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FOR THE CIOs BY THE CIOs OCTOBER 2017
RISE OF
INDIA’S
DATACENTER MAN
From founding India’s first indigenous Datacenter Company to pioneering the Tier 4 Datacenter in Asia,.. p18 SRIDHAR PINNAPUREDDY, FOUNDER AND CEO, CTRLS DATACENTERS
GUEST TALK
BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR ENTERPRISES...p 23
FEATURE STORY
MOVING TOWARDS PATIENT- CENTRIC
HEALTHCARE
..p 34
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EDITOR’S LETTER
$1.2. BILLION HEALTHCARE IT SEEKS CIOS’ INNOVATION With this festive month of Diwali, I
would like to wish all the happiness and joy to all the CIOs and readers of Enterprise IT World, who have been strong supporters of our journey so far. Couple of things we are doing at Enterprise IT World. First of all we are dedicating this magazine to the CIOs. It means the magazine will be for the CIOs and by the CIOs. Majority of the content will be driven by the CIOs. We will try to be the true proponent of the CIO challenges. Come what may, we will not falter from our commitment. So in each story we would have active participation from the CIO community. So from the CIOs’ perspective, healthcare is an important sector. Therefore, we have taken this issue as the special issue for the healthcare and tried to bring out the challenges and opportunity for the CIOs. Globally, India as a country has turned to be a tourism place from the healthcare perspective. Patients from global market are entering India every year on the pursuit of cheaper and better treatment. It is believed that the total market is around US$100 billion now and can easily touch
NEXT MONTH SPECIAL
US$280 billion in next three years. This includes the domestic influx of patients and international patients. It means the opportunity of IT is immense. If we conservatively assess the market can be 1.2 billion US dollars this year which can easily grow three times in next three years. Apart from the traditional machines and equipment’s which are IT enabled, MIS / database / Information management is becoming big component of the industry. Similarly, e-health or e-counseling solutions is another one. Of course, it has a huge CIO innovation opportunity to make the services better for the stakeholders including the doctors, staff and patients. No double there will be a huge influx of funding to this sector in the country as India’s spend on healthcare is far less than the global average. To give a perspective of the investment, the U.S. healthcare system accounts for over $3 trillion in yearly expenditures, which is almost 20% of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Similarly, Singapore spends 8% of its GDP into the healthcare sector. Whereas in India, our GDP spend is around 2.5%. So, there is a lot of work to be done. Besides, we have exclusive CIOs articles in this issue which address security and infrastructure designing and challenges. I will further urge if anyone wish to write something about any topic influencing the CIOs, pls. drop us mail. We would certainly like to cover it in print and online.
S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M
COVER STORY
SUPPLEMENT
Blockchain for Business
Digital for Fintechs
Blockchain is reshaping industries in diverse domains like BFSI, healthcare, retail, government and manufacturing. The underlying force behind Cryptocurrencies, it is being touted to power entire markets and bring in a new form of enforced reliability and transparency in business. We take a look at how Blockchain is finding new applications as it continues to evolve and be used in more innovative ways in coming times.
Digital transformation and third platform technologies like SMAC have been driving Financial organizations towards delivering more customer friendly financial services.. We take a look at what technologies are driving the space and the BFSI market in India.
PLUS
Interviews and Case Studies
Catch interviews, guest articles and case studies of recent applications from the Industry stakeholders, IT/ITES Vendors and IT leaders and CIOs from the Enterprise IT World CIO Community.
Send in your inputs to sanjay@accentinfomedia.com
4
ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
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CONTENTS VOLUME 02 | ISSUE 08 | OCTOBER 2017 | W W W. E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Associate Editor: Chitresh Sehgal Designer: Ajay Arya Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary Visualizer: Ravish MARKETING Marketing Manager: Kajal Sharma kajal@accentinfomedia.com Asst. Marketing Manager: Rahul Ranjan rahul@accentinfomedia.com SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas
FEATURE
New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-41055458 E-mail: info@accentinfomedia.com
34
MOVING TOWARDS PATIENTCENTRIC HEALTHCARE
Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, New Delhi-110016,
Technologies like Big data, automation and SMAC have been changing how healthcare services are being delivered in the country. Hospitals and pharma companies looking at innovative solutions,......
COVER STORY /18
CtrlS RISE OF INDIA’s DATACENTER MAN
23 GUEST TALK
TATA DOCOMO “Bridging the Digital Divide for Enterprises”
6
EDITORIAL OFFICE
Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993 info@accentinfomedia.com Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib Mohapatra Place of Publication: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016
MORE INSIDE Editorial~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04 News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08 Guest talk~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 38
Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458
Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the prior written permission from the publisher. Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues) All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.
24
32
33
INTERVIEW
CIO TALK
CXO SPEAKS
Dell EMC
“IT becomes the Business”
ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
FIS
“Cyber Security for C-Suites”
Apon
“Top 3 Code Vulnerabilities causing Security Gaps”
ITWORLD
ROUND UP
203mn records breached in India: Gemalto’s 2017 Breach Level Index B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M
Gemalto released latest findings of Breach Level Index revealing 18 data breaches led to 203.7 mil data records compromised in India in first half of 2017. Compared to 2016, the number of compromised records increased by a 167 mil with 61% of data breach incidents being identity theft. Globally, a large portion of the 1.9 bil stolen or compromised data records came from the 22 largest data breaches, each involving more than a mil compromised records. Of the 918 data breaches recorded worldwide more than 500 (59% ) had an unknown number of compromised data records. In India, attack on Zomato exposing 17 million 8
ENTERPRISE IT WORLD  OCTOBER 2017
records became the sixth biggest data breach in first half of 2017. Also, the continuous attacks on Aadhaar data was another significant data breach that put focus on identity theft breaches occurring in India. During the first six months of 2017, more than ten million records were compromised every day, including medical, credit card or financial data or personally identifiable information. This is particularly concerning, since less than 1% of the stolen, lost or compromised data used encryption to render the information useless, a 4% drop compared to the last six months of 2016.
D ATA BRIEFING
USD 52.40 billion Total cost of breach for 65 companies evaluated. Source: Gemalto
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ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
Huawei reinforces vision to make India 5G Ready
Oracle intros enterprise-grade Blockchain Cloud Service The advanced, enterprise-grade distributed ledger cloud platform helps customers increase business velocity, create new revenue streams, reduce cost & risk by securely extending ERP, supply chain, and other enterprise SaaS and on-premises applications to drive tamper-resistant transactions on a trusted business network.Part of Oracle Cloud Platform, Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service delivers an enterprisegrade blockchain platform with industry leading resiliency, scalability and security. It is fully managed by Oracle and provides customers rapid provisioning and simplified operations with built-in monitoring, continuous backup, and point-in-time recovery. “Blockchain holds the promise to funda-
mentally transform how business is done, making business-to-business interactions more secure, transparent, and efficient,” said Amit Zavery, sr. VP, Oracle Cloud Platform. “Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service provides enterprise-grade blockchain capabilities and is able to accelerate innovation for on-premises ERP and cloud-based SaaS and PaaS customers.” Oracle recently joined Hyperledger. Hosted by The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance crossindustry blockchain technologies. By leveraging open sources and maintaining interoperability with open standards, Oracle enables customers to benefit from all open-source innovations, and avoid vendor lock-in.
GLOBEL
Huawei reinforced its commitment to bring worldclass innovations to India and helping the country become part of a globally unified 5G ecosystem. A pioneer in 5G innovation, Huawei has been investing in 5G research since 2009, and will invest US$600 million in the research and innovation by 2018, paving way for the technology’s commercial roll out in 2020. Committed to the Indian market, Huawei is continually investing in market-specific partnerships, developing localized solutions and conducting trials to ensure that India joins the ranks of other developed global economies in 5G’s commercial roll out. Paving way for 5G realization in India, Huawei, together with Bharti Airtel, recently announced the country’s first Massive MIMO technology implementation. An integral component in India’s roadmap to 5G deployment, the Massive MIMO solution can potentially increase spectrum efficiency by six to ten times, significantly decreasing networking costs while enhancing intensive coverage. Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India, “The 5G era is approaching, and we are confident that 5G deployment in India will happen in line with global timeline. “
EVENTS
13 – 14 OCT 2017
29 OCT– 02 NOV 2017
6 – 8 NOV 2017
29 – 30 NOV 2017
ICCSCI 2107
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS WORLD FOR BUSINESS 2017
1ST WORKSHOP ON APPLICATIONS IN SMART CITIES
AI EXPO NORTH AMERICA
Bali, Indonesia Forum for researchers, engineers & scientists to disseminate their knowledge and research on Computer Science, Computational Intelligence and IT.
10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
New York City, United States Event covers today’s commercial deployment of predictive analytics and machine learning across industries.
Boston, United States Discuss the future positive impact of AI, current accomplishments and future potential smart cities of the future.
Santa Clara, US Explore and discover the practical and successful implementation of AI in driving forward your business in 2017 and beyond.
NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD
Hybrid solutions driving overall Cloud adoption in India: Gartner
S/HE SAID IT
BRANDON SWAFFORD,
CTO – DATA PROTECTION AND INSIDER THREAT SECURITY, FORCEPOINT
“Organizations must start with a focus on people and how they use and access critical data and systems to first understand normal user behavior and normal movement of data in and out of the company.”
