December 1 2007 by Sreekanth Sastry

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From The Editor-in-Chief

Want a surefire conversation starter? Try the Linux gambit. Few things divide

Switching Sources Mid-stream CIOs don’t seemed convinced about changing to Linux.

the IT world or raise tempers as much as the Open Source versus proprietary OS discussion. It’s another matter, of course, that it’s one of the dullest subjects to debate with CIOs in India — the responses I typically come across run the gamut from “interesting, but…” to “no way”. Take the case of a PSU bank’s CIO I was speaking to last month. Simply stated, his big issue with deploying Linux was one of accountability. “If something goes kaput whom do I turn to? The chap who tweaked the kernel, the guy who wrote a patch or the company that sold me the OS?” he queried. His attitude was understandable given the risk averse nature of banking and finance. But CIOs from other verticals aren’t Organizations that have too enthused about switching to an invested in specific Open Source OS either. business critical apps are An IT head of a pharmaceutical reluctant to migrate to an company did say that the pressure to Open Source platform. cut costs was sufficiently high to push them into experimenting with Linux. The trial floundered because they saw only marginal cost benefits from switching 20,000 desktops over (specially when they weren’t picking up new systems). The application ecosystem was the clincher that forced them to abandon the pilot. “We had no issues with finding equivalents to office automation apps, but we hit a wall when it came to specific business critical apps,” he said. To be fair, Linux has been muscling into the action at application providers like Oracle and SAP (and even i-flex for that matter). However, it’s interesting to note that while Linux holds over 13 percent of the worldwide servers market, the scenario is starkly different when one considers desktops: Microsoft Windows is the OS of choice with an over 90 percent hold. And, Linux? Just about one percent (this despite intuitive UIs and the availability of office automation apps.) Given this background, I was fascinated by Elcot’s migration of close to 2,000 servers and 30,000 desktops to Linux. Read this issue’s cover story on page 30 to find out the factors that compelled them to do so and how they handled reticent users and the issues of support. Would you deploy Linux or Open Source applications in your organization? Write in and let me know.

Vijay Ramachandran Editor-in-Chief vijay_r@cio.in

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content decembeR 1 2007‑ | ‑Vol/3‑ | ‑issue/02

3 0 Open Source

Executive Expectations

COVER STORY | HARD CASH, COLD LOGIC: LInux | 30

VIEW FROM THE TOP | 40 Ajit Balakrishnan, the founder and CEO of Rediff.com says that if technology can’t give organizations a consistent lead, it can, at least help them burst out of the gate.

I Photo by SrIVatSa ShandI lya

As organizations grow, the need to deliver more for less can be paramount. Here’s how one government agency faced its Linux fears and found that the ice wasn’t as thin as it thought. Feature by kanika Goswami

Interview by Gunjan Trivedi

Career Counselor HOW TO MAkE nICE | 28

CoVEr: dESI gn by bI n ESh SrEEdh aran

Win back estranged colleagues by reaching out and taking accountability for your actions. Column by Susan Cramm

Workflow MAkInG WORkFLOW WORk| 47 Workflow can better the way a company runs only when its principles are applied correctly. Feature by Rick Cook

more » 6

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content

Essential Technology | 52 Storage| Storage Virtualization Takes Off

Feature by Galen Gruman Innovation| More Value from Human Capital Column by Michael Schrage

Endlines| 56 Do You Love Your Blackberry Too Much? By Scott Berinato

From the Editor-in-Chief | 2 Switching Sources Mid-stream By Vijay Ramachandran

NOW ONLINE For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy It strategically. go to www.cio.in

c o.in

Case File TRACED In TRAnSIT | 36 In a fast growing courier industry, Indian cargo companies are finding it difficult to track their consignments. But thanks to CDMA based tracking system, now your parcels can be traced — irrespective of geographical boundaries. Feature by Shardha Subramanian

Collaboration THE COLLABORATIOn GAP AnD HOW TO BRIDGE IT | 44 Everyone admits that collaboration for innovation is good. It is also rare. And when it works, it’s beautiful. Feature by C.G. Lynch

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2 4

ADVISORY BOARD Ma nagement

Publisher & editor N. Bringi Dev

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4&5

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new

hot

unexpected

Straight S traight From the Heart manager for Dil Se, says "website customers can track their orders on the Internet. Maruti will take care of delivering the vehicle on an auspicious occasion or on an anniversary or on the birthday of the beneficiary." Jain says the site is viewed on an average by 3,000 unique visitors eveyday, and adds that, under this program, Maruti has received payment worth Rs 57 crore from more than 17,000 NRI customers residing in 38 countries. Maruti has delivered the cars in over 140 cities in India. When asked about

Maruti's plans for 2008, Jain says, "We are going to get more aggressive in USA, UAE, and Europe." But he was not willing to divulge any target figures. "This is all about building awareness and the greater the awareness, the greater will be the success of the program,” he points out. —By Balaji Narasimhan

IllUStratIon by pc anoop

Technology In 2006, Maruti Suzuki India Limited came up with a portal to sell its cars online. It had a twist: it is targeted at NRIs who want to gift a car to their loved ones in India as part of a program called 'Dil Se' (from the heart). For this purpose, Maruti setup an e-commerce website www.marutinri. com for NRIs and PIOs (people of Indian origin). Today, the entire product profile of Maruti, from the M 800 to the latest offering SX4, can be purchased online. With a five-step process to purchase a car, the snazzily-designed site is simple to use. It also allows NRIs to finance the car with car loans from ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citicorp Maruti Finance Limited, and SBI. Pratul Jain, program

Quick take

Ajay Patil on Google Apps s o f T wa r e Will Google Apps find place in Indian enterprises? Balaji Narasimhan spoke to Ajay Patil, CIO of Aviva Life and here's what he had to say:

confidentiality is concerned for instance, will Google sign third-party liability clauses with us? Will Google sign a penalty clause covering reputation losses on account of security breaches?

Do you think Google Apps fit in an organization like Aviva? Conceptually, it's a great idea. It would act as an enabler for our field forces — especially deskless employees. But it depends on being continuously connected to mobile users. It is difficult for us to even think of moving to Google Apps because there are other issues (for example, security levels mandated for our industry, interoperability with MS-Office, and availability of files off-line), which need to be delved into. It would also require a huge shift in mindset.

Will Google Apps life easier for a CIO? Google Apps would fall under IT utility applications, which don't form part of a CIO's critical responsibilities — these are virtually commodities. Google Apps would increase the security and compliance burden on CIOs. For example, today, the responsibility of data security on mobile computing platforms lies with the business — with Google apps it would lie with the CIO.

What would be your key concerns? Confidentiality, integrity of data, data loss because of interoperability and availability. Where loss of

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Ajay Patil

At Rs 2,000 per account per annum (premium version), what do you think of its price? For the SOHO segment it is an attractive proposition, but for the large enterprises, I don’t think price is a key decision factor unless the larger issues I've identified are addressed. REAL CIO WORLD | d e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

Will the Business Manager of Today Become the CIO Tomorrow? In the formative days of IT, only the IT manager understood IT—and IT alone. But today, while the CIO is expected to understand business, business managers are getting IT savvy. Does this mean that the business manager of today can become the CIO tomorrow? Balaji Narasimhan asked some of your peers and this is what they had to say: career

“It's possible, if business managers have leadership skills, business acumen, the required attitude, skills and knowledge. And the technology edge to lead and drive IT.” trendlines

Subramaniam V. CIO, OTIS

“Yes, I think it is possible. I have a business background, and have been a CIO for about seven years. I was in a business role for 25 years. That said, all business managers can't become CIOs.” Arvind Tawde VP & CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra

“Not really. In fact, I think it will work the other way: CIOs will become CEOs. Managing IT in an

enterprise is different from being IT savvy. I am not saying business managers can't do it — I don't think they would want to.”

Sunil Mehta

Sr. VP & Area Systems Director, JWT

Lend Your

Voice

Write to editor@cio.in 16

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Look on The Dark Side Because of the recent turmoil in credit markets around the world and the continued uncertainty of the future economic climate, CIOs should create two IT budgets for 2008, according to research group Gartner. The firm has advised CIOs to create two separate budgets; the first should reflect the guidance already provided by senior decision-makers, but this should be supplemented by a back-up budget that assumes the need to cut costs in response to the arrival of a business slowdown. "Although the financial outlook for 2008 remains far from certain, waiting for a clear economic trend to appear prior to taking action is not a prudent option," said Ken McGee, vice-president at Gartner. "There is already sufficient concern about the possibility of a business slowdown for next year from enough credible and independent sources to suggest that preparing a back-up, cost-cutting IT budget now is just plain good management." CIOs need to have a recession budget and business plan ready for immediate implementation long before being asked to reduce costs, McGee added. To be meaningful, such plans should target a decrease in IT spending of at least 10 percent below the highest annual IT spending run rate levels attained in 2007. CIOs and IT managers who play their part in preserving as much enterprise profitability as possible will benefit the wider organization, he claimed. "Creating a responsible alternative recession IT budget now will demonstrate the type of innovative and forward thinking that senior executives expect to see from their staff. It will also show the kind of flexibility and agility needed to respond to fastchanging economic and business conditions." McGee said that rather than viewing the possibility of a significant business slowdown or recession with trepidation, organizations should use it as an opportunity to create a solution that will enable the enterprise to react with speed and certainty if the worst economic concerns come to pass. —By Len Rust

CIO R o l e

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CIOs to Mobile Operators: Step Up

trendlines

St u d y Modern CIOs and other IT executives are watching the number of mobile workers within their enterprises increase rapidly. Along with that growth comes larger demand for mobilized business applications and devices that support them. But many IT departments are struggling to manage this plethora of Web-enabled devices, and they're looking to mobile operators for assistance. Mformation, a provider of mobile MDM(mobile device management) technologies, commissioned market research firm Coleman Parkes to conduct the survey of 200 CIOs and telecommunications directors from US and European Global Fortune 500 organizations. Their research was conducted during March and April 2007. Ninety-five percent of CIOs surveyed are currently seeking

new ways to manage their mobile devices and applications. And 45 percent of those technology executives want assistance from mobile operators. Sixty-two percent said they'd ditch their current operator for a competitor if it had a comprehensive MDM offering. "Very real opportunities exist for mobile operators to provide valueadded device management services for enterprise customers, increasing their competitive advantage," said Matt Bancroft, Mformation CMO, in a press release. Among the study's other findings: Eighty-eight percent of US companies surveyed think mobile operators should perform some MDM function, but almost 60 percent said they'd prefer an arrangenment in which their own IT departments have direct control over all mobile assets.

Seventy-four percent of the US organizations queried said they have bumped up investment in data and system security recently; 71 percent have increased investments in staff education; and 66 percent are spending more cash on network monitoring and other security systems than in the past. Key device management concerns include the ability to provide a high degree of device and network security and the ability to remotely-support users. This ensures that issues with devices are resolved quickly, technology is constantly updated and support costs are kept as low as possible. Sixty percent of study participants said they're not pleased with their current mobile operators' MDM offerings. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; By Al Sacco

India: Security Spend 2008

Infograp hics BY BIN ESH SRE EDHARAN

Respondents

How big a slice of your budget is security going to take in 2008?

27%

34%

14%

Below 5%

6 to 10%

11 to 15%

16 to 20%

21 to 25%

26 to 30%

above 31%

To be spent on security Source: CIO

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BY Margaret Locher

Supply Chain’s Missing Link Cost-minded supply chain strategies don’t advance the business priority of improving customer service.

trendlines

It’s all about the customer: 71 percent of business operators said their top business objective is increased loyalty and customer satisfaction, according to a recent Manufacturing Insights survey of 800 companies. But their number-one supply chain objective is to reduce manufacturing and logistics costs. “That’s a big disconnect,” says Kim Knickle, program director and lead analyst at Manufacturing Insights. If businesses don’t align their strategic objectives with supply chain priorities, IT investments in supply chain will not be effective, Knickle says. One of the reasons for the misalignment of goals could be that CIOs are focused on more day-to-day issues, she says. IT may need to be more proactive about showing the business ways that its supply chain can improve customer strategy goals. “CIOs aren’t always invited to conversations,” Knickle says. “IT needs to talk to the business to ensure IT investments align with corporate objectives.” The survey showed that business operators want more collaborative processes within the organization, says Knickle. Historically, strategy development within each business function was a siloed process, says Simon Ellis, research program director at Manufacturing Insights. “But as technology is increasingly outsourced, collaboration becomes more important,” he says. This is especially true when business constituents don’t understand that the IT budget is already limited. Ellis says most IT budgets haven’t increased during the past five years. “IT is under greater pressure to stretch their dollars,” he says, noting that the supply chain can’t be a center of innovation without the proper budget. “The business must be willing to see IT from more than a service and cost-saving angle,” Knickle says.

