifting their digital focus from web to mobile. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), in partnership with Exchange4media, has released the mobile advertising spend report for India, which estimates the size of the current spend at `180 crore and is expected to increase by 40% in the next 12 months. It is evident that it won’t be long before mobile advertising emerges into a full-fledged media network using rich content, which will alter the status of mobile advertising from being an after-thought to being the first choice for advertisers. Today, forward thinking players are using mobile technology to generate more tailored experiences for the users rather than just pushing extraneous advertisement on mobile devices. With an increasing number of people using applications on the smartphones, it has become likely for the advertisers to use this panorama to give their business visibility. With the requirement for customer acquisition and brand promotion, continuous brand visibility to the target audience is important considering the competitive attitude of the industry. This is when the application based marketing has emerged. Since people are always on the go and using their apps on their smartphones all the time, it is a very personal device, the chances of an advertorial content being missed out by the user are least in case of mobile advertising. The leading social networking sites have also identified the strength of mobile devices and they are trying to build a strong mobile platform. Consumer is depending on mobile technology for real-time recommendation. 70 | May 15, 2013

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Customization with Locationbased Advertising

Today with the advent of social communication, the relevant user has become the focal point and the brands have started to follow the people with location based advertising (LBA). This budding trend tackles needs of both customers and marketers, location of customers is tracked through GPS and the ad is placed on their internet mobile very contextually. The progressive market players are on the go and aiming to attract their customers but very selectively and efficiently, consequently LBA becomes a new mantra for the advertisers to magnetize the customers towards their brand by offering them service in accord to ease and expediency. Location based advertising is a methodology to reach out to the customers in accord to their need and ease. LBA providers are aiming to offer the brands with an endto-end mobile ad campaign and moreover cutting RoI by giving them an opportunity to do a selective and focused tapping of customers. Small businesses that have investment constraints can employ this approach to advertise to the specific people based on their location. Since the consumers want to get a punch for a buck, it is desirable for them to be reorganized and simplified. Hyper-local Advertising—Getting More Local With technology upgrading and emergence of various communication-need based mobile applications, the geography has been narrowed down to precise vicinity through hyper-local advertising. Hyper-local advertising enables the brands to connect with the end users with more customization as required by the audience in the required vicinity. For example, a user visiting Ambience Mall in Gurgaon sees a KFC ad banner on the apps running on his phone, which describes an offer, can be availed at the KFC restaurant DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Highlights Today mobile devices have emerged as the new lifestyle of every citizen in the country and a 24X7 communications and entertainment companion Forward thinking players are using mobile technology to generate more tailored experiences for the users rather than just pushing extraneous advertisement on mobile devices

in Ambience Mall. This ensures a higher click through rate and also increases the chances of the ad bringing in a sale/customer. It is very likely that the person would want to try it out. This is just an example of many. FMCG companies, like retail, healthcare, automobile as well as technology companies, are all trying to woo consumers with innovative and real time mobile advertising which could be a simple banner ad or an audio visual advertising.

Chat Buddy—The New Interactive Vehicle for Brands

Apart from LBA, very recently, another new trend has emerged in the mobile advertising segment. With people started utilizing their mobile internet as the preferred vehicle for communication and also their presence in the virtual world, brands in India are also considering partnering the leading chat applications in this geography for having 24X7 direct communication network with their user base. This is quite similar to the chat platform, more popular as Chat Buddy; we may discover in the websites of various brands but on mobile it is more proactively reaching to the people. With this innovative platform, people can actually connect with brand for inquiries, complaints, information and many more. On the contrary, these brands can manage on the negative outburst of the people on various social media platforms. visit www.dqindia.com

More Innovations Calling

Since the new trend in advertising is more focused towards mobile, there is another important stakeholder in the landscape. Today the mobile application development companies are more focused towards putting an engagement model while an app innovation. For example, the welcome screen of any applications stays static for a good 3-4 seconds. The advertisers have started to prioritize these aspects today.