“Just because breaches are inevitable Public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) continues to be dominated by the hyperscale providers and their ecosystems that are driving growth, according to Gartner, Inc. The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 43 percent in 2017 to total $1.9 billion. The highest growth will continue to be driven by IaaS which is projected to grow 42 percent in 2017, followed by 33.5 percent in PaaS and 33.3 percent in SaaS. Worldwide demand for IaaS will continue with strong growth through 2021, which benefits the cloud related services market, such as development, implementation, migration services, etc. Gartner sees continued significant above-average growth for the big three hyperscale IaaS cloud providers. The iPaaS market will continue to be the fastest growing segment within application integration and middleware (AIM)
QUICK BYTE ON
segment, and it is therefore the jewel in the crown of the integration software market. Much of the worldwide growth will be driven by increasing adoption of cloud applications, mainstream organizations building their hybrid integration platforms, the relatively untapped SMB/mid-size markets, and geographies outside US such as India. Declining annual growth rates indicate the mainstreaming of cloud services in the market for IT spending generally. Approx. 18 percent of IT spending was directed to cloud in 2016 worldwide and is expected to increase to 21 percent in 2018. In 2016, approximately 17 percent of the total addressable market for cloud infrastructure, middleware, application and business process services shifted to the cloud. By 2021, cloud shift for these markets will increase to 28 percent worldwide.
FINANCIAL
doesn’t mean that action can’t be taken. Doing so requires a datacentric view of threats in which essentially the value of data is made useless to hackers.” J A S O N H A R T , V P & CTO – D ATA P R OT E CT I O N , G E M A LTO
HCL Infosystems reported Q1 FY18 revenue Rs. 685 Cr vs. Rs. 823 Cr in Q4 FY17. Enterprise Biz grew from Rs. 566 Cr in Q4 FY17 to Rs. 582 Cr in Q1 FY18. Consumer Biz recorded Rs. 69 Crore in Q1, decline due to transition from single brand to multi brand business model. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
11
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
eMudhra to experiment with Blockchain at new R&D centre in Bangalore
IDC observes India’s fastest growing FinTechs in 2017 IDC Financial Insights unveiled a list of 10 fast growing fintechs in India as part of the broader IDC FinTech 101 list for Asia/Pacific based on extensive on-ground analysis of the dominant fintech players within the region. The list makes a reference to the Financial Insights’ Triple U framework - ubiquity, utility, and usability. IDC Financial Insights believes that newer categories of fintechs are gaining traction, including those focused on digital identity and authentication, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, robo-advisory, credit analytics and scoring, and usage-based insurance.
EXECUTIVE
IDC mentioned specific initiatives like Aadhaar (biometrics-based unique identity number for all residents), Pradhan MantriJan-Dhan Yojana (national mission to ensure access to financial services), and UPI (unified payments interface). Rrecent regulations and guidelines related to digital payments and KYC/ AML practices have been encouraging as they have built more clarity to market participants, and further strengthened the strategic intent of these players. Fintechs in India have been successful locally, but they now need to focus on growth in the rest of Asia and eventually, the world.
eMudhra launched an R&D center in blockchain related technologies to further enhance Blockchain based systems for Smart Cities. The company also plans to introduce solutions that will help various industries which require identity verification and authentication in conducting transactions across smart cities. eMudhra will also hire about 100 people to help accelerate efforts to bring about blockchain related solutions through its R&D center. V. Srinivasan, Chairman, eMudhra, said, “We are already starting to see a lot of interest from Government and Financial Services on Blockchain. Investing in blockchain technology is a natural progression of things for eMudhra. We deal with identity management every day and our expertise lies in simplifying a customers’ life while doing their financial transactions, ensuring full transparency. The key features of our Blockchain platform is the ability to identify and digitally sign transactions on a Blockchain using e-KYC and eSign.”
MOVEMENT NetApp promotes Krithiwas Neelakantan to Director, NGDC Business India
Hitachi Vantara taps former GE Digital COO Brad Surak as Chief Product and Strategy Officer
12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
Stephen Murphy joins Epicor Software as new CEO
Puneet Gupta joins ITC Infotech from Brillio as Chief Digital Officer Mukesh Mehta joins B&K Securities Group as Chief Technology Officer from Spark Capital
Dilipkumar named as President of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
Arindam Singha Roy joins East India Udyog group from SPML Infra as Head IT
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
Blockchain and AI dominate agenda at RSA Conference 2017
In its third year, the conference offers a platform that encourages discussion and debate around the industry’s most pressing challenges. Conceptualized with the “Power of Opportunity” in mind, it will feature five tracks and nine keynote sessions that will cover a range of topics, curated to engage attendees. The tracks this year are Cybercrime & Threats and Security, Security Strategy, Infrastructure and Operations with sponsored sessions on trends including Blockchain, AI, Cloud, IoT & Ransomware. H.E. Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA Director General, said: “Such conferences support TRA’s vision of the UAE as a global ICT leader, as well as the wise leadership directives in transition to the knowledge-based and information economy. They also enhance a smart lifestyle in the country, in preparation for realizing the UAE vision 2021. The importance of compatibility between the efforts of the public and private sectors should be highlighted, to ensure the security and safety of our cyberspace, and the safe use of data for the public and their protection.” “With every conference, our priority is to help facilitate conversations between industry professionals. This year is no exception, and we expect our attendees to leave with the tools and insights needed to safeguard their organizations and assets. Our commitment to finding new voices and ways to inspire the region’s professional community is unwavering, and we will deliver on what attendees have grown to expect of RSA Conference Abu Dhabi,” said Linda Gray Martin, General Manager, RSA Conferences. Sponsors and exhibitors for this year’s event hail from leading edge companies such as RSA, Qualys, Dark Matter, Spire Solutions, Tenable Network Security, Raytheon and Etisalat to name a few.
‘Unpatched’ India at high risk from new Phishing scam ‘Freemilk’
IT security researchers have discovered a new spear-phishing campaign that intercepts an active conversation and hijacks them to spread malware using highly-customised emails designed to look as if they are coming from the original sender. The malware dubbed as “FreeMilk” is used by the hackers to infiltrate the
INTERESTING
TWEET
#CISOs in the #healthcare, financial services and #energy sectors need to look out for industry-specific risks: http://ibm.co/2ykF9Ah IBM Security @IBMSecurity Shows how the sectors need to redefine their IT security policies to keep the new age cyber threats and risks at bay. Source: https://twitter.com/drharshvardhan
14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
computers using malicious codes and retrieve confidential information without even getting noticed. The attack leverages CVE-2017-0199, a remote code execution vulnerability in the way Microsoft Office and Wordpad parse specially crafted files – which was subsequently patched in April this year.
NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD
SAS, NMIMS drive Business Analytics and Data Mining in India
C-Suites see humans and robots working in tandem by 2020: Genpact A large majority of global companies that are leaders in AI expect their employees will work comfortably with robots by 2020. Despite this optimistic outlook, a significantly smaller fraction of businesses is providing adequate reskilling address technology disruption, according to a new survey of C-suite and senior execs. Study shows a striking disconnect between the expectations of how AI will impact the future of work, and the actions companies are taking in preparing their workforces and organizations for that future. The research, Is Your Business AI-Ready?, conducted by Genpact, a global professional services firm focused on delivering digital transfor-
mation, and FORTUNE Knowledge Group, underscores that even in AI’s early days of enterprise applications, large gaps in behavior and performance exist between AI leaders and laggards. While 82 percent of respondents plan to implement AI-related technologies in the next three years, these disparities in success will only widen without adoption of critical widespread organizational change. “CxOs often struggle with how to achieve strong business impact from AI. The survey findings underscore what we see with our clients daily – success won’t come simply from technology alone,” said N.V. ‘Tiger’ Tyagarajan, President and chief executive officer, Genpact.
SAS India in association with NMIMS announced Business Analytics and Data Mining Championship 2017 for tech enthusiasts across India. This championship invites graduates and post-graduates from various colleges to participate in an analytics competition and win a cash prize worth 2,00,000 rupees and an opportunity to travel to the USA to be part of the SAS Global Forum. “Large amounts of information is now available and to stay ahead, industries need analytical minds to mine data and make sense out of it. NMIMS in collaboration with SAS has conceptualized a nationwide mega event that intends to help students sharpen their analytical minds and become a part of the analytics wave to meet the increasing demand of data scientists across the globe,” said Dr. Dhirendra Mishra- Ass. Dean - NMIMS’s Mukesh Patel School of Tech, Mgmt & Engineering. Kunal Aman, Country Marketing Manager, SAS India said, “Fostering innovation and creativity is core to SAS India. The initiative provides a platform for discovering new ideas, stimulating creative use of data and exploring problem solving skills. We are looking forward to huge participation from passionate students across the country who can design cutting-edge solutions for real world challenges”.
Stakeholders join hands to create a blueprint for ‘Digital Revolution’ of Haryana The Govt. of Haryana and NASSCOM hosted the debut edition of the Digital Haryana Summit in Gurgaon. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and IT, inaugurated the summit, along with CM ML Khattar. Aligning with PM’s vision of
Digital India, the State Govt. launched its IT & ESDM Policy, Tower Policy, Start Up Policy, Cyber Security Policy and SARAL Citizen delivery tracking Portal. The state government has been working with KPMG and NASSCOM for over two years to develop a
blueprint of creating a Digital Haryana. The govt. also announced the opening of startup warehouse in Gurgaon, with an eighty-four seater capacity along with a mobile application development incubation center within the warehouse.
OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
15
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
SHELF
BOOK
Blockchain Revolution GLOBAL UPDATE
96 percent of large Global tech companies to leverage 5G in near future
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DON TAPSCOTT, ALEX TAPSCOTT
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About The Book
The survey reveals that 96 percent of large tech companies plan to leverage 5G and 83 percent will have 5G solutions deployed within next 24 months. Nearly every company surveyed plans to adopt 5G, with two out of three respondents evaluating 5G over the next year. Over a third (34 percent) plan to release 5G technologies over the next 12 months if they have not done so yet. “Many industry analysts talk about 5G as if it is far in the future, but this study shows what we are seeing within
Ixia, that 5G rollout and adoption is ramping much quicker than predictions,” said Kalyan Sundhar, VP, Mobility and Virtualization Products at Ixia. The survey also revealed why organizations want 5G. They are seeking speed, flexibility, and reliability resulting from 5G advancements. Over 45 percent of organizations are driven by first-to-market pressures to secure and satisfy customers, but they state that a lack of resources, expertise, and standards are hindering their developments.
Blockchain Revolution eveals how this game-changing technology will shape the future of the world economy, dramatically improving everything from healthcare records to online voting and from insurance claims to artist royalty payments.
Key Features l First book to explain why
Blockchain technology will fundamentally change money, business and the world. l Brilliantly researched and highly accessible, this is the essential text on the next major paradigm shift.
Seagate joins Bain Capital in consortium to acquire Toshiba Memory Corporation Seagate Technology is part of the consortium led by Bain Capital that has entered into an agreement with Toshiba Corporation to acquire Toshiba Memory Corporation. In the agreement, Seagate has committed to provide up to 16 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
$1.25 billion in financing to support the acquisition, to be provided at closing, which is expected by March 2018. In addition, Seagate expects to enter into a long-term NAND supply agreement with Toshiba Memory that will provide
continuity of raw NAND for Seagate’s expanding SSD product portfolio. Seagate expects this transaction to be accretive to its earnings. Over the years, Seagate has developed an excellent long-term relationship with Toshiba Memory.
NEWS BRIEF // IT WORLD
MANAGEMENT
MANTRA
“People are the key to success, or extraordinary success.” – AZIM PREMJI, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, WIPRO.
Power plants to become greener and economical as digital takes front seat The research reveals utility companies are investing in significant digital enhancements to coal and gas-fired energy generation to increase production efficiency and reduce their generation costs. Over the past five years, firms have invested an average of $330 mil in digitizing their power plants. Continued investments will see one in five power plants (19%) becoming ‘digital plants’ by 2025, operating with approximately 27% lower costs and, together, contributing to a 4.7 percent reduction in global carbon emissions from power generation. Increased digital investments by power plant owners will create significant generation efficiency gains, driving down both operating costs and CO2 emissions. The reportfound the increased produc-
tion efficiency achieved from digitization will enable utilities to bring down energy generation costs. The report found that power plants with digital technology will see 27 percent lower production costs, with individual plants saving $21 mil each year on average. As price of renewable energy continues to reduce, these savings will enable organizations with gas and coal-fired plants to remain competitive. With global electricity demand increasing year-on-year and ambitious global carbon reduction targets to meet, these digital investments will ensure that traditional power plants can continue to contribute to an energy ecosystem increasingly shifting towards renewable energy sources.
Gemalto, Ledger combine forces to build security infra for enterprise Blockchain
The joint Gemalto and Ledger solution consists an integration of Ledger’s unique Blockchain Open Ledger Operating System (BOLOS) into Gemalto’s industry-leading SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM) to provide a secure environment for financial institutions looking to leverage cryptocurrency. The solution enables a variety of use cases, such as launching investable products
on cryptocurrencies, or stocking cryptocurrencies securely. Eric Larchevêque, CEO at Ledger, explained: “As value of blockchain based solutions rises, so does the need for bank grade security products. We plan to leverage SafeNet HSM to provide our clients in the financial industry with a unique, secure product line customized to their needs.”
Netgear intros scalable IP surveillance for SMEs NETGEAR has teamed with Arcus Global to run Milestone Arcus on NETGEAR ReadyNAS. This collaboration with Arcus Global will enable businesses to leverage their ReadyNAS for dual purposes — video surveillance storage and management, as well as secure business data storage and backup. With the growth in the market, scalability of video systems has become a major challenge, both for supporting more types and quantity of cameras and for storing increasing video data. Now with the combination of NETGEAR and Arcus Global solutions, it makes possible for SMBs to meet their needs of physical security with minimal investment, effort, and total ownership cost. Further, the free downloadable app runs on all NETGEAR business-class ReadyNAS models, offering Support for up to 100 highdefinition high frame rate IP cameras, which can be easily expanded through the addition of NETGEAR Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) switches to provide power to those cameras at a distance; Highest storage capacity ranging from two to 60 bays, capable of handling continuous video recording from several weeks to over a year; Superior data retention with unique five levels of data protection against hardware failures and virus attacks, and hybrid remote NAS and cloud backup for multiple sites. Business users enjoy premium video surveillance features such as automatic camera discovery, PTZ controls, motion detection, anywhere access to video feeds for live view and playback, and easy export for forensic evidence and investigation. In addition to performing the video management functions, the ReadyNAS continues to operate as a standard network attached storage solution. Its full ReadyNAS OS feature set includes ReadyDR (disaster recovery) so businesses can meet the most stringent legal and commercial requirements for video data retention.
OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
17
COVER STORY // CTRLS
SRIDHAR PINNAPUREDDY, FOUNDER AND CEO, CTRLS DATACENTERS
“The role models for me were not people but great datacenters around the world.
They were like temples for me”
18 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
CTRLS // COVER STORY
RISE OF
INDIA’S
DATACENTER MAN
From founding India’s first indigenous Datacenter Company to pioneering the Tier 4 Datacenter in Asia, CtrlS founder Sridhar Pinnapureddy has come a long way from the humble beginnings to establishing a multinational, multi-million dollar enterprise. Now, with the Community Cloud as the new feather in his hat, the innovative entrepreneur is set to take his company to next phase of success. BY CHITRESH SEHGAL CSEHGAL@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM
C
trlS has been at the forefront of the Enterprise IT revolution in India, emerging as the leader in the datacenter outsourcing and cloud market. Apart from being India’s first and biggest datacenter company, the organization already has a strong positioning with a customer base of some of the largest Indian enterprises as well as a number of Fortune500 companies from around the globe. There are plans to expand to more than 40 geographies in the coming years as well establishing presence across verticals in the coming years. Energetic and enthusiastic, Sridhar Pinnapureddy opens up on his journey from the humble beginning to creating Asia’s first Tier 4 Datacenter, and his plans with his new venture, the Community Cloud which has already started gaining traction with successful customers in sectors like Banking and Government.
FOUNDING A DATACENTER COMPANY A veteran of the IT industry for over 20 years, Sridhar has seen the industry landscape change very closely. In the early days of his career, he developed his skill in streams like IT consulting, application development, product development as well as internet services for the first ten years. He founded CtrlS when he witnessed a transition in the data center industry. Sridhar shares, “So ten years ago, with the drop in bandwidth prices, availability of smartphones and 4G
across the spectrum, connectivity dramatically improved. It occurred to me that data centers can no longer just be internet data centers but will transform into enterprise Datacenters where core business applications like ERP & Banking can be run out of the datacenters. Running applications from a Datacenter is a lot more effective proposition be it in terms of cost, higher uptime or availability. The thought of enterprise Datacenters excited me. I knew that it would be a reality in the coming time and would add a ton of value to the customer. The ecosystem was ready for it to be successful. That empowered me to start CtrlS.”
SURVIVING COMPETITION AND MAKING IT BIG Starting out with India’s first datacenter company was no cakewalk by any measure. The early years at CtrlS had been tough with no initial takers of the outsourcing services. Sridhar recollects, “Ten years ago when I went out and talked about outsourcing, I had no takers. Even as latest as 5 years ago, there were no takers for either cloud or outsourcing,” However, some of CtrlS’ initial offerings did succeed in hitting the spot and were tremendous successes for the organization. The CtrlS Disaster Recovery product was an outright success, so much so that it forced the entire industry to follow suit and launch similar products and services. “DR is a prime example and there are others like the Community Cloud. These individual success stories have made it possible OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
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COVER STORY // CTRLS
CtrlS Datacenter, Mumbai – Asia’s largest Tier 4 Datacenter
“Our product had to be of a much better quality than that of anybody else in the industry. That’s how Tier 4 came into being.”
organizations, one sixth of the global Fortune500 and market leaders across verticals are CtrlS customers.
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE SUCCESS
for us to reach where we are today.” In fact, CtrlS had a lot more to do than the competition, as Sridhar continues, “They were all big brands, and not only in India but they were the world’s biggest, the goliaths of the industry. There was no way that a startup from Hyderabad could win a customer, doing business the same way as these big brothers.” With odds stacked against CtrlS, Sridhar and his team came up with a strategy different than the competitors, a threefold strategy which Sridhar likes to call Win-Win-Win. This strategy, that CtrlS took to heart and continues to adhere even today has been responsible for some of the biggest feathers in the organization’s hat including the world’s first Tier 4 Datacenters. “Our product had to be of a much better quality than that of anybody else in the industry. That’s how Tier 4 came into being. Then we set a parameter that our cost cannot be more than the competition. We took extra measures to contain our costs, hence our investment in better energy efficiency and the way we built our Community Clouds.” This going the 20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
extra mile for efficiency, as Sridhar reiterates, has been key to CtrlS being able to offer better pricing than competition even with more advanced and dependable Tier 4 datacenters and highest redundancy in cloud infrastructure. The third string of the Win-Win-Win strategy at CtrlS is flexibility for business adding to customer value. In this regard Sridhar explains, “Most of the competition is large companies, which are basically monoliths that don’t adjust easily according to the customer needs. When the customer is also a monolith, then this problem gets multiplied. On the other hand our offering, Cloud sourcing is not like a onetime license procurement. You go shared but it’s in essence like establishing a family where you depend on the family members on a day-to-day basis. It’s more of establishing partnerships than vendor customer relationships. So the flexibility we bring in makes it a triple win for us as well as our customers.” This win-win-win strategy has worked well for CtrlS; well being an understatement. Today, more than one third of India’s top hundred
With Sridhar, the approach to inspiration depends on where exactly a person is looking to the inspiration to use, “Most of us have one role model, but somehow I have different role models for different aspects of my life. When I think about creating a product, Steve Jobs comes to mind. When it comes to being a modern entrepreneur, I look at the maker of these new age electric cars, Elon Musk. Similarly, when I started CtrlS, the role models for me were not people but great datacenters around the world. They were like temples for me and I found some reason or the other to visit them, learn from them and then do more by customizing their innovations for the Indian market.” The result is out of this too shape in form of the state of the art CtrlS Datacenters.