Best Practices 1

Show the board that the supply chain effort can do more than reduce costs. Detail the business value of any supply chain innovation you pitch.

Keep the customers in the front of your mind. Emphasize supply chain changes that could improve the customer experience.

Create a strategic framework for IT decision making. In times of cost pressure, this gives you boundaries for choosing among business requests.

What’s your supply chain focus? What’s your top supply chain priority?

48% of businesses say reducing material, manufacturing and logistics costs. But where’s customer service?

What IT investments will be most important to your global supply chain performance in the next two years?

Advanced supply network planning or manufacturing scheduling.

Advanced inventory management or optimization.

Supply chain execution, logistics control and management. SOURCE: Manufacturing Insights

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Social

Networking

trendlines

Will you marry me (in Second Life)? A Gartner analyst is predicting that 2 percent of US citizens will get married in virtual worlds by 2015 to people they have never met, and may never meet even after they are married. These online virtual marriages will carry all the same legal implications of marriages that take place in the ‘offline’ world, the Gartner analyst claims. Virtual brides and grooms may never consummate the marriage, but they will have the same joint property rights as your mom and dad, claims Gartner research analyst Adam Sarner. Sarner is making his prediction at various conferences. He also describes ‘Generation Virtual’, and its implication on marketing and human relationships.

His marriage prediction is already a reality. You can get married in Second Life, but it doesn't hold any legal implications in the real world. "I think the online connection is powerful enough to have these legal marriages online," Sarner says. "The point is the emotional connection they have will be strong enough that they want to make it forever." In Sarner's future world, people who get married online to a person they never meet would not be legally able to marry

anyone else, real or virtual. It's one marriage per person, just like today. A good online marriage would provide “an emotional connection with someone who cares about what your day was like, who cares if you're feeling down," he says. "I think it can be quite fulfilling. Is it something for everybody? No, absolutely not." Just as many people have miserable marriages today, and virtual brides and grooms might find themselves in failed marriages too, according to Sarner. "Generation Virtual is being able to target these groups of customers who are spending more and more time online, even though their real names might never be known," he says. —By Jon Brodkin

Illustration by ANIL T

Taking Online Marriages Up a (K)notch

What's the Business Value of your

Core Software? mANAGE M EN T Research businesses need to pay more attention to their intangible assets like core software, according to Recognizing the True Value of Software Assets, a research report published from international business school INSEAD and UK software vendor Micro Focus. The end goal? Businesses must manage those assets for value creation, not cost containment, says professor Soumitra Dutta, author of the report and INSEAD's chair of business and technology. But first things first. Do CIOs and CFOs even understand the scope or value of the core software they own? The link between core software and business strategy seems clear. Almost 77 percent of the CIOs and CFOs surveyed for the report call their core software assets ‘critical’ or ‘very critical’ for their business strategy. Yet 60 percent of the respondents don't know the size of their core software assets. Just 52 percent of US respondents could identify this size; that figure compares to 60 percent of German respondents, 40 percent of Italian respondents, 36 percent of French respondents and 12 percent of UK respondents. This situation traces back to the it

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layers of software that business has added piecemeal for years, and to new tools that business units bring in themselves, the report says. Perhaps most surprisingly, this research shows that 29 percent of the CIOs and CFOs do not know the total amount they spend annually on their core software assets. On the communication front, the CIOs and CFOs know there's need for improvement, just 10 percent of the CIOs and CFOs said their team did an 'excellent' effort communicating the business value of core software assets to their boards. Twenty-six percent rated this effort 'very good.' "Both CIOs and CFOs need to be communicating the business value of core software assets to their boards and make it a priority to measure the value of their software assets," Dutta says. The survey queried 250 respondents across France, Germany, Italy, UK and the US, comprising 50 percent CFOs and 50 percent CIOs at companies with revenues from Rs 400 crore up to Rs 4,000 crore-plus.

— By Laurianne McLaughlin Vol/3 | ISSUE/02

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Social Networking

trendlines

Likely to Spread in Enterprises

I n t e r n e t While social networking sites may primarily be the domain of students and recreational use, enterprises can be expected to climb aboard as well, said dignitaries at the Nokia Mobile Mash-Up 2007 event in Palo Alto, California. Mobile Mash-Up emphasized mobile computing, social networking and extending social networks to mobile devices. Although many of the estimated 200 people in attendance acknowledged participating in the LinkedIn business networking site, only a handful used the more recreationally oriented MySpace site. "What I think will be very interesting when this particular group enters the enterprise is their communication and collaboration desires change," Bajarin said. "The question is really: is that [a Microsoft] Exchange solution? Is that something that Microsoft can provide as part of the corporate enterprise? Or is that something that a company develops as a core use?" "The idea of a social network and the power of it is when it's for a certain group of people at a similar stage, in this case like a company," Bajarin said. "It's a great example of how something like that may evolve and add value as communication and work habits change with this demographic." "Just like wikis on the PC world, they started off as a consumer gadget that eventually morphed itself into an enterprise play. I think the same thing is probably going to happen on the mobile side," Trice said. Nokia's event covered a multitude of mobile and social networking issues, including differences worldwide in how these spaces will play out. "My belief is really that in the US at least, mobile social networks will be an extension of the online networks," said Michelle Law, principal at the Greylock Partners investment firm and a former engineer at Sun Microsystems. The popular Web-based YouTube site is being extended to mobile products such as Apple iPhone and Nokia phones. But YouTube's use by corporate enterprises could be limited to applications such as playing of training videos, Hyland said. Asked if he saw a use for YouTube within the enterprise, Hyland responded, "Apart from office entertainment, probably not too much." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By Paul Krill

Innovative IT.

Transformative

IT.

IT that drives the business forward.

Leading companies are marked by IT that works in true partnership with the business.

That partnership can provide new areas for growth and set a company apart from its competition.

CIO Chief Innovation Officer

Enter http://www.in.idgcast.com

Press Play to see CIOs discuss innovation within their enterprise

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12/6/2007 12:03:01 PM

Daniel Goleman & Clay Shirkyâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;

COmmunication

Failure To Communicate Understanding how the brain processes social cues can help you improve how you and your colleagues collaborate online.

Illustration by MM Shanith

wo companies had formed a joint venture to develop a new telecommunications product. Engineers in both companies were hard at work, but the project itself was stalled. The reason? A consultant we know diagnosed the problem this way: "Engineers on each side never saw each other," he told us, let alone coordinated their work on the project. "The two sides just e-mailed their irritations to each other. They were having a flame war." Flaming, of course, refers to an e-mail message that comes across as rude or otherwise annoying, and a flame war happens when the recipient of such a message flames back, leading to an arms race of insult. Flaming is but one of numerous ways a lack of social intelligence can sabotage the use of technology, especially when it comes to working with others together online. Any IT manager takes a risk that a group's efforts will falter if he ignores the psychological dimension of social computing. Flaming is a symptom of a larger malady-an epidemic failure of social restraint. The same syndrome seems at work in bloggers who take a perverse glee in attacks and threats, who somehow see Web rage as cool. In games like The Sims (an online role-playing environment), 'griefers' are players whose goal is to ruin the experience for other players. In chat rooms and on Listserv discussions, 'trolls' take pleasure in baiting people into pointless arguments that waste time and energy. And of course, no business environment would be complete without some opportunity for passive aggression, which may be expressed in a variety of ways, from answering a critical e-mail late (or never), or providing only partial or obtuse

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Daniel Goleman & Clay Shirky

COmmunication

answers that force a questioner to re-ask her question in increasingly picayune detail.

Why People Are Rude Online There is a technical name for this unsociable behavior in cyberspace: the online disinhibition effect. All cases of cyberrudeness would be far less likely in face-to-face interaction, where subtle, mainly nonverbal cues help us govern our responses to others. Neuroscience diagnoses the mechanics behind flaming as a design flaw in the interface between the online world and the brain's circuits for reading and responding to another person. When we talk in person, massive numbers of parallel neural circuits process emotional signals and let us decide instantly what to say or do. A crucial hub for this adaptive bit of empathy is the brain's orbitofrontal cortex, which both conducts this social scan and helps orchestrate our response so

Short of a two-way webcam conversation, the online world lacks a channel for real-time cues from voice, facial expression and posture that the social brain needs to navigate well. an interaction goes well. Patients with damage to this circuitry are unable to censor their unruly impulses—they will make mortifying gaffes or insult people. In essence, they flame while face-to-face. For individuals with an orbitofrontal cortex that is operating normally, a fleeting frown or a lilt in tone of voice is the basis for 'mind sight,' which lets us sense what the other person feels and thinks. But short of a two-way webcam conversation, the online world lacks a channel for such in-themoment cues from voice, facial expression and posture that the social brain needs to navigate well. Without those cues, we become 'mind blind'—unable to sense what the other person thinks and feels—and thus more prone to send a response that seems 'off.'

The Costs of Mind Blindness The cost of mind blindness isn't just measured in rude behavior—it also robs us of some of our most powerful tools for decision making. Consider asking a question in e-mail and getting back 'No' as an answer. Does that 'No' mean 'My first answer is no, but I could be talked into it' or 'Absolutely not?' Face-to-face, we are able to read all kinds of nuance into seemingly concrete answers—we know a 'Yes' from a 'Yeah, sorta,' and we can tell a 'Maybe' that means 'I'm thinking about 26

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it,' from a 'Maybe' that is just a polite refusal. Online, No is merely No, and considerably less informative as a result. As with much about human social capability, the problem is magnified in group conversations. E-mail is a wonderful medium for distributed conversation but a terrible one for group decision making. Our mind blindness doesn't just deny us the ability to read the speaker, it takes away our ability to read other listeners as well. This creates challenges for IT organizations that are trying to implement distributed collaboration environments. Consider a group trying to arrive at a major decision through e-mail. Were they together in a single room, the conversation would typically be accompanied by tiny head shakes and barely audible responses — the Ahs and Hmms and Nuhs that we are instinctively adept at reading. In this kind of environment, everyone would tacitly recognize when a consensus had been reached. Then someone would articulate that agreement to a medley of nods. These moments are routine in meetings. But in virtual meetings such consensus can't be read. Lacking this signal to wrap up, an online discussion can be endless. There are, of course, ways we can add a bit of emotional nuance to our e-mail. Emoticons signal the emotion that goes with a written message; inserting bracketed question marks to indicate uncertainty might be another. But as yet there is no online convention that adds to e-mail anything near the full emotional undertones that a live voice or face offers. E-mail simply offers no substitute for the richness of a live encounter. The solution to the telecom company engineers' flame war problem was to get them away from their computers and put them in one room for a couple of days. People communicate better when they are together, and they also communicate better online after they've spent some time one-on-one. The memory of what a person is like in the real world mitigates the mind blindness created by our online tools. When the engineers gathered, they got to know each other as people. They were no longer faceless entities lurking behind an e-mail address. They were able to establish ground rules for a respectful and productive discussion, whether face-toface or online. Whenever they had the urge to send a flaming e-mail, they agreed to call each other on the phone and talk the problem over. And their joint venture was completed successfully. CIO Michael Rapken is executive vice president and CIO of YRC Worldwide. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in Daniel Goleman codirects the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. He can be reached at contact@danielgoleman.info. Clay Shirky is a consultant who also teaches in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program. Contact him at clay@shirky.com.