Conclusion

With the changing style of consumption by the users, mobile technology can’t just be an afterthought anymore. Now focus of the developers is directing to improve the mobile experience for the users due to the growing usage of mobiles. As consumers are relying more on mobile technology than ever before, it is becoming vital for developers to get them ultimate experience on mobile phones. Therefore they are intending to focus more on user-centered approach, which is indeed mobile apps in today’s scenario. This is a defining time for mobile marketing. Publishers need to innovate and advertisers need to get educated about the possibilities of reaching out over a more personalized, impactful, and cost-effective advertising medium. At this moment, nothing is more personal than the user’s mobile and there is no better delight for the advertiser to reach him when he is most likely to react to the advertisement. However the app developer should also remember the aggressive inflow of advertisement should not affect the user interface. If advertisements are oxygen to the app business, the users are the lifelines to the app and the app design should benefit both these stakeholders. n (Article was first published in VOICE&DATA)

ANUBHAV SHARMA

The author is head of sales, Nimbuzz maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 71

Q&A Developing parallelly and contributing to the ecommerce industry are the mobile and enterprise apps and gaming industries. Amongst these, founded in 2011, AppStudioz is an emerging mobile app and game development company in India, which is also foraying into wearable computing. In a short span of 21 months AppStudioz has successfully created more than 750+ mobile apps for iPhone/ iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, etc. Amongst its key clients are Times Group, ESPN, Coca-Cola, JK Tyres and e-commerce giants like deals&you, fashion&you, etc. Dataquest recently spoke to Saurabh Singh, the CEO & founder of AppStudioz, heading a team of 200+ people whom he calls “geniuses” in innovation. Singh serves on the Advisory board of a mobile product company “Appbulous” and is also the co-founder of AwakIND, a non-profit initiative. His well grounded marketing skills and extensive business strategies have helped AppStudioz successfully generate a million-dollar revenue in its first 12 months of the business under his leadership. Excerpts

—Saurabh Singh

CEO & founder, AppStudioz

‘We have developed applications that are in the top 10 category in the Android market’

ow has AppStudioz done since inception? We are 200+ in strength in just 21 months of existence, which easily puts us under the list of the fastest growing technology companies worldwide. We have developed over 750+ successful mobile apps and doubled our strength in every 2nd quarter. We touched revenue of $1 mn in our first year and are close to a $2 mn turnover this year. We have doubled our revenue and increased the team size exponentially. In 2012, we expanded our base to UK and Australia.

72 | May 15, 2013

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AppStudioz has now served in over 25 countries and has clientele worldwide. What avenues do you target? Among many, we have the expertise in consumer apps, enterprise apps, healthcare apps, navigation apps, media apps and many more. We have also tapped the new trending markets like Augmented Reality and 3D gaming. Appstudioz has had remarkable success in the Appstore and Google Play Store. We have developed applications that have had over 1 mn downloads and are in the top 10 category in the Android market. We also have developed an application that is in the top 5 productivity apps in the US AppStore along with an app that is competing with “Google Drive App” in Japanese Appstore under the top 5 category. There are many such success stories that AppStudioz have created for its clients in the past few months. Gaming is an essential part of the mobile industry and AppStudioz has ventured into mobile gaming in early 2012; till today we have developed over 75+ mobile games and developed good expertise in 3D and 2D gaming. What is the skillset that you look for? We have tapped a new market and are taking a leap ahead with the best and experienced talent in the mobile industry across India. In the past year there have been 5 hiring drives including 2 pool campus drives where Appstudioz hired over top 70 talents from tier 2 colleges. Our company is dependent on innovation and creativity. We keep refurbishing the UI and how an app should like and interact. Getting designers is a problem, we make a lot of investments in them—18-20 people in innovation and several in design, user experience, etc. DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

How do your clients manage and assess the innovations? Lot of our clients have a huge planning for this. We develop the mobile apps with IPR/copyrights. In the first phase, these are given to the client with say, 10 features. If they find it fine, new features are then added in the next phase. So, repeat biz is good. Clients do not ask us to innovate for monetary purposes but want us to capture wider user base, repeat and returning users etc.

best outfits and order them online by making the payment via eBay. ESPN covers the ESPN F1 season that too completely free! The app includes all the GPS information, classification of pilots, news, photos, and races back-to-back in real time. My Safety Alert has been developed for iPhone, with this your family and friends can easily locate and track you in real time during any emergency or any stressful situation.