GAMEPLAN AND DIFFERENTIATOR FOR THE COMPETITIVE CLOUD ERA According to Sridhar, CtrlS has been successful in developing a niche positioning in the Industry which renders any effects from the competition with multi-billion dollar global companies inconsequential. “As long as we continue to provide specialized niche services, customers will come and that’s exactly what has happened till now in our space.” This has been true with clear success of Tier 4 and Community Cloud where CtrlS has been the pioneer. The CtrlS ERP Cloud has over 300 customers; the banking Cloud has had close to 40 customers. “All of this happened in the midst of a highly competitive marketplace. So that’s our strategy: continue to differentiate and provide a different value proposition all together.” Talking about differentiators in the market that has helped CtrlS maintain its positioning, the CtrlS banking cloud has been making good
CTRLS // COVER STORY
CtrlS currently has five datacenters in India with two more in the pipline for next year. Below: Hyderabad Datacenter
“There is nobody else in India or globally doing the same thing as of now. I believe this (community cloud) will be very big in the coming two or three years.”
COMMUNITY CLOUD FOR CIOS IN SECTORS LIKE BANKING AND GOVERNMENT
strides recently, but the biggest one was the ERP, as Sridhar explains, “The ERP is predominantly SAP based and the industry problem with SAP was that too many hands were involved, There was a different implementer, a different license provider, a different system integrator, then came the hardware vendor, the security provider, and management of the application among others. All of this required a big team in the organization to manage multiple agencies. With CtrlS, all of that goes into a single service where a client pays on a monthly basis and gets SLA at the application login. With no headaches of handling at least six or seven different agencies and the security parameters going into it, cost goes down and uptime goes up making it a winning situation. We’ve done a similar thing for insurance industry. We’ve done much more than a community cloud for software vendors and SaaS players. Similarly, we’ve done the same for all regulated industries which require different compliances. All of them have a readymade ‘in the box’ solution with us. Our aim is to cover most of the important verticals in the next two years.”
THE CTRLS COMMUNITY CLOUD The biggest USP to the CtrlS Community Cloud offering is the specific customizations that render it apt for the customer’s specific needs. “The Cloud we offer to the banking community is very different from what we offer to the ERP community. For the banking community, we give up to 40 control checks. From a cost point of view, it would
be at least 4 times more than ERP which does not require such a bullet proof category security. The ERP customers are happy with 5 or 6 information controls or security checks as we call them.” The way CtrlS build’s the industry specific Clouds differ from one offering to another. As he reiterates, “Yes, the server, computing space and network components are the same, but beyond that it requires a deep rooted expertise. For example, let’s take the SAP Cloud. We have a huge SAP Center of Excellence with more than 200 people with global Fortune500 customer experience, and that CoE, combined with our other 16 CoEs is able to provide this solution. It calls for a complete mile deep expertise in that particular technology. Else, no company can gain SLA and survive.” The CtrlS Community Cloud offerings include the entire array of functionalities from test & dev, application administration, complete security, accent management, and other component, making it a conclusive deal for the customer. “After signing to our community cloud, an organization only needs any other vendor when there is need for a major implementation, a major change in application, or the launch a new product of service.” More than 80 percent of the new business that the company is signing has been coming through Community Cloud. “There is nobody else in India or globally doing the same thing as of now. I believe this (community cloud) will be very big in the coming two or three years.”
As per Sridhar’s estimates, the community cloud easily brings up savings by 30 to 40 percent and improved uptime in applications. And this keeps the Banking CIOs satisfied, “They are happy souls with uptime up to three 9s and we are now reaching up to four 9s: it’s improving day by day.” The third and the biggest benefit is time to market, “Previously, banks took a long time with even the most efficient CIOs taking at least 8-9 months to launch a branch from an IT perspective. Today this time is 3 weeks thanks to the CtrlS community Cloud. At the same time, if you get a 40 percent decrease in pricing and increase in uptime, it’s a no brainer.” When it comes to the government sector, Sridhar believes the organizations can save a lot more than other sectors, “They can actually save as much as seventy to eighty percent if you consider the resources in their IT departments.” CtrlS has executed some of the country’s largest projects in their G-Cloud or better, the Government Community Cloud. The country’s largest tax project is run on the CtrlS G-Cloud. Some other major government clients include the Finance Departments of some State Governments, application and registration departments, the country’s largest legislature regulator, a number of Utility companies, and the Municipal Corporation of India’s biggest cities. CtrlS is one of the leading Government cloud providers in India.
MARKET PRESENCE AND EXPANSION PLANS Currently, CtrlS has presence in 5 Countries in Southeast Asia; stronghold in Australia and New Zealand, and 3 Countries in the Middle East. Expansion plans are in pipeline for the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia while Japan tops their plans. The year will also witness expansion to the rest of Middle East with next year’s focus on foray into Africa and South America. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
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COVER STORY // CTRLS
“EVERY BUSINESS HAS RISKS. IF YOU WANT TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR, YOU HAVE TO FACE IT, THERE’S NO OTHER WAY AROUND IT.” The company’s expansion plans have 4 more datacenters in pipeline for completion in a couple of months further expanding its global presence outside India apart from the 24 locations in operation. Sridhar shares his expectations and plans for future, “Between Cloud and Datacenter, we are looking at almost USD 400 million of revenue in the next 4-5 years, and about 70 to 80 cloud bots operational. In India, we are looking at a 100 Megawatt datacenter infrastructure in the next 3-4 years. We are making two more datacenters operational and will have six by the end of the financial year.
ADVICE FOR STARTUPS AND YOUNG INDIA ENTREPRENEURS From his own experience as a young entrepreneur when founding CtrlS, Sridhar believes that a young business leader aspiring to make it big in any industry cannot get discouraged by risks and setbacks. “When I set about this business, everyone around was puzzled. They remarks went from ‘Why?’ to ‘It will not work’. I’m sure 90 percent of individuals starting a new business often hear things like this. My advice is that you should listen to what people have to say but don’t let any of it discourage you. Look at it from the perspective of knowing what can go wrong, working on it and thus perfecting the business. Let it be a step in preparation for the business.” Sridhar continues, “Every business has risks. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to face it, there’s no other way around it. Once you get in, expect
“Between Cloud and Datacenter, we are looking at almost USD 400 million of revenue in the next 4-5 years.”
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big obstacles, swim through and overcome them.”
ON MANAGING A WIDESPREAD LARGE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS For people who love their job, managing personal and professional lives is no big mountain to scale. As Sridhar states, It’s actually quite simple because I enjoy my job. Going to work every day is something I look forward to. The energy that work brings is a joy and something that keeps me going.” Sridhar maintains a strict Sunday evening to Friday evening work schedule. “Pretty much 95 percent of my productive time goes in work and thinking about work. I put in about 60 hours in this phase. Earlier, this time used to be more than 60 hours but now in the current phase of my life I’ve restricted it to that number. I spend time with friends and family on Saturday and Sunday, and get back to it Sunday evening.” The innovative entrepreneur has an interesting ideology towards running his company where in he tries to divide his work time among different tasks to ensure he makes most out of his time from the business perspective for CtrlS, “What I try to do is cater only 30 percent of my productive time to management, and rest 70 percent time I wear the hat of a standalone executive. This time is leveraged to create innovation in our processes, products and services, and other vital roles like building important client relationships, tackling problem areas within the organization or planning finances and fund raising. These are various task I perform as a standalone executive, and probably that’s what keeps it going, else with just the management part, the week will be quite boring.”
UNWINDING AND DE-CLUTTERING THE MIND Being in love with what he does, Sridhar generally doesn’t need a lot of regular unwinding. He shares, “I try to get some time in the gym, or the swimming pool or cycling. Doing some extreme
MORE THAN 80 PERCENT OF THE NEW BUSINESS THAT THE COMPANY IS SIGNING HAS BEEN COMING THROUGH CLOUD4C COMMUNITY CLOUD.
physical activity relaxes my mind and clears the clutter and makes me feel more energetic.” For leisure and to satisfy the travel bug, the leisure destination closest to the entrepreneur’s heart are the majestic Himalayas which offer his the peace of mind which is missing in his regular business destinations of urban cities. “Personally, Himalayas are my favorite. Better than any other place in the world. I’ve been to the great mountains eight or nine times so far. The tranquility is surreal, the resorts are a stress buster and trekking around the landscape is something I absolutely love. This unwinds me and allows me to come back with fresh ideas. It also gives me a lot of time to introspect.”
LIKES AND DISLIKES FROM AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PERSPECTIVE Sridhar believes that dislikes are just inabilities to tackle situations from a business leader’s point of view. “Everything that’s not to my liking, I try to work upon it and figure out a way to address it. If you want to grow as a leader, there shouldn’t be anything that you can’t deal with. One should develop the skills and abilities to deal with any situation. That’s also my belief in life.”