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Susan Cramm â&#x20AC;&#x201A;

cAreer counselor

How to Make Nice Win back estranged colleagues by reaching out and taking accountability for your actions

ou would be amazed at how often executives are stymied by their inability to influence others. The typical scenario involves a talented, changeoriented leader who gets a shot at a more visible role. In the process of getting stuff done, he steps on a few (very influential) toes. Over a couple of years, the executive racks up some impressive accomplishments but finds that his success is hindered by the organizational minefields his actions have sown over the years. As a result, the executive tires of the level of effort required to move things forward and decides that it's time to move on. Getting others to do what you want them to do because they want to do it is the ultimate test of leadership skill. It's hard to face the fact that others don't like working with you (and it always boils down to this very personal sentiment, doesn't it?) but once the tears, anger and denial are over, two questions remain: Is it too late to salvage these relationships, and how can I do that? It's rarely too late to try again, although it does take a lot of time and effort because it's easier to create impressions than change them. It may seem easier to start over at a new company, but the only sure way to put the issue to bed is by winning back those who have walked away. I have a couple of clients in this situation and, the fact is, they can change organizations but they won't change the outcome. No matter where they go, there they are; you can change organizations, but unless you change your behavior, you'll find yourself in a new place facing the same old problem. It's easier to outline what to do than it is to muster the courage to get it done. The first steps require eating a lot of 28

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Susan Cramm

cAreer counselor

humble pie. Start by facing the truth of how your actions got you into trouble. Everybody has a tendency to, at first, place the blame on others. Accepting accountability requires explaining the past without using the phrases 'He said...,' 'She should...,' 'I told them...,' 'I tried...,' and so on. Next, reach out to would-be colleagues by communicating three things. First, say that you are sorry for past actions. Tell them you would like to restart the relationship. Then ask for their help in doing so. If the other party is unwilling to let go of the past, focus your efforts elsewhere. Finally, you need to learn how to understand and serve the needs of others in order to find the win-win solutions that define effective collaboration. To do so, you will need to: Understand your stakeholders. Understand the motivators of key stakeholders by discovering their current objectives, concerns and longer-term goals. Determine how to collaborate effectively by understanding their communication, decision making, and conflict management styles using tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Listen more empathetically. When people are emotional, they need to be heard. Avoid using 'why' questions because they put others on the defensive. If conversations get heated, take a break and reconvene laterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in person if possible. Uncover underlying rationale. People have a tendency to advocate their point of view. Don't counter with your own advocacy statements. Instead, use inquiry to understand how they reached their conclusions. Shift into productive advocacy once you have all the facts by presenting your recommendation and underlying rationale, and inviting comments or critique Apply the psychology of persuasion. In a Harvard Business Review article, Robert Cialdini outlines six psychological principles that can help strengthen relationships and tip the scales in your favor. The principle of reciprocity, for example, discusses how important it is to give what you want to receive. Although, 'Do unto others' is hardly a new concept, what's interesting is the fact that you will compel others to repay in kind. But if, and only if, you give something unexpected and relevant and respond to their gratitude by saying, 'I'm sure you would do the same for me' rather than the more typical response, 'No problem' or 'My pleasure.' The remaining principles include liking, social proof, consistency, authority and scarcity, and they are useful to any leader, regardless of the circumstances. My clients, like most executives in similar circumstances, are having trouble getting off first base because of the ego hit involved with taking accountability for their actions and asking others for help. Ultimately they will be successful because they understand that it is impossible to move on without staying put and delivering against the acid test of turning around negative impressions.

Reader Q&A Q: One of my direct reports is very talented and should be in line for my job. However, he's a bomb-thrower when it comes to working with others and defensive about his people skills, to boot. What strategies do you suggest for changing his behaviour? A: Defensive people need direct tactics. Conduct a

qualitative 360-degree assessment by conducting interviews with his key stakeholders. The qualitative assessment will provide in-depth insights as to his bombthrowing behaviours with examples that will be difficult for him to deny. Before presenting the feedback, discover his career aspirations, values and motivators so that you can directly link the feedback to his aspirations and how he wants to live his life. Once he works through the feedback and demonstrates motivation to change, send him to an emotional-intelligence seminar so that he can understand the behaviours that he needs to work toward and then provide him on-the-spot feedback â&#x20AC;&#x201D; both positive and negative â&#x20AC;&#x201D; so that he can start to internalize the changes he needs to make. Q: Why do some executives think that they can influence others by throwing their title around? A: They understand that positional power can be very

effective in gaining compliance - in the short term. Q: Driving change does mean stepping on some toes. Should I worry about this as long as those at my level and above are satisfied with my results? A: If your peers and superiors are happy with your results

and the people below you are miserable, you will have a hard time attracting and retaining people to work with you. Furthermore, you will limit your impact because those below you will 'phone it in,' doing no more than necessary to get the job done. The job of a leader is to help others do more than what they believed possible, and this, of course, requires their enthusiastic participation. CIO

Susan Cramm is founder and president of the California-based executive coaching firm Valuedance. You can e-mail feedback to editor@cio.in.

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As organizations grow, the need to deliver more for less can be paramount. Here's how one government agency faced its Linux fears and found that the ice wasn't as thin as it thought. 30

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Cover story | open source

Reader ROI:

The benefits of moving to Linux Novel ways of getting buy in for Open Source How Linux can support millions of users

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n May 26, 2006, Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) let in its first penguin. Things would never be the same again That day, Elcot’s managing director, C. Umashankar, walked into his office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was handed a brand new laptop. He recalls promptly giving it back to his PA. “I asked him to load Suse Linux on it. I guess he was surprised. But when the installation — complete with drivers and wireless networking — only took 45 minutes and very little external effort, there was a new confidence in my PA.” That confidence spread quickly. And with it came more penguins. Within weeks, the Rs 750-crore Elcot was undergoing a enterprise-wide migration to Suse Linux. A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000 computers and 1,880 severs belonging to some of the state’s schools to Linux — creating possibly the largest Linux rollout in India. REAL CIO WORLD | d e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

ImagI ng by p c anoop

By KaniKa Goswami

Cover Story | Open Source

Photos by Srivatsa Shandilya

March of the Penguins The decision to move to Linux could not have been anything if not daunting. As the nodal agency for information and communication technology of a state with the population of the UK, Elcot has enormous responsibilities — current projects include creating an electoral database and photo identity cards, computerizing land records and driving licenses, producing eight million farmers cards and 18 million family cards (used by families below the poverty line to draw monthly rations from the PDS), among others. In short, there are a million ways they can blow it. And with no vendor support, the odds were against them. Meanwhile, in his office, Umashankar had other problems. Like many pioneers, his vision held good only where his voice reached. Leading his secretariat to his vision of the Linux-enabled enterprise was one thing, convincing other government agencies that Elcot shifted gears with, was another. But Umashankar knew what needed to be done. He was convinced that it was only a matter of time before the price of staying proprietary became crushing. With every technology refresh, with every piece of additional hardware, with every new school that his department provided for, with every new service they wanted to offer various government bodies and with every new PC Elcot bought, staying proprietary came at a significant price.

“If we bought a proprietary office suite for each desktop, the cost of infrastructure would go up by 55 percent.” — C. Umasankar

Managing Director, Elcot

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By the first week of June 2006, Umashankar started moving Elcot's desktops to Suse Linux OS. The entire organization followed in phases, and slowly at first. The migration of over 200 desktops at Elcot’s HQ took just over eight months. “During the migration although there were no issues, like all new things, it faced resistance. But once people started using it, they saw benefits and became fond of it. We won’t go back, this is an irreversible process," says P.R.Krishnamoorthy, senior business development manager at Elcot. As users caught on with Umashankar’s infectious enthusiasm, they started getting more familiar with the features of their new OS. Soon a cycle of interest developed and users found new ways of switching mail clients to work on Suse Linux. “First they migrated from Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird for Windows. From there they took the mail folder and put it into the Suse Linux system, and started operating Thunderbird over Suse Linux system. Novel, isn’t it?” Umashankar asks proudly. This interest helped his campaign to migrate completely to Suse Linux, from a 100 percent Windows environment. But why Suse Linux? To begin with, Elcot found that the Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop matched and surpassed the Windows OS where ease of use was concerned. But initially, Elcot thought that half their desktops should be commissioned with Red Hat and other half with Suse. Later, because of its user-friendly interface and backed by popular demand, users decided to migrate to Suse Linux en-masse. “Our aim was to migrate to Linux and not a particular version of Linux. We had issues with Red Hat in certain areas. Ubuntu has only Gnome at the front end. We wanted KDE too, as it closely matches the traditional Windows XP environment. To migrate from Windows to Linux this was essential,” Umashankar says. And, he says, Suse does not require a technical person to install since everything is automatic and front-end driven and device drivers are detected automatically. Initially, Umashankar says, they had some issues with an existing procurement application that was developed in ASP. It wouldn’t work under Mozilla Firefox. Umashankar’s solution was simple, “We got the coding changed to work on Mozilla Firefox. Problem fixed.”

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notHing beats a good PriCe

Where OPen SOurce dOeSn't flOW

As much fun as it was to fiddle with Linux, it wasn’t fun that drove Umashankar’s decision to switch platforms. Before he become an Indian Administrative how one cIo went down the open source road and came Services officer, Umashankar spent time at running back. three nationalized banks. He also served as the district collector of Tiruvarur (a district in Tamil Nadu) for two years, during which all Akhil Pandey, principal executive officer for the north the taluks under his jurisdiction achieved an delhi power (ndpl (ndpl)) knows how open source can be a over 85 percent score on paperless automation. let down. This included modules for land record the first time akhil pandey decided to use open source, administration, national old age pension he had a right to. It was the 80s, and pandey worked with schemes and agricultural laborers’ insurance. tata Steel. Unix was in a similar stage of development as t Umashankar knew his IT and he knew the VmS, a popular operating system in those days, he says. financial burden it put on the government. When t tata Steel considered implementing UnIX as The decision to migrate to Linux was driven an operating system, pandey knew that he would spend primarily by cost. It was hard to escape the a lot of time and resources justifying how UnIX was the cold figures before Umashankar: Elcot saved best oS – at the cost of business. “I decided to choose Rs 5 crore on every 20 servers it set up with VmS. my objective was to support my business and meet Linux. And they had over 1,800 servers. with the goal and objectives of the company, not of the It In addition, Umashankar says that the shift fraternity,” pandey recalls. saves them about 25 percent on any general twenty-two years later, pandey was confronted the same devil. by this time, he had moved to t hardware purchases — and as much as 90 ndpl, which serves over 10 lakh customers in India’s capital area. percent on the high-end servers. In 2002, when ndpl was being set up, pandey was given a chance to create an It t landscape Umashankar says that his office uses the of his choosing. he made the decision to use linux for his messaging server. he soon found his Openoffice.org suite. This saves them close to department was swamped as it spent its time deciphering problems on linux. he remembers Rs 12,000 on each desktop, he says. how systems would go down and emails wouldn’t reach their destinations – while 35,000 “We buy Intel dual core desktops with 19" employees waited for It t to fix itself. “We had to deal with over 2,600 pcs on the network and TFT monitors for Rs 21,600 including the email was the backbone for communication because we were spread over 500 sq kms.” Linux OS. If we bought a proprietary office the huge requirements of fine-tuning stopped them in their tracks and pandey’s team suite at Rs 12,000 for each desktop, the cost of decided not to pursue linux for other applications. commissioning infrastructure would go up to “When we sat through the privatization of delhi Vidyut board, it was running at 52 percent Rs 33,600 — a 55 percent increase,” he says. loss. my objective was to help reduce the loss. and linux was not helping.” And when you have to refresh over 30,000 It wouldn’t be long till he pulled the plug on linux entirely. “Within six months I knew that it PCs, that’s a figure that can add up: to about would be five or ten years before open source would be successful and that we wouldn’t be Rs 17 crore. able to enjoy the open source ride right then. my need was immediate: my company had to And that's not all. These figures don’t survive and I had business goals to meet. Within one year we dumped the linux oS and turned take into account software upgrades for to microsoft. I didn’t have the luxury of time. I am in power distribution business and I can’t tell applications. By using the free Openoffice. them my computers have failed,” pandey says. org suite and a Linux OS, Elcot has bypassed —by K.g. yearly licensing fees for proprietary software. A corollary benefit is that the government example how Elcot was recently asked to get software for a no longer needs to procure additional hardware required school for the visually challenged. to run upgraded versions of most proprietary software. Their search for vendor came up with one company in Umashankar estimates that just this saves the government Mumbai that offered them five user licenses for Rs 5 lakh. For between 45 and 50 percent of a project’s initial hardware costs, an agency whose objective is to find the best price for public which makes it easier to buy more computers for schools. funds, it was a price Elcot found hard to swallow. In addition, Umashankar says Elcot got rid of about 100 So Umashankar took the open source route. Their focused anti-virus licenses that were rendered redundant, because as efforts led them to Orca, a free software running on Ubuntu one official claims viruses have “became extinct.” Linux to assist the visually impaired. Elcot put together a Once Umashankar had broken the ice surrounding Linux, massive three-day program to train visually-challenged other open source applications were more welcome. Take for

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Cover Story | Open Source teachers across the state on ORCA. They learnt how to handle a machine running on Ubuntu. Now Umashankar plans to bring more teachers and schools under ORCA.