Can you cite some specific apps that you have developed? Some of our notable apps developed by us for various platforms are: Crowdstream is a mobile event network that connects artists directly with fans at events. offerBeam’s an iPhone GPS based app that revolutionizes the way you shop by sending relevant offers right to your fingertips. You can check out offers available within 50 mile radius, get directions to participating retailers, as well as share offers via Facebook, Twitter and emails. The Cookoo watch is a Bluetooth smart watch, and is the world’s first designer watch that combines an analog movement with a digital display that connects the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S. It does not even need to be recharged. Style Match lets you match the clothing style on yourself and choose the best attire. It provides the facility to choose

What are your future plans? Aiming at the future of Mobile, Appstudioz is now focusing on wearable computing, which are miniature electronic devices that are worn by the bearer under, with or on top of clothing. We have developed mobile apps that allow a watch to communicate with the phone and receive notifications and messages. Along with this the technical team at AppStudioz is now researching on developing an App, which can interact with the newly launched Google Goggles. Having developed a few products in this sector already, we are now very confident that we are the only company in India developing such interactive Apps and products. We are testing the prototype abroad and will be doing so in India too. n

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SHOBHA SIVAKUMAR shobhas@cybermedia.co.in May 15, 2013 | 73

CIO SPOTLIGHT

Tracing his roots from a very humble background to currently donning the role of the head of an IT function, Srikanth Appana, vice president, IT, SKS Microfinance recollects his journey to the top. He shares with Dataquest his programming skills and interest in film-making. Excerpts —Srikanth Appana

vice president, IT, SKS Microfinance

‘In decision making, the best part is innovation and creativity’ SHILPA SHANBHAG

shilpas@cybermedia.co.in

74 | May 15, 2013

Family Bytes...

I come from a middle-class family, my father was a bank manager and mother worked as an arts and crafts teacher for a short stint and later took a sabbatical and settled as a housewife. With my parents and my younger sister, I have a small sweet family. My parents brought us up with values, ethics and discipline, and always gave high priority to education. As a family we were doing great...there is nothing we missed. visit www.dqindia.com

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Buying my First PC...

The Coming of the Computer...

I was doing my intermediate when I got exposed to computers, soon it became an obsession for me to work with computers. When boys of my age were struggling to do programming,I was doing great. It was an easy flow for me and I used to write programs in 3-4 different ways.I used to challenge even my tutors with my programing skills. My programming skills, which was a child play to me, used to amuse people.

Working Hard...

I took the tough route—then I did my bachelors and masters in computer science, and also did an executive general management program from the University of Cambridge—which I thoroughly enjoyed with all my passion towards these machines.

To buy my first personal computer, I did all kinds of facetious works to meet my budget needs. I used to write college programming assignments for my friends and used to charge them for the pseudo code. I remember, I used to act as a counselor to primary class students telling so many stories about computers and internet and I was paid for that. But during this process, I observed it is just not kids, I inspired teachers too who used to come to my sessions to learn about computers. Later on, I realized that I am a good story teller.

The Unfulfilled Dream...

I did all this to buy a good personal computer and an airconditioner for my home. I did make good money but it was never enough to buy a computer and so, used to rent it—but it always remained a dream to buy a computer. I was so busy with these machines, not sure how but I missed to get a good rank in my engineering entrance—which deprived me from getting a government college seat and a private seat was always possible with a donation.

First Job...

I got my first break with a small firm, where I worked as a junior engineer and got a dedicated computer. I sat one full day admiring my new computer and all joy that came at that stage. Hence, there was no looking back from then as I donned many hats of programmer, designer, architect, product manager, and proudly, I can say that I wore the hat of every single step that was involved in a software life cycle development. I worked for some of the best companies in the world like GE, IBM, Microsoft, and currently I am working as the vice president, IT, for SKS Microfinance.

If not IT...

Definitely a filmmaker, as I am good in arts and creativity is easy for me. Right from childhood, I used to write stories, poems, etc. During my teens I worked on my first documentary and later wrote a few screenplays for dramas and also participated in making few short films. I also did an independent filmmaker’s course with Dov S-S Simens’. Even now, I spend time writing stories and screenplays for documentaries.

Current Role...