GUEST TALK
BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR ENTERPRISES
Today, the large enterprises are seen to be the torch beaearer of digital transformation, therefore they are the beneficiaries too. But in order to achieve the larger objective of inclusive growth, the millions of SMEs to be influenced to do the same so that the growth of the country becomes better.
B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M
G
lobally, as the businesses are evolving with changing consumer needs, digital technologies have brought in a paradigm shift in the way companies now operate. In the last decade or so, digital disruption has renewed competition, placed innovation at the center of all business strategy, and opened-up newer markets for businesses to tap into. Besides mobile, cloud and Big Data, a gamut of new-age digital tools such as M2M, Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Analytics are set to be the next set of agility drivers for businesses. These will help in collaborative innovation, continual governance, consolidate data systems and upgrade billing and charging. As the largest emerging economy, India has embraced the digital revolution admirably. While large-scale businesses and conglomerates across sectors have been the bellwether of digital transformation in the country, the SMEs (small and medium enterprises) which are an important contributor to the GDP are now aggressively pivoting towards digital adoption. The fact that SMEs in India show a 14 percent year-on-year rise in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expenditures underscores their seriousness toward digitization as they have realized that being digitally enabled helps them in increasing their efficieny , adding value to their customers requirements and also leads to overall exponential growth in business . SMEs are now going digital to bridge the gap with large corporations and operate with them on a level-playing field. Today, IT companies are helping SMEs to transform digitally, thereby aiding their path to achieving double digit profits. Some of
the traditional homegrown busnesses for example, in Kerala, some of the biggest jewellery business houses, most of which began as small businesses have effectively deployed ICT solutions that have helped them expand their presence, and tap into the vast customer-base across the country. A unique example of digital transformation enabling growth of a Small enterprise is that of the Shimla-based BPO firm 31 Parallel, which deployed end-to-end ICT requirement to expand operations. With products such as - Internet Leased Line (ILL) for unhindered and dedicated internet connectivity; Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines for voice service; Toll Free Services; and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, they are seeing a tremendous growth and now are poised to compete with bigger players in their sector. Not just business firms even sectors like Education is now transforming itself on the brink of digital technology Schools are adopting and adapting to tools like LBS (Location Based Tracking ) which provides a safety feature for their students. For instance, Delhi Public School (DPS) Karnal employed the LBS technology to locate school buses in real-time, and an intuitive portal to improve safety, accountability, and system efficiency of their mobile fleet. Monitoring the school bus position while in transit, it comprises a feature called ‘Parent Alert’ that helps Parents to track the location of the bus, and informs them as to when it is reaching their respective pick-up or drop points.
BARRIERS TO ICT ADOTION Though SMEs are open to the idea of going digital, their usage and access to quality and latest technology solutions is limited. As per a recent KPMG Report, a staggering 63 percent of them still function offline, using traditional methods and legacy tools. Sev-
MR. VISHAL BHAT, HEAD - SME OPERATIONS- NORTH, TATA DOCOMO BUSINESS SERVICES
eral barriers force them to put their digital transformation plans on hold. Major hurdles include financial access leading to budgetary constraints and inadequate personnel. SMEs run on small budgets compared to large organisations, thereby making it difficult for them to invest money in digitisation. Moreover, this also makes it difficult for them to hire employees with good IT acumen or those who can help in system maintenance or failure. Adopting ICT solutions in such a scenario becomes a risky task.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES These barriers, however, can be addressed with smart and perceptive decisions. SMEs must look at deploying highly scalable and reliable connectivity solutions. Generally, the degree and complexity of the ICT requirement for each of SME differs depending on the nature of their business. So, make sure to adopt only those end-to-end ICT solutions which will help achieve operational efficiency, reduce cost, provide seamless connectivity, improve productivity, and improve customer experience. This way the business will be able to compete with any large organisation and would have the capabilities to offer quality services to its customers. Clearly then, access to ICT solutions will have a significant impact both at home and on the global turf. SMEs should buckle up and embrace the digital renaissance for a promising performance and a positive future that will ensure their viability in the coming times. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23
INTERVIEW // DELL EMC
IT BECOMES THE BUSINESS As Dell EMC gears up to take the market by storm with the release of the new 14G Server platform, Christoph Theisinger, heading presales in APJ shares his thoughts on how the IT business is changing and sheds light on Dell EMC’s plans for India and Asia Pacific region. 24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
DELL EMC // INTERVIEW
CHRISTOPH THEISINGER, VP PRESALES APJ, DELL EMC
“Going digital, businesses need to ensure that their underlying IT infrastructure and the business operating model which is in use are modernized.”
How has the Indian market been for Dell EMC in comparison to other geographies in APJ? The Indian market is our second largest market. For Dell EMC, it has been our first quarter together, and across the Asian markets, we have been very successful. It is a solid foundation. We have seen that the customers like the go-to market which is less based on products and features and more about partnering with customers to help them innovate in a bid to move their business to digital. The Datacenter market is currently at $2.2 Billion and is expected to grow to $4.2 Billion in 2018 and to $7 Billion in 2022. We have a leadership position growing in double digits over the last year and are on a good trajectory moving forward. How can Dell EMC support digital transformation of Indian enterprises? Going digital, businesses need to ensure that their underlying IT infrastructure and the business operating model which is in use are modernized through technology. Particularly in the Indian market, the CIOs are adopting IT-as-a-service model. Today, everything is somehow advertized as a service: It is priced in such a way with things like charge back. This process has to be very agile and can’t be done if the underlying infrastructure doesn’t support the model. Last but definitely not the least, Security is a core concern everywhere and we are looking at how can we help organizations in strengthening their security, be more preventive in their approach, know their cybersecurity insurance premium etc. We have market leading server portfolio and recently launched the latest 14G. The market is moving from buying boxes to buying Hyper-converged Infrastructure where we have all the components of the datacenter in an integrated experience ready to be used.
How has the pre-sales pitch changed over the years with enterprise IT architectures rapidly transforming? I am an inherited EMC person. Before the merger, we had a big portfolio of products but it was primarily storage and data protection focused which basically helped us maintain a certain level of product expertise. Now with the portfolio growing even wider, it demands that we use a different approach when interacting with the customer. Our customer conversations are around digital transformation as earlier mentioned. The approach we are taking moving forward as Dell EMC is more on the lines of the enterprise architecture approach. In my personal experience, what has been missing in the traditional selling approach is the business context. The business context is very important when it comes to building a technology strategy with a customer. So it should be more of a partnership and when the partnership and the context are both in place, only then can we work out a long term technology strategy which is co-owned with the customer and fruitful to both the parties involved. Who heads POC and Simulations at the customer end: Dell EMC or the integration partners? It’s a bit of both for us but the customer scenarios are becoming more complex. An organization can buy infrastructure based on specs and pricing but that’s not the way to go about it. Typically, customers have specific use cases in mind ranging from virtual desktop infrastructure, machine learning and machine intelligence, large-scale Big Data scenarios etc. Now to build all these scenarios is a goliath task. It requires resources on our side, resources maybe on the partner side, and definitely the right resources on the customer side. We have been investing big time in solution centers and briefing centers where we can collaborate with customers and work on a foundation which already exists in their organizations.
Speaking of India, we are already in a very fortunate position with our CoE in Bangalore for product engineering and support. The Bangalore CoE maintains a research lab with a number of use cases where our customers and partners can go, test and try out new technologies. We are morphing in the way we deliver the proof to more of a solution center approach at the same time attaching it to the business value. Is CIO the only link or do your customer conversations extend to other enterprise leaders like CFOs and CEOs? In today’s scenario, everybody is. We use a tagline in our organizations – IT becomes the business. With the way the organizations are changing, IT team members are placed in the business unit to better understand requirements of marketing, sales or finance departments. Let’s use a performance based customer example. A customer needed to run a couple of database batches . When we re-engineered to understand what was happening, we did an evaluation of the products and services to build upon the customers’ requirements. The solution helped them in turn to build customers early which directly impacted their cash flow, thus making it actually a CFO decision. The CFO of the company said and I quote, “If this technology has proven that it can deliver worth for us, we are going to adopt it.” Although it’s centers on the Presales group, the conversations impact the sales group and the marketing message. Our transformation message and how we talk about our solutions is centered on the business message and that allows us to have such conversations. What is the strength of Dell EMC’s engineering team in India? We are organized in business units: server business unit, and HCI business unit. Both units use our CoE and offshore development center capabilities. We have a multi location approach. A major portion of the 14G server platform was developed out of the Bangalore CoE, something we in the APJ region are very proud of. The Indian engineering team has had a longterm partnership with the headquarters engineering organization which started with the 6th gen server platform. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25
INTERVIEW // VEDANTA
AMITABH MISHRA,
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, VEDANTA RESOURCES
“IT, combined with Digital, now enables fundamental transformations and innovations to the
business model.”