Where the ‘Open and Free’ Live

55%

the amount Elcot saves on every PC because it uses Linux

Rs 5 Crore

team cleared the entire backlog of family card applications, and relieved the government from public pressure,” Umashankar recalls. This first project took less than a week’s time to start. Today, data from 19.8 million families are available on servers hosted at the head office’s mini data centre. It is worth about 1 TB of data and counting. The database will be moved soon to Elcot’s larger database center. Other projects include the online registration of property, which when completed will enable citizens to register land or property online. Elcot has also recently released the first-ever Linux powered ATM. Thanks to its Linux operating system, Umashankar says, it will be available in the market at one sixth the average price of a regular ATM machine.

Today, Elcot's 30-seater software development center uses a strong OSS the amount Elcot saves on 20 framework to develop its packages for servers it sets up with Linux. They government departments. “For the have over 1,800 servers. integrated development environment, the team uses Netbeans IDE, Postgresql for database, Jboss for deployment server, Jasper report for fixed width the amount Elcot saves on any report development, Mantis for bug tracking and Subversion for version general hardware purchase. control,” Umashankar says. The development center runs a few major applications. The first is the family card administration system. the amount Elcot saves on highEvery family in the state has to end servers. possess one of these cards to receive Cold Shoulder monthly rations. But it wasn’t like Elcot met success all “Earlier the system was put on a the way. Umashankar says that Elcot critical client-server run on Microsoft, faces a real challenge with certain but there was a whole lot of confusion,” says Umashankar. “So sections of the bureaucracy. In direct opposition, with others we switched over from client-server architecture to an open who don’t buy his ‘Linux is superior theory’, he has stood by source system.” Branch offices of the Food and Civil Supplies his decision to migrate. Department capture family card data — including scanned “Despite Suse Linux beating Microsoft's Windows in ease photos using HP's scanners which work on Kooka, a free of user interface, some bureaucrats still consider that only software for scanning. These are then attached to a database MS-Windows is user-friendly. They refuse to look at Linux using a Web-based application. OS. It’s strange. But that’s only one side of the story. Many On the server side, Elcot switched the application and departments have also migrated to Linux after experiencing database from Windows to Linux. Under the old Windowsit,” says Umashankar. based client-server system, once contractors captured data It helps that Umashankar threw in a sweetener. Elcot they integrated it with the Linux server. After the migration, offered them a set of standardized Tamil fonts working on contractors and Elcot officials were given user IDs and Linux and Windows — free of cost. passwords on the newly developed Web-based system “Until now they were buying the font license for between powered by OSS. All 30 branch managers were given training Rs 2,500 and 6,000 each!” he says. on the new application software for one day. They, in turn, Training, which can be a really big challenge with largetrained the data entry operators. scale migrations, is also covered at Elcot. All government “There was no issue in moving applications because they departments are offered free and paid training facilities. are all Web-based — users only get a browser as a front end, Elcot has opened a full-fledged training division, which so they didn’t find any difference. In fact, it is easier to use has made marked progress in the last year. Elcot is also setting because we don't have to install any applications on local up its own 300-seater training centre in Chennai. machines and training is minimal,” says senior business Umashankar expects the entire operations of the development manager Krishnamoorthy. government to gradually switch over to Linux/Open office. “This is the first software run on Tamil Nadu statewide org over the next 12 or 18 months. “Give it two or three virus area network (SWAN). The data capture operations were attacks and you’ll see a faster migration,” he says tonguecompletely decentralized at the district level. It can be scaled in-cheek. up to the taluk level, depending on the requirements of the Despite his attitude, the worries of his peer are not Food and Civil Supplies Department. Within 30 days, the unfounded. It’s hardly news that one of Linux’s biggest

25%

90%

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drawbacks is the fact that there aren’t many vendors and software providers who will service Linux. What annoys Umashankar is that there are no practical hurdles in providing this support. ”This is largely due to their lethargy." Since, he says, the logic of business is competition, he's going to give these providers a run for their money. "Now, government companies like Elcot, which have only served the government, are coming forward to provide Linux OS and application software support to private businesses.” On the desktop front, the challenge, he says is a little different: hardware manufacturers refuse to release Linux drivers. Elcot only qualifies hardware or peripherals if it passes the Linux test. The challenge comes in areas like Apple's I-Pod, video conversion for high definition cameras and popular software such as Tally, says Umashankar. “We informed Tally to provide a Linux version failing which Elcot would not take up Tally training. Apple too has been asked to release a Linux version of i-tune software,” he says. On his part, Umashankar plans to share code Elcot has developed. “Once we implement two more application software packages, we will host the entire application software framework for free download for use in other state governments.” Elcot, says Umashankar, is also looking into the possibility of taking legal action against vendors who refuse to release Linux drivers for their products. That’s not the only place Elcot is making its presence felt.

influenCing tHe environMent Umashankar — and now Elcot — consider reliability and freedom the two important values they have derived from Linux. This sense of security has prompted Elcot to deploy Linux clients at all its 30 offices. The current number of 300 clients is expected to go up to between 600 and 1000 over the next few months. In addition to stability and reliability, Elcot relies on a Linux desktop-based PIV system to firewall its domain. Umashankar points out that “Linux is the only OS which is scalable to any hardware platform, including mainframe computers. We have servers and desktops running on Intel and AMD platforms. We have a Solaris installation, too.” Linux also offers freedom and choice which are completely missing in the proprietary domain. There is the freedom from downtime, that proprietary systems can never offer, Umashankar says. Besides, he points out that many business application majors have already released products for Linux, which means that interoperability is not going to be an issue. “Due to our experience in the last 18 months, our trust in Linux has gone up,” Umashankar says. And so has the trust of Elcot's vendors, he says. “One of our vendors who produces banners and pamphlets for us suffered a severe setback because a virus attacked them on the eve of a large event hosted by Elcot. In the end, we had to make our own arrangements through another vendor.”

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4 financial reaSOnS tO uSe linux REDIRECt FUnDs IntO sALARIEs Within the blend of costs summarized as tco, the use of linux inux tends to shift finances spent on licensing costs into other areas — personnel is most typical, whether internal or outsourced. Savings in licensing costs alone can pay for extra staff. Support costs have long been considered a hindrance in migrating to linux, but this perception has woven its way into the realm of misconception. Every technical person says he 'knows' Windows, but finding someone with the required level of expertise is just as hard as it is for linux. OPEns An ARRAy OF AvAILAbLE APPLICAtIOns yes, you read correctly. While microsoft office and other applications may y not run natively on linux, emulators and terminal services have been used as successful workarounds in some environments. as for running apps natively on linux, a shift has clearly taken place. open office has matured into a credible replacement for microsoft office, and linux gurus point out that alternatives exist for most major software packages used in the enterprise. FACILItAtEs RAPID GROWth going open source makes it possible for enterprises to grow really quickly, mainly because of the low barrier to entry. Systems can be built essentially with 'no money down' and invested over time as their use ramps up with growth. Initially, a small linux deployment can be rolled out, and resources can be spent scaling up rather than absorbing high up-front costs for small deployments. In this way, business risk is mitigated by not having to wait a long time to recoup up-front expenditures. PAys FOR vALUE Setup costs vary, but building on linux shifts the cost from licensing to expertise. Selecting software (or developing modifications) for linux can take more research time up front. the real question is perhaps how one allocates the inevitable cost of It. businesses adopting linux invest in service and support instead of licensing. Essentially, the costs are minimized up front, and triggered only as the enterprise ramps up. —by brent toderash t

He recalls how despite anti-virus updates, all their vendor’s systems including their CEO's laptop was corrupted. “Elcot has given them an ultimatum: either switch to a dependable system like Linux or lose Elcot’s business,” says Umashankar. Their vendor currently is in the process of switching over from Adobe Photoshop to GIMP software with enhancements. Elcot experience might just be one pebble in the pond, but it’s making its splash felt. CIO Kanika Goswami is special correspondent . Send feedback to editor@cio.in

REAL CIO WORLD | d e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

Case File

In a fast-growing courier industry, Indian cargo services are finding it difficult to keep a track of their consignments. But thanks to CDMA-based tracking system, now your parcels can be traced, irrespective of geographical boundaries.

Traced In TransIT By Shardha SuBramanian

Reader ROI:

How the centralized architecture works How DTDCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s customers track their shipments

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Case File

Expectations are always sky high in the delivery business. From FedEx’s ‘The World On

IllUStrAt Io n By Un n Ik rISh nAn AV

I Photo By SrIVAtSA Sh AnDIlyA

Time’, to DHL’s ‘We Move The World’, international service companies have set high standards. But until recently, Indian courier companies were unable to match the standards of their global rivals, mainly because of inadequate deployment of technology.

Today, even relatively small courier companies ship hundreds of thousands of packages everyday. In a country as large as India, this can mean remote, farflung destinations with often unreliable transport networks. To navigate this maze, delivery companies require sophisticated technology that not only enables the speedy delivery of packages but also tracks them at various moments in transit. As the courier business became among the more demanding in the service indsutry, it became a must not only to locate a package but to predict its delivery time. Indian firms began to recognize technology as a big differentiator and a key means towards higher standards and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Established in 1990, Door-to-Door Courier (DTDC) is one of the largest Indian companies in the delivery business. In 2003, it was delivering over a lakh packages everyday day to an average of 3,700 locations — 240 of these overseas — and it ran its operations from about 90 branches and 10 regional offices. Considering the volume of DTDC’s shipments, it became apparent that it was not humanly possible to achieve high levels of service without investing in smart technology. Besides, DTDC’s competition was getting there, too. Following the lead of international courier companies like FedEx

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and UPS, many Indian companies were ramping up their technology infrastructure to acquire the ability to track their packages across most cities and towns. Blue Dart, for example, had already armed itself with a tracking system it called ‘Trackdart’. When DTDC’s operations began to get unwieldy, Mrinal Chakraborty, the company’s general manager for IT operations and process, started a technology initiative to bring better logistical control and help DTDC’s customers track their consignments on their own. DTDC’s project, called ‘Centralization,’ aimed to track every parcel throughout its journey from the hands of their customers to the doorstep of the recipient. Centralization sought to achieve this larger objective by, first, bringing all DTDC’s offices and branches on a common network. “When the project started, DTDC had 92 branches and 10 regional offices. Getting data in time to enable a track-andtrace was a true challenge. Especially since our staff was not strong with IT and data management,” says Chakraborty.

HunTIng for TecHnology DTDC made use of all the leading technologies in the market. The criteria used for selecting the technology for the project ranged from reliability and security to ease of maintenance and compatibility with the existing applications. “We have used Linux and a Windows server. Linux was used because it had lower TCO and reduced dependence on software vendors. It was also easier to customize,” says Chakraborty. It was a decision that came with it’s share of problems.

“The centralized application has definitely played a pivotal role in our achievements. It has given confidence to our customers.” — mrinal Chakraborty GM-It operations and processes,DtDC “In the corporate world, Linux is still in its nascent stage, which means that support and services are quite weak in India. One of the major problems we faced was a shortage of experienced engineers and a lack of ownership from the supplier. There was absolutely negligible online support, and customer care was very poor,” recalls Chakraborty. DTDC’s answer was to trained their internal engineers on Linux. According to Chakraborty, it’s an approach that has helped them keep their head above water. Project Centralization’s data center serves their offices in India and abroad. DTDC has real cIo World | D e C e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

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Case File

hosted the application with database, mail and antivirus servers, a backup solution, SMS- and Web-tracking systems, auto alerts and delivery information system, IP telephony, IP-based DVR etcetera. “We also share Internet centrally, which is behind the UTM/Firewall on a high availability mode and on a load balancing between different ISPs. This protects us from all kinds of vulnerabilities,” explains Chakraborty. They also boast of a local scanner at their SMTP Gateway. The mail servers are made clustered for high availability, as e-mail is the lifeline of their communication. DTDC has indigenously developed an FTP product that transmits data nationally to the data center. “Our customized FTP system is used to aggregate data from the non-centralized locations to track consignments, help create business reports, etcetera,” says Chakraborty. All their processes have been automated at both remote and the centralized locaTrack 2 tions. They chose to Once a package has been handed over for develop the software transportation, it’s in-house, rather than new status is relayed buy packaged softto the server. ware. “We understand our application (ERP) better and it is easier to manage scalability,” says Chakraborty.