In the year 2007, I joined SKS Microfinance, where I was given full freedom to design the IT landscape. At SKS Microfinance, I started with the first blocks—people, process, and technology. My association with SKS is close to 5.5 years— and there are many contributions to highlight.

Destressing IT...

I always define stress as an emotional behavior; one feels stress only when you do not know how to do a particular work or fail in decision making. IT is always about learning— and yes, some time I do come under pressure but I come out quickly by using few tools which I always practice. I always do SWOT analysis when in pressure or when I am at crossroads. I play golf and make sure I play full 18 hole course by walk which I normally take 3-4 hours to complete, and make sure I get solution before I end the game.

Decision-making...

In decision making, the best part I like is innovation and creativity. During decision making I always make sure to take out-of-box approach. This actually breaks traditional thinking and changes the thought process of decision making. The best part is when as a head of IT I make a decision, it has to be a very responsible one as all the departments KRAs are aligned to my deliverables and the entire workforce will start working to meet the objective. And I really like the leadership role, where I take a decision with a proper logic and facts in place and I prove to my teams that it is achievable. During this process, I follow situational leadership techniques.

(For the full version of the interview, visit www.dqindia.com)

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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May 15, 2013 | 75

DIG DATA

Enterprise Satisfaction VOICE&DATA and CyberMedia Research undertook the Enterprise Satisfaction Survey with 520 large and medium companies. The focus of this survey was to gauge satisfaction level of large and medium enterprises with respect to communication services. Pre-implementation Satisfaction Pre-Implementation Weightage

Pre-implementation Satisfaction Index 82.58

Overall

86.42

Tata Communications

22%

84.18

Tata Teleservices

83.13

MTNL Bharti Airtel

82.33

Tulip

82.14

15% 16% 19%

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

82.01

Reliance Communications BSNL

20%

79.87

Functional and technical understanding of account support team 82.2

Others

Requirement mapping and analysis

Score out of 100

Solution ﬁt assessment Deﬁning scope and sizing of solution

Tata Communications is number one followed by Tata Teleservices and MTNL. Tata Communications has outscored others in terms of requirement mapping, solution fit assessment, scope and sizing, knowledge skills and network design

Knowledge and skills of account support team Network design suggested

Implementation Satisfaction Implementation Satisfaction Index

Implementation Weightage

81.18

Overall

84.12

Tata Communications

MTNL

82.34

Bharti Airtel

82.33

Tulip

80.18

20%

78.08

Functional and technical understanding of the team 80.3

Suggested right hybrid (mix) of service(s) Score out of 100

Tata Communications is the numero uno followed by Tata Teleservices, MTNL and Bharti Airtel. The company has done well in suggesting right mix and meeting the needs of enterprise users 76 | May 15, 2013

17%

Delivery within committed time Service provider exactly meeting your needs Overall cost of the service

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Source: Voice&Data-CMR

80.29

Others

30%

10%

Reliance Communications

BSNL

23%

82.91

Tata Teleservices

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

Network Quality Satisfaction Network Quality Weightage

Network Quality Satisfaction Index 84.14

Overall

88.24

Tata Communications

27%

23%

85.41

MTNL

84.6

Tata Teleservices

10%

2% 84.52

Tulip

83.84

Bharti Airtel

16%

12%

82.98

Reliance Communications

80.66

Functioning of the network design Diﬀerent types of user access connections

85.3

Others

Score out of 100

Committed bandwidth Overall connection throughput

Tata Communications leads the table followed by MTNL, Tata Teleservices and Tulip. Tata Comm leads in connection throughput, user access connection and back-up guarantees

Speciﬁc equipments and software Type of backup guarantees & solutions implemented Network management report generated

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

BSNL

10%

After Sales Support Satisfaction After Sales Support Satisfaction Index

After Sales Support Weightage

83.29

Overall

13% 87.27

Tata Communications

26% 84.28

MTNL

16% 83.59

Tata Teleservices

83.43

Bharti Airtel Tulip

12%

82.33

Reliance Communications 79.03

Others

85.2

Score out of 100

Tata Communications has outperformed others followed by MTNL, Tata Teleservices and Bharti Airtel. The company has done well others in providing satisfactory repair and replacement services, turnaround time, stock level replacement and warranty experience