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VEDANTA // INTERVIEW
WHERE WILL THE NEXT BIG GROWTH COME FROM? THE ANSWER IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION With Enterprises looking for the next phase of growth, a new breed on change makers, the Chief Digital Officers are taking the reins of business as well as technology simultaneously in their hands. Amitabh Mishra, leading the transformation for energy giant Vedanta Resources talks about the role of a CDO and the way for organizations to tap the digital moving forward. With organizations going from IT-enabled to completely digital, how has the enterprise outlook changed through your journey in the industry? The enterprise outlook has changed in three fundamental ways: (1) IT is viewed more as “technology innovations” than “keep the lights on” – in other words, IT no longer runs the guts of the information management or MIS systems. IT, combined with Digital, now enables fundamental transformations and innovations to the business model. For example, we are building an end-to-end commodity management chain that combines 100% automation with cuttingedge analytics. It will enable us to bring massive benefits to Sterlite Copper in terms of costs and revenue. Chief Digital Officer is a new emerging role in large organizations across verticals. How is it different from a CIO? What are the responsibilities of a CDO? You have to remember that CDO is a new role, whereas the role of CIO has been around for years. From the reporting and responsibility perspective, in most organizations, the IT organization – and, by extension the CIO – reports into the CDO, whereas in a few organizations, status quo reigns, that is, the CIO continues to report to the COO, CFO or CEO. Regardless of reporting, here is a fundamental way the CDO role is different from the CIO role: the CDO is essentially a business leader with a solid technology foundation who is responsible for achieving business goals such as cost reduction and revenue increase, whereas the CIO is first and foremost a technology leader that primarily focuses on keeping the lights on with the help of information systems and automation. A CDO is responsible for achiev-
ing enhanced business objectives using data, analytics, machine connectivity, IoT and Artificial Intelligence. In other words, he or she is the CEO of the digital organization and a ‘revenue center’, while the CIO is a ‘cost center.’ One isn’t better than the other; both roles have a very important role to play in the evolution of the organization. How crucial is the involvement of the top management in IT and Digital strategies and decisions? I would say it’s very crucial. Without the active buy-in and proactive involvement of top management, IT and Digital agendas won’t be very successful. In Harvard Business Review (March 2000), Christensen and Overdorf present a very scientific framework for answering this question. If your Digital strategy fits well with existing values but poorly with existing processes, then your innovation team must be heavyweight dedicated exclusively to the innovation project, with complete responsibility for its success. That’s been precisely our approach at Vedanta. Digital is entrusted to dedicated Chief Digital Officers with their own staff. While the existing organization (e.g. logistics, operations, services, finance, et al.) pitch in whenever necessary, the success of the strategy depends on the CDO and his or her team that has the firm backing and support of top management. What needs to be done to ready the workforce for the Enterprise’s Digital Journey? A number of things come to mind. These are the steps top management may want to undertake. First, hire the right digital leader that has a combination of business and technology skills, with the ability to paint a transformative vision and execute that vision. Next, make it a big deal.
Talk about it at leadership events, employee events, all-hands meetings and the like. In other words, communicate early and often. Next, create Digital Councils that support the Chief Digital Officer in developing and executing a Digital strategy. Next, let the CDO pick an appropriate partner with proven success in developing and executing end-to-end digital strategies. Finally, publicize small successes and parlay that excitement and confidence to create progressively larger successes. What are some of the ways in which organizations can benefit from digital transformation? What is the scope and opportunities that can be tapped? A traditional business, with continuous improvements, will run into a wall sooner or later. Where will the next big growth come from? The answer is digital transformation. Imagine a piece of expensive equipment going down in your factory today. What do you do today? Well, you call the OEM, who sends a technician and a part. Tomorrow, post-Digital transformation, this scenario won’t happen because the technician and the part will show up before the equipment goes down. How? By connecting your equipment to the IoT and monitoring the performance of the asset continuously. Another scenario is a financial and operational dashboard for top management that provides real-time scorecards. Yet another is digital process modeling, a ‘digital twin’ of sorts that enables managers to optimize processes perfectly, taking personality-based inconsistencies out of decision-making. And so on and so forth. In summary, a digital transformation is really just that – it’s a transformation that can propel an organization on the path to years of astounding growth.
OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27
INTERVIEW // IXIA
OUR GOAL IS DELIVERING GROWTH WITH PROFITABILITY With exciting times ahead following acquisition by Keysight, Ixia is stepping in with new intensity and big plans for the market. President Bethany Mayer talks on the new go-to market strategy; tech plans for future and offers advice for businesses dealing with issues with the Cloud technologies. Why was Ixia an attractive proposition for Keysight? How successful has the acquisition proven? Ixia leads with technology. We have a massive patent portfolio for a small company, and we are consistently first to market. We are not the low price leader, and we never will be. We offer the best products on the market, and support our customers in whatever they need to ensure they are successful. Keysight saw that in Ixia and it was highly attractive to them, as that is in line with Keysight’s mission and culture. It is important for Keysight to add value to their customers by providing solutions to layer 1-7 testing and offering best in market products. Keysight is the market leader in their space. Ixia brings layer 1-7 technology and is the market leader in our space. This is a strong combination. Can you shed some light on Ixia’s future plans as part of Keysight? Our goal is continued growth in our markets and delivering growth with profitability to Keysight. In addition we are moving into the Cloud with both our test and visibility products. This is an exciting time for Ixia and Keysight. We will go with the first to market, best in class technologies approach to the cloud and offer our customers solutions to help them migrate with performance and security to the cloud. What is the USP of Ixia against market competition in testing? Our products are technically superior both in performance and in their ability to test complex protocol sets and with real world environments. Our Cloud Storm solution is unparalleled in its ability to test terabit speeds of SSL encrypted traffic. What is the biggest cloud-related issue businesses are overlooking right now? The issue that customers face now is how and what to migrate to the cloud. Once migrated, how to ensure performance and security of workloads and applications in 28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
the cloud. What risks are organizations exposing themselves to when they move applications to the public cloud? Business continuity issues and security issues. Public cloud right now is not always as reliable as a customer’s data center. If there is an outage, depending upon the workloads in the cloud, it can pose a serious risk to the business. In addition, security of data is always a concern in the cloud, and there are not as many solutions as customers would like right now to solve that concern. What do organizations need to do to minimize those risks as they move applications to the cloud? They need to stage what they move to the cloud in terms of importance and complexity. They also need to consider tools that can provide them with visibility into the traffic and workloads in the cloud to assure performance in the cloud. What is Ixia’s strategy around helping organizations move securely to the cloud? Our strategy is two-fold: Offer test solutions that test the security and resiliency of their instances in the cloud, and provide scale out visibility tools that can enable a customer to assure the performance of their workloads in the cloud. What is your advice to the Enterprise IT World CXO community? Developing a strategy together as a team, communicating it across the organization, aligning and staying in touch constantly with the leadership is the key to turning around a difficult situation. Broader communication on the progress of the turn around and transparency on the success factor is important. And finally, tie everyone in the company to the larger goal financially. We are in this boat together and we sink or swim together.
IXIA // INTERVIEW
BETHANY MAYER,
PRESIDENT, IXIA SOLUTIONS GROUP
“We will go with the first to market, best in class technologies approach to the cloud and offer our customers solutions to help them migrate with performance and security to the cloud.”
OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29
INTERVIEW // FORCEPOINT
SECURITY THROUGH A ‘PEOPLE-CENTRIC’ LENS As more and more enterprise-grade attacks cripple large organizations and CISOs having mammoth tasks of keeping such threats at bay, Surendra Singh, Country Director, Forcepoint sheds light on the security giant’s recent whitepaper on ‘The State of Cybersecurity’ and how a human point approach to security is critical for today’s CISOs. 30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
FORCEPOINT // INTERVIEW
customers. So it is just a start and I think it will take another 6 to 12 months for Indian customers to fully understand, accept, do the pilot, and then a project on this.
SURENDRA SINGH,
COUNTRY DIRECTOR, FORCEPOINT INDIA
“There is a big need to rethink about the technology and we at Forcepoint feel that the next big thing
is human point security.”
When you talk to CIOs and CISOs, how is the concept of organizational security changing for them? The number one issue would be that there are so many breaches that their teams are extremely busy in trying to integrate the various security pieces. So a typical CIO of a medium sized organization’s number one concern is that the time his team is spending in just trying to integrate these products and not being able to work on security posters. They need answers to questions like ‘Who could attack us? Who are these threat attackers? What are their strategies and tactics? What they should do in terms of tactics and strategies to contract against these? Number two issue that they are facing is a lack of sufficient manpower. There is not enough manpower in any organization and there are so many vacancies for cyber security professionals. So definitely we need more of automation and have less complexity. But today, with so many innovations happening in the security world, many good security products have come helping them solve this problem to an extent. Today we have reached the inflection point where too many fine products are actually affecting and harming the security of the organization. Remote workforces, virtual offices and concepts like BYOD and MDM: How have these cultural changes transformed tasks of the security staff or organization? The organizations have to reorganize or rather rethink about the security because some of them still have the same security which we did 10 years back and depended on securing the infrastructure. Giving flexibility to the employee to work from home or work from remote offices enhances employee satisfaction and I see a lot of movement in this direction. This is something which will grow and the entire security is based on
perimeter security. Today, we do 90 % of the work without touching the corporate network. We use the public cloud for so many things and hardly the company corporate network. Traditionally, security is built to secure the corporate network but today that is no more important. There is a big need to rethink about the security technologies and we at Forcepoint feel that the next big thing is human point security because the answer is that, where is the employee? Whatever he is doing, if you can trace the behavior and see if the employee’s behavior is changing because of circumstances or maybe because if machine has got compromised and a hacker is using his machine to become the employee. There are solutions like CASB which is called Cloud Access Security Broker. It gives a lot of visibility to CIOs as to what is going on within their organization like - which employee is using what applications. In the initial survey, the CIOs and CSOs are very surprised because they would have thought that maybe we are using 20 sanctioned applications and there might be another 50 or 100 sanctioned applications. But for mid to large organizations, there are more than 1000 unsanctioned applications which are mindboggling. And how many of these thousands are actually security risk, there is absolutely no idea. So this Cloud Security Access solution gives purpose to take care of this visibility and gives some complaints to the CIOs to review their risk on going to public cloud. How do Indian cybersecurity professionals understand this concept? Are they able to implement this concept? Some of the elements of human point have been in India for last 7 or 8 years. DLP has definitely been there but insider threat protection was very recently introduced. It is a work in progress where we are doing events. We are talking to people to create awareness and are also interacting with
With attacks like WannaCry and Petya, are organizations actually realizing where they are lacking and are being targeted by cyber attackers? Does this demand a change in the organizational employee policies? Let me start from the bottom of the equation, a change is policy is actually required and these ransomware attacks are a very good to exercise in creating awareness. Awareness is definitely important and I think the awareness among employees is extremely important. CIOs and CISOs are also realizing that every year more money is being spent on security than the previous year and yet we are less secured. There are some serious issues which we are able to pinpoint. Too many point products is definitely the number one issue. Number two is that the security infrastructures are very complex which needs simplification and the focus is only on the essential. Today, we need to simplify security, focus on few things which can maximum potential. Until and unless an organization doesn’t simplify, it will not be able to secure itself. Till recently, they had been spending too much time on doing something which gives less value, so I believe there is a realization. What are your plans and your targets regarding this technology in the coming year? How do you plan to cater to the Indian market? We are addressing this need through events which we did in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai where a large number of customers came. At the same time, we are educating and training our channel partners also. We are directly in touch with the early adopters and then the second layer of customers is addressed through events like these. And then we have our channel partners who are engaging every customer and every prospect. What is your advice to the Enterprise IT World community of CIOs and CISOs? It is high time professionals realize that they have to look for the change. Once they are open to change, and are willing to look at what new things can be done, they will do much better. On the other hand, if they are not willing to change, then I think it is going to be tougher as security threats are only going to grow. The threats are very high and organizations cannot afford to risk and so it is important to change. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD
31
CIO TALK // FIS
“Organization must develop an exclusive executive protection plan to protect senior executives from cyber threats.”