InfoGrAPhICS By PrASAn th t.r

dropped Any application faces regular changes Track 1 Consignment data unless it from one of 168 matures. branches are uploaded “Taking on a central server t h e s e using DTDC’s ERP. changes to all DTDC offices was a task in itself. Getting an IT person at each branch who was efficient was not only time-consuming but also costly,” recalls Chakraborty. Another challenge that DTDC had to face was automation. “We have removed many duplicate

processes. But at the ground shipments everyday, the level people and processes number of packages DTDC remain as they were to due moves has risen to 3 lakh. snapsHoT to certain interests. Once we Incredibly, this was achieved DTDC brought them under a central without increasing manpower. Workforce: 2,200 control, all those redundant “Courier as an industry is processes were removed,” manpower agnostic, but had revenue: rs 172 crore explains Chakraborty. this application not been there The work they put in to support such a huge number offIces: 168 branches, 10 has paid off. “Now, our of transactions, thousands regional offices customers can track the of people would have been projecT cosT: status of the delivery directly required,” says Chakraborty. rs 15 crore from our website or through DTDC is still adding new IT projecT Team: SMS, which reduces calls locations to the centralized 8 to our customer care. Apart architecture. The return on from this we have provided their investment will be fully customer-specific tracking feature through achieved in 1.6 years, he says . the Web to create more awareness,” “In 2000-2001, we were a Rs 30-crore says Chakraborty. organization and within four years, DTDC’s tracking system works by tapping we have become a Rs 200-plus-crore its ERP, which captures all data relevant to organization. This centralized application the consignments moving on its network and has definitely played a pivotal role in then aggregates it on a central database. achieving the same. It has given our DTDC provides consignment tracking customers confidence,” says from this database to its internal Chakraborty. Track 3 and external customers. Looking back, Chakraborty Upon arrival at a From an average of 1.2 lakh says he would have taken DTDC warehouse, the central server is another route where open informed again. source was concerned. Even though the project was completed at a lower cost, the use of Linux had an impact on project deadlines because they had to learn along the way. Chakraborty says he has learnt the concept Track 4 of security Finally, when a customer at one of wh e n it DTDC’s 3,700 locations comes to signs off on a parcel, the secure and server is updated. safe mail policy. Let me track my Data archiving consignment online and storage issues have been a part of the learning experience too. More than just another innovative project, DTDC has paved the way for a better route to deliver value. cIo

On The righT Track

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11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

Ajit Balakrishnan, founder and CEO of Rediff.com, says that if technology can’t give organizations a consistent lead, it can, at least, help them burst out of the gate.

Betting to Win

View from the top is a series of interviews with CEOs and other C-level executives about the role of IT in their companies and what they expect from their CIOs.

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By Gunjan Trivedi

When a business man gets covered repeatedly by the media, their biopics begin to fit a stereotype: the Big Shot. Each mention of the Big Shot is accompanied by the Big Credits: the couple of notable companies or wins that define a big shot’s status. Ajit Balakrishnan has his big credits: founder and CEO of Rediff.com and co-founder and director of Rediffusion-Dentsu, Young & Rubicam — one of India's largest ad agencies. Ajit Balakrishnan. Rediff. Rediffusion. And people stopped looking. Balakrishnan says too few people remember that he also ran PSI Data Systems, one of India's earliest IT companies. It proves that before the software services boom took off, Balakrishnan was already there, testing out a hunch, exposing himself to the industry. When the Internet became popular, Balakrishnan was at a crossroads. By combining his experience at Rediffusion and PSI, he could create an Internet media company. With Rediff, he created a name as a business man who knew his technology and would use it for competitive advantage. Balakrishan keeps on top of cutting-edge technologies and is involved in projects that adopt new technologies. He is also striving to take the wonders of IT and the Internet closer to one billion Indians.

CIO: In 1995, Rediff broke new ground. Was it worth it financially? Ajit Balakrishnan: Though people find it hard to believe, my goal in 1995 wasn’t really to make money. Even today

it isn’t. It is more intellectual curiosity. I wanted to know where this new technology (the Internet) was going. In 1995, the answer may well have been nowhere. Back then, it was not clear that the Internet was a media. But my instinct told me that it would be.

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View from the Top

Ajit Balakrishnan expects I.T. to: Bring the Internet and data mining to a billion Indians Give Rediff first-mover advantage Create common data structure across the enterprise

The inspiration to start Rediff came from a business course I took at Harvard Business School in 1989-90. We were asked to study Compuserve, an information services company before the era of the Internet. It used a proprietary networking protocol and one had to use a command-line interface to log on to a time-sharing computer. It had news, chat and practically everything the Internet is known for. The missing link was Windows, which had not yet been created. So, the user interface was a black screen with blue text. The commands

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were quite complex and required a lot of keystrokes, dots and slashes. One needed to be half-a-programmer to use it. With the introduction of TCP/IP, and the disaggregating in the computer industry, I guessed that it was time to start a new business, which was based loosely on Compuserve, but with newer protocols and technologies.

What were the risks? Around that time, there was a great amount of debate over which network

protocol would take center stage. The two contenders were X400 and TCP/IP. As late as 1989, there was absolutely no assurance of which was going to win. TCP/IP did, and Compuserve eventually died because they did not move to TCP/IP. With the new protocol, networks were much cheaper to build; with Compuservetype protocol it was almost like the old landline switches. The connection needed to be kept alive. If you had 10,000 users online then you needed to keep 10,000 connections alive.

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View from the Top

While at Harvard, we also saw the first multimedia-supporting browser put on Compuserve. It was platform-independent. It was unlike Windows, which was tightly tied to Compuserve's backend. Every piece of technology became independent.

E-commerce didn't took off in India like it was envisaged. Do you agree? What's it like now? Absolutely, I agree. We launched our shopping site in 1998. Those were the early days of e-commerce and it never took off as expected. There are a couple of reasons. One, credit card penetration is low in India. Today, there are only nine million active credit card users in India. And, debit cards have not yet been enabled to be used on the Internet. In the absence of this, all of us largely depended on a cash-on-delivery model, which is an inefficient system. Any efficiency and cost savings users get with Internet shopping is more or less annulled by this model. Two, outside the US — and in limited way Germany and France — auctions never took off. Auctions normally work for products that have reached the end of their engineering lifecycle or those which are in short supply. The CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, theorized that since consumers in places like India and China are being introduced to consumer markets for the first time, they prefer to pay a premium and buy something new — not second-hand stuff. I think she maybe right. Retailing is still relatively new in this country. In the US, online shopping is dominated by traditional retailers who sell about 5 percent of their products online. Online retailing is in its infancy in India. Retail folks have to stick on for the next two or three years before this becomes anything big.

Where is e-commerce beginning to pick up? The arrival of low-cost airlines has created a boom in online purchases. Roughly, according 42

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“It’s not the person who does something first that succeeds. A window of opportunity is open for four or five years.” — Ajit Balakrishnan to IMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) numbers, two-thirds of online purchases are tickets. This shows that if you can offer something worthwhile and valuable — something users can’t get conveniently and cheaply outside — people will pull out their credit cards and pay.

You’re one of the few companies that survived the dotcom bust. What did it teach you? Those were certainly trying times. We had our IPO in June 2000 and in July everything collapsed. It was like sitting on Noah’s Ark. But businesses go through cycles and I told my core team to stay cool. I told them to treat it like a downpour and to stay indoors. The downturn lasted for about three years. As experienced entrepreneurs, we kept everything low cost, something we still do today. We had between $50 and $60 million in the bank when everybody else had zero. We did our share of foolish things — but not as foolish as what others did.

Technology is key in Rediff maintaining its edge. How do you keep on top of cuttingedge technology? We invested quite early in a talented, mainstream technology team. From 1996 onwards, most portals outsourced technology. I maintain that we can’t outsource these areas because they are core to our business. In the last two years, we have had a program to partner with young, strong companies of 10 to 12 people. They are innovative, and come to us with good ideas. We, in return, provided them with an innovation platform. In the US, companies like Yahoo normally acquire these companies. We don’t. We rather partner with them and make investments if the need arises. These young companies need more revenue than investment. Once they have revenue they can get VCs to fund them. We have a dozen such companies surrounding us anonymously, providing us with a huge source of innovation.

Are leading-edge technologies a must to be successful on the Internet? I know there is a general belief in the tech community that there are early-mover advantages attached to technology. It’s generally not true. It could be true if a company can sustain that lead throughout its life. Look at the graphical user interface of Windows that made Microsoft so successful — it came out of Xerox. Xerox couldn’t make it work for them. Neither could Macintosh. Bill Gates however had a business design to license the software for cheap. The business design was original — not the technology. Look at Google’s PageRank. The methodology has existed in the academic community for at least 50 years. To see whose paper has more value, academics check how many others have referred to it. It’s the same concept with PageRank: the more people linking to your site, the more popular it is. Or take sponsored ads on Google. GoTo.com

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View from the Top

(now Overture.com) has been using it for at least seven years. It’s not the person who does something first that succeeds. A window of opportunity is open for four or five years. Anybody who enters during that period succeeds. Later, the cost of catching up becomes too much. Or the product goes into a stage where innovation is not rewarded. In our case, iShare (a desktop tool that shares files) is relatively early and is proliferating like mad. We got our first million users in four weeks. The next guy to try a similar videosharing site, will have it much harder. First, the novelty’s gone and second, we execute it well. User already have Youtube and iShare, there’s no need for another one. Technology is essential in the beginning. For example, when NBC came along, it was the only channel available in color. For the next five years they were the king because they were the only channel where one could see programs in color. Soon, everybody else had color. In the media, technology advantages don’t last very long. They proliferate immediately. Point is: the early mover advantage is not sacrosanct.

So what technologies are you working with now? For the last six months, we have been trying to build data models for every part of our business. For example, for our online shopping, when a product is defined, it comes with parameters: description, price, ID, etcetera. We realized that these data structures were different from those being used for our ‘product search’. But when we talk about a product, we want it to mean the same thing across five different businesses. A large amount of effort is going behind this. It is fairly new in India and it is quite difficult to find people who do data modeling. So, we took out our textbooks and everybody is busy reading about it — including myself. Overtime, this will ensure that maintenance of all these complex platforms becomes easier. Second, we have six or seven platforms. These include a shopping platform with a

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payment gateway; a content platform for the editorial team; a search function, which is a data-mining platform. We are trying to abstract some of these as common Web services across all platforms. For example, we have defined payment as a standalone Web service. A lot of effort is being put in to architect the platforms on a Web services paradigm. It is challenging because standards are still emerging. But, it is absolutely essential to succeed in the future.

SNAPSHOT

buy because their components were largely imported. Another big problem is language. Registered users*: There is almost no content or 53.6 million services on the Internet in Indian Revenue*: languages. The government has Rs 33.92 crore found a committee to address Headquarters: this and made me its chairman. Mumbai At our first meeting in October, Offices: the big conclusion was that it New Delhi and New York is incredibly difficult to author, store and display content in *March 31, 2007 Source: Rediff.com Indian languages. Primarily because when the fonts were created, they were developed to be stored in an eight-bit format. Unicode, as a standard, only emerged later.

Rediff.com

The CIO's role is changing dramatically. What do you expect from your CIO?

A CIO should be the chief repository of the organization's IT architecture. We are constantly adding new services and features and they need to fit. It is almost like the job of a high priest: to ensure an architecture which works and that everything links within it. The second most important role of a CIO is to be an inspirational leader and attract the right number of people at the right prices and motivate them to keep them here. Achieving and maintaining high levels of quality people is a challenge, we face a shortage of talent.