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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Availability and competence of account managers/helpdesk services Ability to provide satisfactory repair and replacement services Turnaround time Presence of vendor's service centre in locality/city/region Good stock level for replacement Experience of warranty

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

BSNL

20% 13%

83.1

May 15, 2013 | 77

DIG DATA Customer Care Satisfaction Customer Care Satisfaction Index

Customer Care Weightage

83.17

Overall

The ease in access 20%

85.32

Tata Communications

The professionalism of CCE 30%

84.97

Tata Teleservices 84.01

Bharti Airtel 83.11

Reliance Communications

The problem resolution by CCE 19%

82.99

Tulip

The understanding of CCE (Customer Care Executive) 31%

79.94

BSNL

84.3

Others

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

79.59

MTNL

Score out of 100

Customer care segment sees a close fight. Tata Communications leads followed by Tata Teleservices and Bharti Airtel. Tata Comm leads in ease of access, Bharti Airtel in understanding of customer care executive (CCE) and Tata Teleservices in problem resolution by CCE

Billing Services Satisfaction Billing Services Satisfaction Index 84.11

Overall

84.95

Tata Teleservices

Tulip

84.2

Reliance Communications

84.09

Tata Communications

84.07

Regularity of receiving bill 17% Billing transparency 6%

Score out of 100 85.5

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Amount of bill 9%

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

82.81

Tata Teleservices is the number one player followed by MTNL and Tulip. In sub-parameters the leaders are Tulip, Tata Teleservices and Tata Communications

78 | May 15, 2013

Billing clarity 35%

83.47

Bharti Airtel

Others

Accuracy of billing 33%

84.66

MTNL

BSNL

Billing Services Weightage

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

SLA Satisfaction SLA Satisfaction Index

SLA Weightage

81.86

Overall

11%

84.74

Tata Communications

20% 10%

83.86

MTNL

2% 81.53

Tata Teleservices Tulip

80.86

Bharti Airtel

80.72

4% 13%

11%

15% 3%

80.61

Reliance Communications

80.39

BSNL

Comprehensiveness of the current SLAs in place 83.1

Others

Score out of 100

Overall achievement of current SLAs in place Backup guarantee Committed bandwidth Connection throughput Maximum no. of outage Maximum no. of repeat trouble incidences Mean time between failures Mean time to repair Network availability/uptime On site support Preventive maintenance

Source: Voice&Data-CMR

In service level agreement (SLA), Tata Communications leads the table followed by MTNL and Tata Teleservices. In sub-parameters the leaders are: Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications and MTNL

Enterprise Satisfaction Weightage

Pre-Implementation Stage

18% 28%

Implementation Stage Network Quality 9% After Sales Support 7%

Customer Care Billing Services

17%

SLA

Base: 520

DATAQUEST | A CyberMedia Publication

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Source: Voice&Data-CMR

14%

In terms of overall enterprise satisfaction survey, Tata Comm is a leader. The company has outperformed others in all parameters except billing services. Tata Teleservices, part of the Tata Group, is second followed by MTNL which is a major surprise as people always question PSU’s ability to provide quality services to enterprise users

May 15, 2013 | 79

BACK OF THE BOOK

ife Cannot be Ideal... For a long time I ran fast, going nowhere, but now I am running slow but going somewhere. You cannot have an ideal scenario for you but you need to take every situation into your stride. But it is more important that you try to be yourself and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get overpowered by the world.

SHILPA SHANBHAG shilpas@cybermedia.co.in

Anupam Kher onPositive Thinking With 24x7 work schedules and rising stress levels, positive thinking is perhaps the only thing that can help people keep going. Acclaimed actor Anupam Kher donned the center-stage at the SAP Forum recently to highlight the importance of finding the positive side of life... always look at the glass half-full

hildhood Treats...Our treat was always once in 6 months at Alfa restaurant and the menu was also fixed. I remember one instance when I appeared for my 9th standard exam. I was under a lot of stress as at our place there was this tradition that the one who passes the 9th exam directly gets promoted to the 11th standard. One day my father came to me after the exams and asked me where I wanted to go for a treat. I was puzzled as we were already done with our quota 2 months back, but anyway I agreed to go anywhere. That day my father took me to the same Alfa restaurant and ordered the same menu. I was surprised as there was no reason for this treat so I was busy in thoughts rather than with the food. On prodding, my father revealed that I had failed in the exams and we were there to celebrate it. This incident took away the fear of failure from my mind and taught me a lot on positive thinking.