CYBER SECURITY – A VITAL ELEMENT
UPKAR SINGH, Director Information Technology, FIS
CYBER SECURITY FOR C-SUITES
T
he senior or C-level executive protection forms a key component of an organization’s overall risk management strategy. Executive protection has developed as a mature professional service; however, at present its scope is limited to physical protection. Web revolution has transformed the way an organization works, giving rise to a wide range of cyber threats. Hence, the current vision of the executive protection plan needs to evolve to include protection from cyber threats. The senior or C-level executives of organizations operating in critical sectors like energy, 32 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
nano-computing, oil and gas, next-gen mobile technology, public service departments, banking, and defense are easy targets of cyber threats as their log-in credentials provide immediate access to critical data. As a senior executive, you should be extra vigilant while travelling to adversary countries, which may wire your hotel room or bribe the cab or hotel room service provider to get access to any information possible. The Wi-Fi network of a hotel can also be compromised to get access to your internet session. Thus, an executive protection plan must include defense against cyber espionage activities. Senior executives must be extra cautious while travelling to countries which are considered high risk areas.
Every organization has an information security policy to ensure that the IT infrastructure is updated with the latest antivirus, firewalls and other critical security controls. However, the security policy might not cover executive protection. Therefore, the organization must develop an exclusive executive protection plan to protect senior executives from cyber threats. Huge multinational companies with several chief executive officers, vice presidents, and directors, especially require executive protection plans, imbibing cyber security. To start with, an organization could implement the following measures as part of its executive protection plan: l Do not allow senior executives to carry work laptops when they are travelling. l Provide a second laptop to the executive that never connects to the home-office network (company network). This laptop should preferably carry as less work files and applications as possible. l Avoid carrying highly vulnerable and targeted applications on such laptops, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is being targeted by several hackers. Instead, use an alternative PDF reader. l The executive should try and avoid keeping crucial information on the travel laptop. Important files, presentations, and critical information should be stored on encrypted flash drives which should be carried at all times by the executive. l Conduct a forensic analysis of the travel laptop once the executive is back. Given the range of risks involved, a chief information security officer managing an executive protection plan must know that protecting an individual is different from securing a facility. A proper risk assessment exercise would help create a profound executive protection plan, involving cyber security.
APON // CXO SPEAKS
“Hackers only need a small security flaw to penetrate into servers not only harming your data
and applications but in turn, also impacting business continuity and reputation.”
the tools, methodologies, and skill to tackle that.
SECURITY FLAWS CAN LAND AN ENTERPRISE INTO BIG TROUBLE
JAIDEEP KHANDUJA, Regional Director, ApON Innovative Solutions
TOP 3 CODE VULNERABILITIES CAUSING SECURITY GAPS
I
ncreasing presence on internet demands higher level of security. Same way, enterprises are moving to cloud for residing their valuable data and applications. All this attracts potential risks, especially in terms of virus, ransomware, and malware. In fact, hackers only need a small security flaw to penetrate into your servers thus causing a big harm to your data and applications. Not
only that, this in turn, also impacts business continuity and reputation. In addition, there are huge financial losses due to heavy ransom demand for unlocking or decrypting your data. Any vulnerability in code can produce leakages and security gaps. Though there are many leakage possibilities of that you need to think of while writing a code. As a matter of fact, testing has to be the strongest area in the whole development cycle. You need to find the best of
The most common gap in coding causing security flaw is Hidden Field Manipulation. This is most prominent in e-commerce portals. On the other hand, you need to adopt extra protection for an e-commerce website due to the kind of transactions it handles. Recently there was a case reporting a billion of loss during a month due to amounts getting debited from the company account instead of customer’s accounts for purchase transactions. Was it due to a flaw in code or an intentional move by an employee is yet to ascertain. In Hidden Field Manipulation, applications encapsulate some hidden fields within web pages. Due to immature handling of coding standards some of these fields carrying highly crucial information might land a company into a big trouble. The second most common factor responsible for security flaws due to code vulnerability is Cross-site Scripting. This, in fact, is more prone to happen because of careless coding. It becomes a golden gate for hackers letting them steal sessions or inject malicious content thus defacing a webpage to vulnerable content or redirecting users to malicious sites. The third most common loophole in coding is Cross-site Request Forgery. This kind of Security Flaw happens due to negligence of coders while coding. If a code doesn’t understand the value of random tokens and re-authentication on a critical data transaction page, it could cause havoc. In fact, if these two factors are missing an attacker becomes free to perform transactions on behalf of users. Depending on the accessibility rights of a user, the intruder can cause any volume of damage to an organization. OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 33
FEATURE STORY // HEALTHCARE
MOVING TOWARDS
PATIENTCENTRIC
HEALTHCARE Technologies like Big data, automation and SMAC have been changing how healthcare services are being delivered in the country. Hospitals and pharma companies looking at innovative solutions that can help them with faster medical research, better diagnosis and more affordable healthcare, thus moving towards patient-centric healthcare.
BY CHITRESH SEHGAL CSEHGAL@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM
P
roviding the latest medicine and state of the art facilities to a billion strong population of India has been a mammoth task for India’s hospitals and health institutions. Since the early days of forming the nation, catering to the health of large volumes of people situated across geographies has been a never ending challenge. A lack of facilities, shortage of skilled professionals coupled with the inability to precisely diagnose and manage the humongous amount of reports and paperwork attached have been big hurdles. However, as digital kicks into the vertical, technologies like Big Data, Cloud, Automation and Artificial Intelligence are set to change all that, finally moving towards the realization of the vision of state of the art affordable healthcare for all. Healthcare has been a key focus area for the Indian governments of past and present, reiterated through numerous initiatives, among the recent ones being
34 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
the National Health Policy 2017 and eHealth which is a big part of the Digital India initiative and has seen a lot of progress in health technologies in the country. Transformations have been the norm recently and organizations in the sector big or small, have been trying to leverage technology in order to provide their patients with a friendlier and better experience, enable easier diagnosis, and help faster treatments with latest medical research enabling newer cures. The market has also been growing with more and more businesses emerging with innovations in the field and the surge in startups has come as a boost
HEALTHCARE // FEATURE STORY
to doctors and medical researchers. The sector has almost an unending scope for deployments and improvement, being one of the more critical ones in the economy. Organizations have been expanding IT teams and facilities with the understanding of the digital and are now joining the innovation landscape too. The future has a lot of development in store and most importantly, the ability to be able to cater to the 1.3 Billion Indians who will be directly impacted through this digital revolution in the healthcare industry.
CURRENT LANDSCAPE AND
MARKET OPPORTUNITY Modern technologies have been changing the landscape of healthcare globally by helping manage and scale up current treatment facilities as well as speed up research in disease control and therapeutics. Emerging digital technologies stand to transform traditional healthcare business models within the sector with a focus to improve delivery of services to patients and reduce investment of resources in redundant and mundane tasks. There is a concentrated effort by Governments to channelize resources towards the segment. Furthermore, hospitals today have
taken up the issue of technology adoption seriously. According to the IBEF, the total healthcare industry size in India touched US$ 160 billion in 2017 and the number is expected to rise to US$ 280 billion by 2020. As we gradually move towards the vision of ‘Healthcare for all’, there will be a crucial need for a robust infrastructure to cater to the needs of the population. This in turn can also be seen as a goldmine opportunity for businesses in the sector. According to a report by NASSCOM, the Indian healthcare IT market is likely to grow 1.5 times by 2020. A significant reason for this growth is OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 35
FEATURE STORY // HEALTHCARE
VIVEK NAIDU,
DEEP CHANDRA JOSHI,
“Automated health records will become imperative for efficient healthcare
“There is an increased focus on automation and digitization which includes elimination of
VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, KODAK ALARIS INDIA
services enabling doctors to access records at the click of a button thereby speeding up patient care.”
the proliferation of technologies like automation and IT adoption in the space. Somesh Misra, VP, Deskera explains, “Factors like increased health awareness, reduced costs, improved efficiency, and centralized hospital systems are playing a crucial role in this revolution.” This is attracting interests from both IT giants and new age innovative startups and both have being coming up with new solutions and offerings. Puneet Goyal, Director, BD and Transformation – Healthcare at Intelenet Global Services comments, “There is an immense potential for the IT industry to work towards formulating niche solutions to match the increase demand that is being witnessed in the sector.”