The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked India 54 out of 69 countries in connectivity and technology infrastructure. How can India change this? As far as I know, the reason behind our low ranking is that on a per capita basis, access to either PCs or the Internet is low. Anything divided by a billion becomes small. Another reason is that the Rupee-Dollar conversation rate deflated from Rs 8 to a dollar in the 1980s to Rs 50 to a dollar in the 1990s. This made PCs too expensive to

How are you going to correct this? If you look at the 50 Indian newspapers sites, each site uses a different set of fonts. They’ll make you go and download the font. We are trying to figure out how to get everyone to adopt Unicode. The government has funded many projects to come up with apps, with authoring systems, display systems and browsers, in Indian languages. Many of these projects have failed. There is a view that cell phones may be the solution. Cell phones have a technological challenge: their keyboards are still in English. You need innovation in voice recognition. One of the projects we have enlisted is a voice recognition system with accuracy levels of 95 percent. Then, a user can speak into his phone asking for, say, a train's timing between Mumbai and Pune. This will translate into text, search a database and revert instantaneously to the user. If we can do that then we can bring the Internet, data mining and other wonders of technology to one billion people. We are trying to figure out how to manage and fund such projects. We want to complete such projects in the next three years. CIO Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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Everyone admits that collaboration for innovation is good. It is also rare. And when it works, it’s beautiful.

The

Collaboration Gap and How to Bridge It By C.G. Lynch

Erin Griffin, CIO and VP of IT at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) and Mitch Davis, CIO of Bowdoin College, met three summers ago during a conference on academic computing. They chatted, shared experiences about their challenges and traded some ideas. But it didn’t occur to either of them that they could join forces until they met up again in 2005 at the same conference. They were leaving a session about disaster recovery, reflecting, Griffin remembers, that they were both in similar jams. Disaster recovery solutions from vendors were expensive — especially for small colleges (like LMU and Bowdoin) with limited budgets. Griffin and Davis joked about how easy it would be for people to replicate each other’s data centers if only they were willing to work together. Then came the epiphany. “We said, what if we actually did it?” Davis recalls. Half a year later, Griffin, who is based in Los Angeles, and Davis, in Brunswick, Maine, began developing a solution that allows them to host each other’s disaster recovery sites. And it has cost a mere fraction of what it would have to hire a vendor. 44

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Reader ROI:

Where resistance to collaboration comes from How to define project metrics that make sense for both parties Why personal relationships are a critical success factor

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Collaboration

Samuel Gaer, executive VP and CIO of the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), faced a different problem. A major competitor was encroaching on Nymex’s market share by offering competing energy futures contracts on a ‘side by side’ system for trading both securities and their options. Nymex was still executing them manually (brokers screaming out orders in the trading pit) from its trading floor during daytime business hours. Gaer needed to get Nymex’s contracts online in a hurry. Nymex had a system ready (ClearPort) that it had upgraded, but Gaer knew that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which specializes in financial futures, had a well-established electronic trading platform called Globex. “From a technical standpoint, our system was robust, but CME [and Globex] still had some distinct advantages,” he says. For instance, Globex, which had been around since 1992, had been more heavily tested and as a result was more scalable. So Gaer swallowed hard and called CME COO Phupinder Gill to propose a partnership. “I essentially said, ‘why should Nymex reinvent the wheel when we can collaborate?’” Gaer recounts. Working together over the next year, Nymex and CME came to an agreement that enabled Nymex to list its futures contracts on Globex. The partnership helped extend CME’s Globex platform, improving its customers’ experience (many also did business with Nymex). For Nymex, trading volume in the crude oil futures it offered grew from 220,000 to more than 500,000 a day in 6 to 8 months.

The Collaboration Imperative These efforts represent a growing trend among companies toward collaborating with industry peers. A global study by IBM of 765 CEOs last year revealed that more than 75 percent place a priority on partnering outside their organizations to create innovation. But there remains a collaboration gap, with only 50 percent actually reaching beyond their own enterprise to partner with another organization. That gap, the study concludes, represents an opportunity for CIOs to lead the way as facilitators of intercompany collaboration. But assuming this role is a challenge for IT departments, which typically take pride in in-house innovation. “The role of the inventor is disappearing,” says Navi Radjou, VP at Forrester Research. “They need to stop inventing and take on the role of...transforming raw technologies into a meaningful application for [the] business.” LMU and Nymex have reached out to transform the way business is done in their industries. In so doing, they’re helping to define best practices for partnerships in business innovation.

How to Bring the Boss Along Even though most CEOs might tell IBM’s survey team that they would welcome external partnerships, they still have to be convinced that these partnerships with putative competitors are good for business.

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There are three factors that count with the boss: good timing, a solid ROI and an immediate business need. Griffin and Davis conceived the disaster recovery plan for LMU and Bowdoin in 2005. They were still brainstorming when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August and forced colleges such as Tulane in New Orleans, to shut down. Disaster recovery became a hot topic. “All of a sudden people were interested in it,” Griffin says. “So we took it to our senior administrations.” Cost became the overriding factor, Bowdoin’s Davis says. “I’d been thinking about what it would cost to do disaster recovery with a vendor — you just couldn’t do it.” In the case of Nymex, CEO James Newsome was keenly aware that the company had put significant time and money into ClearPort. But in 2005 Nymex developers were still putting the system through its paces. So when Gaer made the case to collaborate with CME, he emphasized the benefits of speed and economics. “I said that CME spent Rs 28,000 crore in seven years building a worldwide distribution market for Globex,” says Gaer. “If we put our products on Globex,” he argued, “then we’d have the immediate distribution we needed.” Newsome bought Gaer’s argument, acknowledging that the decision ultimately was about business, not technology. There were some sticking points during negotiations. For example, Nymex worried about ceding some control over its technology to CME. In exchange, Nymex wanted CME to sign a noncompete agreement promising not to list futures contracts that resembled Nymex’s. CME eventually agreed, and the deal went forward. (In June, the companies quashed rumors that they were discussing a merger after the Bloomberg news agency reported Nymex was exploring a sale with three potential partners, including CME. Executives from both companies said that they plan to continue their partnership as independent entities.)

How to Bring Your Staff Along Once Gaer worked out the deal with CME, he had an ugly job ahead of him: telling his developers that their ClearPort platform was being shelved in favor of Globex. “It was one of the hardest things I had to do,” he says. “We had our own system that we believed was bleeding edge. There was a lot of pride of ownership.” Gaer’s problem was a common one, says Forrester’s Radjou, as IT staff are urged to let go of their role as inventors. “You don’t want them to think they’re not good at what they’re doing,” he says. Making sure that your IT staff is given ways to make valuable contributions to the project is critical. The Nymex developers weren’t blindsided by the news of the partnership (there were rumors in the marketplace) but there were, Gaer believes, bruised egos. So in town hall meetings, he went out of his way to make it clear to the developers that their technological work was sound. This allowed him to explain the business imperatives. REAL CIO WORLD | d e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

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Collaboration Of course, not all the developers were convinced, so Gaer encouraged them to vent and to challenge him. “[I would] walk to the bottom of the floor and say, ‘Ask me what you want. Say the emperor has no clothes.’” He also established an open-door policy for his staff to speak with him privately if they didn’t feel comfortable doing so in the town hall forum. Gaer believes that his openness and willingness to hear criticism helped the staff come to trust and get behind the decision. Gaer and CME CIO and managing director Jim Krause also gave the Nymex IT department an active role in the Globex integration. While CME, which deals primarily in financial futures, wasn’t new to energy futures (it had once listed a few Nymex products), it still relied on Nymex IT’s expertise to help with the migration.

matching until their IT departments were like twins. “Now you can go right down the list of places where we match,” Davis says.

Metrics for Everyone’s Success

Collaborating with partners in one’s own industry often breaks new ground. Therefore, measuring outcomes can be difficult. “We were looking for measures of success, and we found that we sort of redefined them as we went along,” says Griffin. One way to ensure that a partnership succeeds is to mind your partner’s goals. For example, while both LMU and Bowdoin wanted a new disaster recovery solution, they needed it for different reasons. Given Maine’s rough winters, Bowdoin would need LMU’s services frequently for short periods due to storms that cause power outages several times a season. LMU, on the other hand, would most likely need Bowdoin only in case of a large earthquake or terrorist attack. (The LMU campus is near Los Angeles International Airport, which After LMU and Bowdoin got their staff and leadership teams on has been targeted by terrorists in the past, including an attempt, board, the next step was to assess the strengths and weaknesses thwarted by US authorities, to bomb the airport on New Year’s Eve of each organization. The approach was simple: figure out which 1999. (Snow storms, conversely, are rare in the L.A. area.) organization was better versed in a particular technology and let The partners designed each other’s emergency sites to reflect the that organization help the other implement it. Griffin and Davis’s frequency and magnitude of their needs. For instance, LMU would ultimate goal was to replicate each other’s IT departments as much need the ability to conduct all classes remotely for several months as possible — from their Web infrastructure to e-mail, to servers. in the event of a major disaster. As such, it would need to retain By mirroring each other, they could easily take on each other’s access to one semester of a fully populated course management operations if a disaster occurred. system. Bowdoin, however, had no such need. Each scaled its According to Griffin, Bowdoin had a good handle on VMware, storage plans accordingly. but LMU had a better grip on Microsoft Exchange. So they helped If the CIOs in a partnership have a good relationship, their goodwill each other deploy the technologies they knew best, mixing and will trickle down to their teams. “We had mutual respect for each other, and I think that transferred quickly,” says Bowdoin’s Davis. Gaer and Krause are friends and had worked together in the past. “That really helped — having the familiarity from a cultural as well as a technology level,” Gaer says. As their teams got to know each other, they developed close relationships. How two CIOs with separate collaboration experiences Griffin and Davis helped transfer the energy of their view partnerships friendship to their teams by bringing their managers to Snowmass, the birthplace of the project. “We did some Samuel Gaer, CIO, New York Mercantile Exchange: bonding over frisbee, golf, rafting and hiking,” says Griffin. “I can code in seven different languages, but I’m a business guy.” When Gaer “As much as electronic collaboration is great, it helps to meet proposed listing Nymex’s energy futures contracts on the Globex platform people face-to-face and get a sense of what kind of sushi they run by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he told his boss: “This has nothing eat, or if they prefer Fenway Park or Dodger Stadium.” to do with a lack of faith in our abilities; this has everything to do with a Griffin says that because collaboration with a peer forward-looking business relationship.” organization is still a new concept, IT staffs tend to view it with caution. It takes enthusiastic leadership from the CIO Erin Griffin, CIO, Loyola Marymount University: — and a few gung-ho staff members — to get things moving. A successful collaboration pairs partners with complementary skills, says “There was some trepidation at first,” Griffin says. “But I Griffin, and that’s what she found with Bowdoin College CIO Mitch Davis. have a couple of people who saw this as exciting. Sometimes “Mitch is the king of the creative idea. I’m a process and planning person.” it takes a few people who look at the world differently to Together, Davis and Griffin built a disaster recovery system for both schools. make a collaboration effort like this contagious.” CIO “Not only did our staffs have complementary skills,” says Griffin, “we did as well.” — C.G. Lynch C.G. Lynch is associate staff writer. Send feedback on this feature to

Leverage Each Other’s Strengths

Words to Collaborate By

editor@cio.in

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Workflow

Making

WORkfLOW Work Work k By Rick cook c ook

Workflow isn't rocket science, but it isn't magic either. It can better the way a company runs, only when its principles are applied correctly. We explain the success factors and the benefits that the process can provide.

rom a business perspective, workflow is a way to make people, information and computers work together consistently and efficiently to produce the results the business needs. In effect, workflow applies the equivalent of systems analysis to the entire process, not just to the part done on a machine. From a bottom line perspective, adding workflow to a process saves money, increases customer satisfaction, gets results quicker and largely eliminates things getting lost in the shuffle. From a manager's perspective, the most important benefits to workflow are saving cost and time. "With workflow, the process is really in focus," says Wilhelm Ederyd, a technical project manager at Bonver, a major Scandinavian distributor of home entertainment products, such as films and music. Another benefit, Ederyd says, is "hiding unnecessary complexity from the users."