elieve in Yourself...The world keeps telling you that you need to be someone else. As we go ahead in life we start losing our individuality. My grandfather used to make noise while eating, and my mother used to tell him that he was making a lot of noise. To which, he once replied that he was enjoying his food and the noise was her problem. My biggest joy is that this city has not been able to change me. At heart, I am the same little boy from Simla.

y Twitter Connection... I receive a lot of messages from people facing untoward incidents and deciding to commit suicide on my Twitter. Some look for financial help for medical ailments. Through Anupam Kher Foundation, we try and help the truly needy. There are frauds also. Once there was this case of a person requesting aid for a medical treatment. I had even signed the cheque but then on second thoughts I asked my secretary to check the details of the sick person with the hospital which turned out to be a fraud case. Social media always has 2 sides—good and bad.

truggle as an Actor... As a struggler in Mumbai, one of my friends’ family refused to let me stay with them, so I shared a place with 4-5 other guys. Our landlady was a dhoban and my address was a big matter of pride for me but when my father read this address—22/5 Kherwadi, Kher Nagar, Bandra (west)—he sent the same to my uncle (to verify) in Mumbai, thinking that I was fooling him!

ositivity and Hairloss...The height of thinking positively came when I started losing hair at 19 years of age. During the initial days I had this tendency, like any other person, of saying that the hair belonged to somebody else from the family when I saw hair on my pillow every morning. But to all those who lose hair I would like to pep up your mood by telling you that there are only two sets of people—baldies and would be baldies—so those who have hair on their heads have no reason to smile!

e Assertive and Strong... I tried my luck hard in Bollywood but no one was ready to offer a bald man a good role. Yet I did not give up hope and one day ‘Saransh’ happened when I was just 27 years old. The idea of a 27-year-old playing the role of an old man was challenging. Then after some days I came to know that the role was given to someone else as Rajshri Productions was hesitant to hire a newcomer. So I decided to leave the city but not without venting my anger on Bhattsahab. I abused and even cursed him (aka those brahmins from the folklore). After venting my fury I exited and to my surprise Bhattsaab called from upstairs saying, “Come back, I will do the movie with you”. And from then on there was no turning back.

LAST MATTER

Does America need foreign workers? Ed Nair,

The author is Editor of Dataquest ed@cybermedia.co.in

he draconian nature of the proposed immigration bill and its impact on the Indian outsourcing industry is an active topic for discussion. The reforms are aimed at giving American workers their due in terms of job opportunities and wages and stop the abuse of the temporary specialist work visa by Indian companies. It seems that once the bill is enacted, millions of unemployed American IT professionals (if they exist) will find jobs and the menace of foreign workers snatching away jobs will stop. However, the reality of the situation is far different. There are not many highly skilled technical workers in the US. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook have called for an increase in the H1B quota because they cannot find enough qualified tech workers to fill their open positions. While there are a group of senators that have pushed for raising the quota multifold, there are critics that H1B workers undercut US wages. Data from Dice, the tech job board, CareerBuilder and staffing agency Kelly Services show thousands of open IT jobs across the U.S., with significant openings in application development, including mobile apps and HTML 5, IT infrastructure support, and for IT project managers. Here’s some hard data reported by Computerworld. CareerBuilder, the online jobsearch portal, had more than 290,000 job listings for application developers between December and February, and just over 20,000 active candidates in related fields. AT&T and IBM each had more than 3,400 app developer job postings during that three-month period; Microsoft and Computer Sciences each had more than 1,250 postings. CareerBuilder listed more than 30,000 IT project management jobs during the same time period. There were about 5,500 active job seekers in that area. The gaps in demand and supply are pretty clear. Even all the American tech workers that are available are not full employed. For one, there is a huge mismatch of skills. Then, there is the issue of people not willing to move locations. There is also the issue of people seeking much higher wages than what some of the positions offer. Corporate America relies too heavily on foreign workers and companies for their technology services just as it depends on China and Far East for manufacturing. A sweeping immigration bill is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 82 | May 15, 2013

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