MAJOR TECHNOLOGIES INFLUENCING THE SPACE The healthcare sector has in recent times seen a major focus on data management, with patient medical reports and previous case histories being a vital component of diagnosis. Further, technologies like HRMS software, automation, Big Data driven Analytics have further strengthened medical diagnosis and prescribed treatments. Cloud is becoming an integral part of the healthcare system. Telemedicine is another technology which has helped in expanding reach to rural communities. Hospital IT Heads 36 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
HEAD - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, MYLAN PHARMACEUTICAL
manual labor and introducing tools that support business processes.”
have truly embrace the third platform with mobility and cloud access major trends. On how automation technologies will influence medical records management and EMRs, Vivek Naidu, VP, Information Management, Kodak Alaris India says, “Automated health records of patients will become imperative for efficient healthcare services enabling doctors to access records at the click of a button thereby speeding up patient care. Automation and digitization are vital tools to optimize healthcare resources. Automation is happening at the base level whereas digitization is observed at the user-interface level. A handin-hand execution of both these trends will see significant traction in the coming years.” Areas of pharmaceutical and drug manufacturing also sing the similar tune of digitization with process like RPA influencing industrial processes. As Deep Chandra Joshi, Head - Information Technology, Mylan Pharmaceutical opines, “Indian healthcare companies are doing a good job nowadays in the space of Digital Transformation. There is an increased focus on automation and digitization which includes elimination of manual labor and introducing tools that support business processes. Another area is data collection through available intelligence. The technologies being majorly deployed are business oriented one.” Vivek Naidu seconds the thought,
“Automation will play a crucial role in inventory control and record keeping with respect to drug manufacturing.” The ‘Big Data’ explosion and analytics tools have transformed medical research from the traditional hypothesis based to data-driven. This has opened avenues for investigation of unexplored medical knowledge for treatment and diagnosis. Big Data tools allow researchers to run through papers and digital records and perform high-speed analysis at a global scale. As per Deskera’s Somesh, “It is changing the landscape of healthcare globally by helping speed up research in disease control and therapeutics. Research on ailments such as Aids, Diabetes, and Thalassemia is getting tremendous boost through Big Data tools. These tools are helping researchers comprehend diseases and aid in the development of predictive, preventive, and personalized therapeutics and diagnostics.”
THE ASPECT OF CYBERSECURITY As per a recent Cisco Cybersecurity report, thirty-seven percent of the healthcare organizations surveyed said that targeted attacks had been a high-security risk to their organizations in 2017. The Healthcare industry has been one of the most targeted industries by cyber attackers globally. Keeping medical institutions running is critical as they provide a vital service to societies. Cyber attacks which involve breach of information, or denial of service can be far reaching as such can result in complete halt of operations of an affected organization, which may result in not just a monetary loss but consequences far reaching. As George Chacko, Brocade India comments, “Medical data hacks may result in not only material losses but also endanger the health and lives of people subjected to such incidents. Breaches may lead to unauthorized tampering with medical reports which might result in physicians being misled by incorrect information.” George continues, “Medical records contain personal data such as names, addresses, social security numbers, birth dates, and billing information which might be used by cyber-criminals to create fake IDs that can for illegal drug purchases or filing false insurance claims using patient data.” Vivek Naidu believes information security should be a priority across the sector, “Security becomes an important aspect when dealing with sensitive patient information. On the other hand, drug formulation records are critical for drug manufacturers. Thus, information protection should be a priority. Deep Joshi of Mylan Pharma believes the sector has made some strides forward but there is work to be done. He opines, “Cyber-
HEALTHCARE // FEATURE STORY
SOMESH MISRA,
GEORGE CHACKO,
“Factors like increased health awareness, reduced costs, improved efficiency, and
“Healthcare industry must transition to New IP which is open, softwaredriven network design
“In principle, the healthcare institutions need to assess the viability of a solution basis
IP which is an open, software-driven network design that can support the service levels which drive positive patient outcomes. Standards-based solutions reduce vendor lock-in to allow for choice and flexibility. Applications, compute, storage, and the network all work seamlessly and transparently to deliver services on-demand with the highest quality user experience, while assuring regulatory compliance. Patient-centered networks enable IT to become more relevant to users and to maintain better control of resources through a combination of hardware and software functions.” Another important area where CIOs in hospitals and other health institutions need to focus is increasing IT awareness and skill development inside the organization. This is essential in reaping the complete benefits of any deployment and also in keeping the network secure. As Kodak Alaris’ Vivek Naidu suggests, “Healthcare institutions should not only choose the best of hardware and software resources in order to adopt digitization, but also employ the right skill-set and IT literate workforce to man the digital tools leading to a coherent outcome.”
tions. Technologies like analytics, automation, and information management have helped research progress as well as enabled doctors and hospitals to perform better diagnosis and patient-centric treatments. As Mylan’s Deep Joshi puts it, “We will definitely witness fruitful changes in the coming years as companies use clinical and patient data in a way which helps both doctors and patient to dig better solutions.” There has been an emergence of third platform technologies in the sector with SMAC a big hit with hospitals and pharma manufacturers. Technology is set to change the way healthcare is administered with customer experience set for a boost and patient focused healthcare to be the norm. Analytics will enable faster researches and thus faster cures and advanced treatments. RPA and IIoT technologies will enable more efficient manufacturing, in turn bringing down costs which will help the industry move towards affordable healthcare. As the industry forays into a new era of information technology – driven healthcare, there should be a focus on collaboration and innovation which is able to bring out a value at the consumer end which in turn drives growth for the organization. Definitive solutions are required to focus at specific areas within the health value chain to eliminate the challenges at hand of industry.
VICE PRESIDENT OPERATIONS, DESKERA
centralized hospital systems are playing a crucial role in Healthcare IT revolution.”
security had been an ongoing topic. Companies have expedited plans for securing their networks and databases post the recent ransomware attacks. However, more work and efforts in is required in planning cybersecurity architectures. With movement to Cloud, companies have increased focus on IT and data security. I believe the picture and the thought process among organizations will definitely change in the coming years.”
ADVICE FOR HEALTHCARE CIOS Healthcare organizations need to partner with technology vendors who not only possess an intricate understanding of the technology aspect but more importantly have deep domain knowledge about the sector. This will spur innovation in the sector. “Only then will they be able to approach these implementations more holistically and ensure successful business transformation.” Intelenet’s Puneet continues, “In principle, the healthcare institutions need to assess the viability of a solution basis the niche challenges they face in their line of business and operations.” Brocade’s George Chacko believes, as third platforms take center stage, organizations need to deploy latest networking technologies that enhance a seamless customer experience, “The healthcare industry must transition to New
PRINCIPAL SYSTEMS ENGINEER & LEAD TECHNICAL CONSULTANT, BROCADE INDIA
that can support the service levels which drive positive patient outcomes.”
THE FUTURE OF INDIAN HEALTHCARE IT The Indian healthcare industry is set for the next phase of growth powered by digital transforma-
PUNEET GOYAL,
DIRECTOR, BD AND TRANSFORMATION – HEALTHCARE, INTELENET GLOBAL SERVICES
the niche challenges they face in their line of business and operations.”
OCTOBER 2017 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 37
GUEST TALK
EXECUTING INTELLIGENT CONVERSATIONS Incedo recently introduced an open source framework, Incedo Cognitive Framework (ICF), which helps clients build and deploy BOT’s applications. The framework offers Business Process Automation using cognitive solutions at a competitive support cost.
I
B Y S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M
CF is a cognitive framework which helps enterprises to build, configure and develop applications for different use cases and requirements across various domains. The platform is apt for enterprises that don’t want to build a complex chat bot from scratch. Unlike other frameworks currently available in the market, ICF uses open source technology which makes the framework flexible, robust and secure. Hence, it can be integrated into existing enterprise systems without any cross-platform application
38 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD OCTOBER 2017
concerns. It currently supports Englishlanguage conversational BOTs, understands natural language and responds to customers with a human-like response. Besides, with a powerful framework like ICF, an enterprise can access advanced statistics, analytics and business intelligence.
What makes it different from other platforms?
An enterprise can start seeing benefits of this framework within a few weeks of deployment. One of the main advantages of using ICF is that it keeps the cost of creating and operating BOTs comparatively low, and
ARUN ARORA, VICE PRESIDENT – COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING, INCEDO
transactions also end up cost-effective. Secondly, the framework includes Natural Language Processing (NLP), domain knowledge and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities. NLP makes it possible to hold conversations and has an added capability of switching contexts and coming back to the original conversation. Hence, virtual humans can converse with customers intelligently and create tickets just as efficiently as human beings. Meanwhile, ML provides the ability to self-learn. These factors help to automate tasks which are mundane and repetitive in nature. Business processes can be implemented with the platform quickly and BOTs can be rolled out once the algorithm is applied. Meanwhile, the same platform can be used to create multiple bots. ICF also has the capability to integrate into any engine - including NLP, ML, user interface and backend from different solution providers. This allows flexibility in any business process automation. The framework is scalable and can accommodate higher computing capacity and BOTs. If a business wants to venture into a new product or service, it can easily create a new product with a different use-case and roll it out within a few hours – without taking the help of a developer. BOTs have become the biggest, and one of the most useful trends in technology. It is here to redefine how businesses sell products and services.
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