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Reader ROI:

The benefits of well-applied workflow making workflow fit your budget How to optimize workflow

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Workflow wanted is Microsoft Office and a As an example of a typical workflow, little routing slip between users," Ederyd cites building support says Johannes Scholtes, president for individuals and businesses of ZyLAB Technologies, a workflow ordering broadband services via vendor and consultant. "Of course, the Internet, postal mail and e-mail. according to gartner's you can sell these people a $25,000 "This can be a rather complex application to automate this, but they process, with the need for the list of top 10 strategic don't need it." systems and personnel to interact technologies for 2008, Ultimately, what you need efficiently in order to make the Bpm was the third depends on the size and complexity process slim and pleasant to the most important of the processes that you're applying customer," Ederyd explains. for the coming workflow management. You can think of workflow as year. green iT came Features aren't the only differences systems analysis that mixes humans, between tools. Usually the products machines, documents and other data. first and unified aimed at simpler processes focus In Edervd's case, he designed the communication strongly on ease of use. The designers' process for ordering and installing can second. assumption is generally that the users the broadband connection for the Source: Gartner are non-experts or quasi experts customer. Typically that means within the company. — given a whole raft of business For example, Quask, a workflow requirements generated by others — software vendor built its application around the concept of working out how the process would flow from the customer's an intelligent form. Basically, the user develops the workflow initial contact to the actual installation: who does what, what by filling in the form, including the business rules. "Everyone the IT system does, when decisions were made and who understands what a form is," Freddy May, CEO of Quask, made them. If you were doing this all on a computer, you'd says. "It's very much a logical way of mapping paper into a probably call it 'systems analysis'. piece of software. People can instantly relate to it." Ederyd's example is a classic case: a fairly complex, multiThe products aimed at larger projects are much less step process where computers and people have to interact as concerned about ease of use — vendors expect that the smoothly and efficiently as possible. It's also a process that is products will be used by consultants or in-house experts. exposed to the customer, and delays or mistakes can damage The division between big and complex and small and customer relationships. simple is important, but it is also somewhat misleading. For Defense Health, an Australian insurance company, Since almost any process can be broken down into a series of customer relationships were particularly important. "We smaller processes, it's possible to handle even a large, complex needed a system that would let us answer a customer's process by chopping it into chunks and doing it one chunk question up front rather than saying 'We'll call you at a time. back,'" says Andrew Guerin, COO of Defense Health. For The limitations of the simpler workflow tools become Guerin, that meant having processes in place to access evident when they're asked to manage interprocess information as quickly as possible. Using workflow tools dependencies, handle complex database integration and from OpenText, the company designed processes that handle tasks that are much more important to larger, more combined IT systems, documents and people to get a complex processes. The complexity cuts both ways. A really handle on customer queries quickly. big project requires the tools that come with a big, expensive product. But if you don't need that big, expensive product, BIg AnD COmpLEx vs. product complexity can slow you down. There is a lot of smALL AnD sImpLER overlap in what these tools can do. orkflow tools are highly stratified. At the top are the workflow modules built into ERP applications such as SAP and standalone WORkfLOW LOW fROm thE BOttOm products like FlowWare from Plexus. Products in this class nlike ERP, workflow tends to use a bottom-up typically include process modeling, business rules engines approach to re-organizing the enterprise. It and other features to help reengineer processes involving essentially works one process at a time, although thousands of workers and thousands — or tens of thousands you can use it on several processes simultaneously. — of steps. In a typical organization, workflow implementations are At the bottom or entry-end of the spectrum, applying atomic. That is, while a process may be connected to other workflow to the simplest processes requires no special tools processes in an elaborate chain or network, each process is, at all. "I have pointed out to some users that what they really in effect, a separate project. This is in contrast to something

In The

Top 3

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Workflow stuff BPM or Business Rengineering. But workflow is at the heart of all these tools. While the formal difference between workflow and business process management is anywhere from murky to nonexistent, in most cases vendors who sell applications labeled as BPM are aiming at bigger and more complex projects. Also, BPM vendors are likely to offer elaborate software supporting even more elaborate methodologies, modeling, collaboration methods, process definition modules, and on and on and on. The distinction isn't hard and fast by a long shot, but it is useful. The advantage of the workflow approach, compared with ERP, is that you're not as locked in as you implement. You can make changes to a workflow process quickly. "Once the system is in place, it's not the be-all and end-all," says Craig Cameron of Web and Flo, a Melbourne, Australia, workflow consultant and maker of workflow software. "Things will change in the future and you need to have a system that is easy to change." The process is going to change. That's the whole point. You want to improve your processes over time. Another advantage of a well-designed workflow process is that it can serve hen implemented incorrectly, applying workflow to processes actually as a template that can be applied reduces efficiency, increases costs and generates a lot of internal friction in quickly to similar processes. "Once the company. Here are some trouble spots to look for. you're comfortable with workflow in Who's going to bell the cat? "It's a mistake to buy a product without thinking through your organization, it will allow you to who's going to carry out the implementation," says Freddy May, CEo CE of Quask. The implement new business models much actual implementation can be done in-house, by a consultant or even by the vendor. faster than [do] your competitors," lack ack of process definition. By definition, workflow applies to a process. A process is a says Bonver's Ederyd. "The cost single stream of activities connected in a specific order. If what you're trying to improve and complexity of doing so is now with workflow isn't an actual process, you'll end up with a dysfunctional mess. manageable." Thinking too big. Size your process to your resources and tackle the problem from Cameron cites the example of a customer, the bottom up. Almost all processes are composed of smaller processes. The best a major Australian bank, that wanted to strategy is to break the process into bite- sized chunks. apply workflow to the process that some of Striving for perfection the first time out."Don't try to implement a 100 percent its divisions used to order large amounts of solution in the first place," says Michael Cybala, director of program and product hardware. "They needed to go through all management transactional solutions for open Text Corp. in Waterloo, ontario, Canada. these checks and make sure that the right "Cover 85 or 90 percent of the business requirement and then learn where you can people had signed off on it," Cameron says. get better." "So we implemented a system to do that." Improving the wrong thing. It's easy to waste money applying workflow to the wrong Which was fine until the other divisions processes. "Wrong," in this case, means processes that return minimal or no value for of the bank found out about the new being improved. It's vital to pick your targets carefully-especially in the beginning. process. "We found out later we'd only Failing to get buy-in. As with any change in an organization, it's important to have created a system for three or so of their the key players on board with the plan. teams and suddenly another 15 or so Ignoring the human element. Almost by definition, implementing workflow means teams wanted to be involved," Cameron combining systems and people. If the people don't understand the process, and its says. "Instead of having to do a complete benefit, they aren't likely to cooperate enthusiastically. restart, we're extracting what we've already Re-engineering the whole organization at once. While some approaches to improving done and cutting and pasting it into a new an company's function, such as ERP, have to be applied to the entire organization system. Then we hit a button to create the essentially simultaneously, workflow is process-based. That means it's inherently end user interface." bottom-up and it's easy to implement one process at a time. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By Rick Cook like ERP, which tends to deal with the organization as a whole â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and the 'whole' should be carefully modeled before making changes. The disadvantage of the workflow approach is that it takes a while to fully reengineer an organization. ERP is like trying to swallow an elephant in one gulp. Applying workflow to an entire organization is like eating an elephant one bite (process) at a time. In fact, if the organization is large enough, you may want to consider some of the more advanced business process management (BPM) tools. The difference between workflow tools and BPM is a semantic distinction, but an important one. The bigger, more elaborate standalone BPM vendors loudly insist their software is not a workflow product, and call their

WorkfloW

Gone WronG

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WhERE DO YO Y u stAR t t? tAR

BpM

Draw pictures. In the world of workflow, these are known as "visual process models." They represent the ince workflow is a process-atprocess and the roles of the various a-time process, there are two affected groups in a simple, easy-toschools of thought in picking according to a 2007 understand format. your first workflow project. One aberdeen group "Diagrams are critical," says school is that you start with the largest report on bPM May, even if the process is trivial. 'safe' project that will give you the convergence, having "What a diagram does is basically best ROI. The other suggests starting a Bpm solution is prove you've thought about what with the simplest project and taking you're doing. The temptation is the others in order of complexity. In one of the indicators always to say 'I know how this this context, 'safe' means a process of a best in class works.' More often than not you with a high probability of success. organization. don't, because you haven't taken "The process with the biggest ROI Source: Gartner the time to analyze the process." is the one it is most important to get Don't be afraid of the white board. right," says Quask's May. "If you're "Users, especially management doing it in-house, do the simplest types, find it easier if they're given thing first. You'll probably get a better a graphical representation," says Cameron. ROI and get it quicker if you do it the right way." According to Scholtes, UML diagrams and flow charts May points out that the advice is less applicable if you're produced in the early definition phase are useful for using a consultant or vendor to implement the process. Since outlining the process. But, he cautions, they're not ideal the highest ROI project is the one you most want to get right, for communicating the process to others. "Only a few May thinks you should tackle it after you get experience on people can read a flow chart," he notes. smaller projects. Obviously, if you're hiring the expertise in "We show diagrams to the end user but we also show the form of a consultant, this doesn't apply as forcefully. implemented workflow," Scholtes says. "We show them Beyond that, there are several important things common to how the process works and we show them the diagram." all successful workflow implementations. Here they are: ZyLAB supplements the graphics with screen shots of the Start right. "A workflow implementation should be as process in operation. simple and robust as possible," says Ederyd. "A complex "As systems become more complicated," says Cameron, solution often indicates you are trying to support goals other "and workflows start flowing into each other, it's a lot than those defined, and this will add risk to the project." easier just to click through the maps." Identify an individual who is capable of analyzing what Pay attention to exceptions. It is in the nature of needs to be done. Someone within the organization has to processes that users judge them more by what goes analyze the process. wrong thant what goes right. In workflow, the term is Talk to all the people involved to make sure all â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;exceptionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. You need to make sure that the inevitable aspects of the process are fully understood. Ederyd exceptions are handled smoothly. adds, "Active user involvement is a key to success. You "A lot of customer dissatisfaction is based on how really need to sit down with the users and watch and clumsily exceptions are handled," says Ederyd. question how they perform their tasks in order to identify Pilot and test. Make sure the process works before the scope for the solutions." you rely on it. Some organizations run the old and new ZyLAB Technologies's Scholtes, whose company includes methods in parallel until they are satisfied with the a workflow consulting practice, recommends getting use workflow implementation. cases from users. "The only way we've been successful is to Workflow isn't rocket science, but it isn't magic either. talk to the end users and try to get some use cases on paper," While workflow can make major improvements in the way he says. ZyLAB typically starts with standard use cases from an organization runs, it can only do so if the principles are its library, and then asks users to point out how their way of applied correctly. Fundamentally making workflow work doing things differs. for you comes down to understanding the processes that "Once we've got that, we make a flow chart or a UML make your business work. CIO diagram and try to find agreement with the end users," Scholtes says. Define the process. "The biggest problem is knowing what you want," says Scholtes. "People often do work differently from how they think they work. With workflow, you're going to really pin people down." Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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poInTer

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Essential

technology Virtualization can help you go supersonic with the speed of backup and disaster recovery, plus trim costs. But you will need to rethink storage management.

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From Inception to Implementation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I.T. That Matters

Storage Virtualization Takes Off By Galen Gruman Storage | When Roland Etcheverry joined chemical company Champion Technologies two years ago, he looked around and realized he needed to remake the company's storage environment. He had done this twice before at other companies, so he knew he wanted a storage area network (SAN) to tie the various locations to the corporate data center, as well as to a separate disaster recovery site, each with about 7TB of capacity. He also knew he wanted to utilize storage virtualization. At its most basic, storage virtualization makes scores of separate hard drives look to be one big storage pool. IT staffers spend less time managing storage devices, since some chores can be centralized. Virtualization also increases the efficiency of storage, letting files be stored wherever there is room, rather than have some drives go underutilized. And IT can add or replace drives without requiring downtime to reconfigure the network and affected servers: the virtualization software does that for you. Backup and mirroring are also much faster because only changed data needs to be copied; this eliminates the need for scheduled storage management downtime, Etcheverry notes.

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essential technology

Better yet, he will save money on future storage needs, because his FalconStor storage management software combines drives from multiple vendors. As if they were one virtual drive, letting Etcheverry avoid getting locked in to the expensive, proprietary drives that array-based storage systems often require. Although storage virtualization technology is fairly new, it's quickly gaining traction in the enterprise. In 2006, 20 percent of 1,017 companies surveyed by Forrester Research had adopted storage virtualization. By 2009, 50 percent of those enterprises expect to. And the percentages are even higher for companies with 20,000 or more employees, the survey notes: 34 percent of such firms had deployed storage virtualization in 2006, and that will climb to 67 percent by 2009. But storage virtualization requires a clear strategy, Etcheverry says. "A lot of people don't think much about storage, so they don't do the planning that can save costs," he says. Because storage virtualization is a

environments. These chores include the following: replication to keep distributed databases synchronized; mirroring to keep a redundant copy of data available for use in case the primary copy becomes unavailable; backup to keep both current and historical data available in case it gets deleted but is needed later. It also includes snapshots to copy the original portions of changed data and make it easier to go back to the original version. All these activities have become harder to accomplish using traditional storage management techniques as data volumes surge and time for backup chores decreases. Because storage virtualization technology used for these purposes copies just the individual parts of changed data, not entire files, these data-protection activities are faster and tax the network less. "You end up transferring 40 or 50 percent less, depending on the data you have," says Ashish Nadkarni, a principal consultant at the storage consultancy GlassHouse Technologies.

Some enterprises have gained additional advantage from storage virtualization by combining it with an older technology called thin provisioning that fools a drive into thinking it has more capacity than it has. very different approach to managing data, those who don't think it through may miss several of the technology's key productivity and cost-savings advantages, concurs Nik Simpson, a storage analyst at the Burton Group.

Better Backups Strategically, storage virtualization brings the most value to resource-intensive storage management chores meant to protect data and keep it available in demanding

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This efficiency lets a CIO contemplate continuous backup and replication, and enables quick moves to new equipment in case of hardware failure. "We can add new storage as needed and have data transferred in the background, without the users even knowing," says Ryan Engh, IT infrastructure manager at the investment firm Wasatch Advisors, which uses DataCore's virtualization software. "This prevents the states of the disaster recovery site and the production site from

pulling apart," he says. Moreover, the distributed nature of the data storage gives IT great flexibility in how data is stored, says Chris Walls, president of IT services at the healthcare data management firm PHNS, which uses IBM's virtualization controller. "That control layer gives you the flexibility to put your data in a remote site, or even in multiple sites," he says, all invisible to users. Understanding these capabilities, a CIO could thus introduce 24/7 availability and disaster recovery, perhaps as part of a global expansion strategy. That is precisely what Etcheverry is doing at Champion. "We now have a zero-window backup, and I can rebuild a drive image in almost real-time," he says. Some enterprises have gained additional advantage from storage virtualization by combining it with an older technology called thin provisioning that fools a drive into thinking it has more capacity than it has. This is done typically to create one standard user volume configuration across all drives. So when you replace drives with larger ones, IT staff does not have to change the user-facing storage structure. By adding storage virtualization, these standardized, thin-provisioned volumes can exceed the physical limit of any drive; the excess is simply stored on another drive, without the user knowing. "This really eases configuration," says Wasatch's Engh. That also reduces IT's need to monitor individual drive usage; the virtualization software or appliance just gets more capacity where it can find it. For example, Epilepsy Project, a research group at the University of California at San Francisco, uses thin provisioning, coupled with Network Appliance's storage virtualization appliance. The project's analysis applications generate hundreds of gigabytes of temporary data while crunching the numbers. Rather than give every researcher the Windows maximum of 2TB of storage capacity for this occasional use, CIO Michael Williams gives each one about a quarter of that physical space. Then REAL CIO WORLD | d e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 7

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essential technology

uses thin provisioning. The appliance allocates the extra space for the analysis applications' temporary data only when it's really needed, essentially juggling the storage space among the researchers.

The Hard Part Storage virtualization's newfound flexibility and control does have risks. "The flexibility can be your worst nightmare... it's like giving razor blades to a child," says Wasatch's Engh. The issue that storage virtualization introduces is complexity. Although the tools keep track of where the files' various bits really are, IT staff not used to having the data distributed over various media might manage the disks the oldfashioned way. They would copy volumes with partial files rather than copying the files themselves for backup. Or when setting up virtualized storage networks, they might accidentally mix lower-performance drives into high-performance virtual servers, hindering overall performance in mission-critical applications, notes GlassHouse's Nadkarni. Virtualization tools aren't hard to use, but it's hard for storage engineers to stop thinking about data from a physical point of view, says PHNS's Walls. "Everything you thought you knew about storage management you need not bring to the party," he adds. Another issue is choosing the right form of storage virtualization, networkbased or array-based. The network-based virtualization technology is delivered via server-based software, a network appliance, or an intelligent Fibre Channel switch. It comes in two flavors: block-level and file-level. Array-based virtualization is typically provided as part of the storage management software that comes with an array. Array-based virtualization is mature, says Burton Group's Simpson. But it's limited to storage attached directly to the array, IT usually must buy array storage from the array vendor, creating expensive vendor lock-in. 54

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Virtual Storage Tools Storage virtualization comes in several forms, starting with the most established, array-based virtualization. Here, a vendor provides an expandable array, to which that vendor's drives can be added; management software virtualizes the drives so they appear as a common pool of data. You're typically locked in to one vendor's hardware but don't have to worry about finger-pointing among vendors if something goes wrong, says Forrester Research analyst Andrew Reichman. Providers of such arrays include Compellent, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, Network Appliance (NetApp), Sun Microsystems and Xiotech. Reichman notes that several such arraybased virtualization products, including those from Hitachi (also sold by HP and Sun) and NetApp, also support third-party storage arrays. The Hitachi array is "the only option for the high end," he says, while the others are designed for relatively small storage systems of less than 75TB. The newer option, network-based storage virtualization, uses software or a network appliance to manage a variety of disk drives and other storage media. The media can come from multiple vendors, typically allowing for the purchase of lower-cost drives than the all-from-one-vendor options. This lets you use cheaper drives for non-mission-critical storage needs. It allows you to reuse at least some storage you've accumulated over the years through mergers and acquisitions, says Ashish Nadkarni, a principal consultant at the IT infrastructure consulting and services company GlassHouse Technologies. Providers of such network-based storage virtualization (often as a component of storage area network (SAN) offering) include BlueArc, DataCore Software, EqualLogic, FalconStor Software, IBM, Incipient, iQstor and LSI. Current offerings tend to be for medium-size environments of less than 150TB, notes Forrester's Reichman. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; By Fred Hapgood

Network-based storage virtualization has been in existence just a few years and so has largely been offered by startups. It's the most flexible form of storage virtualization, says Forrester's Andrew Reichman. It lets you manage almost all your storage resources, even offsite, as long as they are available via the SAN, he says. Although these tools can theoretically act as a choke point on your SAN, in practice the vendors are good at preventing that problem, he notes. Most network-based storage virtualization products work at the block level, meaning they deal with groups of bits rather than whole files. Block-level network-based storage virtualization is the most flexible option. The technology typically requires that an enterprise change its storage network switches and other network devices to ones that are compatible, Nadkarni notes. "But no one wants to shut down their SAN to do so," he says.

Technology can be added incrementally, but that just raises the complexity, since you now have some virtualized storage and some nonvirtualized storage. Thus, most organizations should consider adopting network-based storage virtualization as part of a greater storage reengineering effort, he advises. That's exactly what both Champion's Etcheverry and PHNS's Walls did. Etcheverry brought virtualization in as part of an enterprisewide storage redesign, while Walls brought it in as part of adding a new data center and disaster recovery site. Once the two IT leaders were happy with their new systems, they then transferred the data over and brought them online. That meant there was only a single disruption to the storage environment that users noticed. "This was a one-time event," Walls notes. CIO

Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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Pundit

essential technology

More Value from Human Capital It's time for a new kind of internal audit. Do your systems support your employees? By Michael Schrage Innovation | For decades, CIOs have sold IT as an investment to boost the strategic and operational competitiveness of their firms. That’s a good thing. With Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, networked CAD and VOIP, IT's internal value proportion has expanded to embrace enhanced communications within the enterprise. That's also a good thing. But when CEOs talk about their challenges and priorities, they reveal subtle but significant shifts in emphasis. However, they now are much more concerned about getting more value from their best people. They even seem more motivated to get better results from their ‘average’ people.

council. The result? There is no integrated or coherent corporate understanding of how blogs and wikis should transform how people should communicate or collaborate within the firm. Ironically, his C-level peers criticized the CIO for launching the platform before they were ‘ready’ to take advantage of it. The CEO points to the platform as 'yet another way our organization is empowering our people'. This is fake empowerment. It's time for a new kind of internal audit. To support the human capital portfolio, systems demand comparable treatment from IT. CIOs need to push their people —

than stellar job of investing in their internal clients and users. CIOs need to focus more of their attention on making their customers smarter and giving their internal clients tools and training to make them smarter as well. When you underinvest in your users and customers, they are unable to get the value they need and you want from your systems investment. CEOs — and even CFOs — now grasp that one cannot divorce the return on the virtual asset from the return on the human asset. In reality, a portion of their global competitiveness potential is a function of how well people utilize that

CIOs need to focus their attention on making their customers smarter and giving their internal clients tools to make them smarter as well. In short, augmenting human performance now appears even more important than automating business process. But are executive teams following through on these priorities in truly meaningful ways? The CIO of one global bank set up a lovely technical infrastructure to support blogs and wikis worldwide. The professed goal was to make the firm's internal communications platform more participatory. The bad news? The new blogosphere/wikisphere was built with the approval of — but without guidance from — the CEO and the operating executive

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and their C-level colleagues — to identify what the key elements are in the firm's professional development and talent management portfolio. And match up the systems investments with the people ones. What does that mean? Teaching you how to use Outlook or set up a wiki or create e-mail Listservs is not the same as you learning how to use them effectively. Not to be too cynical, but training is how IT has conveniently ‘outsourced’ its investment in the human capital of its users. Indeed, many CIOs do a fantastic job of investing in and developing their own staff. They do a less

asset. Every IT proposal of note should come with a human capital impact statement, not just a training budget, curriculum and schedule in the appendix. Does this pose an added burden on an already overstressed CIO? Perhaps. Does this better reflect what the CEO is now telling his direct reports, your colleagues, your company and your investors? Absolutely. It's time to coordinate your calendars so that the CEO's priorities are better embedded in your own. CIO

Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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B y S c o t t B e r i n at o

Personal Technology

Do You Love Your BlackBerry Too Much? Take this quiz and find out: *Answers are at the bottom of the page

1. According to Reuters, how fast did 16-year-old Ang Chuang type a 160-character text message to set the world record for fastest texting? (A) 1 minute, 25 seconds (B) 1 minute, 1 second (C) 42 seconds (D) 21 seconds

2. What was Chuang’s 'trick' to speedy texting? (A) Daily finger exercises. (B) Using fingers and thumbs simultaneously. (C) Memorizing the keypad. (D) Using a phone with big keys.

3. Which of the following is not a real quote from a news story about BlackBerry use? (A) 'BlackBerry e-mail devices can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users, experts warned today.' (B) 'A management expert is warning corporations to gird themselves for a potentially costly wave of lawsuits from employees claiming they are addicted to ’crackberries.’' (C) 'The Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz., offers a special BlackBerry Balm Hand Massage that runs $80 for 30 minutes.'

(D) 'A yacht broker was fined for kicking and punching a building company director who put his personal organiser into a pint of beer.'

4. What was the court’s sentence for the teen who killed a bicyclist when he was DWT (driving while texting)? (A) Life in prison (B) 10 years in prison (C) 9 days in prison (D) Community service

10. According to an anonymous posting on a BlackBerry addicts’ confession page, 'BlackBerry is...' 5.True or false? This is the only (A) '...the best invention ever.' reported death in connection (B) '...the key to higher profits and with DWT. productivity. When will they become mandatory in business?' 6. Britney Spears 7. Reese Witherspoon (C) '...a scourge on my life, my family and my sanity.' 8. Naomi Campbell 9. Tori Spelling (D) '...a lifeline to love, work, How’d You Do? Match the celebrities to the knowledge, friendship and BlackBerry incident: experience. Who wouldn’t 1–3 correct: be addicted?' CIO (A) Allegedly attacked Clean and sober assistant with 4–7 correct: bejewelled BlackBerry. Experimenting (B) Divorce allegedly spurred 8–10 correct: by love letters found on Get help. Please. spouse’s BlackBerry. Send feedback to editor@cio.in

Answers: 1. c; 2. d; 3. Trick question; they are all real. 4. c; 5. False. Deaths have also been reported in England, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Switzerland, according to the San Jose Mercury News. 6. b; 7. a; 8. c; 9. d; 10. d 56

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